Lady Dates

I've been busy this week with planning some "lady dates", which are much more fun and less fraught with anxiety than actual dates where I might have a good time and/or sex. For a lady date, I still put just as much effort into the fun part, getting dressed up and making sure I smell nice, but I don't have to deal with
the part that bums me the fuck out, i.e. when the guy is going to start talking about his ex or try to choke me. Or both.
I met up with my good friend, Libby, this week since she was visiting from Albuquerque. I wanted to see her, but felt a bit conflicted about it, since my sister told me that she and Libby had recently had a fight and weren't friends anymore. I find myself in this position often, having to choose between being loyal to my sister and doing what I actually want to do. It kept me from seeing the not so subtle, ham-fisted flirting Mike was throwing at me (which actually might have been a good thing, come to think of it) because Sarah forbid me from hooking up with him. I've lost other friends because of one thing out another that Sarah did. To be fair, a friend who can't separate me from my sisters actions is not one I really needed, but it still stings. All I need to remember to get over my guilt, of course, is that Sarah has done worse. She went behind my back to a former friend, a person I refuse to associate with to this day because he is a garbage person who told everyone I was in rehab for an imaginary drug addiction when I was actually in a psych ward for behavioral issues. Sarah and I ended up at the same party as this bitch, and Sarah cornered me and told me that I needed to get over it and be friends with him again, because I was "being immature". Yeah, I needed to be friends with him because Sarah probably needed something from him. Sometimes, that's how she operates. I love her, but I don't always trust her.
Regardless of my misgivings, I enjoyed spending time catching up with Libby. We had some wine and I did ask her what the fight with Sarah was about. Her version of events was, of course, totally different from Sarah's. Not really a shocker, because I'm used to that. I heard Libby out and then just had a fun time, caught her up on what I've been doing and felt happy at the end of the evening that I had gone on my lady date with her.
I started trying to interest my friends into the ultimate lady date- Galentine's Day. I stole the idea from Parks and Recreation, but who cares? It's a great idea. Valentines is a shitty holiday. If you're single, it makes you feel, somehow, even more single. If you're in a relationship, even if it is with someone you really love, often you either fail them or they fail you. Or, you try to surprise them with flowers and discover that your wife is allergic to baby's breath. That happened to me one of the only times Gino made an effort.
Last Valentines was the worst. I had to bully Gino into taking me out for a hot chocolate and a fucking macaron at Chocolate Springs, and he was sulky and bored. He was even more sulky when I brought up the fact that we never talked about the future any more, and that I wanted to talk about moving out of his parent's house, and maybe starting a family soon. It was a conversation about a future conversation I was hoping to have, but it was still too much for him. I always wondered why it was so hard to get him to do something nice for me. It didn't come naturally to him, especially last Valentine's Day, when he had already stopped loving me that way.
Focusing on lady dates feels like the best thing for me. I need my friendships more than ever, because I can feel myself turning, little by little, into a spiteful bitch. I don't like it. I saw that Mike put a poem by Charles Bukowski on his Facebook page, and I grumbled about it all night. I mean, Charles Bukowski? What the ass? That's like when Gino quotes Albert Einstein- it's absurd. I'm not even sure what bothered me about out so much. Maybe it was the fact that he even put a whole verse of any poem on his page, as if he is so emotional and deep, he has to borrow the words, but maybe it was the poem he chose, as if he knows what it feels like to have a bluebird in your heart. To have a bluebird in your heart, first you need to have a heart, you fuck stick, I wanted to say. I didn't say it, because it's not my place to say what someone can quote on Facebook, nor is it really my place to call him a fuck stick. I'll leave that to others. But I still think he's a fuck stick.