Why am I in at 1230AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, listening to the bar across the street rage on?

Let me enlighten you.

But, for this exercise, I've been instructed by a good friend to speak only positively of myself, instead of the constant criticism I subject myself to. So let's see how this goes.

Friday morning rolls around. Pretty tired. Go into work, boot up the box, decide that I should just give in and drop the money for the tickets to a club that's having an event that I really didn't care about, really wish wasn't happening.

But friends were going. And while events mean large crowds and significantly increased door charge, they also mean new faces, new, potentially attractive faces. I can dance, which drops me quite visibly into the "regular" category and since I dance well, it ups the visual value.

So I win all over.

I go buy the overpriced tickets online, text my friends, make dinner plans, power through the day, go through the usual pre-club routine, etc. Dinner, dancing, Taco Bell.

No Taco Bell. That was a movie reference. If you get it, awesome. If you don't, eh.

So, I meet up with my best friend and his girlfriend of four or five years that I've mentioned here before, and they tell me that they're planning on getting married sometime in the near future.

Which concerns me. I like her, but she's completely unaware of her sexuality. She recently almost cheated on him because of this, caused a big issue, they almost broke up, and a few weeks later and he's... clinging to her. This isn't going to solve anything.

Anyhow, get to the club, start making the social rounds.

And then I go down to my usual spot on the first floor, leaving my friends up on the third. Nothing new with this, I tend to keep to myself after my hellos.

Who rolls up on me?

The tall blond in the freaking suit from last time. He's hovering over me, again, like he's Edward and I'm Bella and we're about to re-enact some teenage drama and I'm starting at him thinking, "Fuck, really? He doesn't remember how hard I shut him down last time?"

Then he says, "You're that girl."

"That girl?"

"Yeah, the girl who asked me if I was drunk last time. And I said no. And then you said that I shoulda said yes because that would have excused my behavior."

He remembered. Word for word, he remembered. And he still came up.

Balls. Balls or total stupidity.

So I thought I'd give him a chance, see if he was drunk this time. If he was being ballsy or stupid.

And we chat a little bit, with him leaning into me touching my back, trying to put his arm around my shoulder at one point and draw me into him (which was a quick step back and a "Oh no, no, no, you don't get to do that" scold and push).

Since I'm me, and how I screen for guys is being a complete smartass and seeing how they roll with it and which ones will just hand me my ass (those are the ones to take home, in my opinion), I put him through some mildly light paces before I realize he's not only drunk, but stupid.

And he's nagging me for my name and I'm politely handing him his ass, making jokes that he's not able to keep up with, occasionally apologizing for being such a smartass, but he keeps trying to grab me.

Finally, I tell him that I'm going up to the top floor to dance and next time he tries to pick me up, I'd prefer he'd do it sober so I wouldn't have to deal with the mild guilt of mentally manhandling a drunk. Because that's just sad.

I bolt, and he's calling out after me as I near sprint up the stairs. As much as one can sprint in a mid-thigh dress.

He follows me up a few minutes later, which causes me to grab one of my guy friends and instruct him to place his hands on me and look territorial. Five minutes of that, I assume I've hopefully connected with this sad guy's buried intelligence, and he'll leave me alone.

Such was not the case.

I head back downstairs, dance for a bit, and he's back downstairs with me. He's not following me I think, as much as roaming. And he's trying so hard. I would've sworn he was sarging for the amount of women he was going up to, just powering through them (getting rejected 100% of the time), occasionally going back to talk to this one tall, well-dressed man.

But there is no way, no way that anyone with any small amount of education in game could be that inept after at least three weeks of clubs.

I hope.

So he comes after me again, I tell him that he's a) not getting my name and b) being way too obvious with the amount of girls he has tried to pick up in the thirty-forty minutes I've seen him. He denies that he's picking up girls, tells me that he just likes making friends. Keeps trying to guess my name.

During this period, one of the guys, a friend of mine I've mentioned earlier, joins us downstairs, takes a seat at the bar a few feet away from the aspiring ladies' man and myself. I had mentioned to him earlier how much this guy had been annoying me, cracking jokes and the like. So a song comes on, I excuse myself, dance for a bit.

When I get back, the annoying guy is gone. A curvy redhead is leaning on my friend at the bar, laughing and hugging him, then introduces herself to me and explains that my friend, after I had left, told the guy that he was my boyfriend and, essentially, if he stayed in the area I was dancing in, he'd continue in his failure rate because the girls in that particular room are the ones that are there to dance, not socialize, not fuck.

Which is 100% true.

This wouldn't seem like a big deal to most girls.

However, most girls aren't me.

I totally teared up.

Yes, you read that line right. My eyes got wet and I was incredibly overwhelmed.

My guy friends... I love them. All of them are so wonderful in so many different ways.

But none of them ever stand up for me when it comes to men. I'm the maneater, I'm the shark, I can handle myself. I'm, especially of late, constantly having to shut guys down. When I see someone I want and they display interest, I walk up to them and go for it. I'm the sex queen who no one touches on a mental or emotional level.

They know I can take care of it.

They don't realize how much I squirm whenever I reject a guy. They don't know how bad I feel, even when I'm being a smartass, when I shut someone down. I'm not a bitch, but I do have a way with conversations that... works. That is playful and smart and will keep you on your toes. Most guys, especially when I'm out, can't keep up with it.

And I feel bad. I feel guilty and uncomfortable and I wish that I could go find them the right girl at the club or show or wherever we're at so they don't have to deal with the rejection.

But that's not life.

So this man, this man that I've known for a little over a year, who has asked me out a few times, who has expressed a good deal of sexual interest, who I have spent time outside of clubs with, eating at 24 hour diners while the sun rises on a new day when we haven't even finished with the old one, both of us covered in sweat from dancing, who is such a scene fixture it's ridiculous, this guy stepped in and chased someone off for me so I wouldn't have to deal with it.

Because he's just a good guy. And that's normal behavior for him.

...this, and an additional moment of emotional vulnerability that carried over from Thursday, was why I ended up in one of the side rooms, on a couch, making out with this guy.

Yeah.

And he could kiss. I actually got a little dizzy from one of them, which was amusing.

But I know, I know he'd date me if he could. Relationship.

Which is why I pulled back from him, locked eyes, and said, "This is a one-time thing, okay? This is just tonight. This is not carrying over."

That was, physically, as far as it went. Which is progress for me. No negative criticism. Not doing it. I'm pulling back, this is good. For the extreme emotions I went through on Thursday, with the resulting emotional flow and need for comfort, it's amazing that I didn't just drag him into a corner and ride him silly.

I was talking with a good friend of mine, someone I've known for a couple years. He's, apparently, a fairly famous anonymous blogger. I say apparently because he refuses to give me any information on it. But he can write, I know. And he's calming to me, in his own way.

I mentioned to him my current frustrations. I'm feeling a lack of value because of things with GV8, vulnerable because of some oddly emotionally heavy things that happened with Roman that caused me much embarrassment and self-doubt, instability in my worldview due to what has been going on with my father, and emotional drag because I'm the only person my mother talks to about all the things that are going on and she's cried so much this year and it eats me alive. Combine those things, along with working, school (and the just completed midterms), and the fact that I haven't had sex in over a month...

Sex is how I breathe. Sounds odd, but it's so very much a part of my body functioning. It mellows me, it centers me, it stabilizes me. There doesn't have to be an emotional connection, just the act of sex is calming, lets me get through my day, week, month so much easier.

That seems normal to me.

And then my friend told me that I could replace the word "sex" with "alcohol" and I'd be considered an alcoholic.

That kinda set me on my ass, but he's not wrong.

So, in this combo of use and appreciation, I took a little edge off of the physical and psychological tension I've been under lately with my friend. Hoping, hoping that he wouldn't read more into it than I was offering, that he would take me at my word. That things wouldn't change.

And, in a moment of... God, I don't even know what that was. Probably validation seeking. When we were in a much more public setting, when he was talking to some other people, I walked up to him and just started going at it.

Grinned at him when he leaned down and self-consciously said, "Who all saw that?"

Patted him on the shoulder and said, "I don't know these people. Have fun dealing with any social fallout." And walked off to go dance.

I just wanted to claim him for a minute. Yes, he's my friend and I care for him. But he's also a social pillar, in the scene for so long, popular, has worked, and still works, for various promoters, like he was that night. He's such a good, amazing guy, and while I don't believe a relationship would work out between us, I still wanted that... moment. I wanted to say, "Hey, I might be that serious, aloof girl on the dance floor, I might not drink or smoke, I might not party, and I definitely don't fit in, but this guy, this guy that is so damned amazing, thinks I'm wonderful and desirable."

And I'm not going to criticize myself right now. I know I am mercenary at times, not for money, but, yes, status. That's normal. That is standard female operating procedure and I know I'm not like most other girls when it comes to many social things, but when it comes to sex, I'm the poster child for my sex viewed through evo-psych theory.

I got home at 430 or so, in bed at 5AM.

Then Roman called me at 930.

930. I was sore and tired and confused as to the noise that weird, vaguely rectangular thing on my nightstand was emitting.

This call started off normal, conversation as per usual. About an hour or two in, I suddenly spoke what my brain had been suspecting for a few days, about another woman. Someone established significantly prior.

I hit that right on the nose.

Talk about embarrassment. For me. As I internalize everything. My responsibility, everything is my responsibility. I should have seen that coming, I should've asked, I should not have been flirting and gaining interest when I'm still not sure what is going on with GV8, I should've been focusing on myself like I said I would, I should have not been getting emotionally engaged with someone when I'm still messed up over GV8 and therefore much more vulnerable to such things.

This all played through my head.

Is that negative? I don't think so. It's just what I was thinking. This trying to stop myself from criticizing myself is a bit awkward for me.

Just lots of kicking myself.

Feeling that imbalance that comes when one party is only partially engaged, shifting in value. Makes you feel horrible.

Well, maybe not you. But me.

I felt so low. Just so disgusted with myself, and so used, as more information came to light.

When I got off the phone, another hour had passed. I wanted to curl up in bed and mope, but I had told myself I was going to get off my ass and do what I had planned prior to being stripped raw on an emotional level.

So I drove, still tired and sore from the club, to Westfield Plaza, which is like a condensed version of Orange County, but in Los Angeles. So rich white suburbia. I missed my originally desired movie, so I hit "Clash of the Titans" instead, then sat out in the food court, eating sushi and reading Frankenstein, slowly cheering myself up with good fish, a good book, and good sunlight.

That's when I was unexpectedly approached by a man in his mid-to-lateforties (why, why oh god why is it always the forty+ year olds??) who proceeded to sit down with me, introduce himself, and start talking.

And talking. And talking.

Which was fine.

He fucking grilled me though. Running through all the points you would on a first date, gathering info. Family, education, neighborhood you grew up in, occupation, interests, goals and... oh, yeah, boyfriend? It wasn't that subtle. But, then, most things aren't that subtle to me when it comes to such situations.

That was all fine. I wanted the distraction, didn't mind the reading break, he was decently intelligent so it was an okay conversation.

What I did mind was two things:

1. He repeated himself. Enough to be noticeable. Which made things feel odd.
2. The significantly more major one, when I went to leave, instead of shaking my hand, he went to hug me. And I just went along with it.

And then he held me. He just stood there and held me and tried to do the full body hug and did actually kiss my cheek way too close to my mouth, and then when I went to go, he tried again for the kiss and I was just standing there going, "Oh my fucking god, I want to go, I don't want to be a bitch, I don't want to cause a scene, I wasn't flirting with you at all, I didn't escalate at all, fuck, you didn't even escalate, you just immediately went for it, why the hell are you holding me, I told you I was sorta seeing someone and not dating at all and made that VERY clear, where the hell did my personal space go, why the hell did you go from an okay conversation partner to creepy and gropey as we went to part ways?????"

As odd as this may sound, it's days like today/last night that make me glad that I'm not standardly attractive (blonde haired, tan, model-thin). I would not be able to hang if the standard issue man was hitting on me all the time. I'd go bezerk and kill someone.

So I run away from him and head over to my friend's party, still feeling rather low (and creeped out, yay!).

It took me a little, but as I was sitting on the floor of their living room, meeting new people, having interesting conversations, sharing stories and jokes... I suddenly felt more okay. I've got some great friends, people that unexpectedly entered my life and they're fantastic people that I'm glad to know. There's no motive other than enjoyment of each other's company, we lend support when needed, time when it's open, and caring.

The morning's events that left me so distressed faded.
The man with his verbal escalation at the mall that took on a weird vibe because it was not encouraged, but he continued anyhow, interrupting the conversation with small, physically complimentary comments that made no sense and derailed everything... it still bothers me, but it'll be okay.

I won't be negative here (again), I think I did... okay.

And, my friend is right, I'm really not comfortable with not criticizing myself. I don't know how to do it, it makes me hesitate and stumble over the words.

He says I have to practice.

Wonder how long I can keep it up.