just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... (part 2)

So OK if you read my last entry, my last few actually, I don't have to tell you how much my self-esteem has been shot. The lack of a job, the inability to attract the opposite sex and the possibility that my academic pursuits may very well come to a screeching halt, these thoughts have been weighing down heavily on my soul. There is also the inescapable feeling that I am shouldering these burdens alone either through my lack of close friendships or my unwillingness to share my weaknesses and lay these burdens upon the few people who are actually close to me.

I wanted so much for a shoulder to cry on, but having none available during my time of need did something to me. I realized that no matter how painful and lonely this existence may have become, I realized that I can survive, alone if need be. I realized that the path that I have chosen and will continue to choose is not always going to be easy and somehow I was meant to travel this path alone.

Needless to say women and any possibility of sharing any type of intimacy with them have more or less not been in the forefront in my mind. With that said this weekend has been just plain unusual. I guess I should start with last Friday night. I was hanging out with my ex wife and her Maid of Honor. The Maid of Honor signed us up to this singles gathering at the Funky Buddha Lounge. We went in early to take advantage of the open bar until 8:00 pm. My ex even played along with the whole singles thing, slipped off her engagement ring and had just fun with it.

The singles group sponsoring the function cut up a bunch of cards and split them into two bags, one for the males and one for the females. The idea, to go up to members of the opposite sex and see if you could find your "match". I suppose it's one way to break the ice. Naturally with my usual quiet nature and my heavy feelings as of late, I wasn't exactly the social butterfly that evening. Still, somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered that somehow, maybe my possible "soul mate" was holding the other half of my card. Romantic bullshit I know, but without hope, what do we have?

Anyway, my ex was getting approached left and right by guys. I even saw a girl try to match cards with her. Interesting concept considering the that for this particular event the card halves have been split between the males and females. =p Needless to say she still had her mojo. I on the other had had little if any that night. I conversed with a couple of older women while getting drinks at the bar, and I think I caught the eye of the bartender who was a total cutie, but that was about it for me. Someday I'm going to have to muster up the courage and follow up with those little vibes. I have a feeling that may lead to somewhere interesting. Either that or I'll crash and burn. But hey even that can be good...

But that's not the really weird part. Oh no, because one of the most improbable things happened a little later that night. Me, the maid of honor and the ex tried matching each other's cards and guess what? My card matched up exactly with my ex's. We both kind of laughed and played it off as a some fluke, but in the back of my mind, really what were the chances? What if she is somehow my soul mate?� It's just my luck that she is engaged and will be getting married to somebody else, in the very near future. Really though I think fate played a small hand in this and I think it is somehow a testament to bond that we share. We all wound up leaving early and going to a cafe so the girls could talk wedding planning stuff and have a bite to eat, then I drove the girls home. So I figure it's back to my normal routine with the rest of my weekend being more or less uneventful. Or so I thought...

So I'm over at my mom's house checking my email. I figure I have a few messages from my classmates concerning projects and the like, maybe some junk mail to clean out. But then, I get an e-mail message from her. This in itself is not unusual because I get quite a bit of email spam forwarded from her. It was an actual message from one of my ex-lovers the drop-dead gorgeous chick.

I haven't really seen or heard from her since the wedding back in May. Quite frankly the whole wedding thing for obvious reasons has (eventually) caused me to write her off as a romantic possibility, despite my obvious residual feelings for her. Actually up until this weekend I've done a pretty good job keeping her out of my mind and I more or less expected to simply never hear from her again. Then I get her e-mail message.

Apparently her friend went through this really bad break up so in a show of support she and a few of their friends got a hotel downtown so they could go clubbing Saturday night and since she happened to be in town, she invited me to tag along. She gives me her friend's cell number so I can contact her and meet up in whatever club they happened to be in. In the email message she also tells me about the rest of her family.

Her mom is out in Arizona now with a new boyfriend and her sister is out visiting her. Her grandma is doing OK too, feeling a little lonely perhaps now that both she and her mom used to live with grandma not more than a year ago. Really, it seems like only yesterday when they were all still together and I visited them at grandma's place. Anyway she goes on to tell me that it's almost her 1 year wedding anniversary and her and her husband are talking about "starting a family", which I assume means they are planning to have a child or two. She sees the prospect as both "scary and exciting".

So I figure this outing is largely a friendship thing, we would catch up on a few things, maybe dance a little. I also figure this is a chance to deepen our friendship and maybe establish something like the friendship I have with my ex-wife because like I said, we haven't really communicated after the wedding. Honestly though I did not know what to expect from that evening. Maybe I was looking for a deepening of my sense of closure with her because really in my heart the matter was never really truly settled. I think I went over this in some detail in my 100 things entry, but I think it's important to reiterate at the moment so if I'm being repetitive, I apologize.

When we were seeing each other I was very much in love with her and I made her aware of that fact when I started saying "I love you" to her. Somehow after that she began distancing herself from me and I noticed it right away. Honestly I think I scared her off with all that. In retrospect, I think that I merely was her "rebound" relationship and she was actually rebounding from the guy that she eventually wound up marrying. In reality the "I love you" was the kiss of death to this now obvious casual sexual relationship, but at the time my heart simply didn't know the difference. I was very much in love and I would be betraying myself if I didn't express it in some way.

So anyway, I confronted her over the phone about the distancing thing, I just went ahead and asked where I stood with her in the relationship. She gave me the song and dance about how busy her life is and that she isn't ready for anything serious, but how that she would very much like to remain in contact as friends so I agreed and after that conversation I pretty much stopped calling her. Needless to say, my heart was broken into 1,000 pieces over this. I was in almost complete bewilderment how I could have been so in love with her with an almost complete intensity one moment and have it all completely fizzle out the next. Anyway it wasn't the last time my heart was broken over her, I got hit one more time one more time at my 30th birthday which she attended naturally and a couple of years ago, sometime after Valentine's day when she told me she had gotten engaged. I go over pretty much all of the details of this in the middle section of one of my web logs entitled "She's Baaaaaaaack...".

But enough about the past. Back to the evening at hand. I call her friend's cell around 10:00pm Saturday. They are going to John Barleycorn in Wrigleyville. So I wind up at Barleycorn's around midnight. That place is always packed, mostly because it's one of the few places in Wrigleyville that has a dance floor and they don't charge any cover. Anyway I go to the place and make several rounds but couldn't find them anywhere, so I call the cell again and the told me to meet at the dance floor level by the women's bathroom.

Then, she finally comes out we hug, kiss cheeks and she introduces me to her friends. Apparently she's not having the best of times because obviously she isn't single like her friends who are having a good time, getting drunk and doing their very own rendition of a "girl's gone wild" video, well minus the boobie flashing, but still I wouldn't put it past them given the right environment. ;) Two of her friends were doing the girl-on-girl dance thing for most of the night which quite naturally gets the attention of a whole bunch of guys and my friend was receiving quite a bit of unwanted collateral body part groping from nearby males so she tells me and she seemed slightly miffed at the fact that most guys don't even pay any attention or respect to the rings on her left hand. I told her that the place was pretty much a "meat market".

Putting all that into consideration she was especially happy to see me. It was almost as if I were her knight in shining armor. I wasn't sure how to act in this situation. It's not like I have a whole bunch of female friends, even less who are married. I figure I'd stick do the unspoken "no intimate form of touching" policy I had established with my ex-wife and keep my distance a bit.

But instead, from the moment I saw her in that place she took me by the hand and kept me close the whole time. I don't know how to explain it exactly, I suppose in part I served as a rather effective human body shield. But yeah there wasn't a moment where our hands weren't somehow holding and it was mostly her holding onto my hand and not letting go. It was a little weird too because she kept me at her back most of the time. I guess it was better that way because despite the fact that I trying very hard to be a gentleman and that I was also trying very hard to respect the fact that she is indeed a married woman, I could quite easily picture us standing face to face, with me looking right into her blue eyes and falling quite naturally into a passionate kiss.

I knew that right there, even with the unspoken physical limitations we imposed on ourselves, that we belonged together, at least from a physical standpoint. It was like gravity the way our bodies were drawn to each other and it simply felt like her body's natural place in the universe was right next to mine. I was dancing behind her, with her soft skin against mine, I felt my heart thumping at her proximity and my cock turned solid as I did the bump and grind against the curves of her ass.

It was weird, but in a way it just felt good. I just let nature take over and held and caressed her and just allowed myself to enjoy the moment because moments like this, at least for me, are so few and far between. Lately I have been seriously craving physical contact and the universe somehow provided me with this fix. I know in my mind that nothing can really come of this since she is married. Having my heart broken over her several times in the past has my heart is pretty much guarded.

Still I think this interaction is something I really needed. I think it serves as one of life's little reminders that I am not completely out of the game like I thought I was in terms of love and physical affection. There exists somewhere in this universe the possibility that my true happiness is still out there just waiting for me to embrace even at this particular low point in my life. I think this also serves as a reminder that although I have somehow wound up on path of loneliness, It is still very much in my nature to give and receive affection and I can't wait for the next moment where I have the chance to express that kind of affection again.

Anyway, back to real life. I have a Final exam tonight and I still have to work on that group project due Wednesday evening. My work is indeed cut out for me. I need to put those babies to sleep and I'll be good to go. Looking forward to the St. Patrick's day drunkenness after my group presentation Wednesday night.

*jaws theme music starts playing* Do you want to know what Derrick is? Derrick is one confused puppy right now... I guess I should start with last weekend. I went out with my cousin to one of his friend's b-day outings. We started out in Harry's Velvet Room, one of those lounge type nightclubs where I proceeded to have several martinis.

Me having several martinis is nothing new. One of the things that totally was new my utter and complete lack of game. Well OK, that too is nothing new, Derrick was never really any good at the whole "gaming of females" thing. Just about the only edge I do possess is the momentary moments of smoothness brought to you by my corporate sponsors, Grey Goose Vodka, Stolichnaya Vodka, Absolut Vodka and Skyy Vodka.

That night however, even with the backing of my "corporate sponsorship" I was so off it was unbelievable. My cousin encouraged me to talk with one of his acquaintances, this really tall sexy female but all I could come up with was "hi, how are you doing." while she was looking around the room looking for someone more interesting to talk to. I basically felt like the village leper.

I needed more "corporate backing" so went to the bar and I endowed myself with another martini grant. Actually being now unemployed, it's actually more of a liability than a grant. At $10 a pop, I'm going to have to find myself a cheaper fix. Speaking of unemployment, I think the fact that I'm loss-fully unemployed has somehow affected my self-esteem. I feel like I have de-evolved into a lower life form, like I am lesser of a person, lesser of a man almost to the point where I am oozing some inferiority complex.

So I'm halfway through my martini chasing the stuff down with ice water because I was at my saturation point. It's basically the point where If I pounded down the rest of that martini I'd black out for at least an hour or maybe I'd just hit a gag reflex and throw it right back out. It was only my 4th martini. I must be fucking getting old. Anyway my cousin comes by and says we are switching over to Red No Five.

He told me to slam the martini because we had to bounce out like 10 minutes ago but I couldn't do it so I left more than a half a glass, still nicely chilled and it just hurt that I had to do that. We both hitched a ride with his friends in separate cars and we finally got to the club where I had to part with my last $20 for cover charge. Man did that fucking hurt. It was packed at Red No Five that night. It was one of those 5 am nightclubs that spins Techno and has a live drummer complimenting the beats. Nice touch actually.

I was dead broke at that point, so no more drinks for Derrick. I had to do a pit stop at the men's bathroom and that's where I lost everyone for a good hour and a half. I must say trying to weave your way through a packed club is quite the sobering experience. By the time I made a complete round of the club my buzz was gone. Then I finally caught one of my cousins' friends. He told me everyone was at the VIP section.

I'm not sure what the selection criteria is to get into the VIP section, but all I knew is that for the life of me I could not get in. This was not helping my self-esteem in the least bit. Instead of waiting by the velvet rope like an idiot, I decided to find a place to sit an chill. There was a small lounge area by the entrance so I sat there until I got bored, got up and made another round of the club. I ran into my cousin this time around and we did another walk around the club before he headed back to the VIP section. I was able to slip by the velvet ropes with him. Apparently there was another entrance to the VIP section where the bouncer was more lenient. Personally, I don't know what all the fuss is about, the only thing about the VIP section that distinguishes it from the rest of the club is that there are more lounging areas to sit down in. What's even more whacked is that there was another VIP section within the VIP section which by the looks of the people trying to get in was perhaps even more exclusive. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief.

Anyway my cousin catches me just totally checking out this one female, Filipina, drop-dead gorgeous. He introduces himself to her and introduces me to her and the only game I could spout was "hi, what's your name?" Which I couldn't even hear over the music but I didn't want to come of as deaf so I didn't ask again. At this point I would have done something like offered her a drink or maybe paid her a compliment what came out was nothing, absolutely nothing. At that point my game was at it's official all-time low. She was practically handed to me on a silver platter and I could do absolutely nothing to gain momentum. I think this one of the manifestations of the whole "paralysis" thing I mentioned 2 entries back.

We wound up closing the place down around 5 am. My cousin and I got a ride back to his car and we wound up eating at Clarke's, a 24-hour joint that serves great food. That was pretty much the "highlight" of last weekend. That pretty much set the mood for the entire week all the way up to this weekend. I'll continue the events of this weekend in my next entry...