She's moving up slowly

Yesterday, yesterday I had one of those evenings where my mind was exploding and all I wanted to do was write. If I give into it, it's great. If I don't, I end up more and more out of my gourd and disconnected from the immediate reality.

Well, more than I already am.

I was unable to sit down and write.

I, instead, went out to dinner with a man I slept with a couple of times, who is now referring to me as his 'little sister' because I took our budding sexual relations and purposefully killed them last Decemember because I was seeing too many men and it was really, really starting to overwhelm me. If I didn't have the whole work/school/social life thing going on, it would be infinitely easier to handle five or six lovers, but, well, I do.

That whole "making something of yourself" thing can be a real drain on your sex life.

So we sat and caught up. His company was bought out a few months ago and, due to bad management, and illegal activities on the part of the owner, lawsuits have been flying. He's been busy as hell dealing with all the litigation crap.

It took me about twenty minutes before I stopped having to review in my mind the dialogue set before me. He would speak, and I would run through a list of things that may or may not be appropriate in response, and then adjust my facial expressions accordingly. This must be what autistic people feel like all the time. Social interaction must be exhausting for them.

Eventually, I mostly snapped out of it. Then, of course, I was distracted by a man at the bar. Good face, bad voice, bad facial expressions, midwest dress-style, wedding ring. The more he talked with the bartender, the less attractive he became.

Wanted to go over to him, put my finger on his lips and go, "Sssssh, just sit there and be hot. There's no need for this 'talking' business."

Glasses texted me earlier this week. Wanted me to go to a club I haven't been to in years with him and some of his friends, then go to some hotel suite he was getting near the club. I was up for it. He's gorgeous and brilliant, I can only assume his friends would be the same. Potential group sex, or at least a MMF or MFF? Sure, I'm down.

Wasn't coming together fast enough, though. Trying to set my schedule for the weekend is almost always a very intensive activity of calling and texting people, seeing who is doing what, when, where, and with who. Then you have to go through the freeways in your head for transit times. Construction? Holidays? Conventions? Concerts? If you're planning on hitting the 10/110/101 interchange, these are things you have to know. People wonder how I do so much all over the place, and it is because I take into consideration everything I can, and most people are willing to adjust their get-togethers in order for me to make it, or understand that I will be late.

So, when Thursday rolled around and it still wasn't set, and I had other people calling me for this weekend's activities, I decided it just wasn't worth it.

You've got two lines of thinking here:

1. I decide I will go to his club with him, which would, effectively kill my previous Saturday night plans and a chunk of Sunday day.

Then:

A. If things come together smoothly, that's great. I'd still be meeting his friends for the first time, though, so if I did not pull that off well, I could be boning myself for future encounters. Potential date-ambush.

or

B. Things don't come together. I end up cancelling my other potential plans for no good reason. And I look like I'm willing to bail on whatever activities I have going on just to possibly spend time with him. That's just no good.

2. I decide not to go with him. These leaves me with invites for multiple things in LA or San Diego, and I'm free to choose the weekend's hijinks. Yes, hijinks. Escapades? Capers? Shenanigans?

Two outcomes happen from this:

A. I never see him again. He wants a girl that will just fall by his side when he calls. I'm not going to be that girl, and if that's what it takes to have him in my roster, of things he is, worth it is not one of them.

or

B. I see him again. This would probably mean that either he was okay with me opting out on his plans, meaning he respects my individual decisions, or that he didn't care one way or the other. Of course, if it was the latter, he wouldn't have bothered inviting me at all, much less introducing me to his friends.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I get to determine how this is going to run by sending one text message and spending my weekend by going out and having an excellent time because whatever I decide to do, it will be fun.

If I don't see him again, it's no loss because he's confirmed to me that he isn't worth investing time, energy, or emotion into. If I do, it's excellent because he has confirmed that he is worth it, at least for a short time, depending on how things play out.

Either way, I win.

You can't control what other people will or will not do, but you can control how you react to the situation.

We might be meeting up on Sunday late afternoon, early evening. We'll see how that goes, if it goes. It very well might not. If it doesn't, you will very likely find me kayaking in La Jolla, as one of my ex-lovers has been trying to convince me to join him... for the last several months. It's an unsuccessful venture as it is hard to get me out of bed before 11 or 12 after a night of clubbing. It does not help that his bed is extremely comfortable and I tend to stay in it and groan at him for daring to wake me.

This weekend is shaping up to be rather crazy. I should be used to it by now, but... no, not really. I don't think I'll ever really get used to it. Leaping from place to place, party to coffee to club to book signing to art gallery to play to dinners to concerts to family events with so many different faces.

My mother told me recently that she never expected me to be like this. That because of my anti-social nature and bookworm tendencies that she expected me to be a homebody, and probably live with them the rest of my life.

If things hadn't fallen out the way they had, she would have been correct.

No one expected me to do the things I did, no one expected what happened as a result, and how the impact of those results would change me.

I should have been a librarian or an accountant. I should have been a frazzled secratary living in a one bedroom apartment with three cats and a lot of tacky art on the walls featuring kittens and cottages, shopping out of the Sears and Land's End catalogs, reading romance novels and dreaming of that One Guy that would see me One Day and See Me for Who I Am Inside, past the white cotton underwear and ill-fitting flesh-colored bras, past the tacky wardrobe and gold-rimmed glasses.

I love how no one recognizes me from a few years ago. I love how I run into people from high school and they have no idea who I am, even after I tell them we went to high school together, even if we were in the same classes, sat next to each other, since junior high.

I earned this life. It's mine, and it's good.