Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.

It’s rare that something reaching Tucker Max levels happens, so I feel compelled to share this story for its sheer entertainment value. It happened a while ago and I don’t want to forget it completely when my hair turns grey.

Before I proceed, here’s some background: I had gone out one night to a friend’s farewell party. He came in with a female friend (let’s call her V), and V confided to him that she had a friend that she would like me to meet. I thought nothing of it when she added me as a facebook friend a few days later. There was no contact between us.

Fast forward to a long weekend last September. I had indicated via facebook that I would attend a certain event out at a certain nightclub. A whole group of us head there, and we grab a table for bottle service at the patio upstairs. The second we get to the table V stumbles upon me and reintroduces herself. We exchange pleasantries and I fully expect her to head back to her group, but she doesn’t. She drags me over to introduce me to her sister and a friend, followed by an awkward silence. I tell her I have to head back to my friends, but she tags along anyway. To get her to go away, I give her my phone number and tell her “we should hang out sometime”, fully not intending to follow up on it.

About 20 minutes later, she comes up to me again and tells me she wants to introduce me to someone. Expecting this to be the person she mentioned to my friend weeks before, I follow her, only to be reintroduced to her sister. Her sister turns beet red, mentions to V that we have already met and runs away. This is getting bizarre and awkward. I go back to my friends and think nothing of it, and proceed to get trashed.

Towards the end of the night I’m piss drunk and I get a text message from what I assume is V. By that time the group had moved downstairs to dance. She tells me she is downstairs and to come get her. I head back to my friends and V is hanging around there. She comes to me and gives me a sip of her drink. By that time I was really drunk — she trieds to dance with me and I oblige. After a while my head starts spinning and decide to go outside for a breather. I sit down at the doorstep of a shop next to the club, and lie down. (I’d like to mention here that I never do things like this. I have gotten drunk like this only a handful of times in my life and I have never, ever run outside to lay down on a sidewalk. This was really weird behaviour for me). At this point V has followed me outside to see if I was OK. After a few minutes my head is still spinning and I decide that I need to go home. She tells me that she could come too.

At the time even though V was not particularly attractive, I thought it might be a good idea. Again, this is not what usually happens — people don’t usually offer to come home with me especially without me asking. I have pretty high standards even when drunk, and she did make not the cut. I think it was a combination of my drunkeness and what I was going through at the time that led me to proceed. I was trying to get over someone and I thought this might be a good way to help the process (it didn’t). I had also been going through a particularly nasty dry spell so that probably contributed to my decision to let her come with me.

By the time I get home I realize that 1) I did not want to go through with this and 2) I couldn’t perform even if I wanted to. I tell her she has to leave, and she protests that her friends have already gone home and that she has no ride. She proceeds to get in my bed while I stay outside in the living room for a bit. When I head to my bedroom, I kick her out of bed and make her sleep in the living room. Then I proceed to heave into the garbage can next to the bed. I have only been so drunk that I could not even bring myself to go the the bathroom to puke once before in my life. I was really unable to move at this point, which is not a good thing when you have a psycho in the living room.

She comes in and to see if I am OK, and then proceeds to have her way with me to her satisfaction (I never got mine). I am so incapacitated that I just lie there while she does the work, unable and unwilling to enjoy it. Once she is satisfied, she gets off and I roll over and pass out. Twice more during the night she wakes me up and does it again. In between she whispers really creepy stuff to me like, “The first time I saw you at our friend’s farewell party, I knew I wanted to have you”. And, “You know the only reason I went to the club tonight was because I knew you were going through facebook”.

I wake up bleary eyed once more early in the morning to see her trying to take a picture of me naked with her phone. I quickly cover myself up and pass out once again. When I really wake up later on that next day, the psycho has disappeared and I am just glad that she is gone. When I get my wits together I realize that my phone is missing. I start panicking, and then take an inventory of what else is missing: a couple of books — one that was on my nightstand and one that was in the bathroom, a jacket that was hanging on my office chair, and the underwear that I was wearing that night. I also find that she ate half of my leftovers and left a greasy patch in front of the fridge.

I freak out, IM my friends and get them to try and call my phone — it’s off. Luckily through the wonders of technology, my phone backs itself up nightly and I found the bitch’s phone number. I try to facebook message, call and text (through their website you can 2-way text to a Rogers customer via the web) her, but there is no answer. After a couple hours I send one last desperation message, telling her I have her phone number and if I don’t hear from her in an hour I am going to call the cops. I finally get an answer shortly after this. She pretends that she just got up and just got my messages. I then proceed to ask her if she’s seen my phone, and she says that she hasn’t. I ask her to look harder, and she miraculously finds it in the jacket — the one she took along with a couple books “because she had to leave”. That’s really funny, because there’s no way my phone should be in that jacket. I wasn’t evening wearing it the night before.

I have to play nice in order to get my stuff back, so I play along and meet her at a coffee shop to collect it. When I get there she is already there and has bought me an iced tea, and we share an awkward moment while we finish our drinks. She hands me my stuff, and asks whether “we are cool”. I agree and head out, glad that I got all my stuff back.

Well, almost everything. My underwear is still unaccounted for.

When I get home I immediately put her on my facebook limited profile. She gets the message and deletes herself as my friend shortly afterwards. I get one more text message from her that I ignore, and that’s the end of it.

Many people whom I have told this story to believe that I may have been drugged, and I don’t think that is out of the question.

Lesson learned: Watch who you add on facebook, and don’t publicize everything that you are going to do on there. Facebook is a stalker’s paradise.

P.S. On my phone she had the audacity to put herself in my calendar a few days ahead to “Meet with V”. I also went through my text logs and saw that she sent some incomprehensible garbage to one of my female contacts. Also, she was considerate enough to use protection.

I’ve kind of been trudging along the last couple years, totally ignoring this and shutting down emotionally. Something/someone happened to me that woke me up from my slumber. I was literally figuratively shocked into waking up, partially because of her and partially because it was just time. I’ve learned quite a few lessons from this episode:

Stop trying to sleep with women on the first date! It really screws everything up one way or the other.

It’s time to stop using the past as an excuse and time to get over and on with it.

Just because you want something doesn’t mean you can have it. You have to let it happen naturally.

Stop and smell the roses: I’m too goal oriented. Once I have a target I put the blinders on and go full steam ahead. I didn’t even check to see if the prize was worth the the price of admission (no offense intended — I just didn’t take the time to get to know her before putting her on the pedestal).

Watch my mouth. Some of the shit that comes out is funny, and some of it is offensive. Most of the time it’s both

I’m still an introvert. Luckily I have great friends that love me despite it. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being one.

Long time no see.

One of the things I’ve been reminded of over the past 6 months is if you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll miss the opportunity of getting anything valuable in return. Sometimes you get something back and sometimes you don’t. It sucks when you don’t, but you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and put yourself out there again. It’s better than the alternative of living in your own world forever.

I just finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie, and I’m putting one particular concept into good use right now.

“You know what the Buddhists say?  Don’t cling to things, because everything is impermanent”

But wait, I said.  Aren’t you always talking about experiencing life?  All the good emotions, all the bad ones?

“Yes”

Well, how can you do that if you’re detached?

“Ah. You’re thinking, Mitch. But detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it.”

I’m lost.

“Take any emotion–love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I’m going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions–if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them–you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.

“But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment.’”

…

I thought about how often this was needed in every-day life. How we feel lonely, sometimes to the point of tears, but we don’t let those tears come because we are not supposed to cry. Or how we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don’t say anything because we’re frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship.

Morrie’s approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won’t hurt you. It will only help. If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me. I see it for what it is.”

Same for loneliness: you let go; let the tears flow, feel it completely–but eventually be able to say, “All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I’m not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I’m going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I’m going to experience them as well.”

“Detach,” Morrie said once again.

Too bad I only just realized I’ve been doing it wrong when the good emotions have gone and the bad have come.

Sometimes I think: why bother getting attached when you know it’s going to hurt so much when it ends?

One of the younger females at my workplace went on vacation for 2 weeks, but didn’t go anywhere. Upon coming back, she looked different. At first, I thought it was the hair. However, after a few more glances I realized something else must have been done. My less tactful coworkers have asked her directly if she changed anything other than the hair, but she refuses to admit to anything more. I’m convinced she had a nose job, as nothing but her mouth moves when she talks now. She still looks different after her hair returned to its usual look.

Now, I can’t even bring myself to look at her as it seems like I’m talking to a different person. Why would someone want to do something like that, especially when they looked fine in the first place? I can’t help it, but I think less of a person if I know or he/she has had any reconstruction done. When you look in the mirror, are you you any longer? Were you so unhappy with yourself that you wanted to become someone else?

The only way something like this would fly is if you had the work done, then moved somewhere else and met new people who didn’t know how you looked before. You could either do that or go to Hollywood where everyone else does it too.

Hope all 2 of my readers have a Happy New Year! I had the last two weeks of last year off, and didn’t do much except veg out on my couch, with the exception of a snowboarding trip to Mont Tremblant. It’s nice to get your batteries recharged once in a while.

New Years was spent at a party at York Event Theatre, which was packed to the brim with drunken revellers — everyone was extremely friendly and approachable — I guess it’s a New Year’s thing. Why do we need an excuse to be friendly and be like this all the time? I guess being New Year’s gives girls who otherwise can’t think of anything something to say to guys.

Afterwards, I met up with a few friends who crashed a stranger’s house party downtown in the clubbing district. This guy’s pad was a geek’s dream, with a nice sound system, big screen TV and high-tech toys galore. Apparently this guy works in computer animation. The fact that it was right next door to a club didn’t hurt things one bit.

We didn’t stay for long as it was already 4am, so we tried our damndest to get a cab. Unfortunately, so did the rest of Toronto. We decided to walk in the direction of home and even though we flagged a few down on the way, they all refused to take us since our trip would be too short. Those bastards!

All in all, I had a great time this vacation. Too bad I have to work tomorrow

I’ve been back from Cancun for a week now, just missing Hurricane Wilma. While I was there it was awesome. It’s too bad what’s happened over there for now, as tourism is the economy there.

On a totally different note, I do not and will not ever understand women. I was chewed out by a friend of mine recently about an evite invitation. I admit that I did not read it carefully, but after showing it to a few of my co-workers, they all came away with the impression that it was a pumpkin carving event. They all missed the fact that there was a brunch in there too. Since I’m not so hot about pumpkin carving, I was still deciding whether to go or not.

Anyhow, we’re chatting about it, and it’s clarified that brunch is actually the main event. Then she complains that “everyone just reads the evite but they don’t respond or they just tell me verbally”. So to explain why, I mention how it’s easier for people to disregard mass emails, because you’re a small percentage of the invite and it’s easy to hide behind that. She then proceeds to go ballistic about how this is not true, because 30 people who have attended the event before and know what it’s about have responded already. I find myself disinvited.

Wait, didn’t you just complain about how people don’t respond? Huh?!

I just started reading He’s Just Not That Into You. I’m only about 1/4 into it, and I have to say although most of it is pretty true, some of it is a crock.

In one part, the author says girls should move on when a guy doesn’t call when he says he will. Wait a second! Girls do that ALL the time! They always flake. They will make dates and call the day of, 5 minutes after they were supposed to meet, and tell us they can’t make it because their dog pooped on the carpet. It’s perfectly acceptable for them. Why can’t we do it too?

I’m trying to find more examples I don’t agree with, but I can’t. So far it’s all pretty true. That one I just mentioned chaps my ass a bit though.

Actually, now that I think about it, it probably just means that She’s Just Not That Into Me. I guess I should move on in this case (hypothetically speaking of course — She is always into me!).

I’m not sure what the point of this post is anymore. The book is good. It just sucks that girls know all our tricks now.