This is the Story of a Girl

Well, two girls actually. But I only found the second one after I started writing this.

Girl #1: Remember in the first post where I said I'd had almost no interesting encounters with the opposite sex since I was dumped? This girl would be the "almost" part of that:

Wolfgang has a new girlfriend (You may remember the old one. If you do, my sympathies), and she is a pretty cool girl. I'm going to refer to her as Tingles because that's her handle when we play Halo. Yeah that's right, she plays Halo. Additionally, she hangs out with us, she can actually talk with interest and depth about the same things as us, and unless she was working, she would be out every Wednesday for wing night at the local pub with us.

Just before the Labour Day weekend, she brought a single friend of hers along, having let both this girl and I know beforehand that she expected things to happen. When they arrived I wasn't disappointed. The girl was good-looking, and it became pretty clear pretty fast that she was into me too. Eventually Wolfgang, Tingles, this girl, and I went back to Tingles' place. Things happened. After things were done, this girl told me that she wasn't interested in a relationship, but that she'd like to hang out again the next night. I told her I agreed as I'd just gotten out of a relationship, and it hadn't been a really fun trip.

We did hang out again the next night in another large group, but she was late arriving and had to leave early before I could get a chance to talk to her. Seriously, I sat down beside her and she told me she was about to leave. However, during the short time that she was around I was treated to a little surprise: Carl was working that night was the only person to arrive to our little gathering later than her. When he walked in they both saw each other, I introduced Carl as "My hetero life-mate"(not that she got it), and they stopped dead. Of course Carl and this girl have a history. Not that this particularly phases me. Carl's a man with a long history and as long as they can keep off each other while I'm in the picture, I don't really care what happened in the past. Anyway, she got a ride home from one of Tingles' other friends (Let's call him the Smoking Man) soon after and I got her phone number from Tingles before I went home that night.

Here's where the nonsense starts:

Ever since I became more than academically interested in girls, there are two things I haven't really been able to understand: The obsession many people have with the taxonomy of relationships, and the ability all of my friends (of both genders) have to get drunk, fool around, and act as if nothing happened afterwards.

What does this have to do with the above story (as if you couldn't guess!)? Here goes:

When this girl told me she didn't want a relationship, I was genuinely relieved. As I said above, I'd just gotten out of one and Tingles told me later that this girl had as well, maybe a week or two before me. I was ready to go with a "friends with benefits" arrangement with this girl. Of course, not really knowing what that meant, I went with what I remembered from the only casual relationship I was ever able to discuss at length in my high-school years. The one between my Bestest Buddy Ever, and a certain dancer she happened to meet. As I recalled, theirs was a very low key thing where they'd call each other up and get together for... fun. And, having read a definition on Wikipedia, I'm going to say that it matches my thoughts pretty well. However, due to what Tingles and Wolfgang had been telling me, I was also working under the assumption that this would be a monogamous thing, which was likely going to lead to a "real" relationship once she and I had gotten over our exes (which, according to the wiki, was actually a very wrong thing to assume).

Aside #1:
What the hell is wrong with the word relationship? It gets tossed around conversations like a hand grenade with a loose pin. Seriously, I have a relationship with everyone who's reading these words, and I would characterize the majority of them as both "real" and "serious". Forming a relationship is not a life-altering event for me, but many many people appear to be under the impression that when one is formed between people who are attracted to each other, that it is analogous to forming an engagement (or a marriage for all that they're worth these days...), The wiki I mentioned above uses the term "formal relationship" to deliniate between the two, but where does that term come from? Formality implies a contract of some kind. Maybe something like this. If I'm in a relationship with a girl I'm not necessarily interested in long deep talks and eating dinner with their parents. I'm mostly interested in monogamy and not being lied to. Anything else is up for discussion.

Friday of that week (the 31st) I moved out of my University apartment, said a rather wrenched goodbye to Wolfgang, and began to feel somewhat lonely and sentimental. Perfect time for some non-committal sexual activity! I called the girl to see what she was up to on the following day (I was busy hanging out with Blake and Carl that night). I'd never actually spent any time with her sober, and figured it would be good to spend an afternoon hanging out and actually learning more about her than her name, and hopefully finding somewhere with no people around to learn more. No one answered her phone, so I left a brief message with my phone number and basically put it out of my head. That night on a bar patio with Blake and Carl I mentioned that I was a little disappointed that this girl hadn't gotten back to me. At this point, Carl and Blake turned my little world upside down and began heaping abuse on me.

Why had I called her? Why would I expect that she would want to see me? When a girl says she doesn't want a relationship it means she doesn't want to see you unless you happen to run into each other at a bar and decide the time is right to go somewhere else in each other's company. Of course, this flew in the face of everything I'd thought or been told to expect so far, and I was a little confused. (Aside #2: Apparently casual relationships are more formalized that any conception I have of a "formal" relationship) For the next 45 minutes I would randomly direct the conversation back to this point. They both seemed to agree that calling her that morning was a really really bad thing to do, to the point that it might wreck my chances of spending any time with her again.

And then she walked onto the patio. Seriously, my exact words were, "Yeah, I know, but I still don't get why calling her was such a bad holy shit there she is."

She was with a friend and we pulled two chairs up to our table for them. Her and I began to talk idly, but now my mind was full of wheels-within-wheels nonsense trying to figure out what she meant when she said seemingly normal things like "I got your message, but I was at work all day and didn't have a chance to get back to you". Did she really not get one chance? At all? Was this a polite way of saying what Blake and Carl had just been saying?

Eventually she and her friend went to the bathroom. Before they got back a drunkard we knew showed up with a friend and took their chairs. I got replacement chairs for her and her friend, but she was now sitting 3 seats away from me surrounded by people she didn't know, and the newcomers were doing their best to monopolize me in conversation. I was busy trying to figure out how to a) shut up my friends b) break tactfully out of the conversation or invite her into it or c) if all else failed, make my friends leave the table or take her to another one. While I was running the calculations for these things in my head (somewhat slowly because I was drunk and I still had to converse with my friends), some dude came up behind her and gave her a hug. She responded, went over to his table, and he proceeded to start buying her drinks.

Yeah, who can guess what happened next?

The wheels went into overdrive. Should I try and talk to her again? Was that the definitive signal that I had fucked things up with the phone call? Was that her way of telling me she was bored and didn't appreciate having her seat stolen? Was she going to finish saying hello and come back to this table? Had she actually come to this bar to meet this guy and just been talking with me to pass the time? Was I supposed to go over and begin competing for her attention? Who fucking knows? I, by then 9 or 10 drinks into the evening, certainly didn't. Blake and Carl were both busy engaging in other conversations, so I had no one to turn to, and ended up staying at the table and talking to her friend (incidentally, she knew my brother, and I spent a while talking to her about him, eventually receiving the impression that they'd hung out a few times before he cut her off for reasons unknown).

Sometime later, the tail Blake had been chasing left that bar and went to another. Blake then spent about 20 minutes convincing Carl and I that we should follow. We did. I wasn't sure if I should go over and tell this girl where we were going, or play it cooler and just tell her to call me sometime. In the end, I wussed out and simply left with Blake and Carl.

Aside #3:
Why do I do these things? "Paralysis by analysis" is a ridiculous term that my brother learned in business school, but it does seem to apply pretty well in this situation. The speed of the wheels in my head seems to have an inverse relationship (uh-oh, I said a dirty word!) with the amount of actual conversation or action I'm able to produce in any situation

I went on to spend a totally joyless hour at the other bar, and then we went to Carl's house around 2-ish to say goodbye to his sister, who was leaving at 5 to go off to school in Newfoundland and had been up all night packing. I was feeling so shitty by that point that I decided to walk home, and only accepted Carl's offer of a child's scooter to ride home on after 10 minutes of cajolery.

That takes us to Saturday morning, where I decided to play it cool. I wanted to call this girl, but I had already called her. She knew I wanted to hang out that day, so I figured that if she was interested she knew where to find me. She didn't call. I spent the day loafing around and cleaning my room, which wasn't actually that bad since I had spent the last 3 nights getting drunk. Also I thought it would be much easier to move out if I had all my things organized (this being a day before Blake dropped the "Hammer of God" on me).

Sunday was much the same. I spent the whole day cleaning my room (10 bags of garbage and 1.5 defunct computers taken to my dumpster), stopping only to buy some groceries for my mother, and then to eat the results of that trip. I also took small breaks to recieve Blake's terrible news and to call my brother to ask if he knew of any bachelor apartments on the market. My head hit the pillow hard that night, and somewhat earlier than on the last 4.

No calls on Monday either, so I decided to take matters into my own hands on Tuesday.

This was spurred on as much by wanting to know what the hell this girl was trying to do as it was by the shocking realization that I was pretty soon going to have no one to go to wings with for a long long time. I decided I would call everyone I had left in Stratford: Blake, my brother, Carl... and this girl. My brother had a meeting on Wednesday one block away from the wing bar and just after the time when I figured we'd be done (that means he couldn't come). Carl and Blake still live together so Blake was able to tell me that Carl would be working that night and the he (Blake) would be in London all day at a doctor's appointment. Fucking London.

Still waiting for nonsense? Here goes!

Blake then went on to tell me that I shouldn't bother calling the girl because she was bad news. He informed me that Carl had had trouble keeping her hands out of his crotch when we'd seen her on Friday. I agreed that that was a bad news kind of thing and decided to call Wolfgang and see what he thought of it. Only one problem: Wolfgang had moved back to school over the Labour Day weekend. I decided to pop off an email to him asking for his number.

Sometimes I think maybe there is a god, and other times I'm freakishly tempted to wonder whether or not it lives in my subconscious mind. When I logged into my gmail I saw a message from Wolfgang there already:

"I think you need to call me for a little chat, my friend"

And then another email with his phone-number.

I dialed. He answered. His first words (after our lengthy passwords, formal introductions, and a short break for tea) were, "I think you should stay away from that girl. She's bad news."

"That's so weird! Blake just told me the same thing. Why do you think so?"

"Well..."

And then he told me a story. It was the story of how, on the second night of our acquaintance, that girl had gotten a ride home from Tingles' friend the Smoking Man, made him drive her to the art gallery, and then ravished him in his car.

I was... pulled in two directions. The first was maybe not obvious to my readership:

I was not mad. I was maybe a little disappointed, but that's not the same thing. I was trying hard to get my head around the rules in this "friends with benefits" thing. I had been told my Wolfgang that monogamy was included, but not by the girl. And after the Friday night incident, I had decided that that assumption was a bad one. After all, who only has one friend? The most obvious advantage of thinking this way was that it clearly worked in both directions.

However, unlike the guy on Friday, it wasn't like I hadn't met the Smoking Man before. I describe him as Tingles' friend because they've known each other since high-school, but we'd hung out in groups many times over the summer (we spent much of that time covering each other's backs in Halo at Wolfgang's) and I figured we were friends too. Apparently not. Now, as I said above, I didn't have any sort of claim on this girl's affections. I had no serious ground to start mounting a "You cheating bitch" or " You back-stabbing asshole" campaign. But that's not really what's at issue here. What's at issue is that you don't intentionally fool around with people your friends are into, even if they aren't in any sort of "formal" "relationship". I am personally of the opinion that my company is worth more than the transitory affections of a drunken woman, but I can't say that that's a universally held opinion.

Given these two different pulls, I came to a conclusion about myself: I am not cut out for casual...whatever you want to call it. And when I say "came to a conclusion" I, of course, really mean "returned to a conclusion". Can anyone say "Gaggy Maggie"?

From that starting point I was able to decide that I should call the girl, tell her that I wasn't angry about what had happened (Who's gonna lie? I might have done it myself), but that I wasn't really interested in seeing her anymore. Basically, with everyone I knew having already moved or moving away soon, I was looking for all the friends I could get. To that end, I'd be happy to call her a friend, but leave it at that. It certainly wasn't worth any stupid drama and I wasn't interested in running into her at a bar and having to look away, stare into a gaze of contempt, or attempt to make feel-good half-hearted small talk.

So I called her. And got her machine. And didn't leave a message.

That night Blake called to get the girl's phone number. He said it was so that he could get the number of the friend she'd been with that night he, Carl, and I ran into her. I gave it to him, wished him luck, and told him that if he got through to her he could mention that she could call me sometime.

I can't remember if it was that night or the next, but she did call me. I was asleep though. By this time I'd started my new job and my 9pm bedtime.

When I got up at 5:30 I saw her number on the callers list of my phone. There was no message though, so I went to work. I called back at 9-ish to see if either of my parents had taken a message. No they hadn't, just that she had called. I waited until 11 (I had called after noon every other time and gotten the machine), called her, and got the machine. This time I left a message making some lame joke about telephone tag. She called my house when I was done work. I was working up to telling her that I was no longer interested, as she began busting into a long tale about how the whole thing was a lie and she hoped I believed her. A long tale, but the basic gist was that the Smoking Man had driven her to the Art Gallery instead of her house, hit on her, been rebuffed, made her take his phone number, and then driven her home.

Two totally opposite tales from two people I don't really know. I was diplomatic with her, told her it was nothing personal, but that I wasn't really going to make up my mind until I'd talked it over with Wolfgang and Tingles, who would be able to judge a little more accurately. However, I couldn't quite get around to getting my great big self-realization off of my chest, given that she was trying to convince me that the major catalyst for that realization was possibly not a real event.

It was all getting complicated. More so, in fact, than a "real" "relationship" might have been. I told her I was going to think it over but that I wanted to see her sometime (also, seriously, who says things like "I can't do this with you" and whatnot over the phone? Doesn't that make me look like a huge prick?). We quickly discovered that this was going to be impossible. I worked my mornings, she worked 2 hours after I finished, and I was asleep by the time she was done.

"Two hours after?" you say. Quite astute, my readers. I was all in favour of a rendezvous somewhere downtown for a quick chat, but that was also not in the cards. You see, this girl lives somewhere out on the very very edge of our fair metropolis, and she apparently cannot drive (what a luddite) and does not have access to a bicycle. Or bicycles aren't ladylike enough. I don't know.

Eventually we cycle through our schedules until we come to the end of the week, when she says she works until 9 and then is thinking of going to a bar in town with her friend (The one we've met once before that Carl was interested in). My logical mind was busy weighing whether or not that would actually be a good time to talk. Just as the counter in my head begins to dip towards "No, dumbass", another part of my head (the one controlling my mouth apparently) says, "Well, maybe I'll see you there."

"Oh yeah? Alright, well I'll call you when I'm done work on Saturday."

And, having done such an unexpected thing to myself, the strange part of my mind did its best to justify what had just happened: Why was I taking all this so seriously? Could I not relax for 5 seconds and just try to get laid this weekend? The thought of getting laid was a strong motivator for me, and I let it go. I was again determined to make this non-relationship work. Work for me. Hard.

Through the rest of the week reality began to crack my little shell of confidence. 1) I never did call Wolfgang to get his opinion on the situation, so I was basically taking what she had told me in blind faith, mostly because I was hoping I was going to get laid out of it. 2) There was a good chance that this girl would do what she had done the last time I saw her in a bar: get bored with me and move onto some other piece of meat. I decided that I would need some sort of backup plan. I tried half-heartedly to bring my brother in on the idea by tempting him with the friend, but he was having none of it. Nothing else presented itself to me until the night itself.

Blake was, in fact, still in Stratford (he's still here now for all that are interested. He's moving sometime next week). I had the bright idea to give him a call and try to pull him into this adventure at the last second. It almost worked, but he had other plans. Specifically, plans with another of our friends and some bottles of wine down by the river, and Carl (and some other bottles of wine) when he got off of work. I decided to spend $13 on some insurance. I told Blake to pick me up a bottle of the usual while he was at the liquor store. That way, if things fell through, Blake and a comfortably numb evening were only a phone call away.

To shorten this long story, things fell through. Blake and I arrived (our friend was still working), the girl didn't even invite us to sit at her table. I tried to give her Blake's phone number, she insisted that she could remember it if we told her. At this point, only the part of my mind that had gotten me into this whole stage of the mess was trying to insist that she would call and we would get together later. And none of Blake's mind was thinking that as he made ridiculous faces and comically exaggerated goodbye waves at her when she left the bar with some dude. Some dude, who I will add for the benefit of my own dignity, who was very very ugly. I should also add at this point that Blake definitely did the right thing and I was just too embarrassed to admit it at the time.

I proceeded to get semi-incoherently drunk on a bridge, bike around the river with my boys, and fall off my bike on a gravel path and tear up my knee. The best part of the night, however, was lying on my back on the riverbank (beside said boys) looking up into the stars, and listening to the Most Beautiful Woman in the World tell me to celebrate.

Then I went home, threw up in my sink, and passed out in my basement. The next morning I had a hangover that would have enslaved the world and destroyed humanity if it had been able to beat its way out of my skull.

Girl #2: Much cooler than the last one

I found this while I was searching for the appropriate link to put in a recent comment in another blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZXGdg23Qdk&mode=related&search=

It's a video of a girl dancing to my favourite Daft Punk song. Now, this on its own is not enough to earn her what could be called the entire second half of this post. Oh no. She's not the most attractive woman ever, and the dancing, while good, did not blow my mind as other dancing has.

Watch it. Enjoy it. But pay special attention to exactly which dance she decides to employ at 37 seconds and 1:16. You won't regret it.