weird dreams

Dream #1, two nights ago

I'm lying in bed with my roommate. (My roommate is male, American, white, 5'7"ish, nice average-looking guy) We're being affectionate and snuggling, and he keeps leaning in close to kiss me on the lips. I always turn away so that he gets the cheek. Finally I give in, and we make out. He's a good kisser, but I keep thinking of what to say to Broadway. I also keep pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming this, and am disappointed when I realize that I am fully awake and not dreaming (ironic, since it was a dream after all). I wanted it to be a dream so that I wouldn't have actually done anything to have to confess to Broadway.

Dream #2, last night

I'm back to college at a reunion of sorts with a group of close college buddies, including the Ex and his now wife. Broadway did not come with me. In the afternoon, with everyone else gone somewhere else, the Ex and I start talking to each other, and it's a very frank and intimate conversation about our relationship, where we've been, and where we are now. He said that he and I had a better relationship than he and current wife. This completely surprised me because I assumed our relationship would pale in comparison with his current one, and it made me mad because I couldn't understand why he would marry her after just a couple of years of dating if he doesn't even love her that much.

This confession brings us closer, and we end up snuggling in bed, naked, but in the giant hotel suite that our group all got together. Someone comes back to the suite and catches us laying together naked and I jump out of bed covering myself with a sheet. His wife comes back too and realizes what happened and storms back to their room crying. He and I look at each other, and I ask, "That's bad, huh? Does she know who I am?" And he says that she definitely knows me, and that I've always been a contentious part of their relationship.

He then leaves to go console her, leaving me to wonder what I should say to Broadway.

I don't know what these dreams mean. Am I lonely? Am I horny? Do I just want someone to snuggle in bed with?

Does this mean that I'm still somehow holding out hope for the Ex? I really don't think I am. What does this say about how I feel about Broadway?

In both dreams, I had the same feeling of dread, guilt, disappointment of "wow, I can't believe I did that, what do I tell Broadway now?"

It's definitely in line with my daydreams about being with other men. I love Broadway to no end. He provides me with all the care that I want and need and would do anything for me, but he's not particularly passionate. Or rather, I'm not particularly passionate about him in bed. We have so much emotional connection, but only minimal physical connection. I fantasize a lot but of course never act on the fantasies because I know how much that would ruin Broadway.

I sometimes fantasize about having an open relationship where we're both free to physically explore with other people but come home and have each other at the end of the day. I don't think I will care that much about the girls he explores with, and part of that is because I know he probably won't see that many other women, if any, whereas I would definitely have fun with a bunch of men.

So I don't know what those dreams mean. I am not attracted to my roommate in the least bit, and I definitely think I am completely over the Ex. And I don't want to hurt Broadway anymore.

ugh disgusted

I wrote this my second week in Beijing but forgot to post it. So keep in mind that when I say "Friday," I really mean Friday-three-weeks-ago.

------------
Friday, I got an email from this guy asking if I wanted to get some drinks with him and some friends. I met him last Tuesday at our college's young alumni mixer event. There were five or six of us at the event who live in the same neighborhood, including him and me, so we exchanged emails to stay in touch. Several group emails went around, and off of those, he replied to me to ask about Friday night drinks. I found it a bit strange that he would single me out, but I didn't think too much of it.

When I first met him at the alumni mixer, he was there very obviously with a Chinese girl. He held her coat out for her, talked to her closely, basically looked like he was dating her. I am indeed heeding Broadway's repeated advice to be more skeptical of boys' motives and generally assume they are evil, but when someone like this guy has a girlfriend already, I am definitely not as on-guard.

So Friday night, I met up with him and his (male) friend around 10:30. Looking back, I should have realized fairly early on that he was trying to hit on me. But in typical friendly fashion, I denied it and chalked it all up to "just friends going out together." (Broadway would gester wildly at my utter lack of awareness right about now).

To make a long story short, I was completely annoyed by the end of the night at this guy's ridiculous attitude, repeated antics, and multiple ill-concealed ploys to get in my pants. Several things happened:

1) Several random girls came up to his friend to talk to him at the bars, but no one came up to him. He turned to me several times to say something along the lines of "You're the only one who I'm paying attention to, and look how scared these girls are of you." Oh puhlease. He's just upset that he's not getting as much attention as he usually does as a tall white guy at a Chinese bar.

2) He obviously thinks he is a total hunk and God's gift to women and acts like the stereotypical (and despicable) fearless foreigner-in-China. Whenever he introduces himself to women, he says, "Hi, I'm Blah, the good-looking one." Every single time, without fail, and you know that he is only half joking. This arrogant attitude persisted throughout the night. He bragged about his muscles (again, only half jokingly), and make me feel his flexed arms as a (half) joke. Ugh ugh ugh, puhlease.

3) At one point Friday night, our ages came up. I said that I already gave him clues to my age since I told him I graduated in 2004. He did some mental math and asked, "27?" I nodded and then asked how old he was. His friend offered, "Didn't you graduate in 2006?" To which he answered, "Well technically 2005. It's complicated, I'll tell you later." Going off of 2005, I asked if he was 26, and he nodded.

So, why is it complicated which year he graduated in? Turns out, thanks to Facebook the next morning, he is only 23 and graduated in 2007. I never thought I would actually meet one of those young guys who lie about their ages to older women in bars. That's absolutely disgusting that he would claim to be 26 just so he would appear more attractive to me. (It's also an sad indicator that I am old. Sigh)

At the end of the night, he insisted that we all take a cab back together. I'm hesitant, and he is very insistent. Okay sure whatever, we are going in the same direction. In the cab, I give the driver directions and ask him to drop me off first. He immediately corrects the driver, "Oh, we all live very close together. Just drop us all off at this-this-this address."

Then to me, he says, "We're going to watch a movie at our place. You should come up."

Uhh ... Puhlease. NO THANKS. At this point, I'm so pissed that he re-directed the driver to drop us all off at his apartment. We do live fairly close to each other, so the cab had already passed mine so it was too late to get dropped off first.

I snickered at the suggestion of a movie and said, "No thanks, I'll just walk home."

After the cab dropped us off, his friend wanted to go to the 7-11 to get a snack. It's on the way to my place, so he then decided to come along since we're all walking, and I think to myself, "When will this guy ever go away and this night be over????"

When we get to the 7-11, his friend veered off, and I kept walking to go home. HE FOLLOWED ME. WHAT????? He claimed he wants to walk me home.

Really? I was so incredibly skeptical of anything he said at this point and swore that he was trying to walk me home to create an opportunity for me to ask him to come up to my apartment.

Seriously, where did this guy come from? He is so full of himself.

Fine, if he wants to walk the extra block, he can do whatever he wants. As we walked, he asked about my roommates, and I told him that I live with two guys.

He replied, feigning concern, "Oh really? I don't know how I feel about you living with other guys."

I snapped back, "What is it to you?" and kept walking.

When we got to my apartment, he actually respectfully said goodnight, at a distance, turned around and walked off.

What an asshole. I couldn't believe it. I feel dirty just thinking about the whole thing.

ahh, facebook

In an interesting twist of fate, the newly updated Facebook privacy settings revealed a bunch of pictures that I was dying to see, but had no way of accessing previously. The Ex got engaged last year around this time, and I got all kinds of upset. Then, I found out over the summer that despite an original plan to have a fall wedding in 2009, they got married in April instead, preceding a move to a far away place.

At the time, I did pause and think, "Huh, so he didn't think to tell me," but didn't give it much more thought than that. More than anything, I just wanted to see pictures of their wedding because 1) I love to go through other people's wedding pictures, and 2) I'am a secret stalker at heart.

The Ex had hidden all of his photos on Facebook, and of course I wasn't friends with his wife, so even though I knew there were photos of their wedding on facebook, I couldn't see any.

Enter Facebook's new privacy settings ... Not only are the Ex's tagged photos now newly visible, but I can also see his wife's wall and photos. I think this is because she and I are friends of friends.

I do feel a little creepy doing this, stalking their wedding pictures, but looking at them made me really really happy. Their wedding was simple, sweet, and very low-key. It made me really happy that the Ex found a girl who is totally real and down-to-earth, not a poofy-white-wedding-dress princess who's had her wedding planned since she was daddy's little girl on a pony at 8. Compared to how I was the years that the Ex and I were together, it's not hard to see why he would be so much happier with New Girl.

And I am totally okay with that. The Ex was not the right person for me. I am actually very down-to-earth at heart, too, but somehow got too caught up in wealth and status and appearances during the later years of college. The Ex only knew he was unhappy with that aspect of me, but didn't know that it wasn't actually representative of me as a person. Instead, he found the right person in New Girl and was immediately drawn to her cheery unpretentious personality.

As for me, I found the right person in Broadway who is able to bring out the best parts of me. He helped me to find the real me, the (relatively) easy-going, happy-go-lucky me who is happy and secure without (many) material possessions. And that is what the right relationship should do. I can't believe that I hadn't yet even realized this a year ago. I probably wouldn't have been as upset over the Ex's engagement.

So, back to the Facebook pictures. I'm not sure how long I'll continue to be able to see both of their photo albums and tagged pictures. Did they already update their privacy settings to include "friends of friends?" Or is the "friend of friend" visibility simply the default, and they haven't changed anything yet?

Of course, I hope the pictures continue to be visible, especially so I can keep up with other pictures of them in the future in far away place. But either way, I'm happy to have gotten a glimpse.

I'm even happier at my reaction to them. I honestly smiled a few times at how happy they looked at their wedding. Yay!

changes

Essentially, I now live in Beijing. Well, I "live" in Beijing. I am here temporarily, for 5 months, as an intern with an international agency. I go back to Boston in 5 months.

I also rejuvenated my public blog. However, the me posting 3 years ago was a very different person and tended to overshare on the internet. So, before relaunching that site, I had to ensure that the more sensitive posts were no longer readable. That however turned into a bit of a fiasco because I was previously unaware of this internet project called Internet Archive, which aims to archive every single site on the internet.

The fiasco involved an older male friend who was already starting to get creepy. Rather haphazardly, I discovered that he was reading my public blog, but not through the normal blog address, but rather through the archives at Internet Archive. All of the more sensitive posts, despite being no longer visible on my blog, were still in the internet archives because they were at one time, all public. Blame it on stupid youthful ignorance and naivete.

I know it's my own fault for being immature and attention-needy a few years back and posting more private thoughts with my real name, and in all honestly there wasn't anything particularly juicy in there anyway, but I still felt stalked, betrayed, and violated by this let-me-emphasize-again-already-getting-creepy older male friend. Yet I was completely and utterly helpless. I came home that night and collapsed on the couch next to Broadway in tears.

Broadway wiped away the tears and helped me set up a robots.txt file for the public blog so that the archive robots won't crawl my site anymore, and he also helped me request that Internet Archive restrict access to the material that was already archived from the site. But it was done maybe a day too late, as I could tell from my site trackers that the friend had already crawled through 90% of the back posts. He read them one by one, clicking the "Previous Post" button, all the way back to the very first post. I just can't get over the fact that he purposefully read the blog through the Internet Archives server knowing that he would find hidden posts no longer visible on the actual site. That's manipulatively creepy, and even now, more than a month later, I get so angry thinking about it. Obviously, that "friendship" will never be the same.

Given the existence of the public blog, and my restarting to post there especially while I am in China, I debated whether or not to still keep this one. I write here so infrequently already, even when I didn't have a second blog. I felt that it would be a lost cause for sure to try to keep two blogs going. But then the last couple of days, I thought of some interesting things that would only be appropriate for a private blog. So why not, I'll keep both and see how things go.

Along those lines, I'm also considering forgoing anonymity and sharing the public blog with readers of this blog. I want to share about Beijing. I definitely won't post any links here--that just seems like a bad idea, but I am still thinking of turning this into a private blog with restricted readership. I'm particularly paranoid now after the creepy stalker friend incident. The worst would be for someone somewhere to stalk and establish a connection back to here from my public profile.

Anyway, so potentially some changes here in the near future.

really mature

The Doctor who I avoid at all costs de-friended me on Facebook. WTF? I want to say it's no big deal, and it isn't a big deal, but I'm kinda offended. I wouldn't defriend him, and I'm more upset than anything that I can't facebook stalk him anymore (that's how mature I am, I know).

I was supposed to go to this Halloween party on Saturday (and Broadway was planning to come with me), but by the time I got home from lab around 11:30pm, I just wanted to veg out on the couch. I felt kinda bad because I told my friend (party host) that I would go, but I knew he would understand.

Many other friends went to the party, and one in particular posted some facebook pictures from her camera, and one is of her and the Doctor. Then I was glad that I didn't go to the party, especially with Broadway in tow. I can't imagine that being a good situation for anyone given all the history.

Then I was curious as to what the Doctor has been up to recently and went to his facebook page. Imagine my surprise when it showed that we were no longer friends. I had actually just looked at some recent pictures of his maybe a couple of months ago, so I know his defriending me is relatively recent. In that time period, I also changed my relationship status to being engaged. I wonder if that had anything to do with his defriending me.

That relationship was indeed rather fucked up, and I'm sure he feels as strongly as I do about not wanting to talk to or see the other person. But the defriending feels to me like a bit of a "fuck you," and I'm offended.

It is what it is. Whatever.

he's cute

Broadway is getting sick of his iPhone and wants to get the new Android when it comes out. This past weekend, he made this off-comment to me:

"I thought about it. I'm going to get the new Android when it comes out, and I'll give this iPhone to you so then you can always play your games."

Hahaha, I do always steal his iPhone to play games. And every once in a while, he'll poke me after getting home from work and tell me he found a new game I might like on his iPhone. I smiled inside.

Also ... we got engaged this weekend :)

helping people

When friends, or even acquaintances, ask me for help, I really try to be as helpful as I can. I put myself out there, maybe more that I should, to not just answer some silly questions but to REALLY help. I'll put them in contact with people I know, or I'll do some leg work researching something, basically going out of my way to help them as much as I can.

Most of the time, I am disappointed by the result. I usually end up feeling very underappreciated, that my efforts were pretty much taken for granted. I then start to feel bad about myself, wondering if I am trying too hard to desperately help people, wondering there are subconscious insecurities manifesting themselves in weird ways motivating me to help every Peter and Bob and Jill who asks for a second of my time.

Take last week for example. A college acquaintance of mine is writing up his masters thesis and asked if I could help him reserve space on my campus. He needs to conduct some focus group meetings with college seniors for the thesis research. If there's one thing I know, it's my campus. I know the ins and outs of getting things done (reserve space, "reserve" space, casually drop by as if the space is already reserved). Most of all, I know people. I know a lot of people.

So immediately, I offered to help. He needs seniors for his focus group. I offered to send emails to seniors whom I know. He doesn't know where he could hold a focus group meeting. I offered to meet up with him and show him the secret meeting places in our student center. I expected ingratiating behavior on his behalf in return. Not so much. He didn't even seem remotely excited. Maybe I was being too eager. He just said that my offer was generous and he would follow up with me.

Fast forward a week. Wednesday morning, I get a frantic email from him. He wanted to know if we can talk at 7:30 that night so he can enlist my help to set up a focus group in our student center center for lunch on Friday. I felt really awkward: do I, or don't I, tell him that planning on Wednesday for something on Friday with a campus full of flaky students is a bad idea? He is on a campus himself. Surely he knows this?

But I said, "Sure, give me a call at 7:30pm, and we will talk."

Unbeknownst to him, I rearranged some things in lab that I had to do in order to be available at 7:30pm to talk to him. Nothing big, but I did adjust things.

7:30 rolled around, and he didn't call. 7:35, and still no call. 7:45, and still nothing. I sat around this whole time twiddling my thumbs waiting for his phone call. It was ridiculous. I don't know why I was taking it so seriously when he obviously 1) wasn't that serious about his own thesis, and/or 2) just plain don't didn't value my time. I had more lab work planned for after the call, and the longer I waited to start those, the later I had to stay in lab Wednesday night.

Fuck it, I finally decided, and went to do my own stuff.

8pm. My phone rings. It was him. I was so annoyed, yet so undecided as to what I should do. Do I answer it? Do I ignore it? Do I ignore it but call back 5 minutes later just to passive-aggressively rebel with hopes that my very very subtle behavior will somehow convey my supreme annoyance?

In the end, I put down my lab work and just answered the phone.

"Sorry for the slight delay," he said. SLIGHT??? You're 30 minutes late.

"Oh, that's okay," I replied. WHY???? Why do I pretend that his behavior was no big deal?

"Do you still have a few minutes to talk?" he asked.

"Sure, what's up?" I answered. I kicked myself. Why can't I say no to things?

We ended up talking for 15 minutes. I manage to convince him to delay the lunch until next week, and in the meantime, if he sends me something, I can circulate around to some seniors I know. He agreed to send me something Wednesday night.

This (Friday) morning at 1am, he emailed me the blurb he wanted to me forward out. It looks like spam. It has multiple colors. It makes a false claim. Well, he would say it's looking forward to the long term goals of his thesis. I think it's a hell of a stretch, thereby making it a plain and simple false claim. He also asked me to forward his email along with a very specific subject line. The subject line promotes the false claim.

So now I am caught in a weird place. I've gone out of my way to help this guy already. He showed no semblance of appreciation up to this point. He has, what I believe to be, unreasonable requests in his email blurb that I somehow feel obligated to foward out to my friends. I really don't want to. I feel like sending something like this may jeopardize my relationships with people I know, expending my political capital (in corporate speak), to what ends? I'm not even getting a sincere thank you from him.

The rational, but pissed off, part of me wants to email him back and say that his email is inappropriate, and that I will not forward it as is to people I know. The other part of me thinks that the recipients are busy college seniors who don't really care that much, and how can a silly little email like this really hurt me? Is it really worth it to make this situation worse by now retracting my offer to help, which I very voluntarily put out there myself with little to no prompting from his part?

I just feel caught in a weird situation, feeling the same awkwardness I often feel after perhaps trying too hard to sell my help to those who mention the smallest things that I can help with. I just don't know why that is. Why I feel the need to so desperately be deemed helpful, and why I still keep doing it after all the empty letdowns I feel after wards.

bridesmaids

Coming out of college, I worried that I wouldn't have enough good, solid girlfriends to have the "right" number of bridesmaids at my wedding, whatever that number might be. And then I worried that none of my good solid girlfriends would themselves get married anytime soon, so when will I ever be a bridesmaid? What the heck?? I am glad that I'm past that mental phase of my life now.

After my bridesmaid experience last summer and a wedding that I attended two weeks ago, I now wonder what is the point of bridesmaids? Are they there to help celebrate YOU, the bride? Or are they there for you, the bride, to celebrate and honor their friendship? Realistically, it's probably somewhere in between the two, but I wish it where more on the side of celebrating the friendship.

Being a bridesmaid sucks. It's so much time, money, energy, with little to no appreciation. I suppose you want to do something nice for your friend the bride, and the proper bridesmaid mentality is that you'll sacrifice yourself so your best friend in the world can have a fairy tale wedding. But really, it's just a super sucky job. You parade down the aisle in some off-green silk taffeta or other gown that matches the girl's next to you. Neither one of you particularly liked that dress, but it was the only one that all 5 of you didn't decidedly hate. Fantastic.

The wedding I attended two weeks ago also had 5 bridesmaids. They paraded down the aisle, only to sit back down once the priest started the ceremony (Catholic ceremonies are too long to stand through, apparently). As an old friend of the bride, I got invited to some of the pre-wedding festivities for the bride and girls. So I went to the bachelorette party with a sex toy rep (actually kinda fun) and a bridal lunch with an awkward assembly of the female members of both families. Wow, what a mess. I was so glad I could bow out, but the bridesmaids, they all had to stay there for many many hours longers.

So that made me think about where I now stand on bridesmaids. I don't think I want any bridesmaids at my wedding. I think I will just have one big party for a wedding. No walking down the aisle, no officiant making you exchange vows in front of everybody, no speeches by family and wedding party--just one big fat party. When you're talking about one big fat party, it makes even less sense to have bridesmaids. What would they even do? Help me get dressed before the party? But it was that exact part that I hated doing as a bridesmaid, and I feel rather royal and princessy making my friends help me dress and put on jewelry.

I wonder if my friends would be offended when I don't ask them to be bridesmaids. I do want to celebrate and thank them for their friendships on my big day. I definitely want them there to be a part of the big fat party. But would they feel weird getting some special acknowledgment without being a bridesmaid? This might be too much off the beaten-path. I like the part where the bride & groom give gifts to their wedding party. I really don't like the part where the wedding party is subjected to become servants, taking the "maid" part almost too literally.

individuality

It turns out that Mr. Guy was writing a paper for a sociology project studying students and extracurricular activities. He went to websites of several big schools in the area and just looked up student groups and their officers. So now I helped Mr. Guy write his paper, and that made me feel pretty good.

I went on a 3-day ski trip again this past weekend. Broadway was too stressed about work, so he stayed in town wanting to crank out some experiments. I had a blast with my friends on the trip. I missed him, but ... I feel rather guilty that I know I had a better time without him than I would have had with him.

While some of the reasons for this is specific to Broadway, I also think that's just the way that I am. I feel tired in relationships, with Broadway and in past relationships. I feel tired that I need to think for two people instead of just one, myself. When I'm out with friends, I always feel guilty indulging in something I know the other person may not want to do. With Broadway, I often cut our night out with friends short and go home, or do things in ways that I know wouldn't bother him.

That's fine--I don't mind readjusting some of my ways for another person. You give and take in any relationship. It was just a relief to not have to think about any of this while away this weekend. I did so many things I wouldn't have otherwise done had Broadway been there. I went to the terrain park for the first time with a friend to try jumps. Broadway would have never done jumps with me (nor probably allowed me to go do jumps), and I would have felt bad leaving him to ski on his own while I did jumps. I went to apres-skis and parties that Broadway probably wouldn't have wanted to go to, wanting instead to just go home. I got up early every morning to hit the slopes, whereas Broadway would have wanted to sleep in for sure. I didn't mind skiing with a big group (more than 10 people), waiting for each others along each trail fork, which would have definitely annoyed the heck out of Broadway.

So maybe the difference between Broadway and me is our social behavior patterns. I have definitely come to crave activity and social interactions, especially with people I like. He loses patience with a lot of people, including people I hang out with. He keeps a small group of very close friends, whereas I have a really big social circle. He gets stressed out when I take him places because he doesn't know anyone and has to make small talk with strangers. I'm not the biggest fan of small talk, but I am inherently interested in people, so I liking meeting new people and finding out their experiences.

I don't always like the new people I meet, but more often than not, I find out something neat and interesting. Broadway's just not open-minded about social activities and would rather not meet anyone new. That doesn't mean he's unfriendly ... I think the cost-benefit for him just isn't worth it. He seldom meets someone whom he is that interested in, and with social situation being such stress cases for him, he just opts to bow out.

Which leaves me in a weird predicament. On the one hand, I feel guilty leaving him home while I go and hang out with my friends. On the other hand, his coming along just means he is miserable and I have a hard time enjoying myself knowing that he is miserable. I'd like to not feel guilty for going to hang out with my friends on my own, without Broadway. But I think this arrangement would be much less stressful for both of us, but it just doesn't feel right. Doing it means seeing him as a burden, and that feels wrong.

How much do couples hang out with their friends independently of each other? Broadway is pretty dependent, and I just feel that I'm in a different place than him on this issue. We are socially mismatched, and at what point would our coupledom lose its two-ness because I'm spending time with other people and Broadway is spending time with himself?

strange ...

Here's something quick ...

I got a random email today, from someone I don't recall having ever met. In fact, googling the name turns up nothing. He's not a student, nor does he have a Google footprint. The email went as such:

Hello Seine,

I am very impressed that you are able to juggle a specular [sic] load of extra-curricular activities on top of being a graduate student at [University]. Has this negatively impacted your work? Do you think you would have been much more productive in research (and perhaps even have graduated by now) if the time and energy you spent on activities were instead directed at your work? Looking back, do you regret having spent your time in this way? Does your advisor know and/or approve? And what do you plan to do after graduation?

Sincerely,
Random Guy

Not sure what to make of this. All of his questions are so negative. Would I have been more productive? Would I have been a better student? It pretty much implies that I've not made academics my priority when I should have as a student first and foremost. Well, first and foremost, there is not a single sentence about himself.

Broadway said I should just ignore the email. I probably should have, but I'm so weak for stuff like this. Someone contacts me out of the blue ... it makes me feel kinda important, you know? Even if it all seems to judging and negative.

So I shot the following back:

Hi Random Guy,

Are you wondering about juggling the two yourself? I'm curious as to why you ask. Perhaps we've met, and I'm just not recalling ...

Seine

Let's see if Mr. Guy responds.