F***tards

I love men...they make me laugh. I just hope, though, that the man I end up spending the rest of my life with won't be as utterly idiotic as the men that are in my life right now. Memorial Day Weekend gives me the opportunity to remember that having a "Dr." in front of one's name, or being on one's way to having one, such as the case with Nikolai and Alex, doesn't make that person any smarter than anyone else. Sometimes, it's to the contrary.

Yesterday afternoon, I got into an argument with Nikolai over the phone. Actually, it was more like he started arguing with me over the phone. I had asked him an ill-advised yet innocuous question, and in response, he started telling me off, getting into issues that were not even relevant to the conversation. Just about went PTSD/'Nam on me. Of his gems were the following: "I don't want to talk about the past situations," and "I can't tell you what to write in your [public] blog, it's your first amendment right. Just know that other people are reading it," and "I was reading [the blog], but I won't be reading it anymore." So after I looked to calm him down, everything was okay - I think - and then he and I got off the phone.

Today, I checked my webcounter for my public blog, and Nikolai looked at it just last night, a number of hours after telling me over the phone that he won't be reading it anymore. I did inform him right after the Chicago trip that I can tell when he reads my blog, so he should know that I am well aware just how full of it he is. He can have all the space he wants from me, but he just can't tear himself away from my words.

I called my mother yesterday, upset about the argument with Nikolai. She advised that I go out with Alex, because it'll get my mind off of Nikolai, and besides, I don't have any feelings for him anyway so it shouldn't be stressful. So I talked to Alex tonight, and he invited me out. So we went out for beer. On the way home, he reminded me of when I called him vain and superficial, and then asked me if muscular men are attractive. Then, over the course of the conversation, he talked about how he was getting back into weightlifting, and revealed that he was considering taking performance-enhancing drugs to accelerate the muscle-building process. He asked me if I felt he should do it, considering that it would make him look better.

After reminding Alex of all the serious potential health risks, I told him if it was that important to him, he could do it, prompting a friendly yet high-stakes debate. At the core of it was the question of if I was being double-minded, or if in fact I am of more depth than he is, and I consider actions long-term. He wanted me to agree with his consideration, but I wasn't biting. I said he was thin, which he took as a negative, although I didn't mean it that way. I explained to him that while I do look at the physical, that is not as important to me as the spiritual, mental and emotional.

Physicality can only take a person so far. I used Nikolai as an example - he's solid, although not muscular because the only working out he does is walking to school and moving his arms to shovel food into his mouth as if it's the 1980s and he still has to wait in a Soviet bread line to get his next meal. But his solidity is physically attractive to me, and overall he is sexually attractive. The problem is that he is defunct in character and he has less integrity than a political hack. Physical beauty wastes away much more quickly than anything else - but the essence of who a person is will always be there, and that is what you have to live with. I think Alex might have "got it," although it may take more than that to keep him away from the juice.

The past two days has me wondering about the mental health of the men I seem to know. What the hell is wrong with these people? Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum...or Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber. One seems to think that I'm not going to know he's addicted to my public blog like it's a pure cut of coke, while the other is so image-conscious that he's willing to shoot up like Barry Bonds just to get noticed - even though they really should know better.

The WTF moments of 2006...

Desire

The written portion of comps is over, and next week I'll know my future. I don't like the suspense.

Lately, though, I feel like I've been in emotional meltdown.

Alex calls me every weekend faithfully, which is really sweet, but it's over a half decade too late. Years of caring for someone who didn't know I was alive - until I finally took my bat and glove and went home. He now seems to care when I no longer do. It's nice and I think it's funny. But I don't know what he wants, and whatever it is, I don't have it in me to show any reciprocity.

Meanwhile, Nikolai reads my blog faithfully, but I haven't heard his voice in weeks. It's embarrassing, but the truth is that I miss him. At least the part of me that sees something in him. The rest of me doesn't. I almost hate him. Not because he ever owed me anything, because he sure didn't. But because he was so charming and so deceptive, and allowed me to get sucked in before he showed me his true colors. And then he basically dropped me. I guess that deep inside, I resent him for that. I hate being lied to. I hate being manipulated.

I saw him in passing about a week ago, and we said hello and that was it. I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know how deeply my feelings truly ran, and how hurt I really was, but I couldn't think about it because of comps. Now that my written exams are over, and I have a little time on my hands, I have been feeling it, and it kind of hurts. I think it's the idea of Nikolai more than Nikolai himself. The idea that someone of quality could notice me, care about me, like me for who I am. And then come to find out, that person is in fact the most judgmental of them all. I can forgive, but I can't forget. And when I saw him last week, I could not forget.

Yet, there is this small, miniscule part of me that still likes him. Very little, very small. But it's still there. It's the part of me that wants to impress him, that wants to make him feel what he's missing. It's the part that enjoys my interesting and deep conversations with him, that likes to look at him as he's talking and moving around, that loves hearing the sound of his voice. And that's the part that must die, or else it's going to get me really hurt. The truth is, even if I did get what I wanted, chances are I would ultimately end up heartbroken anyway. Maybe I'm emotionally masochistic.

Exhaustion

I am ridiculously exhausted, and comps are next week. I pray really hard that I will pass these exams, because I feel like I remember everything and nothing at the same time. I have so much in my head, so many paradigms, concepts and frameworks, but I question to what extent I can put anything to paper, and to what extent I can explain my thoughts. I hope I can remember enough to be precise, since this is not an open book exam. There is so much riding on this. So much. Basically my future for the next year and a half is based on nine questions and an oral defense. If that's not pressure, I don't know what is.

Freshmen

I can't be held responsible
'Cause she was touching her face
I won't be held responsible
She fell in love in the first place

Not a whole lot is happening. Nikolai's blog-reading streak ended yesterday, thank goodness. Maybe he realized I wasn't going to be a jerk and put his business out on the street. But I did find out through Brooke that Nikolai truly felt bad about what happened in Chicago, and didn't truly blame me, and now I have a little more information as to why. That night, when we were at an Eastern European-themed nightclub, Nikolai had bought me a shot, which contained a super-strong liquor (approx. 100-proof) popular in Eastern Europe that is difficult to tolerate unless one is used to it. I wasn't aware of this when he got it for me. This may have also contributed to the unfortunate and life-threatening end of the night.

Honestly, I don't blame him. I don't think he did that on purpose, and I don't blame him for not realizing that I as an American, and especially an American who doesn't drink often, wouldn't know what that shot was or its strength. I mean, I was the one who took a shot of Absinthe down in Mexico in one gulp and only ended up buzzed. I didn't know about my condition either and I don't expect for him to have known that either. In the end, I made particular choices that were not wise, but I didn't have the information in front of me to make better choices. It was what it was.

Something tells me, though, that to some extent, he had a hard time accepting at first that he contributed to the situation - he even blamed me for accepting a shot that he offered. Given all of the other issues we were dealing with, especially a misunderstanding of how I felt about him (his belief that I thought God was putting us together...ha ha ha ha!) placed all the blame for everything that went wrong that night and with our friendship at my feet.

Ultimately, though, his conscience caught up with him and it really bothered him. The most surprising thing is that he actually has one. Anyway, though, it's kind of messed up that his need to be right and to have control endangered the friendship. I think that what it came down to, though, is that I made the mistake of almost falling for him. That messes lots of things up, including the fantasy of who I was and who he was. And for that, our friendship was altered, probably permanently.