To Pink and Red From Black and Blue February 14, 2008

Today I wear a Thomas Pink button down, pink, and a Marc Jacobs wrap sweater, deep red.

Apparently, when you’re this happy, you do stuff like this. Shit that’s unjustifiably sappy. You’re so thrilled with life that wearing red and pink to your very professional office setting on this day makes sense to you. You think it’s fun. That it’s whimsical. Maybe even ironically cute. You don’t give one damn what it is.

You’re that happy.

That in love.

And you fucking adore loud clashing colors anyway.

Love makes you do crazy things.

You first learned this when you were 17 years old.

His name was Caleb. He was tall, athletic and lean. His eyes were ice blue. He was intimidatingly smart. And refreshingly eccentric.

He was a fresh import junior year, transferring from a nearby town to play baseball - my high school one of those that perpetually kicked ass at almost every sport, reaching Districts, Regionals, and States almost every year. And he was very serious about baseball. Girls gushed about the new cute guy who’s, like, totally crushworthy! but I barely cared. My small hometown bred beautiful people. The kind that looked like they had just stepped out of an Abercrombie ad. In fact, my friends Andy and Brett, twins, were shipped down to the Caribbeans for a shoot their senior year. 

I was tired of all of it. Even when included in the clusterfuck of it. Or maybe because I was included in the clusterfuck of it. So over the beautiful people; the cookie cutter molds; the ‘I’m so perfect’ archetypes. So ready for something different. Just hungry to leave and be lost in a wave of everything new. I didn’t simply count the number of days until my high school graduation - I counted the number of seconds.

I met him finally, one day after school, a friend shouting for me to come over and meet the new kid who wasn’t so new anymore. It was the fall of senior year. We went to Palio’s for dinner. I knew he was interested. I knew he wanted something to happen between us.

And I knew it couldn’t.

At dinner I told him to please stop wanting to date me. Just a few weeks earlier, I had gulped down a handful of Tylenols after one more night of playing punching bag to my father’s verbal, mental, and emotional assault. My mother had found the empty Tylenol bottle and me vomitting in the bathroom upstairs. And cried. Slapped me and told me to never, ever, ever be so stupid again. Grabbed my face, bore her eyes into mine, and whispered only 8 more months, daughter, then you leave this house. Convincing me that night to decide that, no matter fucking what, I would make it to my high school graduation; that I wouldn’t so selfishly hurt my mother and my sisters; and that I sure as hell wouldn’t let my father rob me of a life away from him.

I uncomfortably uttered over a plate of Palio’s famous Eggplant Parmesan that my father was a very, very strict guy. Like really strict. Trust me. And Caleb laughed. Assured me that he had never met parents who didn’t immediately fall in love him, his eyes filled with joy and happiness at the prospect of us. His premature statement held weight - his good looks, engaging personality, and easy manner cooed Instant Catch. I knew that my father would be like no other parent Caleb had encountered. But in that moment, all I wanted was to believe him. To feel normal.

So we began dating and our first fight inevitably happened a month or so later - him frustrated and confused as to why he couldn’t take me on a simple date on a Friday night. Why I hadn’t introduced him to my parents yet when I had already met his multiple times. Why I acted so scared and skittish whenever I was on the phone with him. I couldn’t lie to him anymore, exhausted of my own fabrications for why I couldn’t come over on a Saturday afternoon or why he couldn’t just stop by on a Sunday morning with Zimmerman bagels for my whole family. I told him everything soon after that fight.  He cried and said he couldn’t believe how someone so beautiful and warm could spring from an environment like mine. And I cried because someone was telling me I was beautiful for the first time in my life.

The recklessness soon followed. Maybe because we were only seventeen and didn’t know fucking better. Maybe because he quickly began to see me as something he had to protect from my father. We turned into our own twisted version of Romeo and Juliet. But for a brief period of a couple months - after he had learned everything but before the guilt and the weight would eventually settle in too deep - we were something completely pure. He wrote me letters. And love songs. He snuck into my room to leave me stuffed animals and mixed CDs. So many mixed CDs. Music became the closest thing to capturing our overwhelming emotions for one another into something compact and tangible. We talked about marriage. What we’d name our children. He’d tell me how he couldn’t wait for that day, far in the future, when we’d lay out in our backyard, rolling around with our three kids as he occasionally snuck a handful of my rack or my ass, and we’d laugh. All as he ran his hands over my hair and kissed my forehead.

I became addicted to what we had. Of course I did. After only knowing fear and disillusionment during my most important formative years, love? Love was the sparkles and the glee and the warmth that I had seen far too little of until Caleb.

My father still yelled at me almost every night. He spat at me. And I clutched onto my inconspicuous safety blanket created by all the words and kisses ever planted on me by Caleb. I grasped onto the knowledge that I could call him the moment my father stopped yelling, no matter the hour, and he would tell me he loved me and that he woke up every morning with a smile because of me.

He tried to give me everything. His cell so I could call him anytime, anywhere, any hour. His nights when he should have been sleeping, driving to my house so I could sneak out and we could sit in his bright blue convertible and just be together. His words weaved into beautiful stories inspired by our love. He gave me his entire self.

I feared that whatever he saw in me that was beautiful and romantic and conflicted would eventually turn into something depressing and burdensome and exhausting. And that fear did eventually become our reality. Because I needed him too much after a while. And he needed me too. But with me came a wash of painful yarning buried in inherent sadness. And he quickly learned that he could love me, but he couldn’t really have me. And the more he couldn’t have me, the more desperate he became. He loved me too much to be able to sensibly bear the thought that any moment he wasn’t around me could mean a moment I was hurt and scared. With that kind of love came too much sadness because of something very bad beyond both our controls. 

We broke up not too long after I went away to college. And for two more years, I loved him. He played me those two years. Perhaps the result of some deep-buried resentment. Revenge. Maybe regret. He’d call and tell me that he still loved me too and that he missed the something special we had that he couldn’t find with anyone else. That he wanted to see me. And I let myself believe him every time - every single time - because I still loved him. But just as suddenly, there’d be no more phone calls from him. And my heart that had already been battered and broken too often - and dealt its biggest blow when someone I had loved so fearlessly and so unconditionally had finally told me he’d had enough - would hurt just a little more.

At least it was a reminder I still had my heart.

The relationships I fell into after Caleb weren’t pretty. I grew bored and tired of every guy who wanted me. Sometimes I even wished I was capable of loving some of them back, knowing how much they loved me. But no one could grab me like Caleb had. No one had his intensity. His was the something more that no one else could give me. Some hole in my mind made constant home to the thought of what we could have been under different circumstances. And healthy relationships with new people are not borne from a mindset such as this.

Thoughts of Caleb eventually grew more faint. I began to mentally give Tennyson a Fuck You anytime I heard someone flex his infamous maxim. Caleb had robbed me from whatever fledgling ability I had to trust other people after our love lost. Before him, I had been ignorant and cautious but optimistic. After him, I understood that no one could truly love anyone with such crippling baggage. I wisened up. Became some sick hybrid of Unintentional Maneater, the product of never completely grasping the effect I had on boys boys boys but using to my advantage the windfalls. Senior year in college became a nonstop funfest with some of the craziest motherfuckers I will ever probably know.

But all of it was running away from demons. Chasing down my next distraction of allure, my next rush of constant movement. I had long stopped comparing guys to Caleb or the menagerie of emotions he had been able to draw out of me, but the ugly fog of our trainwreck still hovered - yes, three whole fucking years later.

It was in this mentally fucked condition I met a friend of my friend whose party I was dragged to that fall after college graduation. A boy who I instantly knew was different when I met him. Because the only thing someone has ever truly needed to capture my attention is to be interesting. But interesting is a hard quality for most guys to pin down when the girl who is to fill the role of interested defines it more by a gut recognition than anything rational or tangible in words. 

He had a quiet confidence that I found immediately attractive, but that was the only thing that came immediate for us. The attraction. It took us one full year after meeting to establish a relationship. And when we did, no one really believed we’d last past a week. Neither of us had good reason to believe we’d make it either. He was known to ward off anything remotely serious. And not to be outdone, I was the girl who had given her entire heart to the first person she had believed she truly loved - the first person who she felt had ever truly loved her - and learned to throw men away, left and right, in every direction, ever afterwards.

Somehow though, we both knew we’d be okay. Because, I guess, when something kicks you in your gut as truth, you have to know. When you’ve really dealt with so much shit, you don’t scoff in the face of toilet paper. Really terrific, Grade-A quality toilet paper. Not the generic industrial public restroom variety and not the type that’s too soft and leaves undesirable leftover fibers in your ass crack. The kind that’s absolutely perfect at getting the job done. Repeatedly.

So of course I hesitated telling him about my father.  

Things are different now from what they were when I was 17 years old. But I initially scared at the thought of telling my boyfriend because I won’t ever escape who my father was and still can be sometimes. I will never escape my childhood. And once that part of me is shared, the person I date has to accept that too. 
 
I don’t think I should have to escape any of it. Because it’s a part of me, and for all the reasons I love intensely and am fiercely loyal to the people I care about, I think it has something to do with my upbringing. Why I cherish unabashed freedom and practice spontaneity to a fault. Or why I tear up when I read about abused children and am so emphatically passionate about helping battered women and their children.

I’m a lot of kinds of ugly and imperfect, but I discarded wearing my pain and feelings of entitlement on my sleeve a long time ago. Some of my closest friends from college, the people I loved most fiercely, were battered and broken people too. Fabulous, hilarious, genius people who I thought got it because they too had experienced some kind of pain growing up. But their shtick got old after a while. Our shtick got old. The bitchiness and assholery got really, really old. I tried to convince myself that they were good people when it counted because I think it’s entirely possible to be snarky, to be cynical and sarcastic, to even be mean at times; to drink too much, to be too loud, to dabble in the controversial, but at heart, to still be moral. To know what it means to be a solid person and a good friend. After some repeated twisted back-stabbing shit that all of them wanted to laugh about after the fact and pretend never happened, I realized these people weren’t that.

While my pain has influenced who I’ve become, it’s not who I am. I despise extensive pity parties over mindless trivial shit. I’ve spent too many years feeling enough pain and sadness for many lives over. I never, ever want people to feel pain just because I felt pain. I want the exact opposite. I want no one to ever, ever feel anything close to the pain I had to feel.

And that is an easy, easy task with my boyfriend.

He is one of the most good people that may exist in this world. Completely oblivious to What’s Cool or What’s Hot right this flash minute, he cracks jokes about Britney or Paris that were current a year ago and asks “What’s that?” when I mention the latest buzz thing. Yet he has a style and taste that’s all his own and - really? It’s so cool and definitely what’s hot. He’s completely uncontrived. Complex and full of contradictions. And original. Yet not one bit a mess that wallows in his own narcissistic delight. One year plus some and I still feel fucking giddy that I have found someone so smart and funny and cool. He challenges me and keeps me consistently intrigued. ADD, Non-Committal, Rushing-To-The-Next-New-Thing Me. He’s effortlessly breathtaking. And best of all? He’s just so unaware of how fucking awesome he is.

It all makes me want to pinch his fucking cheeks.

He is why I know I still have a valid shot at being a truly good person. Without even meaning to, I’ve found a kind of peace with him that I didn’t know I so badly needed. It has no ties with distracting myself from all the bad with all this good. With him, I see that love isn’t just tears and sacrifices and confessions and saga after saga after saga. I had confused all that shit with passion in the past, when it was a just cover-up for why nothing good enough existed to dominate the bad. With him, I’ve learned that passion can be loud and full of bounce. But it can be quiet, too. It can be a kind of comfortable that’s heady with excitement. A constant source of fiery blue sparks and down comforter warmth at every moment.

I don’t feel like I need to find someone that can make up my shitty childhood for me anymore. Someone who can fix me. My rare kind of passion - the type that can only come from a painful past - has lost all association with anger because of him. He makes me feel whole in the healthiest way possible. We’re bacon and scallops. Each is fucking awesome by itself. But a whole new kind of fucking brilliance is created when the two are combined together.

We support each other. We want so much good for the other. We’re each others biggest fan.

There are times when I catch myself crying. He doesn’t know this. It happens in the shower or when I’m alone in the apartment. I cry and I clutch my heart, overwhelmed. All this happiness, all this love. And the odd guilt and fear I feel. Like I owe something to someone. Or that I’m borrowing something not meant for me to own outright.

See, I’m far removed from the little girl that cherished those very brief sojourns of happiness during her childhood, those rare times when my father showed me how truly wonderful he could be. I’ve still never seen a smile or a laugh infectious like his. Those nights, I’d pray so hard to God to please let my dad just stay happy, please, God, please please I’ll never ask for anything else, hands red when released from their vice-like grip. I’d let my hopes fly. And they would eventually crash because my father never stayed that wonderful. His demons always won. I’m not that little girl anymore. I’m not even the chick I was a few years ago, who still fiercely believed anything good in her life would soon see its end. That everything happy and warm and safe knew to leave her just when she was beginning to accept it as a truth.

I can let hope flicker now and not fear that whatever it is that’s warranted my hope will disappear or disappoint.

But still I cry sometimes. Maybe because I so desperately want my father and my mother to know this kind of love. So desperately hope that my two younger sisters will eventually know something like this and they too can make peace with whatever lessons of unconditional trust and love we missed out on as little girls. That everything can be based in good, even the truly ugly moments. That fights can be constructive and not just rip and tear and destroy. And you just want to spread all this freaking love to everyone so that they too can feel this because you, Addictive-Personality You, believes that maybe it is possible to live High! On! Life! Alone! all because of this one person.

Blissful, estatic love that makes a girl like me write a turgid anthem to her boyfriend today - because fuck, he deserves unabashed love thrown in his face if for no other reason than that he’d never demand that from anyone - as she wears her pink and red with such ease no matter how unjustifiably pathetic because it emphatically trumps the black and blue that once covered her.

We Slept With Enchiladas January 22, 2008

I would be lying if I told you I didn’t fall asleep very early Sunday morning with a Chicken McNugget in my hand and barbeque sauce covering the corners of my mouth.

I want to place all blame on Streeters, a Chicago beer pong bar that remains open until 4:00 in the morning. Or its nearby neighbor, 24-Hour McDonald’s. But really, it’s my fantastic skills at the game of beer pong and my complete inability to say no to just one more game.

Heavy wears the crown, I know.

It’s just that so little in life is more satisfying than beating a pair of ex-frat boys wearing matching black button downs (Ed. note: A seemingly new douchebag direction from the popular and overplayed striped button down?) who like to shoot pussy-weak bounce shots to try to get ‘er done and move their hands around a lot in a “What’s up NOW, biatch?” fashion.

And I have an addictive personality. I like to surround myself with things that make me feel good.

I miraculously awoke Sunday morning not nearly as hungover as my body was due. (Ed. note: Falling asleep with nuggets in my hands and barbeque sauce covering my mouth were probably not unrelated reasons for this.)

My boyfriend and I talked about all the various things we’d like to get done that day. Him: Work. Phone calls. Reading. Me: Shower. Laundry. Regaining semblance to a functional human being.

But instead? We stayed in bed all day.

All flippin’ day.

Him, playing online poker. And occasionally asking me what he should do with a certain hand. And me responding that it’s fake money so he should just GO ALL IN GO ALL IN I’M SERIOUS JUST GO ALL IN DON’T LET PAPASAN1221 WIN THIS POT. And him clicking on “Fold.”

Me, reading the Economist’s coverage on American politics and the primaries. And googling Mitt Romney and the word “squillionaire”. And wondering how I can ever become a squillionaire myself if my father was not the governor of Michigan and I am not at all capable of financial transactions and know-how.

And occasionally purring.

And asking my boyfriend to rub my tummy.

(I’m kidding. Maybe.)

We napped. We sexed. We discussed social issues (Me: What do you think a squillionaire is? Him: Not sure. Why don’t you look it up? Me: Do you think it’s a made up word for … beyond millionaire? Him: No. That’s called a billionaire.) We napped again.

And with a large baking pan of homemade enchiladas and a jar of the best hot salsa in this world, Mrs. Renfro’s Habanero Salsa (Ed. note: Like the world’s best ice cream and the world’s best potato chips, this is actually not up for argument) in our bed with us, we had sustenance and we had each other.

It was a day my body, my mind, my soul sorely needed.

Six continuous days of no sleep? I certainly hope the door hit you on your way out.

The ever-growing hamper of dirty laundry and ever-more-necessary functional adult behavior will just have to wait another day.
  
 

Sleepless In Chicago January 18, 2008

Sally Fields hawks a drug named Boniva to me in between CNN’s news stories of a fiery bus crash in Nevada that left 25 injured but none dead.

Oh the fucking high life of an insomniac.

A faint beeping sound is audible whenever the song that plays on repeat on my laptop briefly pauses, its end met but its start yet to begin again. The be-be-be-beeps are barely audible but abundantly annoying. My damn neighbor has gone out of town again and forgotten to shut off his alarm clock.

What irony.

Alarm be-be-be-beeps on loop. Song on loop. Commercial breaks on loop.

Insomnia on loop.

I’ve slept very little in the past two weeks. Any slumber for my body has been fitful. Or drunk-induced, which isn’t sleep at all but an opportunity for my body to demand a temporary break from its hand that likes to steer vehicles of alcoholic beverage to its mouth.

These have been a series of days that have seen me drinking more than usual.

Even now, at 5:34 a.m., I sip on liquid comfort.

You’re starting to think that homegirl here may have a problem.

To you, I ask: What took you so long?

I sit on our Room & Board couch and stare ahead at the CNN Morning Express that plays on the Sony Bravia 52″ LCD Flat Screen. It reminds me of when my father would sit me in front of CNN for 30 minutes everyday before elementary school. I would always conclude that 30 minutes was excessive, the news stories eventually repeating themselves before that time period ended.

I notice the same thing this morning.

I’m my own Son of Man painting, the apple a drink instead. An outward appearance of modernity and well-to-do but the scene interrupted by what is in my hand: a red plastic cup containing a homemade screwdriver. It’s really Grey Goose with a side of orange juice, only a dash of the cup filled with the non-alcoholic. But I still like to think it’s not entirely unhealthy.

“Head under water and you tell me to breathe easy for a while …,” the laptop tunefully sings. 

I nod because that sounds just about right.

How wonderful life could be if a steam of music always played in the background. Like Ally McBeal strutting down the sidewalks hearing music inside her head at Tracy Ullman’s urgency. No matter how sad I am, music uplifts me. It acts as a tangible expression for something very intangible.

I decide it’s time to switch to Ben Harper.

Burn One Down; Another Lonely Day; Forever.

Music is my senses. A VH1-friendly girl power song isn’t entirely representative of me right now.

There’s an arresting reason for why I haven’t been able to sleep much lately.

The person with whom I share my bed is struggling right now. I won’t go into details - the reason he’s hurting isn’t my story to publicize. But every time - every single time - I look over at him asleep, I want to cover him with my kisses. I want to wrap my arms and hold him tight and whisper over and over that everything will be okay. I want him to feel the strength of what I feel for him. I want him to know he’s not alone. That I - me of all fucking people - have enough happiness and optimism and hope for us to share.

He has that effect on me.

Sleep can be a reprieve, though. I know this. Oh how I know this. A vacation from the energy of being alive.

So I let him sleep, undisturbed.

And I sit on our Room & Board couch and stare ahead at the CNN Morning Express that plays on the Sony Bravia 52″ LCD Flat Screen. 

Bobby Fischer is dead, the TV announces. My face scrunches trying to remember more than just the cover of the Searching for Bobby Fischer VHS that my parents probably still own among their movie collection. Another memory that involves my father, a chess genius who had hoped to get my sisters and I interested in the game.

I hear the sheets and comforter crinkle as my boyfriend tosses and turns.

It’s impossible for me to lie in bed next to him as he sleeps when I’m unable to. I’ve never been very good with forced bed times, even as a young girl. The quiet and the dark and the ceiling begin to press down on me and the weight is unbearable. I like to fall asleep accidentally. The process of getting into bed at a certain time and lying there until sleep eventually happens is not my style. It seems less than peaceful that way. It requires some kind of patience I don’t have.

It’s impossible, too, because my boyfriend is the most beautiful sleeper I have ever seen (Ed. note: Gag away, but if a misfit like me can acknowledge this, then it’s hardly a sentiment of mush but just a simple observation. Aight?). He looks like an adult-sized Precious Moments Doll that I want to pet. I know it’s only a matter of time before I cave and become that girl who watches her boyfriend sleep for pronounced periods of time. And coos.

Plus, it’s impossible, three, because I have Restless Leg Syndrome.

Forced stillness may as well come delivered with a machete because that is what I will need to amputate my batshit crazy legs off my torso if constrained to stay still for too long (Ed. note: When did my life become a Grey’s Anatomy episode?).

So I choose the couch and the distractions of modernity.

I’m a night owl. Unlike my freshman year horror of a roommate who had claimed to be a night owl on her dorm housing matching sheet then got paired with me - a true night owl - and gave me shit every single night for not being asleep by 10:00 p.m. like her. I like being awake late into the night. Some friends even nicknamed me Hoots in college, a shortened version of Hooters. The result of 1. My hooters. 2. I’m a Hoot! 3. My night-owlness. 4. Friends who thought they were extremely clever. 

But insomnia is a different story.

It’s a result of too much on my mind. It happens when I need life to pause for a moment. If I don’t sleep, it means no palpable passage from old day to new day. It means I’ve stopped time. It becomes easier to stay awake and watch TV and listen to music and browse the internet and hope that three different distractions can be enough to fully use up my mind.

And hope that will be enough to distract my heart.

I pain doubly when he hurts. Pain 1 because this person who legitimately only deserves to feel happiness is sad. Pain 2 because I feel helpless. Not helpless in a frustrated, burdened sort of way. But in an ”I Wish I Were the Puppet Master Of This World” kind of way, wanting with all of my energy a power to create changes that I know are out of my hands.

He knows this and feels guilt. It only makes me want to say Hush and wrap him with even more of my heart’s muscle. To let him know it’s okay to just be. To never worry how he’s around me. To know that I know I’ve leaned on him so many - too many - times during our relationship and I’m more than ready and capable to do that for him. To know that he’s the most selfless person I’ve ever met and I need him to be selfish right now. That both of us need him to take care of him right now.

And that he needs to know it’s okay if that means he sleeps with as much peace possible.

While I stay awake, sleepless in Chicago.

Waiting for daylight.

When all is bright and life feels lighter just strutting down sidewalks to the beat of the music playing in my head.

Hate At First Sight December 21, 2007

We began with an assumption borne from a Facebook profile picture.

Once upon a night three Novembers ago, a friend named Brendan informed me and my roommate Sia that the plan for the night was his friend’s apartment party. A friend Brendan had made a few years earlier while studying abroad and smoking hash in the south of France the summer before our sophomore year. A friend neither Sia or I knew and, hence, a friend Sia and I immediately Facebook-ed once we were off the phone with Brendan.

Naturally.

What we found was a Leather Jacket wearing A Pair of Yellow-Tinted Sunglasses holding A Beer Bottle Perfectly Pointed To The Camera classified as A Moderate looking for Whatever He Could Get. 

An alum of a private school. To wit, one of this country’s best. A venerable breeder of overprivileged clones who, in sum, continue their educations at fancy top universities like my alma mater where development into entitled douschbags can be secured.

Oh God, I judged. Yes, I absolutely judged.

When Brendan later arrived at Sia’s and my apartment to begin our night, I was prepared. When he promised the party would be fun, I protested. When he insisted we all go, I shook my head no. When he waxed nostalgic out loud remembering their study abroad together in the south of France, I waxed nostalgic in my head remembering the Facebook profile I had seen moments earlier. And when he asked me why the hell I was giving him such a hard time - me, the girl who had a history of being quite agreeable whenever copious amounts of free booze were involved - I said I had my reasons.

But Brendan is 9 inches taller than me and unafraid to smack a sister. He’s gay, after all. So he won our argument.

When the cab arrived at our destination - a fancy high rise with a fancy entryway and a fancy foyer with a fancy accessory of a doorman right in the heart of downtown Chicago - I thought, Figures.

When the fancy doorman informed us we’d need to go to the 51st floor - the very top of the building! - my eyes rolled back and I nearly choked spitting HA! with such scorn.

When we got to the door of the apartment, I sighed. Loudly. I looked away while Brendan enthusiastically knocked.

Then he of my Facebook-inspired scorn opened the door. And I forgot to throw up in my mouth a little like I had threatened Brendan I’d do seconds earlier. 

I remember that his eyes laughed even though he wasn’t. I immediately wanted to be included in whatever made his eyes laugh like that.

But what I don’t remember? Are first words or first introductions. Or second words or even our one hundredth words. Because the rest of the night was a blur of very heavy drinking, after-hours clubbing in Wicker Park, sloppy tongue-twisted flirting, a very necessary 4:00 a.m. pizza delivery and Family Guy episodes. We all crashed at his place. And I slept on the couch.

His bed was where I slept the following weekend.

And a Thursday night not too long after that. And on New Years Eve 2005 (or is it 2006?), too.

But phone numbers remained to be exchanged. (Bodily fluids though? Taken care of.) Which meant that later that January - when he suggested what I learned many months later was his attempt at an official first date - he used AIM to cyberly ask if I’d like to meet him after work to go rock climbing. Sia insisted I go because seriously, when the fuck are you two going to do something that doesn’t involve late nights and booze?, but this? Rock climbing? I got down to the floor and told Sia I’d only go if I could finish ten push-ups first.

I got to 8 (Ed note: High School Me that won my high school cross country team’s Annual Freshman Push-up Challenge with 76 in less than 10 minutes groans in shame right now). I thought What the hell, packed a bag of what I thought rock climbing might require - gloves? a hairband? leggings? - and ran to catch the 145 bus.

The rock climbing wall was closed already for the night. What a pity. Imagine the stories I could share had it not been.

The following months were spent sleeping in beds together but not sleeping together and meeting up when out but not going out together. Everyone told me the attraction was obvious but that he wasn’t the committal type. That he didn’t do serious relationships. That girls long before me had tried and failed.

I said, That’s fine. This fits.

For the very, very first time, I had met someone who didn’t want to force the So What Are We conversation on me, rush labels or definitions or limitations. Define me as his. And it fucking sucked. But it also, somehow, worked. For a girl who had a history of running away from boys who pushed and wanted too much too soon, it worked.

Then one day in September, we went beyond the witty banter and guarded attraction. We talked about our families and our childhoods and shared pieces of ourselves. We had met after work, our office buildings only a block apart, and gone to his apartment. And, because it’s me, we decided to have some shots because Shots? Why not? before meeting our friends at ESPNZone to watch our alma mater’s first football game of the season. And maybe it was the Barcardi Limon (Ed. note: Stop judging), but soon, we shared stories of similar rebellious streaks against strict parenting and commiserated regret on our childish behaviors. And when the story exchange was over, we both looked at each other and smiled. He walked over to me and pulled me up into a hug. And we hugged the kind of hug that raced my heart and made me feel entirely safe all in one electric moment. And I knew somehow, we had finally gotten over our hump, from there’s a connection to we are connected.

But the conversation was ill-timed. 

Because I was no longer single, stuck in a relationship that had more or less begun earlier that summer, signed, sealed, and delivered as a summer fling. Which unfortunately did not end with summer’s end because I am very bad at two things. That is one, ending relationships. And two, ending relationships that really need to fucking end.

It did, eventually, over the next couple months. In a very ugly, brutal way. And finally. After a year from our first introduction and nearly a year ago from today. After intrigued interest but nothing concrete; catty girls who tried their unstable best to beg his interest away from me; and complications and calumniation by multiple parties that would make most soap operas - Yes, even you, Passions! - blush.  After all this?

One year ago from next Friday, and almost a year after a leather jacket and a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses almost kept me away from his party, my boyfriend initiated a very simple conversation over a couple of beers at Clark Street Ale House and we finally became us.
 
 ~ 
 
The holidays for me mean appreciation. Beneath the lights and decorations and wrapping paper, the cookies and holiday parties and carols, I’m thankful for my friends and my family and feel blessed that we are all - more or less - in good health. I’m thankful for my boyfriend, who allows my huge tits to counterbalance my huge amounts of crazy. And I am thankful that we eventually exchanged phone numbers so that I could receive his call moments ago to learn that tonight, we have reservations at Kevin, and squeal in excitement. (Ed. note: I’m lying. He told me over Gchat. Old habits die hard.)
 
Happiest of holidays to everyone. And also, the funniest of holidays too. Come back with stories, yes? I will need to be kept entertained once the holidays are over and we have nothing but the winter slump upon us. I fuckin’ love y’all. May your next few days be merry, bright, and not occupied with too many thoughts of wanting to strangle family members.

Who Wears The Pants? December 19, 2007

I overslept in his bed, Backless Halter and Skinny Jeans. Tardy without choices, I secretly stole this stranger’s pants to wear to work. 
 
From stranger to boyfriend, he mourned his missing Armani pants. I remained silent. Then one day, we moved in together. After 17 months, the pants had returned to their owner. 
 

  
  
[Ed. note: This is a 17-month long saga of humor and horror. To condense it into 50 words was not easy. But I appreciate a good challenge. Like when my friend told me to smack the bitch who elbowed us out of our front row spot at the Dispatch concert we attended our freshman year and I did it, even though the girl was twice my size and I wasn't even drunk.]

The Blog Is Out December 17, 2007

It happened over a shared plate of sloppy chicken wings.

I told him.

I finally told him, my boyfriend, about this blog last night. 

Maybe it was the restaurant’s dim, romantic lighting combined with the din of raucous football cheering. The fireplace lightly cackling with warm flames. Ads everywhere telling me to just Bang On!. Or the demands of this list.

It’s hard to say. I’m still trying to pinpoint the necessary whipping boy to blame for my submission of truth before I get carried away and call my mother to tell her the exact location of all the diaries and journals I kept during middle and high school. Or, hell, tell her about this blog, too.

With bleu cheese dressing covering my fingertips and buffalo sauce all over my cheeks, apparently this is when I felt was the right time to give him the keys to the deep, dark, dirty recesses of my mind. Because this blog? That’s what it is. An inlet to me. The place where I go to vent and spout and gush and try very hard to be witty and clever and sometimes, yes, to find validation.

And now he knows. And it scares the hell out of me. Even though he reassured me that he’s thrilled I’m writing. Told me that I’m the cutest ever. That he believes I’m an amazing writer. And expressed how he had been hoping to be allowed to read some of my writing for a while.

I’m still nervous.

Nauseously nervous.

Secrets and I, we’re not cut from the same cloth. They like to be kept hidden away and exclude, the stepping stones to separation and discomfort and combustion. I keep secrets, and it never ends well. It tears my insides because I am of the cloth that Loose Lips and Too Much Information was cut, the type that is loud and conspicuous and needs to be connected.

Privacy can be important, though. This I know. That some things are okay to keep to oneself. It’s part of the reason why I began this blog beneath a guise of anonymity. As it continues, as I continue, more identifying pieces will continue to leak - there’s nothing I write that I would be ashamed to admit is my own (Ed. note: Unless you are my father, mother, or 16-year old sister. Or my boss. Then, I’m sorry, but you must have the writer of this confused with someone else.) But the people I write about - my boyfriend, my family, my friends - never made that same decision to have themselves exposed. So the anonymity stays.

There are casual mentions of my boyfriend scattered throughout this blog. But I have yet to post the more serious posts about him, or us, that are beginning to wear out their Draft statuses. It’s a challenge I accept - to capture us in writing - but a part of me fears I can’t do him, do us, much justice. It’s not my style to write gushing pieces of frill and hearts. So I focus on his Sci-Fi to my Teen Queen flicks and our neighbors who love us too much. But him and I? We’re frills and hearts. We’re neuroses and silliness and opposites attracts, too. Sometimes, fewer times, we’re fights. Really ugly, emotional fights.

And, fundamentally, we’re No Secrets.

So I told him. And I feel all kinds of Shy and Sensitive and Awkward and Will He Like It? Will He? Will He Think I’m Just A Basketcase Of Batshit Insane? Will He Still Date Me? (Ed. note: I just heard my brain tell me: He already knows you’re a basketcase of crazy, idiot), but I know it’ll pass. The poor boy will now hear no end of my blog and this blog and that blog. He’s already been inundated. After my Boos and Hisses and Whines for want of a more personal layout, he offered his help with the HTMLs and the Formats. (The Gifts of A Technology! Saavy! Boyfriend!) And he now knows what a meme is. And it places right up there with trying to explain to my parents, the immigrants, such foreign concepts like Prom and Homecoming Queen and High School Lock-In in terms of sheer unintentional comedic value. He has even joked that he’ll start leaving comments as Damsel’s Better Half to be taken seriously, already aware of how much I love the insightful, humorous, thought-provoking comments I receive from all of you.

But it really is no joke, he of better-halfdom. Someone who, after hearing their significant other has kept a blog in secret only responding with excitement and encouragement and humor? Is far more mature than I would have responded were the situations reversed. He even - of his own accord - mentioned that if there are ever posts I’d rather him not read, he would respect that. I’m 50% grateful and 50% stupified.

There is one rule, however, that has been established: That is, until I’m more comfortable, there will be no reading my posts in front of me. The Hm’s and the Ha’s and the Shouldn’t He Be Laughing or At Least Have Tears of Emotion In His Eyes By Now that forced their ways into my mind as I showed him this blog for the first time? 

I know better than to put our relationship through that again.
 

The Company Of Unlimited Sangria December 14, 2007

There will be a party tonight featuring plenty of tapas and unlimited sangria to the background of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early.
 
Even in the company of unlimited sangria.
  
Drinking - heavy and plentiful drinking - was a thing my 18 years of locked up angst adapted to quickly and efficiently once I arrived at college. The stream of long nights blurred with dancing and seducing, phone number exchanges and searches for misplaced cell phones, 24-hour Burger King runs and 10:00 a.m. discussion sections for my Modern Germany class dressed in my outfit from the night before provided distractions of allure and a rush of constant movement that never faded for me.
 
Graduation from college didn’t change the quantities consumed, only the settings. Rather than plastic red cups of keg beer at Phi Delt’s off-campus apartment, it was now a bottle of red in my apartment while sitting on my couch and secretly crushing on Santino. Walks of shame past Hillel and the engineering buildings turned into 6:30 a.m. cab rides and a quick stop at McDonald’s for hash browns before arriving at the office. A break-up with a college boyfriend just days after graduation only pushed me to move harder, move faster during those months as a newly inducted player of the real world. I just needed to move.
 
Then came the news of the upcoming office holiday party. My first. I considered my options - newly guaranteed employment, top-shelf open bar, and my own personal patterns of non-stop double-fisting even around unlimited alcohol - and became nervous. Moderation and I have never been words synonymous. 
 
Tales regaled by a roommate of her co-worker who arrived at work the day after theirs only to be handed a box of his things by security and a message that he had been terminated for his gin & tonic-influenced words and wandering hands only frightened me further. Instant sympathetic recognition and thoughts of Fuck! Could that be me?? as responses to this story made me understand that extreme measures had to be taken to prevent me from being this man when my own office party happened in a few days.
 
So, on the night before this office holiday party two years ago from present, I called my friend Brendan to inform him that the goal for the night would be to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. A goal that began as a joke and very, very quickly became reality. Sake martinis at Japonais, liters of wine at the (then) newly-opened Quartino, gimlets - gimlets! - with the escargot and cheeseburgers at late-night spot Bijan’s Bistro, and I was tanked. And to encourage matters, my now boyfriend who was only a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier when Brendan had dragged me to his apartment party had joined us by this point. Who welcomed the challenge to get me so drunk that the mere sight of alcohol would discourage me from consumption the next evening among my coworkers. Which soon led to wild giggling over the waitress’ indignation at our order of “ESSS-CAR-GITS” and drunken French blabbing of how our serveuse de coquetels needed a sens de l’humour and forced Brendan to find us too caustic to humor any longer and leave.
 
Leave us - me and this boy who caused butterflies and sparks but a boy I had just met a few weeks earlier - to end up in his bed. Leave me to slur that my mouth was too dry for kissing and leave him to run to the kitchen to bring me a 24-ounce glass mug of water that I could barely lift to my mouth. Leave us to have sex for the first time. And leave me to text my coworker at 4:30 in the morning something involving many misspellings, exclamation points and pleas to bring me suitable work attire the next morning for me to wear.
 
She found me cowering behind a pillar in the lobby of our office building the next morning and burst into laughter at the sight of me, hungover and hair messily pulled into a ponytail held by a miniature red and white scarf that I had stolen from the snowman soap dispenser I had found in his bathroom (Ed. note: I learned many months later that the snowman soap dispenser had been sent in a care package from his mother). She threw into my hands a Bloomingdale’s Medium Brown Bag stuffed with clothing and told me that I had better replace my jeans right away. Because our office? Is a very professional setting where I may be able to pass off a hungover face and a messy ponytail held in place by a miniature scarf stolen from a snowman soap dispenser but jeans? Jeans were completely unacceptable.
 
I scoured through the shopping bag and considered my options. Faced with the decision between a pair of brown pants that ended right above my ankles and a black skirt that ended right above my knees - a pair of pants that ended below the ankles and a skirt that ended below the knees of my co-worker who at 5′2″ is 5 inches shorter than me - I erred on the side of slutiness rather than unfashionable, and chose the skirt.
 
And for the rest of the day, I sat in an unlit office with my head unable to move beyond a 45 degree angle from my neck. I grimaced at comments of my festive appearance. And silently cried on the inside when 65-year-old Susie asked me where she could get hairties that looked like little scarves for her granddaughters.
 
But I made it to the office holiday party that evening that began at 6:00 p.m. And while coworkers ordered glasses of white and sipped on scotch, I drank my water and averted my eyes away from the bar. And when the younger attorneys and staff decided to move the party to Suite Lounge on Wells and told me I was not allowed to go home that early, I went along. And shot the Lemon Drops. And drank the Carrot Cake Martinis. And sipped the Chambord + Sparkling Waters. And realized that my body had become so accustomed to alcohol running through it’s internals that it no longer presented any discernible effect. My coworkers talked brutal about other coworkers, danced on table tops, screamed profanities at cab drivers, and I watched bewildered, shocked that I had felt worried about my possible behavior.
 
It prepared me. And reinforced the life lesson that one should always get drunk when the opportunity is available. So when the night before last year’s office holiday party came, I spent it indoors, away from Sake Martinis and Gimlets, and went to bed early, like an athlete preparing for his big game the next day. But the party was no festive occasion because an older attorney at our firm, the father of the managing partner, had passed away the night before. And while the party was still held, it was no time to chug down the endless drinks I had prepared my body for. Naturally.
 
One more year has passed from that day and the night of another holiday party is now upon me. And yesterday evening - the night before tonight’s holiday party - I went to dinner with the same boy I spent the night before my office holiday party two years ago, the boy who is now (finally!) my boyfriend. We enjoyed their delicious focaccia with taleggio cheese, truffle oil (Ed. note: I would bathe in truffle oil for the rest of my life if I could somehow afford this to happen) and herbs to start. The New Zealand snapper with shaved fennel, pomegranate, celery leaves and coriander followed soon after and was consumed in minutes, prepared to perfection. The meal also saw a bottle of Portugeuse Bruto Rosado. We made jokes that the bottle was for me and we should get a glass of something for him. But by the end of the night, my boyfriend had drank more of the bottle than me. And after our bill was paid, we ran over to Sepia for a nightcap to celebrate the anniversary (Ed. note: My boyfriend and I like to celebrate atypical anniversaries. We’re kind of forced to because of the very odd way we came together. We agree to look at it as humorous). Avec had been perfect as always, and Sepia was wonderful. But my happiest moment of the night was when we ended up in the same bed we had ended up in two years ago. And instead of feeling disgustingly drunk, I felt calm, content, and giddy.
 
And of course there was sex. Sex that I could remember today.
 
So this evening poses as my third chance. Dressed in my own work attire and not a bit hungover, it’s one more opportunity to indulge my insatiable thirst for alcohol on the company dime. And perhaps it’s a product of age or feeling less like I’m desperately running from my demons and more like I’ve gained some control over a life and behavior I once thought of as uncontrollable, but it’s a thirst I’ve seen become less insatiable over the past two years.
 
However, it’s still a party with coworkers, where the setting will be of forced laughter, awkward conversation and silent urges pulsing in my fingertips to pull any fire alarms I see to end the occasion early. And because drinking oneself obscenely drunk is still not technically illegal - unlike pulling a fire alarm when there is no fire - you can damn well bet that much of that unlimited sangria will be ending up in my stomach.

Thy Neighbors Loveth Too Much December 3, 2007

Our neighbors in Apartment 1209 have begun a competition with my boyfriend and me and like all good conspiracies, I am the only one who actually believes this.
 
The truth of the situation became unavoidable once insomnia made me its bitch last month.
 
Unable to fall asleep and tired of tapping my boyfriend’s shoulder every ten minutes to remind him that I still wasn’t asleep while he oh so happily slept, I began making bed in our living room and making friends with the television and late night cable. And it was all great fun until one night - in the midst of an American Gladiator rerun on ESPN Classic - I heard noises.
 
Sex noises.
 
Sex noises that made it clear that the two noisy people (or more?) were posturing. The kind that screamed, “Listen to me, I’m having amazing sex! I know how to make amazing sex! I’m a star!”
 
For me to criticize two people who make a lot of noise during sex would be like if I were to complain that the person next to me is breathing. I’ve probably encouraged many past and present neighbors and roommates to wonder if the sex I’m having with the person I’m having it with could really be that good. So even though overhearing two people having sex is awkward and uncomfortable for anyone with ears and a decorum of decency, I recognize that part of the awkward and uncomfortable I experience is a result of feeling called out. Embarrassed that I’ve put other people in that position and knowing that the recognition of how loud I really am only makes itself known in my little brain after the sex is over. 
 
But overhearing my neighbors that night just annoyed me.
 
Because it felt deliberate. Like they were trying to tell me, “See! We can have loud sex, too! What you think about them apples, bitch?”
 
My boyfriend and I have lived in our apartment for three months now and have yet to meet any of our neighbors. There are some I’ve passed and said my hellos to, but no one that I could freely borrow cups of sugar or glasses of gin after realizing the Bombay Sapphire is finished from. It’s not that I’m unfriendly. It’s just that after growing up in a town where most people didn’t lock their doors even at night or ever used the horn in their cars unless to say hello to a passing car (beep: hi there!) or gently alert a child that one and a half tons may run it over if it didn’t stop chasing its basketball onto the street (honk: look over here!) then finding oneself living in a city where one is met with suspicious looks if they happen to smile or acknowledge another people’s presence in any way, one’s attitude towards strangers can begin to change.
 
And after three months of walking through our apartment building’s lobby, riding its elevators, and visiting its fitness center (a grand total of seven days), I’ve observed that our apartment building is home to quite an eclectic crowd. The investment bankers and the consultants; the artsy students with the hipster appearances and daddy’s credit card; the pampered princesses with the pampered miniature dogs and the pampered Louis Vuitton purses; and the yuppie parents whose babies ride in strollers that probably cost more than the total amount of one of my paychecks. It’s the kind of crowd that seems very nice but I don’t dare accidentally push the Close Doors button in the elevator when I mean to press Open Doors for someone running to catch said elevator because if they happened to have a glance at my face, there’s a good chance they would hunt down my identity and blacklist me at all of Chicago’s preferred places to be or knife me - albeit with a very nice butter knife from the Vera Wang Byzantium collection - the next time I cross their path.
 
The apartment itself deserves love though. It boasts high, vaulted ceilings; beautiful, shiny hardwood floors; and appliances whose existence had become a faint memory for me during college and my last two apartments, appliances that I stroke lovingly and whisper Oh you sexy washing machine you, please don’t ever leave me. It’s the type of apartment I’d have no business calling mine except that I get to split the exorbitantly high rent with my hedgefund-employed boyfriend. And I’ve lived in enough shitholes in the past six years for me to really enjoy this experience.
 
So I listened to the sex noises long enough to feel annoyed and attacked that night, turned up the volume of the TV, and called it a night.
 
Until the following week, when - in the middle of the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel - I heard screams dripping with emotion. Indignant cries of unfairness. Pitiful pleas for forgiveness. And I immediately turned red.
 
Red, because the night before, my boyfriend and I had fought the kind of fight that reduced me to feeling like a 17 year old that’s so misunderstood. The kind of fight that - after it was over - allowed me to really understand how really lucky I am to date someone who really looks at these tarriances from our customary state of bliss as building blocks to a better us. The kind of fight that ended with my boyfriend hiding himself in the bathroom with the door locked because he needed to not see me for a while, something he had never done before. The kind where I was left sobbing the theatrical, panting, really loud type of sobbing.
 
The kind of fight I didn’t need to be replayed by my neighbors the next night.
 
I ran into our bedroom, shook my boyfriend awake, and indignantly whispered, “Can you believe it, baby? Can you?”
  
My boyfriend: “Uhh … sleep … no …. “
 
Me: “Listen! Listen. They’re copying us again!”
 
My boyfriend: “Work tomorrow … why … sleep”
 
Me: “How dare they! I really don’t know what we’re going to do about this.”
 
My boyfriend: “Zzzzzzzz.”
 
Since that night, they’ve allowed us me some freedom from experiencing anymore uncomfortable deja vu. I’m not sure if that means my sex has been quiet or that the fighting between my boyfriend and I has been minimal (life once again proves it is all about trade-offs), but it seems like my neighbors don’t know what to do unless I provide them some initiative.
 
Then last Sunday, I decided to cook fried chicken. Because I love fried chicken and wanted to recreate the dinner I made for my boyfriend last winter, when I cooked the most delicious fried chicken with a gallon of his extra virgin olive oil that I had not known was extra virgin olive oil until I had used a gallon of it.  
 
When waves of smoke started consuming our kitchen and living room, I told my boyfriend not to worry.
 
When my boyfriend yelled, “[Damsel]! Fire!”, I looked over and saw that there really was a genuine orange and yellow fire rising from one of the stove’s burners.
 
When I suggested he use the sink’s water sprayer feature, he screamed, “Not for grease fires!”
  
When he reached for the bowl of flour to blanket the flames, I squealed, “No, not that flour! Use the plain stuff in the bag, I just mixed in the perfect amount of seasonings into that bowl!”
 
And when the fire had been vanquished, we were left with smoke billowing into the hallway and oil all over our granite island counter and the wood floors and the stove top.
 
Moments later, Chris, one of the doormen, popped his head into our apartment and inquired if everything was okay in here, while I desperately fanned the air with a cookie sheet so the fire alarm would stop its incessant beeping and my boyfriend hopped around trying to avoid stepping in oil. Soon, we heard our neighbors in the hallway commenting on the smoke in the hallway and the overwhelming yet delicious scents of fried foods.
 
And then I heard one of them say, “Oh, we should cook some fried chicken this week too!”
  
If I go home one of these nights and there happens to be a raging fire consuming our apartment building, I’ll know why. And I may only have myself to blame for providing them the inspiration, but at least my boyfriend may finally - really, finally - believe me that our damn neighbors won’t stop fucking copying us.

I Fucking Love You Too November 28, 2007

My boyfriend and I had already committed to the idea of staying up all night on our last night in Vegas. Our flight out of Vegas the next morning was at 11:00 and staying up all night just seemed more fun (and oh so Vegas of us) than plunking down $250 for a hotel room.
 
This is the type of logic that frequently pops its head into my life and enables me into situations that help me realize how lucky I am to not be jailed/unemployed/dead.
 
Like the night before my first office holiday party two years ago when I decided to go out, get absolutely hammered to eliminate any chance of me getting a little too friendly with the open bar that would be at the holiday party the next night so to not be that girl, and ended up in the bed of my boyfriend who was only a boy I had recently met back then, drunkenly texting my coworker to please oh pretty please bring me work appropriate clothing the next day. And how the next morning, I woke up with possibly one of the worst hangovers of my life. And how I went to the bathroom that belonged to my boyfriend who wasn’t my boyfriend then and desperately tried to find something, anything, to put my J.B.F hair into a ponytail. And settled on the miniature scarf on the snowman soap dispenser that I later learned was from his mother. And showed up at my office building and hid behind a pillar until my coworker arrived, my coworker who is beautiful and cute and? 4 inches shorter than me. And tried to decide between the black skirt and the brown pants in the office bathroom because my coworker was sweet enough to bring me a plentiful selection. And decided that I’d rather appear slutty in a black skirt that ended above my knee rather than fashion-backward in pants that ended right above my ankles. And smiled half-heartedly (and queasily) when coworkers told me I looked so festive with my black going out skirt and red and white hairtie that oh isn’t that cute it looks like a miniature scarf! But, the moral of the story, is that I was by far the least drunk person at my office holiday party. Although, in hindsight, it didn’t matter because no one will believe the stories I have in my arsenal from that night because over time, I’ve established I am that girl anyway so I should have just gone ahead and gotten drunk that night. So the real moral of the story is to always get drunk when the opportunity is available. But I digress.
 
Our first stop was a hotel room in the Flamingo, where my boyfriend’s friends from high school had a room. Friends he had not seen in months and friends I had not yet met. Friends who, when he called them to tell them we were in their room, were at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall to see Big Elvis. Friends who, with that little bit of information, I knew I’d love.
 
And oh, did I. My boyfriend had already warned me they were crazy. But see, my boyfriend and I, we went to the same college. And knew the same people. Yet somehow didn’t meet until the fall after we had both graduated when a mutual friend dragged me to his and his roommate’s apartment party that I did.not.want.to.go.to (Ed. note: Another post will have to be dedicated to the Story of Us - it’s not pretty). And since dating, I have met his friends that live in Chicago. And they are fun and adventurous and up for a good time and practice the mandatory drinking-too-much and staying-out-too-late behavior I encourage, but crazy - really, really crazy - they are not.
 
But Adam and Matt and Phil and Woods? They are crazy. Crazy. My kind of crazy. And not just crazy, but good people. And they clearly loved my boyfriend. And I loved it. Because is there anything more endearing than seeing your significant other with their friends and seeing how much they all love one another and thoroughly enjoy one another’s company having a kickass time together? It was fitting that the running line of the night was (cue: Southern Twang) “I motherfucking HEARD you, boy! I fuckin’ love you too!,” something the guys had overheard a model yell into her cell phone the night before, a model hired by Matt to pose for faux wedding pictures at famous Vegas sites. A line that was frequently uttered all night. During dinner at Mr. Lucky’s 24/7 Cafe? Yes. Bottle service at LAX? Oh, hell yes. And many, many drunken cab rides.
 
(Oh, and Matt? Is an incredible photographer. I saw his stuff and it is good. Good enough for me to almost post the link to his site and risk my anonymity. Please email me if you are in need or know someone in need of a photographer who is unbelievably creative and hilarious and innovative. He will blow you away.)
 
My boyfriend and I did manage to stay up all night, although the hours between 5am-7am were rough. And using the booth at the 24-hour cafe at Flamingo to catch a quick cat nap at 6:30am did not please the waitresses. Neither did I feel very comfortable walking around in a short (Ed. note: Short) black dress and chocolate brown 4-inch heeled suede boots once the senior citizens in matching warm-up suits started showing up in hoards.
 
We made it back to his friend’s hotel room to pick up our suitcases and change. And it was dark and all of his friends were asleep. So we changed quietly and tried to pack and gather as quickly as possible.
 
Just as we opened the door to leave, we heard Matt whisper to us, “I motherfucking HEARD you. I fucking love you too.”
 
It was the perfect (fucking) end to Vegas.
 
(Vegas!)

Multiple Vegasms November 28, 2007

Exiting the plane and walking into the airport, I immediately sensed warm weather. That was Vegasm #1.
  
My skin, it likes sun. It needs sun. Some women look absolutely beautiful alabaster and paler and I salute you and your decreased likeliness of getting skin cancer someday from too much tanning today. But I am not one of you. I must be sun-kissed, tan, glowing to pass as healthy. It’s not something Chicago winters like to encourage so trips like this one during a Chicago November are even more necessary. Even when it means being pestered endlessly by a mother raised in a society that prized porcelain skin untouched by the sun to take along the Dior DiorSnow Pure UV Ultra Protective Whitening Base SPF 50 she gave you last winter before your trip to the Caribbeans that is still sitting inside it’s box. 
 
[Ed. note: For those of you keeping score at home, that's one father who kept me locked up inside a house with a door covered with newspaper articles about raped, kidnapped, murdered women and one mother who applied whitening cream on my face while I slept at night and insisted that I exercise pressing my lips together firmly to minimize their natural pout.]
   
If my laptop would cooperate, this is when I’d post photos from the vacation. Because Zebra-striped Jeep? Sweet. Click. Large black man in Escalade with a 4-foot-tall white teddy bear in the passenger seat? Yes, click, definitely, click again just in case the first one didn’t turn out. The oxygen bar inside the airport? Click. The old couple sitting at the oxygen bar? Click click. The four Jäger shots I ordered to the blackjack table for me, my boyfriend, and our new honeymooning Mexican friends who had never drank Jäger before? Click click click click.
  
And, by the way, palm trees lining the street outside of McCarran International cued Vegasm #2.
  
MGM Grand is where we stayed. And it’s some where we probably would not stay again. While it was fine, it was more a place for us to change clothes, sleep, have sex in the shower, fix broken toilets and pay an additional $30 for a 1979 Sanyo Mini Fridge to store our booze than a place we utilized to dine, club or gamble.
 
But dinner at Nobu? Vegasms #3 to … too high too count. The Toro Tartar with Caviar and Fresh Yellowtail Sashimi with Jalapeño were enough to encourage some genuine Yes! Yes! Yes! moments. Additionally, my boyfriend and I both ordered the Chef’s Choice 8-course menu because we are fatties and foodies and oh my gawd. A ceviche salad that was the perfect blend of acidity, spice and sweet; a Chilean sea bass topped with both black and white truffles (Yes! Yes!); kobe beef accompanied with a decadent portion of foie gras (Ed. note: Stay away, Charlie Trotter. Stay far, far away); and a dessert of potstickers filled with glazed pears is why I am so glad I live to eat rather than the other way around. (Ed. note: This is not a food blog and I am not a food expert so I will stop pretending now.)
  
I did, however, find the service less than top-notch. My boyfriend and I had to wait a while to be seated even though we had reservations; our waiter seemed uninformed and out of place; and the noise was just enough to have to shout at times to hear one another. Little things that could have gone either way and nothing that stuck out as particularly bad, but enough for me to think Thank God the food is so good to make Nobu worth the $450 check. I don’t remember sounding like a prima donna being on my to-do list today, though, so I’ll just stop looking down my nose now.
 
Sugar & Ice inside the Wynn is absolutely delicious and adorable. I would like to bathe in their pistachio ice cream, and the jamón serrano sandwich hit the spot for my stomach filled with at least 4 Bloody Mary’s and not much else. (Ed. note: I like to not keep track of the exact number of drinks I’ve consumed once it gets past 3 or 4.)
 
The casinos at New York New York (cute, quaint, cozy - for a casino?), Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon (loud, unpretentious, mullets and tank tops on men … and a saloon!), and the Wynn were my favorites. The Wynn gets included because Kanie the Blackjack Dealer is the coolest lady I have now ever met and I wish very much I could have packed her into my suitcase and brought her back to Chicago with me. She and I talked and talked and talked (leaving my boyfriend to card-count, apparently, which he later told me was why he was so quiet) about the pearls or diamonds question asked to Hillary at the end of the Democratic debates that occurred the week before; Wolf Blitzer (woof); People magazine’s choices for Sexiest Men Alive; the famous elbows she’s rubbed; the kiss on her cheek from Bon Jovi; and her role in the movie The Cooler as a craps dealer. (Ed. note: When she asked me if I had Netflix to order The Cooler, I answered “yes” a little too emphatically.)
 
Eva Longoria & her tall French basketball-playing husband played craps not too far away from us at MGM and yes, she is that beautiful in person and yes, her body is like whoa.
 
We never made it to the pool or rode the roller coaster at New York New York (I like roller coasters in all shapes and sizes pleasedontmakefun), and I can’t believe that with all the time we spent at Bill’s, we missed seeing Big Elvis in person.
  
Our last night in Vegas was the Friday after Thanksgiving. We arrived in the evening after three days in Mormon Utah, his parents kind enough to drive us and, really, they couldn’t be any sweeter. Although being dropped off on the Strip by my boyfriend’s parents that include a Mormon mother was, in a word, surreal.
  
This night justifiably deserves its own post.
 
And I have some NaBloPoMo catching up to do for the 9 posts that never were during my vacation.
 
So scoot along.
 
Come on, to the next post, off you go. 
  
Yes?
 
Yes! Yes! Yes!