what had happened

okay, so the last post was a little hasty. and severe. if i can break this all down into two parts maybe we can figure out what had happened...

part one.

the beginning of the week was spent in a haze of McCatering, fun nights at little pubs, and of course, another dream run of deliciously nice dates with barista boy. he holds my hand when we walk around town, he buys me coffees and beers and food, he introduces me to his friends. etc etc etc. getting a little boyfriendXcore. but the scary thing is, i don't really mind.

wednesday! i am having a chill evening, hanging out with four nashville guys who are crashing at the goblin house*. then my friend susie calls and wants to grab a drink. i head over to oddfellows and we class it up, olympia style. i casually text barista boy, who had mentioned he was going to be at the comet that night for a show.

and then. barista boy comes crashing into oddfellows around 1. drunk. and with his even drunker female roommate. and drunker female roommate is ALL OVER HIM. yes, she is like 30. yes, she has a boyfriend. yes, she barely knows him. but seriously. bitch, please. and to make matters worse, when barista boy gets up to use the bathroom, she leans over the table to susie and i and whispers (more like shouts): "so which one of you is trying to fuck him?"

???

in the next few minutes i casually assure her that:
1. we aren't trying anything
2. don't worry, he's already being taken care of
3. actually, the girl she saw leaving the house the other morning was ME
4. NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS

actually the last point was never uttered but was strongly hinted at. the night ended with drunk roommate, barista boy and me standing outside oddfellows; me trying to have a conversation with barista boy and drunk roommate annoyingly trying to hail a cab. the conversation with barista boy was also just about the most confusing thing ever, and one i will attempt to summarize in yet another numbered list.

basically:
1. i really, really, really, really (etc etc etc) like you.
2. wait, are we dating?! (why is he asking me this? i thought we already agreed we were not.)
3. okay, we're not dating. buuuuuuut there's no one else i am seeing, or even want to see. and you're free to do what you want, but i just want to let you know that it would be hard for me to see you with someone else.

???

so... we're exclusively not dating?


part two.

i was sick of trying to figure all of this out. sick of the guessing games. sick of the back and forth. sick of feeling like a cranky girlfriend (but NOT a girlfriend!). so i decided to go to portland for the weekend. got my shift covered, bought a train ticket and called up my wonderful, crazy portland sistah kiki.

i arrived in portland friday night and headed straight to NE to meet kiki at a bar. coincidentally, the weekend i choose to flee seattle was also the weekend that all of seattle was in portland. the U.S. barista competition (yes, there is such a thing. nerdy) brought up frey, steven, brandon, cortney and a bunch of other seattle kids were packed into the ace hotel amidst all the convention center craziness and nightly barista parties (=nutty amounts of free alcohol). besides this, the four nashville guys that had been crashing at my house were now in portland. seattle invasion!

anyways. met up with kiki at a bar, she introduced me to her delightful roommates: ruji (sarcastic gay girl studying copyediting and selling sex toys made from recycled bicycle bits), regina (quiet bespeckled girl and recovering heroin addict) and levi (cute nerdy boy grad student studying math and tutoring undergrad students. just got out of a girl situation... trouble). we all got beers and sat outside smoking. i ended up talking with levi for a while, comparing notes and lamenting our not-dating situations. and then it happened. i was flirting again! what was i doing?!

the night went on, we hit up a few more bars and then drove downtown to the fez dance club. i havent been out dancing in a while but this place was crazy fun - copious amounts of silly kids dancing their little hearts out in converse shoes and hoodies. the music was all MIA to wham to rhianna. totally danceable. half way through a coupla vodka sours i realized that kiki and one of the nashville travelers had snuggled up in a corner. my buddy steven had disappeared and now all i had was a high blood alcohol content, some good tunes, and a sweet, flirty boy in front of me... two seconds later we were millimeters away from making a Ridiculous Mistake. i pulled myself and my dumb face away from him and walked away briskly. i waved my hands in front of my face a few times, almost as an afterthought, to indicate that my reason for walking away was purely a body temperature situation. i don't know if he noticed.

gah. i love how i feel guilty for almost kiss-cheating on someone i am not even dating! good lord this is stupid. anyways. back to portland. the rest of the weekend was delightfully stress-free. i hung out in NE, riding bikes to coffee shops, reading good books, laughing lots, having some good portland smokes, making lots of vegan food, drinking cheap beers and just sleeping in late. so wonderful. as for the whole levi thing, i managed to be ridiculously awkward around him at all times, providing kiki with an endless supply of things to tease me about. great.

i got back to seattle last night on the train. i felt wonderfully gross. the afternoon had consisted of kiki and i reading books in the ace hotel, grabbing multiple drinks at the ash street saloon, and then stumbling into voodoo donuts where i somehow acquired a commercial size frosting bucket full of half-day-old donuts; all before i boarded the train. arriving back at home, i shared donuts and stories before we all rushed out to the bars at midnight for my roommate josh's long-awaited 21st birthday festivities. frey showed up, and after doing the obligatory tequila shot with the birthday boy, we settled into a corner to dish on our weekends. turns out that things have been going good for her. very good. in fact, her McText is now her McBoyfriend, and among more important things such as she-might-move-down-to-san-francisco-with-him and her-mom-wants-to-meet-him and they-go-on-normal-dates-and-have-normal-conversations; besides all this, he asked her about changing her relationship status on facebook. cha-CHING! she just scored a 100% real, genuine relationship.

!!!

good for her. at least one of us knows how to date. maybe someday i'll learn too.

ps. barista boy showed up to the birthday celebrations around 1 am. he was drunk. i was drunk. we stumbled home and got a little rowdy. in the morning i realized that my roommates jerad was sleeping on the couch on the other side of my paper-thin bedroom wall. woops.