Thursday, January 28, 2010

I'm gonna need a second opinion.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I didn't have many friends that lived up here. Sure, I had a few hipster friends that dwelled on the painfully cool East Side, but I've always been in love with living next to the Pacific Ocean, so being that brand of awesome was never in the cards for me. So I parked myself a few miles from the beach and spent most of my free time watching reruns of Friends on the scrambled 13 inch TV in my studio apartment. Seriously, do you know how long it takes to get from the beach to Silverlake? Not worth the gray hairs or $10 worth of gas spent on sitting in traffic. The only people I really spent any time with were a few girls I had known from before my move up to the city and the people I worked with, one of them being my first LA love.

I hestitate to call him my first LA boyfriend because I don't think that's how he would ever classify it. Well, maybe now he would, but back then he sure as hell wasn't going to acknowledge any sort of attachment he may or may not have had to me. This irritated me to no end, by the way. Because, to me, he was my boyfriend. We liked each other, we hung out (I slept over) every couple of days outside of work, where we spent 50 hours together weekly...when it ended, he had to break up with me, for chrissake.

Later, when he decided to completely deny any sort of relationship between the two of us and referred to our connection as being "coworkers," my argument was that if you have to break up with someone, then you are more than just coworkers. Still, he didn't agree. And what was the point of arguing it, anyway? This person, regardless of what actually existed, did not want the history books to show that we were ever together. As sad as that sounds to me now, I still ended up sleeping with him every few months for 2 years following the breakup, so I guess I can't really say he was the only asshole involved in that mess.

One night, when we were "together," a girlfriend of mine was having a birthday dinner and she invited the two of us to come out. My coworker accepted, and we met up beforehand to get ready, fool around, and buy a present for the birthday girl. We both signed the fucking birthday card, even! The plan was to eat dinner at this place in Hollywood that serves thai food and has some sort of thai Elvis impersonator that, for $5, will sing anything you want, and then we were gonna hit up this psychic on Cahuenga Blvd. for a little post-dinner soothsaying.

The girls and I had been to this psychic before, and she blew our minds the first time we visited, so we thought it would be fun to take a large group over for a collective mind-blowing. Gina was her name, or at least the name she gave us.

When we walked up the stairs to Gina's -- shop? office? what would you call it? -- she was smoking a cigarette in her nightgown, and she looked directly at me and said "I know you. welcome back." It had been about 6 months since I'd seen her last, so the fact that she remembered me so instantly made me think this chick was actually legit. I figured she recognized the spirits that were hanging around me or something. Is that how it works?

When I picture spirits, I feel like it would be a similar scene to that of a Great White and those adorable little pilot fish that can't stand to be away from him for any amount of time. Maybe it's more like the Verizon commercials where there's just a mass of people surrounding that one dude in the glasses. Of course, the crowd (and pilot fish) would be invisible.

I DIGRESS. So Gina asks to see each of us separately so that she can reveal intimate details about our futures to us. I go first, and she tells me that the guy I'm with (my "coworker") is the one for me, but that he's a tough one to nail down, and if I didn't figure out a way to do it, then I would be single until I was 50. (...) Thanks a lot, asshole. I didn't even know how to process that.

My coworker went last. He was trapped in Gina's lair the longest, and when he came out he was awkwardly trying to act like everything was fine and dandy by way of clapping his hands and laughing uproariously about things that weren't funny. He never mentioned a word about it, but I've always wondered what she said to make him come so unhinged.

Despite the fact that I had a bladder infection and was unable to actually "go all the way," the coworker let me sleep at his house...he was a charmer. Still antsy and weird, he was completely detached and actually fell asleep with his back to me. Normally it was a little spoon/big spoon situation, with him being the big spoon more often than not. Not wanting to read into anything, but still feeling the sting of being kept at arm's length, I turned my back to him and let a few tears leak out before I fell asleep.

The next morning wasn't any less awkward...I left before he even got out of bed. He broke up with me the next week. Not to point out the obvious, but it's clear that we didn't have a very strong foundation if he wasn't even willing to admit that we were together. But we "weren't together" for months before that, and everything seemed to be (neurotically) fine. I seriously doubt that whatever that psychic said had anything to do with anything, but still...what if it did?

Also, it's bullshit that I'm gonna be single until I'm 50. I object!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know that this is the "single girls unite" thing to say, but if the alternative to being single until I'm fifty is a guy who makes me cry while I'm trying to fall asleep, I'll take single :/

I'd rather take neither, though... Fuck that psychic is in my head now!

articulicious said...

Haha I know. Hindsight is always 20/20. That psychic is an idiot. Get that shit out of your head.

Roxanne said...

I was "not a girlfriend" to a guy I ****lived**** with (as in, shared a bedroom in an apartment) for two years. To make the point that I WAS his girlfriend, I would go on dates to make him angry. When he started offering to come pick me up from dates, I realized he was not hurt at all by this and I really wasn't his girlfriend...but we broke up like 100 times and I guess he's my "ex" but I hate to count it. I also slept with him for many years after (after 1 year of totally ignoring him) but I was so disgusted by him that it never left me emotional. I broke that off when I met my husband and thats when he seemed to actually care and be hurt. WTF is up with men? I guess we all have to go through that. And NO don't marry him.

articulicious said...

OMG! Roxanne! I didn't know that. Ugh. I would never marry the dude from this story. He knows that. We still totally talk and are fine, but the feelings are completely gone. Thank. God.

boxViolet said...

I never believed in Gina.

articulicious said...

Haha I know, right? Gina was full of shit, man. At least I hope she was...

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