Four Men, Two Books, Three Authors & A Sleepover

Four Men: David Sedaris, Chuck Klosterman, Dave Eggers, and of course Todd:

I'm in love with three of them. Let me explain. Michelle & others have raved about David Sedaris. So I picked up ME PRETTY ONE DAY on Thursday night and proceeded to only put it down twice (once to sleep and once to work) before I finished it, raving on Friday about how David Sedaris is my newfound writing idol (taking the place of Jennifer Paddock and Nick Hornby).

THEN I went to a Klosterman signing and got a free copy of his book KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE. I read it cover-to-cover Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. The only time I put THAT down was to:

Have sex with Todd. And get drunk before doing so. I know you're all gasping or at least saying "what the hell, I thought you hated that guy." And I do. But I hate him because I love him and I'm not sure if he's in love with me. Case in point: he says he is, but he says (and is) also too fucked up to be with me. Because of the past (and him telling me he didn't love me at least twice after he said he was sure he did) I'm not exactly trusting of anything that comes out of his mouth other than engineering and sciency related things - or the cultural observation of his eternally interesting and equally pathological roommate Eamon. So I spent twelve hours talking and laughing, dancing and sleeping next to him... and afterwards I had a very Surreal Sunday (and yes, the capital letter on Surreal is both intentional and necessary).

So in other words, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing other than that I did something relatively fucked up. But yet again, every single relationship has had the after sex. But I don't know what to do about it.

And what makes it worse is that he was talking as if we still had a future. My best friend told me to "close and lock the back door of your heart and make him knock and leave flowers" but I'm not really sure what that means. I'm not going to stop dating other people, but I don't want to not heal either. I'm pretty sure this was a step in the wrong direction to make him disappear out of my life, but I don't want to do that either.

When I studied interpersonal relationships in undergrad, Deborah Tannen had some great research about the tensions in a relationship. She said that essentially the tensions were like a tug of war between the partners. In order to hold on to the relationship, one would have to lean in and give the other control (which means the other one was pulling.)

Instead of that illustration I feel like i'm the one hanging onto the rope, swinging before the mud puddle that the losing team is going to be drug into. And I'm not really sure what that means either.

TWO BOOKS: Classic Escapism. I read Klosterman's thoughts in SEX DRUGS AND COCOA PUFFS (I can't seem to get enough of him) about how John Cusack (and his character in SAY ANYTHING, Lloyd Dobler) ruined any chance of his adult relationships ultimately being satisfying. Lloyd Dobler and Jake from SIXTEEN CANDLES don't exist - but we think they do, which fucks us up. Makes sense to me. I blame Hugh Grant in NOTTING HILL, who made it cool to wait around for your love to come back. Damn Hugh Grant - he also influenced me to sleep with James.

So from here the THREE AUTHORS should be apparent, even though I haven't begun Eggers yet: but since I'm on this memoir/essay kick, I might as well stay on it. It reminds me that others are at least as fucked as I am in the emotional stability and Surreal department.

And SLEEPOVER..... well Michelle slept over on Friday and watched about 7 hours of RESCUE ME (my favorite new show, resulting in an odd crush on Denis Leary and the other hot hot firemen) and.... of course Todd slept over, resulting in me wandering around my house and calling every friend in my phone when I wanted to talk (I just realized that Alison never called me back, that bitch.....) not to mention what I noticed this morning - a nice round white stain on my comforter. Damn him! Am I being eternally punished?

And I'm in love thinking of how I'm going to get out of it without driving myself to tears, or worse yet, making my friends think I'm pathetic for loving a guy that is so weak that he can't even bring himself to fight for me.

If he does love me - he'll fight for me. He'll be reflective for once and think about how much I'm worth to him and get his shit straightened out. Because I'm moving on without him and if I'm over him by the time he comes back, he's likely to be shit out of luck.

But if he catches me again like he caught me on Saturday - or the way we caught each other, really - then maybe someone will be home when he knocks.

These are pretty heavy thoughts for a Monday. I better not drink any more coffee.