Saturday, December 19, 2009

I need a new picker

When it comes to the holidays, there are two types of people. There are the people that live for that stuff: blasting Christmas music the second it turns midnight on Thanksgiving, spangling their homes (and bodies) with stars, snowmen and evergreen trees; shoving copious amounts of peppermint and gingerbread into their faces. Then there the ones that cannot wait for the entire holiday season to disappear as soon as possible. These are the lonely people, the bitter ones. Growing up, Christmas was my scene. My birthday is the day after, so I had to wait an entire year to have any reason to celebrate, and I was always the first to start counting down the days. Now I find myself in the second group of people. Let's just get this shit over with already. Tonight I sent one friend off to the east coast to spend a warm and toasty Christmas with her loving family, and I sent another one off to engage in holiday cheer at a company party (that will, no doubt, be loaded to the max with free alcohol, and Best Buy giftcards aplenty). People will be kissing under the mistletoe. Glorious, glitter-encrusted lapses in judgment will be made. And I will be sitting on my fucking couch thinking about how I messed it up with yet another guy and how I'm somehow lonelier than anyone else during this Christmas because of that very fact.

The Comedian. I saw him onstage at some bullshit Thanksgiving trivia thing that my friend Rachel dragged me to. He was exactly my type: tall, lanky, giant nose. He looked like a Lebanese version of Clark Gable, hairstyle included. I was too shy to go up and talk to him that night, so I did the pussy move and sent him an email on Facebook. He responded the next day and we shared a few flirty emails back and forth. Promising! The day after Thanksgiving I had a few drinks at The Troubador while watching some no-name band play and while also trying to hold myself back from smelling Robert Downey Jr.'s hair, who happened to be sitting right in front of me. The dude I hooked up with on Halloween...Roman Polanski, I call him...was supposed to come over to my house after the show. I sat and waited for an hour and he never showed. Feeling rejected, I decided to email The Comedian again. He was out and about at some karaoke bar on the east side and he invited me to come! So I talked my karaoke-loving roommate into hopping into the car and driving east. We got there about 30 seconds before the bar closed, but The Comedian conveniently lived a few blocks away. We already drove all that way...so I then talked my roommate into making an appearance at The Comedian's apartment. And so it began. The Comedian kissed me on the balcony, we came up with a getaway plan so we could sneak away and be alone in his room, we went wayyyy farther than I would have liked to have gone on the first night. I actually liked this guy. He was nerdy, and funny...I wanted to go on a date with him. So I had to make it weird, of course. In the middle of one of our steamier moments, I pulled away and told him I wanted to leave. Then I CRIED. He was a bit of a dirty talker, and the later the night got, the more sober I became, and his words began to make me feel really cheap. I was cheap. I showed up to the bar where he was at closing time and immediately accepted an invitation to his apartment. And the hooking up was fun, but I really just wanted to go on a date with him...thought maybe the hooking up could come later. But at this point, how can you go back? So he gave me this whole speech that somehow worked on me and then he did the one thing that you can't do to a girl unless you plan on calling her again: he tucked my hair behind my ear. I melted back into his bed and fell asleep. The morning after was moderately awkward, but I didn't think it was anything that couldn't be recovered from. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't text him for a few days. I texted him 12 hours later. But he invited me over again, so I forgave myself for lacking so much willpower. Two nights in a row seemed like a good sign. Maybe I would get to go on that date I told him I wanted, that he agreed to.

I get to his house the second night and it's more of the same. The physical chemistry was decent. He smelled good. When he fell asleep, he faced me, but he didn't hold onto me. I wanted his arms around me. The following morning was cold and distant, and it seemed like he couldn't get me away from him fast enough. No kiss goodbye. Still, I thought maybe he was just tired or something. Who knows how he acts in the morning? I certainly didn't, I barely knew the guy...I just slept with him. So I sent him a "thanks for a fun time" text a few hours later, only to be met with no response. I did some more convincing to myself. He's probably busy. He'll call this week. We'll have a date by this weekend. We had fun, why wouldn't he want to see me again? When I hadn't heard from him by Wednesday, I sent him an email. A pathetic email. I asked him to hang out with me. I told him I liked him. I said I wanted to make a fresh start, and that fucking asshole never responded. It's hard for a guy to ask a girl out, I've been told, but try being a girl asking a guy out. Doubly hard. And this guy didn't even have the balls to tell me he wasn't interested. So I sent him a "fuck you for not responding" text and received...nothing. Oh, he called me while I was in a movie, that one where Sandra Bullock plays the blonde Republican soccer mom that adopts an enormous homeless black kid (I wanted an excuse to cry), but he didn't leave a message. Still pissed, and thinking that he actually felt bad and that's why he was calling, I decided to make him wait a day for a response. He made me wait long enough, I thought. The next day I sent him a text letting him know I was in a movie when he called, and I asked if he had a message for me. No fucking response. Then I start thinking "fuck, did he accidentally dial my number? Do I look like an asshole AGAIN?" There's just no way to come back from that. I'd made it weird enough the first night when I fucking cried, and now I'm contacting him after he's rejected me 8 million times. I let it go. But I knew I would be seeing him in a few weeks at this other work thing that Rachel asked me to come to, so I had to come up with a plan.

The original plan was to be surrounded by a bunch of awesome dudes that gazed at me adoringly, but by the day of the actual event I was just hoping to avoid any sort of confrontation at all. If I weren't wearing a completely obnoxious Christmas sweater, I would have hoped to remain unseen, but that...didn't seem likely. I get there on time, and I'm stuck in the lobby of this uber-hip LA hotel alone...in this sweatshirt. I was the first person to arrive, and the SECOND person to arrive was...The fucking COMEDIAN. To his credit, he tried to be kind, but I didn't make it easy for him. I didn't know I was going to be so upset when I actually saw him. I was choking back tears while trying to shoot him looks of disgust...no easy feat. I was convinced I would vomit on my lap. Thank God he felt uncomfortable enough that he left my side and went somewhere else. I couldn't believe he was just going to act like nothing had happened. Like everything was fine. I was thisclose to leaving, but then I realized I'd look like a total pussy, so I hung around and ordered a drink, which I promptly drank in 15 seconds. After the first drink started warming me up, and the realization that the night would seem like an eternity if I didn't get out of my current mindset, I decided to extend an olive branch and send him a "truce" text. He accepted, and for some dumb fucking reason I instantly forgave him for everything and actually thought I might get my chance to get my stupid date with him afterall. If anything, I thought we'd get drunk enough and have more cheap sex, which I was fine with at this point. Not so. Every time I tried to talk to this dude throughout the night, he favored the opposite of what I was saying. It was like everything I said made him feel like he needed to tell me how he thought my point of view was wrong. Never a smile. Nary a laugh. I wanted to see his dimples. I saw them from across the room while he talked to another girl, and I wished he had saved some for me. He was more handsome than I had remembered, I wanted him more than ever...and he treated me like some sort of disease. And despite the fact that I was this itchy rash that he couldn't get rid of, I then thought it would be a good idea to text him and see if he wanted to hook up. What. Is wrong with me. I received no response, of course, and I went home sad and wondering what it was about me that he found so repellent. He sure didn't think I was when I was in his bedroom. I can't even get this guy to fuck me again! So of course I couldn't stop there. I had to send him an angry email the next morning asking him to stop being so mean to me and of course he responded that he had no idea what I was talking about. So now I'm the creepiest fucking person ever and I still can't get it through my thick fucking skull why he doesn't like me. It's obvious. He never liked me, and I can't let it go. And why do I even want the attention of someone that was so quick to disregard me? Why am I wondering what he's doing tonight? I don't like him enough to be broken-hearted, but my ego is bruised and I want him to be the one to fix it. This will never happen, and I will realize this in 2 weeks when I haven't heard a single thing from him and when I've set my sights on a new dude that will blow me off in a similar manner. My stepmother is rarely quotable, but she once said something to me that completely rings true: "Lindsay, you've got a bad picker." Yeah, well. Where can I pick up a new one?

3 comments:

CM said...

Lindsay, you are hilarious and a very talented writer! Love the blog, it's awesome.

Unknown said...

Want me to beat him up for you?

Ewa M. said...

I wanna read more!!! You rock!

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