Friday, April 14, 2006

Margaritaville

At far too early of an hour this coming Tuesday morning, I'm getting on a plane.

To Cabo.

I've only been once before. For a work thing. And to be perfectly honest, I don't recall much about the trip.

This time around, I'll be enjoying the sun and the surf and attempting to moderate my alcohol intake in the company of eight to ten 30-something women. Some of whom I don't even know. Many of whom are in varying degrees of committed relationships yet I suspect intend to pretend for six intoxicated days as if that weren't the case. And at least one or two of whom (like yours truly as of five days ago) aren't engaged in anything at all.

This time around, I'm going to remember.

I can for damn sure tell you what I'm going to Cabo *not* to do:

I am most certainly not going to Cabo to be disrobed and put to bed by coworkers after about six too many blended margaritas served from a large canister apparatus strapped to the sweaty and shirtless back of a tall, dark-haired and just barely legal and very tan man of undetermined ethnic origin.

I am also not going to Cabo to ultimately have photographs circulated four days later of me and that very same man of undetermined ethnic origin (rated PG-13, thank god).

And lastly, and without a doubt, I'm most definitely not going to Cabo with the goal of renewing my acquaintance with any potted plants in any hotel lobbies for lack of any other more appropriate vessel into which to deposit the remnants of the previous evening's meal and, more specifically, fruity and frosty libations that I may or may not have consumed far too many of the night before.

On the other hand...

This past week sans M3 has sucked balls. But any of you who really need to know how The Break is affecting me have already heard your fair share. And I plan on keeping it that way. Not only is it too difficult to write about, my blog is far too public of a forum in which to do so...in which to articulate the profound sense of loss I've felt since M3 and I said what quite possibly could have been our last-ever goodbye on Monday morning.

So maybe... just maybe...

I'm really going to Cabo...

To forget.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Once upon a time...

There was a girl.
Who met a boy.
Who was unlike anyone she'd ever known.

The girl fell in love.

So she became his girlfriend.
And he, her boyfriend.
For two weeks.
Or a couple of months.
(Depending on who's doing the counting.)

And then one day, her boyfriend stopped being her boyfriend.

Maybe for a little while.
Maybe for a long while.
Maybe forever.

The girl became very, very sad.

Maybe for a little while.
Maybe for a long while.

Maybe forever.

Friday, April 07, 2006

...And Ready To Mingle

Usually when my soon-to-be-ex-husband calls, I don't answer the phone. While our separation last May was as amicable as one could possibly hope for when one person (namely me) decides its time to dissolve a nine year relationship, there's been approximately next to nothing since I walked out our front door to bind the two of us, let alone inspire even the occasional phone call, aside from our mutual desire to have our personal matters finalized.

Today, I picked up.

The voice on the other end was familiar but also somehow startling in its sincere, overt sense of jubilance.

"You're single!"

"What?!"

"I just got back from the courthouse. Its done. You're single!"

"Uh, okay."

Our exchange continued pretty much in this same retarded vein for another few minutes...me trying to overcome the tremendous disbelief that after ten months of what often felt like backwards progress, the pace of the process to terminate our nuptials seemed to have escalated within the last 24 hours to near lightening speed.

And he's now my ex-husband.

That's when I started to cry.

A few weeks ago over dinner in Vancouver, as M3 and I were in the throes of exploring our potential exclusivity, I asked him if the fact that I'm technically still married had any bearing -- conscious or otherwise -- on his trepidatious feelings about committing to "us". His response escaped his lips almost before I'd even finished posing the question.

"No, not at all," he said.

Certain and resolute.

And so I believed him.

But as yet another week without M3 comes to an end...a solitary stretch marked by a continued struggle to temper, dispel or somehow otherwise semi-effectively manage the feelings of want and longing that overtake me when I'm supposed to be enjoying the other important and enriching aspects of my life that don't involve M3 and thus ensure my (debatable on even my best day) status as a well-rounded, modern and independent woman, I can't help but hope that whether he knew it or not at the time, just maybe he wasn't telling the entire truth that night in Vancouver.

We'll explore the answer to this and other pressing questions in t-minus three-ish hours when he rolls in to my mid-sized town.

Just as soon as I've had a cocktail and a pedicure.

P.S. On another note entirely, congratulations to my pal, The Girl at Hickopolis, on her recent relocation to the very same mid-sized city that M3 calls home. Like I need yet another reason...

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Smrtyboy

M3 and I took a self-portrait a few weeks ago. We were in the midst of a quick weekend jaunt to Vancouver, BC when he decided the time was nigh for me to face my crippling fear of heights. His solution? A leisurely stroll across a suspension bridge that dangled precariously at least thousand feet above a rocky riverbed if it was strung up an inch. Even with M3 holding my hand and assuring me that I'd be okay, it positively sucked. But an hour later and about $25 lighter, I'd done it. Twice. But that's so not the point.

In our self-portrait, M3's head consumed three quarters of the frame.

"That's because it holds a larger and more developed brain," he explained.

His argument was annoying, certainly, not to mention so obviously designed to provoke some sort of snarky response from yours truly. Unfortunately, his justification for his ginormous cranium was also not entirely without merit.

My all-time favorite thing about online dating was just how easy it was to almost instantaneously cast people aside when they didn't meet my stringent criteria related to their ability to spell, write or form coherent sentences. Unfortunately for the vast majority of the male online dating universe, determining someone's intellectual horsepower is actually pretty easy, really, when your initial meeting occurs via the Internet and thus, the written word.

In the case of me and M3, because we met via a dating website the premise of which is to help singles find a lifetime of lasting love, I knew enough about him to be fairly certain that the boy had a brain even before we'd exchanged one single email.

I knew the last book he'd read (or, at the very least, the last book he intended to have me believe he'd read). I knew the most influential person in his life and why. I knew the one thing he was most passionate about....the five things he can't live without...and the ultimate characteristic that he was seeking in a potential mate.

M3 and I carried on via little more than email for weeks before actually meeting. And, because one of us was still in a relationship, we continued to be relegated to that very same medium for almost another entire month after we'd finally met face-to-face and discovered within like the first five minutes that we had the hots for each other. In the end, after a stretch of weeks that felt much like a very tedious lifetime, through the exchange of more email messages then either of us at this point could count, I fell for the boy.

(It also didn't hurt that he was a total fox.)

I may be wise when it comes to matters of the heart (kindly refer to archived posts between the dates of January 2 and January 26 for compelling evidence in support of this argument rather than the wealth of other blog posts that attest rather explicitly to the contrary).

But M3's smart about shit that matters.

Like the implications of American foreign policy on the global economy. And supply-side economics. And he probably knows at least a dozen real reasons to mock George W. Bush above and beyond the tragic reality that the cowboy hat-wearing leader of the free world not only makes up words but clearly has profound difficulty pronouncing others.

So while I absolutely find M3 to be really unbelievably attractive (and often tell him so, even when I haven't been drinking)...and continue to routinely marvel at the gravity-defying amplitude of his buttocks...and am challenged on a minute-by-minute basis whenever we're together to not fully molest him, especially in public...

M3's big ol' brain is by far the sexiest part of his anatomy.

Last week, as I was en route to San Diego for a rowing competition, he sent me some light reading that he thought could help pass the time in the airport. They were essays he'd written in 2004, published on a political website. It took me a couple of days to finally give them the attention they deserved.

And I think I might be more head over heels now than ever.

An examination of the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. A dissection of the implications of Reaganomics in the context of John Kerry's failed attempt to reclaim the White House from the lot of buffoons currently taking up residence. An assessment of the Democratic platform, the party's position on the role of government from the genesis of this particular debate more than 200 years ago to that which Kerry espoused in the 2004 election, and the cavernous delta that separates the opinions of our two primary political ideologies on this very matter today.

To a girl who is woefully undereducated on both the topics of politics and the economy...and to that very same girl who wishes each and every Sunday that this weren't the case yet who knowingly and deliberately leaps straight to the New York Times' wedding announcements and Style pages, generally bypassing the front section entirely...M3's words were pure poetry.

Oh, and yesterday he also referred to himself as my boyfriend.

Smart boys are so fucking hot.

NO and I mean NO

From: Jimbo
Date: Apr 1
Subject: Hi

WOW and I mean WOW. Lets chat.