The Last

I think I am cursed.

I have a habit of only having a romantic encounter* with a guy a few days before I leave a place forever.  Which, in my academic career, has been quite a few places.

The first guy was also my first kiss.  It was an Indian guy, S, who lived at my student house in London, England.  We all went places together, and somehow he usually ended up walking next to me on our way to where we were going.  Then the night that my cousin arrived, the night before I left London on a trip with her, we all went out to a club. I really wanted to dance, and no one would dance with me, so I went to get a drink and saw one of the guys suggesting to S that he ask me.  So I danced with S, and he kissed me, and then we ended up kissing for the next few hours on the dance floor, and home in the cab, and then when we got to my floor, I chickened out, said "Goodnight!" and ran to my room.  I still remember the look of shocked disappointment on his face.  Poor guy, I was pleased with how the night had gone!  My cousin told me recently that she figured something had happened because I was spacing out on cloud nine for the next few days!

Second guy was in Victoria.  He was a friend of one of the girls I worked with and we hung out as a group for most of the summer.  One time friends of theirs from home were visiting and they had a tradition of cooking breakfast at someone's house the next morning, so I got invited to K's house.  I ended up being the first one there and helped make breakfast.  I got some pointed questions of where I had slept the night before from his visiting friends.  After most of the people had gone, he and I and one of his friends hung out for most of the afternoon and he introduced me to a whole bunch of new music.  I  sent him a message on Facebook that night that when he had time, I would love to hang out with him again.  A few weeks later we went to see a Rodin exhibit at the art gallery.  Which turned into talking for a few hours in the gallery's garden, then dinner, then coffee, then going to see the movie "Once".  Then the car mysteriously pointed its way to his house... and I went home the next morning.  No sex was had people, I am not that kind of girl.  He drove me to the airport a week later and then he drove to Newfoundland to do a masters before I came back to Victoria three weeks later.   It might have been, but never got a chance.

The encounters have gotten decidedly less romantic since then.

Third guy was from my first masters that I met again in an elevator in Ottawa on my co-op for this masters.  We exchanged emails and I did not hear from him again until the week before I left.  He claims he lost my email until then.  Anyway, we ended up having a coffee break together at work and had a really great chat.  The coffee break was about an hour longer than it should have been!  It might have turned into something if we had more time, but I left three days later.

And this brings me to guy #4.  Nothing romantic about this one at all.  The guy is in two of my classes, and we have not had anything to do with each other until we happened to sit next to each other last week and helped each other with our websites.  Our program had a prom last night and he and his friend followed our group to the next club.  They were both after a girl in our group.  When it became obvious that he was getting nowhere with that girl, he came over to dance with me.  We were not so much dancing together as occasionally doing the same stupid moves.  I went to sit with the rest of my friends and he came and sat down occasionally, but my friend's boyfriend gave him a look, and he would go off again.  Somehow we all ended up leaving together and when I was having trouble walking he swooped in to hold my hand.  Then while my friends were ordering sandwiches at Subway, he asked me if it would be appropriate to ask me to go home with him.  I said no.  He took the next cab out of there.  I regretted it a little because I had to hobble back to my friend's hotel room to get my flat shoes with no one to hold onto.  I am not sure what is going to happen on Tuesday when I have two classes with him.  Hopefully we can go back to politely ignoring each other!

I just don't understand though, is it something about "The End" that makes guys bolder?  Or is it something about me that makes guys wait until the very last second?  Am I that intimidating?

Once or twice I would be ok with, but four times?!!  Geez!  Some cruel joke the universe is playing on me!  This last one especially, its like the universe suddenly realized I was about to leave here in a week and threw whoever was closest at me without really thinking about it, "Oh sh*t!  C's leaving in a week! Uh... he'll do!  =toss="

As soon as I am living in some place for longer than 4 months at a time, I am going to say "screw you!" to the universe and do something about this dating thing, but until then, I shake my fist at you universe!



*I wrote "asked out" first and then realized that in most cases I was not formally asked out at all!

Weird Kid

So, I was a very imaginative child.  I would spend hours by myself, telling myself a story.  Often these stories got wildly out of hand, and ended in some horrible, macabre, gory way.

Seriously people, I once started singing a version of "On Top of Spaghetti" to myself that somehow ended in the battlefield massacre of millions of puppies!

I have no idea why my imagination was so messed up from such an early age (ahem, watching Star Wars when I was three, ahem), but it was, and it usually ended up with me in tears over the horrors that had befallen my characters, and running to mom, until I realized she just didn't understand.

I have no idea how my mother put up with it.

Scene: Kitchen, mid 1980s, mom making dinner.

Mom: So nice to have the kids playing quietly in their rooms.  Kids, wash your hands! Soups on!
A: Yay Dinner!
C: =SOB= bwaaaaaaa!  =SOB=
Mom: C!  What wrong sweetie?
C: The kitty di-i-ed-d =SOB= bwaaaaaaaa!
Mom: What kitty died?  Where? A?  What did you do to your sister?
A: Nothing!
C: The kitty with the candle =hic= he ... he ... went up the stairs ... and the door wouldn't open ... and...and he ...he di-i-i-ed =SOB!=
Mom: What kitty?
C: The one on my wall =sniffle=
Mom: What kit-...?  You mean the one on the tapestry? The one your Aunt made?  On the wall above your desk?
C: un hun
Mom: The kitty on your tapestry died...
C: un hun
Mom: How...?
C: I was telling myself a s-story and the kitty died at the end...
Mom: Wh-  ?........ I am sorry honey, that is very sad.  Why didn't you tell yourself a happier story?
C: =confused stare=   =uh oh! abort! Mom doesn't understand that stories go where they want, say no more, just start eating=
Mom: ...Well ... um ... eat up...?

As an adult looking back now, you can totally tell that she was thinking something along the lines of "WTF!!!! This kid is totally batsh*t crazy!!!!"  or whatever the polite way of saying that in the 1980s would have been.  Everytime my family didn't understand why I had done something, I just clammed up and wouldn't say any more.  I had obviously miscalculated my observations of humanity somewhere and done it wrong if they didn't understand and therefore had brought shame upon myself.

Like I said: Weird Kid!

P.S.
Mom's line to explain to my brother why we were treated differently in terms of punishments and things when we were growing up is:

"Well, I could reason with you!  There was absolutely no reasoning with her!"