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.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

‘Bodyguards,’ buns, and booze

All right, dahlings, sorry I’ve been on such extended hiatus from real blogging! Crazy times, these last two weeks have been. Sometimes I feel like my brain’s been thrown inside a blender. Not the kind with sharp, cutting blades though, mind you; more like the soft-edged “dough blades” that just toss everything around a lot. Whew!

Thank God I’m still on the no-dating bandwagon due to the ongoing absence of my purity ring. I don’t think I’d even have time to be thinking about men.

Except for now and then. ;) Take Friday for instance. Shortly before midnight my phone gave a beep, indicating a text message. And who was it from?! Hippie the Groper! Apparently he was amidst some sort of blizzard ... but still had time to wish me happy new year! It’s things like that that fairly warm the cockles of my increasingly shriveled little heart (fans self briefly).

Maybe God is my bouncer...
Why shriveled, you ask? Well from disuse you see, readers! For I’ve begun, in recent months, a somewhat radical campaign of praying that God would guard my heart. Not for me, any longer, the dashing out and pinning of pink paper hearts (secretly attached by super-strong string, of course, to my own, real, throbbing one) to the backs of hapless young men who catch my fancy. Oh no.

I’ve decided my heart needs a special bodyguard. A heartguard, if you will. And since God is clearly the best man for the job, I’ve decided to ask Him - regularly - to provide a little heart security. Keep those paper hearts hidden away where they belong until some fellow gives me one of his own to start things off. Of course I’m very doubtful any such lad who is actually upstanding, blond, hot and a Jesus-loving closet nerd (perhaps I need to look at younger men?) either exists or would be inclined to do so ... but that’s another problem.

And maybe that problem stems, in fact, from the cynicism built up after so many times having my real heart jerked around and torn up from the strings attached to all those paper hearts, yanked about and finally left in the mud by all the chaps I was hapless enough to fix on. I don’t want cynicism, and I don’t want careless love either ... hence the heartguard program.

Coffee shops the hot, new pick-up joint?
Which means that probably this blog will devolve into an occasional reportage of things like my random TM from Hippie ... and the even-more-random coffee klatsch that transpired this morning with Yet Another Old Dude (Yaod! for short). I swear, collecting these guys is easier than buying up second-hand Britney Spears singles at the used CD shop! And somehow it always happens under some vaguely job-related guise of “potential business” transactions - in which I am always a very significant, highly esteemed player. Blah, blah, blah ...

Then on the other end of things we have the greenhorn Starbucks guy who chatted me up New Year’s Eve. Come to think of it ... between that chat and today’s, the coffee shop might be my West Coast place to meet men. Except they need to be Christians. Maybe I should track down fish-adorned coffee shops? Hmmmmm.

Of buns, not quite hot or cross
But back to the coffee dude. He was brown-haired and pony-tailed and young-looking, but cheerfully entered into banter when I asked about a pastry in the display case. “Is that a ‘morning bun’?” I asked skeptically, peering at the sign. It looked more like a muffin-shaped cinnamon roll to me. “Not an evening bun,” he confirmed. Why is it, I wonder, that “cinnamon bun” is so much more fun to say than cinnamon roll?!! I got to the point: “Is it dry?”

He peered at it reflectively, pronounced a moist state unlikely, then offered me a sample to assess. I watched him pull the pastry from the shelf, wondering how exactly the “sample” bit would work. Pastry housed in paper, he handed it to me to tear off a bite. I chewed a little, made pensive (although not deliberately cute) faces, and pronounced it “passable.” At this he declared it mine at no charge.

We continued chit-chat over the latte transaction, discussing our non-existent and unexciting plans for the big evening. I said I was from New York, he mentioned he was from New Jersey. Then I went over to wait for my drink, where a weary-looking middle-aged woman was dumping out shot after shot of coffee grounds, I realized, and shaking her head at the watery stream emitted by the machine. “Sorry to have such a complicated drink,” (a grande, half-caf, breve latte) I apologized. But this was not the trouble, she explained. The trouble did, however, provide the Jersey boy an opening to wander over and hopefully joke how I might spend the New Year’s at Starbucks. I made out to be a lush, decrying the absence of actual booze among their servings.

He commiserated, the espresso machine relented, and I was on my way to a purse-smacking cross-walk jaunt to the car (a car speeding left in the rain apparently did not see me there and just missed knocking me over though its mirror hit my bag). Guess God sometimes extends His reach beyond mere heart-guarding since I have not had health insurance since the end of May.

Blog Reader World Series and Contest update
But since I must also guard against ending up on the streets as I have now claimed the final moneys in my unemployment fund, must return to job-applications. Back with a new photo for the final “December” contest soon! Oh and congratulations to new-reader Courtney. With entries only from her and Frasier, I must declare her week-3 contest caption the winner: “Anna discovers a new way to pick up men.” Nicely done, Courtney. Frasier and Poster Boy would remain at 4-3 except that I’ve decided to add in a comment-love category just to see if it’s even worth a final round. It is. During the last 14 weeks of 2004, Poster Boy averaged 2.36 comments per week (based on a total 33) to Frasier’s 1.93 per week (based on a total 27). Gentlemen, you’re tied at 4-4 as we prepare to enter the final round. Unless you’ve better ideas than beer, that’s what the winner of you will get.