Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Gambler

As I walked out of the bar I looked over to her and she smiled, I approached her, complimented her ear rings, and the rest was history. A chance meeting after last call leads to "hello," a phone number, and my first real date in months.

It was the eve of Irene, everyone was scrambling to evacuate their beach houses and summer jobs and find safe haven. I guess the one positive we can take from Katrina is that the US government will never let itself be unprepared again for a predictable natural disaster. After the earthquake hit and cell service was down for hours they told us to text and not call. Then they started to evacuate cities and beaches to make sure we wouldn't be caught off guard again by a hurricane that ended up being only Category 1. I mean Maryland is always just far enough west from the coast not to really be in any imminent danger, but strong winds and heavy rain always leads people to start driving retarded. Despite all this impending doom, I still decided to commence the weekend activities as usual, heading down to the city to drink.

This time around would be a little different. I decided to bring my lil sis (who is 20 and turns legal in March) and her friends down with me to hang out with the cool kids. I drove them down, dropped them off, and found some always difficult city parking. Once I got to the pregame spot I didn't really waste anytime and went straight for the shots of the hard stuff. At this point it was already 10pm and I was dead sober, something that I don't like being with a limited amount of bar time ahead of me. Stann was back in town so we wrestled a game of You Got Served together and after a couple of rounds headed to the bar. Plenty of couples, plenty of people, and plenty of dancing and plenty of free drinks, that is the summary of my night out at the "Ricks of Baltimore." Then came last call, I was actually out with Kerry and her friends, and was playing wing man for my boy Alex who was trying to get it in with one of Kerry's friends. I did my usual "after you" to the ladies and took up the rear. As I rounded the turn to the exit stairwell, I spotted this really attractive girl leaning against the wall next to what looked like a couple, who were clearly her friends. She has this bored/lonely look on her face so of course I decided to go up to her and start a conversation...

"Are those feather earrings you're wearing?"
"Yeah, they are"
"I really like them."
-Smiles
"Thanks, I really like you. What's your name?"
"Stevann."
"Steven?"
"No, Stevann"
"Devin?"
"Ha, no, Stev- ann"
"Oh, cool."
"Yo Stev, let's go, where are you?"
"Take my number."
"Alright, well I'll give you a call sometime, Lindsey right?"
"Yeah, but why don't you just come with me now?"
-Takes my hand and walks me out to the street.
We say "hello"
Stev?! What are you doing?! Kerry is waiting. Let's go!
-Literally pulls me away from Lindsey
-Makes a confused face, walks away


So yeah that was my last 15 minutes at the bar, or I guess technically my last 5 minutes at the bar and then 10 minutes outside getting her number, saying hello, and then getting pulled away. She later texted me asking if I had a gf and why my friends would pull me away like that. I have to say though it has been a long time since I've picked up a girl at the last moments of the night out. I guess Stalking Horse isn't the "Rick's of Baltimore" (I am the only one who refers to it as such) for no reason. After further conversation she tells me that she thought I was "hot" so why not try to take me home seconds after meeting me ha. She is actually a cool girl, she's a nurse, and used to be a gymnast, yeah a win win there.

Fast forward to 7 am when we have a hour long text conversation that leads to our first date. At this point it is Saturday evening and the rains and heavy winds come in so we decide just to go back to her place after dinner. We get some wine and watch Dirty Dancing (which is actually a great date movie) and cuddle up on the couch for a couple hours. Despite what all evidence may lead you to believe, I actually did NOT hook up with her. It was more of an adult type date where we got to know each other and look forward to saving the "promiscuous behavior" for later, those were her words actually.

So yeah thats about it, it was a nice touchy feely night, the lights cut off a couple of times and we had a romantic evening. Wow, romantic evening. Is that something that grown ups do? Is that something I'll have to get used to? She's 27 by the way. No more just getting down to the dirty early, let's see how playing it slow goes for me.

As for the rest of the weekend, I will spend it watching movies and just chilling. A hurricane doesn't really incite me to do anything crazy.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

P.D.A. We just don't Care

I had sex with a girl outside in the street leaning against her car.

Have you guys ever had a moment of self reflection, where you look back and realize that you were just doing something crazy,stupid, creepy....Well it happens to me, not often but it happens. For the last two weeks I was trying to organize a party with my buddy Jerry. Well mainly what I was trying to do was get the girls from work to come to the party. Now I should be no stranger to get together, we invited hundreds of people over numerous houses over the years, but for some reason I didn't use my past experience. To make a long story short, I pretty much came off as a semi-creeper in the way I went about inviting people. The easy way would have been just to let everyone know all at once on various occasions when we are all together, instead I for some reason asked each girl individually, at different times, to the point where they were all questioning my motives. Now the party went on and was a success, and a couple of the girls did end up coming over, but I realized that they really weren't comfortable with the whole situation, and that was totally my doing.

I'm trying out a new format, I will start my posts with the "punch line" so to speak and then eventually tell you the story leading up to it. That way, anyone who just skims the blog or doesn't feel like reading a long post, they will be able to pretty much know the main point/story being shared.

So Friday night I hung out with some work buddies downtown. It was a chill night which I guess is cool but made me realize that not everyone can control hosting people. It wasn't like they did a bad job, but when I host I always want people to be involved and doing something, and I noticed that everyone isn't like that. My whole thing is if I wanted to just sit around and drink and talk, I could do it at my own house or at a bar, if I go through the trouble of inviting people somewhere, I want to make it worth it by including activities or games or even a general group conversation. Anyways, the moral of Friday was that I missed my closing sign. I apologize in advance for using work terminology, I've just gotten so used to teaching/training others at work that I just start to talk like that normally. But the idea is that I could have pursued this girl but I failed to pick up on the signs that she was interested. There was a point in the night where everyone was getting ready to leave and split off their separate ways, the girl in question lived about an hour away from the city and didn't really want to drive all the way home. Her friend was leaving her to pursue other "interests" and I could tell the girl didn't want to go on that chase with her. INSTEAD of inviting her back to my buddie's place to keep the party going, I just walked her to her car and let her go home. HOW do I know that there was in fact opportunity there and I'm not delusional, well I did what I always do I just asked her. Her exact words "Well I was waiting for you to invite me to stay downtown with you guys but you never did."  Yeah I don't know how I missed that one I was just off my game and now that opportunity is more than likely gone forever, but at least I learned my lesson.

Saturday was much more of an eventful day for me. I woke up around 8 and went for a run and did some various drills. I got back around 10 just in time for my buddy to come pick me up so we could start setting up for the party. Two hours later we had cleaned the house, cut the grass, trimmed the hedges, and did some weed waking and then bought food and a keg. So by noon I had one of my most productive Saturdays ever, I knew it was going to be a good day. It started to rain pretty heavy and I knew we were going to lose the people who were "maybes" for our party. You know the type who are looking for a reason either to come or to stay at home and rain during a day drink/bbq event is as good as reason as any to want to stay in. However we did not let that stop us and still had our cookout anyway. Fast forward many drinks and talks later. I guess I have what I will call a couple of "moves" when it comes to sealing the deal with girls. One of these said moves, the one I use most at house parties is to say "Let's go for a walk" Basically what I do here is try to get the girl alone and we literally go on a walk to have more "intimate" conversation. Last night my walk went as far as to her car parked across the street. I don't remember how exactly it got started, but next thing I know I'm pushing her up against the car and pulling her pants down. I'll save you guys all the details but you know where it went from there, in the words of Mike O, we proceeded to "fold laundry." Now I'm no stranger to the outdoors so to speak, but we were literally in the middle of the street in the middle of a nice family neighborhood, and it was awesome. Ha at any given point anyone could have walked/driven by, looked out their window, or even just stepped outside for a smoke and they would have gotten a show. Suppose thats a cool story for the books.

The final thing I noticed yesterday was that I can't go a full day of drinking anymore. I started around 2 pm and was ready to pass out by midnight. I guess that's a long time but I kinda feel like we used to start pre gaming for football games and then still make it out to ricks that same night and not always using the power nap to do it. Oh well guess we are growing up a little now and my body just likes to sleep instead of drink excessive amounts.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Ye Olde Par 4

I think I skipped blogging about last weekend because well nothing terribly exciting happened. This weekend, the one I was supposed to go to Mich, was much more eventful. I decided to spend the weekend visiting an old friend in Philly, we all should know who that is so I won't say any names. On Friday she gave me a pretty great tour around the historic parts of the city, and the whole time I could only think about how Sweeney would not only appreciate that more than me but he would actually know who all those old important people were. It's always an interesting time visiting an old course, most of the time is spent trying to figure out what kind of dynamic you're going to have. And by that I usually mean answering a few important questions.

The main question you ask yourselves ( not verbally of course, more mentally) is Are we going to hook up? This question usually dictates the "nature" of the rest of the visit. Either you're going to spend it as a couple type, or as a friend type. Usually the couple type interaction serves to let other people know that either of you is off limits, and more than likely will lead to an argument or disagreement that stemmed from jealously. Whether its a guy buying her a drink, or you talking/dancing with a girl, when you choose the couple type its almost inevitable to have to "talk." With that being said, the friendship isn't really much of a better option, at least not when you visit solo. When you visit someone by yourself and are a friendship type, the host usually goes out of their way to accommodate you. They try to make sure you have a place to stay, that someone will know where you are at all times and etc. That on the surface is not a bad thing, after all you're probably in a place you're not very familiar with. The issue comes into play when drinking happens and then the host wants to go ahead and do what they normally do. If the host as a significant other, you could get lucky and have them be cool like Cassie and Craig. BUT most likely they won't be as cool and the BF will get jealous anyway and want to overexert his presence in front of you. Then he will take the host away and leave you to fend for yourself. Another common occurrence, when the host doesn't have a significant other, is that they spend all their time/attention on you and never really get to be themselves. This just means that they are too worried about leaving you on their own that they forget to have fun themselves. This is the kind of scenario when the host would have gone to a party/club/event, but since you aren't familiar with the people/weren't invited you stay home to watch a movie, ha not exactly the best time.

Moral of the story, we spent the weekend as a couple type, and it was nice. I mean she is one girl who's probably cool enough to have a friend type visit and still be fun, but then of course we wouldn't get to hook up and well where's the fun in that. So back to our weekend. Friday night we went out in Manayunk, it was pretty cool. She was there with all her PT friends so I kinda just chilled and had bottomless drinks. The thing about the couple type is that you really can't talk to any and every girl like I'm used to, so I just chose to limit all convos to her friends, and specifically the ones that had boyfriends as to not get myself in trouble. On Saturday their apartment complex had this really cool all day drinking event by their pool. At one point they even brought out a mechanical bull, but I have to say it was nothing like the 5th quarter bull we all used to marvel at and love. Met more friends on Saturday, including a girl who went to UM and knew Logan. If you guys don't already know my history with Logan and the Waterpolo team of those years then lucky you ha. Turns out the girl only met Logan during their Senior year, so the Stev days were long forgotten by then.

Sunday I came back to Baltimore and had bottomless screwdrivers for brunch. I actually got tired of Orange juice by the end of the day so now I'm taking a week off from it as to save my stomach. Thats a rough summary, I'm getting kinda tired now and don't really feel like going into any more detail ha.

Chin, Mike O lets work on you guys updating more frequently. Thanks.