Leaving... by Giselle

I know Giselle from dance (get the pseudonym yet? No?) and work. Together, we are a creative force not to be messed with. And talk about boys a little too much. I love her! You should love her too.

I’m not sure if it’s because my iPod is full of shaggy haired boys playing slow acoustic guitar and singing about unrequited love or if it’s because I had just left a certain shaggy haired, guitar playing boy behind...but I could not find a single song on my long drive home from Harrisonburg tonight that made me happy.

Who am I kidding, the latter is most definitely the reason for that.

For my fellow fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you might recall Lena and Kostos’ meeting in Greece at the end of the final book, Forever in Blue. Kostos is Lena’s ‘person’. You know, the someone you can’t get past despite anyone else…

…Sound familiar to anyone? Anyone?

Sorry, I digress.

Life had separated the two for months, and when they finally chance meet again, it’s the day before Kostos has to leave the country. They spend the night in their special place- an orchard at the top of the village- and when the sun starts to rise in the morning and they hold each other for the last time, he whispers to her a word in Greek that she doesn’t understand.

“κάποια”.

Lena seaches every English/Greek dictionary she can find, she asks her grandparents, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, but no one seems to know the word that she means.

Finally, on her last day in Greece she finds it in an old dictionary.

“Someday”.

Did I expect anything like that? Oh no.

But I can’t decide what I DID expect.

Experience and reason should leave me without expectation when it comes to this boy. But experience and reason should have taught me a LOT about him, and without fail, despite experience…and reason…something always brings me back to him.

Today was full of packing and loading and hauling and moving…so needless to say, by 7:00 tonight I was physically exhausted. And then there was the packing and loading and hauling and moving help that I received from shaggy haired, guitar playing boy- the very same shaggy haired, guitar playing boy who left my bed earlier that morning with a kiss goodbye- but when everything was packed and loaded and hauled and moved, and it came down to the ACTUAL goodbye, the REAL ending, I got a one armed hug and a “see you when you visit the beach this summer”. Now, I didn’t expect much, but I expected more that that.

… needless to say, by 7:00 tonight I was emotionally exhausted.

I sat across from my mom at Applebees, picked at my salad and tried not to cry. And after a while of staring at my pathetic-ness she said, “When did you become such a wimp? What in this 2-year-long friendship, or relationship or whatever makes it impossible for you to say how you really feel? That’s not you.” And of course, she’s right.

With Chicago Boy last summer, I promised myself I wouldn’t get attached.

Sound familiar?

I promised to let it be a physical thing only.

Sound familiar?

I promised to not expect anything and go with the flow and let what happened happen.

Sound familiar?

And then came the end of the summer, and the anxiety of leaving him behind, and knowing I didn’t want to be without him and having the conversation I knew I had to have and the resulting relationship and that was me. That was me telling him how I felt and getting what I wanted and being real.

But for some reason I cant say those things to Shaggy Boy. I can’t even ask him to say those things or prompt him to say anything at all. I never say anything I want to say or anything I mean. And I don’t know if it’s because I never know where I stand, or because I think I know where I stand and it’s not where I want to be standing, or because I think I’m more invested than he is or what, but I didn’t say anything. I drove away from JMU for the summer and from him for who knows how long and I pretended to be content with that one armed hug, and despite attempts to drown my sorrows in a Sheetz milkshake and cheese fries, I cried all the way up 81.

So here it goes- what I might have said if I had any courage or any faith or any hope:

“Maybe, κάποια?”

I obviously think this guy is lame. You should too...

Best date idea ever....

And by "idea," I mean, this actually happened. His idea.

We wrote a song and then recorded it.

It's the perfect date - active, creative, CHEAP (well, if you already have a guitar and/or recording software I suppose), and still plenty of opportunity for flirting and/or chemistry and/or double-entendres in the lyrics.

Holla. Why do I have to graduate now that I may or may not have found a decent JMU guy?

Pheromones

I think they're stronger than we assume.

I read this fantastic article that my friend drew my attention to (Oh she knows my interests so well!). It had a lot to say about how science, genetics, carnal instinct, and dating culture all inter-relate.

Why do we like kissing? Because saliva helps us sense the best DNA to mingle our own with.

How do men become subconsciously more attracted to fertile, ovulating women? It's in our scent.

There must be some hormone I released once I was more single than usual lately (it's a long story about stupid boys who are stupidly far away and me being smart and sticking up for myself). After this bit of heartache, I wanted to take a break from boys, I really did. One of my informal New Year's resolutions was to put less emphasis on boys (including just flirting for flirting's sake and especially ESPECIALLY to not date another boy at JMU. They're just too lame).

But like I predicted, that resolution lasted for oh, about fifteen seconds. Not my fault!! Out of nowhere, boys - both old and new - came to bug me. (Who am I kidding? I love it.)

A guy I met at a bar over winter break invited me to come back up to DC for his birthday party.

Another (mmm...military) guy I met at a club like nine months ago IM-ed me out of nowhere. For some reason I have a special place in my heart for boys in Maryland.

One of my former hall mates, who I've always had an attraction to, revved up the flirting last week. (But apparently he's been revving with several girls recently.)

Last weekend I ran into a guy I dated sophomore year for a bit. He looked seriously good. And he said all the right things. And I questioned why I didn't hold onto him a little bit tighter back in the day.

And then tonight, I heard from some boy I met on the metro a couple summers ago. Random, not too flirty, but then he never was too obviously flirty. He invited me to do a stop-by visit if I was ever in DC.

Did they smell my pheromones - even though most of them are at least 100 miles away? Could they subconsciously tell I was trying to give up on them? Are they a distraction from my goal; a temptation to give it all up? Or are they a reminder that it's futile to stop caring about having a boy in my vicinity? It's our evolutionary goal in life, after all, to find a mate whose DNA will mix with ours to create the perfect offspring.

Maryland is calling my name. Not quite sure why. (Well, okay, perhaps it is because he came to visit. Him and some friends drove down to meet some friends and come to my roommate's birthday party. When I invited them, I had no idea they would actually come. But I am extremely glad they did; I had an amazingly fun time thankyouverymuch.) My friends and parents tell me I only like unavailable men. I suppose this includes the geographically unavailable. Of course he would - out of all the long-distance guys I could potentially date - have the strictest visiting schedule. But considering I refuse to date JMU guys the remainder of my time here, what other choice do I have but to travel?

Like I have commented on before, the military just trains good daters anyway. He is legitimately more respectful and attentive from 150 miles away than maybe any other guy has treated me.

Buttttt if I do hang out with the JMU guys who have reappeared, it doesn't count as breaking my resolution right? Since I have already dated them?

Eesh. Maybe I should go back to rejecting all boys.

Ha, yeah right. That time carnal instinct let that thought last only five seconds...

If there's a second thing I've learned...

It's that not trying is key.

It happened again. The week after I officially gave up on boys (including seeing a cute one without any sort of stimulating physiological reaction in my body at all, and instead just feeling depressed about how many girls he's probably mistreated), they return the pursuing full-force.

It seems so counter-intuitive, but the past two boys that have made any sort of move on me must have done it because I went into the situation thinking "hmm, I so don't need to flirt with them."

So I didn't.

But they did.

Right now, the third key to fit my personal pattern is that the boy must not go to JMU. Those ones are still all lame. But it's okay - there's hope for love in the world outside of the Harrisonburg bubble!

(Thank goodness. Get me out of this bubble. I mean wait - I love it here! I don't want to leave! Ah, didn't I just struggle with this dual emotion like yesterday when it came to senior year of high school?)

ah, JMU...

It feels just like New York.

I was walking past the tennis courts, where a bunch of Spanish-speaking guys were playing soccer. As I strolled, excited about my last year at JMU (eek!) and my awesome job and job training (why I'm here so early), the men started making kissing noises at me.

Ah, it was like I was back "home" in Brooklyn.

The kissing noise. Best way to attract girls anywhere. Ahem.

The Paradox:

When I'm feeling my worst, boys pester me more.

I went to go meet my mom's bus at Penn Statioin when she came to visit me. But it was right after a nap, so I threw on my JMU sweatshirt (complete with a pink paint stain of some sort), wiped the excess mascara out from under my eyes, and trudged into the subway system.

"Hey, purple's my favorite color!"

Really? It is? Well thank goodness I wore it!

It ended with multiple kisses on the cheek. I don't know how I let myself get in these sketchy situations.

Then the other night, I went to go buy MORE TOILETPAPER (seriously) at like midnight around the corner. I was pissed off and in a rush to, you know, pee? And then go to bed?

"Have a good night!"

(mumbled) "Thank you!"

"I SAID good NIGHT!"

(angrily - bad idea at midnight in a vaguely sketchy-looking neighborhood, I know) "I said you TOO! THANK you!"

And I kept walking, after two other younger 20-something guys snickered. Little did I know, when I would come back around that same corner, conquest in my posession, the same guy would still be there.

As he approached me, giving me a second chance with "Have a good night!" I just straight out asked him whether or not he said hello to every girl in the city, or do I have something on my face that says "Well hello there! I'm from out of town! Specifically, the south! I am a friendly person!" even when I think I've mastered the "Get out of my way. I'm a disgruntled/busy New Yawker" face. While I was blabbering on, he was stumbling over words himself about being 40 and living in the same apartment for 10 years and he doesn't talk to every girl and maybe could we get together for-

No! I refused to be picked up past midnight by undatable, creeptastic men. Refuse! I'm trying to raise my standards here! (Okay, maybe if he had been in his 20s...still probably a bad idea).

So, I think every guy who makes a little cat call or says something to me, I'm going to poll him: is it me? Or is it the city? Or is it you? It must be exhausting talking to every pretty girl here. Lawdy knows there are a lot more of 'em than pretty (straight) men.

And the lesson I learned from this that one of my guy friends tried to convince me was true just a few weeks ago: You don't need to try to get a guy's attention. It's the lack of effort that turns guys on.

So now I have to try to not try? That's when I pretend to not be looking for dates because, well, they always show up when you're not.

The Disease plauging college girls

...And no, it is not an STD.

(even though supposedly JMU surpassed Radford as the Virginia college with the highest STI - isn't that the new, correct term? - rates and two non-JMU-ers would not stop making fun of two of us proud JMU-ers for that last night)

It is an unnamed Disease, one where girls are reduced to the like of tissues, paper plates, standard red drinking cups...pick your own disposable cliche. Although boys are the cause of an original case of the illness, it is highly contagious among women as well - and we all know how close dorm living is.

It is closely related to Competition, commonly found spread among college-aged women too (which I happen to be highly susceptible to), but it is a little different.

Girls generally get it a lot, but it is especially common among college-aged girls, and especially especially JMU girls. Like most liberal arts schools, we have more girls than guys, and our streotype on both ends is really really pretty girls and really really skeevy guys (who all really really like partying really really hard).

Guys want one thing - this is not news to anyone of any generation. But this generation hosts more girls who are willing to give guys only that one thing without demanding anything else. And the rest of us are left without any vague notion of romance in our lives.

If the boys are getting what they want without any effort on their part, what right do we - as self-respecting and self-hoping for some sort of romance/lust/pretending girls - have to demand that boys actually pretend to like us for anything other than our bodies?

So we catch the disease, since the girl down the hall is "dating" some guy, and we want to too - and to be in any sort of competition, we have to give up any expectations. It's okay if we make out and then he doesn't call/IM/say hi in real life for three or four weeks (searching for other options without being tied down) , and then next time he texts its to suggest another make out session. And we say "okay!" because we want to pretend. Pretending is fun and care-free for a while, as long as you are fully aware that you are pretending.

And this disease spreads like wild fire - or the black plauge, or ebola, or mono, again pick your cliche - among hallmates, suitemates, classmates, and friends.

I have had it. I may have it now, I'm not sure (that's another thing about the disease - sometime it masks itself as sexiness or confidence). Can I cure it? Can I help others with it? Duhn duhn duhhhnnn....