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bluelovesorangeSeriously, everyone - I know. I seem to have stumbled into an episode of a drama on the CW network.
Since I'm not locking this, I'll revert to my old standby of initialling everyone involved.
Once upon a time there was a young woman. She made the life-changing decision to finally follow her dreams of travelling to far off lands and teach English. To further this dream, she quit her soul-destroying, faith-in-humanity-shattering job as a retail monkey at a large corporate owned bookstore. In the last weeks of her job, she encountered a young boy. He was tall, had good hair, looked exceptionally cute leaning against things, and a keen conversationalist. He kept her laughing and amused during their shared shift. She shyly enquired after his email address, as it was the age of MySpace, and he had mentioned that he played in a band, and her, being a fan of music (mostly good) wished to know more about the band (and him).
They parted, and the woman did realize to her dismay, a few days later, that she did not have the boy's email, and no other way of contacting him. Disappointed, she went into work, determined to be professional and helpful anyway, despite the fact that her store was being managed by corporate bureaucrats of the lowest order and were fucking stupid, besides.
Another day and the woman upturned her messenger bag and found to her delight, the email. She plugged it into Myspace and came up with a profile that was.....semi-worrying in that the blog appeared to be written by a five year old, regarding sentence structure and abbreviations. However, remembering previous (ahem) conversations with well-meaning friends about her possibly....overanalytical and judgmental nature, and her English degree, she was willing to overlook the net speak, because that should not define a whole personality.
Not a word about the band, and so she thought she would drop off a funny, gently chiding email asking about it. The email came back with a system delivery error - 'this email is no longer in use.'
Huh, she thought. That's....interesting.
Meanwhile, her inner voice, the one that counseled her against wearing plaid with stripes, eating the last stuffed mushroom canape, talking to telemarketers on the phone, kicked in and suggested, "That was a pussy way of saying don't get in touch."
(for clarification purposes, the inner voice will be referred to as the Virgon. The Virgon swears like a sailor.)
Deciding to write off this as 'well, that was a jack ass way of avoiding someone,' but whatever, I'm going to be FREEEEEEEEEEEEE from the shackles of retail servitude!
A week passes, and the woman goes back to the bookstore to invite her favorite boss to the quitting party. The boy is there. She debates briefly, seizes the fish, and invites the boy to come along to the quitting party, in a move worthy of John Hughes. Or possibly Josh Schwartz.
It doesn't quite happen, but the meet-cute feeling persists.
Until enter in the Office Slut. The office slut (and we've all known the Office Slut. Some of us may even be reformed Office Sluts!) decides that she's not happy with flirting/sleeping with/toying with her usual stable of men (not including her BOYFRIEND who works at the bookstore) and makes a play for the Boy.
The woman, who idealistically thinks, oh the boy won't fall for the Office Slut, because he's smart and kind and knows about the Office Slut's boyfriend, and ooo, isn't the world all sparkly and shiny and pink?
Tragically, real world math interferes - the boy is reveling in his 21 year old callow youth status, the Office Slut is a nubile 19 and as fickle and selfish as they come, and the 27 year old has a vocabulary that trumps both of their shallow asses, and understands suddenly, she's the mad woman in the attic.
In the most recent 'twist' to the melodrama, the Office Slut asks the woman's friend (WHO STILL WORKS THERE BECAUSE HER HEART IS MADE OF GOLD and because she can't say no) if she was aware of the woman's feelings for the boy. The friend immediately uses her Adult Tact shield and protests that she doesn't want to HEAR IT, yet the O.S. persists anyway, and says that the boy informed her that woman totally liked him.
This is news to the woman, who while admitting that she may have liked the boy a little too much than she should have, considering the difference in their age, certainly never proclaimed any such thing to the boy, unless he took it upon himself to assume that from two short txts and a voice mail about the new Radiohead album.
To drown salt in the offensive, festering emotional gash in her heart, the boy apparently 'likes' the Office Slut and wants to 'hang out' with her. The O.S. doesn't know how she feels about the boy and insists that they are just 'friends'.
The O.S. Boyfriend, by the way? Still assumed in the picture, and still all too incredibly good for the O.S. and has no idea that there is yet another boy added to the queue waiting to get into his girlfriend's pants. At last count, there were 2 other guys in front of the Boy.
The woman is now admittedly, furious, humiliated, and ENRAGED (the Virgon momentarily speechless, sputters, "OH NO HE DIDN'T." and then, "DETACH! DETACH! You are too old, too awesome, and again, TOO OLD for this playground nonsense.") is pleased that she deleted boy's phone number from her cell, and then rips up the piece of paper that contained said cursed phone number of douchebag with good hair. (and so she won't call him and screech, GET OVER YOURSELF, YOU SMUG LITTLE TWO-FACED MANWHORE.)
Then concocts various scenarios of sweet, sweet, snarky banter filled confrontations, mostly ending with the refrain, "and then she punched him in the face."
And imagines herself wearing really good shoes and a pencil skirt while doing this.
The problem with this entire fiasco of course, is now that it's decided to turn into a horrible Clerks-meets-SaTC-the-OC bastardized telenovela, is that it forces me to use total recall and treat everything C ever said to me as suspect, that he was never really interested in me sincerely as a friend or otherwise, and it's sad to think that the nice boy that I thought he was....never really existed.
But...red flags:
1. The age thing. God, the age thing. Now I'm just disgusted with myself. While C is certainly not the barometer to set all 21 year old 'men' by, he certainly doesn't help the generalization that all the thinking they do are with the head downstairs. HE'S PRACTICALLY A GODDAMN FETUS.
2. He was ...'you did that?' about certain parts of my past - like going to clubs and dancing on speakers while completely sober, and the artier aspects of my personality. He clearly had me marked off as an old maid, boring and prudish.
3. Who the fuck goes to house parties anymore? Really.
4. The Finding Office Slut Attractive DESPITE her glaring emotional neediness/infidelity/overall skankiness factor. Truly, a love story for our times. Only Shonda Rhimes could write better!
I am just too much awesome, (even with my emotional retardation) for one mere mortal boy. I need to meet men. Real men, who don't lie, who don't play emotional mind games, who are interested. Really hot red-headed women may also apply, because, who doesn't love a redhead?
Now, now that I'm done over-sharing any emotional repulsiveness, I need to go and rewatch Hot Fuzz.
Since I'm not locking this, I'll revert to my old standby of initialling everyone involved.
Once upon a time there was a young woman. She made the life-changing decision to finally follow her dreams of travelling to far off lands and teach English. To further this dream, she quit her soul-destroying, faith-in-humanity-shattering job as a retail monkey at a large corporate owned bookstore. In the last weeks of her job, she encountered a young boy. He was tall, had good hair, looked exceptionally cute leaning against things, and a keen conversationalist. He kept her laughing and amused during their shared shift. She shyly enquired after his email address, as it was the age of MySpace, and he had mentioned that he played in a band, and her, being a fan of music (mostly good) wished to know more about the band (and him).
They parted, and the woman did realize to her dismay, a few days later, that she did not have the boy's email, and no other way of contacting him. Disappointed, she went into work, determined to be professional and helpful anyway, despite the fact that her store was being managed by corporate bureaucrats of the lowest order and were fucking stupid, besides.
Another day and the woman upturned her messenger bag and found to her delight, the email. She plugged it into Myspace and came up with a profile that was.....semi-worrying in that the blog appeared to be written by a five year old, regarding sentence structure and abbreviations. However, remembering previous (ahem) conversations with well-meaning friends about her possibly....overanalytical and judgmental nature, and her English degree, she was willing to overlook the net speak, because that should not define a whole personality.
Not a word about the band, and so she thought she would drop off a funny, gently chiding email asking about it. The email came back with a system delivery error - 'this email is no longer in use.'
Huh, she thought. That's....interesting.
Meanwhile, her inner voice, the one that counseled her against wearing plaid with stripes, eating the last stuffed mushroom canape, talking to telemarketers on the phone, kicked in and suggested, "That was a pussy way of saying don't get in touch."
(for clarification purposes, the inner voice will be referred to as the Virgon. The Virgon swears like a sailor.)
Deciding to write off this as 'well, that was a jack ass way of avoiding someone,' but whatever, I'm going to be FREEEEEEEEEEEEE from the shackles of retail servitude!
A week passes, and the woman goes back to the bookstore to invite her favorite boss to the quitting party. The boy is there. She debates briefly, seizes the fish, and invites the boy to come along to the quitting party, in a move worthy of John Hughes. Or possibly Josh Schwartz.
It doesn't quite happen, but the meet-cute feeling persists.
Until enter in the Office Slut. The office slut (and we've all known the Office Slut. Some of us may even be reformed Office Sluts!) decides that she's not happy with flirting/sleeping with/toying with her usual stable of men (not including her BOYFRIEND who works at the bookstore) and makes a play for the Boy.
The woman, who idealistically thinks, oh the boy won't fall for the Office Slut, because he's smart and kind and knows about the Office Slut's boyfriend, and ooo, isn't the world all sparkly and shiny and pink?
Tragically, real world math interferes - the boy is reveling in his 21 year old callow youth status, the Office Slut is a nubile 19 and as fickle and selfish as they come, and the 27 year old has a vocabulary that trumps both of their shallow asses, and understands suddenly, she's the mad woman in the attic.
In the most recent 'twist' to the melodrama, the Office Slut asks the woman's friend (WHO STILL WORKS THERE BECAUSE HER HEART IS MADE OF GOLD and because she can't say no) if she was aware of the woman's feelings for the boy. The friend immediately uses her Adult Tact shield and protests that she doesn't want to HEAR IT, yet the O.S. persists anyway, and says that the boy informed her that woman totally liked him.
This is news to the woman, who while admitting that she may have liked the boy a little too much than she should have, considering the difference in their age, certainly never proclaimed any such thing to the boy, unless he took it upon himself to assume that from two short txts and a voice mail about the new Radiohead album.
To drown salt in the offensive, festering emotional gash in her heart, the boy apparently 'likes' the Office Slut and wants to 'hang out' with her. The O.S. doesn't know how she feels about the boy and insists that they are just 'friends'.
The O.S. Boyfriend, by the way? Still assumed in the picture, and still all too incredibly good for the O.S. and has no idea that there is yet another boy added to the queue waiting to get into his girlfriend's pants. At last count, there were 2 other guys in front of the Boy.
The woman is now admittedly, furious, humiliated, and ENRAGED (the Virgon momentarily speechless, sputters, "OH NO HE DIDN'T." and then, "DETACH! DETACH! You are too old, too awesome, and again, TOO OLD for this playground nonsense.") is pleased that she deleted boy's phone number from her cell, and then rips up the piece of paper that contained said cursed phone number of douchebag with good hair. (and so she won't call him and screech, GET OVER YOURSELF, YOU SMUG LITTLE TWO-FACED MANWHORE.)
Then concocts various scenarios of sweet, sweet, snarky banter filled confrontations, mostly ending with the refrain, "and then she punched him in the face."
And imagines herself wearing really good shoes and a pencil skirt while doing this.
The problem with this entire fiasco of course, is now that it's decided to turn into a horrible Clerks-meets-SaTC-the-OC bastardized telenovela, is that it forces me to use total recall and treat everything C ever said to me as suspect, that he was never really interested in me sincerely as a friend or otherwise, and it's sad to think that the nice boy that I thought he was....never really existed.
But...red flags:
1. The age thing. God, the age thing. Now I'm just disgusted with myself. While C is certainly not the barometer to set all 21 year old 'men' by, he certainly doesn't help the generalization that all the thinking they do are with the head downstairs. HE'S PRACTICALLY A GODDAMN FETUS.
2. He was ...'you did that?' about certain parts of my past - like going to clubs and dancing on speakers while completely sober, and the artier aspects of my personality. He clearly had me marked off as an old maid, boring and prudish.
3. Who the fuck goes to house parties anymore? Really.
4. The Finding Office Slut Attractive DESPITE her glaring emotional neediness/infidelity/overall skankiness factor. Truly, a love story for our times. Only Shonda Rhimes could write better!
I am just too much awesome, (even with my emotional retardation) for one mere mortal boy. I need to meet men. Real men, who don't lie, who don't play emotional mind games, who are interested. Really hot red-headed women may also apply, because, who doesn't love a redhead?
Now, now that I'm done over-sharing any emotional repulsiveness, I need to go and rewatch Hot Fuzz.
