What I need is you
"You need me," my boyfriend said, pressing his hand against my back, keeping me close. I'd just jumped at him for a quick hug, and it was nice that he took time to savour it. I smiled.
He knows it's true. And I liked his confidence.
"You need me," he repeated. And after only a short pause, said it again, "You need me."
It was getting weird. But what the hell, I played along.
"OK, I neeeeeed you."
He squinted. What's he getting at, I wondered, feeling at a loss. Then he reached his hand down to the front of his jeans, gingerly cupping himself, before saying it one last time in a way I finally understood.
"You KNEED me!"
When he recovered, we decided both were true.
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Before I got lucky in London
It was a short, regrettable fling – one of the last, and it may have otherwise been among the most forgettable, had my suitor not resorted to theft to gain my attention, if not my affection.
It was a short, regrettable fling – one of the last, and it may have otherwise been among the most forgettable, had my suitor not resorted to theft to gain my attention, if not my affection.
Lasting only a few days of vegan lunches, soy lattes and his nervous mannerisms, even in its genesis, I knew the deal could never quite be sealed with more than a hops-sloppy kiss. It wasn’t in the stars. So when having the young Scottish import in my personal space became unbearably unpalatable, I delivered the terminal blow by phone and naively expected never to hear from him again. Instead, as it does, dinged pride guided its punch-drunk governor to commit criminal acts of idiocy.
Of the little he knew about me, other than my being the ex-girlfriend of one of his own friends – though the quality of their relationship continues to be debatable – was my love of cruising Montreal’s broad, tree-lined streets on my beloved beater bike, a ’67 Schwinn with just enough of its original paint to suggest it was once a decidedly Californian shade of blue. The bike had been a gift from the ex-boyfriend – a gift he particularly enjoyed reclaiming when it came time to exchange any love he had for me for seething, pathological hatred. Ours was the standard break-up to follow any 7-year union – savage, vengeful and sufficiently bitter to put any Canadian winter to shame. After all I’d invested, anything less and I’d have been offended.
The young Scot seemed an anxious contender for the post, but upon experiencing even a lesser rejection first-hand and over the phone, he both blamed my ex-boyfriend for having rendered me incapable of loving someone new, and set out to win over what he believed to be even the most damaged bits of my icy little heart. But, had he asked me, I’d have said it was less an issue with my heart, and more an issue of instinct. Something, I felt, just wasn’t right.
Within a few days, the misguided young Scot made up his mind and did what he thought best, and resolved to steal my bike back. I know how he arrived at this decision, because the entire decision-making process was recorded in a series of four voicemail messages, from conception to completion. The wayward gesture was highly successful, but only in proving me right about him being so wrong.
While I appreciated his sympathy and creativity, the plan was not very well thought out. My ex-boyfriend, and the bicycle, lived in Mile End, the same close-knit Montreal neighbourhood as me. Surely I’d be seen pedalling guiltily along and be accused of thieving it myself. Nevertheless, in the first message, he said he’d spotted the bike and thought I deserved to have it. The second message reiterated. The third announced he’d developed a plan to steal it. The fifth, told me it had been relocated to the entrance of my apartment building, with a key to its new lock hidden under the seat, awaiting me.
At the time, my ex-boyfriend’s wrath was a fitfully sleeping dragon, and avoiding inducing further nightmares was topped in my priorities only by basic survival. Already subject to random phone calls designed to intimidate and punish me for leaving, any new fodder would surely fan the hellfire. So, after running down three flights of stairs and out the front doors to the bicycle rack, you can imagine my relief to see that despite the young Scot’s strange trail of messages, the bicycle wasn’t there.
What was there, was someone else’s bike – a similar bike, but red, and not the right brand or make or year or, really, anything the same at all. Still, I checked underneath its seat, and there as promised, was a key. I was now in possession of a stolen bike.
After calling friends to rant about my new role as harbourer of stolen goods, I began posting flyers around the neighbourhood, asking for anyone with a bicycle stolen from the area that week to please contact me with a description, so I could return it to its rightful rider. But none of the many hopeful enquiries described the bike I’d been fostering. A week later, it occurred to me to lock the bike up in the same location from where I suspected it had been stolen. To it, I attached my email address, figuring the delighted owner would contact me for the key. Another week came and went, and still no word. When I checked on the bike, I saw that the paper with my email address had been torn away, but a second U-lock was attached and a note snaked through its grimy spokes. It read:
“Dear Bike Angel, I don’t know how you found it, but please call me.”
And he left his number. Bike Angel. I liked it.
Doing the right thing is good, but having it work out is great. The owner of the bicycle was a well-known local character and talented Montreal artist. His prints had been hanging in my home, years before his stolen bicycle made it there to join them. And, because it’s Montreal, and the English-speaking community so small, he was also an acquaintance of my ex, who, as it turns out, still has the blue Schwinn.
A small, awkward friendship budded in the fiasco, with the red bike’s rightful owner, and every time I saw him riding it through the same streets I loved, I felt a little spark of victory. And just once, we also shared a hops-soggy kiss, so every time we stumbled into each other’s paths afterward, my cheeks took the colour of the bike that started it all.
But all of that and all those people have become little more than anecdote. I’ve since fallen in love with someone else, someone without need to impress me, someone completely unrelated this story, someone English who’s never even been to Montreal, and to my own surprise, someone who doesn’t even own a bike. Still, my instincts say he’s also someone for whom it’s worth crossing an ocean.
My ex-boyfriend with the blue bike seems to be letting sleeping dragons lie.
The young Scot must surely have been deported by now.
The artist’s red bike has since been stolen – for good.
And even though it’s raining tonight in London, I’m warm inside with a man who’s doing well at proving I was right about him, and so I think, I may have been stolen for good, too.
This is me with my boyfriend, tolerating London, for some effing good reason.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Public parts
When my boyfriend said he had a surprise for our date last weekend, I didn't expect to find myself looking between the thick, creamy thighs of a complete stranger, and into the fuzz of her nether regions.
I wouldn't say I 'met' her exactly, in the Women's toilet at the Nöel Coward Theatre – where he took me to see the hilarious Avenue Q – but rather I marched forth as an unwitting martyr.
As the first in line, I was destined to expose the robust thirty-something to tens of women during intermission. She'd forgotten to lock the stall door – the one in plain view of the queue – before inexplicably assuming an advanced yoga pose, balanced over the bowl with her pants around her knees, and her hands involved in some sort of terrifying and aggressive undertaking. She didn't look up.
"OK!" I yelled, and let the door fall shut. Its resident contortionist turned the lock.
A series of barely audible peeps escaped the women behind me and in unison they averted their eyes to the floor, the ceiling, their feet. They had the luxury of pretending it didn't happen, or that maybe they'd just arrived and hadn't witnessed this woman poking around her now-public parts. I didn't, because I was still next in line waiting for the toilet. That, and my cheeks were red.
I looked down at my shoes and prayed someone in another stall would emerge before She-Who-Failed-to-Lock-the-Door did.
Apparently, there is a god.
When my boyfriend said he had a surprise for our date last weekend, I didn't expect to find myself looking between the thick, creamy thighs of a complete stranger, and into the fuzz of her nether regions.
I wouldn't say I 'met' her exactly, in the Women's toilet at the Nöel Coward Theatre – where he took me to see the hilarious Avenue Q – but rather I marched forth as an unwitting martyr.As the first in line, I was destined to expose the robust thirty-something to tens of women during intermission. She'd forgotten to lock the stall door – the one in plain view of the queue – before inexplicably assuming an advanced yoga pose, balanced over the bowl with her pants around her knees, and her hands involved in some sort of terrifying and aggressive undertaking. She didn't look up.
"OK!" I yelled, and let the door fall shut. Its resident contortionist turned the lock.
A series of barely audible peeps escaped the women behind me and in unison they averted their eyes to the floor, the ceiling, their feet. They had the luxury of pretending it didn't happen, or that maybe they'd just arrived and hadn't witnessed this woman poking around her now-public parts. I didn't, because I was still next in line waiting for the toilet. That, and my cheeks were red.
I looked down at my shoes and prayed someone in another stall would emerge before She-Who-Failed-to-Lock-the-Door did.
Apparently, there is a god.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Good morning, Great Britain!
Seat 39K – the one beside the toilet at the very back of the plane and directly across the aisle from the gawking, randy middle-aged man with mustard on his scarf – was all mine.
The karma I'd generated in the departures lounge, by turning in a stranger's purse to the security desk, had apparently been lost in airspace. It had occurred to me at the time that I maybe shouldn't involve myself with the business of unidentified parcels in airports, but my heart was so strung out on adrenaline that adding accidental implication in a smuggling scandal seemed manageable. I carried the purse very conspicuously at arm's length, just in case.
On the plane, I hid under my coat instead of that karmic shield I’d wanted. And my scarf. And that other coat I didn’t have room for in my checked luggage. A stiff neck was all Mr. Mustard was going to get from his efforts, no matter how long the flight from Halifax to London, or how vivid or well-oiled his imagination.
I sniffed the air, because I was more concerned about a smelly washroom anyway. It seemed normal for a plane: heavy on the freezer-burn with undertones of armpit. Since the flight was only five hours long, I reasoned my misery would be capped at passing ladies knocking me lucid with their purses or, at worst, a little anticipatory flatulence from the queue.
Nothing so minor would distract me from my daydreams, I resolved. Finally Heathrow-bound and running on three months of anticipation, I was on my way to meet my frighteningly-too-exactly-what-I’ve-always-wanted-in-a-man-to-be-true English boyfriend, and I had a lot of theories about how that might go. I wanted to run though them all. The R-rated ones I replayed until I fell asleep.
Before long, a swift knock on the head with a sturdy leather handbag woke me to a pink horizon. The sun was rising over England and the wing pointed to the moon. Pre-cooked omelette wafted then flopped through the cabin, and it smelled relatively delicious.
Mr. Mustard, now fast asleep, missed all the good stuff. I snapped a picture, because I didn't want to miss a thing.
Seat 39K – the one beside the toilet at the very back of the plane and directly across the aisle from the gawking, randy middle-aged man with mustard on his scarf – was all mine.
The karma I'd generated in the departures lounge, by turning in a stranger's purse to the security desk, had apparently been lost in airspace. It had occurred to me at the time that I maybe shouldn't involve myself with the business of unidentified parcels in airports, but my heart was so strung out on adrenaline that adding accidental implication in a smuggling scandal seemed manageable. I carried the purse very conspicuously at arm's length, just in case.
On the plane, I hid under my coat instead of that karmic shield I’d wanted. And my scarf. And that other coat I didn’t have room for in my checked luggage. A stiff neck was all Mr. Mustard was going to get from his efforts, no matter how long the flight from Halifax to London, or how vivid or well-oiled his imagination.
I sniffed the air, because I was more concerned about a smelly washroom anyway. It seemed normal for a plane: heavy on the freezer-burn with undertones of armpit. Since the flight was only five hours long, I reasoned my misery would be capped at passing ladies knocking me lucid with their purses or, at worst, a little anticipatory flatulence from the queue.
Nothing so minor would distract me from my daydreams, I resolved. Finally Heathrow-bound and running on three months of anticipation, I was on my way to meet my frighteningly-too-exactly-what-I’ve-always-wanted-in-a-man-to-be-true English boyfriend, and I had a lot of theories about how that might go. I wanted to run though them all. The R-rated ones I replayed until I fell asleep.
Before long, a swift knock on the head with a sturdy leather handbag woke me to a pink horizon. The sun was rising over England and the wing pointed to the moon. Pre-cooked omelette wafted then flopped through the cabin, and it smelled relatively delicious.
Mr. Mustard, now fast asleep, missed all the good stuff. I snapped a picture, because I didn't want to miss a thing.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Filthy perks of London
I have a lot of baggage, and I'll unload it on my boyfriend as soon as I get the chance.
When he picks me up at Heathrow, he'll help me haul my weight in luggage back to his flat – 120 lbs of my favourite things, the maximum allowed by Air Canada. My life in England begins with this simple recipe: one part each, person and parcel.
Empowered by Customs with an entrance stamp, I'll begin the travel equivalent of a Walk of Shame via the London Underground. My eyes will be red from the sleepless overnight flight and good-byes. Nothing about me will be especially fresh, and with politely peripheral glances, everyone on the tube will see I didn't exactly make it home last night. I won't be home again until I make a new one. But first, I have a few more things to purge, a long way to travel, and a job and a flat to find.
Fitting twelve years of living in Montreal into a duffel bag, a backpack and a rolling carry-on is proving challenging, and expensive. Everything I didn't pay to have shipped to my parents' house in Nova Scotia, I undersold to friends.
I'm going to do my best to forget about the moving company – L & B Déménagement et Entreposage, whose driver demanded $500 in cash when my shipment arrived two weeks past schedule, exactly 30 per cent more than I'd been quoted – because I don't want the fire-breathing dragon in my belly to incinerate the butterflies.
Besides, that was weeks ago. Since then, I've been camping out at my friend, Cathy's, and living among piles. A seismic heap of clothing is graciously smothering my enormous, unsorted stack of "important" papers, and I really hope they die.
Tomorrow, I'll carry another bag of donations to the vintage boutique, attempt to sell my printer, and store my bike in a friend's basement until I can sell it through Craigslist this spring. Then, I'll buy health insurance, say a few good-byes and drink.
That should leave plenty of time for panic.
I know I've made the right decision, and it'll be great living and working in a city where English is the first language for once. All that gooey love stuff I'm feeling will smooth the transition, and there'll finally be perks to monogamy. Filthy, filthy perks.
Meanwhile in London, my boyfriend's getting ready to incorporate me into his life. Beyond helping me pimp my CV, he's prepping his roomies for my arrival, and customizing our happy place – a bedroom oasis. Best of all, he's added an original Nintendo Entertainment System to his games corner, so I can play Super Mario Brothers when the fog and flurry of London is too much. I'm not going to pretend he bought the NES for me, but I'll enjoy it as much. We are, after all, about to switch to the ultimate two-player game.
I have a lot of baggage, and I'll unload it on my boyfriend as soon as I get the chance.
When he picks me up at Heathrow, he'll help me haul my weight in luggage back to his flat – 120 lbs of my favourite things, the maximum allowed by Air Canada. My life in England begins with this simple recipe: one part each, person and parcel.
Empowered by Customs with an entrance stamp, I'll begin the travel equivalent of a Walk of Shame via the London Underground. My eyes will be red from the sleepless overnight flight and good-byes. Nothing about me will be especially fresh, and with politely peripheral glances, everyone on the tube will see I didn't exactly make it home last night. I won't be home again until I make a new one. But first, I have a few more things to purge, a long way to travel, and a job and a flat to find.
Fitting twelve years of living in Montreal into a duffel bag, a backpack and a rolling carry-on is proving challenging, and expensive. Everything I didn't pay to have shipped to my parents' house in Nova Scotia, I undersold to friends.I'm going to do my best to forget about the moving company – L & B Déménagement et Entreposage, whose driver demanded $500 in cash when my shipment arrived two weeks past schedule, exactly 30 per cent more than I'd been quoted – because I don't want the fire-breathing dragon in my belly to incinerate the butterflies.
Besides, that was weeks ago. Since then, I've been camping out at my friend, Cathy's, and living among piles. A seismic heap of clothing is graciously smothering my enormous, unsorted stack of "important" papers, and I really hope they die.
Tomorrow, I'll carry another bag of donations to the vintage boutique, attempt to sell my printer, and store my bike in a friend's basement until I can sell it through Craigslist this spring. Then, I'll buy health insurance, say a few good-byes and drink.
That should leave plenty of time for panic.
I know I've made the right decision, and it'll be great living and working in a city where English is the first language for once. All that gooey love stuff I'm feeling will smooth the transition, and there'll finally be perks to monogamy. Filthy, filthy perks.
Meanwhile in London, my boyfriend's getting ready to incorporate me into his life. Beyond helping me pimp my CV, he's prepping his roomies for my arrival, and customizing our happy place – a bedroom oasis. Best of all, he's added an original Nintendo Entertainment System to his games corner, so I can play Super Mario Brothers when the fog and flurry of London is too much. I'm not going to pretend he bought the NES for me, but I'll enjoy it as much. We are, after all, about to switch to the ultimate two-player game.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
My "real" friends love me anyway
Pranking friends and mocking people from afar has never been so easy, now that Facebook is on the scene.
Cathy's never really pregnant like her status line occasionally suggests, by the way. She's just left her account open on the computer in the main room again. I'm sure she'll appreciate your concern and congratulations regardless, so don't be discouraged by the truth.
It's up to you whether to harness the power of social networking sites for good or for humour, but faced with an opportunity, my path is clear. What wasn't clear, was whether I'm allowed to heckle web-specific Facebook "friends" just the same as I do my real friends.
Last night, I tried it and now I know better.
Before going out to meet people refreshingly off-line, I checked Facebook for a totally legitimate reason – to find a phone number – and by compulsion, became distracted by my "friends" status updates. Several were posted by people I love, and others by those with whom I share some nebulous association – an acquaintance from a flight to Nova Scotia, a partier from New York, a hostel-mate from Buenos Aires, or the Home Hardware cashier who attended high school with my sister. Some are ex-boyfriends. Some know my ex-boyfriends. A few play in bands with them.
The status which caught my attention at that particular moment read:
[Bandmate-of-a-guy-I-dated] is cancelled [his lame band] show.
Reading the grammatical error aloud like the snotty third-grade bookworm I still am, I reminded Cathy we'd both dated this band's members. Then we agreed to never, ever speak of it again.
"Their show is cancelled? THANK GOD!" I joked to Cathy, and further mused, "I should write that as a comment on his update..."
"DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!" she said, vibrating a little. Good ol' Cathy; she's always got my back.
We laughed hard enough at the prospect that I forgot I wasn't serious. Surely, he'd see the humour, I thought. By the time Cathy left the room, I'd forgotten there was any reason at all not to comment, for just long enough to follow through. Laughing to myself, I typed in "Thank God!" and hit enter. I sat back and waited. As the page loaded very, very slowly, my smile faded. Contextual details oozed forth from the dankest sludge of my recent memory, and I began to panic.
For every great joke, there's an oh-no moment. It's the silence before the laughter, while the audience susses out whether you're funny or just another inappropriate effing a-hole. I had enough time to see I'd be the latter.
Before going for the jocular, I really should have taken into consideration just how much the band's head man is devoted to hating me – because it's a lot. Over time, he's penned volumes of personalized hate-and-blame email, especially for me.
Months ago, determined to wring some humour from the fiasco, I read excerpts of his impassioned, somewhat frighteningly obsessive work at an open mic night for love letter readings at a Mile End cafe. I got the shock-and-awe audience response I'd wanted. After that, I guess I just forgot.
Last night, I remembered. And I realized that not only would my comment not be well received, but I risked reigniting the rubber of the smouldering, molten tire which was the end of that noxious relationship. No one would read this tongue-in-cheek comment as it was intended. No one.
So you can imagine my relief, when the page finally loaded, to realize that while my comment posted successfully, I'd accidentally done it from Cathy's account. It was her smiling face, not mine next to this terrible comment – karma for having encouraged me. Now, not only is she "pregnant" on occasion, but she's a complete effing a-hole. That'll teach her to log out before she goes to the bathroom.
Pranking friends and mocking people from afar has never been so easy, now that Facebook is on the scene.
Cathy's never really pregnant like her status line occasionally suggests, by the way. She's just left her account open on the computer in the main room again. I'm sure she'll appreciate your concern and congratulations regardless, so don't be discouraged by the truth.It's up to you whether to harness the power of social networking sites for good or for humour, but faced with an opportunity, my path is clear. What wasn't clear, was whether I'm allowed to heckle web-specific Facebook "friends" just the same as I do my real friends.
Last night, I tried it and now I know better.
Before going out to meet people refreshingly off-line, I checked Facebook for a totally legitimate reason – to find a phone number – and by compulsion, became distracted by my "friends" status updates. Several were posted by people I love, and others by those with whom I share some nebulous association – an acquaintance from a flight to Nova Scotia, a partier from New York, a hostel-mate from Buenos Aires, or the Home Hardware cashier who attended high school with my sister. Some are ex-boyfriends. Some know my ex-boyfriends. A few play in bands with them.
The status which caught my attention at that particular moment read:
[Bandmate-of-a-guy-I-dated] is cancelled [his lame band] show.
Reading the grammatical error aloud like the snotty third-grade bookworm I still am, I reminded Cathy we'd both dated this band's members. Then we agreed to never, ever speak of it again.
"Their show is cancelled? THANK GOD!" I joked to Cathy, and further mused, "I should write that as a comment on his update..."
"DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!" she said, vibrating a little. Good ol' Cathy; she's always got my back.
We laughed hard enough at the prospect that I forgot I wasn't serious. Surely, he'd see the humour, I thought. By the time Cathy left the room, I'd forgotten there was any reason at all not to comment, for just long enough to follow through. Laughing to myself, I typed in "Thank God!" and hit enter. I sat back and waited. As the page loaded very, very slowly, my smile faded. Contextual details oozed forth from the dankest sludge of my recent memory, and I began to panic.
For every great joke, there's an oh-no moment. It's the silence before the laughter, while the audience susses out whether you're funny or just another inappropriate effing a-hole. I had enough time to see I'd be the latter.
Before going for the jocular, I really should have taken into consideration just how much the band's head man is devoted to hating me – because it's a lot. Over time, he's penned volumes of personalized hate-and-blame email, especially for me.
Months ago, determined to wring some humour from the fiasco, I read excerpts of his impassioned, somewhat frighteningly obsessive work at an open mic night for love letter readings at a Mile End cafe. I got the shock-and-awe audience response I'd wanted. After that, I guess I just forgot.
Last night, I remembered. And I realized that not only would my comment not be well received, but I risked reigniting the rubber of the smouldering, molten tire which was the end of that noxious relationship. No one would read this tongue-in-cheek comment as it was intended. No one.
So you can imagine my relief, when the page finally loaded, to realize that while my comment posted successfully, I'd accidentally done it from Cathy's account. It was her smiling face, not mine next to this terrible comment – karma for having encouraged me. Now, not only is she "pregnant" on occasion, but she's a complete effing a-hole. That'll teach her to log out before she goes to the bathroom.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Just another pretty face
Chances are, if you're my friend or have anything in common with me at all, you didn't pick up the July issue of Clin d'oeil – Quebec's premier French-language fashion magazine. And you definitely wouldn't have read the article on horoscopes, fortune-telling and dating – the one I'm in.
To readers of the magazine, I'm just another pretty face. Just another woman turning to the stars for reassurance that her next boyfriend won't be deceitful, controlling, unfaithful, crude, inconsiderate, selfish or homosexual, like the last one.
They'll commiserate with this image of me, and join the ranks of what French-Canadians apparently call ésotérico-girly girls. You know, women with more faith in tarot cards, dice, clairvoyants and Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology than their own instinct – the kind of women you'd never want to date.
Ahem.
While I didn't have anything to do with the actual content of the article, I'm its mascot. The illustrator commissioned for the feature, a close friend, asked if I'd be willing to pose as a reference model, so he could draw me. All I had to do was drink tea, play with props, and feign excitement and wonder at dating in the New Age. Feign excitement and wonder at dating? I've certainly done that before. This time I'll get something out of it, I thought, and volunteered for my own selfish reasons.
Firstly, although I was only slightly more qualified for the task than the standard wooden drawing figure, by virtue of having eyes and hands – I just wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, I've modelled." But mostly, I wanted to see myself through someone else's eyes.
My friend showed me some of the sketches before they were approved for print – over beer on his balcony, back when the world was sunny and warm – but it wasn't until yesterday, when I met him to say good-bye before I leave for London, did I remember to ask for a copy of the magazine.
And here I am, as he drew me. In the illustrations, I'm pretty. My nose seems smaller. My boobs seems bigger. And it seems I'd be willing to do anything for love.
In twenty days, I'm boarding a plane to Heathrow to be with a man I met via Facebook. So, if nothing else, at least that last part is true.
Chances are, if you're my friend or have anything in common with me at all, you didn't pick up the July issue of Clin d'oeil – Quebec's premier French-language fashion magazine. And you definitely wouldn't have read the article on horoscopes, fortune-telling and dating – the one I'm in.
To readers of the magazine, I'm just another pretty face. Just another woman turning to the stars for reassurance that her next boyfriend won't be deceitful, controlling, unfaithful, crude, inconsiderate, selfish or homosexual, like the last one.They'll commiserate with this image of me, and join the ranks of what French-Canadians apparently call ésotérico-girly girls. You know, women with more faith in tarot cards, dice, clairvoyants and Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology than their own instinct – the kind of women you'd never want to date.
Ahem.
While I didn't have anything to do with the actual content of the article, I'm its mascot. The illustrator commissioned for the feature, a close friend, asked if I'd be willing to pose as a reference model, so he could draw me. All I had to do was drink tea, play with props, and feign excitement and wonder at dating in the New Age. Feign excitement and wonder at dating? I've certainly done that before. This time I'll get something out of it, I thought, and volunteered for my own selfish reasons.
Firstly, although I was only slightly more qualified for the task than the standard wooden drawing figure, by virtue of having eyes and hands – I just wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, I've modelled." But mostly, I wanted to see myself through someone else's eyes.
My friend showed me some of the sketches before they were approved for print – over beer on his balcony, back when the world was sunny and warm – but it wasn't until yesterday, when I met him to say good-bye before I leave for London, did I remember to ask for a copy of the magazine.
And here I am, as he drew me. In the illustrations, I'm pretty. My nose seems smaller. My boobs seems bigger. And it seems I'd be willing to do anything for love.
In twenty days, I'm boarding a plane to Heathrow to be with a man I met via Facebook. So, if nothing else, at least that last part is true.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Death, lies and dinner
When I was small, my parents lied to me all the time. "It's beef," they'd say, and drop a plate on the table. Sometimes, I'd refuse to eat, convinced I'd heard them slip a barely audible "just like" between the "it's" and "beef". It was inhumane, I thought, to hunt wild game and (at that age) equally inhumane to force me to eat vegetables as the alternative. My parents were cruel, and I was right not to trust them.
Several incarnations of Bambi's mother and his philandering father have joined us for dinner, as have Thumper, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Jaws and various anonymous guests, sometimes in a medley of murder my mother liked to call 'stew'. Children's stories, cartoons, movies and Teddy bears did not serve me well in a family of naturalists, hunters and fisherfolk.
Not until I fully understood the horrors of industrial farming, and tired of my diet of pasta and frozen chicken nuggets while studying at an out-of-province university, did my views on my parents' eating habits begin to soften. By then, I cared more about what food wasn't (pasta or mechanically separated meat), than what it was.
Not until I'd travelled throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America did I begin to actually appreciate my parents' choices. As it turns out, a lot more can be considered food than I'd initially thought, and the horrors of my mother's cooking weren't, comparatively, so terrifying. Travelling, I learned to find my happy place, which allowed me to politely choke down whatever lovingly slaughtered, hacked and salted ungodly creatures I'd been served. They won't eat me from the inside out, I consoled myself. Even if the heads are still on? asked my little voice.
While I maintain my belief that food should not be able to look back at you, I've learned to appreciate dead, cooked versions of creatures, so long as I have nothing to do with their death or any stage postmortem/pre-meal.
Among life's greatest motivators, however, (pain, necessity, a full bladder) is the desire to look tough in front of one's peers, and this is what got me to both kill and cook one of Earth's most hideous, head and all: a lobster.
I watch my parents do it every year on Christmas Eve, and, with the help of my happy place, I was pretty sure I could pull it off for my mostly urban, English, fruit-and-salad-loving boyfriend. On this, his first visit to Canada, my family had already introduced him to bear stew, moose sirloin, vampire-repelling dill and garlic pickles, pierogi and three batches of Mom's cookies, and it seemed a shame to have him leave Nova Scotia without eating something from the sea, especially since he'd never tried lobster.
My greatest realization, in cooking the beast, was that I truly am becoming more like my parents. Here I am, carrying on the tradition of lying to people who are reluctant to kill for dinner, while my boyfriend screams, "It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE! OH, EFF! It's still ALIVE!":
When I was small, my parents lied to me all the time. "It's beef," they'd say, and drop a plate on the table. Sometimes, I'd refuse to eat, convinced I'd heard them slip a barely audible "just like" between the "it's" and "beef". It was inhumane, I thought, to hunt wild game and (at that age) equally inhumane to force me to eat vegetables as the alternative. My parents were cruel, and I was right not to trust them.
Several incarnations of Bambi's mother and his philandering father have joined us for dinner, as have Thumper, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Jaws and various anonymous guests, sometimes in a medley of murder my mother liked to call 'stew'. Children's stories, cartoons, movies and Teddy bears did not serve me well in a family of naturalists, hunters and fisherfolk.
Not until I fully understood the horrors of industrial farming, and tired of my diet of pasta and frozen chicken nuggets while studying at an out-of-province university, did my views on my parents' eating habits begin to soften. By then, I cared more about what food wasn't (pasta or mechanically separated meat), than what it was.
Not until I'd travelled throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America did I begin to actually appreciate my parents' choices. As it turns out, a lot more can be considered food than I'd initially thought, and the horrors of my mother's cooking weren't, comparatively, so terrifying. Travelling, I learned to find my happy place, which allowed me to politely choke down whatever lovingly slaughtered, hacked and salted ungodly creatures I'd been served. They won't eat me from the inside out, I consoled myself. Even if the heads are still on? asked my little voice.
While I maintain my belief that food should not be able to look back at you, I've learned to appreciate dead, cooked versions of creatures, so long as I have nothing to do with their death or any stage postmortem/pre-meal.
Among life's greatest motivators, however, (pain, necessity, a full bladder) is the desire to look tough in front of one's peers, and this is what got me to both kill and cook one of Earth's most hideous, head and all: a lobster.
I watch my parents do it every year on Christmas Eve, and, with the help of my happy place, I was pretty sure I could pull it off for my mostly urban, English, fruit-and-salad-loving boyfriend. On this, his first visit to Canada, my family had already introduced him to bear stew, moose sirloin, vampire-repelling dill and garlic pickles, pierogi and three batches of Mom's cookies, and it seemed a shame to have him leave Nova Scotia without eating something from the sea, especially since he'd never tried lobster.
My greatest realization, in cooking the beast, was that I truly am becoming more like my parents. Here I am, carrying on the tradition of lying to people who are reluctant to kill for dinner, while my boyfriend screams, "It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE! OH, EFF! It's still ALIVE!":
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Putting the 'pet' in petulant
It's dead under a stool in my kitchen right now, and no, I am not going to do anything about it. Not until my visitor has come and gone. He's due in about ten minutes, and I'd hate to be caught red-handed, heartless and with a body on my conscience. Once he leaves, I'll roll it up and carry it at arm's length to the basement – the logical place to stash a corpse. Until then, I'll just act casual.
I won't pretend I didn't get a sense of satisfaction from the kill, maybe even a little adrenaline. I am entirely capable of killing again. The deceased should've known better than to enter my home uninvited, sneaking around at night, stealing bits he thought I'd not notice and presumably defecating in miniature throughout. I wouldn't accept that behaviour from a person, it's just not polite. For a mouse, that behaviour is punishable by death – preferably the quick, sudden and immediate sort.
The entire scenario feels as though it might've been orchestrated by a higher, comic power. Just this week, my boyfriend proposed getting a hamster – a sad interim replacement, I think, for the cat he can't have thanks to his roommate's allergies – to keep in his own corner of the house, his bedroom.
He seemed surprised by my disgust with the idea, perhaps having seen me as the quintessential Canadian, in tune with nature and with love for all animals. Likewise, I expected more of him. He's English, after all, and you'd think the Black Death would've been enough of a lesson.
I said everything I could to deter him, short of threatening to never spend the night again and letting him imagine the horror of that on his own. I spoke of pee and wood chips, pet shop odour and the relentless whir of exercise wheels. A bedroom is no place for a rodent, and I think both Richard Gere and most gerbils would agree.
Faking my best heartlessness, I resolved to tolerate his particular rodent, but only as fodder, until it came time for us to move in together and I'd get a cat and let nature take its bloody course. You know, like Darwinian selection for pets. I was mostly joking.
Still, when I saw a mouse in my house yesterday, I set traps straight away, with delicious canapés of dried fruit, cheese and whole wheat muffin crumbs. One bite for me; one bite for the undead.
Before long, the mouse enjoyed its last nibble and now I am faced with the only thing more disgusting than a rodent scurrying unchecked about my house, and that's a dead one.
It's dead under a stool in my kitchen right now, and no, I am not going to do anything about it. Not until my visitor has come and gone. He's due in about ten minutes, and I'd hate to be caught red-handed, heartless and with a body on my conscience. Once he leaves, I'll roll it up and carry it at arm's length to the basement – the logical place to stash a corpse. Until then, I'll just act casual.
I won't pretend I didn't get a sense of satisfaction from the kill, maybe even a little adrenaline. I am entirely capable of killing again. The deceased should've known better than to enter my home uninvited, sneaking around at night, stealing bits he thought I'd not notice and presumably defecating in miniature throughout. I wouldn't accept that behaviour from a person, it's just not polite. For a mouse, that behaviour is punishable by death – preferably the quick, sudden and immediate sort.
The entire scenario feels as though it might've been orchestrated by a higher, comic power. Just this week, my boyfriend proposed getting a hamster – a sad interim replacement, I think, for the cat he can't have thanks to his roommate's allergies – to keep in his own corner of the house, his bedroom.
He seemed surprised by my disgust with the idea, perhaps having seen me as the quintessential Canadian, in tune with nature and with love for all animals. Likewise, I expected more of him. He's English, after all, and you'd think the Black Death would've been enough of a lesson.
I said everything I could to deter him, short of threatening to never spend the night again and letting him imagine the horror of that on his own. I spoke of pee and wood chips, pet shop odour and the relentless whir of exercise wheels. A bedroom is no place for a rodent, and I think both Richard Gere and most gerbils would agree.
Faking my best heartlessness, I resolved to tolerate his particular rodent, but only as fodder, until it came time for us to move in together and I'd get a cat and let nature take its bloody course. You know, like Darwinian selection for pets. I was mostly joking.
Still, when I saw a mouse in my house yesterday, I set traps straight away, with delicious canapés of dried fruit, cheese and whole wheat muffin crumbs. One bite for me; one bite for the undead.
Before long, the mouse enjoyed its last nibble and now I am faced with the only thing more disgusting than a rodent scurrying unchecked about my house, and that's a dead one.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Breaking up with my apartment
The last time I moved from an apartment, I walked in on strangers having gay sex in my living room.
Apparently, there'd been a miscommunication (read: no communication) between me and my recently "exed" boyfriend concerning when the new tenants could have the keys and start moving in. That's the difference a day makes.
Our relationship was a recent fatality, having ended with style and force usually reserved for collapsing mine shafts, atom splitting and revolution quashing, as most long-term relationships do. Everyone involved scrambles for their lives, there's screaming, and no one makes it out unscathed. Still, when it's all said and done and a new day comes, it's a bright one.
More than simply packing up, we'd had to negotiate seven years' worth of mine vs. his. Through clenched teeth and the staccato of monosyllabic reluctance, we still managed to negotiate divisions of things like dinnerware: Three plates for me. Three plates for him. A holy travesty.
The car was his. The furniture was mine. The apartment and its gorgeous patio would soon be for someone else. The hate was initially his, but we soon managed to ensure there was plenty for everyone. Eventually, all I wanted was 'out'.
I'd arranged for movers to come when I didn't think my Ex would be there, the cheap kind that arrive late and try to buy weed from you when the move takes longer than expected, because they can't call their regular guy after 11 PM. It doesn't occur to them that you don't smoke weed and don't know where to get any, so they become annoyed, and you end up tipping them more than you would have otherwise. They know where you live.
The final and more delicate remnants of my three years in the old apartment were still there come midnight. Returning in a taxi to gather them in a last run, I'd romanticized that perhaps the night would end with one final moment of silence for that era of my life, and with a deep breath I'd both symbolically and literally lock the door behind me. Saying that I felt like I was reluctantly saying good-bye to a beloved, but toxic friend would be a good analogy, if that wasn't exactly what was happening.
When I arrived, all sentimental and melancholy, I remember turning the key and slowly pushing the door open, expecting to be struck by the vacant space that was once my home. I remember just as clearly how instead there were two svelte, naked bodies humping in the dark on my living room floor.
Oh my gawd, I gasped and gawked, too shocked to avert my eyes and still not quite understanding what I was seeing. Initially, I'd thought my Ex was exacting some sort of revenge, and had arranged to have me catch him doing the dirty with some poor martyr or hussy. Moments later, I realized both bodies were of the male variety. Oh my gawd, my sense of wonder renewed. Then, I realized neither belonged to my Ex.
They scrambled for pants and sheets, all the while apologizing and urging me in. Blushing and gathering my things, I knew I wouldn't have that final moment of closure I'd romanticized, just as the new tenants' first romp in their new home didn't quite go as they'd imagined.
That's a lot less likely to happen this time, I think – as I pack, sell and donate my belongings before my next big move – but I can't wait to see what will.
The last time I moved from an apartment, I walked in on strangers having gay sex in my living room.
Apparently, there'd been a miscommunication (read: no communication) between me and my recently "exed" boyfriend concerning when the new tenants could have the keys and start moving in. That's the difference a day makes.
Our relationship was a recent fatality, having ended with style and force usually reserved for collapsing mine shafts, atom splitting and revolution quashing, as most long-term relationships do. Everyone involved scrambles for their lives, there's screaming, and no one makes it out unscathed. Still, when it's all said and done and a new day comes, it's a bright one.
More than simply packing up, we'd had to negotiate seven years' worth of mine vs. his. Through clenched teeth and the staccato of monosyllabic reluctance, we still managed to negotiate divisions of things like dinnerware: Three plates for me. Three plates for him. A holy travesty.
The car was his. The furniture was mine. The apartment and its gorgeous patio would soon be for someone else. The hate was initially his, but we soon managed to ensure there was plenty for everyone. Eventually, all I wanted was 'out'.
I'd arranged for movers to come when I didn't think my Ex would be there, the cheap kind that arrive late and try to buy weed from you when the move takes longer than expected, because they can't call their regular guy after 11 PM. It doesn't occur to them that you don't smoke weed and don't know where to get any, so they become annoyed, and you end up tipping them more than you would have otherwise. They know where you live.
The final and more delicate remnants of my three years in the old apartment were still there come midnight. Returning in a taxi to gather them in a last run, I'd romanticized that perhaps the night would end with one final moment of silence for that era of my life, and with a deep breath I'd both symbolically and literally lock the door behind me. Saying that I felt like I was reluctantly saying good-bye to a beloved, but toxic friend would be a good analogy, if that wasn't exactly what was happening.
When I arrived, all sentimental and melancholy, I remember turning the key and slowly pushing the door open, expecting to be struck by the vacant space that was once my home. I remember just as clearly how instead there were two svelte, naked bodies humping in the dark on my living room floor.
Oh my gawd, I gasped and gawked, too shocked to avert my eyes and still not quite understanding what I was seeing. Initially, I'd thought my Ex was exacting some sort of revenge, and had arranged to have me catch him doing the dirty with some poor martyr or hussy. Moments later, I realized both bodies were of the male variety. Oh my gawd, my sense of wonder renewed. Then, I realized neither belonged to my Ex.
They scrambled for pants and sheets, all the while apologizing and urging me in. Blushing and gathering my things, I knew I wouldn't have that final moment of closure I'd romanticized, just as the new tenants' first romp in their new home didn't quite go as they'd imagined.
That's a lot less likely to happen this time, I think – as I pack, sell and donate my belongings before my next big move – but I can't wait to see what will.
Friday, October 03, 2008
The 'big prize' for learning French
"I should warn you," said my friend, J, who's witnessed every bad dating decision I've made since becoming single again two years ago. "Grand Prix asked about you."
"I should warn you," said my friend, J, who's witnessed every bad dating decision I've made since becoming single again two years ago. "Grand Prix asked about you."
He's had a major crush on our friend Cathy for quite a while, which manifests for her as unwanted awkward, drunken advances at gigs, in French, a language she doesn't know and the only one he does.
For Grand Prix, Cathy's beauty compensates both for her total lack of interest in him and her complete inability to speak his language, so he continues his pursuit convinced she'll eventually come around. Two years of dedication and he's holding strong, and she's still ducking into crowds to evade him.
"Yeah, he was all excited," J went on. "Apparently, you spoke with him in French, and now he thinks you'd make a better date than Cathy, because all she knows how to say is 'no'."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
I'm someone's favourite
So, I pour myself a cup of coffee and head over to BlogHer – a vast network of women bloggers that's been getting quite a bit of recognition in the press lately, and to which I submit my own writing – for my morning fix of other people's tales of travel and sex and relationships, my two favourite categories by far.
Spotting Blogher editor, Liz Rizzo's article, BlogHers Tell the Best Stories. My Favs: Sex & Relationships Stories, I decided to go straight for this week's creamy middle – and there I was, with this introduction:
1) She said my story was her favourite.
2) It reinforced my belief that good stories always win over evil, even drunken sleazoids in bars.
So, I pour myself a cup of coffee and head over to BlogHer – a vast network of women bloggers that's been getting quite a bit of recognition in the press lately, and to which I submit my own writing – for my morning fix of other people's tales of travel and sex and relationships, my two favourite categories by far.
Spotting Blogher editor, Liz Rizzo's article, BlogHers Tell the Best Stories. My Favs: Sex & Relationships Stories, I decided to go straight for this week's creamy middle – and there I was, with this introduction:
Back to the party... or at least the pub, in my favorite story of the day, Kate Savage shares, Sixty minutes in a London pub – How do I know you? It's a great post about when the horrible guy in the bar turns out to know someone you know...There are two things I love about Liz's quote:
1) She said my story was her favourite.
2) It reinforced my belief that good stories always win over evil, even drunken sleazoids in bars.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monogamy, and dys-sex-ia
"I told him, 'If we're going to be monogamous, I think I want to get a DUI,'" confided my friend Cathy – a barely recovering commitmentphobe with her first serious boyfriend in years – "and he just stared back at me like an idiot and didn't say anything. Can you believe that?"
She sipped her pint and waited for a reaction – for me to express disgust, incredulity, and ultimately validate her annoyance with him – but I could believe it, and I, too, stared back at her like an idiot.
"Do you mean 'IUD'?" I ventured, remembering she's dyslexic and the words-and-letters section of her brain has a tendency to go rogue. "As in 'Intra-Uterine Device', the birth control method? Or, 'DUI', the acronym for 'Driving Under the Influence', the crime?"
"Oh my gawd," she said, already cackling.
"Basically," concluded our new friend, Rax, "you told your boyfriend that the thought of being in a monogamous relationship with him makes you want to drink yourself stupid and get behind the wheel of a car. How was he supposed to react?"
"I told him, 'If we're going to be monogamous, I think I want to get a DUI,'" confided my friend Cathy – a barely recovering commitmentphobe with her first serious boyfriend in years – "and he just stared back at me like an idiot and didn't say anything. Can you believe that?"
She sipped her pint and waited for a reaction – for me to express disgust, incredulity, and ultimately validate her annoyance with him – but I could believe it, and I, too, stared back at her like an idiot.
"Do you mean 'IUD'?" I ventured, remembering she's dyslexic and the words-and-letters section of her brain has a tendency to go rogue. "As in 'Intra-Uterine Device', the birth control method? Or, 'DUI', the acronym for 'Driving Under the Influence', the crime?"
"Oh my gawd," she said, already cackling.
"Basically," concluded our new friend, Rax, "you told your boyfriend that the thought of being in a monogamous relationship with him makes you want to drink yourself stupid and get behind the wheel of a car. How was he supposed to react?"
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Sixty minutes in a London pub, some degree of separation
"Kyahnahseetahayah?" frothed the Rugby-sized pub regular. His substantial ass imagined itself small enough to wedge in next to me on the over-sized chair in the London pub.
"Can you sit here?" I repeated for clarification, but said ass was already testing the possibility and subsequently established, at the misfortune of my left thigh, that no, he physically couldn't. "You can sit there," I suggested with a lubricating smile, pointing at a seat a few meters away. To compromise, he slid himself onto the arm of my chair instead, where his giant body eclipsed my view of anything else in the pub and proceeded to emanate noxious fumes. I met the degree of his lean with my own in the same direction so as to avoid contact with anything more intrusive than the spray of his saliva.
I'd chosen the seat nearest the window, both to watch the time on the tower clock outside and to maximize daydream opportunity with a clear view of a bustling London street. In an hour, I was to be at the Liverpool Street tube station to meet my new boyfriend after work, and I intended to enjoy a moment of solitude over a cold, bubbly pint of cider. We were heading to the English countryside, to play house alone together for a few days before my return to Canada, and he was really all I wanted to think about. As a wise English band once said, however, "you can't always get what you wah-ahnt."
"Yer prittay," sprayed my new companion, his eyes entirely out of sync, neither directed at me. "I'm Welssssshhhhhh," he said, hoping to create an allure of exoticism that might win my favour, or failing that, any woman's favour, despite his probable impotency to follow through with anything beyond ordering more pints to spill on his bar-rag of a shirt. "Have you met people from Wales before?" he frothed for the third time, this after we'd established, more than once, that I was Canadian and not offended that he'd assumed I was American. Boring him off, my usual tactic, didn't seem to be working.
"Leave the poor girl alone," his friends called from across the room, from somewhere behind this fleshy barricade of man. "She's not interested in a drunken idiot, you drunken idiot."
I liked them straight away. "I've met drunken idiots all over the world," I said, "and three of them happened to be from Wales."
"Reeeeeh-leeeeeh?" he said, leaning closer, ignoring that I was the fourth person to call him a drunken idiot since he'd made his introduction. His arm was around my back now, but I didn't particularly mind because the added support prevented him from toppling over and smothering me. Still, I edged forward to avoid coming into contact with whatever was making his skin damp.
"Two at a wedding in London this past weekend, and one in Argentina," I clarified in monotone.
"Argentina!?" he boomed. His enthusiasm made up for my complete lack. "What was his name?"
"Caden," I answered, because it was easier than saying, "Stop talking." I checked the time again, and alternately gulped cider and covered the glass with my hand to protect it from spit-spritzing.
"Caden [So-and-So]?" he asked, slightly more sober. "The one from the Welsh pet food empire?"
"What?" He finally had my full attention, though my brain didn't immediately allow me to understand how, on my first visit to the United Kingdom, I'd managed to encounter Caden's older brother's best friend in a random London pub around the corner from the Liverpool Street tube station. Within minutes, I was on some stranger's mobile talking to Wales. "It really is a small world, " I said to the brother of a traveller I'd met, and maybe smooched, at a Buenos Aires hostel two years earlier, "Say 'hello' to Caden for me."
My sixty minutes alone in a London pub was up. I grabbed my bags and ran to the station.
"Kyahnahseetahayah?" frothed the Rugby-sized pub regular. His substantial ass imagined itself small enough to wedge in next to me on the over-sized chair in the London pub.
"Can you sit here?" I repeated for clarification, but said ass was already testing the possibility and subsequently established, at the misfortune of my left thigh, that no, he physically couldn't. "You can sit there," I suggested with a lubricating smile, pointing at a seat a few meters away. To compromise, he slid himself onto the arm of my chair instead, where his giant body eclipsed my view of anything else in the pub and proceeded to emanate noxious fumes. I met the degree of his lean with my own in the same direction so as to avoid contact with anything more intrusive than the spray of his saliva.
I'd chosen the seat nearest the window, both to watch the time on the tower clock outside and to maximize daydream opportunity with a clear view of a bustling London street. In an hour, I was to be at the Liverpool Street tube station to meet my new boyfriend after work, and I intended to enjoy a moment of solitude over a cold, bubbly pint of cider. We were heading to the English countryside, to play house alone together for a few days before my return to Canada, and he was really all I wanted to think about. As a wise English band once said, however, "you can't always get what you wah-ahnt."
"Yer prittay," sprayed my new companion, his eyes entirely out of sync, neither directed at me. "I'm Welssssshhhhhh," he said, hoping to create an allure of exoticism that might win my favour, or failing that, any woman's favour, despite his probable impotency to follow through with anything beyond ordering more pints to spill on his bar-rag of a shirt. "Have you met people from Wales before?" he frothed for the third time, this after we'd established, more than once, that I was Canadian and not offended that he'd assumed I was American. Boring him off, my usual tactic, didn't seem to be working.
"Leave the poor girl alone," his friends called from across the room, from somewhere behind this fleshy barricade of man. "She's not interested in a drunken idiot, you drunken idiot."
I liked them straight away. "I've met drunken idiots all over the world," I said, "and three of them happened to be from Wales."
"Reeeeeh-leeeeeh?" he said, leaning closer, ignoring that I was the fourth person to call him a drunken idiot since he'd made his introduction. His arm was around my back now, but I didn't particularly mind because the added support prevented him from toppling over and smothering me. Still, I edged forward to avoid coming into contact with whatever was making his skin damp.
"Two at a wedding in London this past weekend, and one in Argentina," I clarified in monotone.
"Argentina!?" he boomed. His enthusiasm made up for my complete lack. "What was his name?"
"Caden," I answered, because it was easier than saying, "Stop talking." I checked the time again, and alternately gulped cider and covered the glass with my hand to protect it from spit-spritzing.
"Caden [So-and-So]?" he asked, slightly more sober. "The one from the Welsh pet food empire?"
"What?" He finally had my full attention, though my brain didn't immediately allow me to understand how, on my first visit to the United Kingdom, I'd managed to encounter Caden's older brother's best friend in a random London pub around the corner from the Liverpool Street tube station. Within minutes, I was on some stranger's mobile talking to Wales. "It really is a small world, " I said to the brother of a traveller I'd met, and maybe smooched, at a Buenos Aires hostel two years earlier, "Say 'hello' to Caden for me."
My sixty minutes alone in a London pub was up. I grabbed my bags and ran to the station.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I like him as much...
I'll share more details when I return from Ireland in a few days, but for now, I've exhausted myself setting the stage with the previous entry, Cabbie love. (See below.)
What I can tell you for certain is this:
I like him (the man I met on the internet via a best friend who ridiculously wishes to be known in my blog, from this day on, as La Perla Esperanza) as much as can be entirely inconvenient to like someone who lives on the opposite side of the North Atlantic. He's fantastic.
I'll share more details when I return from Ireland in a few days, but for now, I've exhausted myself setting the stage with the previous entry, Cabbie love. (See below.)
What I can tell you for certain is this:
I like him (the man I met on the internet via a best friend who ridiculously wishes to be known in my blog, from this day on, as La Perla Esperanza) as much as can be entirely inconvenient to like someone who lives on the opposite side of the North Atlantic. He's fantastic.
Cabbie love
"I got my wife and family for $1400," my cab driver shouted over the wail of a siren, turning around so I could see the full breadth of his grin.
"That's quite a bargain!" I shouted back, and we shared a laugh that drowned out everything else.
He was driving me to the airport, where I was to barely catch a flight to London. Within the first few blocks, I'd already excitedly informed him that on this trip, I'd be meeting a man I suspected might be among the best I've ever had the excellent fortune to meet, but that I'd met this particular man via a best friend, via the internet. My story prompted him to share his.
"I'd been wanting to marry a nice Lebanese girl," he explained. "You understand." He shrugged apologetically, as though I might be offended for failing to qualify as a contender in his search for a life partner. "Of course, I understand," I said, though I couldn't relate. I've never been on the hunt for a 'nice Canadian boy', I've simply been holding out for someone truly great.
When his brother called from Lebanon to offer him the number of a worthy future sister-in-law, my cab driver was more than intrigued. For four months, the two spoke over the phone for hours at a time. "Everything is a lot to learn about someone. It takes a while," he said. Boarding the plane to go meet her, he hadn't seen so much as a picture. All he had to go on concerning her looks was what his brother had said: "She's not ugly."
Having perused and reviewed and obsessed over hundreds of pictures of my current interest, I just couldn't imagine at all how he must've felt. His situation speaks loads for the weight of personality, I thought.
Not surprisingly, his friends thought he was crazy for entertaining the idea that she might actually be right for him, that she'd return to Canada with him to live, and that she might actually be anything less than horrendously malformed or psychotic. "They told me I was just wasting my money on a plane ticket," he said.
Then, he started yelling. "You have to take chances! Look at me! Look at me!" He was now flailing his arms and laughing like a lunatic, and I thought his friends may have been right about him after all. "I took a chance, and I won my life. I have a wonderful wife and three kids now."
Crazy or not, I'd never been so glad I'd struck up a conversation with a cabbie. I couldn't help but fantasize that my meeting with the English boy would go as well, especially when he said, "I'll never, never forget how I felt when I first met her." He became silent and looked ahead at the traffic, reflecting for a moment before laughing again, not because something was funny, but because he'd won big. Really, really big.
While I recognize that advice is really little more than nostalgia, I'm willing to accept his. "I'll tell you what to do," he declared (at this point I'd been doing little more than egging him on for a while). "Go to London, meet this man, and fall in love. If he's a good man, and he respects you, keep him. You'll figure out how. You really don't have anything to lose."
At the airport, we were both all smiles. He helped me with my bags and we shooks hands for a long time, moments short of hugging. We wished each other all the luck in the world for all the chances we love to take.
"I'm going to tell people your story," I told him.
"Please do," he said. "There should be more stories like it."
I boarded the plane thinking $1400 really is a bargain.
"I got my wife and family for $1400," my cab driver shouted over the wail of a siren, turning around so I could see the full breadth of his grin.
"That's quite a bargain!" I shouted back, and we shared a laugh that drowned out everything else.
He was driving me to the airport, where I was to barely catch a flight to London. Within the first few blocks, I'd already excitedly informed him that on this trip, I'd be meeting a man I suspected might be among the best I've ever had the excellent fortune to meet, but that I'd met this particular man via a best friend, via the internet. My story prompted him to share his.
"I'd been wanting to marry a nice Lebanese girl," he explained. "You understand." He shrugged apologetically, as though I might be offended for failing to qualify as a contender in his search for a life partner. "Of course, I understand," I said, though I couldn't relate. I've never been on the hunt for a 'nice Canadian boy', I've simply been holding out for someone truly great.
When his brother called from Lebanon to offer him the number of a worthy future sister-in-law, my cab driver was more than intrigued. For four months, the two spoke over the phone for hours at a time. "Everything is a lot to learn about someone. It takes a while," he said. Boarding the plane to go meet her, he hadn't seen so much as a picture. All he had to go on concerning her looks was what his brother had said: "She's not ugly."
Having perused and reviewed and obsessed over hundreds of pictures of my current interest, I just couldn't imagine at all how he must've felt. His situation speaks loads for the weight of personality, I thought.
Not surprisingly, his friends thought he was crazy for entertaining the idea that she might actually be right for him, that she'd return to Canada with him to live, and that she might actually be anything less than horrendously malformed or psychotic. "They told me I was just wasting my money on a plane ticket," he said.
Then, he started yelling. "You have to take chances! Look at me! Look at me!" He was now flailing his arms and laughing like a lunatic, and I thought his friends may have been right about him after all. "I took a chance, and I won my life. I have a wonderful wife and three kids now."
Crazy or not, I'd never been so glad I'd struck up a conversation with a cabbie. I couldn't help but fantasize that my meeting with the English boy would go as well, especially when he said, "I'll never, never forget how I felt when I first met her." He became silent and looked ahead at the traffic, reflecting for a moment before laughing again, not because something was funny, but because he'd won big. Really, really big.
While I recognize that advice is really little more than nostalgia, I'm willing to accept his. "I'll tell you what to do," he declared (at this point I'd been doing little more than egging him on for a while). "Go to London, meet this man, and fall in love. If he's a good man, and he respects you, keep him. You'll figure out how. You really don't have anything to lose."
At the airport, we were both all smiles. He helped me with my bags and we shooks hands for a long time, moments short of hugging. We wished each other all the luck in the world for all the chances we love to take.
"I'm going to tell people your story," I told him.
"Please do," he said. "There should be more stories like it."
I boarded the plane thinking $1400 really is a bargain.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Clover, 11:11 and other people's birthday candles
I'm willing to use any tactic I can to make what's about to happen as fun as is romantically possible. And it's about time I update and tell you all about it.
Remember when I admitted to you that I met an English boy on the internet? And then I went on to describe that, despite how wonderful he is, I'm totally embarrassed about how we've met? And then I dared you all to heckle me, but you just egged me on instead?
Well, thanks. I'm all packed for London.
[Here's the original post.]
We're both ecstatically terrified. We meet on Thursday afternoon, in the historic centre of the city, for the first time in person. It's not a blind date, not at all, but I've also never watched his mouth move when he speaks to me, and I've never even laid a single dirty finger on him. I do plan to, though, if he lets me. And, he really should let me.
Over the phone, I sometimes have trouble understanding little bits of what he says, but not as much trouble as I let on. Certain words sound particularly silly, and I like him to repeat them, for kicks. Certain things he says to me make my whole world spin a bit, like an amusement park ride, and I make him repeat those, too.
I really do like him as much as is possible to like someone I haven't yet met.
I'll let you know if I like him as much as is possible to like someone I have met, too.
I'm willing to use any tactic I can to make what's about to happen as fun as is romantically possible. And it's about time I update and tell you all about it.
Remember when I admitted to you that I met an English boy on the internet? And then I went on to describe that, despite how wonderful he is, I'm totally embarrassed about how we've met? And then I dared you all to heckle me, but you just egged me on instead?
Well, thanks. I'm all packed for London.
[Here's the original post.]
We're both ecstatically terrified. We meet on Thursday afternoon, in the historic centre of the city, for the first time in person. It's not a blind date, not at all, but I've also never watched his mouth move when he speaks to me, and I've never even laid a single dirty finger on him. I do plan to, though, if he lets me. And, he really should let me.
Over the phone, I sometimes have trouble understanding little bits of what he says, but not as much trouble as I let on. Certain words sound particularly silly, and I like him to repeat them, for kicks. Certain things he says to me make my whole world spin a bit, like an amusement park ride, and I make him repeat those, too.
I really do like him as much as is possible to like someone I haven't yet met.
I'll let you know if I like him as much as is possible to like someone I have met, too.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
The real thing
I've finally found what I've been not-so-secretly looking for all my life. It's the sort of thing that either is, or isn't. That you find or you don't. And now, I have it. I really might be the luckiest girl in the world.
On quite a few occasions, I've thought I'd found it – stomach-flipping sure I'd found one – only to look a little closer and see that one part was missing, one essential bit, the kind that changes everything. That's the difference between magic and the ordinary.
Very early on, I've been faked out by a few sneaky tricksters and opportunists, but they couldn't hold it together for long and always revealed themselves as the grade school con artists they were. I've fallen for their trickery, I'll admit that, but only because my hopes were high and my primary character flaw is that I'm willing to forego most things for excitement and adventure. I could probably still be fooled into believing you had one for me, too, but only because my primary good fortune is that, despite my high hopes, enough has gone right for me that I'm not entirely jaded – but dishonesty is no foundation for luck OR love, and tricksters' names I don't recall.
In the park yesterday, lazing in the grass with some best girlfriends, I realized I'd really found one, and the moment was cathartic for more than just me. "I stopped believing they really existed," said my friend, Cathy (a catch who couldn't be caught, not until recently, and she's barely admitted she's fallen for a certain worthy and talented rising Canadian artist), "...but you finally effing found one."
"I know," I said, smiling [insert adjective for a huge grin, overwhelming sense of fulfillment and renewed hope for the world]-ly. "Yet, there it is."
It happened exactly how I'd heard it happens, where and when I least expected, and right in front of my face.
I've finally found what I've been not-so-secretly looking for all my life. It's the sort of thing that either is, or isn't. That you find or you don't. And now, I have it. I really might be the luckiest girl in the world.
On quite a few occasions, I've thought I'd found it – stomach-flipping sure I'd found one – only to look a little closer and see that one part was missing, one essential bit, the kind that changes everything. That's the difference between magic and the ordinary.
Very early on, I've been faked out by a few sneaky tricksters and opportunists, but they couldn't hold it together for long and always revealed themselves as the grade school con artists they were. I've fallen for their trickery, I'll admit that, but only because my hopes were high and my primary character flaw is that I'm willing to forego most things for excitement and adventure. I could probably still be fooled into believing you had one for me, too, but only because my primary good fortune is that, despite my high hopes, enough has gone right for me that I'm not entirely jaded – but dishonesty is no foundation for luck OR love, and tricksters' names I don't recall.
In the park yesterday, lazing in the grass with some best girlfriends, I realized I'd really found one, and the moment was cathartic for more than just me. "I stopped believing they really existed," said my friend, Cathy (a catch who couldn't be caught, not until recently, and she's barely admitted she's fallen for a certain worthy and talented rising Canadian artist), "...but you finally effing found one."
"I know," I said, smiling [insert adjective for a huge grin, overwhelming sense of fulfillment and renewed hope for the world]-ly. "Yet, there it is."
It happened exactly how I'd heard it happens, where and when I least expected, and right in front of my face.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Kiss, or just Tell
"I told my parents you're my girlfriend," he casually announced, mid-conversation, like I shouldn't be surprised.
"What!?"
It was ten years ago. He was a writer/editor for Vice Magazine when it had just gone glossy – back when one of its co-founders still lived behind a curtain at the office, before its headquarters moved to New York, and my friends and I were occasionally recruited for minor publicity stunts as basic as disrupting media interviews and giving the impression that the Vice office was always overrun with girls vying for laps to sit on. I'm sure there's more truth to that now, but back then they lured us in with a pretty-please, free swag and beer.
"Yeah, so we're going to have to share the same bed." He said it as though it was an unavoidable complication, a necessary evil we'd suffer together, all the while avoiding my fuming stink-eye. "Otherwise, they'll catch on," he shrugged. If I'd ever doubted I might be the sort of girl guys could take home to their parents – Nineties-era spiky hair and all – it ended there.
We were on our way from Montreal to Ottawa by bus – my first visit to our nation's mediocre capital – where we'd be staying with his parents. He was smart to bring this up then, with an hour of the ride remaining to justify himself and rally my support. He'd been trying to get into my pants for a while, but it had never quite worked out, and I was still naive enough to think he'd give up trying and just be my friend. Still, he was very funny, sweet, and clever enough to play on my love of the absurd, so I agreed to go along with his act for the weekend, as deceitful as that was. Besides, his family was already expecting me, as his girlfriend, and there'd be light fanfare at the gates. What else could I do?
"You might have to kiss me to make it believable," he said. Add euphemism to cliché and he'd taken the inch I'd given him and was trying to slip me some tongue through it, resulting only in more stink-eye.
Over coffee, bacon, toast and fruit the next morning, I felt a little guilty. It wasn't hard to say nice things about this friend to his parents, but my thoughts were all scrambled from my sudden promotion. Like any new job, it takes a while to get into it. His dad was very sweet and very British and after breakfast, he took us to the garden to show us his flowers, then strategically excused himself, leaving his son alone with me, the stand-in, in the romantic setting.
"I think they're watching from the window," said my friend, nervously glancing back over his shoulder. "Quick. Kiss me." I put my arm around him instead, and we stood there awkwardly, backs to the house. If he didn't mind making his parents think he was dating me, I didn't mind having them think he'd chosen a prude.
His 17-year-old brother was the first to figure us out, but that was weeks later, maybe months, while visiting in Montreal. Eventually, he told his parents that we just didn't work out, or that's what he said he told them. For all I know, he told them I'd gone the way of the gay – he has been known to bend the truth, and he did have an apparent creative flare for it.
We lost touch when he moved to London to become an editor or something for a more respectable magazine, but just recently, as all modern friendships go, we reconnected via Facebook. He looks great, and happy, and hooked-up. His status says he's "In a relationship", and this time, I think I really believe him.
"I told my parents you're my girlfriend," he casually announced, mid-conversation, like I shouldn't be surprised.
"What!?"
It was ten years ago. He was a writer/editor for Vice Magazine when it had just gone glossy – back when one of its co-founders still lived behind a curtain at the office, before its headquarters moved to New York, and my friends and I were occasionally recruited for minor publicity stunts as basic as disrupting media interviews and giving the impression that the Vice office was always overrun with girls vying for laps to sit on. I'm sure there's more truth to that now, but back then they lured us in with a pretty-please, free swag and beer.
"Yeah, so we're going to have to share the same bed." He said it as though it was an unavoidable complication, a necessary evil we'd suffer together, all the while avoiding my fuming stink-eye. "Otherwise, they'll catch on," he shrugged. If I'd ever doubted I might be the sort of girl guys could take home to their parents – Nineties-era spiky hair and all – it ended there.
We were on our way from Montreal to Ottawa by bus – my first visit to our nation's mediocre capital – where we'd be staying with his parents. He was smart to bring this up then, with an hour of the ride remaining to justify himself and rally my support. He'd been trying to get into my pants for a while, but it had never quite worked out, and I was still naive enough to think he'd give up trying and just be my friend. Still, he was very funny, sweet, and clever enough to play on my love of the absurd, so I agreed to go along with his act for the weekend, as deceitful as that was. Besides, his family was already expecting me, as his girlfriend, and there'd be light fanfare at the gates. What else could I do?
"You might have to kiss me to make it believable," he said. Add euphemism to cliché and he'd taken the inch I'd given him and was trying to slip me some tongue through it, resulting only in more stink-eye.
Over coffee, bacon, toast and fruit the next morning, I felt a little guilty. It wasn't hard to say nice things about this friend to his parents, but my thoughts were all scrambled from my sudden promotion. Like any new job, it takes a while to get into it. His dad was very sweet and very British and after breakfast, he took us to the garden to show us his flowers, then strategically excused himself, leaving his son alone with me, the stand-in, in the romantic setting.
"I think they're watching from the window," said my friend, nervously glancing back over his shoulder. "Quick. Kiss me." I put my arm around him instead, and we stood there awkwardly, backs to the house. If he didn't mind making his parents think he was dating me, I didn't mind having them think he'd chosen a prude.
His 17-year-old brother was the first to figure us out, but that was weeks later, maybe months, while visiting in Montreal. Eventually, he told his parents that we just didn't work out, or that's what he said he told them. For all I know, he told them I'd gone the way of the gay – he has been known to bend the truth, and he did have an apparent creative flare for it.
We lost touch when he moved to London to become an editor or something for a more respectable magazine, but just recently, as all modern friendships go, we reconnected via Facebook. He looks great, and happy, and hooked-up. His status says he's "In a relationship", and this time, I think I really believe him.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Haven't we met? If not, we will.
Yesterday, the universe poked me. Hard.
For the purpose of learning from the experience, and sharing it with you, I'll pretend I believe that the universe is a will-exercising entity. A sexy one with a sense of humour, and a penchant for reminding us that Earth plays but a teeny, yet scandalous, role in the Big Picture.
The day ended with the full moon eyeballing me all the walk home, and with me concluding that the more I travel, and the more I talk to strangers, the more I think there are few true strangers left. I bet I know someone you know. Don't believe anything they say about me.
The day began as any muggy Montreal summer day should, at the city pool with friends, and beer. Cheap, watery, cold, cold beer. We mused that regardless of how few rules there may be in any given situation, we always manage to bend them. If my travels in Mexico have taught me anything, it's that when no one stops you from doing what you like, it's as good as having permission. If my travels in Germany have taught me anything, it's that I definitely don't belong there.
We were already questioning why we hadn't brought more beer, apologizing for nearly hitting a man in the head with a flutterboard, and mocking the sleazy guy who loitered next to the change room, when my friend Leigh's newest ally arrived to meet us. I'd met her before, when we were performers in the same arty burlesque show, but we'd never been in a position to chat. She's a sickeningly talented young painter, and she'd come to photograph Leigh. Allow me a moment to temper my jealousy. Ahem. There.
My mind must've been playing some sort of subconscious matching game all day, fitting things she'd said to dusty, old scrapbook snippets of memory, and when we left the pool together in search of delicious snacks and more beer, I suddenly remembered her from thirteen years ago. And more, her older brother.
More than 1200 km from here, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where we were both visiting at the time, I somehow managed to land an invitation to lunch with him, and his entire family. "You were more of a hippie back then," said the painter. I cringed, but didn't argue. We've all made our mistakes.
I can't remember for how long we kept it up, or why we stopped, but it was with her brother that I learned to flirt by mail, at the tender, confused age of sixteen – a primitive version of what I'm doing now with Mr. England. His letters were beautiful, and it's no surprise to me that he majored in Creative Writing, or that he's now living in Prague with his Czech girlfriend, with whom he nurtured a similar, but more advanced relationship-by-mail. It's nice to know it can work.
All that was established before we even ordered our delicious nachos. While still marvelling at the coincidence, my friend pointed out the restaurant window and interrupted to say, "Hey, don't you know that guy?" Pretending to read Timothy Findley, on a balcony across the street, was a favourite friend I hadn't seen since he abandoned ship for Scandinavia last year. I ran out the door, up the stairs to his new apartment, and welcomed him home. He'd returned just a day earlier, and was still wobbly on his Swede legs, so we invited him to join us for beer in the park next to Leonard Cohen's house. This is Montreal, after all.
Not an hour into bending public consumption laws, a random punk busker asked my friend for a light, in exchange for a song on his fiddle, and also joined us. "In a culture like Sweden's, there ARE no winners!" My friend was complaining to me about his basketball league's reluctance to keep score, when Leigh yelled at the punk, "Oh, YOU'RE the fiddle player!" That was the third and final coincidence of the day. The fiddler had met Leigh's musician boyfriend at a gig in Toronto a month earlier, where they'd talked about collaborating.
These were much happier coincidences than the one that has my ex-boyfriend living across the street from me, or the one that made my Argentine boyfriend sleep with the very same Swedish girl I knew from Mexico long ago, or the one that had me realizing that, of all possible Mikes, I'd just made out with one my friend had a crush on, or even the coincidence that had my sister's ex-husband waking up at a close friend's little sister's place right at the moment we decided to call her. Whoever said "honesty is the best policy" must've known that the world is far too teeny to allow you to get away with anything anyway.
Of everything I could possibly conclude from this day of coincidences, I've decided to conclude the following: It's the universe that's absurd, not me, and there are stranger ways to meet someone than on Facebook. So, I'm done making excuses for how I've met Mr. England, and more into celebrating that I have.
Yesterday, the universe poked me. Hard.
For the purpose of learning from the experience, and sharing it with you, I'll pretend I believe that the universe is a will-exercising entity. A sexy one with a sense of humour, and a penchant for reminding us that Earth plays but a teeny, yet scandalous, role in the Big Picture.
The day ended with the full moon eyeballing me all the walk home, and with me concluding that the more I travel, and the more I talk to strangers, the more I think there are few true strangers left. I bet I know someone you know. Don't believe anything they say about me.
The day began as any muggy Montreal summer day should, at the city pool with friends, and beer. Cheap, watery, cold, cold beer. We mused that regardless of how few rules there may be in any given situation, we always manage to bend them. If my travels in Mexico have taught me anything, it's that when no one stops you from doing what you like, it's as good as having permission. If my travels in Germany have taught me anything, it's that I definitely don't belong there.
We were already questioning why we hadn't brought more beer, apologizing for nearly hitting a man in the head with a flutterboard, and mocking the sleazy guy who loitered next to the change room, when my friend Leigh's newest ally arrived to meet us. I'd met her before, when we were performers in the same arty burlesque show, but we'd never been in a position to chat. She's a sickeningly talented young painter, and she'd come to photograph Leigh. Allow me a moment to temper my jealousy. Ahem. There.
My mind must've been playing some sort of subconscious matching game all day, fitting things she'd said to dusty, old scrapbook snippets of memory, and when we left the pool together in search of delicious snacks and more beer, I suddenly remembered her from thirteen years ago. And more, her older brother.
More than 1200 km from here, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where we were both visiting at the time, I somehow managed to land an invitation to lunch with him, and his entire family. "You were more of a hippie back then," said the painter. I cringed, but didn't argue. We've all made our mistakes.
I can't remember for how long we kept it up, or why we stopped, but it was with her brother that I learned to flirt by mail, at the tender, confused age of sixteen – a primitive version of what I'm doing now with Mr. England. His letters were beautiful, and it's no surprise to me that he majored in Creative Writing, or that he's now living in Prague with his Czech girlfriend, with whom he nurtured a similar, but more advanced relationship-by-mail. It's nice to know it can work.
All that was established before we even ordered our delicious nachos. While still marvelling at the coincidence, my friend pointed out the restaurant window and interrupted to say, "Hey, don't you know that guy?" Pretending to read Timothy Findley, on a balcony across the street, was a favourite friend I hadn't seen since he abandoned ship for Scandinavia last year. I ran out the door, up the stairs to his new apartment, and welcomed him home. He'd returned just a day earlier, and was still wobbly on his Swede legs, so we invited him to join us for beer in the park next to Leonard Cohen's house. This is Montreal, after all.
Not an hour into bending public consumption laws, a random punk busker asked my friend for a light, in exchange for a song on his fiddle, and also joined us. "In a culture like Sweden's, there ARE no winners!" My friend was complaining to me about his basketball league's reluctance to keep score, when Leigh yelled at the punk, "Oh, YOU'RE the fiddle player!" That was the third and final coincidence of the day. The fiddler had met Leigh's musician boyfriend at a gig in Toronto a month earlier, where they'd talked about collaborating.
These were much happier coincidences than the one that has my ex-boyfriend living across the street from me, or the one that made my Argentine boyfriend sleep with the very same Swedish girl I knew from Mexico long ago, or the one that had me realizing that, of all possible Mikes, I'd just made out with one my friend had a crush on, or even the coincidence that had my sister's ex-husband waking up at a close friend's little sister's place right at the moment we decided to call her. Whoever said "honesty is the best policy" must've known that the world is far too teeny to allow you to get away with anything anyway.
Of everything I could possibly conclude from this day of coincidences, I've decided to conclude the following: It's the universe that's absurd, not me, and there are stranger ways to meet someone than on Facebook. So, I'm done making excuses for how I've met Mr. England, and more into celebrating that I have.
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