Getting older is supposed to mean getting wiser. I thought having a birthday and the intrinsic wisdom that would kick-in upon turning 34 would by far make up for the increased episodes of heartburn and growing number of visible veins on my legs that I'm experiencing instead.
Suddenly I would be capable of a knowing look, and most importantly...I would stop doing stupid shit. Luckily for my six readers, all my advancing age has left me with is heartburn and varicose veins.
My birthday weekend started rather sweetly, as most anything soaked in champagne for several hours tends to be.
(It's important to note that as I get older, I'm taking longer to celebrate my birthday. For now, it's an entire weekend. By the time I'm 80, those of my friends still alive and not incarcerated will be asked to take an entire year off. Prepare yourselves accordingly.)
I combined my birthday party with a long overdue housewarming party, not wanting to vacuum more than once a year. Work colleagues dropped by early, and left before the more serious drinkers showed up. This was how I found myself quite alone with the BT in the lull between.
(Bomb Tech for those of you who've forgotten anything I might once have posted, given how long it's taken me to update this blog.)
Alone and quite tipsy I might add, and I mean that literally. I chose the highest, sexiest shoes I could find to wear. I wanted to impress him, and I'm sure watching me be one mildly drunken footstep away from a severed spinal cord was truly awesome, if only he were to find that kind of thing arousing.
It was feeling like a lucky day. My unsteadiness on my shoes had the BT fetching my drinks for me, and the only time I really had to get up was when I launched myself across the room and threw my arms around him.
I should probably back up. (I know, I know. If I just updated my blog more often I wouldn't have to bother with all of this exposition. Now shut-up and keep reading.)
(The BT and I had a bit of a falling out you may remember when a mutual friend told me she and the BT had been fooling around on a regular basis, which really sucked. I stopped talking to him, and intended to make that disconnect in communications permanent, until the BT was diagnosed with cancer. When he told me that, whatever fooling around he had done with my former good friend didn't mean much anymore.)
(Not one of the good kinds of cancers either by the way, but the kind that means the good-byes should probably be rushed. He was terrified, his family was devastated and I was both. Actually, I was asking why the Grand Poobah in the sky couldn't just let me break it off with a guy - why did the guy have to actually go and die?? After losing Jesse, and now this, I was ready to order Alex into a protective bubble immediately.)
(I know - what kind of a selfish bitch does that make me? Yes, I know how hard your impending painful death might be for you, but think about me dammit!)
(A week or so passed and the BT's doctor started to back peddle his diagnosis. The BT sought second and third opinions, and was given a clear bill of health. The original blood tests showed elevated blood sugar - that was all.)
(This was why when the BT told me he was OK, no really, he was fine and there was nothing wrong, I sort of threw myself at him, risky shoes be damned. At the time, I thought it might be one of the best hugs ever, but I was wrong. That hug was actually coming the next night...I know. I know. Lame plot device. Now shut-up and keep reading.)
(Also, sorry for all of the brackets.)
Now that I knew he wasn't dying, I could really let him have it. He knew I was upset over something to do with our mutual friend, and I had assumed he knew exactly why because after all...wouldn't he have been there?
When I launched into the part about how I knew he and I were not exclusive but he could have at least manage to stick it in somebody I didn't know he became confused. Like, genuinely confused. He asked me what I thought he'd done with this girl. I told him what I thought, because that's what she told me they did. Apparently...nothing of the sort ever happened.
I won't bore you with the he said/she said details, but I will say that I believed him. Him, and not her. What he said made sense, and he's not a good enough actor to pull off that level of shock. We sat there blinking at each other, the realization that we'd both been played really starting to sink in. That's when the buzzer rang, and we weren't going to be alone anymore that night.
Which naturally didn't stop me from throwing him against my hall closet and making out with him just before he left a while later, which seemed to highly amuse the assembled peanut gallery. I blame this on the lack of balance caused by my shoes. They were just so high I had no choice but to lean way forward and practically fall onto his face when seeing him out.
(Yes, that is the story I'm sticking with. Now shut-up and keep reading.)
There is no glory in waking up 34 years old with a hangover not seen since my early days in university. While I wasn't praying for death, a light coma or perhaps a nap deep within the confines of a silent monastery would not have gone unappreciated. Every movement brought an entirely new level of weariness, right up until the phone rang late that afternoon.
Now that I was 34 with a hangover and reconciled with a guy who defuses bombs for a living, one would think I'd exhausted the stupidity supply for one weekend. One would think that when there's suddenly a certain really hot, really married firefighter I know on the other end of the phone line who's proposing performing several acts that are legal only in Bangkok if I would just come over for a visit that night, that I might decline.
I might tell the really hot married firefighter that I had reached my stupidity quota no matter how many visible abs he has and that his marriage was really a problem for me.
I might do those things, or I might go shave my legs and get in the car and drive to his place. Which is exactly what I did.
I know I'm supposed to be weaning myself off of firefighters. I know they're bad for me, and I would be better off with settling for a fire extinguisher in my kitchen and buying the damned calendar like normal people but as Mae West once said, I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Several hours later I'm back at home, pondering whether I should go back to my Catholic roots just so I can confess to somebody every salacious detail of how I managed to cure my hang-over and possibly even my varicose veins in just one evening due to elevating my legs and repeatedly calling out to God.
Ahem.
The phone rings again, and I almost don't answer it. It's late, I'm in my PJs, I'm eating cold pizza left over from the party the night before and I have to get up early to go to a conference for work the next morning, despite the next morning being Sunday. Even earlier if I was planning to suddenly start going to Confession.
I finally answer the phone and all I hear is Lady Gaga singing "Bad Romance." This is actually both fitting and prescient, but I simply assume somebody's ass pocket has dialled me from the gay bar, and I hang up. The phone rings again, and this time I hear Lady Gaga and a guy's muffled voice asking me what I'm doing.
I assume it's my friend John, actually dialling me from the gay bar. (Hi John!) I ask him what does he possibly think I'm doing? I'm hung-over as hell, in my PJs, eating cold pizza and I just got back from a date with the firefighter and you know what that means...
The voice says, "I don't know what that means at all - I was just hoping you could give me a tour of your beautiful city, beautiful girl."
He'd stepped outside whatever bar he was in, Bad Romance was silenced and now I knew that voice. Just to be sure it was time to drop the pizza and freak the fuck out, I asked him who was calling.
It was Alex. Didn't I know? Didn't I recognize his voice? His number? He's in town, he's surprising me and he wants me to come pick him up and he's at the waterfront and do I know how pretty it is at night with all the lights and the boats? Hurry up!
Many land speed records have been broken with jet-fueled cars somewhere in the deserts of Nevada, but I can assure you I broke whatever land speed records have ever been set by a woman wearing hastily thrown on clothing, lip gloss and driving a Grand-Am. My record will stand for years.
I could not believe Alex was in my city. I could not believe I was going to see him in mere moments. I could not believe what a slutty weekend I was suddenly having.
I want to say that when I saw him walking towards me on the Inner Harbour, lights reflecting off the water and him smiling at me looking a little like I might be imagining him, just because I always do, that I played it cool. I'd like to say that, but instead I ran at him like I was on a war-torn roof top and he was the last flight out of Saigon.
For one moment of my life it was like being the romantic lead in a movie. He spun me around and a little old lady sitting with her little old husband on the bench behind us said, "Awww...."
Then I pulled away and started yelling at him. What kind of an ass calls a girl up at 11:30 at night with no notice?? A little notice next time Alex because..." At that point he was kissing me and the little old man was clapping and laughing.
If it was weird seeing Alex in my city it was completely surreal seeing him brushing his teeth in my living room.
January will mark three years that Alex has been part of my life, one way or another. Three years of long-distance unrequited love on my part, and three years of wondering what will ever happen, and trying to accept that nothing will ever happen.
Three years of trying to be OK with that, and trying to be with somebody else if I can't be with him. Three years of refusing to even have sex with him, knowing how many other women he has and needing to not take whatever fall that could mean if I let myself become one of the many. Three years of wanting and nothing happening.
Something did happen this time though, even if it wasn't what I expected or even something I can explain. We still didn't have sex, and yet we still blew each other's minds nonetheless which at this point and with this man, is not surprising.
(This feeling is at least mutual, and I know this because Alex sent me a message days later saying his mind was blown, and expressing amazement at just how good his time with me was. I'm not sure whether to be pleased with myself or insulted that he's amazed.)
What happened this time was a realization and unwilling comparison. I'd just spent a few hours in the company of a really hot firefighter, whom I know loves his wife despite whatever shenanigans he engages in with me. Trust me, it's complicated.
I've seen him kiss her, and seeing that has always hurt my heart a little. He doesn't kiss me that way, and nobody ever has. Whenever I've seen that I've wondered what it would be like to be the girl who's kissed that way.
With Alex I'm that girl. Let's be clear. The firefighter is very good at what he does when he's with me. His technical performance is beyond reproach. In fact, I'd consider him a national treasure and gift that should be shared with more of the female population because...well...damn.
He's good is what I'm saying. Very, very good. The Russian judges would give a 10 for technical merit but the judges from France would only give 8.5 because there's no heart. There's no feeling.
With Alex there's feeling. Whatever is missing with anybody else is there with him. And therein lies the problem. Alex is not here for me. Not geographically, not physically, not emotionally, and I need to either be where he is and face the distinct possibility that even if we shared a fence line it wouldn't work out, or be where I am and be with somebody else.
Three years of unrequited love, turning 34 and realizing that this love is not fading maxed my stupidity quota for that weekend and proved I know less now than what I did last year and the year before that.
My early morning conference meant I had to kick Alex out of my bed before 7:00 a.m. and once again we couldn't spend a whole day together.
Kicking him out of my car moments later because I had to be at a stupid networking breakfast starting ten minutes earlier meant I was eventually sitting in a conference hall wearing a sticky name-tag with my eyes red from crying.
I had no choice but take my sun glasses off when an extremely well-dressed older woman came over to sit with the loner picking at her breakfast danish. As soon as she saw my eyes she said how awful allergies are this time of year, and she has just the thing to fix me up in her purse.
Great, I thought. Just what I need is a dose of Benadryl from this lady's purse after a night spent not sleeping and smiling in the darkness as Alex alternated between stealing the blankets and snoring in my ear, and me refusing to sleep so I wouldn't miss a moment of it. At this rate I would be drooling through the key-note.
Instead the woman pulled out three drink tickets and put them in front of me. There was a reception later on as part of the conference, and she wasn't going. If I was going, she wanted me to have her drink tickets. She's always found her allergies clear right up after a few.
I'm not any wiser than I was at any other age, but at least this woman gave me hope. She obviously became very wise in her years ahead of me.
