He cancelled on me! zomg!

Well, not really cancelled so much as rainchecked, and for reasons that, if he weren't an Internet Stranger, I would 100% commiserate with, having been in the same situation. HOWEVER. He is an Internet Stranger, and this makes it more likely that Valid Reason is a total cover lie for "my third wife went into premature labor with our second child, and I have to be there or else she'll re-initiate divorce proceedings and I can't afford to lose all my hedge fund millions." Something like that.

Although, really really oddly, I am not upset, depressed, freaked or otherwise in high dudgeon about this. Which I normally am/would be. I choose to attribute this to my newly adopted philosophy of beaucoup des poissons sur la mer, and I successfully managed not to (psychotically, or as per usual) put all my eggs in this one basket. Or any eggs, really. All my eggs are in the henhouse and I've got a lovely basket collection going. Or. . .something. LIKE WHAT NORMAL BEHAVIOR SHOULD BE LIKE, OMG.

Also, this meant that I got to spend almost all weekend lazing about my new, wonderful apartment. I'm such a homebody, and I hadn't gotten around to that yet! And I downloaded about a dozen songs from iTunes and it's sunny and just in general a fab day. Except for the headache from the teeth grinding ow.

I've really got to get up and shower sometime soon, because it's off to mom's birthday. . .linner? sunch? What do you call a lunch/dinner/supper meal? That. I'm going to that.

Whoops, so I forgot the most important part of my epiphany: how I came to it in the first place! bitchygurl jogged my memory about that, and this is what I said to her in comments:

Oh derr, I forgot the key part of my epiphany! Which totally relates to this and is: I say I want to be pursued, but I have had a problem with every guy who's ever pursued me. I've been in painfully few relationships, gone on a pathetic number of dates in comparison, and mostly all with guys who pursued me. And I've shut down 98% of those dates/relationships. So I was discussing this tendency with mailekai one day, and I thought--"well, self, maybe you actually don't like being pursued. Have you ever thought about that?"



Or, perhaps I don't like the types of guys that want to pursue a girl like me. Or the type of guys who pursue girls, period. Maybe my whole only-child control issues stretch to the area of dating, as well.

So then I started thinking about it--created "Dana's Ideal Guy" and imagined two scenarios: one where he pursues me, in similar ways that I've been pursued in the past, and one where I think I'm all hot and sexy and awesome and pursue--or, in other words, control. Connnnntrrroooolllllll. And I was sort of surprised to realize that I even felt creeped out with Imaginary Ideal Man calling out to me on the street, or writing a solicitous email. I MUCH preferred the scenario where Imaginary Me said, "I like you. Come over here."

So then I was all, "well, what you need for that to happen is to start saying 'I like you. Come over here.'"

It was a little disappointing, initially, to sort of give up on that dream of being the crush object, but the more time I've had to live with it the more comfortable it seems.

I'm not saying this IS how you should feel, it's just the weird crazy thought process that happened to me.

I started to get a little wordy in my response to gfrancie in the last entry, and decided it was worth making into a whole new entry. Yes, my tl;dr comes in volumes. You are so lucky.

First, let me get to the breakthrough, the epiphanic moment that I had the other day about being a girl who is lame when it comes to approaching guys and dating them: Why do I have to be lame? Why, exactly, am I lame? Also, why do the guys get to have all the fun and run game? The epiphany was, essentially, Why can I not also run game?

I don't mean that in a sleazy Player's Club kind of way, but I was thinking about that pink scourge of the bookstore, He's Just Not That Into You and wondering, why does HE get to be not that into ME? What guy sits around hoping that if he wishes it hard enough, or smiles just the right way to a random stranger, or some other bizarre juju, that a girl will want to have a relationship? That is bogus. Why do the men get all the agency (sorry, lit majors) here? Why can't I start at the same level that they do, assuming that I'm hot and awesome and that I will make my moves and run my game until they realize how hot and awesome I am?

It was my Helen Keller under the water spigot moment (yes, I've had a lot of those). Oh! WATER!

Yeah, so I was like, look, I am going to go out there and start chatting up a ton of dudes and not doing the stupid girl thing where I single out one person and put all my eggs in that basket and probably have all that weirdness come out in the communicating and then get immensely crushed when it goes south because I have put all my eggs in the one basket. . .etc. No more!

So, there was that. But, as I was mentioning to gfrancie, I've now run into the problem of ABSOLUTELY NOT KNOWING how to effectively run my game. Because I know what image I'd like to project, but I have also been told recently that I am hard to read. And because the person who told me is a total BFF who I have known over ten years and even lived with at one point, I gave that opinion a good deal of weight.

So I don't WANT to be hard to read. But I'm not intentionally being hard to read, so I'm not sure exactly how much more expressive to make myself. I just emailed this guy that he was cute. Which is true, but normally something I'd never do. Normally I'd interact with a cute guy the way I'd interact with my aunt, waiting for. . .what, I don't know. Possibly, some embarrassing Romantic Comedy Moment where it all goes from 0 to 60 in a scene change! Oh, I am so ashamed of myself. Okay, that is enough self-exploration for tonight!

So. . .Cute Guy Is Cute. I tell him that. Is that too much? Not enough? OMG I don't know!! I'm totally happy to do MORE, go FURTHER, because I've had my epiphany and there is no shame in the game that I am running, but. . .I am a horrible judge of this, clearly!

And yes, krock, I know. Aspies flatmouth. I almost deleted this post several times because of aspies law.

This guy on okcupid just sent me an email saying, among other things, "you clean up really well."

No, right? No. I think perhaps jessica_dwg and I should circulate a helpful pamphlet: Things Not To Say To Girls You Have Just Met (On The Internet).

I made my first cup of coffee in the new apartment this afternoon. The apartment is hereby christened. Now, I'm going to take a shower (yes, at 5 in the afternoon) because I was up at 7am, flea-marketing and grocery-shopping and completely-unplanned-detour-hardware-store-plant-shopping.

Oh, and on one of the parallel streets to the hardware store, there was this street fair thing, complete with rides. And around 3 pm, when I was at the store, there were a total of two visitors for the whole fair. And they were just going around the tilt-a-whirl thing by themselves. It was a depressing scene. The operator of the mini-ferris wheel looked like he wanted to punch someone.

Five Things I Will Be Very Excited to Purchase Once I Have A Job:

1.
A brand-new car!

2.
My own apartment

3.
Updated Rx glasses

4.
A match.com membership (because hope springs eternal)

5.
Writing classes at UCLA extension

You know, when I started this list, I thought I would have no trouble finding at least five things. But after the first three, I sort of had to reflect for a bit. But the whole match.com thing motivated me to ask your advice on photo selection. Tonight, I was wearing my Frankie Say Relax t-shirt because I felt crappy (boo, food allergies) and Ithought, hey! Good "humorous/wacky" photo op! The pics are below the cut, and I would LOVE your opinion on which you think is best. Keep in mind that this was taken with my dying camera (seriously, it's on it's last legs at this point) and I have been feeling sickly all day, so . . .I know those two things are happening. I will definitely take a better picture later. Thank you, friends list, as I think I'm pretty terrible at picking good pictures of myself.

( Door #1, #2 or #3? )

Oh, yeah, so I said I was going to write about how this year had been for me, and I don't want to make a liar out of myself, and I don't really want to have this hanging over my head in 2008, so I've got to do it now. But I don't really want to do it ('cause I don't think I will ever really want to do it) so I imagine it will be short and rather un-analytical. But the purpose of this is to. . .look, if you ever want me to talk to you about anything relating to cancer, or a parent dying, or depression, or being single for pretty much your whole life, or. . .anything, any of the things that have gone wrong for me, please just ask. I know it helps me to know that I'm not the only one who's managed to live through all that.

( Christ, get in the car--it's a herd of teal deer! )

I was going to do it today, and maybe I'll do it tonight, but fairly soon I'm going to have a little something prepared about my father's death this year, the difficulty of the last two years in relation to that, and the difficulty of the last four years or so outside of that, and how I finally started to figure myself out and get the whole ship righted. I'm going to do that because I am a glutton for stories of people who have gone through something similar, and it's only fair that I get all personal and share my story, too. With the hope that someone going through some serious crap comes across it one day and it makes her feel a little better, or at least not alone.

But right now, I am going to talk about. . .[drumroll] failure at dating! I know, it's been a while. But I sort of took myself out of the scene this year, since I could barely be bothered to put on socks, most days.

So anyway, a little over a year ago there was this guy from okcupid who emailed me--and because I never get okcupid notifications and because I also was not in a headspace to care about okcupid, I didn't see his email until at least a month later, maybe two. But I thought he was cute and interesting (and that's so rare to find me on online dating sites--or anywhere) so I did email him back. I gave some song-and-dance about being preoccupied, but didn't get into the ugly details.

Yeah, well, he never emailed me back. Sort of a bummer, but I forgot about it. Now that I'm finally starting to feel human again, I sort of had an itch to surf the dating sites (whatever, I'm doing lame internet dating, you're reading livejournal right now, Judgey McJudgerson), and I saw a new profile for him on match.com! And I was all, hey, that's the guy! And I went back to okcupid and he still had a profile there, and I was like, what the heck, getting back in the saddle, just email him again and sort of lay it out.

And so I did, I was all, "I wasn't dating someone else, it was just that family health catastrophe, so you seem cool and write back and stuff." Yay me! Not a chicken!


And later that night, he emailed back! Yay again! And it was a long email--yay again again! And it contained this line:

"I get all up in this sending stuff out to people that I think are cool, not that I am even particularly romantically interested in,"

Dude, burn. Also: no more yay. How am I this made of fail at dating?

So, I guess I'll write back, since he does seem cool, and I could use a local friend who can . . .who is handy. Not in that way. But it seems like maybe he could help me with, like, my car or whatever. And also be my friend! I mean, I wouldn't want him just hanging around to change my oil, but come on--there has to be some sort of tradeoff for my bruised ego.

Are you ever suddenly gripped with the realization that you don't know what you're wearing? Maybe the shirt, maybe underwear, maybe the whole outfit is making you draw a big blank. Do you then stare straight ahead until you can remember what you put on that morning?

For someone (me) for whom dressing is the most important decision I'll make before lunch, I sure do forget about it quickly.

...

I think maybe I shouldn't blame the guys for dumping their Big Ol' Bags of Ugly and Issues on the table. I think maybe there's something about me, some way I behave, that makes that happen. I shouldn't be surprised; it's probably somehow related to the Crazy Magnet gene.

So, this afternoon I got a MySpace comment (I know; so lame to even use this as a springboard for discussion, like it's a legitimate form of conversation) from CLCB.

"What?" you're probably all saying. Which is what I said. "What?" and "Huh?" Really, if I had known for just one second he'd be back to bother me. . .

We saw Wordplay, the crossword puzzle docu (v. v. good!), and he said he's been doing the LAT crossword every day since. So have I (mostly), but the thing is--that's been two weeks now. Two weeks since we spoke. I was fine with that, really. So he felt like dropping in, and just expected me to be free?

Anyway, I figure this is one of two things: a MySpace booty call or a truly hamfisted attempt at reconnecting long-term. I'd really rather not. The only child in me just wants to do nothing, to lock herself in the bathroom until the intruder goes away. The manic people-pleaser, the Everybody's Friend Diplomat, in me wants to reply just so as to be not impolite.

Note that neither of those responses involve being at all excited about connecting with this guy again. I mean, what is the deal? Arranging a third date (I'll just call it that) three weeks in the future, thinking I'm that chained-up little person still in. . .enjoying his company after another two?

So I was at the grocery store this evening and this shady character who's been saying "hello" to me in the mornings when I go to the gym cornered me in the frozen food section and forced me into conversation. I know it's the same guy only because he told me; I pretend I can't see or hear him when I go to the gym.

It had been awhile since one of the shady, slimy guys who singularly hit on me had done so, and I had started thinking it was because I'd gotten fat, or old, or whatever. And I wasn't too bothered by that. I had actually thought, "well, if a side effect of being fat and almost thirty is that I don't get random losers approaching me on a daily basis, it's not all bad." But I just realized what it really was--for the last couple of years I've been wearing a portable music device almost everywhere, just because I like music that much and I prefer to shop alone. So anyway, I got to pretend to ignore all manner of people, especially Sketchy Loser Pick-Up.

And I even thought about taking my iPod today! But no, I decided it was too short a trip to bother. Little did I know.

Anyway, I totally hated everything about the encounter and even though (as I was just telling my new roommate) I'm no longer the person who can't say no, I was out of practice ditching pushy, age-inappropriate, lifestyle-inappropriate men and so I ended up standing there next to the ice cream listening to him tell me about his hair salon, his Jamaican heritage and how he's been trying to say hello to me for five years.

Here's an idea: after five years, maybe I don't want to talk to you.

And then he made me shake his hand, and I wasn't prepared for a handshake brush-off, and I was so disgusted and annoyed (look, I am a bit of a princess, but I get attention from a guy I'd find attractive maybe once an Olympic cycle but I beat away the jobless criminals with a stick, and it just wears on me, it would wear on you, too), like, I don't want to touch you! And then he's all, "what do you do for fun?" and I said, "nothing. I don't like going out." And then he said, "maybe we could exchange numbers." And I said, "I'm seeing someone." And he said, "just as friends, everyone needs friends." And I said. . .I don't remember what I said. I might have said, "maybe" or "we'll see" or "yes. . .friends, who doesn't like friends" but it really doesn't matter because by that time I was pushing my cart away.

Now the freaking gym that's half a block away is ruined and I'll have to use the other entrance two blocks away just to avoid this guy with his chain of hair salons and bloodshot eyes.

So, for like the last. . .ever, I refrained from talking about boys. I did it in high school because my friends either liked the boy (and aside from any icky competition angles, even then I knew that high school boys weren't really worth all THAT adoration) or the boy happened to be my best friend (draaaamaaaa). I did it in college because my friends sort of hated all the boys I liked, and then. . .you know, I just got older and I kept doing it. It was a habit, and plus I started thinking that no one would be interested and plus when boys I liked kept not liking me, it was sort of a protective measure against looking like the eternally spurned woman.

If you'd known me that entire time, you'd think I wasn't really in the habit of liking boys at all (something k_rock can attest to). I didn't mean to project that image, and I really didn't think about how it looked to anyone else. So I was surprised when, for whatever reason (oh right, the unbearable hotness of his being), I decided to dish about my CL concert buddy and nearly caused the vapors in a lot of people who did know me and did think I wasn't in the habit of liking boys. My bad.

Anyway, I think I'm going to go back to that habit. Because in this month-ish of talking about CLCB, I've encountered. . .well, negative and pitying reactions from some (SOME! And if you can read this, and this is not on a special friends filter, I'm pretty sure you're not even included) of my friends about it, and while I know it's all well-meaning. . .it's not. . .helpful, dudes? Well, helpful in the sense of making me feel not discomfited. And nothing's gone particularly wrong--although nothing's gone right in a spectacular way, either--so I get all weird about this new trend of throwing all this daylight on some potentially negative hypothetical.

And that's another thing--this might be bugging me more than it should, because back when I didn't talk about boys, I never got ANYTHING but positive feedback. I could be relating some random story about a crazy Post Office experience, happen to mention how this guy in line passed me a pen, and I'd get back "HE TOTALLY LOVES YOU!!!11!".

That is a slight exaggeration. But it does seem like folks were way optimistic about my prospects back when I didn't have any prospects (as far as they knew). I find that odd. And, yes--discomfiting!

Sometimes, at work, I have an uncontrollable impulse to say, "Jeremy Jordan? Al-right!" a la Tori Spelling/Donna Martin (was she in character?) when someone says either of the names "Jeremy" or "Jordan." It amuses and frightens my coworkers. It's not that they don't get the reference. But it is a weird thing to do. It's also weird that I never had this impulse before I started working here, and I don't have this impulse outside of work.

I just did it.

. . .

I almost watched Rockstar: Tommy Lee last night just because of the once-removed connection to former rockstar friend/idol/client Steve Isaacs (who is in a new band, Panic Channel, with host Dave Navarro). I got as far as it took for the talking go-go dancer in a sequined sarape to get her first two camera angles in. And then I was too annoyed to even Tivo it. I'll have to set up a season pass once the memory has faded a bit, because I'm sure Panic Channel will be on at some point.

. . .


Oh! Although, I had an eating-related realization last week: like most American women, I have a contentious (at best) relationship with food, and for a long time I ate for all the wrong reasons: boredom, sadness, inability to give rude drivers flat tires through telekinesis. That's (mostly) over now, but it's sort of created an opposite problem: if I'm busy, or happy, I'm not hungry. It's not that I don't eat--I don't think about eating. And not just a missing-lunch type of thing, either. I can go a loooooooong time without food and not really realize it if I'm going 100 miles an hour. Or at Disneyland. That's not good. I retrained my hunger sensors! In a bad way!

...

The guy I went to the Counting Crows/Goo Goo Dolls show with last Friday and who I will be going to the Pearl Jam show with this Monday is really hot. I just couldn't not say that anymore.

Just so we're all clear.

He's the kind of hot that motivated Christel to look up from his MySpace photo and say to me, in solemn earnestness, "You're seeing him again on Monday? I would just stop eating."

Oh. . .or maybe I'm just that fat. No, I kid. But don't worry. It is (well, ever since I got past my teenage hormone-fueled depressions, anyway) impossible for me to stop eating.

So I was reading Jessica's blog tonight (Jessica of GFY fame), and something she wrote struck a chord with me:

And indeed, just this past Friday, I had said to Eliza that what I sometimes really miss in my life is emotional support. Not that I don't get that in abundance from my friends -- I do, and they're wonderful -- but they generally aren't around in the middle of the night, which is when I most want to have someone tell me that: I'm smart; or beautiful; or capable; or that they know I am going to succeed; or that they believe in me; or that, no matter what happens, I'm going to be all right, that everything is going to be fine, and that they're not going to let anything bad happen to me.

It's the quick preemptive strike against accusations that she doesn't appreciate her friends enough that gave me pause to reflect. She's written something like this at least once before--and I don't mean to call Jessica out at all. In fact, it's so resonant because it's something I hear from other single women, my (ever fewer in number) single friends, something I catch myself saying from time to time. And frankly, this time I read it, I got a little miffed.

Now, I don't mean to say this is where Jessica was coming from, and it's quite possible that I'm only miffed because I've been single an amount of years so embarrassingly large that I couldn't bring myself to refer to it with a synonymous measurement (i.e., "since before the Beirut hostages were freed") and my capacity for reasonable response has sort of pulled a TILT. But I'm truly tired of hearing, "but you have so many friends!" or, "but you can rely on your friends!" or, "well, at least you have great friends" when I express any sort of emotional want.

Because my friends are great, but that's not the point, is it? If my friends--if anyone--thought friendship was so great, so fulfilling, they'd have settled for just having friends, right? No one would get married, bars would empty, online dating wouldn't be advertising on TV if friends were that kind of satisfactory.

But even though my friends are the most awesome people on earth, I realize at the same time that I'm not their most awesome person on earth, if they're involved in a serious relationship--and in fact, as I get older, I start to feel more and more like my life is a series of episodes where people I'm close to make a conscious decision not to be as close to me anymore--by finding, you know, that romantic connection. And I don't begrudge them this, and I am completely happy for them, but there is only so much outside-looking-in that you can do before you start to get a little navel-gazingly depressed about it all.

So. . .I don't know what I'm saying. Yes, I do. I'm saying that friends are wonderful, but there should be as little static for a single girl saying her friends can't satisfy every emotional need as there is for someone in love saying that her significant other makes her happy in ways she didn't know possible.

. . .

Saw The Break-Up tonight with Christel. It was great, and had nothing, interestingly enough, to do with the content of this entry except for the subject--it's an Old 97s lyric and the band plays at the Riviera in Chicago during the movie, and because they're one of my favorite bands yet I've never seen them live, I got a little distracted from the plot trying to catch as much of their live show as I could. Anyway, one of the many reasons I love them is the bitter humor in Rhett Miller's lyrics, including the lines that complete the verse started above:

I recall, when I was twenty-three
Wondering how anyone could fall in love with me
And now I'm old--and I'm well past twenty-five
And I can't seem to fall in love no matter how I try

. . .

Okay, and a GIANT GROSS SPIDER just appeared on my pillow. I could have been ASLEEP! I'm bombing for spiders this weekend. I don't care if they don't sell spider bomb (and how am I supposed to Google that, bug poison providers, if you have GIANT SPIDER PICTURES on all your products? I don't LIKE them, why would I want to LOOK at them?, I'll buy flea bomb, or roach bomb, or black-market malathion or just pour liquid nitrogen into my room, I don't care, they are DYING ON SATURDAY.

Daniel Powter should start a little cottage industry for Hallmark-able sentiment songs. Made plans to meet Lakers Guy up at Runyon Canyon this morning to walk his dog; my unfamiliarity with the place and bad directions had us missing each other for the first half hour. We walked (briskly, of course) for about twenty minutes and he couldn't suggest turning back fast enough when I remarked that the climb was a little steeper than I'd imagined. And then he didn't even walk me all the way to my car, which makes this officially the first time someone's given me the lie about "I'll call you," I think.

I mean, it's possible that it wasn't a lie, but. . .lots of things are possible; it's probable that's the key. Even though I was excited, I'm not wrecked about how it turned out--I didn't really even get a chance to figure out if I liked him. And although rejection is never a blast, being an only child and the center of one's own universe for so long really goes a long way toward softening the blow: if someone doesn't like you, it's got to be a problem with them, since you are the most awesome human being that ever lived, and why would you want to hang out with someone who had such skewed perceptions, anyway? (N.B.: This learned philosophy is a detriment to only children when dealing with people they actually like. "YOU MUST LIKE ME! ALL! THE! TIME! A LOT!" )

Annnyway. . .Runyon Canyon is awesome; I'm glad I got to go. I also signed up to participate in the Big Sunday clean-up being held there and got a cool t-shirt (only in L.A. would volunteer tees look like something from Michael Stars). So I gained more than I lost, truly. And there's still Anthropology Guy. . .