Stupid is as stupid does.

I did something stupid. While it's true this statement is also the best and most likely title for a book and movie of the week based on my life starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, clearly there will need to be sequels.

Before I explain any further, I'm not expecting anybody to be surprised by this latest turn of events, but what do I know? I was very surprised myself when a friend recently told me she was shocked by the shallowness of my last posting, in which I complained about being unable to find knee boots that don't make my legs look like a couple of giant sausage casings and a turducken squeezed into Italian leather.

Given that the shopping trip this posting described took place during a week I was in Vancouver for allergy testing, and given I learned during that week that I'm severely allergic to a lot of glue used in boots and shoes, it was apparently shallow of me to focus on how sad I am that I can't find fashionable boots because of sizing, rather than the fact that certain boots and their glue could kill me.


In my defense, my allergy to the glue in my shoes won't actually kill me. All it does is cause my feet to swell, bubble, toil, trouble, bleed and blister. I don't die though, so as long as that shit is covered up by my socks, nobody needs to see the mess even though it's kind of painful - much like the theory behind wearing Spanx.


What I found more shocking about my friend feeling shock was she had gone this long without ever having known I'm shallow. Soon she'll discover she's actually met me before, and I'm prone to banging men in uniform. Her mind will boggle.

However, back to me being a dumb-ass.

You see...there was this boy. That's pretty much all I should have to say by now to instill a feeling of dread in all ten of my readers, but it gets worse.

One day, this girl was feeling the need for a distraction. For those of you not following closely enough, that girl would be me. I came across an amusingly worded boy seeking girl dating profile and I sent a reply.

Last year, I had sworn off ever online dating again or at least not until I reach my goal weight, but neither infinity or single digit pant sizes have materialized as of yet, and so it came to this.

(It had also come to my poor Mom calling me on a Saturday night, and sounding so sad that I answered. She told me that my life makes her sad and she just wishes I could have more fun, or at least a guy who would take me to the movies once in a while. My Mom used to wish for my wedding day and grandchildren. Now all the woman can dare to dream about is the remote possibility there might be a guy willing to sit next to me in the dark for two hours, without even having to talk. And yet, I still disappoint.)

This is how I came to be dipping my toe back in the putrid waters of the online dating pool. Remarkably enough, things went...awesome.

The distraction (or D) was funny, kind, tall, smart, employed, younger enough than me to be hot without being creepy, and SO cute. We talked for hours and hours everyday. My work productivity dropped from a solid 30% output to less than zero. When we met in person we clicked like crazy.

Normally meeting in person is when the courtship ends for me, so I was beyond flustered when we continued being unable to leave each other alone.

We started making plans. Restaurants we wanted to go to, long drives we wanted to take, places he wanted to show me, movies he wanted to watch with me. My head spun. Was it really this easy?

My married firefighter called me up and I put him off. It felt like I'd be...cheating. Holy. Crap. Everything I was feeling felt like something I'd given up feeling again - that rush of meeting somebody new. The even bigger rush that came from thinking that the new person was getting the same rush I was. It was such a rush I told nobody. If I talked about it at all, it might go away.

The first time D came over to my place was mildly terrifying. I had invited him, we had discussed it, but I had no idea why he was there. When a guy comes over to my place and he's not directly related or gay, it's normally because he's planning to have sex with me. I didn't know what to do with a guy who seemed like he might be there for more than that.

(Naturally, with all of our talking and hanging out, D and I covered sex and the possibility we may have it with one another at some point. In fact, I had already decided that for once, the idea didn't make me fearful. Instead, it made me happy. He admitted he'd lost girlfriends because his sex drive far exceeded theirs. This ladies, is why I prefer younger men.)

I wasn't uncomfortable for long. We laughed a lot, talked a lot, drank some wine...a lot. And then all of a sudden I was uncomfortable again.

He had just finished telling me a funny story about his family, and I was laughing and pouring wine. By the time I turned back towards him, he had his hand down his pants.

At first I thought I had caught him scratching himself rather obviously and I should turn away again, give him a moment, and then carry on. When I turned toward him a second time, he was still at it. This wasn't an ill-timed scratch. He was full on jacking-off mid-conversation.

Remarkably, this has nothing to do with the stupid thing I did. This is really just an aside, or perhaps it's the first of several red flags I may have wanted to pay closer to attention to over the course of the evening.

Perhaps an even bigger red flag than this was the fact my first response was to ignore it. We were having a wholesome good time goddammit, and as long as I kept my eyes on his face and kept the conversation to open-ended questions that showed I was a worthy companion who was genuinely interested in his life then I could pretend that maybe he was itchy and...oh fuck my life. He wasn't stopping or even slowing down.

I'm certain any one of you 10 faithful readers could have come up with a better response than what I managed, but let's not Monday morning quarterback. I've never understood football and I've never chosen the best option, so it's not worth your effort. Instead of ordering him out of my house or at least off my couch, I kissed him.

Still, this is not the stupid thing I did.

He kissed me back, I made fun of his incredibly subtle seduction skills, we kept kissing and we fooled around. Note, we did not have sex. Per se. Not really.

(Oral sex shouldn't really count because nobody gets pregnant. Feel free to argue whether oral sex is sex amongst yourselves but in the mean time, that STILL had nothing to do with the stupid thing I did.)

We cuddled, we laughed more, talked more, made more plans. I was going to lend him some books, he was going to bring over a spare router so I can finally use my laptop in my living room again. I was going to teach him how to enjoy white wine, he was going to teach me to like good scotch.

When he left, we made plans to hang out the next night if he could get out of a dinner party early enough. If he couldn't, as soon as we could after that.

And that was the last I heard of him.

It's been nearly a week, and it's like he never existed. I'm still a little stunned. After how quickly and easily he fit into every minute of my day, I actually believed it would continue.

I thought that WE would continue, and THAT is the stupid thing I did.

After all of this time and everything I've been through, all it took was a guy using the "we" pronoun in future tense, and my heart went all aflutter. Not only did I believe all of that crap - I fell for it.

When naivete can no longer be considered an option, the only explanation left is stupidity.

(The ending to this story isn't entirely unhappy. After scanning the obituaries and concluding D really did stand for Douche and not Dead, I became fearful of another possibility. Was I that big of a disappointment in the sack...?? Not that oral sex is sex, but this wasn't time for semantics.)

(After three days had passed without any word from D, I showed up on the married firefighter's doorstep. It seemed my schedule had suddenly been cleared. Five hours later I prepared to leave and collected my clothing from the front hallway, the back patio, the living room, the kitchen table, and then retraced my steps through the bedroom, two bathrooms and the garage looking for my car keys and one earring. As one does. Before I could head home though, I had to ask him...was I...any good? I won't bore with you how he told me, but the answer took another hour and was a resounding yes. Firefighters...truly our nation's heroes.)