Come on Little Rabbit

Yeah, I know, I met the five-entries requirements in form but not in substance, but phhhhhht to you too. So things have gotten, well, more interesting with Setup Chick. And since I want to write a treatise about as as much as you want to read it, I'll just provide snapshots.

1) Setup Chick and I have a pact--if she finds a job in Hawaii, I'll move with her. I asked what about her boyfriend, trying to feel the current 411 on the whole sitch, and she said, "Well, that's too bad for him." I also mentioned that I was kinda tipsy when I made the pact, and she kept repeating that she was sober.

2) Setup Chick and I hung out on Friday at 3rd Street Promenade. By the time we got tired of the Promenade, traffic on the 405 was really bad. I offered to hang out with her, maybe get some drinks. She said she wanted to see my cat. So we hung out at Casa de Stark for a while. The cat actually liked her (my cat's reaction to Bee's Knees was hisses). Anyway, time passed. Setup Chick was curled up on a fetal position facing me on my couch, feeling comfortable. She asked about Bee's Knees and my other past relationships. We watched TV for a bit. At 7:30pm, she looks over to me and says in a petulant voice "Take me home." (She drove up from Long Beach to Casa de Stark, and she wanted me to drive her back in her car back home and for me to take a taxi back to my home). I told her that her ass wasn't drunk, she could take herself home. She kept bugging me to take her home in a child-like voice, very reminiscent of Bee's Knees. I started calling her, half-jokingly half-sarcastic, "Bee's Knees." She said "Fuck Bee's Knees!" and then covered her mouth in surprise at her own reaction. Then she said, "Well, if I'm acting like Bee's Knees, you must like the way I'm acting. C'mon, take me home." Then we just stared at each other in silence, both of us on the couch, comfortable with each other's company. Luckily, Rational Marty was still in control, and when the silence got too heavy, I went back to trying to get her up. Setup Chick went back to acting like a bratty kid. She eventually left thirty minutes later. She called me on the road, explaining the whole thing as "just joking around."

Yeah, I don't know what the fuck all that was about either.

3) Random comment from a friend about the Setup Chick situation: "I don't care if she has a boyfriend. I call what you two have been doing for the last month 'dating.'"

Teenage Wristband

OK, ummmm, five entries. 1) I really miss ramen noodles. Especially the sesame chicken flavored ones, with the separate sesame oil packet. Mmmmmmm. 2) Take deep breaths, hold your nose, and go under the water--it's yet another beginning to a craptastic work week. Wash, rinse, repeat. 3) If there's a voice that guys should aspire to be (not to have, but to be, to become all that voice encapsulates), it's Greg Dulli's voice--savior of misbehavior indeed. 4) I feel dizzy my head is spinning. 5) You walked in, just like smoke, with a little c'mon, c'mon, c'mon.

Shiver

Yeah, it's a Saturday night and I'm blogging. But I went out Monday night (Passover dinner--that's right, I'm an Asian Jew--OK, not really, and I have a whole 'nuther story that's not interesting about how Marty is my honorary Jewish name from a certain chick named Debbie but we won't go into that here), Tuesday (got my business cards finally), Wednesday night (owed a dinner by a secretary) and Thursday night (drinking with law school folks who might be buying a dive bar), so excuse me if I want to drink scotch and read the latest novel from my favorite writer tonight.

So anyway, this whole thing with Setup Chick is going to be drawing to a close soon. (I know, if this were a sitcom, dramedy, or whatever media metaphor you want to use, I'd be having notes from the networks execs bitching about wrapping the storyline up already who the hell do I think I am certainly not Joss Whedon and crap has he been on a losing streak recently too). She's having a talk with her boyfriend this weekend about their future. How I do I know this? We had a friggin' two hour talk Friday night about this. There's a defensiveness in her voice when she talks to me about him. She opens up with a "I don't care what anyone else thinks" attitude, but she's always defending her boyfriend and asking my opinion. During lunch, she tries to prove me wrong about her boyfriend, mentioning my friends who went out for seven years before they got married (though they weren't 43 and 24 respectively at the time). A lot of effort for someone who doesn't care what other people think. At this point, I'm going to pull one of those too clever by half non-linear plot devices out--we'll go back to when I first met Setup Chick. She laughed at everything I said (and she still does). Everytime her boyfriend was out of town, she'd give me a call to say she was bored and we'd end up talking for hours. (And given Friday night, that still happens). Everytime she needed advice, she called me because her boyfriend's attitude was "do whatever you want." We've had dinner with each other several times now.

Back to the present. Or more precisely, this week. On Monday night, she asks me for my brutal and honest opinion about her future with her boyfriend. And I give it to her. This man is nineteen years older than she is. His previous relationship was with a woman twelve years his junior and it lasted for ten years. And she was also his employee. Supposedly he wanted to marry her, but she cheated on him. Hmmmm. OK, that's all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day, he went out with this younger woman for ten years and never asked her to get married. Now he has a sweet young thang who's already told him, "I'll leave you if I don't think there's a future," which translates into the male mind, "fuck, this chick won't ever leave me so long as I string her along," she hasn't left him for five years, she does his taxes and bills for him, did I mentions she still hasn't left him yet despite bringing up the marriage subject several times, all this means one of two things: 1) he won't ask her to marry him or 2) he will but it will be for all the wrong reasons. And I tell Setup Chick this, and she says that these thoughts have crossed her mind at well. But, she says, she knows in her heart that she has a future with him. And, I don't say, I know in my heart that I'm much better for you, so that shows you what the heart knows, which is complete fuck all. Friday night's conversation is a repeat of all this except for the fact that she is supposed to have this talk with her boyfriend.

And then she says, "Marty, I'm sure that you'll meet someone who adores you and who you'll adore right back. I'm so sure that I'll bet dinner on it." So by Setup Chick's birthday (which is in August), I owe her dinner if I find someone who adores me and who I adore right back, and she owes me dinner if I don't.

If life was like a sitcom or a dramedy, in August, I'll be sitting with her at her birthday, buying her dinner because I am with someone who adores me and who I adore right back--I'm with her. A very Ross and Jennifer moment, and you could almost hear that treacly music in the background and the canned "awwwwwws" off the laugh track. But we all know that life isn't a sitcom. The persistence of that funny odd guy which endears you to him translates into stalker behavior in real life. The nice guy doesn't get the hot chick, but instead gets a boot to the head from the bully boyfriend while the hot chick laughs at him.

So this brings up why I find myself in these situations. Does the writer in me drift into these situations because of the story possibilities? Or do these story possibilities arise because I drift into these situations?

Anyway, I just got a call from Setup Chick. That conversation isn't happening because she's pissed off at her boyfriend (not because the conversation isn't happening, but because of other things). She's meeting a friend in Hollywood, but her friend doesn't get off for another 2 hours, so she wants to have dessert with me. Sigh. I was going to write more about this whole writer/story/life thing, but I gotta be going out again.

I guess this is a long way of saying I'm kind of tired about this as well. So, I promise, the next, hmmm, let's say five entries will have nothing to do with Setup Chick. Instead, I might bone up on my prose.

Where's The Love Song To Set Us Free . . .

You guessed it, another dinner just between Setup Chick and me. Setup Chick's boyfriend had to work late. And so she's telling me how things are now better with her and her beau. But she keeps on saying things in the line of "Hey, you like x? So does my boyfriend," and "Yeah, my boyfriend is like that too." And she keeps on mentioning I'm the only other person she knows other than herself who watched a certain show. She tells me how she and her boyfriend hooked up five years ago, a tale of two folks with issues who ended up living together out of convenience and now five years have gone by but no they do love each other.

And two thoughts keep rushing through my mind:

1. Radiohead's lyric "Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there," and
2. RUN AWAY!

. . . Watch The World Spinning Gently Out Of Time

Back as a psych student at Duke, one of the theories I learned dealt with pupilary dilation. Back in the 60s and early 70s, several studies were done on whether the pupil constricts when negative images were shown. The studies were inconclusive on that issue, but what researches did find was that pupils consistently dialated when subjects were shown attractive images. To put it another way, if someone finds you attractive, you'll know because her/his pupils will dilate. This has been the basis for numerous articles in men's magazines. I haven't seen any recent studies on this issue, so who knows if it's bunk.

Yeah, and there are yet undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who can see where this is going.

I was supposed to have dinner with Setup Chick and Young Co-Worker chick tomorrow night. Then Setup Chick asks if we could have dinner just between us tonight because her boyfriend is supposed to take her out tomorrow night. Of course I say yes. So we have a heart to heart talk during dinner about her relationship with her boyfriend and my general issues. At one point, she looks like she's about to cry, but she doesn't. I think back to my psych class, and I notice that her pupils did dilate when she looked at me. I noticed this earlier in the office, and I noticed this again when we were in the parking lot. While driving home, she gives me a call to tell me that William Hung is on the radio (damn his FOB soul). When I get home, I give her a call. We end up talking for another hour. We watch the same obscure shows and talk about our pets.

Don't worry, my rational mind knows that, at this point, I don't just need to walk away from this situation--I need to run, run into the ocean, learn to swim and fucking grow gills.