"That's what pretty girls should expect, yes no?"

I feel rather strange today. Earlier this morning I was all, "Heh heh. Someone thinks I'm pretty. Heh heh." Now I feel sad and I can't figure out if it's because of Saturday's indiscretions or because I'm still recovering from my insomnia . . . or if I'm coming down with whatever bug Anne was recovering from.

[ eats dark chocolate ]

[ feels slightly better ]

Anyway, I think the outcome of this weekend is that Anne and I are going to just be friends. Blah blah. Story of my life. I don't even know what I want . . . . More kissing in general? Yes, yes. More of that.

Why is life so confusing?

"I thought I should acknowledge the elephant in the room."

I've been trying to think of the best way to write this blog entry. When I came home early this morning in the car and my mental volume was somewhere around 15, the entry would have started like this:

GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!

Instead I texted those words to Dennise -- three words that succinctly expressed the outcome of the latest foray into Operation Find The Lesbians.

Picture the scene: Midnight. South Slope of Brooklyn. Anne, a girl from Lesbian Club, and I lay on her bed. Everything up until that point has been great -- brunch at a French cafe, a meandering walk through Prospect Heights, Park Slope, and Cobble Hill. Playing Spades at another French cafe and drinking beer till the sun went down and then heading back to her place. Most importantly, there's been flirting.

A bottle of red wine later, Anne and I have moved from the couch to her bedroom. Recent sage dating advice runs through my head as I try to summon the courage to make the move. (First base for first dates.) Anne and I seem to be moving in the direction of making out, both lingering on the bed and waiting for something to happen. We all know how bad I am at making the first move. Finally she breaks the standoff.

"Can I tell you something, Rouge?" she says shortly after sitting up.

A surge of nerves makes my stomach backflip a little. I know what's coming. "Yeah?" I answer, voice shaky.

"I really want to kiss you right now."

I have this bad habit of stammering when I'm nervous and I unleash a torrent of verbal diarrhea that lasts about a minute. She quickly apologizes for being forward.
"I thought I should acknowledge the elephant in the room."

As she speaks, I place my glasses on her desk, lean in, and kiss her. For the moment I think nothing more than the joy of kissing and breaking my three year dry spell. Both the angel and devil on my shoulder are cheering me on. Oh wait, Anne's pulling back and saying something.

At this point I really want to do my best Dianne Wiest impression a la Bullets Over Broadway. Don't speak, I think. Whatever you do, don't fucking speak! Why do girls have to over analyze things sometimes? Just fucking kiss me! It's not difficult!! Here, I'll make it easy, and I lean in to kiss her more.

Oh no, kissing has definitely come to an end. Warning! Warning! Anne looks like her nerve is failing her. I try and establish why things have suddenly cooled.

"You're really beautiful," she says, brushing the hair back from my face. "It's that I suddenly see where this is going and it's going to end badly. I'm just really crazy and I don't want to ruin our friendship."

Hmmm . . . this sounds strangely familiar. Why is it that I am attracted the odd balls? Whatever. It's not like I'm looking for an engagement ring here, just some action. C'mon! I'm giving you a limited time offer guilt free ticket to Lesbian Land. Don't tell a woman she's beautiful and you want to kiss her only to pull back.

But Anne is looking at me plaintively and I soon realize that this isn't going to happen. I try and hide my gargantuan disappointment and put the best spin on the makeout session before asking her to call me a car service. By the time I get downstairs, I want to scream.

This incident will now be referred to as The Great Sexual Frustration of 2006.

"There should always be kissing on the first date."

That's what Marianne, our freelance editor, told me, jabbing her finger into the air for emphasis. Apparently I've been going about this lesbian thing all wrong:
first base for first dates.

Marianne and I had gone out for a drink to swap online dating stories. Over beer at Botanica, I gave her my long drawn out history -- Holly came up and so did January's datefest -- and then I dished on my two recent dates.

The difference between Marianne and I is that she'll sleep with men on the first date
. . . and I don't sleep with men. With all the sage older sisterly advice she could muster, she concocted a strategy.

Marianne: "You go on a date to a bar near your place and then afterwards you invite them back for a drink. If they accept, then you know that they're interested."

Right. Seems like pretty basic advice. Why didn't I think of it sooner?

Me: "I think my problem is that I want the other woman to be dominant."

Marianne: "Then you're only going to date really butch women."

Me: "I don't do butch."

Marianne: "So you're going to be dominant and make the first move."

Me: "If I knew how to make the first move, then it wouldn't have taken me eight months to make the move on Holly."

On the heels of Marianne's advice comes a pep talk from Kate, a friend back in DC who's old enough to be my mom. Contrary to Marianne's advice, she believes that it's impossible to meet anyone of quality in a bar. She also thinks that one of the reasons I've been single for a while is that I'm in a different life place than a lot of my peers.

Kate: "The Bar is not perhaps the greatest place to meet people. What you want is a similarly independent woman who just wants to be equals. It's possible that you are too young for the person you really want, you know."

Okay, I can buy that. Marianne disagrees.

Marianne: "My sister met her husband in a bar and they've been together for sixteen years."

So there you go -- lots of conflicting dating advice. If I've managed to come out with any one piece of information after my talks is that I need to be more of a slut.

"Are you okay?"

What the hell is wrong with me? I've tripped TWICE today. And yes, I'm a person who tends to fall a lot, but this is too much. My boots keep catching on things like stairs and trouser legs. Let's hope I don't trip and fall in front of a subway train.

* [Edit: Now my arms hurt because with the last fall, I sort of landed in a Swedish Fall position. Oy.]

"Take her home! She's wasted! Yay!!!!!"

Um, so, I had two dates this weekend. With the same person. I can hear your gasps all the way from my perch in lower Manhattan.

I mentioned in my previous entry that I was to meet this girl for drinks after work. Thankfully she wasn't put off by the weird thing my hair was doing and we not only had wine at the Bourgeois Pig, but dinner at Euzkadi, and beer at this Belgian place I like. We seemed to be having such a good time that I couldn't believe it was 2:30 am when I looked at my watch.

Second date was on Monday and it had its roots in a conversation on Friday about who makes the best pizza in New York. As some may know, I'm a big fan of Lombardi's -- quite possibly the best pizza I've had in my life. (Seriously, it's that good.) She excitedly asked if I had ever had of Di Fara's pizza. I hadn't and thus our Monday pilgrimage to Midwood was born. Now I can report that Di Fara's is easily as good as Lombardi's and well worth the hour wait for our sausage pie.

Right, so outcome of two dates? Still waiting to find out.

"Good night, beautiful."

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"Here I am, the very equivalent of winning the 'Lesbian Lottery' ... yet all are blind to that fact."

As I walked through the aisles in Duane Reade to pick up lightbulbs, sugar, and paper towels, I happened upon a small gathering of middle aged women giggling over stuffed animals that played some sort of hokey Valentine's Day song. Those are the moments that I thank my lucky stars I'm single -- no chance in hell of receiving a stuffed animal or a silk rose for Valentine's Day.

I began to ponder the type of woman who wants stuffed animals on Valentine's Day. Are they from the same tribe that puts stuffed animals in the rear window of their car? These are the burning questions of our times, people!

So how did I spend the holiday yesterday? Alone, drinking a bottle of wine, and eating chocolate souffle. Sad, sad, sad.

* * *

Update on Operation Find The Lesbians

No dates lately, just my weekly Lesbian Club meetings. However I've been corresponding with a woman so there might be some progress to report in the near future. And yes, J-Wo, I would love to make a concerted effort in 2006 to kiss a woman or maybe a 100. I'm working on it.

"I'm never coming to Brooklyn again!!"

There's an odd phenomena happening in my life right now. No, I'm not talking about Operation Find The Lesbians. I'm talking about how everyone either is getting married or pregnant. I mentioned this to Holly yesterday as we wandered the Metropolitan Museum of Art (what else is there to do during a record setting blizzard?).

"So I need to either get married or pregnant?" she replied.

Please god no, I thought. You getting married and/or pregnant would involve your boss and that's just creepy.

Let's look at the evidence of this recent uptick in nuptuals/babies.

Births last 6 months: 2

Upcoming births for next 7 months: 5

Marriages last 6 months: 1

Upcoming marriages for next 12 months: 6

What's a single lesbian to do?

"The world is your bisexual oyster!"

Happy Friday, my little blog reading chickadees. I'm a tad bit hungover this morning, so bear with me. Oh yes, mock my pain all you want, but you love reading about it.

In the long list of things I would like to do before I die, pole dancing eeeks in at #521 just before acupuncture -- interesting, but probably worth only one try. So there I was, socially lubricated as they say, and pole dancing with Holly on top of a bar. Not a bad way end my Thursday, however the social lubricant (lycheetini, margaritas, and beer) made for a slow Friday morning.

[ makes a big check mark next to pole dancing ]

Hangover aside, I'm in a really good mood. Lesbian Club is taking off, making new friends, and I've decided that I'm just going to accept that I have feelings for Holly and that I probably will for a while. It's another angle on moving on. I figure if I accept my feelings, it's a lot more productive than trying to banish all inappropriate thoughts (see pole dancing comments above).

* * *

Dear L Word writers,

Hi. Big fan of the show. Season 3 got off to a slow start, but the writing and the acting is finally starting to gel. Still trying to figure out the 180 you did on Helena's character, but not a lot of complaints . . . until I watched episode 5.

You opened the episode in Fairfax, Virginia circa 1985. Woo hooo! The DC metro area is my home territory! Fairfax is very much like where I grew up in Montogomery Co., Maryland . . . very suburban and middle class. So I'm a little bemused that your version of Fairfax circa 1985 is the dusty hinterlands of the Bible Belt with hot gay mechanics waiting to get blowjobs from closeted bible types. Fairfax might be in the south, but it's crazy suburban . . . even back in 1985.

I propose an alternate scenario: bible guy on his way to Roanoke is driving west on I-66 and gets a flat tire somewhere near the exit for the Dulles Toll Road. Luckily the man has AAA and a carphone, so the car is easily towed to a nearby gas station. Insert blowjob scene from hot mechanic who DOESN'T have a southern accent and you have a plausible scenario.

Sincerely,

Ms. Post No Bills.

"It's easy to love if you never regret."

There comes a time in a woman's life when she has to ask herself how she arrived at working on articles about fecal incontinence. That time came last week when I had one of those rare moments of seeing the absurdities of my life from a very long lens. I took myself aside and said, "Rouge, what the fuck are you doing here?" Good question. Getting paid seems to be the answer.

I'm very much a singularly focused person and right now the focus is on overhauling my social life and not my career. If the mad energy of January was directed into online dating, the tamer vibe of February seems to be steering me more towards Lesbian Club. I kind of sort of hijacked the group by taking over organization duties, armed with the hope that real life interactions with The Lesbians will produce better results than online dating.

Hmmm. Where am I going with this entry. Not sure. Hopefully very far from fecal incontinence. I wish I had something more interesting to say, but life got quiet all of the sudden.

"That look is where boners go to die."

Blink and you'll miss my one second of blurry fame.

That about sums up my television appearance as a member of the Daily Show audience. For those who need a graphical aid, the photo to the left has some handy red arrows. You might need to squint a little [Click for enlarged image]. Many people asked how I managed to get tickets in the first place and I said that it's one of the few times in my life that I managed to follow directions correctly.

My Daily Show journey began back in October when I put in a ticket request. During my hellacious Halloween move from Bushwick a few days later, I got a call from the Daily Show -- tickets were available for February 1 if I wanted them. Hmmmmm. Free Daily Show tickets. That's a hard call. Obviously I said yes even though I had no idea what my schedule was going to be like three months in the future.

Fast forward to me standing in the cold outside the Daily Show studios on 11th Avenue. With Holly and Jess as my companions, I probably had the most free fun in New York ever (barring that time I once crashed Big Magazine Publisher's holiday party at Tavern on the Green). There was lots of laughing, especially in that way that you feel light headed for hours later.

I was definitely filled with the funny.

"I know New York, I need New York, I know I need unique New York."

DC Reflections Redux

For whatever reason, I've been having a lot of blog love for Mr. Bad Apologies recently. And when I read his reflections and praise for our hometown of DC, I found myself mentally composing my own and how my journey to New York both paralleled and diverged from Mr. BA's.

DC will always occupy something in me and no, I'm not one of its detractors. When people ask me where I'm from I will happily state without a sneer: "Washington, DC, but now living in New York." So what do I miss? Certainly the free museums, the wide boulevards, the shady streets off Dupont Circle, the cleanliness, the architecture of Cleveland Park, and the lazy quasi-European air of some areas of Northwest.

But I've also come to realize something -- New York is my home and my joy and it wasn't until my annual trip back for the holidays that I realized this. The slow pangs of urban withdrawl had me craving 85 cent coffee, the blaring of horns, and the freedom of my subway pass. I missed New York like a lover and only felt calmed when I emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel. Except for London, I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Everything that I love about DC (not including the free museums) has an easy substitute in New York -- shady streets of Park Slope, cafe culture of the East and West Villages, and wide boulevards around Grand Army Plaza that smack of federalism. New York is a walkers paradise and heaven for this gourmand. As hackneyed as it is, I really do heart New York.

Will I ever come back to DC? I can easily say that if I do, it won't be for a long time. Maybe London will lure me away with infidelities, but it wouldn't be long before those slow pangs would have me craving Lombardi's pizza, a 24 hr subway system, and a trip to the coffee cart.