I really must stop doing these catch-up type entries. I'd much rather go daily but time and opportunity is not always on my side. Oh well, I guess another long one won't kill anyone. Some people like it long, yeah baby... =p Anyway, it's Cinco de Mayo, which is a Mexican holiday commemorating the Mexican victory over the French back in 1862. Normally this is an excuse for me to drink Corona and Tequila heavily if not for the fact that I'm dead broke and I have class in the evening.

But anyway enough about my broke ass, let's get on with my past week. Derrick had a guest at his bachelor pad for about a week. She was none other than Chickpea (T), an acquaintance with whom I've maintained contact with off and on for the past year or so. Anyway it started out pretty cool, I took the train out to Midway Airport and met her for the first time. How do I describe her? Dark-haired brunette, brown eyes, cute face and a Rubenesque figure. She was more full-figured than the women I'm typically attracted to but on the major plus she had the largest breasts of any woman I had, combined. Of course none of this was a complete surprise to me since I did see a picture of her a while back and she did describe herself to me in the past.

Anyway, we talked on the train ride back to my place and we related basically the same way we would have related if we were chatting online or talking on the phone. I would say overall for my first meeting of a diarylander it was a really good experience. This wasn't the first meeting of someone I met initially online. A few years back I met someone from bolt.com and let's just say it didn't turn out quite so well as we would have hoped. She was horny and she wanted to get "down and dirty" in her office after hours. Since it was downtown I had no problem meeting her there.

When I got there however, she was a nervous wreck and despite our mutual physical attraction for each other we didn't get farther than 2nd base. It turns out she was married with a child and the whole "covert internet affair" thing she was trying to get going didn't quite turn out the way she had expected it. I guess it was good for me too since that would have been the first time I would have been involved with a married woman crossing a boundary that I never really intended to cross in the first place. After that meeting, she wiped out all the info under her screename and she never called me again. I guess the whole experience spooked her back into fidelity. It's fortunate she met a guy like me who could take a hint and not take the whole thing personally. Had she met some crazed stalker type, it would have totally been less cool.

But I completely digress. My first meeting with T was an entirely different experience. It's good to know that online chemistry could so easily translate face to face. I know from my first experience that this is not always the case, but still it's good to know the possibility does exist. Of course the whole thing was not without it's little "speed bumps". The first night was a huge problem. Although there was enough chemistry between us to go all the way to 3rd base, I couldn't bring it home. That's right, old Derrick couldn't get it up. I apologized to her which she replied there was no need to apologize. Although it did make things a little easier knowing she understood, it didn't stop all the ugly thoughts from going through my head.

At that point my confidence was shot. I thought my days of casual sex were over and that I was entering my Viagra years. I started coming up with reasons of how fucked up I was and just the flood of thoughts, man what a fucking downer. Still, I figured I would make the best out of the whole thing and just be myself. I had to spend the better part of Friday working on an a few websites which I still didn't get a chance to complete on time.

We went out Friday night with my cousin. She was having guy problems with an ex who isn't quite out of the picture and her new flame and just needed to get out and get drunk, so I had my cousin pick us up at my apartment. My cousin and T got along pretty well. We wound up going to Dave and Busters which unbeknownst to me closed at 1:00am, so we only had enough time for a few drinks before we had to haul ass to another place. The Bar server recommended a place near Rush and Division called Shenanigans. Basically an Irish bar with a DJ and dance floor. My cousin got totally wasted and T was sporting a healthy buzz.

Of course I felt a little bad not being able to help pay for any of the drinks. I know my ass being broke is definitely going to be a recurring issue with me. It fucking sucks, but luckily my cousin and T didn't have any qualms alternating rounds. I had no problems taking it easy with the drinking and being the designated driver. I reached my 4 slow-sip martini buzz which was good enough for me. Anyway we closed the place down around 3:00am. Apparently the joint only had a 3:00am liquor license. No matter since it was about time to go anyway.

Since my cousin was too wasted to drive, she crashed on my couch. T managed to twist her knee while dancing so she was limping along. Parking is usually a bitch around my apartment being downtown and all, but at that time of night there were plenty of parking meters open. The problem was I had to move the car at 9:00 am when the meter was valid, so I set my alarm at 8:45. The next morning I tried looking around for a meter space that was free on Saturday but there weren't any. Fortunately, I found a spot by a broken meter where I could leave the car indefinitely. Talk about luck. I then returned to my apartment and went back to sleep.

The next morning my cousin was fiending for food so we went to HUBS, a gyros place to eat. The food hit the damn spot. I had me a Gyros sandwich and they each had a steak sandwich. We then drove to my mom's to pick up my car and we went for a movie. She really wanted to see Kill Bill Vol. 2. Although I had already seen the movie, there wasn't really anything else playing that was interesting and timely and since she was paying for the ticket, I didn't mind watching it again. Overall I'd say the first movie was better in terms of action and impact. The second does fill in quite a bit of the back story though and wraps the story up quite nicely. About the only thing I would have changed is to make the final battle with Bill more epic and drawn out. There were some awesome trailers before the movie as well. Van Helsing, Troy, and Hero were ones that really stood out in my mind.

After the movie we stopped by my mom's place for dinner. My sister had her friend and boyfriend over and my other cousin was there as well, so T had the chance to meet all my family in Chicago practically. She seemed to get along with my mom and cousin pretty well too. My sister and her boyfriend gave us a ride back to the train station in my car (man she is growing up so fast) and we took the EL back to my apartment. She brought the Underworld DVD so we watched it on my couch. She has seen it before so about 2/3 of the way through she started falling asleep so she apologized and went off to bed. I wanted to see the ending so I stayed up and saw it all the way through after which I wound up sleeping in my recliner.

We went to see the Shedd Aquarium the next day (Sunday) which was a fun outing. This is one of the parts I miss about dating, the lack of a partner to do fun stuff with like going to movies and museums and the like. I haven't done the museum/aquarium thing since way back in the days with my ex-wife and that was before we had gotten married. Sad really, but that's life I guess. Anyhow, there's this relatively new exhibit called The Wild Reef which replicates the underwater habitats, flora and fauna of the Philippine Coral Reef. That's right, the reef by my country of ethnic origin, BOO-YAH! ;) It's a cool exhibit, definitely worth a visit if you haven't seen it yet.

The Oceanarium is cool too, they still have the dolphin shows running in the main auditorium along with seals, otters, penguins and beluga whales as side exhibits. Oh there were also the fish exhibits in the main section. There were clown anemone fish like Nemo and Marlin doing the back and forth thing in and out of the sea anemone. Then there was Dory, the blue I-forgot-what-the-name-was fish which was pretty cool. Oh and there was a Yellow Tang, like that fish in the aquarium that kept chasing the bubbles. I think T had a nice time too. =p

It was Sunday night however, when things really changed. T started being a little aggressive sexually and it was only a matter of time when I started getting responsive to her advances. In a way I'm kind of glad she didn't give up on me so easily, I mean she was right there going down on my hard cock. What's not to like? It was in the bedroom when the moment of truth arrived by me pounding the headboard into the wall repeatedly and T conveniently under me with her legs spread. She came and I gushed like a tidal wave. This was a good thing, considering I wasn't able to get it up the first time and with my previous sexual partner I wasn't even able to orgasm. Thanks to T, Derrick is now back on the saddle, back on the wagon and back in business. Sorry, I just ran out of comeback clich�s. =p

Around Monday, she met up with another friend in d-land from Chicago. How come I never meet up with any diarylanders from my own city? I'll have to remedy that sometime. I was also able to complete a power point presentation for my upcoming speech in my public speaking class that Monday. We had to describe a process, so I wound up describing the process of mitosis, the phases that a cell goes through when it replicates and divides. The speech was on Tuesday night and something was wrong with the classroom PC. The power point software wasn't registered correctly on that PC so nobody could run power point on it. Luckily I brought my laptop and was able to hook it up to the LCD projector. I more or less saved myself and a half-dozen other people who had power point presentations prepared. I think I nailed the speech as well. I also got the results from my Midterms last week, 90 on my Info Systems class and 97 on my Public Speaking class. I'm doing awesome in both those classes, all I need to do is pick up the slack in my Advanced Server Side Programming class.

For the last couple of nights T and I went back for the 3-peat. I know she gets quite a bit of heat in her diary for being, well "overly sexual", but I say more women should be like her. She knows what she wants and she goes out and gets it. No expectations, no excuses and no pretenses. Had this been most any other single woman we would still be stuck in the "let's just talk and be careful and get to know each other" stage. An amazing thing considering she's almost 10 years younger than me. I was even flattered when she started comparing me positively against her past boyfriends and sexual relationships I mean not just in the bedroom, but with little things like me opening the door for her so she could get in to the car. Of course, I'm trying not to let these things get to my head, after all those are just things I was raised to do and I was simply being myself. Still, not every woman notices the little things, so I'm appreciative of those who do.

Anyway, her flight left this morning and she arrived safely back in the East Coast later this afternoon. I'm glad we had the chance to develop our friendship especially considering how much my life is devoid of close friendships. The sex action was pretty damn good too. ;) There are a few things I have learned about myself and the world I see around me this past week. First of all thankfully, I'm not yet into my Viagra years. Don't get me wrong, it's good to know that they will be there in case I need them say at my 50's or 60's, I just think now is way too soon to need any "erectional" assistance. =p�

Next thing is condom usage, I think the main reason I couldn't keep it up the first time is because I am so totally not used to condoms. It just totally kills the sensation. Still, if I am ever going to go back to any sexual activity I would either need to somehow train myself to maintain my erection while wearing a condom, or I will have to be really careful and stick to relatively monogamous longer-term sexual partners with whom I know takes birth control regularly and who has a clean bill of health. Not the easiest things to determine so I would have to know that person long enough to trust them.

With me and T we were kind of caught up in the sexual moment, but later we talked about the whole STD thing. I never really had gotten tested since there was really no occasion for me to with me being sexually inactive for the better part of 2 years. I have however been donating blood regularly every 8 weeks and the screen for blood borne diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis and have been asymptomatic for anything else. She had a recent test which came out negative and she's on the pill, so all the bases are more or less covered there.

I think the last and most important things are my newfound openness to new kinds of friendships and the regaining of my confidence which has been shot to hell for quite some time now. I was in some kind of vicious cycle that I have been somehow nudged out of. I think for a very long time I have limited myself to friendships with people who are simply "physically attractive" and in that narrow vision I have excluded myself from other types of friendships that are potentially more fruitful, with people who have inner substance and I think that narrow vision has been largely conducive to my failures as of late. The bottom line is that I should seek more friendships and I should do so by looking beyond the surface. I should also be more confident of myself knowing that despite my current situation I have so much more to offer in terms of friendship and beyond.

Anyway, it's time for me to get ready for class and my body is kinda sore using muscles I haven't used in a while so once I get home I'm hitting the sheets, so until next entry...