I Need Uglier Friends - Redux

Okay, so the more I reminisce about my wonderful trip to Provincetown, the more I think I just need to shut up about it. I mean, really, I had a great time while I was there, but the more I analyze it, the more I realize things may not have been as great as I presently remember.

Remember this post? I'll give you a chance to go back and read it if you need to.

You back?

Some of my friends are exceedingly good-looking. I didn't choose them because they're good-looking. It's just the way they are. And only "some" of them are very attractive. Others are pretty average, kinda like me (I guess).

I'm getting sick of having good-looking friends.

I'm getting sick of having friends who get hit on at the drop of a hat.

I'm getting sick of being invisible when I'm standing next to my friends. I'm sick of having random guys walk right past me to hit on my friends.

I want someone to notice me once in a while, dammit!

I'm realizing that my Provincetown trip last week just highlights this fact for me. My friend Brian got hit on left and right. I am not exaggerating. All he had to do was look at one guy on the boat and suddenly he showed up near us and randomly introduced himself. (This guy later on hung out with at the clubs.) I hit on guys left and right, and got nothing. (I secretly think these guys excused themselves and ran off to the bathroom to puke after I hit on them.) Didn't even get any numbers or anything out of the deal. No one wants a piece of this. I think the guys I did hang out with stayed with me because it was a way of getting closer to Brian.

All of us who went up there hung out a lot and met a bunch of people. And all that was fun. But now that I'm back, I'm realizing this: I haven't managed to keep in touch with many of them since we split up. Everyone else seems to have exchanged numbers and emails and are corresponding with people. No one seems to care to return my emails.

Am I really that completely forgettable?

One night during our trip, we invited a couple over to our place for a cookout dinner. The couple is from DC too, so we figured we'd see them again back in town. Keith suggested that he and his friends put together a happy hour once a month and that he'd invite us. True to his word, he did that, by sending an email to one of the seven of us in the house. And his email -- I am not exaggerating -- said, "Here's the info. Please pass it along to (names five other people in our house) -- did I miss anyone?" The one person in the house he missed was me! I thought I was pretty friendly, at that dinner and when we hung out at the bars... but apparently when naming off the seven people who shared my house last week, I was the one who was forgettable.

It kind of hurts in a stupid way to be so completely and totally overlooked.

So... how the hell do I find uglier friends?

Return from Paradise

Never in my life have I been this depressed upon returning from vacation. This trip to Provincetown has been probably the most relaxing vacation I've ever experienced.

In that way, this trip was substantially different from any other trip I've taken just because it was so relaxing. Usually I'm running off to places where you have to see things: Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Rome. When you shell out the bucks to go to places like that, it's absolutely stupid to sleep in, relax, read, and not occupy as much of your waking time as possible to seeing the sights and, well, being a tourist.

But in Provincetown, it really truly was all about letting the world go by without you for a while. Sleeping in is a perfectly acceptable way to spend your day. Doing absolutely nothing productive while lying on the beach (perpetratin' a tan) is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. Shopping for hours on end -- even if you don't spend anything -- is great. Unabashedly people-watching. Drinking. Eating nasty pizza. Drinking still more. It's all good.

I spent the entire week drifting in and out of sobriety. I don't think I've spent that many consecutive nights out drinking and dancing since I was 25. I don't think I've awakened to that many hangovers in one week before either.

But it was all worth it.

We met some fun people, many of whom I will probably never see again.

One thing I do know for sure, though: We are definitely going back next year. Maybe even for two weeks!

I Had a Dream....

I'm still alive.

It's so beautiful here it's easy to let shit roll off your back, and that's the most important part of any vacation. Well, it's easy to let a lot of stuff roll off your back -- I won't say everything.

One of my housemates is posing something of a challenge; it's somewhat annoying me. I'm trying not to let it bug me too much, but for God's sake. Details later.

I've met several fun and interesting people here. Of course, one meets people here at bars and fast food places. There's not too much room for substantive conversation sometimes. I'm trying to get phone numbers and, well, some action, but so far I haven't sealed any deals. This disappoints me, but then again it shouldn't seeing as I really shouldn't have expected myself to magically become more attractive just because I'm five hours away.

Anyway, I'm on someone else's computer so I'm going to bounce off now. (He just sat down next to me.) Later, gators.

Provincetown

I'm taking a week in Provincetown, Cape Cod. This is the gayest vacation I have ever taken.

I and five gay friends have taken a house in the city. This trip is a welcome and refreshing change from the many times I've been to "Rehoboth" in the past. I put "Rehoboth" in quotes because the last many times I've been to Rehoboth, it's been with straight girlfriends and we end up in Dewey Beach amongst the frat boys and their bustily gifted counterparts. For once I am at a "gay beach" area where I can happily go out to gay bars and meet gay boys and even, if everything goes well, exchange numbers or something. I have not been given any opportunity to meet a gay person in Rehoboth in years.

It's beautiful up here. More posting later.

Straight People Live in Filth Too.

I ordered DVR service recently. Yay! It's on some kind of promotion, so paradoxically, this upgrade is actually going to cost me less for the next year than the service I previously had.

After an aborted attempt to meet with the technician on Friday, I rescheduled her to meet me in my apartment today. Just now, in fact. She just left.

She was a trip. And my apartment is, as I have said before, absolutely inexcusable.

"Come in," I told her, holding the door open for her. "Pardon the mess."

"No problem," she says as she makes her way to the living room. She was an affable, polite woman, friendly and just the right amount of gregarious.

Eventually, it apparently got to her. "What happened here?" She glanced around at the random piles of dust and crap scattered variously across the floor. Thankfully she noticed neither the rat traps laid out by the central air grate (that's a whole separate blog post right there) nor the gay porn lying around near my television.

"Uh... you know what, I can't even explain it."

"What, your girlfriend move out or something?" She smiled.

I laughed, the same way I always do when someone mistakens me for being straight. Then I started stammering. "Moved... it's... let's just say things in the apartment have not been going well for a little while now."

"Men, I tell ya," she throws out. I laugh again.

After having set up my DVR, she tells me she's also taking my cable modem and replacing it with a wireless cable modem. (I hadn't even realized that this was part of the upgrade plan I purchased. I really just wanted the DVR.) I am typing this from a wireless connection now -- yay for me, because somehow I could never get a wireless to work when I had the actual cable modem. That woman performed miracles. Now I can surf from my bedroom!

"So," I ask her, "it's secure, right?"

"Yes," she tells me. "Your password is XXXXXXXXX."

"But I don't need to type in that password every time I log in, right? I just have to turn on the machine and it'll find the connection, right?"

"Yep," she says again. "Now if you're girlfriend were to come over though..."

"No girlfriend is going to come over..." I start.

"If your girlfriend is coming over," she repeats with a sly smile on her face, "she'll need your password to connect to the wireless."

I let it slide again. "Thanks."

I debated the thought of coming out to her ("No girlfriend will ever come over, but maybe a boyfriend or two") but didn't think it was really going to worth the effort. So I just let it go, and let her believe that at some point a girlfriend may come over and try to connect to my wireless internet.

On her way out, she asked just how I slept (the bedroom's a mess too). "Very badly," I told her. I presume she thinks it's because I'm lonely without my girlfriend next to me anymore.

Would It Be Rude of Me?...

So my birthday was a few weeks ago. Usually I don't make a big deal of it, as I don't really care for being the center of attention, and I feel this strange sense of modesty from receiving gifts. So usually I just let it subtly slip by, people don't give me anything or usually remember my birthday, then I silently sulk in my personal self-created prison that no one remembered. Usually small sets of friends do remember, though, and that's sweet and kind of good enough for me.

This morning, some friends took me out for brunch as a belated birthday treat, seeing as we were all quite busy around the time of my real birthday. They also presented me with quite a handsome gift, too -- a rather nice leather briefcase from Kenneth Cole Reaction. (Retail price, $200, though I'm certain they got it on some kind of sale.) I thanked everyone for the gift once I opened it, then we proceeded to dine, then eventually got back (gift in tow) and relaxed for the afternoon.

Just now, I got the following text message:

"Uh, thanks for the thank you email for your birthday gift."

Wow. I think I was kind of floored. I've never actually been called out for failing to send out a thank-you email before. Especially less than TWO HOURS after receiving the gift itself.

So I tried to feign stupidity, by responding:

"Huh?"

I really don't know what I expected to result from that particular response, but here's what I actually did get:

"Send Joe and Bob a thank you email for gift."

At least, I suppose, the sender didn't demand a thank-you note for himself. (The three of them chipped in for the item.) But I was still flabbergasted. I truthfully responded:

"Uh, does it have to be an email? Because I was planning on writing out a note-note tomorrow."

Okay, see what I intended? Pretty much I intended to convey the message that I know enough to thank people when they give me a gift, and (hopefully) that the subtext of the message would have included that it's fucking rude to call someone out for not sending out a thank-you.

He responded:

"Perfect."

Uh, what a bitch.

I'm tempted to respond with the following which references a factually accurate circumstance:

"So, uh, when can I expect a thank-you note for the gift I got you for your birthday three weeks ago?"

Would that be bitchy? Unfortunately, I suppose Miss Manners would frown on that particular response.

Pearl

Oh my God, this little girl is just too freaking adorable for words. I know I posted "The Landlord" before, but she's back!

If I Had a Camera I'd've Taken a Pic of You

An open letter.

Dear Random Tourist Guy:

I know you're visiting our fair city, and I'm glad for it. Really, I'm trying really hard to like tourists, because I recognize how much you non-residents contribute to the economy in this city. And it's necessary that way. And, well, this is the nation's capital, so it does attract a fair number of people for nice little visits.

I do, however, only have one question for you. You look pretty young, so I don't think you even know what it used to feel like when the only option you had for photography on vacations was large and clunky. My parents had this really big Nikon when I was growing up. It had 35 mm film. It was huge. The only way to carry it around if you wanted to sightsee and take photographs was to pop a strap on it (hehehe -- I said "strap on") and wear it around you neck.


This is not the guy I'm referring to. At least he has a big... camera.


You, however, are young. You're (comparatively) hip (I suppose). You have a digital camera. And your digital camera is something like 4" x 3" x 1.5" or something like that. It's tiny.

So why the hell would you wear something that small around your neck?

Dude, it's that small so you can shove the damn thing in your pocket. You look like a fucking moron.

Thank you.

Resign.

[Via]

It's a shame his last few words got cut off. And it's a damn shame it took this long for us to get this fed up. But I do love this video.

Power Up

I thought I'd share the following funny conversation I had with a friend of mine tonight.

Backdrop: I was visiting my friend and wanted to hop on to his computer, a laptop, for a bit. I kept hitting the power button, but it would only do a half-boot before sputtering and dying on me.

Me: Dude, I think your computer needs to be plugged in. Like, it needs a charge.
Him: Just hit the space bar. It'll start up.
Me: [hits the space bar, knowing full well it won't start up] Uh, no.
Him: Then press the power button. It's probably off.
Me: Uh, I've hit the power button twice now. It starts the startup process but then goes poof halfway through.
Him: Oh. Then I guess it needs to be plugged in.
Me: Uh, just where did this conversation begin again?

Yeah, some of my friends are complete idiots.

Another Year

It's my birthday today.

I should have taken the day off from work. It's a dreary day in the office already. Couple that with the fact that it's quite pretty outside, and my thoughts are not with me here in the office. On my birthday.

My birthday kind of stinks because it always falls two days before a major national holiday -- a major national holiday on which most of the rest of the country (or at least my friends nearby) usually decides to take off and hit the beach. So either no one remembers, or no one is around to hang out with me. Over the years, I've really come to not really care about my birthday that way anyway.

So instead, I spent a bit of time reflecting on the past 365 days. Unfortunately, my memory isn't that good, so really only the huge highlights pop up. I realize that I have an amazing corps of friends now, possibly better than any set of friends I've had before in my life, even though I've only known some of these people for less than a year. I know my older group of friends is still a great bunch, even if they have their substantial annoying quirks about them. And I've come to a still greater self-realization me in the context of a dating life.

I'm proud to say that I've passed my "early 30s" and have hit my "mid 30s" and I am in no way ashamed of the number. Every single year that passes grants me more wisdom and life experience which I would trade for no other.

I'm living a great life. I'm embracing it. I'm embracing me.

I'm getting ridiculously self-helpy so I'll stop now.

Happy birthday to me!