Don't you ever call me that again

I tend to be self-effacing. Maybe it's the attention whore in me. But I'm no whore.

I met a man online about more than a year ago. Because we met at a naughty chatroom, I thought that the whole thing would end before I knew it, and if I'd just close my eyes and let it go away. But he didn't go away. So I gave him what I thought was the dirt about me.

I said that I lied about myself and said that I was virgin. He took it.

I said that I'm really 24 and not 18. He didn't mind.

I said that I think that I'm weird and that he should stay away from me. He didn't think so.

I said that I feel like a slut sometimes having cyber with him everytime I see him. He seemed to have exploded.

It took him some time to finally say:

No, you're not a slut. You know and I know that we're just above just that. Don't you ever call yourself that again.

I hadn't realized it, but it was like a letter in the "tough love" kind of way that would knock me off my feet more than a year later.

And, by the way, my love life is complicated. But it's real. Patrick is a darling. And long distance relationships aren't for everyone. He's all for me, though.

I'm in a profession that puts me in close contact with people less than 10 years younger than I am. I teach a humanities class in an up-scale university, and I don't look my age. I'm a member of an org that loves performing and take their craft seriously, just as they value their friends. And in this organization, I found myself liking a boy. I can't help it. We're close friends. He flirts with me, or at least I think that he flirts with me. And if I absent mindedly flirt back, I can take full blame.

And there's this other boy, a newbie, who has a peculiar innocent-but-yet-naughty smirk on his face. And I keep catching him looking at me. Having talked to a gay member of the org about said newbie the other day, his take on this guy is that he knows that he's cute, isn't arrogant about it, but may manipulate people with it. Fair enough.

My boy knows that I find the newbie attractive. And just yerterday, I told him about newbie staring at me as we left the office.

"You stare slut!" He playfully said. Complete with sweet cunning smile and all.

Yet even in his playfullness, something in me ticked. Like what he said was something that I can't and won't take. So I fought back.

I stopped walking and grabbed his arm. I must have gripped it real tight that it may have even startled him. I looked straight into his eyes and took a deep breath. I was surprised at how low and quiet my voice came out when I said:

Don't

you

ever

call

me

that

again.

I don't know what came over me saying that. And after I said that, whatever air hostility lifted and I carried on like nothing happened. It was like my man had just spoken through me, defending me against this bully.

That moment sunk in about 5 hours later (after a 6 pm class, after checking papers, after napping) when I poured my crap all over another friend about my love like at his apartment.

I nearly cried retelling this because even though Patrick has barely been the greatest long distance boyfriend, I still felt his love for me, and it's as strong as it was the first few days we met.

it's just a storm, chile

A lot of my friends know that I'm seeing a guy online, and that I'm seriously in love with him. We were able to talk again a about 2 weeks ago and he was all worried about the weather here, which I thought was mighty sweet of him.

Yes, we know what the other looks like, and yes, we both think that we're hot. It's interesting, how we met, and especially how everything tied in with a gutsy prayer I prayed about 7 years ago, which should be in another post altogether.

So my man lives in Florida, right? And my channel flipping brother lands of CNN briefly and my amazing eye sight catches in inset of an image of Alberto seemingly brushing across the Tampa area, thinking and panicking as if it were a hurricane.

And he lives near Tampa. By the beach. Alone. So I cry, I pray and I beg.

Coming home, frantically charging through channels 8 to 28, I see nothing on CNN. Not even on BBC.

So I go online, after pigging out on watermelon, and find out that Tampa is just mostly cloudy. It'll be raining there all week. And that means maybe another month before we'll talk. Thank God the storm won't be passing right through Tampa. It's the last thing I want to hear.

And at that, all that crying, praying and begging pulled off.

lazy HNT

I've been a lazy, lazy blogger lately. Partly to blame is a recent employment gig. This week's HNT was taken last October. A good friend is supposedly standing next to me, and we were supposed to head for Greenbelt dressed in full gala attire. While dressing like a goddess in a mall appeals to me highly, the plan was cancelled. It was fun to go out like this as if in post-prom adventure.

While people say that I resemble J Lo (okay, so it's a handful, and one of them is my mother), this dress is inspired by a
JLo red carpet favorite.