It’s been a month since I’ve updated anything.

It’s been a good month, actually. I am back working at my old career, which is not quite lucrative yet, but there is progress and I am surviving better than in years.

I had a birthday, which sort of freaked me out.  I am legitimately in my early 40s.  I do not look it, but it is what it is.

I am single.  I am dating.  I am lying.

I walked out of BV’s apartment after we reconciled for the 75 millionth time in my mind — we’re never actually apart in his — on a Saturday morning to grab brunch with my best girlfriend RA because I realized I was bored.

Bored.

There is a lot you can do to me.  This site is a catalogue of the ways I have accepted terrible behavior from my romantic partners.

But, bored  is sort of unforgivable.

And, I realized as I awoke in bed and he slept on the sofa, when he’d drunkenly and highly fallen asleep on the love seat and refused to join me in the bed, that I was bored with him.

We have spent enough time together that I know all of his moves, his interests, and his taste.  Oh, another grateful dead documentary.  Oh, more about the Beatles.

What.  Ever.

There is more out there and I need more.  So much of my life is dedicated to the delight in discovering the new — in music, in film, in food — and being in his bed, without him, I realized I was bored.

So, I called RA who was wrapping her workout nearby and she grabbed me from his tower and we went to the market, where we had brunch, drank wine, and then saw the Bon Vivant, who never ever goes there.  I had checked in on fb, letting him know where I was, subtly.

And, later, there he was.

Drinking a smoothie, wandering aimlessly.

He looked bad.  Old, tired, heavy.  He’s aged markedly since we met a year ago.  It’s the drugs.  They are destroying him.

RA was stunned.  She’d met him in December.  She didn’t recognize him.

Granted,  he’s still an attractive man. He’s just not ridiculously hot, as he had been.

He did not come to say hello to my friends.  I walked up to him, hugged him, he kissed me on the lips as he always does, and that was it.  He said he’d stop back by before he left.

He didn’t.

That was the last time I saw the Bon Vivant.

He left mid-week for a job interview.  He missed my birthday, about which he’d made a big deal a couple of times, on a couple of different dates.  He texted me.  He texted me later during my party, which I didn’t see as I and my friends were all completely and utterly hammered mid-afternoon at the Chic Hotel.  Related: I love my friends.

That day at the market, I also saw PR and his girlfriend, who again acted as though she’d never met me, which greatly embarrassed PR, as always.  It was perhaps the fourth time in three months.  We have multiple friends in common.  And I used to have sex with her boyfriend.

I, by this point tipsily, texted . . . LP, the former love of my life to say “you’re the only person I know who has not walked past me here.”

Our market has restaurants and bars.  It’s an excellent market.

He then decided he really needed groceries.  He showed up looking so very handsome and I wandered through the market with him as we caught up.  We held hands, we kissed, it was lovely.  He asked me on a date for that evening — wine, old friends of his in from LA performing a jazz show.

Then, an hour later, he canceled.  Child issues.  He told me we’d have dinner the next week at the Chef’s restaurant.  (As did BV).  We didn’t.

I decided it was time to put all the disappointing men behind me.  BV announced he was moving, as it’s the only way he can get healthy.  He left for two weeks and I loved not having him around. I did not have to worry about where he was or what he was doing.  I could bar-hop with impunity.

And, then he came back.

I’ve not seen him.

I do not know when he arrived back in town.  It might have been Thursday, it might have been Sunday.  I do know he was checked into a restaurant on FB on Monday.  I messaged him the next morning to say I was glad he was back, as I hoped he was doing well. He said something non-committal like “fucking awesome.” And that was that.

Except it wasn’t.

On Tuesday, I went to the CHB with RA.  I checked in, using FB as a warning signal to the Bon Vivant. I am here, do not come.

Within minutes, he texted me, asking if I were hammered.  I told him I was on my first glass of prosecco.  We traded texts back and forth for 2.5 hours.

The other man, the friend of a friend, showed up at the restaurant at the Chic Hotel, long after I was in bed.

Now, it’s Wednesday.

I have a crush on a friend of a friend I’d never met before but had communicated with for years via social media.  We had a bit of a mutual crush.

He deserves his own post.

Back to BV because, well, I am seriously conflicted at the moment . . .

No, really.

So, BV and I do not see each other on Tuesday, as he’s home drunk.

Wednesday, he posts he bought tickets to a show two doors down from a music venue I was going to be at, unbeknownst to him.  I publish my whereabouts pre-show, and then I check in there.

No response.

Between sets at the show I am seeing, which is actually work-related for me, I step outside.  The phone doesn’t work well near the stage and I see his venue getting out.  No sign of him, but I am trying not to look.

I go back in, watch a few songs, talk to my friend who was performing for a while, and then glance at my phone.  Two missed calls, a voicemail, and a series of text messages increasingly unhinged.

Over half an hour, he tried and failed to connect with me and became a total dick about it.

I finally called him, some 25 minutes after he’d called me, and he was an asshole. Well, I am walking home. BV, I am literally two blocks from you.  Well, you didn’t call me, I am going home. Maybe I will see you tomorrow.  BV, I am two blocks away from you.  I am going upstairs.

Fine.

I go back inside and I am trying to figure out what to do next when the friend of a friend walks in.  We hang out, and barhop for hours.  We also talk about drugs.  He brings it up, I don’t.  Of course, he has done the same kind of partying because he works in my industry and he lived — when he lived in town — in BV’s tower.

Of course.

We made sort of vague-ish plans, but it’s like a platonic flirting.  I haven’t actually processed what’s happening with him.  He made no moves. I made no moves. We hung out three times, and tried to hang out a fourth.  He was here for all of 7 days. It’s flattering.  RA referred to him unkindly as a hot, fit version of BV.  Which he is tall, he is handsome, he works out hours a day.  I need to process it all.

And now it’s Thursday and I have a date with a guy I danced with on Saturday, who I postponed, and vague plans to see BV “maybe” although he is going to punish me because he’s a dick, and this friend is gone.

And there we are.  I am pissed at PR, BFD, and LP for all the same reason.  I am not entirely through with BV for reasons I cannot figure out.  Laziness? Love? Loyalty? I will be spending time writing all of this out, which will include why ALL of my friends hate him.

ALL.

A — L  — L

Even RA hates him.

His behavior before he left, which is part of the reason he left, was appalling.*  It’s among the reasons he left when he did.  He knew he fucked up.  He had to try to fix himself before he could fix it.

He’s still drinking, so clearly, it went well.

Sigh.

 

* Interestingly, his appalling acts had nothing to do with me. I just happened to be there at the time when he decided to put his own needs above every single person connected to him because he wanted his phone from a locked place at 3 am.

Also, he was lovely, really, until his drinking issues took center stage. Unbalanced by other stimulants, his behavior can become monstrous.  Perhaps, in hope he’ll work his shit out, I am kinda lingering.