The Unexpected Consequences of Hooking Up

It’s been quiet over here. Other than the vacation flirting, we’ve had crickets for awhile. As I hit the three month mark on not having slept with anyone (how do you people not do it?), I’m starting to get a little antsy. A lot antsy. 

I shut it all down for logical, rational, well thought out reasons. I very definitely, truly, decidedly would like something meaningful in my life other than reckless one night stands. 

On the other hand…constant boredom will likely lead me down the path of booze n bad decision making. I’m okay with this. Because the other reasons for shutting it down were that I was scolded and I retreated. For like six months? That’s absurd. (The January transgression hardly counts as my usual ridiculous fun type stories, hence the six month count.) I let others dictate my behavior. Not that I wasn’t going out and getting drunk, it was just less frequently than the weekly fall adventures and it had a very different tone to it. 

I haven’t honest to god been out causing (seeking?) trouble on a weekend night since November-ish. That…needs to change. 

I was going to keep it all shut down and well behaved until I head to Vegas in June, the land of debauched, depraved behavior, where you are expected to act out your insane fantasies. But June is a long way off from now and I’m not happy with the way things are. I need a little letting loose to feel a little more normal. The theory of taking in a little to keep from complete insanity. If that makes any sense. (It did when my Greek mythology prof taught it to me in undergrad.)

The point is: I need to find equilibrium. And currently I want to find that equilibrium by going out with my friends, putting on my clothes that make me look fantastic, wearing makeup that implores you to look at my eyes and flirting endlessly with boys. Hopefully (so very hopefully) it doesn’t have to be debauchery or nothing. I’d like to flirt, hand out my number, and call it a night. But you never know. I’m open to the possibilities…

Just thought you’d all like an update. Or not. Whatever. 

I love vacations. I love flirting on vacation. It is a completely low risk venture. You are free to be whoever you want to be with the back of your mind knowledge that should you blow it all to hell and act like an idiot, it’s okay because your tenancy in any one place is only for a short period of time.

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I screwed up. I feel moronic. Too much rattling around the house alone, drinking when I knew I should have stopped, heading to a bar because…I don’t know why.

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It has been two months since I have hooked up with anyone*. This, to most of you, may not seem like a particularly long time, but to me? That’s a dry spell, yo.

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I got a text message a few hours ago from a number that was not saved in my phone and that only had cursory familiarity to me. All it says is “Hey stranger! What’s up?” I have now spent more time than I should attempting to figure out who the hell the number belongs to. My first thought was that it was the jackass 22 year old and then debated what I do as a response.

But I searched my old phone bills and as far as I can tell, our last interaction was the evening of September 5th into the morning of the 6th. Because my phone company sucks, I can’t access anything before that so I don’t know when this started. But that interaction makes it labor day weekend. That also makes it not the jackass 22 year old. Which I have to admit momentary disappointment at.

Yeah, I have no idea who it is. None. And I don’t want to respond until I at least  have an inkling of who it is because I don’t want to indicate interest when there is none. Although the fact that the number was deleted should indicate that I’m not very interested/have moved on. Still. This is driving me nuts. Anyone got any idea what guy I was talking to around Labor Day? My brain can’t seem to figure out who it could be. And I don’t want to send the less than classy “Who is this?” text message. Feelings get hurt yada yada. I’ve done more than my due dilligence in trying to figure out who it is. Went through old gchats seeing if I said anything to a friend, combed old blog posts. You guys, I got nothing. How is this possible?

I was only struck by the lightening idea that even though I take numbers out of my phone so that I’ll no longer drunk dial them, I could bury them in a password protected doc so that should I ever run into this problem again, I’ll know who the hell the number belongs to. Also: even though I no longer wanted to keep a list (the last one is quite dated) of who I had hooked up with, a little recall wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Just for my own purposes.

Anyway. I haven’t responded. I’m not sure I will. At this point I’m not sure I want to backslide into someone who isn’t that interested in me. And is texting me in the middle of the day?

This is still just the kind of ridiculous problem only I seem to have.

I have about a thousand other things I HAVE to do so naturally my desire to write, after over a month, goes up exponentially in that scenario. I am nothing if not a master procrastinator. It is an inherited trait. One I know to be true and yet can not avoid despite all my desire to the contrary. In fact, even with a paying client in my chosen profession (one I can’t believe I chose, would like to be doing ANYTHING else), I need a gun to my head to perform.

Which is a long way of explaining how I find myself here currently.

In such times of added pressure, my mind naturally wanders. This time it wandered to the fact that I have been single for 2.5 years. Single single single. That seemed like a really long time suddenly. 2.5 years with nary a hint of a boyfriend.

Sure, there were guys that stuck around for a bit. He who shall not be named from last summer comes to mind. We had a bit of fun, I suppose, though to my way of negating things it was really just hooking up. He, however, got pissy with me when he wanted to be friends again and I rebuffed him on the premise that we were never friends to begin with, said to his mind it was much more than just hooking up. I disagreed. (Yes, I’m a stone cold bitch. You should know this. Also, I apologize now for pretentious asshatty language contained herein, I’m gearing up for that actual paid writing assignment I have to do.)

There were guys I liked that caused me to delete the guys I didn’t really like from my phone. Guys that made me giddy and ridiculous and plan futures that would never come to fruition. TMK versions 1 & 2. The recent 22 year old jackass was such a good kisser my brain went on the fritz for a bit. Kissing endorphins short circuit even the most staid among us.

There was the firefighter who I saw potential with after so long of not seeing potential, only to have that be the exact moment he decided I meant nothing.

There were guys I would have liked to see again, but either did not give them the opportunity or didn’t give myself the opportunity for future encounters.

There are guys I cared not to see again, sneaking out at first light, never to hear from them again, or dodging their calls if they did want to see me again, carefully avoiding any future contact if I thought I might run into them.

There were hotels and vacations and guys whose names I did not bother to learn or care to know.

There were late night phone calls and not any permanence.

In the moments where I wanted to curl up on the couch and watch a movie in the arms of someone amusing, there was no one.

I am mostly, I’d say 85%, okay with my situation as it is. I didn’t want permanence. I didn’t want responsibility, the need to care about another person’s feelings to the detriment of my own selfish whims. To have banal conversations and run errands and all the couple-y bullshit that a life with someone else involves. Or at least in my mind is what a relationship is.

Then I stopped, while pondering this 2.5 years of men boys flitting in and out of my life, as to WHY I wanted it that way.

The answer is: I was snake bit.

When something happens to me, that experience, if negative, sends me reeling in the exact opposite direction. I spent 5 years in an unsatisfying relationship. One that should have ended long before it did, where both parties were clinging to what was safe and easy, unable to break for the unknown. It wasn’t an inherently bad relationship. The other party is not evil or awful. There was no abuse. It just wasn’t satisfying. I was not intellectually challenged in the least, though the other party has brains to spare (that said person REFUSES to ever actually employ). And I was dating the sort of person who constantly acts helpless and confused by the world at large, requiring that I spent a large part of our time together feeling like a mother prodding a child rather than dealing with a true partner.

To be fair: I am a decisive person. Being the one in the relationship to make all the decisions is fine. If that’s what the agreement is. But I, as most of us are, am complex. Every so often I wanted to be taken care of, to not have to think, to have decisions made for me that were for us both. Where as I felt I was constantly doing what “we” wanted to do, IF my partner did make a decision, it was not as a “we” but as an “I”. This leads to a constant cycle of frustration and disappointment and a feeling of not being heard or understood.

And it’s not that I wasn’t loved. I was. But almost cloyingly so. I, as an almost too independent person, INSIST on having interests outside of a relationship. Of having time apart to pursue things separately. This may very well be a symptom of that not being the right person and were I to fall head over heels, my mind might change and I’d want to enfold that person in every aspect of my life. (And I very much would, someday, like that kind of love.) But I have lost too many friends to what I have dubbed Relationship Land, that I didn’t want to go down that route myself. It was important to me to maintain friendships that existed prior to the relationship. It also says something that I didn’t want this person all up in every pre-relationship friendship, too. I recognize that as an issue of our incompatibility. But the time apart and need to have outside interests drove the other party nuts so that they dug in heels and clung tighter to me, which in turn forces me to pull away.

And yet being in a relationship where things aren’t perfect left me feeling insecure and unwanted so that I became an unrecognizable, unsure version of myself, too. Ugh. Just pondering it now makes me hate me all over again.

The point being, without delving into the entire history of a five year relationship that should have ended long before it did, is that I was unhappy at the end of it. Sure, still devastated by the end of something that took up a good half decade (and more if we count the unrequited thing it was prior to that…I may explain all of this in detail someday). But, I am an unsentimental, awful human being and once initial feelings of rejection and unwantedness passed, I took on single-hood with a vengeance. I wanted absolutely NONE of what I had previously been locked in. I was looking out for numero uno. If I wanted to sleep with someone and not stick around, by god I was going to. I didn’t need to know a guy’s name because I surely didn’t care enough.

No one really challenged me on the why of what I was doing, only encouraging it, living vicariously through it, unaware of the emotional toll. This is likely due to having friends who had never been even close to a similar situation. It was on me to take inventory and stock of what was going on.

So: these two and a half years have mostly been fun. Sometimes a bit scary. Sometimes fraught with emotions I didn’t even know I was capable of having. Sometimes I lost my head a little bit, in a silly, shrug-off-able way, leaving 2 a.m. voicemails I shouldn’t. Sometimes it made me feel cheap and used. Sometimes it made me feel powerful and strong. Sometimes it was regrettable. But mostly it wasn’t. These were my choices and come hell or high water, my stubborn self was sticking by them as MINE.

But recently, even prior to the realization of time passing as a single woman (no longer a girl, fortunately or unfortunately?), I started to think about what these choices meant, and why I was making them, and what I was learning from them. And as I thought about the lather, rinse, repeat pattern of too much alcohol and too much meaningless sex, I felt a sudden shift and a sudden strength and a need for a sea change. (I know, some of you would LOVE to have the problem of too much meaningless sex. To which I say: you very easily can, it’s not difficult.)

I was making the same ridiculous mistakes over and over again. I was getting silly and drunk and being wholeheartedly honest, as that’s all I really know how to do, and sleeping with boys who in the light of day were scared of such straightforwardness. And then I would drink again and be straightforward again and make an ass out of myself with the drunk texting. Or just hook up with someone else who was entirely charming and interesting after a few of my drink of choice. And if I REALLY stopped to think about it (which I obviously did), even the ones I liked, I likely didn’t REALLY like. I didn’t know them. And they certainly didn’t know me. It was all alcohol fueled idiocy with unworthy guys. Guys who weren’t making an effort to see me and making me feel somehow ridiculous when I would ask to see them again. Didn’t they like me enough to want to see me again? The answer to that was probably no. That’s not fun to hear, but I would shrug it off and move on to the next conquest. It was all so…casual.

The 22 year old jackass is the one who crystallized the error of my ways for me. I spent a week feeling rejected and then pretty immediately annoyed. “Wait. You’re rejecting ME? Yeah. I don’t think so. I’m a goddamned woman with an advanced degree, sparkling green eyes, and a rapier wit. You’re a 22 year old jackass, trying way too hard to impress my father and not nearly enough to impress me, good kissing aside. You can go fuck yourself,” is what I should have said but haven’t/never had the opportunity to.

It occurred to me, who is so very rarely full of herself, the last one to seek attention or point out positive attributes and wholly incapable of taking a compliment, treading far more in the waters of overwhelming insecurity and not good enough-ness that I had no reason to be insecure or not feel good enough. I’m a freaking rock star. I didn’t have to take every crumb of late night male attention as if it was a gift when it truly wasn’t. And that having sex and leaving before the crack of dawn didn’t make me powerful but was a different side of the insecurity coin. That while I am all too aware that love and sex are entirely different things, not giving myself the chance to enjoy or even have love was short changing only me and wasn’t some amazing post-feminist I can do anything behavior.

I deserve to be pursued, not do the pursuing, even recognizing that we don’t live in a world with clearly defined norms anymore. Because as I’d been cautioned: just because I didn’t want to play by the rules of the dating game, didn’t mean everyone else wasn’t. I need to not be so forward so easily, or so trusting, or so truthful. I’m not saying I’ll change the blissfully unaware essence of who I am. I won’t stop being smart and clever and saying audacious things in bars to make people laugh. But a little more caution, a little less sleeping around, a little less alcohol to get to more honest interactions wouldn’t be the worst of things. And the me that is more dismissive and bitchy and sarcastic can often be more fun than the me that learned how to bat her eyelashes, look intently and ask the right questions of a guy to show my interest.

All of which got me to this conclusion: because I was snake bit by my past relationship, I dove headlong in the opposite direction, wanting nothing in the vicinity of a relationship for fear it would end up being as pedestrian as that last one that lasted way too long. But what I needed to realize was that just because THAT relationship wasn’t perfect didn’t mean the next one wouldn’t be. And that even if it wasn’t, I now had the tools, skills, and self-awareness to extricate myself from it before far too many years had passed in unhappiness. I wouldn’t just by default end up back in the same situation. All guys I date will not be a carbon copy (god help us) of that last paramour. And I will be different in any new relationship. So I’m no longer snake bit. There are some honest, genuine interactions to be had out there and I look forward to having them.

To be clear: If I again decide I want the casual sex and the leaving at the crack of dawn and am not interested in anything else, I’ll make that decision. But I will be more aware that I’m making that decision. As it currently stands, I don’t think I will make that decision. But I’m changeable and my chosen profession, while not having taught me much, did teach me not to speak in absolutes. There is always wiggle room for changing my mind.

Mostly, however, I hope to stick with the slightly bitchier, less trusting, more demanding version of me. I’ve kind of missed her. I think she’ll serve me well. Both with boys and with the chosen profession. That or I’ll just fake it ‘til I make it. In both arenas.

ME: So, you gonna make plans to see me or just wait until I’m suuuuper drunk again and force the issue? Hahaha!

Him (four hours later): LOL I’ve just got a lot on my plate as I’m sure you understand. 

Me to stepsis, forwarding his text: Oh HELLLL no. Nice to know 22 year olds can be as big a jackasses as guys my own age. WTFF?

Her: He’s an idiot. He needs to be junk punched.

Me to her: WTF is with the ‘lol’ at the beginning? “It’s super hysterical how I’m not going to be spending any time with you!”? AND he didn’t answer my question. Or. I guess he did. Guh.

Her: Dumb dumb dumb

Me to him (four hours after his text, because that’s how long it takes me to think of a comeback): You really should consider law school. That was an AMAZING non answer. 

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