Friday Night Live.

So here it is, a Friday night. I'm young, I'm spry, and I'm sitting alone at home watching the Ray Charles movie and updating my blog. Talk about glamour.

Not that it's for lack of options, for once. I don't know, I'm still fighting this sickness, and I just didn't really feel like going out tonight. This afternoon, I came into the kitchen for a glass of water, ended up feeling weird and laid down on the couch. An hour later, I woke up, but I haven't really felt normal since.

This illness has been weird, though. I've had this horrible hacking cough for the past week or so, but haven't really felt bad other than that. Yesterday, I felt really weird, though. I think it was lack of oxygen to my brain or something due to all the phlegm gunking up my airway, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to faint or run around the block. Strange sensation, halfway dead and halfway jittery.

Hmmmm, I don't really have anything else to say.

Perfection.

I lived a perfect moment today.

I was in the car en route home from school this evening. It wasn't a particularly difficult day, but I've been feeling a little under the weather (I think it's a chest cold), and a little nostalgic (having watched the BYU devotional via internet), and a little introspective (just because that's how I am), and more than a little preoccupied with the hopes of friendship and romance (because I like to daydream).

All these came together to form a strange emotional cocktail, and I was pondering on this as I headed home. Then, the track on the CD changed, and my Perfect Moment began.

It was the Good Morning Maxfield (when they were still just Maxfield) cover of "Stars." Somehow, that song existed solely for that moment with me and my weird feelings in my Camry driving down Malone St.

I turned up the volume and soaked in all the goodness of the moment. It was full,
saturated, absolutely perfect. I can't describe why I felt so, but I certainly did. I wonder if there have been other perfect moments in my life that I have missed by being too preoccupied or just not paying attention.

Now that I think about it, I believe this wasn't the first perfect moment in my life:

The time when I cried with a friend in the vestibule of our high school band hall. The time I played stupid Christmas arrangements with a wind ensemble.
The time I rode with that one boy just because he wanted company.
Driving cross-country with my brother in a car loaded with all our stuff.

I guess it just gave me pause to reflect on what it is that makes life worth living. There are so many perfect moments yet to be had.

Here's to perfection!

Backrub, anyone?

I've always liked to give backrubs. For me, the power of the literal human touch is very strong, and there's something about knowing that I'm using my hands to make someone else feel good that I find very rewarding. I think, too, that years of training and development in the fine-motor schools (i.e., the fact that I'm a string player) has helped sensitize my hands, so I've been told I'm pretty good at it, too.

Back in P-town, I had a loyal clientele built up of roommates and close friends. If anyone had a knot in their back or something, they'd come to me to work it out. Here, though, there are very few with whom I've crossed the touch-barrier. I miss being able to touch people! I need that so badly.

I've always been a cuddly one, and I've said before that I'm addressing this from a completely nonsexual stance. For some reason, it's just important to me to physically feel the contact of other human beings--just in little ways, like touches on the arm, or hand-holding, or and arm around me.

I've taken to giving my dog backrubs. She has these two huge knots on either side of her torso that I've been working on for the past few days. She enjoys it--you should see her melt to the ground in a semi-comotose state. I'm glad she appreciates it, but it does kind of make me miss the same kind of appreciation from other humans.

So, if you ever want a backrub, or a backscratch, or a head massage or just someone to let you know that you've got nerve endings on your skin, you all know where to find me.

Who, me?

I guess if I ever want to feel attractive, I just have to hang out with men who are at least forty years old or older.

I belong to this environmentally-based networking website, and most of my "friends" fall into that category. And they tell me how pretty I am, how "intriguing," how they would like to photograph me (that one especially creeped me out), or how they would love to get to know me--could I email them sometime? Maybe it's something about being one step removed from the person they are trying to woo that causes them to lose all sense of propriety. They don't have to be shy or (what's the masculine equivalent to "coy?"), but they can just say right out: "I think you're beautiful, and I would like to be your boyfriend."

As far as those men who boast an even BIGGER age gap, I still haven't figured that out. I've learned from hard experience that even though a man is seventy-five years my senior, it doesn't necessarily mean he is harmless. Still, the increase in years seems to be inversely proportional to tact or subtlety.

Now, I'm not certain that this attraction from men old enough to be my father, grandfather, or great-grandfather is unusual. I just keep thinking of the Rick James song: "She makes an old man wish for younger days." The thing that is unusual about my ability to attract men is that it doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever with those in my own demographic. Is it then simply the fact that I'm so much younger that makes me attractive, or is there some other quality that the more seasoned male appreciates that is lost on the ruddy-faced lads?

Maybe I should just aim to marry some filthy rich old guy who's about to kick the bucket.

The itch you just can't scratch.

So, I've realized what it is about UNT.

The fact of the matter is that there are actually many many more guys that I am attracted to here. Virtually every random male that crosses the street in front of me I find at least reasonably attractive. [AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am realizing as I write this that I had similar feelings upon arriving at BYU. "Why is everyone here so darned attractive?," I thought to myself. Perhaps, then, it is just the novelty of being in a new environment, with a different type of guy.]

Now, herein lies the problem. It's obviously not that I cannot find a guy that I find good-looking. It's that I don't really want to DATE any of these handsome men-folk. For one reason or another (sexual orientation, marital status, drug use, etc.) these guys are otherwise completely unappealing.

So, I remain lonely. And though no one likes to be lonely, I also don't really feel terribly drawn to any of the alternatives.

Open mouth, insert foot.

The most famed question on the list of questions not to be asked if there is any reasonable doubt is, of course, "So . . . when are you due?" Today I experienced another:

Me: "So, when are you getting married?"
The other person: We're not.
Me: (confused)
The other person: We broke up. We're not getting married.

Uhhh, and then where do you go with the conversation? I don't know. I feel bad for the awkwardness and for having put this person in such an uncomfortable situation, but at the same time, it was an innocent question--and I had no reason to suspect anything had changed since the last time I saw the two of them together (which couldn't have been very long). Nevertheless, it really kind of killed the chitchat.

So, beware. My new rule will be that I will not ask that unless the individual has referenced such him or herself in the same sitting.

What I Want

Over the weekend, I was watching the movie Hitch. There's a line that says something like, "No woman knows what she wants until she finds it." I think in my case, that's true. Or at least the first part.

There is no secret to my lamentations about living the single life. Although, it's not really that I dislike being single so much. It's more that I dislike the IDEA of it, and the IDEA of myself never having experienced the Other Side. That's right. At the ripe old age of 22 (very almost 23), I have never had a boyfriend. Unless you count those that I had from the 7th-9th grade, when for some reason boys liked me (although, since then, one or more of them has decided he likes boys). Ironically, that all ceased almost immediately after I reached the age of 16--when I actually COULD date.

So, I *think* that I would like a boyfriend--but how would that actually be? I can think only of the benefits: someone to talk to to cuddle with, to go to things with. I'm sure there is a downside, too, and maybe it's really NOT what I want.

And *who* would I want my potential boyfriend to be? I've never been one to have in my mind a "type," and as a result of this, I don't really know what I "should" be looking for. For instance, yesterday at church there was this pretty-boy type teaching my Sunday School class. Usually I'm pretty turned-off by that kind of boy--they are too impenetrable and fake--but later on in the lesson he let down his guard a little bit and turned into this shy, awkward little kid. I found it really endearing. I guess it humanized him for me. You always hear about people looking past the outside to see the beauty within. Usually, people use that kind of phraseology when they're talking about "ugly" people, but I think it applies just as readily to "attractive" people. I think pretty people use their prettiness to protect their tender hearts from being so visible and vulnerable.

I don't know where I'm going with all this. I guess I just have a lot to figure out about who I am and what I want.