When The Smoke Clears

Men complain that women are too hard to figure out.... that we have too many thoughts and feelings, and it irritates the shit out of them when we want to talk about them. But for men to be the "simple sex" - the gender with a one-track mind - they ceartainly are difficult to figure out sometimes. Or are they? Men have gotten the reputation of having nothing but sex on the brain.... or at least once every 4 minutes (or is it 6 seconds?). So do we, as women, just assume that every man is thinking of sex and nothing but?

The idea of "meeting a man" after last call is so cliche. So when my crush ends up in the bar I'm in at 1:45am, what do you think is going to happen? I honestly had no idea, b/c I had no idea whether or not he liked me. So when we're all over at my apartment drinking after the bar closed, and he says he's going to crash at my place, I assume he means on the couch or my big chair b/c he's been drinking. Maybe I was naive, but I honestly didn't give it a second thought. Then, when several of us are watching a movie, and he says he's going to sleep, imagine my surprise when he gets up and goes straight for my bedroom.

So say a man is just looking for an easy lay.... when the evening reaches that point and he backs off, was he really looking for just sex but decided to be a gentleman and backed off when he sensed you weren't willing, or is he actually interested in you as more than just sex on a Friday night? We didn't have sex. My thoughts.... "I like this guy and would like to see him again, and I don't think that having sex with him right now is a good way to ensure that I'll even have a chance at seeing him again." His thoughts.... well, your guess is as good as mine.

I received the most bizarre email yesterday I think I've ever gotten in my life. You know that website, classmates.com? I had set up an account with them years ago.... sometime in college.... out of curiosity. I haven't been on it in I don't know how long, but occasionally I get an email saying "come and check it out" or "update your profile". I just delete them. I'd delete my account, except I don't remember my username and password to login and do so! Oh well. Apparently you don't have to remember that stuff to go on the site and read emails someone else has sent you, though. I found this out yesterday.

I was checking my hotmail account, and there was an email from classmates.com. You know how when you are just looking at your inbox and sometimes the subjects get cut off b/c they're too long? This was the case yesterday, so all I could see was "Molly, you have Classmates Email from Geo....". Out of curiosity, I opened the email to see who "Geo...." is. It is a guy with whom I went to high school - I won't write his name here, just in case, so we'll just call him "Geo....". He was a few years younger than me. So, with curiosity fully peaked, I clicked on the link to see what his email said. Turns out that he's in Iraq - part of the National Guard unit in my home town that was activated, I assume - and that he's had a crush on me since high school. He said that he almost told me when he saw me at the car wash sometime, but he was worried I didn't like him, so he didn't say anything. God only knows the last time I saw him! Really, it would have had to have been sometime in college when I was home for a holiday or something, so it's been at least 3 or 4 years, if not more!

I immediately copied and pasted his message into an email and sent it to my three girlfriends from high school with whom I still keep in touch. I got one immediate phone call - when I answered the phone, all I heard was "GEO....?! THAT'S CRAZY!" - and an email this morning asking "WHO IN THE HELL IS GEO....????" I'm still waiting on a response from the third friend I informed.

Now I just have to figure out what to write in response. I can't ignore it. Someone just professed almost 10 years of feelings for me in an email from Iraq! I welcome any and all advice on how to handle this one!

Holiday weekends are good. They are good for many reasons. Paid holidays from work are always a plus, of course. Visitors always put a twinkle in my eye, too. This holiday weekend was the best I've had in a while, I think. It started off a little rocky, granted, with an interesting night Friday night. (Now, Becca, I love you, and this is no way means that I didn't have a good time Friday night. It just wasn't necessarily what I had expected.) I haven't hung out with anyone under the age of 22 in a long time, save my little brother with whom I live (he's 20). I used to have a lot of 18, 19, & 20-year-olds working for me in the Navy, all male. I knew how to handle them, and I didn't hang out with them away from work. There were a lot of 18 and 19-year-olds in Pittsburgh on Friday night at a concert. Even a 17-year-old.... and they were all female. I hate to diss on my gender, but females really piss me off sometimes. I'm sure I wasn't a whole lot better when I was that age, but some of those girls are going to want to shoot themselves 5 or 6 years down the road when they replay some of these occasions. But the concert we went to was a good time. There were some people in the group with whom I hit it off, and we backed away from some of the teeny-boppers and laughed at them a lot.

The rest of the weekend was a blast! Becca came down and visited until this morning. I went out with my friend Danny. I haven't seen him much at all in the last year or so, but he now lives only about 15 minutes away from me, which I'm very excited about! We're going to go see Lyle Lovett and His Large Band later this summer. He and I have always like a lot of the same musicians, so it's nice to have him around again to go to these concerts with.

Sunday was the best, though. What a day! When it was all said and done, Patricia and I had 4 party invites to choose from, on top of going to our favorite bar. We chose a BBQ that ended up being only a few blocks from our apartments. Then we hit the bars after that. My friend Tiffany drove over from Arlington, and a new friend met up with us, so it was a fun girls' night out kind of evening spent with a lot of new friends. We even ended the night hanging out in a bar after hours b/c we've gotten to know one of the owners. The night ended with a mad dash to a cab before a British guy we'd met got into another fight (he did not instigate, btw), followed by shoving all three British guys into a cab to go home, and a run to Exxon for munchies at almost 4am! 7-11 was closed. I didn't think 7-11 ever closed!

We laid around all day yesterday, doing nothing but eating and watching the West Wing marathon on Bravo. Then we ordered pizza and watched the fireworks from my apartment building's roof. Now it's back to the grind stone. But it was a nice, relaxing weekend. Much needed, too. So I got all of the holiday perks - a day off of work, visiting friends, catching up with old friends I haven't seen in a while, making new friends, and eating until I couldn't eat anymore. Oh.... and the beer! :)