Girl and City

“You should see the way the girls in New York swarm around the geezers once they find out they’re bankers,” I said in between mouthfuls of fried rice. “It’s disgusting. They’re old!”
My lunch companion laughed. “But from the bankers’ perspective, it’s their only hope. I mean when else are they going to get any action?” GSB said. “Their hours are too long for them to have any kind of real relationship.”
“Why even bother having a relationship? Did you read that quote on Overheard at The Business School? ‘I don’t understand why people have relationships in The Business School. It’s like an extra-curricular you can’t put on your resume.’ It’s exactly like that.”
“So they don’t have relationships. They just have a few girls on their speed-dial that they can call. Call-girls,” he said earnestly.
“Are you being serious?” I could never be sure when discussing the banker lifestyle with a banker, since he would be joining their ranks in a few short months.
“Yeah. Well a lot of times when they have an event or when they go out, they don’t want to be embarrassed by not having a girlfriend. So they have a few regular girls that they call upon.”
I made a face of disgust. “Too bad it doesn’t work the other way around.”
“Why not? You could have call-boys. Just tell them how much you make,” he said, this time I was sure he was joking.
“And what, offer to pay them to be my boyfriend for the night, weekend, whatever?”
He laughed, “Yeah I guess it doesn’t work as well for girls.”
“The attraction of money and success doesn’t work in the other direction. Girls will be all over a successful, wealthy man, but guys aren’t the same,” I said, with a hint of bitterness. “Plus, it’s even harder for consultants than bankers, we’re on the move all the time.”
“That’s true. So you could have a call-boy in every city, however long you’re there.”
“I’ve already started collecting names,” I said, giving him a wink. If GSB played his cards right, he could be on my list. After all, he was going to be in Hong Kong. That’s just a short hop from Singapore.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I met a guy at a conference. GS Japan. If I have a project in Tokyo, I’m thinking we could hook up.”
GSB shook his head in disbelief. “You are something.”

I seem to amaze people, although I am at a loss for why. Maybe they just don’t see it coming – you know, innocent little me, planning to have boytoys in every major city in Asia? Or any other scheme I come up with, really.

Later that day…

“Let’s meet in the morning on Sunday and spend as long as we need to to get through these cases.”
“9am?” Someone suggested. “That’s when we normally have class anyway.”
“I don’t think I can make it for 9. How about 10?” I piped up.
“Why? Do you have plans in the morning?”
“Well… sort of,” I said sheepishly. My teammates looked at me, waiting for me to continue. Finally, I said, “I have to make breakfast. You know, weekend breakfasts are pretty elaborate, they take time.”
Everyone burst into laughter. Then, when they realized I was being serious, they stared at me incredulously. “Your plans… are to make breakfast?”
“Well, normally I can eat breakfast on the go. But on weekends, I usually make a big breakfast – you know, scrambled eggs, pancakes… it takes time.”
Now they were looking at me like I was an alien. What? Was I so crazy to want to make myself a good breakfast once a week?
GSB finally chuckled and shook his head. “You are…” he trailed off, at a loss for words.
As the rest of my group begrudgingly agreed to meet at 10, I smiled smugly. Maybe I was “something” but I was going to have a big yummy breakfast on Sunday morning, and that’s all that mattered.

Classes have started, although that is not as ominous as it sounds. Last semester, I had to take a couple mandatory courses that were dreadfully boring, but this semester is all electives. So in order to pick ones that I will actually enjoy (it is my last opportunity to get a bang for my buck tuition-wise), I registered myself in eight courses even though I am only allowed five. So after I went to the first class of each, I had to cut three. The result? I have an excellent schedule and some very interesting classes.

One of my classes is called “Global Strategy,” taught by a Taiwanese professor with a very thick Chinese accent. Half the time, I can’t understand what he’s saying, and I’m Chinese! It doesn’t help that listening to him speak makes me want to laugh. I can’t even hold it in, it’s that bad. His accent is so classically Asian, he can’t pronounce ses for the life of him, and he kind of makes up his own sounds when he doesn’t know exactly how something is pronounced. Like “strategy” comes out sounding like “training” – I mean, how do you even do that?
But even without the accent, he is a very amusing professor. In our first class, he was trying to convince us of the necessity of this class by showing us the extent of globalization (foreigners invading our home environment even if we don’t have any intention to go abroad).
“You wake up in the morning, you put on your underwear, made in China. You put on your jeans, made in Bangladesh. You put on your t-shirt, made in Pakistan. You drive to school in your car made in Japan. You buy a coffee, imported from Columbia. And then you get to class and you realize, your professor is imported from Taiwan!” (Imagine this whole monologue with a thick Chinese accent, the kind that Russel Peters imitates.)

Anyway, other than school, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get things back on track with PLB. I knew a month-long break at the start of a (potential) relationship would be hazardous, and I was completely right.
Actually, it’s more my fault that his. Ever since we came back from the holidays, I have been really awkward around him. It’s not like I want to be, but I just get really nervous around him, because now we are both fairly aware that we like each other¹. He was in my first class when I came back, and I didn’t prepare myself at all for that, so I barely acknowledged him there and left right after class. The second morning (we had the same class again), he did come over to talk to me, but I wasn’t really helping the conversation and avoided his eyes the whole time. The same sort of thing happened over and over again as we ran into each other over the next few days; I would be too nervous to flirt or say something remotely interesting, even if I told myself not to freeze up.
I was hopeless, and my awkwardness was going to ruin this!

Last night, I decided to try to redeem myself. I was going to Zee’s going-away party², and afterward, DG and I were going to The Club (the club that The Business School students go to every Thursday night). He was going to be there, that much I knew. So I drank, a little bit more and a little bit faster than normal, at the going-away party, so I was sufficiently drunk (but not sloppy) by the time we got to The Club. He was one of the first people we ran into, but it was in passing so I didn’t get to talk to him. The rest of the night I spent switching between the dance floor and the table where he was sitting. But every time I went to their table, some guy I knew would spot me and come over to talk to me. Many of them were my classmates from last year, so we’d always be very excited to see each other (one guy even picked me up and twirled me around – he’s really strong). I don’t know how it looked to PLB, that every time I sat down, a new guy would come to the table. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the jealousy card was a viable strategy for me at that point. In between guys, I tried to have a conversation with him, but it was hard with the loud music. I did find it more easy to talk to him, and flirt, now that I had lost my nervousness. But still, he did not make a move.

DG got frustrated and decided that I needed to redeem my self-respect, so she dragged me away from him for nearly an hour. When we went to the washroom, we ran into him at coat-check. He was leaving?!
I waited outside the washroom for DG so that he would have an opportunity to talk to me. He did come over, explaining how he had an interview the next day so he didn’t want to party too hard tonight. Understandable, but I was still disappointed. We hugged a couple times, but he seemed no more interested in me than any other guy I’d seen that night.

DG was more upset that PLB left than I was. “What the hell is wrong with him?” She shouted, a little too loudly. A guy nearby overheard us and said, “Forget him. I would never ditch a girl like you.” I rolled my eyes as a signal for him to move on³. Why was it that, today of all days, when the last thing I felt like was hooking up with a random guy, guys would hit on me so aggressively? Even the cab driver had offered to go out with me to “make that guy jealous.” (Yeah, I was pretty creeped out. I mean, obviously cab drivers eavesdrop, but isn’t it a cardinal rule to pretend not to be able to hear the passengers? Much less getting yourself involved and hitting on a girl at least ten years your junior?)
“Come on, let’s go get you a guy,” DG said as she dragged me to the dance floor.
“But I don’t want a guy,” I whined, although I didn’t think she heard me.

In the end, DG found a guy, and I went home alone. Am I really that pathetic? I guess I am.

1. God, I hope so. Because if I’m just making things up in my head again, I am going to feel like a huge fool. [↩]
2. She’s going to Australia for medical school at the end of the week. [↩]
3. Later, that guy found me on the dance floor and I literally had to push him away and tell him, “I don’t want to dance with you!” before he got the message. [↩]

That I’m a little bit boy-crazy (I blame my hormones) is no big secret.
Or is it?

In my head, and sometimes on my blog, I am a little Lady Gaga over boys.
But in real life, I am a stoic mask of indifference. Sort of. I’ve learned to wear my heart on my chest and not on my sleeve. I take love too seriously and am excruciatingly picky when it comes to finding a mate. It’s my own brand of cowardice.

Nonetheless, I will be the first to admit that I cannot live without boys. Because I hate love them.

• I hate love how they offer you items of clothing to warm you up, and hold your extra items of clothing to cool you off.
• I hate love how they anticipate these needs, like when I was getting in the car the other day, and the boy in the passenger seat gave me his gloves because I didn’t have any and the steering wheel was freezing.
• I hate love the incessant teasing, like how every boy I have ever dated teased me because they found my irritation endlessly amusing.
• I hate love how they pretend not to like the girly stuff you rope them into, but secretly they don’t mind that much.
• I hate love how embarrassed they get when their friends make fun of them for being “whipped.” But they don’t deny it, because it’s true.
• I hate love how they fret about your safety, as if you’d be in danger just because they’re not around. Like when my ex-boyfriend used to tsk at my stories of walking around The City alone at night, and making me promise to be careful.
• I hate love how, when ordering in a restaurant, they let you decide what you want first. And if you can’t make up your mind between two things, they’ll offer to order whichever one you don’t order, so that you get to try both.
• I hate love the way it feels when a boy wants you to be his.

I hate love that I love boys.

This is a post by the lovely imerika. She is one of the most refreshingly honest bloggers I’ve ever followed, and am thrilled that she agreed to write a blog post for me. Enjoy!

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My boss told me he is heading toward a divorce.

Where is the hope?

I don’t understand. My boss is AWESOME. Seriously, best boss I’ve ever had. He’s a cool guy. I know I don’t know everything, but what I ask myself is: where is the hope?

Is there anything left to hope for? Another story, another separation, another divorce. It’s not even surprising anymore, but it’s always heartbreaking.

When someone tells you they’re divorcing, your reaction is no longer “how could that possibly be?” but rather “there goes another one….”

Is there even reason for me to hope anymore?

Please, married people, give us single people some hope here. I’m out here in the dating jungle, and I’m trekking through murky waters and turning away perfectly good prospects because I keep hoping that just around the river bend there’ll be some guy that I’ll actually want to marry and not just settle for.

I don’t want to end up in divorce. It’s one of my biggest fears. Which helps explain why I’m so commitment-phobic–what if I make the wrong choice? My parents have been married 25 years, my grandparents 50 years…It’s a lot to live up to. It hasn’t always been easy for them. There were times, I remember, when my mom was thisclose to separating from my dad. But they held on, they struggled through together because isn’t that what marriage is about?

It’s not about being happy all the time. It’s about going through the ups and the downs, sacrificing through those bad times because in the end, the end result is knowing that you’ve stuck through it all together. But at what price?

Why do I value marriage so highly? Why do I believe in till-death-do-us-part? I don’t believe in happily ever afters, it’s ridiculous to believe that you’ll always be happy every day of every month. But I believe in marriage, so very much so. I don’t know why, but I do. I want to believe that there’s something greater out there, that sharing my life with someone, going through all the ups and the downs of life together gives me something to root for.

I want a family, I want a husband, and I want to be a mom and I want to love. Am I fool for still believing in marriage?

This is a guest post by the lovely gem. I have loved every single one of her entries since I discovered her blog and asked her to write a guest entry for me. I love her wit and sarcasm, I hope you do too! I also wrote a guest entry for her: The Truth about Men and Women.

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To introduce myself shortly, online I go by gem, in real life I live in New York City. I have also been single my entire life. So I’m going
to talk about validating men, something that I fail at miserably and which is one of the main reasons for my constantly single status. The most recent example of my failure to validate a man is with my newest paramour, whom I met almost two months ago. I’ve seen him once or twice a week since then, he’s nice, he likes me, I like him, etc. However, when it comes to actually showing him that I like him, I end up unintentionally coming off like a total jerk. Always. This past weekend was a prime example of this…

We’d just spent hours being absurdly cuddly and discussing silly little things in our life. It secretly made me a little nauseous, but the outward happiness was real too. (It’s a paradox, but it’s true.) And then suddenly we noticed how long we’d been lying around for and he realized he had to leave. He asked what I was doing for the day and I mentioned that I was hanging out with my friend and her Italian friend who was visiting her. I concentrated on how I’d be with the Italian, with his cute broken English and his wild Italian hair. My paramour watched me as I talked about this Italian guy, and his response was a simple, “Don’t hook up with the Italian.”

I just smiled at his advice, and moved on to my plans for after that, how I’d been invited to a few parties, none of which I particularly needed or wanted to go to. And he quickly invited me to a party he was going to that night, as any nice paramour would do. But before he’d even finished I said a curt, “No.” And without looking at him, I rambled that I’d told all the parties I was going to go, so I had to at least go to one of them… even if I didn’t really want to. He concentrated on the fact that I didn’t actually want to go to any of the parties and obviously I couldn’t go to all of them, so I might as well just go with him! Didn’t I want to go with him?

I didn’t go with him.

Now, I understand the Italian thing a little. Keep him on his toes, blah blah blah. However, I definitely should have gone with him to the party. I wanted to, even! But… well, once I start meeting more of his friends and he meets mine, then, if we stop spending time together, we have to explain it. I don’t want to explain where he went and I don’t want him talking about me after we’re done. I want our relationship to exist in a bubble and if it pops, I want that pop to have zero effect on anything else in our lives! Slash I am an idiot who lets her fears force her into making poor decisions when it comes to men. Because what if the bubble never pops? Why jump to the negative conclusion instead of hoping for the best and just doing what I know will make me happiest in the moment… Which is why my new plan is to validate him and our relationship from now on and say yes when he wants me to say yes!

Except this weekend. I sort of have a really busy schedule with some old friends and a friend who just moved back to town. And then I’m going out of town for the holidays… so basically I’m not seeing him for awhile and by the time I get back he’ll have forgotten me. Oh well, good thing I kept the bubble small!