So I fooled around with one of my friend Steph over the weekend.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…and right now I’m waiting for her to return my call. I called her last night, but we were both exhausted and just going to watch TV and go to bed.

People had actually been asking me if we were dating for the past couple of weeks. Well, since Halloween. We went to a party in matching costumes (french maids’ uniforms) and she got drunk and I had to carry her down three flights of stairs. We’ve been going to a lot of the same places, and usually together, ever since. We’ve always been pretty flirty, but a freind of mine pointed out that we were kissing each other a lot more than usual, and ahd our hands on each other whenever were together and there wasn’t someone else getting a hug from her. So Saturday noght, I brought her over to my place for breakfast. She talked about a specific couple of guys who have been trying to nail her, and about the crowd of guys trying to nail her in general. This turned to a discussion of how she felt about me. I’ll skip the closing, but we wound up fooling around on the couch and I took her home at about 4:45 Sunday morning (this was not rude; she has dogs).

So this could be really bad for me. Steph is a drunk and a frustrated artist. The enormous kindness she shows her friends is, I’ve always felt, compensation for the way she treats her boyfriends. She is an incredibly gifted and astonishingly unproductive painter. This is partly because of the drinking. It is also because of the aforementioned crowd of guys, who generally see to it that she never has a moment alone. I refer to it as her testosterone exhaust. She has a cloud of men swirling behind her. Anywhere she goes, they constitute a smallish crowd, joking, showing off, opening things, buying things, trying to whisper things. She can make fairly good money as an interior designer, and also general contractor (I say gimme a woman who can swing a sledgehammer), but that work isn’t so easy to come by, and requires getting out there and hustling, instead of turning off the phone and closing the shades and drinking a liter of vodka.

When I spoke with her Sunday, we established that what we did was not a mistake, and that there was nothing we regretted about it. She couldn’t really get too far into a conversation, though because her friend Mike was over (Mike pursues Stephanie because she won’t have him. The last time he had a girlfriend, she, um, turned out to be man, a development that surprised no one but Mike). So I will have to see what, as te old saying goes, her intentions are, and I guess what mine are too.

2

Not to overlook what’s going on with you, but this story about Mike and his sort-of girlfriend sounds pretty interesting in itself. . .you’d think you’d kind of pick up on something like that after a pretty short while. . .

3

Did Mike’s girlfriend have man hands?

4

Yes, this probably will be really bad for you. If all you want is the occasional boink and you don’t mind sloppy seconds, OK.
If you’re lookin’ for love, I advise that you look elsewhere.

5

Some day, Mike will realize that not only was he not really surprised, he wasn’t really disappointed. Actually, Mike is a really great guy, except when he’s being a bitch. Like tonight. Steph called me and invited me out for a drink after she was done cutting Mike’s hair. He wasn’t happy about her seeing me in the first place and when she told him that she was going out with me this evening, he kind of had snit. So in deference to her not-yet-gay friend, I took everyone home and went home myself. I made it clear that I am not happy about being quite this discreet, and Steph said she agrees. I will talk to her at lunch tomorrow to finish the conversation. She was a little tipped over, having also cut her neighbors’ hair (two of them) which they felt called for a trip to the liquor store, of course.

6

I don’t pretend to follow all of this, but I found it oddly fascinating, raising many questions in my voyeuristic, but also somewhat investigative, bordering on the pedantic and forensic, mind. Just a couple if I may:

You needed a friend to point this out??

Drunkard - not good, but who knows, she might reform. Unreliable - also not too good, but again, where there’s a will, and all that. Pricktease - um, not quite so good, but it would give me a bit of a buzz to know that the one I fancied was fancied by a lot of other blokes (or women - that would actually give me even mroe of a buzz). Dogs…sorry, mate, got to draw the line somewhere. Call me old-fashioned, but this is not about rudeness or validating other people’s lifestyle choices. End it.

7

Unfortunately, I can’t do that, as we’re already very close friends. On the other hand, though, I don’t mind even if it ends badly. A football player is not really in the game until he’s taken that first big knock-your-ass-on-the-ground hit. I haven’t dated in years, since I met my ex-wife. Aside from two somewhat unfortunate experiences, I haven’t had much in the way of a sex life. Now I feel like I’m barreling through the line. The fact that I’m going to get my head snapped back to the turf is inconsequential.

Also, if this is doomed from the start, it means that I absolutely cannot fuck it up. So the pressure’s off, is all I’m saying.

8

Sure you can. You can stay in it way too long, past the point where your friends are all wondering when you’re going to get your act together and break it off already. I speak from experience here.

9

You were in matching french maids outfits? That’s the most wrong thing mentioned so far.

10

Well, by that time it will alreay be ucked up. I suppose I ucked it up already, by sleeping with her in the first place. I have a long history of maintaining a female friend in my life, as someone I can sort of touch base with, and who isn’t biased by wanting particular outcomes from me. Unfortunately, I also have a long history of sleeping with her, eventually. Do this once, and you blow a friendship. Do it twice and you blow two friendships and a marriage. All I really have is a hope that it won’t end too badly and a determination to fight it out along that line for the forseeable future.

Realistically, of course, I’m sure she’ll have me chasing rabbits, spitting out teeth and howling at the moon.

11

This is your little head talking, not your big one.

Remember that great big sign about a mile and a half back? The one that said “NO BRIDGE”?

Don’t worry. It probably didn’t apply to this road.

:wink:

Regards,
Shodan

12

So it took a couple of cartons of Crab Rangoon a sixpack and an episode of “My Name is Earl” to demonstrate that she’s not incapable of leading a normal life, just unused to it. I guess what it comes down to in my mind is whether I should give up on someone before she hurts me or after. If you have any faith in a human’s capacity to act in an unpredicatable way (to say nothing of changing or improving), it has to be the latter.

I’m assuming you’re being factious and rude (not that I mind), but this has actually become an issue. She wouldn’t be able to spend the night unless “the boys” could too (they pine), and I’ve got to decide whether I’ll have everyone over some weekend. That’s assuming this lasts through next week; I have the kids this weekend, so we won’t be seeing each other.

13

From what little I know of the situation I don’t see it ending up well.

Frankly though, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. All I can say is that it’s probably not a good idea to get involved with someone who drinks too much. Of course you are already very close, so it’s kind of too late. The main difference, I suppose, is that if you two are a couple it will probably be much harder for both of you to maintain objectivity about each other.

But who knows, I don’t.

14

Well, since this thread started, we’ve learned that you have an ex-wife and some kids. That changes my perspective quite a bit.

You should be mature enough to understand what you’re getting into. Hopefully, you can stock enough Crab Rangoon to keep things somewhat normal. So go for it, Big Guy! And good luck.

PS: If she could sit through tonight’s episode of My Name Is Earl, she’s a better person than I am! Maybe I should have chugged a sixpak before that thing started.

15

This can’t turn out well.
IMHO.

16

Two things I have learned over the years -[ul][li]Never get involved with a woman whose problems are worse than yours, and nobody ever listens to good advice if ignoring it might get you laid[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan

17

This can only end in pain. But I think you know that.

18

counts up her arrows, holds out quiver and sighs, goes off

19

I took the night off last night so I could catch up on my sleep. Steph called about 3:30 and asked if I could come over. I told her that I was in for the night and we chatted for a while. She got increasingly agitated and asked several more times to come over. Finally, she yelled that I “should be here” and hung up on me. Did I go over to her house? Of course I did. I was planning to explain to her that she had a limited number of times she could do this and she might want to preserve them for emergencies. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to. I called her from the stairwell of her building (she ripped the buzzer of the wall months ago) and she said she’d be right down to let me in. She didn’t show. After about 15 minutes, I called back, left a message that I was going home, and did so. The honeymoon, as they say, would appear to be over.

I did not get to work before 7, as I’d planned. I did not get to work before 8. As I was opening my office door, I waved to my boss, ho was chatting in her office with the president of the company. A morining like that says, “It’s going to be a great day!”