The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction - An Introduction

My first foray into the Social Networking world was some years ago, in 2005 I believe, with Yahoo. They had a site called Yahoo 360° that was their own attempt at MySpace, which, at the time, was all the rage. I hadn't been bitten by the MySpace bug yet, but I was already an active member of Yahoo, so to get my feet wet, I set up a Yahoo 360° profile.

Blogging was an extremely attractive prospect to me. I love to write, I love to give myself that type of "outlet" to my problems, fears, joys, and experiences. I've kept diaries and journals off and on over the years and they've always been therapeutic when I took the time to keep them up. But this... a public diary? How do I approach such a thing? How much do I divulge? And what, praytel, do I write about that would actually entice people to read it?

Browsing thru existing blogs, one thing was an absolute MUST: I could not, would not, write about mundane things that no one but myself would care about. I needed an angle-- Something that I could write passionately about. Something that people, in general, have an interest in. Something that would grab the attention of the public. And something that had a "theme." I found that, to me personally, a blog that jumped around all over the place was difficult to read. A theme would keep me in check, and allow me to focus, rather than a stream of conscious that I was sure would bore to death anyone who came across my page.

The idea came to me fairly quickly. I was newly divorced and discovering the delights and annoyances of being single and dating in my 30's. It was perfect!
Love, sex, relationships, dating... The overall general interaction between men and women has always been a fascination and a sure-fire hit to our society, if not our entire species! I had my topic, I was ready to roll...

Yahoo has since shut down their 360° forum, and the experience I had there was both rewarding and therapeutic. So I am going to retell my adventures in a retro-active tale here, and see if I can gather the same, if not bigger, audience I did there. Maybe I can even get inspired enough to bring the whole thing up to date and wrap it all up into a happy ending? We shall see...

So, here we go! Hello, my name is Jennifer. I am 37 years old and I've been divorced just over 6 years now. Fasten your seat belts, boys and girls, it's gonna be one hell of a ride!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Chapter 7: What Kind Of Game Is This?

So, the deal was that “Tramp” and I were going to try again to meet the next night, right? WRONG! We ended up on the phone AGAIN, discussing this twit AGAIN. During this conversation he tells me that he realizes that now is not a good time for him to be starting anything with anybody. Gee, ya think? He tells me that he likes me too much to do that to me. (Nice move, that.) He tells me that he respects me too much to get me involved in his drama. (Again, nice move.) So we agreed to "just be friends." When I hung up with him that night, I figured that was that.

Well, okay, I did stop to consider that if he put some distance between himself and this girl, and was able to regain a little perspective on himself, he would start remembering all the great talks we had, and I thought I might hear from him in about 2-3 weeks. Didn't take 2-3 weeks. Took 2 days.

He started sending me flirty little emails and we did the virtual flirting thing for about a week or so. And then we graduated to the phone again. No freaky-freaky this time. This time, it looked as if we were actually becoming friends. Don't get me wrong, I still wanted to do this guy six ways to Sunday. But I was okay with just being friends, too. The more I got to know him, the more I knew that he was someone I wanted in my life, regardless of the capacity.

So I'm at my neighbor's house one night, drinking an awful lot of wine and having a pretty good time, when my phone rings. Do I really need to say who it was?

"Hello?"
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"Over at my neighbor's house, hanging out."
"Oh, I didn't mean to bother you."
"You're not bothering me. What's up?"
"I just had a fight with her."
(Rolling my eyes)
"What happened?"
He goes into the whole scenario.
"Do you want to come over?" (YES, I know! I was drunk and stupid, okay?)
"Thinking about it..."
"Well, why don't you come over here to my neighbor's house? We'll all hang out and have some wine."
"No, I don't want to be around a bunch of people."
"Okay... Do you want me to go home and you come over?"
"I would really appreciate it."
"Alright..."

Even drunk I knew that it was a very stupid thing to invite him over when he was pissed off at his ex-girlfriend that he was still in love with. But as giddy as I was, I ran home and primped, waiting with bated breath for my door bell to ring. And then “Tramp” was there.

Okay, I'll admit that I didn't find him as foxy in person as I had imagined he would be based on his picture. A little scrawnier than I'd imagined, a little geekier than I imagined, and a little goofy to top it all off. But I didn't care. It was HIM. He was in my house. I wanted him, and I knew I wanted him. We talked and laughed for a while, but eventually my wine-buzz got the better of me and I took a chance. I made the first move. Hell, I didn't just make the first move, I flat out attacked him! And he was not unresponsive to me, either. He was an even better kisser than I imagined he'd be. So things got a little hot and heavy... But before they could get REALLY hot and heavy, he stopped me.

"I can't do this to you. I care too much about you to drag you into my emotional mess. If I didn't care, I'd be upstairs banging you right now." (Again, nice move. You can't ever be really sure if a line like that is the truth, a really good line, or just a flat out rejection.)

So we hung out and talked a little more and eventually I walked him out to his car. We hugged and kissed for a little while longer. He said a lot of really wonderful things to me then. He told me I was a really good friend. He thanked me for putting up with him. He was worried I wouldn't want to talk to him anymore and asked if he could call me the next day. I assured him that I still wanted him to be a part of my life and asked him if he wanted to hang out that weekend. (I had a party to go to Saturday night.) He said he was interested, bade me good night with a few more kisses, and left.

As you can imagine, I was floating on air. I had myself convinced that, with a little patience, a little tolerance, a little charm, and a little finesse, “Tramp” WAS MINE.

Lesson Number Five: Spontaneous DOES NOT have to mean Impulsive. Take the blinders off!

Status: Oblivious