The sidebar is dazed, confused, and crawling back into its hole.
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 probably never going to understand why I keep getting asked out by all the wrong people, especially when I wasn’t looking. It’s not like I’m pining away for some impossibly handsome, rich bastard everyone wants. I just grew to want this one, simple yet complex, seemingly good person who seems to fit. The nerd of my dreams. I met another one a few months ago and I thought, “Fuck celibacy!” So much for the best laid plans. Thus began the oozing of hormones from my very pores and the parade of really nothing-to-do-with-who-I-really-am men begging to lap them up, like dogs trailing my scent. So now is the point at which I freak out, or he does. I pulled myself back the other day. On the one hand, he’s not in touch. On the other, I had to ask him out the last two times, but he did accept and we ended up having a lot of fun. So were those acceptable risks? Like Nerd Boy, must I be the aggressor? I hate to play along to something as insipid as The Rules, but there’s a line I don’t want to cross. I guess this is my plight for really being put off by the aggressive men who come after me for my body, but don’t see me at all. My therapist says it can’t be that black and white, but truly it is. When Rafe jumped me, smart and nerdy as he is, it was rather an exception. If there is one thing in life I hate more than anything else, it’s not understanding what is going on. I felt like that at my last job. I was exposed to everyone who passed by, yet I was alone and had no clue what was going on behind the walls that surrounded me. I sensed there was gossip about Nerd Boy and I at the very least and I’ve always been strangely surprised that people are threatened or overwhelmed by me, but I should be able to anticipate it by now. I’ll never forget Fang telling me how her boyfriend’s brother described me as “intense” on a lazy afternoon during which we drank lots of Guinness and ate his brother’s nummy Guinness stew. Ironically, both Fang and I would describe my mood that day as “Erica on 5” (thinking of the volume on our stereos that only went up to 10). Nevertheless, 5 is too high a setting for a civilian. And so I never know what is the truth, if someone is intimidated or repulsed by me, because I have both extremes all the time. I have overheard people talk about me in less than flattering terms and have had others describe me in the most glowing terms. Meanwhile, I just putter along, completely clueless as to who feels what in regard to me. I’m just not savvy enough to know, sometimes, who to trust. Granted, my instinct is great and most of the time I know who to trust and who to distance myself from, but I do have blind spots. If someone writes to say I shouldn’t care what anyone thinks, I will hunt them down and slap them. It’s not a matter of caring what people think about me, per se, but of wanting to know which people think what, so I don’t throw my pearls before swine, as it were. My concern is of wasting my bounty on those who are beneath me. . . .Thursday night, I went out with Steve, who I’ve been talking with for a month or so. His work schedule is pretty hectic, so he wasn’t able to get together sooner (except during the day when I am, of course, at work). We met for drinks at Johnny’s, a quirky watering hole a few blocks from where I live. I have passed it a hundred times, but never gone in before. In one of the sad ironies about living in the West Village, I don’t go out for a drink nearly enough. It had a great jukebox, and I hummed along happily, between drags on American Spirits bummed from Steve. Unfortunately, Crazy Eyed Singing Guy in the Corner knew the words to all the songs in the juke box, whether Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye or something more contemporary. He annoyed me very much, though I could not pinpoint exactly why. It was an entirely irrational disdain. Steve and I kept praying the hot bartender wasn’t going out with CESGC and were oddly relieved when she didn’t. “Better she comes home with me,” I said with a wide grin. The conversation was easy, if terribly light, as were the laughs, touching and flirting. I forgot I could be this way. It’s always so damn serious with the nerds I so adore, a vicious circle of shyness, insecurity, crossed signals. Despite my geeky brain, there is something about just being a woman and enjoying a man. After a few hours and a few drinks, I walked Steve to his car on Seventh Avenue South. It still had much more snow on the roof than the others because he’d just driven back from Christmas with his family in Westchester. He held my face and told me how beautiful I am, how sexy my lips are. Open sesame. I kissed him back, not another thought in my head. For a moment, I was, as Zelda Sayre/Daisy Buchanan put it, “A beautiful, little fool,” all the world wants of a woman. . . .And so it was Steve again on Saturday. After the utter lack of physical contact with K (I hugged him on Tuesday night and he looked like I’d punched him in the gut) I needed to be kissed, badly. Thus, the pattern rears its ugly head again. It always starts with the shy, smart guy who seems right in every way, except he won’t touch me. I have this wonderful, luscious body and it’s just going to waste. There is this huge part of my self I don’t get to express regularly. That is very frustrating. Imagine not being able to speak for months or years on end and then only surrounded by the deaf. That is how I feel. I don’t want to keep having these sort of schizophrenic relationships -- one for my mind and one for my body. I laughed appreciatively last night while watching Kissing Jessica Stein when Helen describes how she calls one boyfriend when she’s hungry, another when she’s bored and still a third when she’s horny. I get exhausted at the thought of trying to squeeze in more than two people; I don’t know how men do it. Instead of assembling a whole man from miscellaneous, spare parts, I want to meld the best together into one, smart, quirky, passionate person who doesn’t annoy the fuck out of me. Regardless of how much I enjoy K’s company, I have always and will always need my time alone in great quantity. Indeed, after work I need to be alone for an hour before going down to the communal dining room, if possible. I vant to be alone -- not always, but rather a lot. When Rafe was calling everyday, it was too much. Begger and chooser, I.
[Next entry: "Deferring a Dream, Again"]
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