Sexless in the City


Sometimes reading romance novels doesn’t quite prepare you for a love life...

For this 30-year-old urbanite, love is always a misadventure: The Harvard Lickwit, Hippie the Groper, the 5% Man, and the Ad Weasel. These and many other men wander in and out of her life — but never her bed.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Further flashes of adventure

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This may have to be yet another abbreviated entry, unfortunately, as I didn’t get home till 4 a.m. last night, and leave in less than two hours to claim my ticket for tonight’s historic session. For an unemployed girl who’s never been involved in politics, I have to say I’m doing pretty well.

Last night, for example, I got 10 minutes to borrow a North Carolina delegate’s pass so I could go down to the floor. Since he had tried so hard earlier in the evening to get me onto the floor, I used the time to sit next to my friend from Arizona. Ten minutes down there and I get my face on NBC for a Zell Miller reaction shot (the bespectacled brunette with flashy round necklace, if you watched that channel). Not only that, but the Arizona friend introduces me to some balding, older Brooklynite who almost immediately gives me a ticket to the post-session Pataki party at Copacabana! (That’s one more for the Bad Girl’s Scrappy Book.)

A wardrobe malfunction?
So far no one has said anything about me flashing the world on prime-time TV. You see, I have this problem with shirts (and one dress) sometimes that the second button down comes undone when I’m not looking. And I was wearing one of those shirts last night. As far as I know the button mishap didn’t occur till after I’d returned from the floor, but there’s always the chance that’s the real reason I made a good reaction shot: Republican gets so excited she’s busting out of her shirt! Luckily the married Politician didn’t seem to notice either when I covertly rebuttoned my shirt. Damn buttons. I also broke one on my pants when I was sitting on the steps last night.

Still, historically speaking, that’s small potatoes. By far the worst button drama with these traitorous garments occurred at church one Sunday a while back. It was actually a crazy morning on which I was trying to avoid Stalker #2 and found myself unexpectedly rescued by conversation with the Captain. I was wearing the cute striped dress from H&M I wore to Ad Weasel’s second Christmas party. The dress is great — but also prone to come undone. And not long after my chit-chat with the Captain ended, I discovered fabric gape-age once again. IMing on this later with my sister, I worried, “Do you think this happened when I was talking with him?!”

Her reply was a quite-reassuring no:
He would have ONLY looked at your boobs rather than occasionally glancing up at you as he normally does.
Not having noticed such one-dimensional focus that day, I can only assume she’s right.

Nothing like taking a walk on the wild side
But back to the convention. When the speeches were over, I broke with my North Carolina benefactors and walked the four blocks west for Pataki’s big shindig. While in line I found myself chatted up by a Bill Murray look-alike (henceforth, “Bill Murky”) who was declaring me his “muse” within alarmingly short order. He maintained a steady stream of conversation about his involvement with some political group that bestows good fortune on Republican candidates and “owns their own building,” while also describing a mysterious book project he’s developing about treason and treachery in South America. He kept describing his fears about the “dangers” of the project, but was apparently inspired by me to pursue it nonetheless.

And inspired to pursue me
This guy glommed onto me like bugs attracted to a lamp (I’ve become an expert on such phenomena, given the ongoing fruit-fly problem in my apartment; sigh). It’s not like it was a bad thing, but for a while there was no opportunity to make a graceful escape back to working the party solo.

But luckily our first stop inside was enjoying the buffet selection downstairs. Quite an amazing spread. We ended up sharing a table with two affable New York cops, who were at the party because of their membership on the PBA board. At first they just talked about their experiences with the force, and one guy’s month of volunteering at the ’96 Olympics. But when Bill Murky left on what became a more-than 20-minute drink mission, the cops and I bonded over my various adventures at the convention. The Italian one really had some crazy stories, but I don’t have time to repeat them all here.

Bill Murky finally returned with news that water was unavailable from the bar. I downed my whiskey-ginger in fairly short order and announced plans to move upstairs to the dance floor when a disco song started playing. At that the table rose with me to a man and said they were all planning to go up there too.

Once we reached the dance floor, Italian cop grabbed my hand and led me out to join the salsa-dancers. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m happily married and have a 9-month-old son.” Since Politician today referred to me as “Darlin’” while calling to announce my ticket for tonight, I was grateful for the clarification.

And as it turned out, dancing with me was just the thing to eventually move us away from Bill Murky. The cops were great, in fact. And unlike Murky, they kept telling me that if I ever spotted a hot guy, to just give ’em the signal and they’d be gone. But I wasn’t there to get lucky. Just being there was luck enough itself. And I think we were safeties all around — me because I helped to keep them occupied while staying faithful to their wives (Shaved-head Cop get lamenting his weakness for Spanish women and moaning, “I’m trying to be a good boy”), they because I didn’t have to deal with political lotharios.

I think I can manage one more side-hug for Politician tonight, and I should be good. Well, good that is, except for the problem of dealing with Bill Murky. He’s attempted to make contact with me three times so far. Once via email, and twice via posts to my other blog (sigh). I think I’ll make him wait at least a day... Here’s hoping I don’t have to rename him “Stalker #3” :-o.

By-the-Buy

Bad Girl's Scrappy Book
Bad Girl's Scrappy Book