"Get your Girl-Hunt on!"

Last night I dreamt that I was going to Paris. Even though I knew in my dream that I didn't have the money to go to Paris, somehow it was okay -- I think my parents were going to pay for it. Beats dreaming about maggots and getting married on "The View" to an old woman dressed in Victorian clothes.

So I declared in a previous entry that OFAG was on again. Actually what I said was consider it relaunched, motherfuckers. I liked the gusto of that profanity laced sentiment, a guns blazing, hells yeah, take no prisoners approach to dating. However we all know that it's one thing to say it's on and another to actually get out there and start dating again. Back when OFTL was in full swing, I quantified my efforts at the end of each month and since it's the end of April (Christ, is it already?), I felt that it was best to show how OFAG progressed along this weekend.

My friend Carmen has a friend named Patricia that I've met a few times before. She's beautiful, intelligent, and seems to embody all the qualities of a sane lesbian -- rare qualities, yes. Patricia apparently has told Carmen more than a few times that she's interested and Carmen in turn passed this info along to me. Yay, awesome!

Seeing how a whole entire year of Hey, Patricia is interested in you laced conversations have come and gone, I decided to do something about it. After a couple emails back and forth with Carmen, we devised a cunning plan -- I would host a happy hour on Friday with Lesbian Club and Carmen would bring Patricia along. I patted myself on the back for being proactive and started making arrangements for the happy hour.

A couple days later Carmen emailed me about some thing that her and Patricia were going to if I'd like to join. This function was on the SAME night as the happy hour I had planned. Ms. Cranky McBitch was not happy. Uh thanks, I said in an email, I will be too busy at the happy hour WE HAD ORIGINALLY PLANNED. Christ on a BIKE! After I calmed down, I sent a second email to ask if they were still planning on coming by? Carmen said that they would indeed swing by.

Order was restored to the universe.

When Carmen finally brought Patricia by the happy hour, I was four gins into the night. I wished that I could have been a little more on my game, but at least it meant that I was loosened up. So yes there was flirting and apparently she was checking me out. I scribbled my cell number onto my card and gave it to her. She said that we should get together for drinks sometime in Fort Green.

There you go. OFAG progress. I even had a this-may-or-may-not-be-a-date on Saturday and have also been chatting with Hot Friendster woman. Yay, awesome!

"The only other time everyone you love will assemble in one place is at your funeral."

I would just like to take a moment to praise New York magazine. Despite its Gotham-centric angle, it is consistently a solidly written magazine with thought provoking features on issues that certainly go beyond the five boroughs. Yesterday I referenced reading "The Lesbian Bride's Handbook" from their Sex & Love issue and how it influenced one of my more interesting dreams of late. What I should have said is that I only read a couple of paragraphs before bed, wanting to save the rest for reading on the subway.

I would also like to take a moment to say that I'm not one for mushy sentimentality, but PMS tends to reduce me to either Ms. Cranky McBitch or a blubbering girl. It was the later version that manifested itself this morning as I finished reading the previously mentioned New York magazine article. Then I started getting all misty eyed in that sort of way that a girl gets when she thinks about love, babies, and frolicking kittens. Reading about the author's "It's not a wedding! It's a party about love!" commitment ceremony, I realized that I wanted one too. Especially after reading this line:

"We just wanted a big, awesome party where everyone could meet and go bananas. It’s a special opportunity, you know: The only other time everyone you love will assemble in one place is at your funeral."

God, I swear I was going to cry right then and there on the 4 train.

"And I do not believe in crummy parties. I believe in glamour. I believe that when you are on your deathbed clinging to the murk of your memories, some will stay with you purely on the power of atmosphere: the way a punch bowl looked surrounded by daisies at your 5th-birthday party, the feel of a certain set of blue sheets the first time you traveled alone. There was no way I was going to let this thing be shoddy—some pathetic hers-and-hers imitation of the real thing or some vaguely patchouli-scented ceremony. If I was going to have a party about love, it was going to be the classiest party about love ever."

Amen, sister!

Before you write me off as a girly girl that has some deep seated need for heteronormality, I will first point to my PMS for blame and then swear to you that gay marriage and babies are low on my list of things to accomplish. However everyone likes a party about love -- even Ms. Cranky McBitch.

So OFAG? Consider it relaunched, motherfuckers.

"Those shoes are definitely bicurious."

I had the strangest dream last night. If anything, Rosie O'Donnell's announcement that she's leaving "The View" had wormed itself into my subconscious along with having read this article shortly before bed. As for the maggots (read below), I have no fucking idea. You can psychoanalyze/speculate to your heart's content in the comments section.



For some reason I was marrying Fake Girlfriend and I was getting married on "The View." Maybe FG and I were trying to make a statement about gay marriage -- logic is always in short supply in Dreamland -- but "The View" was going to pay for my dress. And that was apparently the deal clincher.

Right before the ceremony, I was with some girl and I was trying to figure out what to make to eat since I wanted to make sure I wasn't hungry before the wedding. In the fridge was some raw meat, but upon further inspection it had gone rancid. For some reason the girl decided to take a knife to the meat and inspect it. Upon doing this (WARNING! EXTREME NASTY DREAM PLOT DEVELOPMENT AHEAD), maggots began to shoot out of the incision like a geyser, so much that I was covered in maggots -- they were in my hair, my ears, everywhere. I kept trying to brush them off and remember the feeling of them crushing beneath my shoes. I was obviously freaking out, but was also upset that I would have to completely get ready again and cleaned up for the wedding. I'm not sure how I worked it all out, but when I arrived at the studio of "The View", Fake Girlfriend was a no show. Rosie O'Donnell's partner Kelly Carpenter was brought in as a stand in except she looked like this dumpy old woman dressed in Victorian clothes.

And that's when I woke up.

"Maybe it's time to relaunch OFAG."

Recently there has been a call for restarting OFAG. Dainty acronym aside, I fully remember that every time I seem to put my heart out there it gets crapped on or battle fatigue sets in -- whichever comes first, usually it's the battle fatigue. But . . . but . . . what is this that I'm feeling? Can it be . . . optimism? Surely not?!

So there seems to be some rustling in the air. Perhaps because it's spring and people are slowly coming out of hibernation, but I seem to be generating an uptick in interest from both boys and girls. Case in point? The guy at jury duty yesterday that kept trying to catch my eye, even going so far as to move closer to me throughout the day in a refreshingly non creepy way . I could tell that he was really looking for a chance to talk to me and I felt bad since, well, I'm a lesbian.

Other case of interest? My friend Carmen seems to be finally coming through with my request to facilitate a meeting between myself and a good friend of hers that has been interested in me for a while. And then I saw that someone -- someone HOT -- sent me a smile via Friendster.

Things are looking up. Perhaps I will relaunch OFAG.

"Life Is Too Short So Be Direct And Just Flippin' Talk About It Already!"

Dear Self,

Stop settling for mediocrity.

Love,

Rouge
xoxo



Seriously people, I had a plan -- albeit an impromptu one. I had devised a cunning, non-pussy, actionny offensive. I thought, Let's put all this business to rest and see how Fake Girlfriend really feels. I'll have her over for dinner, drink some wine, loosen her up, and then test the waters.

Armed with food picked up from the farmer's market in Union Square -- incidentally where I saw Uma Thurman shopping -- I called FG and invited her over for dinner on Friday (I've been told that I'm a really good cook). She seemed excited by the prospect, but said she'd call back and let me know for sure. Not exactly a yes, I went to Trader Joe's to get wine and Whole Foods to pick up stuff that I couldn't get at the farmer's market. Then I lugged it all back to Brooklyn.

Unbeknownst to her, this was FG's final shot. I said to myself that if it was meant to be, she'd say she was coming over. If she turned me down, that was it -- I would be moving on. It's not like I didn't try and find out what was going on with us before. Like a flip of a coin, I rode a speeding 5 train waiting her her response. It came via text:

"I would love to but can we do tomorrow? Not feeling festive today."

Disappointed, I knew what this meant. That I needed to stop getting into these retarded situations and move on to something, well, less fake. And this sentiment was sealed on Saturday when FG got very drunk during a picnic with friends and got all up in the grill of another friend of mine.

Hmmpf.

I know some of you are probably thinking, Well you didn't actually have the talk with her, you pussy! And I say you can't fault a girl for trying. Yes, she's probably interested in me, but so was the guy from the carwash and it didn't mean that I should be dating him.

Or fake dating for that matter.

"I laughed, I cried, I identified."

I officially have a cabal of lesbian commenters. Since I can't be trusted to make the right decision in matters of my own heart, imagine if you will a roomful of gay women all with the gravitas of a high level cabinet meeting. Some are in power suits and others in uniforms reflecting timed served in Operation Find The Lesbians. Imagine this scene a la Aaron Sorkin:

"Ladies, we have a situation on our hands," I say grimly, fingers tented over my briefing papers. "The Fake Girlfriend situation needs to be resolved."

I think she's totally interested.

GO FOR IT!

Jump her.

. . . a Tennessee-ish song playing slo-mo in the background during the confessional

"It's not so much as a confession as a dialogue. We need to open channels of diplomacy."

She's definitely leading you on!

Mixed messages are so not a sign of sanity! I say fake-break-up with her and move on.

Plenty of sane people play hard to get.

"Ladies, ladies. My aim here is to not get a girlfriend. My aim is to resolve an ambiguous situation before it deepens into a crisis."

After some more back and forth between the cabal and I, I formulate a plan of action. I will bring the issue to the forefront in order to get some resolution and I will do this face to face over drinks. The problem with this plan is that FG is going through some really big shit right now so I feel extremely selfish for forcing the issue now.

Perhaps I will wait a little bit.

"Call me tomorrow and sweet dreams!!! Xoxoxo"

God, God, God. Why do I get myself into these retarded situations?

Argh!

I've been home today, staying dry while New York and the Northeast experiences something akin to the Johnstown Flood. It's quarter to 10 pm and I realize that the only thing I have accomplished this weekend is the cleaning and organizing of my apartment while a languishing project has sat untouched. But that is not why I want to beat my head against the keyboard. No, I want to cry out in frustration over the Fake Girlfriend situation.

I know what you all are thinking. If she really wants you, she'll no longer be a fake girlfriend. How is it possible for one woman to achieve such spectacularly unsatisfactory results in dating? Is it a voodoo curse? Were you born with a facial deformity? While I can assure you I don't have a facial deformity, I'm still looking into the voodoo curse angle.

So yesterday. Well Friday night's activities ended in amazing failure (imagine being confined to a taxi speeding down the BQE at 2 am while my friend and her girlfriend decide to have it out about their relationship), Saturday held far greater fortunes. I met up with Fake Girlfriend, Wendy, and Holly in the East Village for Thai food, beer, and pool. Throughout the whole evening FG and I were flirting especially when I would lean in for my pool shots with my cleavage all hanging out. Speaking of boobies, we later ended up at the Slipper Room for a burlesque show. Upon going home . . . alone . . . FG calls to make sure I got home okay.

"God, I'm starving," she says and I can hear her banging around in the background. "I'm making some huevos rancheros."

"I want some huevos rancheros. You'll have to make them for me sometime."

"Are you with Holly?"

FYI for the newbies, Holly is an ex-girlfriend of mine.

"Uh, no," I reply. "I'm home."

"I thought that maybe you would go home with her. It seemed like you two were rekindling something."

What? I have no idea how FG got this idea. She knows that Holly is just a friend and an ex that I still hang out with. Could it be that FG is jealous? "No, no, no," I protest. "That's all in the past."

I can't remember what was said exactly next but one of us makes a comment about going home to FG's place.

"I would have invited you over," she says still plodding around her kitchen, "but I'm still stinging from getting shot down the last time."

"Hey wait. It wasn't that I didn't want to, but we were both drunk and I didn't want you to regret it in the morning."

"I wouldn't have regretted it."

We talk a little bit more, flirting, but it's getting late. We say our goodnights and I go to sleep thinking that okay, perhaps things are coming to the surface more. Even as I lay in bed, drunk, I think about calling FG back to confess that I am developing feelings for her. So in the morning I was a little confused when FG sends me a link to lesbian speed dating later in the month and asks if I want to go.

I'm tired of all these bloody mixed signals. I almost wrote her an email, but decided to write a blog entry instead. I really think I need to have that conversation with her in person.

So what do I do? She's obviously interested and jealous of Holly, but at the same time saying how she wants to try speed dating. Is she just being cautious? Thinks that I don't like her?

Bangs head on keyboard.

"You guys seemed like girlfriends."

On Tuesday the number of people who came to my site was 62, a number that was more or less a reflection of a normal day here in Rougeland. Sometimes the number would be higher depending on how many pervs were coming to my site looking for an old photo of my friend J-Wo and I kissing. However yesterday the number was 659. Would that be a 600% increase? I was never very good at math.

Obviously this jump in traffic means that some of my more wincing entries are fair game, especially the early ones where I was still trying to find my voice as a writer, if not my footing in this sometimes maddening metropolis. (Whatever you do, don't click on 2005!) So, er, hi! I'm just going to stick with what I know, which is the obsessive analyzation of my lovelife.

Little has been made in the dating world of the Fake Girlfriend. In fact many of you might be wondering what a Fake Girlfriend is and how she differs from a real one. Her taxonomy isn't quite friends with benefits nor is it dating either. With a Fake Girlfriend you get the full emotional benefits of dating just without those pesky things such as commitment or sex.

To bring some of you up to speed, I have a Fake Girlfriend. See I have this friend who seems suspiciously like a girlfriend. We are regularly in contact in the sort of Hey hon, how's your day been sort of way, use terms of endearment such as sweetheart and such, and will give off the girlfriend vibe when around others. We also go out on fake dates, but we never seem to acknowledge the fact that actual dating is going on.

Obviously nothing in my life is ever simple or straightforward.

"I fucking love a woman who swears."

Uh, so hello everyone. I am Rouge. You all would be the bazillion people visiting me from Dorothy Surrenders. Oh and I am a lesbian, but then again you all probably figured that out. Thankfully this site doesn't have a webcam otherwise you would spot the HUGE zit that has appeared on my chin just in time for my walk in the spotlight.

A Little About Moi

• I am clumsy. I've fallen off a roof and even a bus -- blessedly sober though.

• Men hit on me, but not women.

• I drink far too much and have a penchant for debauchery. I also have a penchant for flashing people inadvertently.

• Finding a roommate and an apartment in New York City is hard.

• I once gatecrashed someone's holiday party at Tavern on the Green.

• I have a talent for dating only emotionally ambivalent/conflicted freaks of nature and then obsessively psychoanalyzing about it in this blog and in real life. Or rather just freaks of nature.

• I develop crushes on the insane, yet thinking I must have done something wrong.

• Here's the point when I realized I was living in a gay soap opera. And here. Here too.

• And for a final thought . . . food poisoning + transatlantic flight to London = bad.

Howdy, y'all!

"When are you going to move to Park Slope?"

I think it's worth mentioning where I live in light of recent blank stares, if only to educate my fellow Brooklynites. It may be a mouthful, but the name of my neighborhood is Prospect-Lefferts Gardens or Lefferts Gardens for short. It's on the other side of Prospect Park and choc full of architectural goodness that one easily finds in other sections of Brownstone Brooklyn. Not to mention it's only minutes from the park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens!

For those who don't live in Brooklyn, let alone New York, I'm sure your eyes are glazing over. The whole point of this mini geography lesson is the fact that no one knew where my neighborhood was when I was searching for a new roommate. In fact for every Craigslist ad I put out there, I got maybe two or three responses. In comparison, my friend Wendy recently got a hundred responses for her open room in Park Slope. The upside to this disparity is that I get some cheap living on the other side of the park. I'm sure these days are numbered and soon we'll all be living in the middle of Long Island Sound, but there you go.

"Remember to breathe."

As promised, here's my sorely overdue proper update:

The Roommate Situation

Finding a roommate in New York is hell. Period. You set up appointments to show the apartment to people who don't show, answer emails from strange people, and cross your fingers and hope that not only you find someone in time, but that they are not psychotic. This was all made worse by a general lack of interest in my place, which I think may be attributed to the fact that no one knows where my neighborhood is.

But for all that consternation and near ulcer inducing stress, my coworker (yes, my coworker!) took an interest in my place and will be moving in the next week or two. While it may be strange or perhaps risky to live and work with somebody, I am filled with the perhaps naive faith that it will work.

The L Word Season Finale

Like any dutiful lesbian, I watched season four with crossed arms, silently praying that the show would suddenly not suck and that writers would move away from lesbian cliches and start offering us engaging interpersonal stories about women and their lives. While I won't analyze the show in depth -- someone has already done a far better job -- I will say that the last few episodes of the season were marked by their lack of suckiness. So let's all hold out hope that season five will somehow somehow finally reach the heights of awesomeness that it flirts with on rare occasions.

Out Magazine and the Glass Closet

Oh my. That cover. When I first saw it, I thought, Can they do that?? Is it libel? Is it satire? Is it right to out two celebrities in this day in age or rather is it right to hide in the closest in a post Ellen world? I obviously see both sides of the argument, but I've come to this conclusion: It's 2007. Being gay is both not a big deal and something that still causes social conservatives to get their panties in a bunch. While I respect that being out is a serious decision and by no means easy, I feel that being a closest celebrity in this day and age almost gives you a responsibility to be out so that one day being gay really won't be a big deal. So I guess this means that I am reluctantly siding with Out magazine.

My Fake Girlfriend™

Lawyer Girl (yes, remember her?) and I talk every day. Text. Email. Phone. We see each other once a week if not more depending on both our busy schedules. For a friend, she sure gives off the girlfriend vibe. You know, that vibe. Perhaps we're caught up in that pre-relationship phase. Perhaps nothing will happen. I've been too busy to care quite honestly. But I feel that in our many conversations there is that veiled negotiation that goes on between two people that like each other. My only hesitation is that she has said more than once that she doesn't know what she wants let alone if she wants to stay in New York.

Bad Habits

I knew that once I mentioned my relapse into smoking (it was just 1.5 cigarettes!) I would hear from my trusty friend Beth, who is currently defending her PhD at Cambridge. She's a scientist who has been studying public health and while she reminded me that red wine, chocolate, and even cannabis were acceptable ways to deal with stress, that I was not to support Big Tobacco! So I hang my head in shame for giving in a very deplorable old habit. Next time I'll make sure I have some weed on hand.

Lent

Here's something I never thought I'd be doing -- church shopping. My Fake Girlfriend and I were looking up gay friendly churches the other day in order to find a place to attend Easter services. I found a not technically gay friendly Episcopal church in gay friendly Park Slope. Service is at 11 am and while it's hard to get me out of the house before noon on Sundays, I'll do my best.

"Darling, have you found a flatmate yet?"

Imagine a gasping sound, the sound of me coming up for air.

I can barely form sentences.

When I close my eyes I see the trappings of Adobe Photoshop. I see words such as combo box drop down and code translation table.

I drank three cups of coffee this morning, so not only am I wired, I have to pee a lot.

I have been pulling 10/12 hour days since Sunday, though not nearly as bad as my boss whom apparently went to bed sometime around 5 am this morning and was back in the office by 10 am. Why? Because of a crazy deadline on a project I've (we've) been working on.

Awesome.

So . . . . . when we last left our heroine I was enjoying Alanis Morissette's cover of Black Eyed Peas. I was also staving off a nervous breakdown and/or becoming a smoker again. Seriously, last week I thought I was going to lose it. But things are looking up, I have a potential roommate who is also a coworker, and I finished the first big stage of a freelance redesign project that has been eating me since late February. While things are by no means done, I no longer feel like I'm going to drown in a wave of responsibility.

Uh, more fun and coherent blog posts forthcoming. Especially ones where I comment about the L Word season finale, my mixed feelings on the latest cover of Out Magazine, my fake girlfriend, bad habits, Lent, anonymity, and the utter horror of trying to find a roommate in New York City.

I know you all can't wait!

"My humps, my humps . . ."

I promise an update is totally forthcoming. In the meantime . . .