It's raining men

So I realize I have been MIA for about 6 days now. I am sorry. But I have brought with me from the adventures upon the M.S. "This is Ginger's Life" tales of mystery, excitement and well, let's be honest...a little (or actually a lot of) sex. But a warning...this is a long one, you may need to read it in multiple sittings.

Sooooo...we all remember I was having a shitty week at work last week. It was bad. I'm still not sure it's alright, but I have been out of the office all week taking a well needed sabbatical from work (i.e. I am taking a class for work). However, I have also been working a few hours at night when no-one is around. It's nice, I actually get stuff done. But this tale isn't about my work worries, or my incredible long hours, or even about how I am so exhausted that it's entirely possibly I might sleep straight through the entire weekend. Nope, this story is better than that.

I can't believe that I am about to admit this, but a few weeks ago I created a profile on the Yahoo Personals site. I also posted an ad on Craigslist...under 'casual encounters'. So we all remember a few weeks ago when the guy from Tahoe asked me out, and that whole fiasco. I never called him back. But I will give this guy all the credit in the word because he jump started my ego. For many years I never had self esteem issues. Even though I've always been on the heavy side, I never had a problem hitting on a guy, or believing that I guy could find me attractive. That is until the last few years. When all the sudden it seemed like there wasn't an interested guy on the planet. No-one ever checked me out, no-one ever hit on me, no-one ever asked me out (except that REALLY drunk and REALLY gross old guy at the Silver Club one night...and even I'm not that desperate) and dare I say I think a few even saw me coming and ran in the other direction. I never hit on guys, I never persued guys, I started believing that no-one would ever or could ever find me interesting. I know this sounds all weeepy schmeepy but it was true. I mean I couldn't even get my old fuck buddy to actually follow through on any of his flirtatious text messages...and he lives like 5 blocks away...and seriously, what guy wouldn't stay up a little late for some sex. And the worst part about all of this was that every time I starting talking to anybody about this, the response was always 'what are you talking about? There's ton's of guys out there." OR THE WORST! THE ABSOLUTE WORST RESPONSE "you know if you stop looking you know you'll find someone." I FUCKING WANT TO SHOVE PEOPLE OFF A CLIFF WHEN THEY SAY THIS. FUCK YOU, I HAVEN'T BEEN DOING ANYTHING, HAVEN'T BEEN LOOKING, BECAUSE NO BODY WANTS ME YOU FUCKING IDIOT!

That is until the other day I had my parents over. It was a few weeks after the Tahoe guy, when things in my head started shifting. It was also after I had both my ad on Yahoo (and had 1 guy that I had been emailing back and forth with) and after I had been chatting via email from a few I had met from CL. My mom has an uncanny ability to say the right thing at the right time. We were sitting in my living room after I cooked dinner for my parents and my grandma and my mom just looks at me, completely off the last subject we had been talking about and says, "I know when you're ready you're just going to pick a guy out and that will be that, he'll be the one. But you know, guys are kind of like shoes. It can be fun to try a bunch of different ones on just for fun. You never know if you'll end up finding something that you you in something you never thought you'd like." Awww, the wisdom of my mom (and you can see she realized the only way to get through to me is to appeal to my intense desire for shoes). After this something totally shifted. I was like 'what the fuck? There has to be someone out there that will well...whatever at this point..."

Let me go back to the ad's I posted. The Yahoo Personals ad was because I knew most people on that site were probably looking for something more serious. I also mentioned I posted an ad on CL's 'casual encounters.' You can assume what people are looking for if they are posting/responding to anything posted under that category. Let me back up for a second. I stumbled upon this one night, I was bored and had been on CL looking through job classified, through stuff people were selling, whatever. I wasn't looking for anything imparticular, I was just bored and clicking on things. Then I noticed the category 'missed connections' and I remembered posting on that once. I had been in South Lake Tahoe for a job interview. I was super early so I ran into the grocery store to buy a bottle of water. I was walking in and this very attractive, slightly older, fire fighter walked right by me. Our eyes caught and we both smiled and kept walking. A few steps went by and I turned to look at him and right when I did that he turned as well and our eyes caught again. We smiled, hesitated, but then we both went our separate ways. Still, to this day, I regret so much not chasing him down and at least introducing myself. Anyways, the point of this was to say that after that encounter, I took a long shot and posted something under the missed connections about our encounter. The only response I got was from a girl saying she stumbled across it and 'hoped he responded because the moment seemed too good to be true and would make a great story for our future children.' So I clicked on Missed Connections, or so I thought. My mouse had missed it and I opened the Casual Encounters. I got completed engrossed in looking to see what people posted on there. Everything from guys who seemed like they were honestly just looking to have a one night stand, or find a long standing fuck buddy, to husbands trying to have affairs, to so sick pervert who wanted a girl to...ummm..be a girl's...ummmm....living toilet paper. Yeah, you read that right. All the things you do with toilet paper, he wanted to do with his tongue. Can you see why I couldn't stop reading? It was like an awful accident that you just can't look away from. Did I mention I was bored? So I posed one under "W4M". Truthfully, when I first posted on this I really just wanted to see how many people (and what kind of people) actually responded to the ad. So I posted a pretty basic ad that just said "Single 25 year old, with a few extra pounds, looking for a cool guy to have a good time with." That's it. I got ton's of responses. Most were freaks, some were married, but there were a few thrown in there that seemed like decent guys. I mean, I realize you can't tell that from an initial email, but my comment is based on the fact that I responded to a few of them. Just to see. Mind you I did this all from a 'fake' email, that has nothing attached to my personality, or my name, so that way I could always just stop responding or delete the email account. A few of the guys wrote back. A few didn't. One, after a serious of emails, turned out to be married. But there was one who seemed like a pretty decent guy so I sent him a picture (only after he had sent me a few of him). I'm not sure what you're thinking about me at this point, and truthfully I don't care. The turn my life has taken (at least socially) over the past couple of weeks is worth any of you thinking to yourself "she did what?" or "I would never do that" or "I hope she was careful, there are a lot of freaks out there". I was careful. And I never thought I would do this either. But here I am. Writing to you about this thing called life. And truthfully, for a while now, I haven't felt like I've been living much of one. I needed a change in my life, whether it was professionally, socially or geographically and since professionally and geographically aren't realistic options, I choose socially. I digress...

I should probably mention a few things. I have been on a very, very long dry spell. I'm not going to admit how long because it is awfully embarrassing. But it's been a long time. Another thing. I wrote this post a long time ago when I was in the midst of being obsessed with Dog Park Guy. I never fully explained why I was really afraid he would say yes. One of the main reasons is because if he said yes, we would go out, maybe many times, and eventually, if all went as planned, we would have sex. I hadn't had sex in a very long time. And even when I was having sex, I never was having very much of it, and it definitely wasn't very good. I was scared shitless of having sex with someone I really liked and having no fucking clue what I was doing.

This guy (we will call him Oakley because he was wearing an Oakley t-shirt the first time we met) and me exchanged emails over the period of a few days and then decided to meet for dinner and drinks one Friday night. He never called. I sent him an email the next morning asking him what was up and that afternoon he responded that he had gotten held up at work, his phone died and then his car broke down on his way home at like midnight. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and see if he wanted to come over. I wasn't looking for anything in him except someone to break my dry spell. He seemed nice enough, but, as crazy as this sounds, I just needed someone I could easily never talk to again, to make it start raining. It rained that night...for many hours a good rain fell. I realize I am completely insane in inviting a guy to my house that I have only exchanged emails and a few phone calls with, and I realize it could have gone wrong. But it didn't. It went very right. So my dry spell was broken. This was 2 weekends ago.

I kept talking to the guy from Yahoo, who admittedly is a little dorky, but seems like a nice guy. We made plans to hang out tonight. More on that later, we have another juicy story first.

So trust me when I say this, but if you are feeling down about yourself, there is nothing better than being hit on. Even if it's from freaks via email. When I posted that ad, and within minutes I had responses from interested guys, it was like "fuck, I am a sexy bitch". So take my word on this, if you are ever down in the dumps, create a 'fake' email, post something on CL and you will either be flattered or appalled, but either way entertained.

My first ad had turned up something good, so I figured I would post another one the other night just for the fun of it. Again, I really had no intentions of actually responding to anyone and then I got an email from a guy whose email had something to do with kayaking and could easily be made into a dirty joke, I won't share it obviously for privacy reasons. I couldn't resist myself so I wrote to him with my super duper cleaver line "So you either like kayaking or you have a very dirty mind?" Are you as embarrassed for me as I am? Good, I hope so! Although at this point I have no shame left so blush away for me. He wrote back "Both...do we know each other? You seem to know me too well already." We chatted back and forth and actually seemed to have a lot in common. But he made it clear he was looking for a long term fuck buddy, someone to have a good time with, hang out with on occasion for more than that, but really was not looking for something serious. Yes we met, and yes after meeting him, I understand why he's not looking for this. Truthfully, I'm not looking for that either. I feel like I have missed out on so many things in terms of relating to men, dating, sex and passion that I am just looking 'to try a few different styles on" and see what fits best and see what I can learn from the ones I decide don't fit. We decided to meet at a local bar for dinner and drinks last night. Right off the bat I really liked this guy. Things were so comfortable with him that 3 hours flew by before we even realized it. Since we had already talked about this, and since we had met with the understanding things would remain casual between us, I invited him back to my place. Do you think I'm a little slutty yet? Good, because I have been a good girl for way too long. We got back to my place and just kept talking. We talked about everything...kayaking, rafting, traveling, our lives, our families...even death. He was so easy to talk to and so much fun to be around. Things finally got a little lot heated and, well, let's just say we were still talking at 2am, except instead of being on my couch fully dressed, our clothes stayed in the living room and we were in my bedroom, and most of the talking that happend during those few hours was very X-rated. And very satisfying.

Are you sick of hearing about me having sex yet? How about an night that ended innocently? Or well, intended to. So tonight was date night with the guy from Yahoo. We decided to get take out and go to the drive in movie theater because they were having an opening night and it was free. He picked me up (I was running late as always), we picked up some take out from a little Italian place near my house and drove to the drive-in. Because neither of us bothered to check what time the showtime actually is (sometime after dark) we got there like an hour before the movie started. Which was actually perfect because we spent the time talking and got to know each other. We watched the movie and he took me home. He really is a little dorky, but super nice, and I told him to call me next week so we could hang out again. It was a really nice date. I mean, except he didn't walk me to my door, but a girl can dream can't she?

Then Oakley called shortly after I got home and the night ended a little less innocently than planned. And here I am again, at 1am, waiting for my laundry to finish so I can pack to go out of town tomorrow later today.

I know I didn't include details. I doubt most of you want many. I know Shannon is having a hissy fit right now that I am just revealing this info to her, but is probably jumping up and down in her seat because I finally got out of the dugout and may have actually found some decent guys to hang out with. I know you're probably thinking that 2 of them are only in the for the sex, and to that I would say "so am I!" Especially when it is as good as it's been...and when the gettin's good, the good keep gettin', right?