I have been a bad blogger.
I failed 30 Days. You would hope that this was because I was so successful at 30 Days, at getting out and involved in the world, that I hadn’t time to blog, and this was why I failed. Or that I had nothing to report, at least. No, I failed because I stopped going outside.
There is an upside to this. Hear me out.
The first day I failed- ok, well, the first day I failed it was because I was sick and limping which made any trek outside seem terrible. But the first non-sick time I failed, it was because I got carried away doing something I have needed to do since even before I moved back to LA. I built a studio. A studio! To make art in! Even better, I used the furniture my mom has failed to move out to do this. I used the furniture and built a dividing wall in my living room, separating it into living room and Studio(!), so that now I have an official place that I can walk into and recognize that I am at work now. So that was a wholly justifiable reason to skip a day of 30 Days, as the productivity I experienced outweighed the benefit of going out.
But then I skipped a day ’cause I spent it on a message board.
Since then, I have been on and off, staying in somedays, in the Studio, and going out some days, with a friend, or my mom. So with two days left, I officially confess, I failed 30 Days.
I will skip the paragraph about how I think my 30 Days resolution was a silly one, how I would have done better by resolving to work on my art daily, or do pilates daily, or even just the dishes daily, building a reasonable habit I could keep. I’ll skip that part, and get to the juicy bits.
TOM. TOM is the juicy bits.
I dated another guy, lets call him Bill. I let Bill take me on two dates, because Bill has been keeping up polite conversation with me for almost two months on the dating site. Bill took me out on fun dates. I had a good time. Well, I had a good time right up until Bill tried to turn a hug into a kiss, whereupon I squirmed out of reach and fled his car in acknowledgement of the fact that I simply felt no spark between us.
Then Tom. TOM. Undateable, broken Tom. Undateable, Broken Tom, who flirted with me online and on the phone like it was his big passion, who turned a casual dinner invitation from me into an exciting, sexy sleepover date, who suggested co-showers and co-bedding, who, the night of such plans, came over declaring that he could only have one glass of wine because he needed to drive home safely. Who looked at my body from the safety of the other side of the table. Who touched only my shoulders for too long, who used the pretext of petting my cat to touch my hand, who gave me three hugs when he left.
I am afraid Tom is being a coward. An emotional coward. He will flirt with me like woah online in messages and IMs, in texts, and phone calls. He will make sexy plans. He will excite me to the point that I will scrub my toilet and change my sheets in anticipation of him spending 15 hours in my place, will try to layer multiple pairs of underwear on the chance that I could strip to the sexy pair for sleeping next to him, will spend 20 minutes separating my eyelashes with a pin because the mascara clumped and I can’t have him wake up next to me, clumpy eyed, will spend days counting down the hours whenever I’m in bed until he is in bed with me. Then, he will show up and effectively fail to cash the check his flirting wrote.
Tonight he was supposed to take me to my bar. I call it my bar, but it’s really more his bar- he wrote the drink menu, he advised them on what liquors to buy, he knows every person who works there. I have been going there for a month and a half, knowing that everyone knows him well, never once mentioning that I knew him too, that he dated me, that we were “complicated.” Tonight he was going to take me there, and I alternately felt anxious and thrilled that he was going to Out me as in some way his. I was eager to see how he would treat me in front of all of them, since the last time we spent in front of any of his friends, he pre-emptively declared me his girlfriend. Instead he showed up for a dinner with a small glass of wine, cuddles with my cat, pretended non-touches, and goodbyes. 2 hours.
So I walked to the bar by myself in a contained, disappointed rage. The bouncers and bartenders all greeted me. They stopped to chat, they gave me all my drinks. A young man started to chat me up. Turned out that he works there, has been watching me ever since the first time I walked in, wanting and hoping to talk to me. We had plenty to talk about, and his intermediate confessions of attraction to me grew in intensity with every passing half hour. He tried to kiss me in the bar and I refused. We left about the same time. He walked me home, holding my hand. He professed a respect for my decision not to kiss him any of the times he’d tried, at the bar or on the way home. At my building he gave me a hug, and I turned it into a make-out session. He asked me to come back to the bar to see him, and I said I’d be going back anyway.
He has to know Tom. Not only must he know Tom- get this- he has the same name as Tom.
And I walk in my front door knowing that below, a young man walks away, happy because the girl he has watched for weeks has kissed him, while I wish that Tom would have just kissed me and taken me to the bar himself.