The Virginity Monologues

I am a total geek. Yesterday my roommate, Abby, and I bought maps. Wall maps. Of the US and the world. And then we put pins in them in all the places that we've been. My fingers and thumbs hurt today from pushing in the pins. But SO worth it. I love them. I love maps.

I had drinks with a very lovely man on Friday evening. It was one of those experiences where the whole world seems to melt away and you're the only 2 people on the earth. There were other people with us. They were completely ignored. Luckily they were able to fend for themselves, as we weren't interested in talking to anyone but each other. And it was interesting, stimulating conversation. Finally around 2 am, it was time to call it a night. He walked me to the subway, and gave me a very sweet and gentle kiss goodnight. Right on the lips too. Nothing I love more than a man who goes after what he wants.

Saturday night, Abby and I went to see a band play in the Lower East Side and the beer was free and by 12:30, we reached that point where everything that happened was hysterically funny. Our eardrums were blown out by the band? Hysterical! Singing along to Gold Digger at the top of our lungs in Pomme Frites? Hilarious! Flashing the camera in our elevator? The funniest thing, ever. A lot seemed to happen between 12 and 2 am, and most of it is a little hazy to me. But damn, I do remember laughing a LOT.

Overall. An extremely successful weekend.

Hey there!

It's FRIDAY! I'm going to dinner and a movie with my darling Karen tonight and then I'm meeting a lovely man for drinks. Luckily, I have no expectations, so there is no possibility for disappointment.

So, just for the record, I am in a stellar mood today. I think I may have managed to avoid the meltdown by just going home last night, and watching a lame-ass movie with my roommate and eating Doritos. It was awesome. And the movie had Xzibit (I have no idea how to spell his name, but he's the hotty rapper on MTV's Pimp My Ride) in it and he's now officially on My List. Holy moly, he had some really nice arms.

Really nice.

Yowza.

Ahem.

I was also told last night by one of the guys on my street that I have long thought to be quite hot, and we have occasionally ridden the subway together and had some 'moments', that I could "get it" if I wanted to.

Hahahahahaha.

Tempting.

Very tempting.

I used one of those cans of compressed air to clean out my keyboard today. WHOA Nelly. Where does all that junk come from? It was embarrassing how dirty it was.

Just a little warning. I'm heading for a major meltdown. And it's probably not going to be pretty.

There's lot of little things that I'm making a valiant effort not to let upset me, but I'm going to lose this battle. I can feel it already.

The disappointment that is Marc, Neighbor Boy, obviously is a little upseting.

There are some things that I heard that former best friend said, that upset me greatly. Clearly she is someone who has no understanding whatsoever about what it means to be a true friend. I have gone OUT OF MY WAY to not say anything disparaging about her. There's been LOTS of questions from people and I've always been very, very diplomatic and made every attempt to keep this as drama free as possible. Then I hear these things that she's been saying and it makes me want to send an email to everyone in my address book and tell them all what a heinous bitch she is. But I won't. I shall soldier on. Turn the other cheek, all that nonsense.

Rubbish.

I'm tired of soldiering on.

For the record, I totally stole the idea for today's post from the book, Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes- which is one of my most favorite books ever. Go read it. Now.

If we all have guardian angels, then I think mine must hate me, or he/she must really be into tough love. I imagine that this is what my guardian angel has been telling his/her guardian angel friends around the water cooler-

"Chloe is getting better at this jaded business. She's not falling for men so quickly anymore. Well, I'm not doing my job unless I get some degree of heartbreak in at least once a month, so I'm going to send her someone. It'll start slow, with mild flirting. I'm not going to give her any red flags- he won't talk about other women around her, he won't try to sleep with her, he'll just be cute and sweet and she'll think that she's met a Nice Guy.

Things will progress. Text messages. Emails. More hanging out. Lots more flirting that will also involve lots of touching. She will still be cautious though. She has been burned so badly before that she will try her hardest not to read too much into things and she will approach the scenario with cautious optimism.

Then, I'm going to send in the clincher. He's going to call her. And talk to her for a long, long time. He will joke seductively and promise her anything to make up for an earlier wrong he had committed. Here, here is where she will cave and let herself actually believe that he is interested. She will allow hope to creep in and take hold in her heart.

(Insert evil laugh)

The next day she will send an email. A joking, breezy, totally non-pressuring email about something they had discussed the night before.

And then..... she will get NO response from him.

Friends will try to convince her that he's busy, etc, etc and tell her not to get too upset about it.

But after 2 days of silence the message will ring loud and clear to her.

Sure, she'll put on her brave face and say that she's fine and that she doesn't care, yada, yada. But deep down, she'll be dying. She won't understand and she'll think that she's defective in some form.

Good times!!!!!

And then to add insult to injury, when she goes to the gym she'll realize that she brought her light blue gym pants, the ones that are fairly see-through, and she'll realize that her panties have big red polka dots on them, which are quite visible through her pants. Awesome! She'll run anyway, which I've really got to put a stop to, because on the treadmill she remembers that running is better than men.

That's okay. She can think that for a while. With this incident, I've filled up my heartbreak quota for a couple of months!"

They all laugh and disperse back to their desks.

Dear God-

May I please have a new guardian angel? Or can you please put large, thick walls around my heart that will not allow me to ever be a fool again?

Sincerely-
Chloe

Labels: Marc

I could turn today's post into an angry diatribe on how much I don't understand men. But I will refrain. I'm working on caring less and must not allow myself to indulge in fits of self-pity. Soldier on.

I have had many 'life-defining moments' as I like to call them. Those moments in life where you take a step back, survey the scene and recognize that these are the moments that are what living your life is all about. Sometimes they are the obvious moments (births, goodbyes, etc, etc) and sometimes they come when you least expect them.

1. My best friend had a cabin in a picturesque mountain town not far from my university. Josh (my other best friend) and I often spent the weekends at this house. It was one of those weekends. We were just hanging around, getting ready to go out and listening to music. MY song came on. It's a special song that has special meaning to me and anyone who's close to me knows about it. The three of us were dancing around the living room, with an abandon reserved for those times when you are certain that you are with people who love you no matter what. In that moment, I recognized the value of true friendship.

2. My 15th birthday. After a year of high drama and a lot of teenage angst in my hometown, my father broached the subject of me coming to live with him. Not wanting to return to the scene of so many recent crimes in my life, I decided to take the chance. One semester later, I knew I had to get out of there as fast as my feet could carry me. I couldn't subject myself to the horror that was my stepmother one day more. My room was right next to theirs. I heard her calling me 'fat' and 'stupid' to my father late at night. I desperately needed the love of my mother. I broke the news to my father, packed my bags and they bought me that ticket home, on my 15th birthday. My stepmom's final fuck-you to me. But as happy as I was to be returning to my home, it was killing me to leave my dad. I was home alone, waiting for them to come and get me and I just lay in the middle of the hallway, sobbing for everything that I was worth, feeling grief to the very marrow of my bones. I had failed my father, I thought. I hadn't loved him enough to make it. I wasn't a strong enough daughter. I had failed. 13 years later, I recognize that it was him that failed me and not the other way around, but the pain from walking away stayed with me for a long, long time.

Interestingly enough, these are two of the moments from my life that stick out the most in my mind.

He didn't make it.

Through a series of adorable little emails, Marc (Neighbor Boy) and I tentatively planned to hang out on Sunday night and it was agreed that I would provide some form of baked goods.

And so, I lovingly prepared some delicious cookies for a large portion of the afternoon yesterday. All the while, thinking of him and how much he was going to love them.

Commence text messaging.

10:00 pm- He was stuck in Brooklyn at his Aunt's house, trying to leave.

10:24- still in BK.

11:00- he's just getting on the subway. I decide to pack it in and go home. I give all the cookies to another neighbor boy that we adore and go home.

12:00- I am walking in my front door and my phone rings.

"You're a little late, buddy," I said, "I just walked in my front door."

"I was just calling to make sure that you got home safe," he replied.

Awwww. We talk for an hour and a half. He promises me ANYTHING to make it up to me (Just for the record, the last time a man made a similar promise to me, he wound up being my first kiss. Offering me 'anything' is a little like handing me a loaded gun). I go to sleep with a grin on my face, wake up with a grin on my face, and quite frankly am making everyone around me sick with the grin on my face.

An hour and a half! In the wee hours of the morning! And he had to be up at 5:30 am! Could it be? Could it be the real thing? Does this actually have relationship potential? Does he really like me? If hoping were enough to make dreams come true, signed, sealed and delivered- I'd be his.

P.S. I was informed this weekend that I have the tits of a goddess. My life is officially complete.

Labels: Marc

I'm totally blog-slacking, I know, but I don't really have anything to talk about. I've pretty much been doing nothing but sleeping since I got back from my conference, so things are real boring around here. The weekend is pretty full though, so hopefully I shall have some interesting stories on Monday morning.

I did have the worst commute of my life this morning. There was a fire in a station downtown, which wreaked major havoc on my trains and caused me some significant irritation. As a general rule, I love New York City's public transportation. I love not being reliant on a car and that even during the wee hours of the morning, I can ride to my hearts content. But when something goes wrong with the subway system, especially during peak hours, it makes my life hell. I had to transfer trains 3 times this morning, and the whole process took 45 minutes longer than normal. Not a lot of fun.

Oh well. It's all a part of living in this city. I'm not going to leave, so I'm just going to buck up and deal with it.

I'm BAAAAAAACK!

And I'm exhausted. 3 days of meetings all day, then dinner and cocktail parties all night. I have no more small talk in me. I am completely out of interesting, non-controversial things to talk about. And I need detox. I need to not drink wine for at least a month.

I don't have any new and exciting stories. I was just thinking today how devoid of drama my life has been lately. I'm enjoying it very much.

Marc, Neighboy Boy, and I did some cute text messaging on Sunday night. I will probably see him this coming Sunday, so I'm very much looking forward to that. There's something interesting about this situation. There's something about Marc that makes me just want to take care of him. I haven't ever felt that way about someone before. Not even my ex inspired those feelings in me. It's not all about sex, for the first time in a long time. It's way more than that. It's weird.

In the meantime, I plan on sleeping. A lot. And not doing any drinking. Gotta give my liver a break!

Labels: Marc

I have on days and I have off days. Some days it feels like every single man that I walk past checks me out and some days I feel virtually invisible. I don't know what triggers an on/off day. Is it something I ate? Is it the weather? I don't know. It's weird. Today is an on day. I feel like going out tonight to take advantage of it, but that would require shaving my legs and as everyone knows, the second that you shave your legs, the chances of getting laid decrease dramatically. It always happens that way. Always.

I am leaving on Sunday to go to a conference for 4 days. I love going on business trips because it means corporate cars to and from the airports. And in NYC- that is a LUXURY. Try to live with the deprivation. It'll be hard, I know, but no worries, I'll be back. Hopefully with no scandalous stories, as I will be traveling on company time and therefore must keep my nose clean. It's gonna be difficult. Especially considering the large quantities of alcohol that will be on hand at the multiple cocktail parties that we will be going to. The upside to working for a famous/prestigious company? Everyone wants to wine and dine us. We never pay for meals. It's hot.

Good News!

The text message was indeed for me. I had assumed that it hadn't been for me after there was an additional text message later on last week, that made more sense for it to be for Karen. But now that Marc, Neighbor Boy, has confirmed that he thought that it was my number, it means that both text messages were for me. Very, very interesting.

Went to the gym last night, then over to Marc's, where Karen and I played John Madden Football on Playstation for hours. I won both games. Marc was impressed with my natural Playstation abilities, as I had never played before and now he wants to challenge me. Although it is generally accepted that I will lose, badly.

My problem is that when I like someone, I have a very hard time being natural and normal. I want him to think that I'm fabulous and that generally translates into me looking like an idiot. It's not pretty. It's like my brain is clouded over by a fog of smit and it inhibits my ability to just be my normal charming self. I hate it. I hate who I turn into when I am in the presence of someone that I am genuinely interested in.

WHOA Nelly! I just got an email from Ted, the street boyfriend. He thinks he loves me. It's time to nip in this in the bud- PRONTO. How did this happen? All I did was kiss him! Sheesh. It's not like there was Ecstasy on my lips.

Why can't I be so irresistable to the ones that I can actually have a relationship with, without worrying about running into trouble with the law?

Labels: Marc

We'll shine like stars in the summer night,
We'll shine like stars in the winter night,
One heart
One hope
One Love

I was 18. They were showing Rattle and Hum at my university's movie theater and when Bono sang these words, his added verse at the end of With or Without You, my heart recognized the words that were my exact feelings on what love should be. I painted these words on a mural on my wall and they were a daily reminder of my belief in an all-consuming love. That I wouldn't settle for a love that didn't fulfill these words completely.

Bono sang these words last night. It was the same feeling all over again.

I believe in love. The kind that lasts forever.

Unrelated:
I got an email from Marc, the Neighbor Boy, yesterday that makes me blush with it's adorableness every time I read it. He wants my junk so bad. :)

Labels: Marc

"Damn," he said, "you are an excellent kisser."

"I know," I said.

He may have a dubious occupation, but Ted, my street boyfriend sure can kiss. And clearly, he has the good sense to recognize the stellar abilities of others.....

U2 tonight! And Keane is opening for them! I saw them at Radio City Music Hall a few months ago and they rocked, so now I have an added bonus to look forward to tonight.

Which I'm going to need since my beloved Yanks lost last night and the baseball season is officially over for me.

Marc, the neighbor boy and I have been corresponding over email. He wants me to come over and 'help him' fix his iPod. Whatever. It's just a ploy. But I'll go, cause I LOVE him. He also wanted to know if he could come to the concert tonight- hahahahaha, like it hasn't been sold out for 6 months! Oh, he's cute.

Labels: Marc

Baseball euphoria. That is what I experienced last night.

I got tickets. I didn't even have to pay for them, someone just gave them to me. To Game 4 of the American League Division Series game, last night, at Yankee Stadium. The playoffs. I got to go to the playoffs.

Damn, that's hot.

I took my friend, Ryan, who I used to work with at a movie theater in high school. We wasted many, many hours pitching ice against the door in the back of that concession stand. It was important to me that I take someone who LOVES baseball. He was the perfect choice. He didn't even mind the constant yelling coming from my mouth. And he's taking me to dinner to say thanks.

BEST game I've ever been too.

Especially when the tying run came in and the entire upper deck was shaking under the weight of our excitement.

I love Derek Jeter. I love Mariano Rivera. I love them all.

No time for blogging today! I got a new phone and am spending every spare second, and every not-so-spare second transferring all my contacts from old phone to new phone. It's tedious!

It's R's (best friend on hiatus) birthday. I sent her flowers. Not as a bargaining tool for her to speak to me again, but just to let her know that she's in my thoughts.

She just sent me an email thanking me for them, and it made me miss her so much I almost couldn't breathe.

They're all going out for her birthday tonight.

I'm not invited.

Awesome.

My sister thinks I'm a good friend. That's all that matters.

On Sunday, a friend walked up to me and called me by my best friend/ex best friend's name.

"Um, my name is Chloe, " I said.

"Yes, but it's like you're the same person," another friend said, "so it's an understandable mistake!"

Clearly, I have not been telling anyone about The Break Up. It will make some people very upset. We were a dynamic duo, entertaining people at dinners and parties with our banter and wit. We were often told that we should have our own TV show.

We are on semi-speaking terms. There are brief emails that go back and forth.

But I'm very conflicted about the whole scenario. I'm not angry, or bitter, or even sad anymore. I'm just.... conflicted. In her email she said that she hopes that we can be great friends again. Except, I don't intend to ever allow that. Once a person has taken their friendship away from me, how can they ever be trusted not to do it again? I will always wonder and worry and walk on eggshells for fear that she will again decide that she can't talk to me anymore. What kind of a friendship is that? With a real and true friend, a person should never have to worry about losing their friendship (unless they've been doing something really heinous, obviously). Friendship implies being there for someone- NO MATTER WHAT.

What kind of a friend violates that? Especially a best friend?

Give her the opportunity to do it again? I don't think so.

Commentary on me:

Last night as I was walking down my street, on my way home from the already eventful evening, I ran into my street friend, who has an interesting street name, but we'll just call him Ted. Ted likes me. He makes it clear. He's funny and interesting, but has an occupation that I don't agree with, so I try to keep our relationship at a pretty superficial level.

We talked for a while last night and then he walked me down the street and into my building. As we stood waiting for the elevator, he tried to kiss me.

Um, yeah, I dodged that one.

Earlier, I was talking to Karen and relating the Ted-waiting-for-the-elevator story.

"Wow," she said. "I just realized how much you really like Marc (Neighbor Boy)."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because a week ago, you would have kissed Ted, just for the sake of kissing someone," she replied.

Damn it all. It's true.

This means 2 things.
1) I am completely smitten with Marc. I would choose him over Trevor (Perfect Man). This is saying something.
2) I am a total kissing whore.

Labels: Marc

It's amazing. All of the things that can take place in one evening.

He was late. My perfect man was late. No call from him, and after a half hour of waiting, I was very close to leaving. My phone rings. It's my friend, his ex-girlfriend, who I have deliberately NOT told that I occasionally see her ex in a dating sort of scenario.

"I'm calling you for Trevor," she said.

"Oh?" I said, "what did he say?"

"He got stuck in meeting, he's on his way," was her reply.

Apparently he had left his phone at home. He only had his Blackberry on him. My number is not in his Blackberry. Hers is. He knew that she would have my number. He called her and asked her to call me and tell me that he was going to be late. AWKWARD!!!!

He was an hour late. But dinner was fantastic. Conversation, even better. While I don't see a relationship happening, he told me that he thinks I'm really cute and that I have a great personality. Take that, bitches!

A friend of ours showed up, happened to be going to eat at the exact same place as us. He stopped and talked to us for a while.

We left, walked down to Strand in Union Square and did some book shopping. We both are ravenous for the written word, so it was a perfect activity. We wandered the aisles together and debated biographies of Alexander Hamilton and Alexander the Great. I bought the latter, he bought the former. When a man was hitting on my as I considered Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (bought it), Trevor came and rescued me. It was delightful.

As we traveled down 14th street together, we ran into someone else we knew- who was with someone that I used to work with at a movie theater in high school. I haven't seen this guy in 10 years. It was very, very surreal. He has turned into a tall, broad, beautiful man. He was ecstatic to see me. So ecstatic that he forced me to take his number (he didn't have his phone on him, otherwise he would have probably pulled my ears until I gave him mine) and made me promise to call him so that we can go to dinner sometime. I've never met anyone more eager to have dinner with me. It was hysterical.

Trevor and I rode the subway together. Hugged goodbye at his stop.

He's promised to take me to see La Boheme.

He won't become my boyfriend. But he will make me a better person.

Houston, we have a problem.

This story gets complicated, try to keep up.

Sunday night, I baked some cookies. This is how we lure the neighbors to the stoop. We bake cookies, they come. It's a no fail system. So, the cookies are piping hot and delicious, so I ask Karen if I can text message Neighbor Boy, alerting him our baked goods. I text, using Karen's phone (cause I don't have his number). He responds almost immediately that he will be outside in 5 seconds. Which he is. I poke my head out the window, laugh at him and call him Pavlov's dog, and tell him I'll be down shortly.

Fast forward to later in the evening. It's just me, Karen and Neighbor Boy (I really need a better code name for him). The conversation gets muddled, but Karen makes it clear that I'm the one that sent the text message. We're not sure if he realizes that it's from Karen's phone, as they've never communicated before and he had never taken her number previously. We're nearly positive that he did not have her number stored in his phone.

Fast forward to this morning. Karen got a text message from Neighbor Boy last night that said, "Thanks again for the cookies, they tasted even better this morning."

Karen thinks, 'Does he know this is my phone number?'

So, here's where the dilemma comes in. Was that text meant for Karen or me? He knows that I am the one that text messaged him, but does he know that it wasn't from my phone? We're assuming that he simply hit reply to the initial text message, offering the delicacies.

Why would he text message Karen, thanking her for cookies that she didn't make, replying to a message that she didn't write? They are friends, and neighbors. And he's a courteous gent, obviously. So, anything is possible.

I don't know! I honestly don't!

I don't want to steal any of Karen's thunder, I mean, I love the girl like a sister, but I want it to be for me! Wow, that sounds really whiny. I need to work on that.

Thoughts, anyone?

Labels: Marc

I have a date tonight with the most perfect man I have ever met. The first night I met him at a birthday party, I was smitten. I was ecstatic when he ended up at a dinner with me and 2 other friends, especially when flirting commenced for the rest of the evening. So, imagine my surprise when he called up my friend the next day and asked her out. She knew how I felt about him, but started dating him anyway. Not a big deal. I hadn't really staked any sort of claim on him. I know his type, they generally don't date such a strong-willed person such as myself. They prefer the meeker women.

They dated for 3-4 months. I went on a trip with them and saw with my own eyes that they were 2 people who, without a doubt, should not be together. It was a little bit like watching a train wreck. She was clingy and helpless. He was irritated. I stood idly by, watching my perfect man, struggle to make it work with someone who couldn't have been more wrong for him.

Not too much later, they broke up.

She cried on my shoulder.

He asked me out.

She doesn't know that I'm about to embark on Date #2. Maybe it makes me a bad person. As her friend, I should probably not be going out with her ex-boyfriend.

But I don't care.

He's a genius. Certifiable. He's funny, and not just ordinary funny, but clever. We laugh a lot. We sing show-tunes together. We discuss Greek antiquity. He admires my volleyball playing skills, and trash talks me from the other side of the net. He held on to my foot so I wouldn't float away as we inter-tubed down the Potomac river. As we were running to meet some friends, he let me stop for a minute to appreciate the sight of the 4th of July fireworks going off over the White House. He makes me want to be a better person.

I was standing on a bench. My heel caught in the cracks of the bench as I made a move to step down and I lost my footing and fell.

He caught me.

He was standing right there, as if waiting for me to fall, so he could catch me.

Isn't the point of the weekend, to recover from the work week and not vice versa?

Friday- Dinner party, then boozing it up in the West Village until 3 am. I should have just stayed home. The men were..... unimpressive, to say the least. When I finally tucked my sorry ass into bed at 4:30, I felt like hours of my life had just been wasted.

Saturday: Karen and I board the Staten Island Ferry, heading for what will become the longest concert of our lives. Six opening bands. A LOT of REALLY drunk people. And once the sun went down, it got cold. There was a group of girls in front of us, that couldn't have been older than 18 and had probably driven their mom's suburban to get there. Here's a line from one of them that will give you an idea of what they were like-

Drunk Girl, talking to her friend that was standing behind me, and occasionally falling into me as she struggled to complete her sentence- "Oh.. my.. god.... I am SO wasted. And it's only....7:30"

Seriously. The entire day was a study in behavioral science. They guy who spent the whole concert at the back of the crowd, then 10 minutes before the opening band, decides to push his way to the front, and doesn't understand why we're calling him an asshole. The funny girls we befriended. The 4 foot tall lesbian who stuck her face in my tits. I could go on and on. It was quite a day. Karen and I are forever bonded for having had that experience together.

Last night. Three hours on the stoop with Neighbor Boy. Three hours of touching in some way. I could spend all day, recounting the small details that made my heart sing. The touches, the looks, the comments. With each touch of his hand on my hair, I sunk a little deeper. I'm trying so hard to not allow myself to have too much hope. But I can't stop myself. I can't keep the smile off my face.

He asked for my phone number.

All I can do is wait.

Labels: Marc