Disaster of Cold Dating

My next date will remain nameless and since her nickname could elicit some hard feelings, she will be known as BG. BG messaged me first.  It was completely random, included all of three sentences, and was an invitation for a date.  Normally I would never consider meeting someone right out of the gate, without some vetting, but Y’A was on my ass about my contribution to the research, so I warily accepted.  The date was a movie, free because she had received screening passes and didn’t know anyone else who liked horror movies. Cool.  We agreed to meet at the entrance to the theatre before the movie.  I’ll admit I was pretty anxious – we’d had no online chit chat whatsoever, so I had no idea who the hell was walking through those double doors to meet me. This whole date was rubbing my OCD the wrong way and on top of the fact that I literally knew nothing about her, she was fucking late.  The whole thing was starting to smell a bit like the Craigslist killer….but I digress. I waited and waited and waited, and then waited some more. Every single person had been seated and still I waited. I wouldn’t have minded so much if she didn’t show, but she had the tickets so I would have been SOL on the horror movie screening. Not cool. She rang my phone and explained that her boss had kept her after work, her bus was late, she was so sorry, but she’d be there soon. 

Did she just say she was on the bus?  From where?  In Baltimore? Oh shit.

When I found out later where she worked I will admit that taking a bus (several busses) to the theatre location was really an act of sheer will. It’s just that damn far and inconvenient.

When she enters the lobby there is no time for anything but quick introductions and I swear if I had gone to pee at that moment I would not have been able to pick her out of a crowd. We are sitting in the first row and swear to god my OCD was starting to itch. There was no time for inane conversation or the preliminary questions you’d normally ask upon first meeting someone.  We were Cold Dating and at this moment I realized why people seek out love online. SO YOU GET TO KNOW SOMEONE FIRST!  We watched the movie in silence (well, that’s not really out of the ordinary) – actually she watched the movie and I spent a good amount of time looking at her, sizing her up, reading body language. Creepy for sure, but since we didn’t pre-game at a bar as I would normally do, I was left with cutting my eyes at her in the front row.  

I hate to admit it, but I did give her a ride home after the movie. My bestie had made me swear not to allow a stranger in my car, but it seemed kind of mean to make her wait an hour for a bus when she only lived about 15 minutes from my apartment. This was the golden opportunity to TALK. I should have known it was gaining speed down the hill when she couldn’t tell me how to get to her abode, though she had lived in the city her entire life. She had a difficult time conversing about any number of topics I was throwing out to her – politics, religion, life goals, college, career. It was more of an interview process than a flowing conversation. I learned that she worked at Rite Aid, was religiously affiliated, somewhat homophobic, had no feelings about politics, and was not over her ex. Awesome. 

There was no love match made that night, or in the subsequent handful of times we hung out. Plans with BG meant that I would feel compelled to pick her up then spend the next few hours wondering why I was trying to forge a friendship with someone whose lack of verbosity made me create whole conversations with myself!  If it weren’t for Cold Dating, we would not have found ourselves in this position. Through the magic of the interweb, I would have learned enough nothing to have made an informed decision to avoid the date! Alas, this is what happens when one reverts to the old model of blind dating. What did she bring to the table? It turns out that free movie ticket was about it. 

OCD is a bitch

OCD is a bitch. No other way around it. I fancy myself pretty organized, in a completely dysfunctional and slightly half-cocked way. OCD assures there’s a place for everything and everything in its place, even if that means last year’s Christmas receipts in a No. 10 envelope stuck in a jewelry box.  Or having enough soap to last until the apocalypse, but ‘saving’ it because each bar elicits an emotional story about its provenance. ‘This soap I bought in Austin, TX last year on vacation’. ‘This soap is only made in Baltimore and only sold in one store in one tiny neighborhood and I got into it with the owner so I’ll never go back there, hence I’ll never find THIS soap again’.  This causes me to create a hierarchy of soap in the linen closet, bars stacked according to importance and usefulness.

One immediate and telling sign of OCD is the accumulation of receipts. Piles upon piles of receipts. Some are important, I might return that bike if it proves unsteady. Some, not so much. I’m pretty sure Target will not take back the veggie burgers I bought 6 months ago. Gas receipts, food receipts, bar receipts (did I really drink THAT much on January 12, 2012?), grocery receipts, gift receipts, the list goes on.  This wouldn’t bother me so much, besides being a safety hazard as a fire accelerant, if each receipt didn’t hold a cutting reminder of who I was and where I was on that particular day. 

I target a particular drawer or box or envelope each weekend, to expel its inhabitants and let myself free. Without fail, there is the constant reminder of my ex.  OCD provides you a one-way ticket to Nostalgia because no matter how many things I throw away, shred, pack in boxes with her name in bold black ink – still there is a wayward birthday card mixed in with take-out menus from two apartments ago. Today I cleaned out my car (also a receipt receptacle) and pulled a U-Store-It receipt from FOUR years ago when all our belongings lived in a cold dark closet at the end of a long road. Sometimes I think she taunts me, stabbing blindly with these random reminders. Her credit card bills, her student loan paperwork from 2002, Easter cards from her mom, menus from our favorite restaurants two states away, even a copy of her father’s death certificate.  All these tangible reminders of her enormous presence in my life. OCD makes you hold on to avoid the anxiety of letting go – but what of the anxiety of being tethered?

I smile at my own inconsistencies, because even as I tear up and throw away this weekend’s pile of ancient receipts, I am starting a new one on the kitchen table – Target and Giant and the coffee shop and maybe a movie ticket stub. OCD is a welcome friend – without it I wouldn’t know the right way to sit the dish sponge or that a spoon has to rest on a plate or paper towel, never direct contact with the counter, or that my keys will never be lost because I check and recheck and recheck their presence in my pocket 20 times a day. I wonder if there will be a day when I stare down OCD, purge the past completely, and never have to find her old running shoes buried at the bottom of my old suitcase.  

Shame on Me

Like most idiots, I met the love of my life when I was 18. Michelle. I was raw with her. Naked. Vulnerable. After seemingly gaining her trust, or more like her gaining mine, I told her all of the things I was most afraid of. I told her everything about me that I feared would be used to judge me. She cut a lock of my hair and kept my only baby picture in her room above her bed. For the next ten years, she held all of my secrets, my fears and my weaknesses in the palm of her hand and used them against me at every turn. She took my heart and shoved it into a meat grinder. I vowed to never do that again. 

As I grew older and wiser, I established my friends as family. I knew I would never open up to anyone the way I had with Michelle. I learned my lesson. So when I met Nigel 6 years ago, he was actually refreshing. We were friends. We were good for each other. He called me the sister he never had. We were wrapped in each other's lives. I thought I could trust him. He told me things and I told him things. He saw me at my weakest and helped me get through. I was grateful for him. When I told him about my brother, he was more than supportive. He took the lead, insisting that I meet Michael. Family was important he said. OK Nigel.

So imagine my shock when I finally discovered that after 6 years of friendship, I was Catfished by Nigel. While I was being a big raw, open and honest vagina, Nigel was making up his story as we went along. His prolonged disappearances, and his over extension of himself towards his nieces and nephews, which I heralded him as the world's best uncle, was actually a man so ashamed he had ten children that he couldn't tell one his better friends of 6 years. He was so ashamed, he transferred that emotion onto me in an email stating that he lied to me for 6 years because he feared judgment. He feared I would look down upon him for the kids. In actuality, Nigel knows me better than most. That is to say he knows I am a kind, loving, smart, nonjudgmental person whom loves children so much I didn't go to law school in order to raise my nephew on my own. He knows that me. The only me. I, on the other hand, no longer know Nigel. 

I pretty much blamed Michelle for shoving my heart into a meat grinder. I was dumb. I was 18, then 19, then 20 And so on. I should have been more guarded. That was a mistake on my part and I vowed to never let that happen again. When I met Nigel, I wasn't literally naked with him, but figuratively I was. I blame myself for that faux pas. I brought down my guard and let someone in whom I thought was doing the same. Shame on me.

Impetus to Change/Anonymous Alcoholics

Impetus to Change

My BFF recently went sober. Not New Year’s resolution sober, not wake-up-hung-over-swear-to-god-never-drink-again-sober, but real talk, AA, one day at a time, Sober.  I blame the bitch at the bar.

Scene: Lesbian Meet Up group, socializing over dinner, lesbians of all ages, my BFF.

This chick sits down and orders a coke. My BFF razzes her about drinking a soda, not ordering alcoholic refreshment because they are at a bar and this chick says ‘it’s a restaurant, we’re eating dinner’. Womp Womp. Jesus fucking buzzkill.

The evening continues with this chick keeping my BFF’s company (at the bar), all the while questioning her every move. ‘Why did you just order another beer before you were finished the first one?’ HELLO, it will take the bartender 5 years to make his way back down here, so I pre-emptively ordered a second drink. ‘I don’t get why you keep trying to call people over to the bar for a drink’. UM, we’re Socializing.

The night wears on and my BFF pounds 7 beers like a champ. She’s loud funny crazy wonderful hilarious instantaneous and almost close to drunk. The Meet Up winds down and everyone soberly says their good-byes. My BFF turns to the chick and says ‘so can I get your number?’ She replies, ‘absolutely not’.

Fucking bitch at the bar, impetus to change, dragging one good woman after another down the interminable AA hole.

Anonymous Alcoholics

Musty basement, stale cookies, bad coffee, and 100 cigarettes. Sponsors, and The Walls, and The Book, and no Crosstalk, and every story told a thousand times. Keep coming back it works.

My soul tells me I’m angry.

Addiction makes me angry.

I've never wanted anything as much as I want her to be happy and healthy and positive and well. I will support her sobriety, one day at a time; if you work it it works.  Let Go and Let God. The problem is I can’t understand organized religion. Or organized sobriety. The problem is that someone you love facing their addiction makes you look in the mirror and consider your own.

Despite the distance between us, I will be there for her through every struggle, every stumble, and every hurdle on the phone day or night. I just hope she doesn't hear my wine glass clanking in the background.