the end of earl grey

found out from facebook today that earl grey got married this weekend

to his "best friend" who we would talk about occasionally when we were dating 5 years ago

his engagement was 3 days after I wrote this post and this post... how foolish of me!

funny how life works out - guess she was carrie and not I.

at least it's closure to a fantasy I never truly wanted. 

TP

he's weird. but hot. 

may I never utter those words again. Oh yea did I mention we nicknamed him TP - first word "tiny", last word...I bet you can guess! 

happiest relationships

I don't post many articles (ok ok, I haven't been posting much at all) but I found this one about relationships particularly interesting. Some of the key happiness factors that I never would have guessed: being with a prettier woman and less attractive man, being a first born and a last born, and being gay... Or feminist. 

Luckily the relationship I'm in has at least 2 of those factors.. I'll let you guess which. 

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4613060?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

Oh yea and happy 2014! More to come - lots of interesting things happening but hard to find the time or words to document! 

earl grey in the morning

10 hours after my last post. 

in my compartmentalized mind, the door to earl grey's sphere cracks open every once in a while. through it I see the beautiful memories I remembered last night, neat and glittering. open the door wider and I start seeing the dust, the darkness, and the furniture falling apart. it's always when I wake that I know we are where we are for the right reasons, that we aren't carrie and big, and that I'll never be brave enough or irresponsible enough to tell him what I think of us when I'm the most vulnerable. 

earl grey

I've become a master at compartmentalizing. I got over the most recent guy I dated in two days and a bottle of wine. I got over my last boyfriend of six months in a week. I got over earl grey in...4 years and counting. 

It's not the first night I've lied awake thinking about him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think about him on a daily basis and I certainly don't let him hinder my dating life, but I've also more or less accepted that I'll always love him. There are sides of me I haven't experienced since I was with him, and I legitimately think I knew myself better when we were together. He's the only one in my adult life who's seen my inner child, and he's the person who has made me the happiest, saddest, and the most livid I have ever been. I've never lived life or loved anyone with such intensity. 

We are magnets held apart only by the hundreds of miles between SF and LA, and our worthless rational logic that tells us we'd never make it in the long run. 

Whenever I turn into this nostalgic mess I know it's just because the nights (and wine) make me more vulnerable. But if I wake up feeling the same way I do now, I think I need to tell him. I know admitting it to ourselves will be opening a Pandora's box we tried to close years ago - but what if it was never meant to be closed?

on being single

Touché, aziz ansari, touché. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyhennen/being-single-these-days-sucks-according-to-aziz-ansari?s=mobile

tow truck

whenever I pass by a tow truck, I feel a slight flutter in my stomach.

four years ago, my car battery died on the third floor down of my apartment garage. the first tow truck was too big to even enter the garage. the second tow truck came closer but still didn't cut it, so we ended up having to call a pickup over and hook my car up to it. in the hour or so that we were waiting for the pickup driver, the tow truck driver and I started chatting. he was about my age, and working to put himself through a junior college. we were from completely different backgrounds, but there was just something that made the conversation click, and i found his crooked smile to be endearing. after we got my car out, I rode with him to the dealership, and before we parted ways he thanked me and said he hadn't met someone who he could have such easy conversation with in quite some time. 

since that day I've forgotten his name, his face, and even the towing company he worked for, but i can't forget that spark (I think I might have even scanned missed connections on craigslist for a few days after). now whenever I see a tow truck, I can't help but peer through the window hoping I might recognize his face. 

but what then? would we exchange numbers? would we go on a date? 

I've been thinking about this a lot, and it's brought me to two somewhat conflicting conclusions: 

Conclusion 1: I'm ready to give chemistry a shot, even if nothing else seems to fit the criteria that I (and all of us) have in my head. clicking with someone is the hardest criteria to satisfy because of its intangible nature, and I can't underestimate the importance or the difficulty of that one trait. so, if I met tow truck man today, I would go on a date with him. 

Conclusion 2: There is no one person in the world that's right for me. just like when looking for an apartment, every potential match is a combination of dials - except instead of desired location, price, and proximity to public transport, the dials read intelligence, background, physical attractiveness, and chemistry. all relationships are different because of the values on each dial, and all can be great in different ways. 

based on conclusion 1, I'm holding chemistry as the most important dial. but, I have to take into consideration the balance of all the other dials to make it sustainable. maybe there isn't "the one", but some number of individuals have to fall within this ideal range. 

i'm putting both these conclusions to the test. I've been seeing someone who is definitely in the 90s on the chemistry and physical attractiveness scale, but low on the intelligence and background scale. it's been fun the last two weeks, but I already sense it falling apart (for one thing, the "goodnight, pretty lady" texts have stopped). chemistry only opens the door; intellectual stimulation and a common upbringing are what deepens the connections. yet, it's so easy to fall for someone based just off the way they look and how your body reacts when you're near them... 

the list.

I finally started putting my list on paper last night. yes, THE list. my primary motivation? I realized that I'm not sure what my number is, and that scares me a little. if I don't keep tabs now, soon I won't know if I'm in the teens or in the 50s. and of course the nerd in me sort of wants to run analytics, like how many different races I've slept with or what my average height partner was, and how many new guys I average in a year - you know, the usual.  

with my terrible memory, I knew it would be a challenge - but it turned out to be so much harder than I expected.

for example, in my list:

• I had to group the men in 2009-2010 because I couldn't remember where they fell on the timeline. The mid 20s were all a blur, and I didn't have the foresight to blog about them 
• I have line items that say: "Jonathan (blue eyes)"; "Cop"; and "Daniel (Asian)" because that's as much as I'll ever remember about them
• I scrolled through several years of text messages to recover names and reread many of my posts in this blog to piece together the slightly-more-significant suitors
• And of course, there is still one name missing between 2009-2011. I know this because when I started dating breve, I knew what my number was, and the math doesn't add up. 

yea, not an easy exercise. my advice: write it all down before you forget. because damn, that "+1" unknown on my list is gonna bother me forever. 

just. make. a. move.

seriously guys, a word of advice. at some point you just have to MAKE THE MOVE.

case in point: david from coffee meets bagel was matched with me a week ago, and this entire week he's just been trying to engage me with 2-3 mundane texts per day. I've gotten sick of his passiveness and for some reason want to give him a chance in person, so I've purposely inserted several openers into the conversation to make it REALLY easy for me him to ask me out.

first opener
david: Mission is pretty cool, they have a ton of great dessert spots, have you been?
chai: hm, I only really know of birite and tartine. what places are you thinking of?

ideal response: Oh man there's so many others! Humphrey slocombe, dynamo donuts, mission pie, anthony's cookies! any you would like to try?

actual response: Oh man there's so many others! Humphrey slocombe, dynamo donuts, mission pie, anthony's cookies! Good thing you don't have a sweet tooth, you don't have to worry about diabetes.

um what, really? you're bringing up diabetes in a dating conversation? 

second opener
chai: btw, do you actually have all those dogs in your pics?
david: Haha no, but the white one is my bro's, so I take care of him a lot. You want to meet him?
chai: lol I bet you get asked about them a lot. well played. haha, sure  [on meeting them]

ideal response: cool, why don't we grab some birite and I'll bring him to dolores park this weekend?

actual response: well a guy's gotta stand out somehow, might as well do it with cute dogs haha

ok, as I'm writing this I'm wondering to myself why exactly I still want to give this guy a chance

third opener 
david: so i'm guessing weekend brunches in the city aren't your thing eh?
chai: haha I didn't say that, I just don't like waiting for them. I love weekend brunch

at this point, I am full out expecting some sort of brunch invite. I just said that I LOVE WEEKEND BRUNCH

david: All the good brunches have ridiculous waits! I've only been to a few because I usually get too hangry haha

omg. seriously?!  OK. how obvious can I make it that you should just ask me to meet up in person?!

chai: Ha seriously. so...do you ever meet people from CMB or do you just text them forever?
no, I'm not even being nice anymore 

david: I've met a few - that's the whole point right? How about you, are you a veteran?

............alY$#jdmd;ja&6*%&%;q 
i give up. those few girls that you've met must have all asked you out, because you certainly aren't capable of pulling the trigger!! 

toothbrush

in my dating life, the moment I give someone a toothbrush carries a lot of significance. it means you've slept over at least 4 times and it doesn't make sense for you to just chew some trident before bed anymore. it means I have an expectation that you'll make good use of that brand new toothbrush, that there's some sense of permanency of having you in my life. it also means that I'll have a daily reminder of you sitting on my bathroom sink. having your own toothbrush is a prerequisite to having your own hanger, which opens the door to having your own drawer, key, etc. It's the commentary equivalent of Summer letting Tom into her room for the first time.  

today I threw wbf2's toothbrush out - and all of "us", whatever that was, along with it. I immediately felt a wave of relief and freedom - who knew a dental cleaning tool could carry such emotional symbolism? 

wbf2 and I had been loitering dangerously close to the border of relationship status, and it was only a matter of time before we accidentally inched a toe across that line. for us it was a weekend of fighting like a couple, realizing we cared, having way too many relationship-y lectures, being grilled by friends about our status, and sending a kissy face emoticon that set us over the edge into that relationship minefield. as the grey area crumbled, we turned and ran full speed the other way until "relationship" became a laughable foreign concept. 

I have one toothbrush left, and you can bet I won't be giving it to another placeholder.