Happily Ever After, Or Something Like It.

My lovelies.

I am so sorry about this last week of incommunicado. I've been HOME-home, and busy being lazy. I've been working on three columns, but none of them are shaping up in quite the way I like. So more work is being done. In the meantime, I have a short little post for you, just to tide you over and keep y'all a little less bored.

Last night, I received a phone call from my mother while sitting home alone, watching the "Ghost Town" episode of SATC. (Ha. Fitting. The irony is not lost on me.) "We're at Beer Friday," she told me. "Want to come down? Bring your dad's jacket and the beer in the fridge. We're at SkaterBoy's and Princess Leia's. Oh, and H is here." "H" is the guy that my parents have been trying, fruitlessly, to introduce me to for the past two years. When this all started, he was 26. Now, he's 28, causing my mother to ask me, "Is 28 too old?"

Yeah, mother, generally, it is, but since all I was doing was further drowning myself in a wallowing pit of despair and missing Perfect while watching Carrie and Aiden (who are a great TV version of Perfect and I, by the way,) make up and make out, I decided that hey, this would be interesting one way or another. So I shrugged into my new last-season AE bomber jacket, slipped into my Dansko motorcycle boots, and went on a "what the fuck do I have to lose?" adventure.

Ok. Usually, my mother and I have very different taste, but H apparently stood for Hot. He happened to be in SkaterBoy' and Princess Leia's kitchen with my dad when I walked in, and as soon as I walked through the door, we gave each other a once-over. He was a smaller build then the men I usually go for (the tall and built types,) but he was golden tan with short and thick blonde hair that looked like it had the texture of a Brillo pad and bright, bright blue eyes. Actually, the best way I can describe him is to say that he looked like a condensed, blonde Prince Harry with smaller features. An introduction and a few minutes into conversation later, I found out that he cooked, was Swiss by birth (AHA! That explained a lot!), had a goofy laugh, and was into biking. As we walked out the dark porch together to meet the rest of the crew by the brick bake oven with which SkaterBoy was making homemade pizza, the Swiss Prince turned around at the bottom of the stairs and held out a hand for me. "Here, it's a little dark."

Um. And you're a little adorable.

Furtively, I texted Alli. "OH MY GOD. He is so cute!"

"Sleep with him," she said.

"Um, how about I try for a phone number first?"

"No, do it-- literally. Sleep with him."

"Yeah, like that wouldn't be awkward or anything. "Hey, mom, dad-- I'm gonna bring your friend home to our house to have sex with him in my childhood bed with the horse wallpaper still on the wall!""

"You have a point," Alli conceded.

At the end of the night, I ended up getting neither a phone number or laid. This may be because the Swiss Prince apparently has a girlfriend. Whom he ignored a phone call from while we were talking. "I like your boots," he told me. "I noticed them earlier."

"Thanks," I said shyly. "It was either between them or sneakers."

"Oh, definitely better than sneakers. And they're Danskos! I'm wearing Danskos, too! I love them."

His phone rang, and he stood up to fish it out of his short's pocket. He flipped it open to look at the caller ID, and then flipped it shut again, sending it straight to voicemail, and sat back down again. His eligibility stock went up.

"Earlier, The Girlfriend called him from Boston, and before they hung up, he told her he loved her," my mom told me on the drive home. His stock went back down. Why, whywhyWHY must all the good men be either too young or taken? WHY?

And then, I'm having to field off things like the Facebook message I got from a random guy who found my profile picture on a mutual friend's page. "Wow! You are absolutely gorgous!" he said. "Single?"

Two days later, I got around to emailing him back, having decided to be nice and give him the time of day for going out on a limb and having to balls to at least do that. Though he wasn't my type by far, I thought it best to encourage this sort of behavior, and make it at least a somewhat positive experience and not something where he was just ignored. More men need to just take the chance and do stuff like this. If they did, I guarantee dating would be a whole hell of a lot easier. And I thoroughly believe, as I wrote in Moss on the Moon, and told Perfect the night we slept together, if a man wants to stick it in, then he's gotta be the one to make the moves.

Hey, it worked for Perfect and I.

So, I sent the Eager Emailer this in return: "Happily complicated with a phenomenal guy, but thanks for the compliment, though I will disagree with both the spelling and the use of the word "gorgeous"."

Ok, so I lied a little bit about being "happily" complicated, but it's better than just saying "hair-rippingly, head-bashingly, crazy-makingly complicated" and telling the truth. Sometimes, a little white lie is better.

"Sorry about the typo!" he sent back. "Still beautiful reguardless."

I didn't even want to get into that typo, too.

Meanwhile, I am reminded by his Facebook wall that Perfect has a type which I do not fit in. (Another reason I was always so unsure about what was happening.) Pretty brunettes tall enough he doesn't have to double in half to kiss them like he had to with me with long, thin limbs, big brown eyes and thin little catty smiles seem to do it for him. I am a tiny blonde with a small and muscular body, big blue eyes, and a big smile that shows off all that money my parents put into it when I was little. I have an alto voice, bawdy humor, and varying ideas on what is Wrong and Right. I'm sure the girls that he likes would absolutely despise me. I am nothing like them. Which always makes me wonder why he was into me. (For the first time in my life, my overly-cocky personality was hit with a crippling bout of negative self-confidence.) And now, when those sort of girls are ALL he seems to be accepting friend requests from his new college, and those sort of girls are the ones posting on his wall about how "they need to do that again soon!", I can't help but to get down about what "that" possibly was, and start to get the desire to throw things, preferably whatever is in closest reach. (A stapler? The shoe sculpture I did in 8th grade? A mug?) Then again, the realistic side of me has to add that it's highly doubtful that if it IS sex that they're talking about, someone would post that on a Facebook wall. At least, I hope people have more class than that.

Especially when Perfect has already told me he may, again, be MIA tomorrow for our trip to Worcester, as he may be "at my camp with the fam. We will see." I'm learning "we will see" means "I'm actually too nice to let you down, so I'm going to cleverly disguise a "no" and hope you feel better about it." Also-- Perfect has a camp?! But I've decided if tomorrow is again a no-go, the boy is driving himself to Burlington to see me, politeness on my side be damned. He owes me at least that in gas and common courtesy at this point. Plus, I really need to unload those t-shirts to him. Though I will miss them, I admit.

I've been wishing on so many stars, finding four-leaf clovers for it, and going through so many of my little OCD rituals to assure it that if I don't get my Happy Ending with Perfect, (oh lord, we're going to ignore the innuendo-filled phrase there,) this optimistic girl may give up a little bit of faith in Luck and Good Things Happening To Good People. What is the point in meeting someone who changes all (or most,) of your Bad (Dating) Habits, makes you straighten up your act and start to believe that maybe settling for the bad boys, the inconsiderate guys, and the douchebags isn't at all what life can offer you, and that maybe, just maybe, there are such things as instant connections and people who really care for and about you, and will be willing to do all the Little Things to prove that to you, even in some cases, After The Fact-- what is the point of all this if you don't get your Happy Ending? That you know that there's someone out there who did all this for you, and maybe there are more of them who will in the future? Ugh. Un-sign me up. I'm an Instant Gratification Girl. No waiting, please.

Speaking of waiting, now I must fly, or else I will literally miss the boat!

XOXO