I know, I know, I just came back from Europe and I’m traveling again? Well, yes. On what money? Haven’t figured that out yet.

I’m going to Nanjing first, to see my grandma and close relatives. Then I’m going to Shanghai for a week with WAF. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’ll know how excited I was to book our hotel in Shanghai, because it’s in a super good location and it was also super cheap – only $180 CAD for four nights! Ridiculous, I know. This is why I love traveling in China, it makes me feel rich even when I have never felt poorer¹.
WAF is excited to go clubbing in Shanghai, and frankly I am too, because I’ve never been to Shanghai without my parents/relatives. I’m sure it’ll be a very different experience to go with a friend, as adults, than my childhood visits. I’m a little anxious though, given WAF‘s track-record on going out. I tried to talk to her about some ground rules for our own protection, but I don’t think I’ll be able to control her. She told me flat out that she is looking to get laid, but what am I going to do if she leaves me alone in the club and goes home with some guy? And how am I going to make sure the guy returns her to me the next morning, alive and relatively unscathed? I am never as trusting around strangers when I’m traveling, especially when I don’t have male companions, but WAF is like a (drunken) train wreck with Daddy Issues stamped on her forehead, just asking for trouble. Luckily we’re only in Shanghai for four days so that limits the number of guys she can sleep with amount of mischief she can get up to.

From Shanghai, we’ll be flying to Hong Kong together, and I’ll be staying with FBB. FBB is the guy I am supposed to marry. My parents and his parents arranged our marriage when I was born (I know, what century are we living in, right?). I have never met him, although I’ve met his parents a few times and I like them. So maybe I will like him too, who knows?

FBB and I have exchanged emails from time to time since he’s an investment banker and I was going through recruiting and I had a lot of questions for him and his kind (before I settled on consulting). We have not talked about our parents’ ridiculous marriage arrangement though; I don’t think either of us take it seriously. And if we don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t be real. Right?

Originally, I was only going to Hong Kong because NB was getting an apartment there (he starts work there next month) and said I’d be welcome to crash at his place any time. But when I actually confirmed the dates with him to book my ticket, NB withdrew his invitation because his girlfriend would also be staying with him at that time. I was pretty bummed until… I remembered FBB had also offered, a year ago, accommodation should I ever go to Hong Kong. But it has been so long and I didn’t know if he was serious or just being polite. Well, he was surprisingly eager to host me when I mentioned I wanted to go to Hong Kong in August, and long story short, I will be spending a week in Hong Kong in the apartment of my potential future husband.

Arranged marriages can be useful after all.

1. This is the first time in four years that I don’t have an income, and my bank account has been so depleted after Europe.

I had a conference in The City the last few days. In order not to miss class, I went to an 8:00AM class on Thursday morning, then got on the train for The City. On the train, I ran into a classmate who was also heading into The City for interviews (it’s summer recruiting season for him). I had wanted to sleep on the train, but no luck. Instead, he spent two hours running his mouth off about all the interviews he had¹. When I got off the train, I wanted to take a taxi to the hotel, because I didn’t want to walk the two blocks with my luggage. Yeah, I was tired and lazy. But the taxi driver wouldn’t take me! He said it was too close, I should just walk. So he literally dumped me on the sidewalk.

By the time I arrived at the hotel, the cocktail reception had already started. I checked into my room to realize that I had roommates. Three roommates, no less. Was this a joke?
When I realized the conference organizers weren’t joking, that I was expected to share a bed with a complete stranger, I was not amused. Two of my roommates were in first year, and my bed-mate was in fourth year. They were all from the commerce program of The Other University.
I quickly staked my claim by unpacking my stuff over as much area as possible (their shit seemed to have exploded all over the hotel room and bathroom counter – although I should have expected that when I realized there were going to be four girls sharing one very small bathroom), and changed into a business casual dress for the reception.

At the reception, I realized that of the 100 delegates, about 15 were external delegates (including myself). That means that only 15 people were from another university, and the rest of the 85 people were from The Other University. The Other University and The Business School are rivals, so I tried to avoid the question, “So what school are you from?” lest the mob descend on me on the first night.
It got worse. I also realized that most of the delegates were first and second year students. I was probably one of four upper-year students.
Let me explain the gravity of the situation. I was in enemy territory, surrounded by nearly 100 people who did not go to my school and did not like my school. I was also surrounded by nearly 100 people who were barely of age and were running around asking for fake IDs so they could go to the evening bar festivities. They were so naive that they had no idea what the difference between finance, accounting, and consulting were, and was under the delusion that they could get a career in any industry they wanted. I wanted to strangle them.
Suffice to say, this was not my scene.

So I didn’t know anyone. And could barely hold a conversation with anyone (without wanting to strangle them, that is). But there was an open bar, good food, etc. So I inhaled every plate they served during dinner and drank too much wine. There was a keynote speaker after dinner, some important know-it-all from An Investment Bank, trying to influence the impressionable minds in the room that investment banking was the true, and only, definition of success. During the keynote speech, I texted WAF: “Get me out of here.” So we made plans to meet up after I was done.

While everyone else was getting ready to go to some pub, I started putting on a glittery top and a sequin skirt. I was clearly over-dressing, so my roommates asked me what I was doing. “I’m meeting a friend of mine at a lounge,” I replied.
“You’re not going to the pub?”
“No, I don’t drink beer.”
My roommates seemed confused that I wouldn’t want to participate in the conference’s event, but how could I explain to them that I didn’t see myself having fun with first-years who were engaging in underage drinking and were probably going to go crazy because, let’s face it, this was probably their first staying-in-a-hotel drinking opportunity? My two first-year roommates had invited all of their first-year friends into our hotel room and were passing around a 60 Litre bottle of vodka. Point proven.
I hurriedly got out of there and hoped that I wouldn’t return to a pile of vomit in our hotel room that night.

WAF and I ended up at a post-modern sushi lounge in the Financial District. It was filled with suits from the nearby banks. At one point, a 60-year-old man with a head of white hair and an expensive suit tried to give both of us a hug and invite us to drink with him. We quickly declined².

When I returned to the hotel room, my roommates were already back and asleep. I checked around quickly for vomit, and finding none, passed out on my side of the bed.

Friday was a packed day filled with keynote speakers and workshops. To give the conference organizers some credit, the keynote speakers were all extremely entertaining and knowledgeable. I learned more about international business and the global market in the last three days than I have in my entire academic career so far. Dinner was at an Irish pub hosted by A Consulting Firm (not the one I’m going to be working for), and surprisingly, the food was fantastic. Possibly the best Western food I’ve ever had. Dinner conversation was with a cute private-school boy who was in his third-year at The Other University and considering offers from several consulting firms.
That night, once again, I skipped out on the conference’s evening festivity and went clubbing with WAF. The club we went to had great music, but the crowd that night was very Euro trash, so we danced to our hearts content with each other and called it a night.

Saturday was dedicated to a case competition. Since I do cases every day, three times a day, at The Business School, this was a piece of cake for me. But The Other University does not teach with cases, so everyone else struggled to analyze the given case in the 3.5 hour time frame. My assigned team had the same trouble, but luckily, they listened to my wisdom (for the most part), and – long story short – we won first place in the case competition.

Since the final presentation was in front of the entire delegation, I received a lot of attention for my presentation skills. After dinner, two boys came up to talk to me. The first was one of the original founders of the conference, a fourth year from The Other University who was going to work for An Investment Bank in New York City. The other, also a fourth year from The Other University, was a Korean boy who was going to work for Another Investment Bank in Tokyo, Japan. Both were very eligible bachelors, at least according to the criteria of: Asian, smart, and potential wealth.

Saturday night, the conference had organized a semi-formal event at a club. Since I had never seen the club, I decided to go with them that night. I pre-drank with a few girls of my fourth-year roommate, who luckily did not make me want to kill somebody (or maybe it was the amount of alcohol I consumed that dulled the killing urge). By the time we got to the club, I was spectacularly drunk³, and ended up dancing with The Korean I-Banker. We spent most of the night together, although I left early because I was dead-tired.

Somehow, I was not hungover on Sunday. It helped that I had some greasy food before bed the night before, and of course, pigged out during breakfast to “re-nourish” my body. The conference finally ended at noon. My parents drove down to meet me for lunch, and after a quick trip to the grocery store for some veggies, drove me back to University Town.

And on Sunday night, I slept 12 hours, to make up for the lack of sleep during the conference. It was kind of amazing.

If you didn’t bother reading all that, the important things to note are:

• I did not mention PLB once. That is because, as of last Tuesday, I gave up on him. In a nutshell, he was playing mind-games and I was not having it.
• I won a case competition! I wouldn’t have had a chance in hell at The Business School, but going up against The Other University was a piece of cake. And of course, it made me feel really smart.
• I hooked up⁴ with a future investment banker in Japan. I don’t know if I will ever run into him in Asia, but it’s nice to know there’s a possibility. Plus, he’s Korean. I don’t know what it is with me and Koreans. It must be fate.
• I realized I am only attracted to ambitious (but not arrogant) boys. WAF had always said that she was only interested in boys who were going to be as successful, if not more successful, than her. I didn’t agree at first, but after this weekend, I think that is true for me too, whether I like it or not.
• Good food and open bar can cheer me up in any situation.
• I’m exhausted, it is Monday, and I have a very packed week ahead of me. TGFC (Thank God For Coffee).

How was your weekend?

1. He had literally gotten every single interview. He had second rounds from every single investment bank as well as the top three consulting firms. This kid was impressive.
2. Although some of the other female associates there were enjoying all the male attention. Many of them had more than one guy fawning over her.
3. As always, no one could tell because I don’t know how to be a sloppy drunk even if I wanted to be one.
4. Like I always remind my readers, my definition of hooking up does not involve sex.

“Do you think… Tell me honestly, what do you think about MFL and I?”
WAF paused for a second. “I used to think you two would end up together,” she said quietly.
“End up together? Like, as in, married together?” I asked incredulously.
“Yeah. Like married. But that was when I thought you two would both be in Toronto after university. Now that you’re going to Singapore, that changes everything…”
I sat back in semi-shock. Did all our friends think we would get married someday? How could they harbour these thoughts when MFL and I haven’t been together in nearly four years? How could they harbour these thoughts and still let me cut him out of my life?

It makes me wonder whether I should tell MFL that I’m leaving. It feels weird to break our no-speaking pact just to make an announcement. And what would be the point? To see his reaction? To get him to finally admit, or even realize, that he still has feelings for me?
Even in my own mind, I think it’s absurd to expect anything. He’s MFL. He’s always been passive and complacent. If he didn’t step up when I made it clear I was giving up on him, he’s not going to step up just because I’m moving halfway around the world. And let’s be honest, I’ve enjoyed these past couple months of not thinking about him. In fact, I can honestly say, “I am not in love with him anymore.”
I am not in love with him anymore.

Maybe I will always feel something when I’m around him – or around any guy that treats me like he does, for that matter – but it doesn’t mean that he can make me happy for life. In spite of what a great boyfriend I know him to be, it is now clear to me why he was not enough. He doesn’t go after what he wants. He won’t fight for the girl he loves, nor the relationship they have. And after the break-up, I wanted to believe that he could, that he just needed a wake-up call. Maybe that’s why I waited so long. But not anymore.

No, not anymore.
SG is officially single and looking.

Yesterday, I met WAF in The City for some shopping and dining. Although she was happy to hear my news, she was preoccupied with her own.
“I might be pregnant!” She hissed at me through the racks of a particularly tacky store.
“What?”
“I don’t know, my body has been acting weird lately.” She proceeded to describe to me just exactly how her body was acting “weird.”
“Have you missed your period?” I asked.
“No, I have it in a week.”
“So, it’s not for certain. It could just be your paranoia. Why don’t you take a test?”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
We dropped the subject as we continued shopping. Over dinner, I approached the matter again.
“I don’t know how you could not know. I mean, if you’re not, then you don’t have to worry.”
“But what if I am?”
“Even if you are, it’s not like you don’t have options. It’s not like it would be outside of your control.”
“If I am, should I tell him? But which one should I tell?” She had had unprotected sex with two different men on two consecutive nights a few weeks ago. Believe me, I work very hard at not judging.
“If it doesn’t make a difference to your decision, then I’m not sure you need to. But you may not even have to worry about that if you just take the test.”
She finally agreed that she wanted to know, and she wanted to know while I was there. So near the end of dinner, I slipped out and bought her a pregnancy test and she took it in the bathroom. She was testing a few days earlier than the test recommends, so the results are not necessarily conclusive, but either way, it came out negative.

“Phew,” she said, when she finally came out of the bathroom. She’d have to take the test again closer to her period, but at least for now, she was comforted. We decided we needed to celebrate – my job offer and her non-pregnancy – so we went to a swanky bar on the 51st floor of a building that overlooked the entire city.

“Cheers,” I said, raising my glass.
“What are we toasting to?” she asked.
“To dream jobs.”
“And no babies,” she added.
“Cheers,” and we clinked glasses.
As we sat outside on the wrap-around balcony, sipping champagne, and admiring the city lights, I silently took a snapshot of the view and vowed to remember it. For all my yearnings to get away, I still loved this city. It was beautiful and familiar and welcoming. It was the city I grew up in, the city that taught me about love and heartache and friendship. It was home.

“I’m going to miss this place,” I said, to no one in particular, and raised my glass as a toast to The City before I finished the champagne. Goodbye, Toronto.

At noon on Friday, we were just finalizing our plans via a flurry of excited emails² when I received an email from LawyerMan asking if I still wanted to work for him as a legal assistant at his firm. I hadn’t heard from him since the interview, where he had made it abundantly clear that I was grossly underqualified for the position. I had interpreted the lack of communication as “I am too busy to even email you to let you know that, like I said at the interview, I don’t want you,” and left it at that. When I read his email, a simple one-liner asking if I was still interested in the position, I jumped at the opportunity and immediately said yes. I asked him when he wanted me to start. He said Monday.

Keep in mind that not only was I currently working, but I was in a different city! What kind of employer emails you on Friday afternoon to tell you to come in on Monday? Did he think I’d been sitting on my ass, twiddling my thumbs for the entire four weeks since the interview?
But of course I said yes, because I was afraid he’d change his mind. After all, this was the sort of opportunity that could really help me with my career, even if the opportunity came with an inconsiderate boss.

Luckily, my boss in University Town was very understanding when I explained the situation to her. I offered to finish my projects remotely and send my predecessor further instructions via email.
Then I went back to my apartment to pack and eat six eggs.

You see, the problem with last minute decisions to go back to The City is that I have to tie up loose ends in University Town. Which means, cleaning out the fridge even though I’d just stocked it two days ago with groceries. I am Asian, it’s not in my blood to waste food.

So on Friday night, I ate six eggs, eight yogurts, three bell peppers, two bananas, one apple, one tomato, and two pieces of tofu. I am not proud of this (ok, maybe I am a little). I decided to take what I couldn’t eat back to The City with me.

As a result of my decision to bring my groceries and as much clothes as I could pack with me, I arrived at the hostel on Saturday with three pieces of luggage in tow, each of which matched my body weight. Needless to say, I looked ridiculous, especially next to all the other hostelers who had traveled across the ocean with nothing but a backpack. But when has looking ridiculous ever stopped me?

After signing in with WAF, we went for a quick shopping trip before resting our feet at the Hard Rock Cafe patio. I slurped on a delicious concoction of Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, black raspberry liquer, and vodka, aptly named Southern Rock, while my companion chain-smoked.

On our way back to the hostel, we stopped by the liquor store and bought a bottle of wine and rum. WAF wanted to split the purchase with me, but I didn’t really want to drink wine because it gives me horrible hangovers and I had a presentation the next day. I agreed half-heartedly and paid for my share, but when we got back to the hostel, I let her drink most of the wine.

Leaving her to oversee the pouring of the wine turned out to be a terrible idea. Between almost a liter of wine and a couple shots of rum, my companion quickly became drunk. WAF can usually hold her liquor quite well, or so I’m told, but I suppose being on the skinny bitch diet³ lowered her tolerance⁴. I should have seen the warning signs when she started whining loudly about BAD, but I figured she drank so much on a regular basis that a bottle of wine wouldn’t have done her in.
“Why doesn’t he want me?” She whined. “Aren’t I a pretty good catch?”
Like the dependable friend that I am, I answered her the way I always did, “Of course you are. He’s not good enough for you.”
She went on like this for a good half hour, even relating to me their sexual exploits. “To tell you the truth, the sex wasn’t even that good,” she announced loudly, as if I were a mile away from her, even though I was sitting less than a meter away.
I feigned shock, although I wasn’t really keen on hearing the details.
“I like it really rough,” she continued, “And he just didn’t know how to give it to me!”
I wondered if she was talking this loudly for someone else’s benefit, because surely she did not need this megaphone voice to speak to me. Perhaps she was drunk, or perhaps she wanted to attract one of the many male hostelers in the vicinity to join us – or maybe both. I felt a little embarrassed for her.

While I took a (much needed) washroom break from WAF‘s whining, she chatted up a 20-something geologist from Germany who had the misfortune to sit too close to us in the common room. She coaxed him into joining us for dinner in Chinatown, despite the fact that he’d already had dinner. I let WAF flirt with him, since she was drunk and I was not nearly tipsy enough. Plus, I got the distinct vibe that this particular Caucasian had no inkling of Asian fever, and I always trust my intuitions on these matters.

We finally found a suitable Chinese restaurant, but once the food arrived, WAF was unusually quiet. I figured she was just ravenous⁵, but in hindsight, I think she was starting to pass out from alcohol overdose.
She disappeared into the washroom for half an hour, which didn’t surprise me because she usually purges after pigging out like this (yes, this girl simultaneously suffers from every eating disorder on record), but when she still didn’t emerge from the washroom after half an hour, I went to check on her.

The first thing I saw when I entered the dingy two-stalled washroom was a bare bum sitting on the yellowing linoleum floor inside one of the stalls. A horrified Asian girl rushed past me, and I knew instantly who the bare bum belonged to.
“WAF?” I called out. “Are you ok?”
“No…” came a croak from inside the stall. “SG, I’m not feeling ok.”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what to do, since there was a stall door separating us and I could still see her bare ass on the floor. “What would you like? Do you want to stand up?”
A pause.
“I threw up,” WAF said. That much I had guessed already. “I kind of made a mess…”
“That’s ok, just come out, ok? Come on.”
I heard some shuffling from inside the stall and her bare bum disappeared. A moment later, the stall door opened.

I was not prepared for the sight of what came out of the stall.

WAF emerged, with puke covering the front of her body, from her chest all the way down to her hips and around to her bum. There were dirty streaks of puke on her black leggings, and on her hands, and in her hair where had ran her hands through her hair.
I quickly rearranged my expression to hide my shock, but it was honestly a disgusting sight. I couldn’t decide what was more horrific, seeing her covered in her own puke or seeing her with a bloody lip and mascara streaming down her face.

I navigated her to the sink and handed her some towels. Lucky for her, I was not a squeamish person, but touching her puke-covered body was a little too much, even for me.
“Is it ok if I go home?” She asked me timidly.
“Of course!” I said, almost too enthusiastically. The party had been over when she had puked all over herself, and maybe even before, when she had decided to drink a bottle of wine and then ramble on about a boy that I’ve heard way too much about. “That’s absolutely fine!”
“I’m so sorry for ditching you. I feel awful.”
“No, really, go home. You will feel better at home.”
I asked if there was anyone she could call to take her home, or if she wanted me to call her a cab. She wanted to call BAD but her phone wasn’t working. She handed it to me, and I realized it was because she had dropped it and her SIM card was soaked with puke. I pushed aside my feelings of disgust and put on a brave face as I cleaned the puke out of her phone. When I put the battery back in, it was working.

“Do you want me to get your things from the hostel?” I asked as I handed back her phone.
“I don’t know… Do you think I should call BAD? I don’t want him to see me like this.”
Nobody should see you like this, not even me, I thought, but I kept my thoughts to myself. “Honey, if there was any time to take advantage of that guy, it’s now. If he can take you home, call him.”
I convinced her to let me go back to the hostel to get her things while she figured out a way to get home. When I left the bathroom, she was sprawled out on the floor, unable to keep herself together. I felt bad, but the German guy was still waiting in the restaurant for us, and I didn’t know how much more of WAF I could look at without puking myself.

When I emerged from the bathroom, I vaguely explained to the German guy what had happened without going into the details. I was nice enough not to embarrass my friend in front of a stranger, even though she was being an embarrassment to herself.
“I saw this coming,” the German guy said, as if it was no big deal. “She couldn’t even walk properly on the way here.”
For some reason, his statement made me really angry. Why didn’t you say anything? Why did you still let her drag you to Chinatown? Even though he was a total stranger who didn’t have any responsibility toward us, I still felt like a decent person would have something, especially someone who had seen many symptoms of severe drunkenness. If it were me, I would have at least asked, “Hey, are you sure your friend is all right?” just to make sure things were under control.

This night was feeling more and more out of control. I walked back to the hostel with the German guy and grabbed WAF‘s stuff. He offered to walk back to the restaurant with me but I told him WAF wouldn’t want anyone to see her. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that the German guy was as nice as he had seemed.
So, I was a little Asian girl walking alone in a sketchy neighbourhood after dark, but it was a neighbourhood I knew well. My friends have often warned me that my lack of fear for sketchy situations was going to get me in trouble one day, but at times like these, my baseless self-assurance helped a long way to keep me cool and collected.

It took me 40 minutes to get back to the restaurant. When I rushed in, I realized the entire restaurant had been alerted to the drunken girl in the washroom. There were four people crowded in the washroom doorway, one of which was a middle-aged woman, who I assumed was the owner (or the wife of the owner).
“SG!” WAF called out when she saw me.
“Oh, your friend is here,” the owner said. “Thank God, we just called the ambulance!”
I apologized profusely as I joined WAF‘s side. Ignoring the dried puke on her clothes, I looped my arm around her waist and guided her out of the restaurant. We hopped into a cab, then onto the subway, where she promptly passed out. It was an opportunity to rest my feet since I’d been wearing heels, and I had to practically carry WAF on one shoulder and her stuff on the other.

Her parents were going to pick her up from the subway station and take her home. I didn’t want to think how they’d react seeing her like this. They’d never even seen her drunk. It took nearly two hours before I got back to the hostel. I surveyed the damage. I was down $75 from buying liquor I hadn’t drank, paying for the dinner while WAF was hiding out in the bathroom, leaving a generous tip to the owner for having to clean up a puke-covered washroom, and covering the cab and subway fare. I also felt dirty and smelled like puke, but the hostel’s showers rarely worked after midnight. This was how I spent my supposed “staycation” from all the things that had been stressing me out.

As I waited on the empty subway platform, the feeling of being disappointed and stranded pervaded me, and this suddenly felt all too familiar⁶. I wondered if I was being too good of a friend. I place a lot of value in my friendships, but do I end up being used? Or do I just attract needy people because I can actually keep my shit together? This weekend was supposed to be fun, but I expected someone as smart as WAF to know how to have fun responsibly. Drinking without abandon is just selfish, because the onus ends up on me to clean up her mess and take care of her. Is it worth it to stick it out in this friendship with a problem-ridden drama queen? And when was she going to return the favour? Not that I’ve ever asked anything of her⁷; not that I’d ever let myself be in a position where I needed to ask this kind of favour, from anyone.
But no matter how needy and selfish WAF can be, I’m not ready to abandon her. I want to believe the best in her, that she would do the same for me if the occasion arose, and only hasn’t had the opportunity to demonstrate that friendship⁸. It is a naive notion, especially when my instinct is telling me that I’m getting the rotten end of this particular stick. But it seems too easy to only look for the “beneficial friendship” and jump ship when it doesn’t seem worthwhile. I don’t want to be one of those people, especially not to WAF, who so clearly needs someone to pay attention to her (lest she acquires more and more emotional disorders).

Surprisingly, I slept soundly in the creaky hostel bunk bed that night, and woke up feeling far less disappointed than I expected. I spent the morning acting as a tour guide to a Japanese girl who was staying at the hostel. She and I became fast friends⁹, and I welcomed the change of this uncomplicated friendship from the previous night’s drama.

So was Saturday night a Girls Night Out or Girls Gone Wild? You decide.

1. two summers ago, I had stayed at hostel with Zee and ER so I was comfortable with it, but this time we were staying at a different hostel, so I wasn’t sure if it would be sketchy or not. It turned out to be quite clean, although the location was a bit sketchy.
2. Both of us were at work and, apparently, not that dedicated to our jobs.
3. Anorexia.
4. Despite my best efforts of force-feeding her chips.
5. Food! Actual food! With meat and oil! I don’t even know when was the last time she had real food.
6. A year ago, WAF had also pulled drama like this.
7. Perhaps I should ask her to name her first-born after me.
8. Although, do I really want to be friends with someone who frequently, and selfishly, allows these occasions to arise?
9. I seem to be very good at charming foreigners, especially those from Asian countries.

“It’s not you, it’s them. They want control, and we’re not girls that they can control,” WAF said matter-of-a-factly as she took a deep breath from the hookah.
We were sitting in a modern Middle Eastern cafe, sharing a bong of strawberry-flavoured shisha. It was only my second time, but I was quickly understanding the lethargic attraction of the suck-and-puff bong.

“You’re right, they’re both passive boys, aren’t they?” I realized, referring to HB and BAD. “It’s like, they can’t overtly exert control, so they do all this sneaky, emotionally manipulative shit to make us feel bad for being who we are,” I deduced, waving my hands vaguely as I tried to understand my own statement.
“Exactly. Just look at their girlfriends. They both chose girls who are completely submissive, completely dull, never go out, and barely speak. Those girls don’t require any effort to control, they’re practically wallpaper.”
She was right, HB had told me his girlfriend basically never left the apartment. That was why he hadn’t been worried about her seeing us holding hands on the street.
“And we are girls who do go out,” I added the obvious aloud, more for my own benefit than anything else.
“Right, and they can’t control what happens when we go out. There’s always the possibility of us meeting someone better when we go out. It all boils down to their own insecurities.”

I had an epiphany. “There are two types of girls in the world,” I said with conviction. “There are the girls who leave their apartments and the girls who don’t. And we are girls who leave our apartments.”

WAF chuckled, but applauded my deduction. “And the BWDWDU want us, but they won’t date us because they can’t control us.” she added.

With a twinkle in my eye, I raised my coffee as if to suggest a toast. “That’s why we need to find boys who can handle us.”

1. Juicy, emotionally confusing, and morally questionable
2. Sensible, uptight, and boring

You’ll be happy to hear that my post is of the first variety. While it ranks high in the entertaining category, it ranks low in the my-proudest-moments category. So don’t judge, k?

I arrived at HB‘s to find him vacuuming. Apparently, he cared about making impressions, although this was not the first time I’d stayed at his apartment. Neither of us had planned anything for the first night, so we had dinner with his brother at a Korean/Japanese restaurant nearby. Then, we engaged in our favourite activity: wandering around The City. We walked through urban parks and impromptu art displays, we sat down on benches and stone garden walls, we held hands and linked arms. We were completely in-tune with each other, and conversation flowed endlessly. He never mentioned his relationship status and I never asked.

Around 11 pm, I said I wanted to head back¹, but he was hesitant. We ended up going to a dessert place with a huge menu and some quality patio space.

We shared the desserts, which were refreshingly sweet and cold in the warm night wind. There were four Japanese girls chatting away animatedly at the table next to us. I couldn’t help but stare.
“Why do you keep looking at them?” HB asked, giving me a funny look.
“I love the sound of Japanese. Plus, they look so animated.” I wondered if HB liked the sound of Japanese.
“Are you still dating that Japanese girl?” I asked, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation.
I continued to stare at the table beside us. There was a girl with sleek, straight black hair to her waist and a simple fringe, gesturing quickly with her hands as Japanese words spilled easily from her lips. She was very pretty. Is she the sort of girl HB would be interested in? I looked over at him to see if he was as mesmerized by her as I was, but he was looking at me.
“Let’s get the bill,” I suggested.
“Ok,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

When we got back to his apartment, I started to get ready for bed, but he still hadn’t told me where I would be sleeping. I assumed the couch, so I asked for a blanket.
“Um, this is my only blanket,” he said, gesturing to the one on his bed.
“Oh.” Well, this is awkward. “Then, what am I going to sleep with on the couch?”
He hesitated. “I actually hadn’t thought of that.”
Seriously? I looked over at the bed, with its two pillows sitting neatly side by side. Bullshit. I guess he planned for me to share the bed.
I should have just slept on the couch without a blanket that first night, because then the whole weekend would have been very different. But I didn’t. I slept in his bed.

Of course, all we did was sleep. I stayed on my side of the bed and he stayed on his. At 2 am, we were awoken by the sound of his air conditioner exploding (it did this every five minutes after that), and he got up to get some water. Something must have been in that water because when he came back, he was suddenly lying much closer. He put his hand on my hip (above the blanket) and pulled me closer. Without a word, I let him spoon me. Then I turned around to face him, and he stroked my hair. I fell asleep in the crook of his arm with our limbs loosely tangled together.

Whenever my friends told me about some scandalous thing that happened in the dead of the night, I always wondered how they let it get that far. They were sensible girls, and most of the time, it wasn’t something they necessarily would have wanted, they just didn’t say ‘No.’ I always wondered how it could be so difficult for them to say ‘No.’ Whenever my friends told me they had had sex with someone and “it just happened,” I always wondered how something like that happens without any discussion. But now I know. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, the silence can be so comfortable that you’d do anything not to break it. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, things that you know are wrong can seem so right. Sometimes, it feels like whatever goes on between 2am and sun rise is part of a dream, not reality.

The next day, we met our friend PL for brunch at a little French place that had received rave reviews. I had been excited to check it out, but I was disappointed. The food was mediocre, the portions small, and the place less charming than the pictures.

PL yammered for two hours without coming up for breath, and by the time our bills came, I was bored out of my mind. To my dismay, she insisted on hanging out with us for the rest of the day. We followed her to an urban park she’d found, which had a few interesting water structures.




She spent the entire time yammering into HB‘s ear while utterly ignoring me. At first, I thought it was simply because she had a lot to say, but after being ignored or cut off for the fifth time, I determined she was purposely being rude to me².

HB was still hungry after our brunch, so we went to another breakfast joint for a second breakfast. I was starting to get annoyed with PL, for she was being unbearably rude and obnoxious. She shot me the most offensive look when I said I didn’t like egg yoke, only egg white. When I didn’t feel like ordering a second breakfast, she promptly said, in her loud voice, “I hate people who go to restaurants and don’t order anything!”

After our second breakfast, we went back to HB‘s place and they watched TV in the living room while I studied the LSAT teacher training materials in HB‘s room. PL came in randomly, and started flipping through my teacher’s binder, making me lose my place in my notes. Then she sat down on the bed and asked, “So, where did you sleep last night? On the couch?”
“No…” I said slowly, not turning around to face her.
“Then where?” she asked, in that obnoxiously loud voice.
“On the bed…” I said, even more hesitantly.
Silence.
“So what’s HB‘s girlfriend’s name?”
“I don’t know…”
Silence.
“He just refers to her as friends,” she says, as if to console me.
I said nothing.
She finally left the room.
I let out an audible sigh and continued working, but my mind was elsewhere.
WAF just happened to message me, so I told her what had happened.

me: i just want this weekend to be over, i think i made a huge mistake coming here
PL has been a bitch to me all morning and now i know why
she totally disapproves and thinks i’m a slut
WAF: …or maybe she’s concerned for you as a friend?
HE’S making the choice to cheat.
me: yeah but i’m going along with it
i guess her judgemental-ness kind of makes me see what i’m doing in her eyes and i don’t like it
WAF: oh so it was okay for her to break up a marriage?³
she’s just enjoying that you are feeling like shit

As soon as PL left, I sat down with HB for a serious discussion. I told him what PL had insinuated, and he confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, PL had called him a few days before the brunch and asked whether he and I were in some sort of ‘secret relationship.’

Our serious discussion was extremely awkward. We had never acknowledged our ‘special relationship,’ much less tried to define it. I was so embarrassed I could barely look at him. We still danced around the facts, never mentioning the previous night or holding hands or any of the things we did that indicated we were not ‘just friends.’

“I think I should sleep on the couch tonight,” I finally said.
He nodded.
“Ok, good discussion!” I spun around in the computer chair and continued working. I didn’t know how to bring up what we really needed to discuss: are you cheating on your girlfriend with me?

That night, I slept on the couch, without a blanket. As I was falling asleep, HB woke me up.
“I think we should have our second serious discussion.”
I groggily rubbed my eyes open and turned around to face him. “Ok. I’m listening.”
“Oh, actually, I hadn’t prepared anything to say. I just thought… we should talk about it. Can we do this in my room?”
I rolled my eyes, but followed him to his room.

We sat on opposite sides of his bed, looking straight ahead. By nature, I am the talkative one, but this time, I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to hear what he had to say, I didn’t want him to just piggyback off my sentiments with half-hearted agreements like “me too.” That would be too easy. I needed him to say what he wanted.

“I’m so confused,” was the best he could muster. “What do you want to do?” He asked me.
I knew he was fishing for something, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to give it to him. “I think this is more your decision than mine. I’m not the one in a serious relationship.”
He looked downright anguished. “I think we’ve always been somewhere between friends and more-than-friends,” he finally said. “I did like you, back in high school, but I felt too guilty⁴.”
I didn’t ask him what made him feel less guilty this time. “I wish we’d settled this three years ago,” was all I said.

Our second serious discussion was even more awkward than the first one. There were a lot of silences. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I needed my beauty sleep.
“I think we only have two choices. Either we’re just friends or nothing at all.”
“What’s ‘nothing at all’? Are we not allowed to see each other anymore?”
“We’ll still see each other at high school reunions I’m sure, but we just don’t see each other as often.”
“I don’t want that…”
I let him think it over.
“Do you think we could be ‘just friends’?” He finally asked.
“I think so. If we wanted it to work, it could work.”
After an even longer silence, I finally asked, “So, are we cool? Have we decided we’re just friends?”
“I guess so…” He was very hesitant. “Why are you so indifferent about this?” He seemed offended that I didn’t care more. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to tell him I liked him, to tell him to cheat, to fight for ‘us’ – whatever we were. But I could never do that. I could barely fight for my relationship with MFL when I was in a real relationship, why would I fight for this murky, undefined ‘us’? Personally, I just wanted to finish this discussion and go to bed.

He finally agreed to do the sensible thing and I escaped to the couch. The couch was too short and too hot, but ironically, it was the best sleep I had all weekend.

The next morning, we stuck to our “just friends” pact and didn’t hold hands once. We had a huge breakfast, strolled through a street festival, and then he accompanied me in my last-minute frenzy to buy a business casual outfit (I’d forgotten to bring one, and I needed it for the training session).

After my training session, we celebrated by going out for martinis at a cute little whole-in-the-wall joint in the heart of the martini bar district of The City.

As martinis with metrosexual names arrived one after another, he seemed to forget our pact and started reaching for my hand on the table. By the fifth martini, he was drunk. I was only tipsy, so I had to take care of him all the way home.
He was more aggressive as a drunk. This was a side of him I’d never seen. He was normally very passive and even shy; he never made the first move and always seemed to care about placating others. But as a drunk, he was completely uninhibited. While we waited for the streetcar, he pulled my body against his and locked his arms around the small of my back. I felt embarrassed – there was another girl waiting for the streetcar and I knew she knew we were drunk. I tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me go.

When we got home, I put him to bed, and as I turned to leave, he tried to pull me into bed with him. I reminded him of our serious discussion, our decision to be ‘just friends.’
“I don’t think we can do that,” he said, this time with no hesitation. “It is clear we like each other. I don’t want to be just friends.”
His straight-forwardness took me by surprised, but I had some liquid courage myself. “Do you know what you’re saying? Cheating is a slippery slope. Are you sure you want that?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t believe he really understood, and I told him so. “I don’t want you to regret this in the morning.”
“I’m not going to.”
I tried a different tactic. “I would not recommend this if you think you have a future with your girlfriend. If you’re serious about her, don’t do this.”
“I don’t know whether we have a future or not. But I know I can’t just be friends with you, and I certainly don’t want to lose you.”
In the end, I agreed to be more-than-friends⁵. Though I had been fine with the sensible decision we came to earlier, this sounded far more exciting.

We shared our first kiss. I was happy to find he was an excellent kisser. As he caressed my bottom lip, and then my top, I felt tiny little explosions all along my spine. This was a kiss three years in the making.

However, the euphoria from the kiss and the excitement of a ‘secret relationship’ did not last long. As soon as we decided to go down the slippery slope, his whole demeanor changed. The power dynamic shifted. Suddenly, I was the one in control and he was this clingy, needy, pathetic little boy. I was quickly starting to regret my decision.
He kept asking me questions to reassure him that I liked him when, in fact, I wasn’t sure that I did. He even alluded to love at one point, but I cut him off because I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know how he felt about me (“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” I wasn’t). He asked me a million questions about my love life (“How many guys have you dated since high school? How many serious relationships?”). When I didn’t want to tell him, he got a little angry. He told me he felt like he could tell me anything, but when I told him I didn’t want to know, he got suspicious (“Are you letting me off the hook so that you can refuse to tell me something later?”). I had never seen this side of him. All the emotions he’d held back for the last three years came spilling out. Not only did the power dynamic completely shift, but it was completely unattractive. He was smitten and curious to know everything about me, and I was disinterested and just wished to be left alone. Was this what I had waited three years for? I felt like I had been tricked, tricked into agreeing into something that had been kept hidden from me all this time.

He became so unbearable that I kicked him out of bed. There he was, more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him, and I was so cold to him, more emotionally detached than I’d ever been around him. He thought I was mad at him, so he spent the rest of the night on the couch while I slept in his bed. Although he didn’t bother me the rest of the night, something scared me awake at 6 am (he had left at 5 am). I heard the TV on in the living room, but I didn’t go out to check on him.

In the morning, we went for breakfast⁶ and HB was back to normal. The controlling, clingy, insecure boy of the previous night had almost completely disappeared.

Then I went to a meeting with some clients for a consulting project, and by the time I was done, it was about time for me to go back to University Town.

HB wants me to go see him again in two weeks, but I’m considering calling off this whole thing. After his emotional gates opened, I realized that he likes me more than I like him, and I don’t think I can handle that.

Besides, I’m a fabulous girl. Why should I play a supporting role in his life when I can be the leading lady in someone else’s?

1. I still had a lot to prepare for my LSAT teacher training session on Sunday, and we had to get up to meet our friend for brunch the next morning.
2. On Twitter, I refer to her as Obnoxious Girl.
3. The short story of PL‘s background is that she started dating our economics teacher in the final year of high school, and by the time she graduated, he had divorced his wife, changed his style to look 10 years younger, and was officially dating her.
4. He had been dating another girl at that time, too.
5. Is there a better term for this? I’m not his mistress, since he’s not married. We’re not lovers, because we’re not having sex. What other terms can be there be for this sort of infidelity?
6. Number of breakfasts I’ve had this weekend: 4.5

I was downtown with WAF during her lunch break to make sure she was ok – and by that I mean, she wasn’t running back into the arms of BAD. Except now she wanted to run into the arms of her married coworker, who was apparently very sweet on her and open to the idea of a no-strings-attached affair. As if.
We ducked into a 50s-themed restaurant-bar and WAF ordered a bottle of wine before I had even removed my coat.
“Are you not eating?”
“Are you kidding? Everything on their menu has to be at least 300 calories. I can’t afford that. Plus I need alcohol if I’m going to get through today without calling BAD.” So this was how she lost twenty pounds since the last time I saw her. Good ol’ anorexia. Who needs food when you have cigarettes and alcohol? I considered force-feeding her fries, but by the time our waitress returned, I was happily buzzed and had forgotten all about it. Great, I was drunk at noon on a Wednesday off of indistinguishable house wine. And I wasn’t even the depressed one.

Soon we were chain-smoking on the patio and bashing all the men in our lives, past and present. We debated embracing homosexuality, then thought better of it. As I so eloquently put it, “Why would you want to deal with girls? I mean, PMS, pregnancy, menopause? Hello bitch extraordinaire.”

By the time her lunch break was over, I had had enough of her bitching and could feel a dull hunger in my stomach. HB called me just in time to invite me out for some real food. I wonder what WAF would have said about our meal of fried chicken wings.

Being with HB made me realize why I used to have so many guy friends. Hanging with guys is so easy, so stress-free. I can just let loose, pig out, have fun, whatever. Conversations with girl friends are always so emotionally charged, and if they’re not bitching about their boyfriend then they’re bitching about their lack of boyfriend. I mean, it’s always nice to have girl friends to commiserate with and the drama can be entertaining, but sometimes it’s a bit much.
HB was exactly what I needed. And he was so happy to see me. He is always so happy, all smiles, worry-free. I often wonder if the kid isn’t on drugs. If he is, what the hell is he on and where can I get some?

As refreshing as it was to be with HB after hanging out with an emotionally unstable WAF, there were a few awkward moments.
…Like when I asked whether WAF and I could crash on his couch after clubbing and he said, “Sure, you two can stay over. But not her.” Then… it would just be me? ‘Cause that wouldn’t be awkward, considering the last time I’d stayed at his place, we spent all morning cuddling on the couch and taking pictures of each other with my camera.
“Uh, you know what, maybe we won’t need to crash at your place. I’ll let you know.”
…Or when he tried to play footsie under the table.
…Or when he adamantly defined a ‘date’ as ‘a guy and a girl planning to meet each other – just the two of them.’ Jesus, if that’s the definition then I have gone on more dates with him than I have shoes in my closet.

So when he invited me back to his place to “see his new lamp,” I promptly declined. I had more emotionally unstable girl friends to attend to.

Oh, and speaking of gender-bitching, check out two simultaneous conversations I was having with WAF and BBB.

Q: Do you ever get tired of gender-bitching? The never-ending ‘boys are stupid – no, girls are complicated’ debate? Why can’t we just agree that we all suck?

She began from the beginning. “My coworkers are all older than me, and, you know, they have a lot more experience with sex and relationships and stuff. So we were chatting it up Sex-and-the-City style during our lunch break, and I mentioned my relationship with BAD. All I said was, ‘He’s very confused and won’t commit. He has a girlfriend but won’t break it off with her.’ Just that. Then my BAD-ASS coworker started describing the rest of his behaviour. BAD-ASS‘s description fit BAD to a T. And he was a perfect stranger! I hadn’t told him anything.”
She took a breath.
“Apparently BAD-ASS used to do the same thing with girls. I was being played textbook-style. And I fell for it! I completely fell for it!”
I didn’t know what to say. BAD was playing her and she had fallen for it. And I had known it from the moment she started describing him – them – to me (which, to be honest, was only a few weeks ago, and they’ve been at this for a while), but I had said nothing. Now too, I said nothing. I hoped the silence would be a receptive audience to her venting. I hoped letting it out would calm her down.

In the absence of conversation, I could hear her crying and sniffling and trying to blow her nose all at the same time. She continued to describe all the signs, his little tricks and manipulative schemes that she could now pick out.
“I feel like such a fool! I am so stupid!”
“You are not stupid. This was his game. You were his target, and you believed what he said because he only said things he knew you were going to believe. That’s the name of the game. It is not your fault. That’s like saying the bank is to blame for a robbery because their security wasn’t good enough. But the robbers are the ones who picked the bank, who mapped out the specs, who knew how to get what they wanted. You are not a fool.”
“But I fell in love with him! Almost!” She paused to blow her nose. “He even said stuff about this other girl friend of ours, how she was just being played for sex, but I was too smart for that. He must have been laughing inside the whole time!”
My heart ached for her.
“I was so willing to believe everything, I just ate it up! I should’ve known better.”

When she was all vented out, I responded with a healthy round of BAD-bashing, calling him all sorts of names that I hoped my parents could not hear from their bedroom. “Look, no matter what, do not blame this on yourself. Do not be one of those girls who get raped then feel ashamed for the rest of their lives thinking it was somehow their doing, as if they gave off ‘Rape Me’ signals and brought it upon themselves. You are not at fault. This was his game, his web, and you are the victim. And everything he said about wanting you to know what you were getting into, that’s bullshit. That’s just him trying to transfer responsibility onto you so that when the time comes – like now – you’d think it was your own fault for not seeing it coming, your own stupidity for believing the things he wanted you to believe. But it’s not.”

This went on for over an hour. Near the end of our conversation, I apologized to her for not saying what I thought of him when she first told me about them.
“It’s ok, I wouldn’t have listened to you at that point and you knew it. I was in too deep by then. I needed to hear this from a stranger.”
Nonetheless, I felt like I could have prepared her for this somehow, and that my apology was more to relieve my own guilt than to really make anything up to her. I don’t even know why I hadn’t said anything. Maybe because I knew she wouldn’t listen to me, maybe because it was simply easier not to and let her realize it herself. Well, now she had, and I could only rush in as the paramedic in the aftermath.

It is ironic that I had just blogged about keeping this secret, and hours later it blows up in my face. Talk about foreshadowing. Should’ve known better than to keep secrets from my friends. Maybe I should consider coming clean on my other secrets.

Q: What’s the best way to get over someone who just played you hard? As in, has a girlfriend/fiance/wife, promising you he’ll leave her, making you believe he has commitment issues but you’re the girl that can change that. As in, telling you not to cheat on him but parading around town with other girls (none of whom are his girlfriend/fiance/wife). As in, reprimanding you for your bad habits (eating disorders, smoking, drinking) while funding his extravagant lifestyle by dealing drugs. As in, being a horrible person but giving you hope that you can be the one to save him. Any advice for my friend?

We all have secrets, from little lies that we tell, or what we don’t tell. We already know there are plenty of things I don’t tell. Here are some more.

Secrets from my boss:

• I told the CEO at Not-A-Real-Job that I wasn’t doing anything this summer other than this internship. Complete lie. As you all know, I am desperately secretly searching for another job.
• He is obviously going to find out when he receives a call from places I have applied to because I put him down as one of my references. I probably should have told him that he is one of my references. I also said I’d been an intern with him for two months. Slight lie, considering I started last month. Hmm…

Secrets from my parents:

• My parents think I have never bombed a single course in university¹ and that I am awesome at science. Neither of these beliefs are correct. I did bomb a course (Cell Biology), which just goes to show I am not awesome at science. I just left the field before it became obvious. My parents desperately want to believe I am awesome at science because 90% of the people in my family are serious scientists, and they want me to join their ranks. Imagine their disappointment when I went to business school instead.
• My mom thinks I am trying to lose weight. Not because I said I was on a diet or anything, just because she thinks I should. So it’s really her fault for making assumptions. When she is not home, I eat ice cream. Lots and lots of it. She also thinks I go swimming every other day. I do not.
• That stain on the bathroom rug that my mother loves? The dog peed there. But it was because I locked the dog in the bathroom when she was getting really annoying. My parents think the dog just went crazy on her own (which does happen sometimes) and I’ve never corrected their notion. It’s not like the dog is going to tell on me.
• One time, my phone dialed my home number on its own while I was out clubbing at 2am (it must have been pressed against something in my purse and hit speed dial). All my parents heard on the resulting answering machine message was “loud noise” (their words, not mine – my guess is it was very loud music). They called me back and when I saw that “Home” was calling, I didn’t answer because I was drunk and I didn’t want them to know I was still out clubbing. They thought I’d been kidnapped or something terrible had happened to me and the recording was all I could get out, so they called the police. I never told them the truth. I switched phones after that incident.

Secrets from my friends:

• I have not told WAF what I really think about the guy she’s seeing. He sounds sketchy as hell, and he is probably bad poisonous for her. But she has fallen pretty hard for him, and anything I say will fall on deaf ears or incur a slew of defenses. I secretly think she wants to be with these bad boys, some form of thrill-seeking or self-destructive behaviour. I mean, her last boyfriend seemed like an angel until he beat her up on my birthday. So who does she rebound to? A guy who is a player, a cheater (he has a girlfriend), and a drug dealer? This can only end badly.
• I secretly think WAF is exactly what I would have turned into had I had more neglectful parents or weaker moral boundaries (maybe the two have something to do with each other). That is why we are friends, and why I do not judge her for her bad habits or moments of weakness – because in another life, I would be her. I actually kind of admire her for being able to vent all of that out. I, on the other hand, might explode one day with all my repressed sinful thoughts and run away to be a prostitute addicted to hard drugs who eventually falls off a hotel balcony.
• OBF knows that I want her relationship with USG to end in their marriage work out, hence I am the first person she runs crying to every time they have a fight. What she doesn’t know is that I think she’s the cause of these fights, because she is needy and demanding and emotionally unstable. I mean, I love her and all, but seriously, this girl can blow up like Mt. Vesuvius.

Any secrets you’d like to share?

1. The Asian definition of bombing: getting below an 80 – or a 3.7 out of 4.0.