that hot day in early September when we rode the 6 all the way into the bronx, deeper than i’d ever been, and you played me your beats on your Beats while i smiled and bobbed my head. we spent all afternoon getting high and watching Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars on the commercial breaks. then we had sex in a bed that didn’t belong to us and ate pizza until we couldn’t move for another hour. you walked me to the train cause it was dark and kissed me on the sidewalk.
…well, do you?
it was never supposed to be like this with him. he was supposed to be simple, a friend, a brother, mainly just someone entirely non-sexual. i barely even took notice of him the night we met, immediately dismissing him as bland. the second night we met things seemed more normal, we were both drunk and talkative, we spoke of a mutual love of photography and music. but that third night, he walked into the room like a man on a mission.
i should have known from the second that comment flew from his sober lips. my legs he said, they were sexy… huh? did i hear that right? laughter and drinks were poured, friends flowed in and out, every time i turned he was almost always at my side. neither of us drank as much as usual, and every time he caught my eyes it was like he was looking deep inside me. stupidly i brought him back to my apartment. i didn’t have conscious intentions, not wanting to complicate my life further, but somehow i think we both knew.
there was talking and giggling, sharing of music until the sun was coming up and finally when i looked over my shoulder and our lips were just inches apart and our eyes were locked, there was no stopping it. he kissed me like his lips had been waiting to taste mine and his hands touched me like they wanted to learn every curve of my body. we kissed for hours and every time i felt his lips separate from my skin and looked up into his eyes, i’d catch a sly smile playing on his lips before he came back to mine.
i woke up a few hours later to find my fingers interlocked with his and our legs completely intertwined with his face nuzzled into my neck and immediately cuddled in tighter and fell back asleep. that’s what killed me. i don’t sleep like that, ever. i can’t it drives me nuts. but there i was, sound asleep in the arms of a boy i didn’t even have sex with. and i can’t stop thinking about it. i would kill for a repeat performance. move heaven & earth if i could. but i can’t. he isn’t mine and won’t be. he belongs to someone else. like always.
crushed.
When the Bouncer of our neighborhood dive bar, started chatting me up a couple weeks ago, it wasn’t that weird. I know he is a friend of my Baby Bro since they’re both fixed gear riders, and I’ve certainly been to the bar enough times both with BB and other friends. The Bouncer is also not your typical bouncer, nor is he your typical fixie boy, but rather something in between. His tightly knotted dreads are usually pulled back and his weathered face is covered by a layer of stubble more often than not, plus there is just the slightest bit of mischief behind his smile. So when it was past 3am and the Bouncer and I were making out in the men’s room of the bar and then he came back to my place, I wasn’t exactly expecting for him to momentarily put the brakes on in order to “be honest” with me.
I must be some kind of magnet for cheaters. I repeatedly attract guys with girlfriends, oftentimes I’m not even pursuing them, and I never know they have a girlfriend initially. So SURPRISE! The Bouncer has a girlfriend. Ok whatever, moving on, his belt was already undone, he was in my bed, what am I going to say? I naively assumed that as has been the case in this sadly repeated story, the girlfriend was probably someone he wasn’t that serious about, and would probably break up with sooner rather than later, not for me, just because the relationship had run its course or else he wouldn’t be cheating.
Cut to a few weeks and an afternoon of boredom later, let the Facebook stalking of newish people in my life commence. What a terrible idea. First I come across the girlfriend, she is adorable, a manicurist, but in the cutest most indie way. Next I come across the pictures, then the anniversary 2009… wait… what…. 2009? They’ve been together for three fucking years?! Holy shit. What kind of dude cheats on a girlfriend of three years so impulsively? Like I’m just some cute light eyed girl in a bar that you happen to know from around the neighborhood, who you have a very similarly adorable girlfriend too. Damn after three years, if you’re gonna cheat then just break up. I feel so horrible for this girl. I pray I never run into her at the bar, let alone have to look her in the eye because sweetie you deserve better. I deserve better. That schmuck needs to grow the fuck up.
It’s quite obviously winter these days, but I can’t seem to shake Summer Fling. It’s harder to go cold turkey with him than everyone else because he’s my protector in a way. When things go horribly wrong, more often then not I end up sitting on the edge of his bed, crying and sniffling until my tears are all dried up, not that shocking when you consider I spent as many nights at his house this summer as I did at my own. So what’s the problem with all of this? He seems like a good guy, right? There is only one glaring problem, the girlfriend.
First of all, before you judge, I never wanted to be the side chick. Summer Fling and I date back to pre-girlfriend times. The problem is… I guess we’re just not quite relationship material. There is an incredible closeness both emotionally and physically between us, to the point that others have picked up on it, but we’re not now, nor were we ever, going to date. So at some point between us hooking up and me drunkly showing up to a party in his building at 2am several weeks later, he started dating her. So when 2am became 6am and I was still drunk and all but asleep in his bed, everyone else went to sleep and he and I had playtime.
It wasn’t supposed to become a regular thing, neither of us intended it to be, but when I became close with his roommates and began to spend more and more time at his apartment, it just sort of happened. And life just continued to roll along, the world didn’t end and I wasn’t wearing a scarlet letter to work. In the same manner it just kind of dwindled off. I met Long Island and fall came and things were different. He always still hugged me a little too long and let his lips linger on my cheek, but there was no more staying over. In my mind, things were wrapped up, everybody move along.
Except neither one of us can seem to say no. So when I go over and he puts on a movie I just have to see and that movie ends and another one is started and a space is made for me to cuddle into him and then the second movie ends and soon it is playtime and oh man do we play. Sensational amounts of teasing and wandering lips and hands and breaks just to catch our breath. It’s almost as if no one else exists but us, and he is melting under me and I’m melting into him. Then it’s 6am and I’m sleeping over and we’re back to back in bed and I can feel him breathing and I’m still the side chick and I’m probably okay with that.
EDIT: 12 Hours Later on my Facebook News Feed - “Summer Fling went from being In A Relationship to Single.” [FACEPALM]
One of my current jobs is in retail and as a tried and true lifer at my brand (Yipee!), I often get sent out to help visual merchandise at stores undergoing re-models or having special corporate visits. Last week I got farmed practically out of the five boroughs to help get things ship-shape after a re-model. That’s where I met Swag.
I was crouching down to get something out of my bag, when I felt someone come up next to me. I panned to the left and was met with a sick pair of Dr. Marten’s which my brain immediately registered as impossible to belong to someone who actually worked at this location. (See the thing is, not to be rude but, us city kids stick out when we get too far from our home. We may represent the same brand but Manhattanites just do it with a little more style.) Letting my gaze travel up, I locked eyes with Swag. We didn’t even speak until later on that day, but we ended up spending our lunch break together, and it was quickly clear that as different as we may be, we saw right through each other.
Swag grew up in Brooklyn, dropped out of college and is an aspiring rapper. Oh and a true ladies man. He slept his way through his female co-workers at his last job and can charm like a motherfucker, but somehow recognized that in me he might’ve met his match. A babyfaced, white girl from might-as-well-be-the-Midwest with a heart of gold and a smile to match. When I first got to my current store, I could hardly blink my eyes without hearing a comment about how gorgeous they were. Needless to say not sleeping my way through the, at the time, very attractive stock team was quite difficult… so I may have partially gave in. Before our break ended he got my number and made sure we had Facebooked (how did we survive pre-smartphone?) each other before we parted ways after work. The next day I informed my Life Twin that I felt like that Swag would be a bit of a challenge but I was going to make it happen. There was zero interest in anything more than sex, but curiosity always gets the best of me.
Today marks a week since we met. The first day I woke up to a “Good Morning” text and the next few days were filled with brief exchanges. It took four days for him to come right out and say he wanted to sleep with me. In fact it almost happened that night, but for the fact that at our home stores we seem to work clashing schedules and can’t seem to find a decent chuck of time to meet up. The last three days have been filled with innuendos and attempts to find time, no nude photos (much to HIS disappointment) but many a sexy and suggestive text and/or image have been exchanged.
Then tonight it hit me for the first time, is this actually a terrible idea? I mean we don’t technically work together, but we might have to again in the future. It’s obviously just going to be sex, but I always seem to get my feelings hurt even when I’m not interested in the other person. I like Swag. He’s sarcastic and overly confident, intelligent but just a little stupid, and he is actually kind of talented… I even want to help him out if I can. So to fuck or not to fuck… that is the question.
Well lets be honest, we’re fucking.
…and brag about it to their friends, it’s nothing but a game to them.
Why do we as ladies feel the need to constantly string guys along long after the relationship has run its course? Now I’m not saying that no man has ever strung a woman along, they certainly have, but usually it gets to a point where either the man moves their attention onto someone they’re more interested in or the girl wisens up. With men, it’s a totally different ballgame, guys will allow themselves to be strung along by a girl they once cared about forever. A girl can have a boyfriend, fiance, husband, child, but one text message or e-mail to that old flame and he is putty in her hands.
Lets take my college on-again, off-again fuck buddy, Lanky Tool. We started fooling around in the fall of 2008, things fizzled out after a couple of months, but rekindled over the summer and into the next fall and winter before fizzling out again. I was overly invested at times and definitely wanted something more serious than he did, but I expressed my feelings and that is probably the reason for the nature of our rollercoaster of a relationship. I can safely say by the end of 2010, I had worked my way past wanting anything from LT but sex, and things came to an end for what I hoped was the last time.
So here we are, one year later with only sporadic texts, Facebook chats, and two or three public hang outs that mostly consisted of me verbally assaulting him, and now he decides that he is in love. I’ve told him I don’t feel the same, I moved on, I’ve had lots of good sex with more interesting people, I’ve been nothing but honest with him and he is still around… so I let him stay. I keep him wrapped around my finger just in case I need him, and he’s not the only one. There’s Little Brother, the one night stand who worships my older woman status, and Bartender, the aspiring DJ who is in love with our sex even though he’s got a boo, and of course Summer Fling, back in his middling high school-esque relationship, but only until I bat my eyelashes. Why do I do this though? Well the truth is… because I can.
I didn’t realize just how messed up it is that we girls do things like this though, until I saw it from the other side…
It’s Long Island you guys, I think I’m giving up. The sex was (mostly) great, especially that one morning… well, all the mornings, and he made me laugh constantly. Everything about him, just worked for me, except for one thing… the exes. Both from lands far, far away and at least one of whom falls into the “long since moved on” category, yet both stringing him along. I didn’t notice it at first because we didn’t see each other that often, but the second time I went to his place it was like it all came crashing into my face, the way he texted with his screen turned away, how he left the room to pick up a call, and when he opened his e-mail it was filled with little notes all from the same person over the course of a few weeks. Finally we talked about them, and the more I learned the more I realized they we’re doing exactly what I was doing with Lanky Tool, keeping Long Island wrapped around their little fingers. He can’t see it, so I won’t bother trying to explain, he’d only end up resenting me. So it’s time to move along, I’ll never be able to compete… I should know.
Well Long Island, it’s been fun, I guess… just call me when you’ve been cut loose.
Never have truer words been spoken in a Facebook status. Most ladies, aren’t stupid. We all know why he is texting late at night, or shelling out those compliments. We even go so far as to joke about it with our friends on the biggest social networking website in the world. Yet, I would put money on it that nine out of ten girls would respond to that text in one way or another, myself included.
Summer Fling and I have been over for a while now, once I told him I was seeing someone, he simply laughed and shook his head because truth be told, he’d had a long distance girlfriend the whole time we were fooling around. (Yes, it’s true I was a “side chick,” but that is another story for another time.) However, since we were friends first and he is fiercely protective of me in a way that I couldn’t let go of we’ve continued to hang out. He and the girlfriend have been off and on since that time, but he always maintains his passion lies with her. That’s fine, I get it.
What I don’t get is the twelve apology texts if I leave his place in a bad mood, the fingers reaching up to tangle themselves in my hair and pull it when no one is looking, and how the minute things are going bad with her or she leaves the city for school I’m suddenly being coerced to stay over again. Take Saturday night for example, as I’m about to walk out the door, a movie is put on that I must watch and a space is cleared for me to cuddle up and a hand begins to wander and suddenly it’s 5am and I’m content.
When it comes down to it, I know I only did it because I was frustrated with Long Island and am starved for male attention on these chilly fall nights. I’ll text LI to let him know I want him to stay over soon and SF will call next week when she leaves for upstate again. It’s a vicious cycle and one of these days I’ll learn to say no.
I’m every cliche, but I simply do it best.
A very funny comedian friend once told this great joke about how 20 & 30-somethings in NYC love to say they’re seeing someone, but by seeing they actually mean fucking. The joke has stuck with me for a while now and recently I came to the horrifying realization that I’m seeing someone.
I met Long Island at a bar, it was 2am and I was drunk off tall boys of Miller High Life and shots of cheap whiskey… totally romantic. We’re both still fuzzy on how exactly we started talking, but I’m pretty sure his drunk best friend/ride home had something to do with it. I know I told him he smelled like clean laundry and forced him to prove his non-U.S. citizenship. Anyways the point is that by 4am we had fallen into bed together. I woke up sweating with his body wrapped tight around mine and fantastic morning sex followed. A few hours later, certain we’d never see each other again, we parted ways at my subway stop with an awkward hug.
Exactly one week passed, cut to me waking up in the same position, except this time in a strange bed in Nassau County… fuck… I went to the island. A week and two more sleepovers in, I suddenly found myself calling things off with Summer Fling, explaining that I was seeing someone and felt a teensy bit guilty about continuing our 2am trysts. Okay… wait… hold up… LI and I are not even close to being any sort of official anything, nor do I think it’s headed that direction, but suddenly I just found myself saying I was seeing someone. I mean we’re not dating, we’re definitely not in a relationship, but we’re fucking and he isn’t sleeping with anyone else, and I don’t think I want to… so what are we doing exactly? Suddenly seeing someone was a part of my vocabulary.
Dammit… well at least now I’m in on the joke.
