Fake Dates

When I was a sophomore in college I went on my first Fake Date. It was with a techy theatre kid named Josh, who ended up becoming one of my favorite men on the whole planet. We sat in a coffee shop and talked for over 5 hours. Josh can talk. 5 hours is nothing.

He was kind of my first not so gay gay best friend. A guy who I temporarily fell madly in love with, who I often questioned in areas larger than his sexuality and who has been with me through thick and thin.

Josh attempted to break into my apartment on an evening of drama with some random ex who now bares little memory in the shadow of Josh, my Lancelot. He brought me a copy of "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," what has become my favorite book of all time and wrote a passage in the front that I still read anytime I start to doubt the beauty of the world.

He may have been the first and he is still one of the best but there have been quite a few fake dates since then, fake dates which always trump real ones.

I am a glutton for guy friends. No offense to my girl friends but I love, love, love a good night with the men in my life, shooting the shit about lord knows what, feeling loved and safe and comfortable in my skin.

I suck at dating. They all tell me this. I turn into girly Lyndsey, who is insecure and fragile and who would never rip them a new one the way their friend does.

"I hate it!!" I screamed at V over celebratory PBRs on our first Fake Date night since his return from the south pacific. (I think I broke his heart when I told him I had hit the threshold on my love of all things PBR - just goes to show all good things must end.)

"Why can't it be like this!! I want this - I mean not this but like this with sex."

But that right there is where a great fake date always takes a nose dive into crap. Meg Ryan may not have got it at first but the sex always gets in the way.

Rule number one: Don't let them fall in love with you. Rule number two: Don't fall in love with them.

If I could go back and keep those best guy friends who got all weird when tingly feelings got in the way I would do it in a heart beat. I miss them.

"Lyn, that is the risk you have to take." I could say who said this but it wouldn't matter. All of my fake date boys who have made it through the gauntlet of dating with me and have come out the other side all say the same thing. "Don't you want to find someone to be up to you knees in wing sauce with?"

"Eww." Wait, maybe I made the wing sauce comment and they said "eww". It is hard to remember at this point.

I love friendship. I love guys. They are great. I just haven't figured out how not to be a moron when you pull the fake label off of dating.

Hmm....

I should be packing. Or cleaning. Or working. Or doing one of the million things on my to-do list that I MUST accomplish before I take off for a month of sun and creativity.

I am procrastinating.

Thinking about life and love and killing time.

Do you ever think that things happen for a reason? (Cliche I know. I will pretend you are not mocking right me now.)

My high school english teacher made us do a research paper on our theories of life... destiny versus free will. He was the same man who gave me detention every day for refusing to tuck in my shirt. Clearly I had made my choice.

Sitting here, procrastinating, having collapsed on the couch after spending the better part of the hour dancing around my apartment in my underwear, philosophizing on all that has been and could be, I am not so sure.

If we wove all the little moments of life together like the quilt my grandmother made me before she died which has since been lost, all those moments of love and loss, conviction and collapse, I bet it all those might make sense.

And in the future when we choose to jump or we hesitate, maybe those moments will all make sense too.

I am seriously overworked... and obviously a little delirious and even reading this back to myself I am pretty sure that it is just a bunch of ramblings. But I am going to post it anyway - because I am exhausted and hoping someone else will regale me with their theories of life for a change.

Come on...fill me in...I'll take notes.

Journals

From the days when it was easier to paste the words down than to say them out loud.

The opening line

"Let's make a deal. You don't ask if what I am saying is true and I promise not to leave out one single dirty detail."

Please don't fire me

There is terror and then there is finding out your boss reads your blog. Normally this news would just run a close second to finding out that your bible/gun toting grandfather figured out that you shacked up with a dirty hippie, but when you are confronted with it pre-coffee, sans Maybelline war paint, it easily catapults to number one in theline of trauma inducing realizations.

My blog is soooo not job approved. The fact that he said he liked it or rather that it "was me" didnt make me less horrified. My boss read my man-bashing ramblings and therefor must think I hate his kind. I don't I swear!!

I curse, I judge, I talk about lots of things that are not sanctioned by office politics. And as I type these very words I know that someone, somewhere who sees me in my attempt to be a grown up from the hours of 8:30 to 6 is getting a whole different perspective.

I am a little mortified. Flattered that someone was interested enough to read my ramblings but hoping to dear lord something I say in this, my place of digital catharsis, doesnt offend someone.

I am pretty sure I need to curb my use of the word fuck.

They're having a baby!

I just found out that two of my best friends from college, are
pregnant. Well more specifically, she is pregnant but he's the dad.

I know this sounds crazy but I knew!

I haven't talked to them since last summer. They are the type of
amazing friends where event though we don't talk that often I know I
could drop in on them tomorrow and it would be like no time ever
passed.

They were next door neighbors in the apartment building where I spent
most of my more blurry evenings camped out on her couch. We were all
friends and when they fell in love it took me by surprise.

But it just made sense. He adores her. She is amazing. And their
wedding was just as beautiful as they are.

I love them so much and a couple of weeks ago I started thinking about
how I hadn't talked to them in a while. I was really missing then and
I just thought, I think they are going to have a baby.

It was like my first moment of psychic intuition ever, even though I
guess it isn't that psychic since she is pretty far along.

They are having a baby!!!! Oh my god we are grown ups. Well, they
are grown ups. It is just the most amazing news!

--
Lyndsey Ogle
213.804.3550
www.lyndseyogle.com

Courage

I can’t sleep. I am getting ready to take off for a month to write, to write something. And I am completely freaked out, which just assures me of what many have long suspected - I truly am f-ed in the head.

I have been awarded a house on the beach for a month and the freedom to create. This is an amazing opportunity and yet I am terrified that when I get there and I flip open my laptop to resurrect this monster of a manuscript, I will have nothing.

I have spent the last hour or so scanning over old photos of Moscow, where I got over heartbreak, where I learned to be a badass, who could flip and bend and scale tall buildings in a single bound...almost.

The badassedness may have since passed, but there under grey skies and perpetual snowfall, I started to find the me I am today.

On my last night in Moscow, the Russians told me I had found my “charm” - that illusive thing that made me, me. All I needed, Natasha said, was the courage hold on to it.

“COURAGE, WOMAN!!” Do whatever you have to do to find - and keep - your courage.

My life changed that day, in the mahogany paneled office of Anatoly Smelianski.

I don’t know. Maybe that is too dramatic, too nostalgic of a time when I was sad and broken but learning to be free.

I wrote a book about that time and it feels like so long ago that when I read it, it is hard to relate. Was it really that life changing or was it just something everyone goes through and I just happened to do it in a leotard at the Moscow Art Theatre?

The girl on the page feels like a stranger.

....And then I get scared. I feel insecure and vulnerable and I close my eyes and I am right back there, houndstooth coat, red bag, teary-eyed.

It’s not the same, I know that, this is a whole other kind of freaked out but I wish that on

the moments like this, when I am worried and channeling the darker parts of my Moscow memories, that they were here, my Russians, challenging me, daring me to be brave.