I also started online dating again. I’m doing OKCupid. I’ve had a few okay dates and a couple of flops. I have a few more coming up. I’m optimistic, though I might have made a noob mistake in inviting my current favorite to attend a company-sponsored event with me as a first date. It’s an outing to Six Flags, but neverthless could go horribly awry.

More to come, eventually.

• That One Dude – drunk, kind of ehh but I’m willing to give it another go cause he’s cute and nerdy
• Abrasive Dude With Whom I Once Worked – not exactly drunk, a+++ would make out with again
• My Future Husband – sober-ish, phenom, long overdue
• Mr. Hickory – drunk most of the times, pretty okay, but we just kind of lost interest
• The Buff Bengali – drunk, not very good, and he was pushy and I had to threaten him
• The Sad Puppy – drunk, but he had just fixed some jewelry of mine for me and i was feeling grateful
• The Face – sort of drunk, but exhilarated at immediate success in picking up a dude after a really obnoxious and dramatic public incident with…
• My Little Brother’s Former Boarding School Roommate – well, it’s a long story. I’ll get to it.
• The Englishman – vacation at Hedonism II, drunk, he is ENGLISH
• The White Jamaican – vacation at Hedonism II, drunk, a fine specimen of a man and quite the gentleman as well, a+++ would make out with again, I even tried to find him after I left to exchange contact information
• Legal By A Thread – vacation at Hedonism II, drunk, it was his 18th birthday
• The Bronx Lawyer – vacation at Hedonism II, drunk, really gorgeous man, it was ok

I went out once with The Physicist, but it was excruciating and we did not make out. I kissed this one guy who works for another company in my office building after crashing his office party, but it was more of a goodnight kiss and not so much a makeout. This is a funny story. I’m not going to tell it right now, though. I also propositioned one waiter and had a mild-to-moderate crush on a completely separate waiter.

I think that’s it.

Yesterday was S’s birthday, so we threw her a party at our usual spot.

The invite for the party said that it was going to be a beach party. See, the bar went all out for S’s birthday because she spends a lot of time there and is apparently their favorite regular (notice how much I am not being jealous of this right now, because I am such a good friend). So they say they’re getting a dunking tank and bobbing for liquor bottles and all this other stuff and ask people to dress up as if they were going to the beach, and to bring bathing suits and crap like that. I do not want to fuck up my hair and makeup in the dunking tank, so I decide not to just wear my bathing suit. I’m sure the other people in their beachwear will be dunkable. I try on my diving skin and am saddened at how awesome it looks on me. But no, I opt to change into my “spring break skank” getup instead: a short denim skirt that hangs low on my hips, a Jack Daniels midriff t-shirt (which C got for me at a NASCAR race because she’s a badass), my flip-flops with a bottle opener in the sole, a bunch of mardi gras beads (including the one to which a blinky shot glass is attached), and a straw cowboy hat. Oh yeah- super trashy.

Satisfied that my attire is beach-appropriate, I head out to the party. Upon arriving, I realize that absolutely no one else has dressed up in beachy attire at all. Ugh. At least I didn’t wear the dive skin. There’s a DJ and a bunch of kiddie pools filled with rubber ducks, which are labeled on the bottom with numbers. After each song, S removes a duck from a pool and calls out the number, as well as the name of a person who’s there. The numbers correspond to shots on a list and the person whose name she calls has to do the shot. Hoo boy.

Despite my ridiculous getup, I am in an awesome mood and quickly go into social butterfly mode. There are lots of fellas there, and I get tons of positive attention. (I’m sure my karaoke badassitude helped there.) The ones I can remember include a super-hot guy who turned out to be a rep from Sam Adams who made me try beers and vote on them when I went up to him to hit on him, a buff blond guy with some sort of foreign accent who was attending another birthday party at the bar, and My Grownup Friend’s coworkers who is pretty hot even though he’s a little skinny for my tastes.

Bad news, though; I kind of forgot to eat dinner yesterday. And lunch. And breakfast. Thus, within a couple of hours, I was putting the following into my empty stomach: Irish Car Bombs, Sweetwater Blue, the Jello shots that the bar had made for the event, Smirnoff Ice (yes, I got “iced” a few times), O-bombs, and Jameson (I think that’s all). No food, though.

Enter This One Dude From Last Night For Whom I Haven’t Come Up With A Name Yet. This dude is the bff of the hot male waiter from my bar. He’s about 5’10″, I think, with dark hair and dark twinkly eyes. He has a scruffy beard. I know I’d spoken to him on one other occasion, but I think I might have been drunk at that time because I have no recollection of what was discussed and didn’t even remember his name until he re-introduced himself last night.

This One Dude: Heyyyyy, [AM]!
Self: Well hi there!
This One Dude: You remember my name?
Self: Ummmm… Dominic?
This One Dude: Nope.

Please note: his name doesn’t even sound a LITTLE like “Dominic”. Whoops. Oh well. We hit it off, apparently, although I don’t really remember much after this point. I do recall that he was hot and that, when he sang Never Gonna Give You Up as his karaoke song, I found it incredibly sexy (yes, I have a problem). I do vaguely recall standing outside talking to some people (possibly to the guy with the accent and My Grownup Friend’s coworker, but I can’t be sure) and abruptly walking around to the side of the bar to make out with someone semi-covertly. It may have been That One Dude, but I’m not sure about that either. It seems likely that this would have fucked up my game, though, which is sad because when I woke up this morning and powered on my dry (and undamaged) phone, I only had one new number in it.

Yes, at some point, it appears that That One Dude and I exchanged phone numbers, because I have a string of text messages between the two of us. Here’s how that shit went down:

Dude: Sup this is [Dude].
Self: You are gorgeous. I still want my hat back, though
[Aside: a-ha! We have learnt something here, dear readers! We have learned that he is, apparently, wearing or holding my hat at this point! Interesting!]
Self: It’s the lttp item found fanfare.
[Aside: So I am talking about my text message notification tone, which I had recently set to be the fanfare that is played when you receive a new item in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It seems that I am even more excited about it drunk than I am sober, which is saying something because I'm pretty pumped about it sober also. Anyway.]
Dude: Where did you go?
Self: Where would you like me to be?
Dude: Be careful around me. My place isn’t far from here and I’ve had enough to invite you back.
Self: Please do.
[Aside: ohhhhhhh, self. You dirty, dirty girl. I am disappointed in us.]
Dude: Come over here to the darts and give me some luck.
[Aside: is "luck" secret code for something else? I have no idea.]
Dude: How you holding up?

And that’s it. At some point after I start being able remember things again but only blurrily, someone tells me that my phone has gotten wet. I immediately take out the battery and examine it, but am too drunk to tell whether the sticker inside has turned red (which it will do when it makes contact with water). Since I lost a phone to water damage just a few weeks ago, I take no chances. The battery stays out. Apparently I have decided to take Dude back to my place. We leave. I am not sure if either of us paid a tab. (I did text today to ask the waiter and the bartender whether I paid, but neither of them has responded yet.) On the way out, the waiter asks dude if he is sure. “You sure, dude?” At the time I assume it is some judgment on me, but in retrospect it may instead have been about his level of intoxication and relative ability to drive.

He drives us both to my place, and I fix him a drink (some concoction of club soda, cranberry juice, peach-flavored “moonshine”, and guaro). I also stick my phone and battery into a bag of basmati rice, because someone told me once that this will absorb any moisture that might have gotten in there. I am still drunk enough at this point that it seems like a good idea. For some reason that I do not remember at all, Dude wants to go to his place instead. So we up and leave for his place, which is basically right across the street from me (SMG, he lives in that complex next to Chili’s).

It’s a little blurry, but I thiiiiiiink we talked for a little while or possibly made out, decided to go to Taco Bell, went to Taco Bell, went back to his place, and ate it while watching MST3K on a computer monitor in his bedroom. After this, we did make out. I had previously decided that I was not going to have sex with him, as I am a lady and typically do not put out on the first date. Somehow, though, I wound up having sex with him. Oops again, folks. It wasn’t really particularly good sex, but I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had drunk sex that was good, so, grain of salt.

After that I fell asleep while talking to him about I-don’t-even-know what.

This morning, I wake up around 7 naked in his ikea platform bed with low-threadcount sheets. Oh, self, what have you done this time, I ask silently. He is stirring as well. I put on my underwear, go to the bathroom, comb out my hair, wish I had makeup. When I come out of the bathroom, he isn’t in the bedroom, so I begin getting dressed. He comes back and asks if I’d like to sleep some more or if I’d like to just go. I’m not sure, I say. I don’t remember whether I have paid my tab, and I am concerned that since I don’t remember saying bye to anyone (which doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t say bye to anyone), my friends might be worried that I was abducted or in jail or something- especially since I don’t have my phone. I lie in his bed for awhile, fretting, and finally decide that I should really get home.

I nudge him and gingerly ask if he could please take me back to my car now. No problem, he says. He gets dressed and takes me back to the bar, where I’ve left my vehicle. We ride there in near-silence. He apologizes; he’s feeling pretty out-of-it, he says. No problem, I respond, I’m not a morning person, either. He does seem to avoid eye contact with me, though. I don’t have much to say, either.

I have gotten a couple of texts from him today, asking about how my afternoon at the lake was. I am not sure whether I’ll make out with him again, but I’m not averse to the idea, as he is attractive and fun and I’ll try anything twice since not liking something the first time might well be a fluke.

And that was last night.

I recovered quickly and said that I’d been practicing my flirting skills but had subsequently remembered that men are ridiculously easy to pick up. I gave an example performance of twirling my hair and pretending not to understand how a touchscreen jukebox works, and they agreed that I had pulled it off expertly. Since my options at that point were to either drink more and let it all go downhill or go home and eat something, I opted to leave, with promises to attend the next meetup.

Progress on this week’s goals:
1. do not sleep with anyone: check.
2. do not give my phone number to anyone I don’t already know: check.
3. avoid avoidable drama: check.
4. do 50 pushups each day: not even close. not even 1 fucking pushup on 1 fucking day. oh well.

Off to meet an old friend for cosmos and penistalk! Enjoy your Thursday evening, bitches!

The rest of this sordid tale is coming soon. The parts of it that I can remember, anyway, which probably make up less than half of the evening.

Physicist called several times yesterday. I spoke to him once. He wants to have dinner sometime this week, but I graciously declined on the grounds that I have plans nearly every night. He sounds like kind of a goober, and not in a good way. Also, somehow in my drunken stupor, I had forgotten that he is a grad student. Bleagh. Students. I might just write this one off from the get-go.

The identity theft debacle also kept me in last night, despite my plans. I think that SMG is sick today, which probably means that tonight is off as well. I plan to stay in and sulk. Fuck everything; it’s Tuesday and I’m hating life.

Physicist called last night. He wants to go out this week, but my schedule is packed this week. I might try to fit him in tomorrow before SMG arrives, but as I want to avoid potential drama, I’m currently undecided. I haven’t called him back yet.

This week’s schedule:
Monday: Sweetwater tasting at the usual spot
Tuesday: weekly SMG date
Wednesday: webdev meetup with the Buff Bengali
Thursday: recovery
Friday: girls’ night out with S and KC
Saturday: the long-awaited date with Twitterdude
Sunday: is when I get my sleep in, cause on Monday I’ll be at it again. (Holla.)

Goals for this week:
1. do not sleep with anyone.
2. do not give my phone number to anyone I don’t already know.
3. avoid avoidable drama.
4. do 50 pushups each day.

I’ll let y’all know how it works out. Happy Monday, bitches!

Picked up My Evil Twin and drove him to his car. He was funny and feeling much better, though embarrassed about last night’s mishaps. I deposited him at his vehicle without incident. I don’t think he remembers the comment he made about not having the courage to ask me on a “real date”. Thank goodness. I accidentally dialed SMG’s number right after I picked My Evil Twin up, so he had the opportunity to hear the semi-awkward conversation on the drive back to the bar. Delightful.

Home now. Sent the obligatory “it’s-not-you-it’s-me” easy letdown text message to Handsome Stranger. He seems confused and unhappy. Argh. I am looking forward to the day of absolutely nothing that I have planned for myself.