Relationships @ MindSay

I think I've written about Mark on here before; I know, I know, 'tis my blog about teaching, but he works at my school, so this makes it school-related, does it not?  I am very nervous (not nervous, I guess, but full of nerves/nervous energy) and regret eating breakfast this morning.

To backtrack, I met him when I was setting up over the summer.  He, and Dylan and Milly were all really cool and helpful custodians while I was moving in, and I won them over (believe it or not, they have to do a lot of crap and deal with stupid people AND their messes, so they don't love everybody).  Dylan was just a summer helper, but Mark and Milly are both young and fun, so after school they used to come visit me while they were coming around to empty trashes/vacuum, and we'd chill.  Yay, two new friends.

Or so I thought. I stay at work late, sometimes until 8:30.  Most nights, Mark usually comes in to visit and stays for a while; sometimes a half hour, sometimes an hour.  NOT helpful to getting work done, but I don't know many people around here, so all social connections are welcome.  He's a cool guy; he's fun to talk to, funny, and he's nice.  A cool new friend, right?

Well, then the rumors started floating around, apparently.  To my knowledge, only one other teacher is here past 6, and she's pretty far out there, so I don't know how they originated, but apparently, most of the building was aflutter a few weeks ago that Emily and Mark were dating/hooking up/etc.  Let me tell you right now that this was not the case.  In fact, Mark and I even joked about it.  We first talked about how everyone thinks he and Milly do it regularly on peoples' desks because he's a guy and she's a girl and they're here until 11 usually alone, and then we were kidding around that 'oh, we're talking to each other - we must be on a date'.  We also kidded around that now the way they divide the building, he's across the school and Milly's on my side, so I talk to her and hey, that must mean the two of US are getting it on (BOY do I miss middle school!).

So this whole time, I was feeling a little weird about the situation, because 1) I SUCK when it comes to boys and 'liking' people, and 2) I didn't want a reputation at my new school of being that girl (since I am not that girl).  To me, it was completely platonic. I thought he was a good guy, nothing wrong with him, but I still wasn't attracted to my friend Mark; that's what I was considering him.  And that's how it felt, except for a few times.  He made a few comments that I DIDN'T think were things just-friends would say, such as "cute girl like you" or "I always have time for you".  I never really responded to them, and I guess I should have thought more of them than I did, but I'm stupid.

So one of the days this past week, he told me that his mom was going to be watching his kids on Saturday (did I not mention that?  It wouldn't be a real factor for liking him or not, but it is a truth about him) and would I maybe want to hang out.  I said maybe.  But after the long work week, I just wanted to head home to my parents' house and get into pajamas and sleep and pet my cat.  So on Friday after TWO long meetings, I was very sleepy and drained and told him that I was going home because I had plans to hike with my mom on Saturday (Truth) and then I was going to go dog-sit for my mom's friend for some money (true in the past, but a definite FALSEHOOD for this weekend).  I don't know why I half-lied, but I did. 

I also never turned my phone on Friday or Saturday, and just put it on before I started typing this (Sunday, about 11:10am).  He texted me with "I didn't meant to make things awkward between us.  I'm cool just being friends if you don't wanna go out" to which I responded "I left my phone in (our town) this wknd, sorry I didn't respond sooner.  Yeah, friends is cool" and he wrote back, "Ok I guess I thought, well it doesn't matter what I thought.  Friends is cool".

But now I feel like a bitch.  I didn't intend to do anything like this...I'm not even sure I did anything like this (lead him on).  I didn't think I was being flirty or... ugh.  I have SO MUCH WORK TO GET DONE RIGHT NOW, I'm at my friggin' school to get it done, and I'm just sitting here in the cold thinking about how awkward tomorrow is going to be.

Glorious.

My friend Anna and her boyfriend, Zach, just broke up this week. They have been together over a year.

Kenzie and Tyler broke up this week. They have been together almost a year.

Sarah and Austin broke up (the first time) at this time. They were together 7 months.

Now Sarah and Austin are on the verg of breaking up. After 4 years.

Renee and Preston broke up at this time. Now they're engaged.

Two...no three years ago at this time Brandon and I broke up. We had been together 2 years.

 

Makes me wonder.

Wow, it's been forever since I've written anything. I'm still with the same guy and still wishing our sex life was better. ... but w/e things are working for now.

Anyway, I had the best fantasy while I was masturbating today.  I was imagining a threesome with a beautiful girl and a guy with enough libido to service both of us and then some. :) Then what I realized was that what I was really wanting was a relationship with them. Not just sex. I think it would be awesome to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend that you live with. Have them to hang out with, date, sleep next to, watch T.V. with.  Just everything. Every normal everyday common joys.  Not to mention the mind-blowing sex.

Then I wondered if such a relationship is possible. And if so how does one get into that one of those? How would you build enough trust for there to be no resentment that is often found in repeated threesome sex?  Thing is, I don't just want the sex. I want the companion ship of both a man and a woman. 

Is there anyone else out there who feels the same?

I feel like I've written about this already. Actually I probly haven't, but wanted to.

 

My second sister, Sarah, has been with Austin for almost 4 years. Austin left for the guards this summer. They wrote everyday, she flew out when she was allowed. And when he graduated from Basic they talked on the phone everyday. When Sarah started out at UND this year she met with Andrew. Oddly enough, I used to like this guy, and when Andrew told me he was going to UND last year, I prayed he would not end up meeting my sister. Because I had a bad feeling or because I would be jealous that he'd like her, I wasn't sure. But no matter what, I just didn't want those two meeting.

On day one, they met. Since then, they've been together every day/talked every day. Today I get a text.

 

"I am horrible person." To which I thought, yeah she is. Anyway, I asked her why. So she told me she likes Andrew. Who wants her to leave Austin. Because Andrew has made her question every bit of the last 4 years. She thinks Andrew would be better for her. But she can't leave Austin. Andrew gave her the option. Him or Austin, she picked Austin. And now she's lost Andrew because he can't stand liking her and not having anything back.

 

Austin likes country music. Austin was in Sarah's class. They grew up together. He's tall and buff. He wrestled and played football in High School. He dresses from American Eagle, Hollister, Aero...ya know.

 

Andrew likes heavy metal. He grew up in a bigger city. He's average height and very thin. He was in the band in High School. Dresses from Hot Topic, Spencers...ya know.

 

I told her she's bored with Austin, because he's not around. And she likes Andrew now and will for a while because she's curious. So she can leave Austin, go with Andrew, find out what he'sreally like, crawl back to Austin who will have already left her.

 

I used to like Andrew while I was dating Brandon for about a year. I stuck around long enough to find out what Andrew's really like, and stayed with Brandon. Who broke up with me about four months later. Which Austin just might do to Sarah when he gets back. But hey, I wouldn't trade those last four months for the world.

_{Thoughts after reading some of Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." Contains mild profanity.}

Chuck Klosterman posits, in his essay, "This Is Emo," that it's impossible to ever be satisfied with a relationship. Why? Because we see happy relationships in the stories, in most of the romantic comedies and love songs that are widespread through our culture. And we want the same thing in our lives. He declares, "whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living."

He then proceeds to blame the entire problem, humorously, on John Cusack. Superficially, on the notion that, "every straight girl I know would sell her soul to share a milkshake" with Mr. Cusack. Initially, I'd misremembered this quote as being "every straight girl in America," and considered this a gross generalization. I've been labeled as representing the all-American girl for years, and I have the opinion that John Cusack's roles invariably seem to represent a whiny guy who's not doing much with his life and can't hold a relationship together. However, being only straight, and not in fact an acquaintance of Mr. Klosterman's, his statement could still be considered accurate.

This comes up again later. Klosterman describes a ploy of his for the second date with a girl, when he'll ask her what religion she follows.

     'Invariably, she will say something like, "Oh, I'm sort of Catholic,
      but I'm pretty lapsed in my participation," or, "I'm kind of Jewish,
      but I don't really practice anymore." Virtually everyone
      under the age of thirty will answer that question in this manner.'

I considered this statement, and then I mentally looked around at the friends I hang out with. The vast majority of them are between 20 and 27, and with five notable exceptions, they're very solid about what they believe. Actually, with most of them, you wouldn't need to ask on the second date - they would have told you before the first. The problem with Mr. Klosterman's phrase of "virtually everyone under the age of thirty," is that his sample group is apparently limited to the people he's dating.
This kind of makes sense, because if he's this half-assed about what he believes, I'm rather certain that nobody who's firm about their religion would want to date him.

But, back to this business of pursuing relationship satisfaction.

Klosterman describes a concept of "fake love," and slides into holding up Coldplay on a pedestal, the base of which he currently uses to beat his forehead. "That sleepy-eyed bozo," referring to Chris Martin as he performs Coldplay's "Yellow," "isn't even making sense. He's just pouring fabricated emotions over four gloomy guitar chords, and it ends up sounding like love." He's not exactly whining, just building for his point later. "Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real."

The rest of "This Is Emo," simply further develops the idea of "fake love;" where we got it, why we can't find it, and why we want it so bad. The two-dimensional happiness that exists in our fiction-media looks and sounds real, and must have been attainable for those people (the movie characters, or the songwriters). If it looks so good and sounds so good, and we know people have gotten it, we want it, too. And of course, we can't find it, so we're never really satisfied in relationships.

Klosterman's wrong, but only because he stops too soon. Agreed, the two-dimensional fake love isn't what we do in our lives. He's got the right focal point, but the wrong angle. He claims that the problem is that we're trying for this ideal, and we can't attain it.

Fake love isn't the ideal. It's just like he said, a two-dimensional version of the real thing. It's not the pinnacle to try to achieve. It's about as comparable as having a photo of your best friend instead of the real thing. Looks like your friend. Reminds you of your friend. Absolutely freakin' terrible at playing frisbee. That's what fake love is.

And it's not a bad thing. Dude, I DON'T have a photo of me and my best friend. Kind of wish I did, because I don't see him a lot. It's cool to have some kind of reminder when your friend/love isn't around, or to pick it up later and smile about it when he/she/it/whatever is. But, dude, love? Real love? You aren't going to get that in a song. Not the lasting kind. The lasting kind has to put up with all KINDS of junk.

Getting home at 11 at night from work, exhausted, and still having to go out and shovel because one of you has to do it to get the cars out in the morning. Recognizing that she's upset because she's not as physically pretty as a 20-year-old, AND she feels like you'd like her better if she was. Holding your smart thoughts in when you're both mad and tired and frustrated. Working all the time because to you, love means taking care of her, but to her, it's abandonment because taking care of her means spending time with her. Not understanding your kids, and being frustrated at the choices they're making. Having to choose between paying the rent and paying the car insurance this month. Her mom. Your mom. Feeling like you don't measure up in her book, but in another girl's eyes you're amazing, but ignoring that and still going back to her every night. Still letting him know that you respect him when you think he's being a doofus (trust me, these are not mutually exclusive).

Weirdly, love, a lot of the time, means acting like you love the person when you don't feel love. And that's not something you can put in a two-hour movie, or a song. It probably isn't something you can put in words at all - it's just something you can feel. When for the fifth time this week your son's wet the bed, and one of you has to get up at three a.m. to take care of it, and you both have to be up at six for work, and you sigh and take it. Because you don't feel love then. You just feel frustration, and exhaustion, and you just try to say as little as possible because you don't feel an overwhelming sense of love for your wife or your son, but you still don't want to say anything that would hurt either of them later (like, in the morning, when they'll both remember it and you won't). You don't think about why. You don't feel like doing it. But you do.

It's weird. Really weird. But pursuing that through all of the mundane - making the choices that spell love even when you don't feel it - it takes awhile to get to what's beyond the fake love. I don't aim for spending time with my friend's photo - I want to hang out with him. You're not shooting for the fake love, because you know it isn't real, but you don't know what else there is. You just know, kind of, maybe, hope anyway, that there's something after all this.

And there is. But it's hard to put the value of it into words. It's a different kind of adventure. It's a different kind of intensity - a softer intensity, maybe. There are things in the world that grow like love does, but I don't know what they are. Trees, maybe - you can't get a solid climbing tree in five years. I guess.. it's not something boring, might be closer to what I'm trying to say. All the crazy, frustrating adventures, sometimes four decades' worth or more, has taught you whether or not you can depend on each other. Whether the lines you're using for your climbing harness are going to hold you, or where not to use them.

That's a decent comparison. When you're still uncertain about your equipment, you don't put it to the test on anything where you're going to get seriously hurt or killed if it fails. You do small climbs, work on different challenges. You can't take the big adventures until you know that your partner's going to be there through the whole thing.

If you aim for the fake love Klosterman talks about, you're going to be disappointed even if you get it. It's hard to get to, because life events tangle it up. But, man, you get there, and then what? It's flat. It's happy, but it's flat. The adventure's gone. You're not SUPPOSED to get there; it's a story. It's a picture. Like Cinderella - when they say "happily ever after," you know life is not a smooth cruise of bliss. They're not saying this life is; Cinderella's just a story. The fierce love that hangs on through bumps off course and flagging emotions and crap you never wanted in your life but hell you got it anyway so you're gonna grit your teeth and get through it...you can't put that in fake love. You can't put that in a four-minute song, or a two-hour movie. You can't have someone tell you about it. You're going to have to be in it before you recognize it, and like rafting crazy rapids, you're going to be too busy trying to keep things together to recognize anything. So, you'll probably only know it after it comes. And then you'll be glad you stuck it out.

And then, after that, you'll have to ask yourself why you're listening to ME about this, because I'm not yet thirty. :)