20 March 2007 - 7:03 pm

Well, here's the fun part.

Mr. Electricity doesn't realize I have figured out he's actually seeing someone else.

He must really think I'm an idiot, that I can't figure these things out. I can figure things out, eventually, because as far as I know, my gut instinct is always right. I just don't always get the confirmation until a year or two later when he mentions he slept with so and so when such and such was happening. And why can't he just tell me at the time, instead of acting all squirrelly and weird and getting all pissy with me? It's how he acts that gets me suspicious, I would guess they actually started seeing one another this last week, because that's when things started to get really odd.

I knew something was odd when he started disappearing on me, unable to get ahold of him, him sounding downright giddy when he finally did call back. Something's up.

He'd throw things at me like, you think I could be seeing someone else if I talk with you in the middle of the night so frequently? I said, yes, I know you can, because you used to talk to me on a regular basis when you were living with a couple of your other girlfriends, you started seeing someone else while living with me, yeah, it's not hard for you.

He finally told me he had met someone, how they met, and his now big dilemma of whether to go to Coachella with her, who is offering him VIP tickets, or me, offering him a resort to lounge at. I had my tickets, he didn't have his. I had offered to buy them for him, but he was going to go with a group of friends, then they bailed, then I offered to buy the ticket for him (of course he would pay me back later!) but he said he would have enough money in a couple weeks, he didn't want to be a mooch. Couple weeks, and the three day passes sold out. Uh-oh. Honestly, no one expected that. It was just the night Rage against the Machine was playing sold out, and for a band re-assembled for this show, the three day passes became the only way to see them. Neither of us care about Rage, so we didn't expect it to sell out. I didn't have a place to stay myself, but I had my tickets. I would just get two camping tickets, and he would then just need to get himself a three day pass. He had planned on buying one, and was watching the ebay auctions religiously. I started looking to see if I could get days at my time share in Indio, and each time I looked, I managed to get another day. I have all but Saturday night booked now, in a two bedroom place that sleeps 6, with its own kitchen.

We figured if I can't get that final night, we could just sleep in the car, no big deal.

I check everyday for the Saturday night. I check every evening for the Saturday night. If it were just me, I wouldn't be bothering, I would just sleep in my car, or go crash at Mr. C&H's. But Mr. C&H usually has his grampa visiting, so I figured I would try to come up with a different option this year. Or I could just sleep in my car. Now with the resort to stay in, even if I don't get that Saturday night, I will be clean and cool all but Sunday of the show, no biggie. I even have it booked for Sunday night, so I can come back, get clean and leave feeling human before hitting traffic.

So then he mentions that this girl is offering him VIP tickets, tickets she herself had not already obtained, but only got from a friend because she had heard he wanted to go and was interested in him. His dilemma is he feels obligated to have sex with her, though he isn't attracted to her, and that just doesn't seem right if he's staying with me. I said, well, there is nothing saying you need to sleep with her. You will be hanging out with her in the VIP tents all day long, because I don't have those tickets, but you had already made arrangements to stay with me, so stay with me, take her ticket, and here's a thought, offer her she can stay with us, as any friend who has already made arrangements and can offer to extend that would do. I had repeatedly told him to invite anyone he knew that would be attending to come stay with us. Same blanket invitation should be covering this situation.

Oh, no, that wouldn't work. I don't want to disappoint you, offend you, you're my best friend..... I'll either go with her, and I'm looking for a place for us to stay, or I just won't go.

Uh, what happened to our plan? You were going to buy a ticket, I already have a place for us to stay? Imagine I am your friend Carlson, he has a place for you to stay, you have a new male friend, there is plenty of room, why wouldn't you stay with him, like you had promised you would? And with your friend? There's a bed for each of us. I was trying to be all mature and adult. If she's just a friend, and he doesn't want to date her, this seems like a no brainer. "I already had a commitment for where to stay, so you are welcome to join us." In the meantime, he asked for her to wait, he needed to think about her offer. In the meantime, he is looking for places to stay. In the meantime, he tells me he isn't sure if he will stay with me, and he'll make his decision this weekend.

Over the weekend, he says she's getting kinda antsy about what's the big deal, why can't he just make up his mind? I find it weird she's not offering to find a place to stay, why has it become his problem, since she's the one offering the ticket? And since she wasn't even planning on going since she didn't get the tickets until she saw it as an opportunity to dangle in his interest, how big of a music fan is she? He tells me she likes to go to live shows, but she hadn't already made plans to go to this huge show in LA's backyard? Hmm.

Weirdness ensued this weekend, I got pissed, I tried to find everything of mine that I am lending him at his apartment, telling him I couldn't understand what the dilemma was. Go, accept her tickets, and all of us stay with me. It seems like the perfect solution. Something's up that he's so conflicted. I walked in on him talking with her, drunk calling him, and he says, 'sorry, gotta go, my friend, he's shown up.' Ah, the old lie, pretending I'm not female, pretending he has no feelings for me.

I confronted him about it, and he told me, 'no, you misheard me, I said she's shown up.' I know what I heard. He laments that her birthday is coming up, what should he do? I say, get her a card, no big deal, it's not like you're dating. He still hasn't finished giving me my Christmas present. He claims he has a card he bought for me too, but when I asked could you at least sign it and give that to me, to show some sign of caring that you are late giving me a present, when I have already given you yours, he just says he has to find the card, and can't write on it while I'm there. I'm thinking the card is still sitting in the store, just like the present is, that's why he can't give it to me.

And what about that drunk call? If you were trying to impress someone to go out with you, because you like them, not knowing he isn't really interested, but you are still hoping to impress him, you do the drunk calling AFTER you get to know them, and are seeing them. After they have made a decision about whether they will be spending a weekend with you. Otherwise, you might turn them off from accepting your offer. Unless of course, it's already a done deal, the decision has been made, in which case, drunk calling is perfectly natural.

I couldn't find my pajamas when I visited him. They always sit in a little matching aqua paisley flannel bag on the side of his bed, hidden by bedding. There would be no reason to move it. He never touches it. I can't find it. It would be a sign to a looking female that there is someone regular in his life. It would be something you move if someone female came to your bedroom, even if just to visit, not to spend the night.

Monday comes, he is on his way to a concert, he keeps telling me he spent Saturday night away at a friend's, he wanted time away from me. I say that's silly, he could have come home and slept on the couch, just like he falls asleep practically every night I ever visit him these days. I try to pry him off the couch, but even dragging part of his body onto the floor does nothing, he resists. He says, don't read anything into it, he just pretty much always falls asleep on the couch these days. But he didn't used to resist me getting him to go to bed, just last month. Or I could have slept on the couch Saturday night, if he didn't want to be near me. Or he could have told me to leave when he saw me there. He said he wasn't going out on St. Patty's, it was for amateurs, but Saturday night he said, oh, I just meant I wasn't going out to the bars, I'm going to a co-worker's party. Uh-huh. I ask him why he's grooming meticulously, didn't he have time to do that before he went to work? He says he only does it once a week, the extra little hairs on his face not caught by shaving that need to be plucked. Uh-huh. I know he only does it once a week or so, I've seen him do it before, and he does it before he goes to work normally. Why does he not offer to take me with him to this party? He's always telling me about his co-workers, but I've never met any of them except the ones that end up as his roommates.

He wakes on Sunday at three, and I know he never sleeps in that late unless he has stayed up all night. The friend he claims he spent the night at has a mother dying in the front of the house, on oxygen now, a very light sleeper. I don't think he went there after the party like he claimed, (if he even went to the party) to wake a dying woman up, so he didn't have to come back to his own home. I think he stayed somewhere else, and it was already planned when I arrived, and they got up and did things Sunday morning, and his waking up at three was actually finally leaving whomever that was and being in his car where he could talk in private.

On Monday he calls, on his way to the concert with his co-worker friend whom he went to Coachella with last year, tells me that a favorite restaurant of his is closed because it is Monday, where is that favorite coffee shop of ours near my work? It is quarter to six, I am just about to get off work, I give him the directions that would have him passing right in front of my workplace, and he's downright giddy asking me for directions. I call him right back, thinking if he wants a meal, like the place that was closed, there is a restaurant nearby that I can give directions to, but 30 seconds after getting off the phone, he's not answering. I get interrupted, take another call, call back, still no answer. I leave the directions. When I originally answered the phone, I asked excitedly, with a preface of suspenseful music, if he had made his decision yet. 'No,' he says, 'probably after my first margarita at the show, I will.' I wonder why he didn't offer for me to join him and his co-worker for coffee at our favorite coffee shop around the corner after I got off work. That would have been nice to have met Chris, whom I have seen in pictures at the same concerts I was at last year at Coachella. The restaurant he had wanted to go to, was the same place he took his really cool friend he ended up sleeping with last year, and had pumped me for information of where to go to show her the cool things about LA. I wonder if his friend Chris would care to visit this trendy, art gallery place near my work.

I wait until 12:30 at night to text message him, saying, 'I have waited for your decision, and since you have given me none by the appointed time, I am assuming the decision did not involve me, and you didn't have the decency to tell me. I will plan accordingly now.' I also wished he and Chris a good show, and asked how long we were waiting before making our own plans for Bonnaroo, since his friend Carlson who expressed interest had not gotten back to him yet. Because Chris was who he was supposed to be seeing the show that night with, he had repeatedly mentioned. Someone he had also mentioned frequently that he no longer would be offering musical suggestions to since he had been unappreciative of them. That he was a pussy, and didn't really do anything without his girlfriend these days. So I really couldn't imagine that was who he went to this show with.

I can tell when he lies, the problem is, I just can't tell what he is lying about at the time.

It all came together in my head. Ah, he's with her, and pretending he isn't to not upset me. He's giddy calling me on the phone, because she is with him, and he is pretending he isn't calling anyone important as they drive by my work. He acts like a six year old, who knows he's just pulled the wool over someone's eyes. He doesn't want me to know that he's seeing her, because he knows that I might be pissed. There is an admission that we are a couple if he is so worried about me finding out he's seeing someone else. He kept telling me we weren't a couple, so if he started dating someone, and told me, I really wouldn't have that much of a problem. He's known I've seen other people. He doesn't like me talking about it, but he knows. Staying with me at Coachella would be a very bad idea for someone else (especially someone who might be useful in pulling strings, and all he needs to do is sleep with her?) to see how we interact, because everyone else assumes we are a couple. We act like one. We just say we aren't.

And his being indecisive? Well, he knows from experience, that if he makes mistakes and begs forgiveness, I forgive him and take him back. Right now he is presumably hanging out with someone who is going to give him something he wants, for free. He told me the ways in which she already annoys him, like interrupting him when he's talking, and being a lazy listener. And she is extremely loud, he hates that. And she's overweight, heavier than I, he pointed out. These are all undesireable things, things he hates. Things he would be willing to put up with for a bit of time, because she gets his sense of humor. They met one night when he was doing stand up. Her ass is smaller and tighter than mine. And she has these Coachella VIP tickets. I think he is reeling us both along, hoping to get the best out of both of us. He will probably ditch her at some point, and come back to me, but probably not until he has tickets in hand, or until after Coachella. So he thinks, I would guess that is his plan, whether concious or not.

So, I wrote this morning about my anger, and here's the funny part to me: I'm pretending there is no consequence to his actions. He's pretending there is no consequence to his actions. My roommate mentioned that I let him get away with everything because I never draw the line. Me trying to use logic as to why I am upset, me crying to show how upset I am, do not translate into a consequence. Me saying fine, you can't stay with me, because I'm not waiting for you to make up your mind, that is a consequence. So now, in my mind he is seeing someone else, I'm fine with that, and I'm pretending I don't know anything about it. I'm reeling him in to think that he can just come back to me when he's tired of her, because I don't know anything about them dating, just them possibly hanging out this one particular weekend at the end of April. Because I'm useful, being an idiot who doesn't figure these things out, what I don't know won't hurt me, won't cause me to push him away.

Oh, he mentioned on Sunday that our staying together was a tentative plan for Coachella, not a for sure thing. Well, that's funny, because a week ago he was telling me how excited he was about where we were staying and knowing he wouldn't need to shell out extra dough for a place to stay, and tickets were more expensive than he hoped, but he was feeling very lucky about them, and would get them soon. That doesn't sound like a tentative plan, that sounds like a for sure plan. I asked if I had bought his ticket, and had a place to stay, would he still potentially bail because she had VIP tickets? He told me no, if he had tickets, this thing with her wouldn't even be a consideration. I somehow doubt it.

Then she showed up with her VIP tickets, and all our plans went out the window. Boom, just like that. Something better was offered, ditch the friend. I kept trying to tell him he could set the boundaries, that he could tell his new friend that he already had made arrangements, and I bet that would impress her what a loyal friend he was.

Then I start thinking about our plans to go to Bonnaroo together, something he has been getting very excited about, and I will be receiving the tickets, and the way things stand right now, I am not inclined to give one to him. It's not like he's finished paying me money for other things, he is making progress, but he hasn't bought the ticket off me yet either.

Consequences. My roommate mentioned she used to be a flake to her friends, always jumping to something better when it was offered, until she looked around and noticed she didn't have any friends. That was when she finally learned her lesson.

So it looks like I will be booking my flight and car to Bonnaroo by myself after all, just as I feared. Now I just need to get rid of this extra ticket I have. Anyone interested?