Live, from the Bell Jar

Looks like I’m going to have to go out and read me some Sylvia Plath, seeing as how I’ve just been voted her soul sister. I was thinking to myself, wow, cool, I’ve won something! Then I surfed on over to the category descriptions. Ouch. Thanks, I think. Well — I’ll just try to keep a good sense of humor about the whole thing. And congratulations to all the other award recipients!

Neurotic and self-obsessed little drama queen that I am, I’ll move on and describe my weekend.

First of all, I had absolutely no sex with Wes last night.

That’s not particularly unusual. On most nights I have absolutely no sex with Wes. But last night I actually hung out with Wes, and hanging-out-with-Wes always leads to hooking-up-with-Wes. Except for last night.

Because I have a three-day weekend, I was going to go to Splash last night. But one friend came down with “stomach issues,” and then I realized I was all barred-and-clubbed out after two nights in a row at Barracuda, so I decided not to go. Then I ran into Wes online. We hadn’t seen each other in about two months, so he suggested we go out to Uncle Joe’s, Jersey City’s neighborhood gay bar. I’d never been there, so I decided, sure.

Pretty empty. Brightly colored walls with framed abstract paintings. Pool table. Jukebox. It was bring-your-own-vinyl-records night, so some random guy was spinning these random trance-like records for an audience of three. We played pool and had some drinks and talked for a couple of hours. More people trickled in. He started to yawn. He was tired and he mentioned heading home to “sleep like a baby.” So we left. Walked back to our neighborhood. Got to his apartment first. I managed to invite myself upstairs so I could reclaim a videotape (ahem) he’d borrowed from me a couple of months ago. I got my tape, but no sex. He gave me a quick smooch and we said our goodnights. Oh well.

But even if there was no sex, it was nice to hang out with him, as it usually is.

Perhaps this is God’s form of punishment. You wanna have less sex? Fine. How about I give you no sex at all? Ha! How do you like them apples?

Those apples are okay, but could I have some meaningful sex to go with them?

The rest of my weekend has been nice. On Saturday night I went to Barracuda with a friend, and we enjoyed all the nice scenery. It was productive in that I actually managed to talk to some of the scenery, which I’m usually too petrified to do.

See, my friend and I watched one guy introduce himself to another guy. Then we watched them talk for about an hour. Then we watched the second guy go off to another part of the bar by himself. I thought the first guy looked a little bit cute. Then we watched a wacky hunched old man with a fedora go up to him. He was making it clear he wasn’t interested — mostly by looking away, nodding half-heartedly to the old man’s muttered comments, and so forth. I figured this was my chance to intervene and rescue him, so I walked past him and we made eye contact and said hi. But I stupidly walked on without stopping.

Fortunately, the old man left him alone — and a few minutes later, after several deep breaths and some contradictory thoughts, I went over to him and said hi and smiled.

“Sorry about my lame attempt to rescue you from that old guy,” I said.

“Oh, that’s okay,” he said.

We talked for about 20 minutes. A university librarian who just moved to New York. Nice guy. I wasn’t particularly into him, though. Eventually I smiled, said “well, it was nice talking with you,” and excused myself.

I was proud of myself for talking with the guy. Because my problem isn’t conversing. My problem is actually going up to the guy in the first place. It’s nearly impossible for me. But I did it. Hooray!

As for this week, I’ve got two second dates, starting today. Should be nice.

Well — one neurotic and self-obsessed little drama queen, over and out.