The Rambling RedHead

Bad Milk in Raleigh - Part 4

The town I live in is not exactly a thriving metropolis, there is only one real concentration of nightlife and not a lot of variety in options for socializing. Subsequently, you tend to run into a lot of the same people over and over. In addition, you tend to make friends with a group of people and stick with them over time. My own beloved Usual Suspects is a prime example. In terms of core Suspects there are 6 or 7 of us, down 2 since Ms. CoraBean settled down with HunnyBunny and Michelle moved to Colorado. Along with the close little group that tends to stick together pretty tightly, we also each have other peripheral friends that we rotate in and out of the group. The point I’m making is that, it’s not a big town. We tend to run with the same folks and stick to the same places, everyone kind of knows everyone else. This provides fertile breeding ground for an unfortunate dating phenomenon known as Friend/Roommate Switching.

You know I love you.. Can I date your roommate??

I guess I have to start with Kansas.. In every other instance on the blog, I change the name of the person I’m writing about to protect identities, particularly in the case of the Bad Milk articles. Heck, Francisco has 3 separate blog names designed to mask his true identity.. Kansas on the other hand.. Well, he really could care less.. He’s the kind of New Yorker, Italian Smart Ass that has skin made of Teflon. Nothing sticks to him. But, as he is one of my beloved, I did feel a need to clear the use of his name and the history we have.. His reply? "As long as you mention I have a big dick, I don't give a shit what you write about me".. I know, I know, but I absolutely think the world of the guy anyhow.. OK, so, just to keep my end of the bargain up, he tells me he's got a big pecker and I am hereby officially passing this information on to you, my gentle readers. It's huge. He was born a tripod. It's like Mount St. Pecker. Women in Argentina sing folk songs about it. (Is that enough to prevent a libel suit, Kansas?? Because I'm starting to abuse sarcasm at this point..)

Anyhow, back to the story.. As has been noted previously, Kansas and I dated for about a month just about a year or so ago. We made a great couple.. We’re both smart, sarcastic, high energy and damn good looking (or so he’s fond of pointing out).. Alas, it was not meant to be.. He’s a foot and germ phobic marriage minded atheist and I’m a divorced free-spirited missionary with kids. We were doomed from the start. Luckily for us, we both recognized that the attachment that we had formed for each other was worth keeping intact.. We decided to remain friends and have done so with an amazing degree of success. I count him as one of my nearest and dearest.. This transition from dating to being friends was not always easy and Kansas is the primary reason I invoke the “Let’s NOT be friends” policy when ending a relationship these days. It just gets complicated. Take for example, when someone you dated and actually had some feelings for wants to suddenly date one of your best friends/roommate.

Enter AJ. My beloved roommate. Model gorgeous (and I’m not just saying that.. She actually IS a model) with a huge heart and a natural sweetness that just lights up a room. Yeah, I have no idea why we are friends either. Typically anyone that sweet and beautiful makes me want to bludgeon them, but her, I love. Anyhow, one night as we’re all hanging out, having a few frosty adult beverages, Kansas and AJ get to chatting it up. I think nothing of it. About 20 minutes later, Kansas and I decide to make a location switch and head out. As we’re walking amicably hand in hand through the back streets of downtown, chatting it up, he suddenly stops, pulls me into his arms and looks deeply into my eyes, gently brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes and says “You know I love you very much.. You are just about my best friend here and I would never want to do anything to ever hurt you.. Can I date Ann?”

Huh? *sigh*..

This begins the most twisted 20 minutes of my life.. OK, maybe not, but it’s in the top 10.. We spend the next 20-30 minutes standing there, faces just inches apart, engaging in verbal Chinese water torture (which was invented that very night for that specific conversation) talking about him dating my roommate and best friend and why I can’t endorse it. Back and forth about why he wants to and why I can't sign off on it and tell him I was ok with it. The whole scenario was wrong and difficult on so many levels, but we’ll get back to that.

After a few drinks, it seemed like a good idea..

Then there was Reynaldo, another guy I dated, ever so briefly last year and, simply out of loss of interest on both our parts, we quit seeing each other. We didn’t date long enough for it to have gotten emotional and we had fun hanging out so we remained friends. This one was less complicated because we just kind of drifted into being friends. At one point last summer, while I was involved in my last long term relationship with the Mad Scotsman, we ran into Reynaldo out on the town and he sort of became a peripheral Suspect. He hung out enough to be on the emails for “Hey, come join us doing this” but not enough to hang out at the Home for Wayward Vixens. Fast forward to a few months back, the Vixens are all single and hanging out one night watching one of our favorite bands The Complaints when we run into him. I notice he’s chatting up AJ quite a bit.. I have absolutely no problem with this and actually kind of give her a “Go for it” nod.. After all, he’s a pretty nice guy.. Straight, employed, all his own teeth, no prison record, in other words, quite the catch.. Then after a few drinks, he starts flirting with me a bit.. And then flirting with AJ a bit again.. And flirting with Dani a bit.. I actually think he was flirting with Kansas at one point but we can’t be sure.. At some point, the Suspects decide to leave and head out.. I decide to stay behind because I love the band and have no problem whatsoever flying solo.. AJ offers to give Reynaldo a ride home.. which he interpreted to include an offer of a “ride at home” as well.. Imagine his dismay to find she was just providing the caring service of designated driving. He actually raised his voice to her and said “If you aren’t going to sleep with me, what was the point of me leaving with you??” Ouch. She decides to risk a traffic violation, floors it and gets him home in record time, dropping him off promptly at 1:00am. I know nothing of this. The next morning, I notice a missed call on my phone.. It’s Reynaldo at 1:05am. He’s calling to see where I am at and if I want to hang out one night. I’m late for brunch so I don’t call him back. During brunch, AJ brings us up to date on her evening with Reynaldo at which point I make mention of my phone call. Interesting. So later I called and asked him about it. I finally point blank tell him I know AJ turned him down and that I think it was pretty damn tacky to call me at 1:05 to ask me on a date 5 minutes after being rejected by one of my best friends. His reply: "Well, I’d had a few drinks, it seemed like a good idea."..

Oh if I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning…

The day I moved in with AJ last year, it did not fail to escape my notice that we had some cute neighbor boys across the street. One particularly cute guy was ever so polite when he hauled all my furniture inside for me. That was quite neighborly. It was also quite neighborly when as I was exiting a cab one night he invited me over to hang out for a bit at the party he was having. So it was just a nice neighborly thing to do to invite him over one night to hang out when we had a bunch of folks over. This happened a few times. Eventually, random neighborly smooching occurred. No big deal. So, this neighbor, let’s call him Builder Bob (he happens to be a carpenter), calls me when I don't stay at the house for a few days to just chat, asking if I’ll be back soon and if I want to go to dinner. I put off the invite for dinner primarily because I think it’s probably a bad idea to get involved with a neighbor, he’s only 28 and he’s a little less cerebral than the men I typically date. I like ‘em sharp as broken glass on a bed of nails. But he's persistant and one afternoon he calls me to invite me out for dinner again. I tell him I’m home with the kids but I’ll be back at the house the next night and maybe we can hang out or something. I figure that's pretty harmless and he is a very nice guy.. I have no interest in dating him but there's no harm in being friends.. The next day, once I get to the house, I mention to AJ that I might go hang out with Builder Bob. She has a concerned look on her face all of a sudden. She proceeds to tell me that Bob had stopped by the night before to watch Desperate Housewives (which is possibly a warning flag all its own) and had proceeded to hit on her. How about that. I suspect he was indulging in some kind of bizarre Three’s Company fantasy without the part where Mr. Roper shows up. The next time he called to invite me out for dinner I asked if it was a date he was looking at or just a hang out.. He said a date, definitely. At this point I told him I thought it was tacky to be asking me out less than 24 hours after trying to screw my roommate. He's become another DNA in my phone (Do Not Answer).

Why This Was Wrong: Do we really need to answer this? Apparently if 3 guys within a 5 mile radius of AJ and I are making the same mistakes, yes, we really do. There are 2 distinct and different scenarios here: Trying to date the friend of someone you previously dated and trying to hook-up with the friend of someone who has just blown you off. Both are wrong, but the second scenario also strays into downright asinine. Here’s the thing guys: Girls talk. A lot. If you hit on someone and then turn around and hit on her friend, the odds are, she’s going to find out and they are both going to label you a desperate leg humping troglodyte. In the case of Reynaldo, it came off as sheer desperation to get laid which pretty much ruined his chances of dating either one of us ever again. Given when he sobered up he called and apologized profusely, he realized the error of his ways.. Unfortunately, the damage was pretty much done.. It was insulting to both of us. It insulted AJ because if he had really wanted to be with her, alcohol aside, he would have not sought the company of someone else so quickly. And it insulted me because, after having been just friends for over a year, he calls me to ask me on a date immediately after my friend turned him down. That comes off as a relationship that would be based on revenge. No thanks. I’ve got enough of those on my personal to do list already! In the case of Builder Bob, I don’t know what we decided to label it. Youth? Desperation? Stupidity? I mean, come on, did he really think we wouldn’t compare notes and realize that he was attempting to have his cake and eat it too? Maybe he was angling for the big 3 Way With The Hot Neighbor Chicks. Right, because everyone knows that all the stories in the Penthouse Forum are based on real events.

Kansas was a different scenario. When it comes to dating a friend of someone you already dated, the situation is much more complex. Sometimes one relationship doesn't work out but it leads you to meet the person it could work out with.. These situations are complicated and messy at best. In this case, it was just weird. I couldn’t fathom the depths of the awkwardness of seeing Kansas exiting my roommate’s bedroom on a Sunday morning. Also being the relationship pessimist I am, my primary concern was what happens when the whole thing went kerplooie? Sorry, but so far neither of these wonderful people have scored a Happily Ever After (which they very much deserve), and knowing them both as well as I do, I just didn’t see it in the cards (because they would kill each other). What I did see was the potential for 2 friendships being torn apart when I (and other Suspects) were forced to pick a side, as would have inevitably happened. It's just a fact that break-ups can get ugly and people are always forced to choose a side. At the very least, one party is typically no longer welcome at group gatherings of the friends. I never wanted to have to choose sides between one of my best girl friends and one of my best guy friends.

This is why we have The Girlfriend’s Code. Because we just can't trust men to exhibit common sense in such situations. It falls on the shoulders of the women to know when to say when.. you know, when it comes to saying no to a guy.. In general, anyone that your close friend has loved, been deeply smitten with or slept with when emotional attachment was involved (no dibs allowed for booty calls) , well, they are off limits for you. This keeps things simple. Now, as I mentioned before, in a town the size of ours, eventually, you’re bound to cross the streams. It’s just something you want to voluntarily avoid if at all possible.

posted by Monet @ 10:00 PM