We're getting MARRIED!

Well--not really.
Story: I've been enjoying an online flirtation with The Mister for several months now. We belonged to one of the same groups at school, but since he was a few years older than me I actually never met him. Towards the end of senior year I tracked him down via MyFriendSpaceBook to ask him a question, and a conversation developed--first "do you know? do you know?" and gradually ranging into everything from politics, ethics, religion, past loves (his), careers (mine), even our visions on child rearing (which isn't as weird as it sounds, given that the context was already odd enough.) Turns out we share a lot of the same views, similar level of intellect, sense of humor, our hometowns are even fairly close. I have to admit, I was kind of thinking "ding ding ding" despite the fact that The Mister lives in NY. Whatever, I go there sometimes. We're both young and mobile. (And nubile, natch.) I was pleased to have this intriguing possibility on the back burner.

Recently, for some reason I as yet don't know, the flirt-quotient really started to heat up. "Manifestoes are hot," he wrote after I sent him one. "I like you, Elle Daley. I don't know what it is about your emails that I like so much." He sighed about his singlehood (which is odd for a young guy living in New York, and never such a sure-fire suggestion tactic regardless, but it showed he's relationship-minded, which I liked.) Then, after a particularly furious spate of email exchange (three from him, including a long and compliment-filled one) he wrote "Is my voicemail message annoying? Everyone says it is."

"Are you trying to get me to call you? I'm not sure we're ready for this!" I typed back. "Actually, I think you're trying to get me to call you and have you not answer!"

"I do want you to call me," he replied. "In fact, now I don't even know if I'm going to answer. What would I say?"

So it was back to MyFriendSpaceBook and I called him. The voicemail was annoying. He called back (midnight my time) and we proceeded to talk for three hours, which could be the first time I've logged that on a phone call since--I don't even know, it could be the first time I've talked on the phone that long when I wasn't trapped by a loquacious friend and my own too-gentle spirit. Reader, I really like him. He's funny, intelligent, thoughtful. Confident enough to be masculine but self-deprecating enough to be funny and kind (or interested) enough to ask about my side of things and to listen to what I'm saying. In some ways he reminds me of a male version of myself. And while phone may not be the perfect way to gauge attraction (remember, we've still never met) it's a way better gauge than email. I like his voice. Teasing me once about how young I am, he said "If I were standing next to you right now" (pause; Elle's entire body proceeds to blush) "I'd be patting you on the head." Whew! I was astonished at my own reaction.

So I came into work the next day with a pounding head (after hanging up, reluctantly, at 3 am) and, I confess, started doodling lists of baby names. NOT SERIOUSLY! It's just the kind of thing that runs through a person's head at a time like this. I mean, I wasn't totally sold on the whole thing. The Mister and I have enough in common that if we were to get together, this could be it. IT it. I really don't think I'm ready for that at 22. I have a few more good years of traveling, making out with strangers and Febreezeing the jeans I have on to get out of my system before any parent-meeting and life-sharing and baby-naming enters the equation. But still, I was blown away: this is the person, out of everyone I know, who it could make the most sense for me to one day be serious with, and we haven't even met yet.

This was two days ago. The next night, which was last night, he called me again (I was on the other line and let it go.) Suddenly I feel like this bride here, nailed to the floor by bouquets.

What do you think, readers? Is it creepy to spend so much energy pursuing a girl you've never met? Is The Mister some sort of anomalous committment-crazed freak? (He did say he hopes to get married by 30, but he's only 25.) Is that creepy that marriage even came up? The thing is, he seems like such a normal guy. Drinks, swears, makes inappropriate jokes (like me), had a few long-term girlfriends--basically as normal as you could hope for, at least, as far as I can judge via extended electronic communication.

But then I got another email from him today--admiring, intelligent, sharing enough about himself to keep the conversation going without being a creepy or needy overshare. And now I'm thinking that little girl up there kinda looks like a Ramona, or maybe a Rachel.

Help me, blogosphere! Should I run, withdraw or just throw myself into whatever The Mister has in mind? (Bear in mind that if I go with that, by the next time I post here it's just barely possible I'd be reporting to you as The Missus . . .)

By the Book

I was admiring a young gentleman on the bus this morning. He had that great is-he-or-isn't-he-straight style: flared jeans, fitted coat, matching scarf and skullie, le tout ensemble sported with Tims, which I love when black guys do but, well, I've never seen anyone else try it, but if they did it would be horrible. Anyway, he looked good. And as a bonus, he was reading: a brightly colored hardcover, looked like a Jonathan Franzen or something like that. (I actually almost never read contemporary writers because I'm too cheap, but I know what they look like.) Perhaps the choice of literature would give me a clue as to his availability. I shifted in my seat and peered unobtrusively. The Abs Diet.

 

Damn.

Yep, I'm a big terrorist

Note to would-be Santas with packages yet to send (get to it, slackers!) when the nice lady at USPS asks you if you've got anything fragile in there, do not say "Yup. A bottle of liquor." "What?" "SODA." Didn't work. I had to haul the darn thing to FedEx and pay $13 more, all because of my pernicious plot to combust the world with hot cocoa and cinnamon schnapps. Funnily, at FedEx he didn't even ask: it was like (mumbling to self) "hazardous materials . . ." (makes check mark) "There, you're all set." What a trustworthy face. (It helped that I found the earmuffs.) I would probably make a very good terrorist.

Goin' to get m'eyebrows threaded!

I'm so excited. Now I can be beautiful like her instead of what I usually am, which is beautiful like her:
Actually, that was just an example, but now that I look, geez, those are some serious eyebrows, Alicia. Ha! 1996!

HAT HAIR

Even the giant butterfly clip doesn't help.

The cold is digging in like a fanatic adolescent after a blackhead, and the past few mornings I have been forced to make a painful choice. Wear the cunning earmuffs--in which I'm insouciant, radiant, truly have the world at my feet--or a warmer and less likely to sproing off my head when my hands are full, but seriously debilitating in the follicular region, knitted cap? The decision was made for me when I lost my earmuffs (and really, I don't know why, but I look smashing in those earmuffs) in the tussle of Washington unpacking. So yesterday it was a tight red number--too long for a skullie and too short for a stocking, resembling nothing so much as a knit condom on my head--and today one of those brilliant Andes hats with the earflaps and the braids that hang down. SERIOUSLY WARM. But now my bangs are plastered to my head like those of an eight-year-old child whose mom has a serious Detangler fetish. And let's not even talk about how juvenile yours truly looks in the hats--if I were smaller I'd get taken by the hand crossing streets, as it is, I look like a horribly overgrown child with a boring dress-up box. Oh, and the other thing about bangs in the winter? When you sneeze, they fly straight up, like you were just surprised by a cartoon character going "Ah-OO-ga!" It's [English accent] damn silly.

Blast from the heart's past

I was out at a bar tonight (yup, I'm a mad crazy partier, but also my roommate's boyfriend's band was tearin' it up) and saw this guy whose face pounded me back into the past. He looked like an older, fatter version of King T, this boy I had a crush on for, if I'm honest, many years of college. King T was on the short side, earnest and solemn and a little nerdy, but I, and as I sometimes found out and sometimes just believed, many of my friends fell for him on the DL because he was also insightful and funny and good. In some ways he was manlier at 19 than some people I know will ever be. We called him by a macho nickname because it was so incogruous, but he came to wear it until the hubris really did accrue to him, and he was a cult favorite by any standards after a few months' acquaintance. This year I found out that King T is becoming a priest. Not without a pang, let me tell you. I know he'll be a good one, and it's not like I was really planning to march back there and marry him anyway. but still . . . The decision fits, I guess; if anyone I know is making a decision as a college senior that'll shape the rest of their lives, he'd be the one to do it, and to have it be the right one. I don't see that kind of permanence anywhere else around me. I know I'm not ready for it myself, but that's what worries me; it's like a nation of people who can't digest milk, when it's that that makes your skeleton strong.

I also accidentalDRUNKENly basically told my roomates tonight that I have a little student-crush on one of my grad professors, who was supposed to meet us out (frisson! a new experience for me, drinkin' with the profs) and didn't. Just as freakin' well. But anyway, ooooops. Hey, we're both adults, damn it. I know many kids whose parents met that way, which is actually a little frightening. I love to keep a closed mouth about my matters of the heart (except that I, um, started this blog, but you suckas don't know me after all) but whenever a drop of booze crosses my lips, it's Unasked-for Truth City. The reason I like to keep my stories close is that somehow, your stories never seem to sound as good to your friends as they do to you, naimean? Maybe I just have extremely phlegmatic friends, but I could be all like " . . . and then the puma spit out my left nipple, turned to Madeline Albright and said 'Hey, don't I know you from sophomore lit class?'" and they'd be like this: " . . . . . . . Ha! And what else did you do in England?" It's more satisfying to tell myself my own Big Fish stories. But that said, dag have I got some good ones for you from my escapades in DC. But not for now. Cookies are only for sometimes, and now Elle Daley is for BAID, son.

Reasons I need a camera phone

The VIc Brew and View listed its movies on three marquee lines instead of two, so it reads like one long phrase: "40 Year Old Virgin Wedding Crashers." When I have nightmares about my future . . .