You Can Pick Me Up at Chipotle

Back from my girls trip to Florida, I was freshly tan and all dolled up to spend a Monday night in with front-runner Sean.  On the way to his place, I stopped by Chipotle to pick us up some dinner.

This was the first date I paid for.  It was Date Four, so I’m sure Patti Stanger would not have objected.  But even if it hadn’t been, the man ignored his broken back to pick me up from the airport earlier that day. Chipotle was the least I could do.

Filling up our sodas, I locked eyes with this tall, dark and handsome middle eastern guy. Long and lean with shaggy curly dark hair and a big smile. I was coy. I smiled back, but went about what I was doing and walked out.

[The Rules Online] Rule #3: It’s a fantasy relationship unless a man asks you out.

The Rules girls would have been proud. I didn’t stand around, fidgeting with the straws, hoping he would come over. His attention was flattering, but didn’t mean more than that. I went happily on my way to Sean’s, boosted by the extra compliment.

My hands full, I backed into the door, and realized the man had left the line and was following me out. Thank you, Rules.

We stood outside chatting for a few minutes, exchanging names and pertinent information. Youness is a bartender in DC, lives in Old Town and likes to party in Miami. He asked where I was headed that night, with two dinners. “To a date,” I told him. We chatted for a few more minutes until he took my number and asked to take me out for drinks the next night.

You’re not supposed to accept Saturday night plans after Wednesday night, but there’s no rule for Tuesday dates. I accepted.

Brooklyn Girls

Back from a whirlwind weekend. It was lovely being back in the ‘hood.

Admittedly, though, things have changed in my borough. The brown lip liner is gone now. It’s even hard to find a good italian ice. But it’s good to see people still appreciate the natural beauty Brooklyn has to offer.

I Represent Queen…

This Brooklyn girl is driving home tonight, for a whirlwind 36 hours to celebrate Cairo’s birthday and party with girls I’ve known since I was 2.

When I lived there, Brooklyn was all about techno, hip hop, italian ices, pizza slices and dark brown lip liner.  It’s these tunes that take me back there.

Enjoy.

Glandular Problem, Boundary Problem

Within a month of moving out of my Adams Morgan studio, one of the work friends in my ex’s new highrise apartment in Arlington moved out and the guys replaced him with a mousy, shy, blonde girl.  She took my ex’s room, at the far end of the apartment with the detached bathroom, and he took the vacated room with the attached bath and balcony.

She was an amateur modern dancer who worked a desk job in Arlington during the day, and rehearsed with a local company at night.  Rail thin, she didn’t wear a lot of makeup, and didn’t do much with her frizzy hair.  Her eyes always looked watery, and her teeth, very straight but a bit too large for her mouth, were always covered in a bit too much saliva.  Maybe she had a glandular problem.

Back then, she just seemed silly to me.  She would hang out with the other roommate and his girlfriend, drinking wine with them, getting drunk, and talking nonsense in her very whiny voice.  I assumed she was trying to ingratiate herself to the other roommate’s girlfriend, who didn’t seem to mind her hanging around on her evenings in with her boyfriend.

But then the other roommate bought and moved into a studio in Old Town, vacating the room adjacent to my ex, and things got weirder.  On nights in with my ex, while we watched a movie, she would do splits in front of the couch.

Her social awkwardness was verbal, too: she would say things to my ex in front of me like, “Oh, Ex, you just like our creepy, dirty-old-man doorman because you’re a dirty-young-man.”  Or worse, when my ex teased her about her reaction to a bad first kiss she’d had, she told him, “Oh, Ex, you’re just worried that your next first kiss will be thinking that about you.”

Speaking of sharing stories, she also began telling us about a guy friend of hers who she was sleeping with, and how she was trying to make those trysts into a relationship.  When that failed, she would tell my ex, their new lesbian roommate (who I loved!) and I about her other awkward sexual encounters:  going on pity dates with guys she wasn’t attracted to, making out with guys she didn’t like, throwing up in her hookups’ apartments.  I can’t imagine what she felt comfortable enough to share with him when I wasn’t around.

And then one time, her underwear ended up in my ex’s clean laundry.  “They probably got left in the drier,” he told me, immediately dismissing it.  Meaning, she might have missed them while she was unloading her load, and he threw his wet laundry in without seeing them. They were black, and plausibly missable.  Nevertheless, I made him knock on her door the morning I found them, and I watched as he handed them to her directly. “Oop!” she peeped, as she grabbed them from him.

Glandular problem or not, at the very least, this woman had a problem with boundaries.  But my gut also feared worse.  I knew her type.  She’s a couple years older than me, but she reminded me of myself at 22:  really eager for anything good to come along, too fucked up to sniff in any of the right places.  Her insecurity was palpable, and I just knew she saw my ex – the stable, republican accountant spending all of his time with me – and she wanted something like it for herself.  I never trusted her further than I could throw her.

None of it would have been so bad if I felt on the same page with my ex.  But when I would tell him that she made me uncomfortable, he insisted he didn’t see anything wrong with her behavior.  He couldn’t address something he didn’t recognize, he argued.