Foreign friends

Today I've got a guest post up at the lovely Baglady's blog while she's away on holiday.

Go have a look.

Summer

I'm guest posting at my Blog Girlfriend's site today while she's away on vacation. Do check it out.

Guest Posting day 6: Mysterg

This guy kept me on edge and waiting for this post until the VERY last minute. Shithead.

I'm actually out of town and about to get ready for my first tailgating/complete college football game day experience (Clemson vs. Florida State). That means tomorrow's guest post will not go up until much later than the others. It's a long drive home. Everyone have a great weekend and please enjoy my last two guest posters and show them some love.

Mysterg always has an entertaining story to tell, it seems. He alternates between posts that are very moving and heartfelt, and posts that are laugh out loud funny. He's even been known to start a debate or two. I knew he'd have no trouble writing about women. Read, enjoy, comment, and then go visit him at his lovely blog: Meditations in an Emergency.



She...


She is the woman who after breaking her foot in three places and spending the night at a hospital where a flasher in a mac kept indecently exposing himself to her, helped me get over the first girl that I ever loved...

She is the woman who got me drunk on a whole bottle of Austrian Schnapps, covered me in make-up, stole my shoes, then sent me to work where I danced on a food counter in front of 100 people before throwing up everywhere...

She is the woman that came to my aid when I overdosed on jalapeno peppers and half-collapsed inside a walk-in fridge whilst foaming at the mouth...

She is the woman that on my 18th Birthday, despite not knowing where I lived, took me home absolutely wasted...even if I did wake up on the doorstep with my front door keys in my hand...

She is the woman responsible for the funniest karaoke moment I've ever witnessed, a duet of the B-52's Love Shack, with the campest, baldest, most deadpan gay guy you can possibly imagine...

She is the woman that taught me all the dance moves to the STEPS version of the Bee Gees song "Tragedy", which led to me being inappropriately touched/violated by a gay guy during a Lost Weekend...

She is the woman that was a good/bad influence on me, my drinking partner in crime who encouraged me to makeout with her best friend on and off for several years, until said friend got married...

She is the woman who gatecrashed a total strangers house party with me, gave me a drunken lap dance in the middle of their living room until we were thrown out, walked her home and put her to bed...then woke up in a shop doorway...

She is the woman who educated me in the ways of the world, including most importantly how to both toast and swear in other languages...

She is the woman who shares in my love of Partridge, Morris, Bailey...

She is the woman who disappears for months or sometimes years at a time, but always returns to me...

She is the woman who reigns as queen of all the redheads that I've ever had the pleasure to know...

She is the woman that has always listened to me instead of waiting for her turn to talk...

She is the woman whose shoulder was there to cry on when my whole world fell apart...

She is the woman whose bed I would crawl into and snuggle with, on and off throughout many years, whenever I needed the warmth and comfort of another human being...

She is the woman who has restored my faith in womankind countless times...

She is the woman that I trust, something I cannot say of anyone else, except perhaps my immediate family...

She is the woman that I would do anything for, no questions asked...

She is the sister I never had...

She is the lover I never took...

She is the wife I will never marry...

She is the mother of the children I will never have...

She is the lifetime companion I will never grow old disgracefully with...

She is the one that I love with all my heart but have never fallen in love with...

She is the friend I will always have...

She is the one that got away...yet I wouldn't have it any other way...

She is the one that I miss...

She...

Guest Posting day 4: The Kid in the Front Row

Today's guest post comes from The Kid in the Front Row. He writes a film blog, but it's much more than that. Inspirational pieces on making your goals a reality, short fictional stories, and random hilarious posts make his site one of the most interesting I've come across. Even though he is currently in New York and I'm sure very busy, he consented to do this for me. I didn't even have to bribe him, though I probably would have. So read on, enjoy, and go visit him when you're done.


The women in my life are great. In fact, they're very loving and affectionate, unfortunately just not towards me. I used to think it was maybe because our interests didn't quite match, or maybe because I'm not quite their type - but now I have a more logical explanation for it - it's because I'm completely ugly and uninteresting. Okay, no. No, I don't want to go with that explanation. How about this one - all the women I've ever met/been with, are completely insane? Yep, I prefer that one. It works for me.


The language of women confuses me. 'I don't love you anymore' often means 'I still really love you' and this one time, 'I love you so much,' I found out, was code for 'I am sleeping with Marcus Dilberry.' How we are meant to decode these things, I'll never know.

Girls have also broken up with me for the most crazy reasons. For example, this one girl, Nia, forgave me when I slept with her sister - but dumped me after I left the bathroom seat up for the 4th night in a row. WHY DOES IT MATTER? It's not like she was going to fall down it and get her ass stuck. Okay, that did happen once, but it wasn't my fault -- she was dieting like crazy (another weird obsessive thing girls do) so it was her own fault she plummeted deep into the mirky depths of the bowl.

I wish I had more positive stories to share with you, and I am trying my best to remember some seedy sex stories. Many of the women I've been with love sex, yet it's still hard to convince them to have it in the same room as me. Again, many weird codes have often come into sexual relationships, like when 'don't worry, it's not too small' has been followed deep into a night of passion with, 'i'm ready when you are.'

I remember one girlfriend who, well, okay, I don't remember her that well, was it Nicole or Nicola? Maybe it was Jenny. Anyways, you can't expect me to remember, it was like two years ago and I've nearly dated a girl since. Anyways, she was always going on about how I should be more of a 'modern' man. so I tried to be more modern, I figured being a modern man was doing the dishes and my share of the cleaning. In the end, she showed me what modern loving really is, she married some man from craigslist.

Women - I can't figure them out, I have no idea what they're thinking - the only thing I know for sure is that they have really nice breasts.

Guest Posting day 3: The "devastatingly handsome" MLS

The guest today truly needs no introduction, but I’ll give him one all the same.

He has been one of my top favorites since I began reading his blog months ago. Humorous and reflective, with a talent for the descriptive that I would sell virtually anything to possess, Mr. London Street’s entries are never dull. He doesn’t shrink away from the controversial and I admire his opinionated nature. I hesitate to make his head any larger than it already is, but I suppose there’s no help for it. I’m honored, even without his having mentioned it (and he did), to be the first recipient of a guest post from him. Actually, it was more like an air-fist pumping HA! So without further ado....

Two nights in the Purple Turtle

Many years ago I met my friend Kirsty for lunch on an anonymous summer day. On the face of it, this was no different from the dozens of other days we had met for lunch, with one exception - this time Kirsty brought her along. We clicked instantly. We spent the whole lunchtime talking as if we’d known each other far longer than we had – far longer, in fact, than I had known Kirsty.

At the end, I went back to my desk to uselessly move work around from one part of an org chart to another in the name of productivity and efficiency. And that afternoon, my email pinged with a message from Kirsty. “She thinks you’re dishy!” it excitedly said. I didn’t think anybody under the age of 50 ever used the word dishy.

Over time, I came to realise that this was exactly the sort of thing she would say.

The emails between us began. Several emails a day – long, chatty emails about everything and nothing. When you first meet someone it’s all there, off in the distance, waiting to be discovered. All those tiny facts that you absolutely have to know when you really like someone – where they went to school, their childhood embarrassments, their favourite bands. What their mother’s like. What they like to eat. What they’re scared of. And then there is that bizarre feeling you get if you‘re really lucky, when you begin to realise that somebody you really like might want to know all those things about you. We have all been there. Those early stages are wonderful, where everything about that person fascinates you, and you want to know it all, piece by piece. All that potential.

The early stages of what though? My jealous, miserable and controlling girlfriend made the answer to that problematic.

The mistakes were all lurking out there, waiting to be made.

Back then I used to escape the house early each morning and hide from everything in Costa Coffee. I had a large coffee and a copy of the Mirror in front of me, along with four cigarettes and once I had finished them all I was almost ready to face my colleagues. It was time to myself to spend not thinking about how my life was going wrong, but then she started joining me. The coffee and the cigarettes still got finished, but the newspaper soon became surplus to requirements.

I never socialised with her outside work, I knew that was against the rules. My girlfriend was busy alienating all the women I was already friends with, initially through conventional means such as extreme chilliness. Later on, she developed more imaginative methods like sending them offensive texts from my phone late at night while pissed, pretending to be me.

So over those months, my life turned into a negative of most people’s lives. My days at work were full of colour, life and ideas and I didn’t want them to end. When I reluctantly shut down my computer I would head back to the house to a greyscale existence of rows and bickering. It felt an awful lot like falling asleep. The only things that were vivid at night were the daydreams and the sadness. The former led inevitably to the latter.

The exception was her leaving do. She was leaving Reading to go study a long way away and we had some drinks in a pub next to a gloriously hideous multi-story car park. Despite the build up, all the action happened elsewhere as my friend Ivor ended up dry humping Kirsty against the side of a transit van in a state of total inebriation. By contrast, she and I seemed like the grown-up chaperones, but none the less in a quiet moment she finally made explicit what had been crackling unspoken between us all summer.

“Something for you to think about when I’m in the frozen North” she said.

Out that back of the Purple Turtle at two in the morning she made a more tangible offer. By this stage we were both quite drunk. She talked about me moving to Newcastle with her, I had absolutely no idea whether she meant it. She invited me to walk her home. I was pretty sure she meant that, and I knew what it really meant.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t be that person.

I had spent that summer wanting to be that person, daydreaming about being that person. But when it came to it, it was beyond me. So I sat there at the bus stop and watched her walking off into the distance, leaving me with only my shortcomings for company. They made for very lousy company.

My girlfriend found out and was furious. She punished me not for what I did but for what I could have done, and I began a protracted stretch living in the worst of all possible worlds. Meanwhile my correspondence with her limped on for a few months but it wasn’t the same. Now she knew this one thing about me, she seemed far less fascinated by everything else. And one day she contacted me from university and told me that our friendship couldn’t continue. It was too painful, she said. I could hardly blame her, since I felt it was no more than I deserved.

If I had liked myself better back then, things would have been very different. For that matter, my whole life could have been very different. But it took somebody else - on another summer’s day, flowing with gin and chemistry - to start to teach me to do that. And this, whatever it is, is not that story.

Life moved on and some time later I got an email from her. “I was looking through some old mails” she told me “and I thought ‘I can’t delete him’.” So we caught up. She filled me in on her news and I told her mine, that I had left that girlfriend and got married to someone I had known for seven months. I decided not to labour the point about the gin and the chemistry. The fact that I had one day done what I couldn’t do back then was in the background of our conversation like static on a phone line, but it was never discussed. I thought it would be okay.

She came down to visit. Kelly liked her and we all got along famously. I had a feeling that something had been mended, that we would be friends now and I was proud of that. Since conversations were no longer forbidden we used to have epic chats on the phone. I usually had to put aside time for them, block out a Saturday afternoon. And then when Kelly and I bought our first place I invited her to the housewarming party. Everyone liked her. My friends liked her. The two guys she picked up in the After Dark and brought back to my living room at 2 in the morning liked her. Even the floor held her in a warm embrace as she drunkenly toppled from her chair, after we had invited her new friends to leave.

And then I ended up sat in my doorstep with her at four in the morning feebly attempting to comfort her as she cried onto my shoulder.

“I always thought it would be me in the end after you split up with Cheryl. I always thought you were my boy.”

What could I tell her? I had always thought that too, but we had both been dead wrong.

The sun was coming up, and she didn’t want me to walk her home. So as before I watched her totter off into the distance but, this time, I went back upstairs to my life.

A curious detail of this saga is that many of the protagonists got back together with their exes. My jealous girlfriend got back together with her ex and now they live in Wolverhampton with a child and presumably a large collection of personality disorders. The man Kelly left for me got back together with his ex. He was decent about it all and I hope he’s happy. And she got back together with her ex too, the ex she was getting over when I first met her many years ago. I think they want children, something I would never have countenanced. I suppose these things have a habit of working themselves out.

The last time I saw her was a few years back on a chilly December night between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when people who wouldn’t normally set foot in Reading, like her, come back to spend time with their family. We went to the Purple Turtle and sat again in that back garden doing what we always did best, talking for hours about everything and nothing. Mended at last, perhaps.

In that setting, with those drinks, I thought it was inescapable that we would get round to discussing the only other time we were in the Purple Turtle together, many years ago. And, at about two in the morning, leaning against a fence and watching the revellers stagger past - younger than us, all their mistakes waiting to be made - we did precisely that.

“I just would have slept with you, you know that?” she said “It wouldn’t have been a relationship.”

I smiled inwardly.

“I know.”

Guest Posting day 2: Jerrod

This second guest poster is one of the most genuinely nice guys I've ever had the opportunity to speak with. Normally I'd say that "nice guy" is like a death sentence, but in this case it's clearly an exception to the rule. His real life posts on blind dates and drive-through employees are hilarious, and even though he's clearly frustrated, he can still find the humor in those situations. Not to mention he was a killer four year old Mr. T. Please welcome Jerrod, from The Yellow Factor:


Let me start off by stating that when I asked Aly to pick a topic, this was probably the one I wanted to do the least. Being habitually single leaves only the relationships that have expired. Past tense. Some good, mostly bad relationships where you are left thinking "What the hell was that?". Those that read me know about my single life...the blind date characters I've endured.

This post will be different. This is a post about the girls that I don't have to impress and they are always with me. This post is about a group of friends. Randomness about some truly great girls. You know, the ones that don't expect anything more from you than your laugh and smile.


The friend that vents to you about serious stuff. They have others to confide in but they choose you.

The friend that knows you the most and despite that information, still hangs around.

The friend that convinces you that someone particular Saran wrapped your car... to the point of helping you get revenge on that person's car.... then confesses that she was in fact responsible in the first place. Mastermind.

The friend that you text with while you're both in the backseat on a road trip. Texting because actual audio conversation has been denied by the driver who just so happens to be out of her mind.

The friend that looks for your shoulder. No matter the time.

The friend that can make a day road trip so fun simply by the music played and how it is sung in the car.

The friend that believes in you so much more than you do yourself.

The friend that got you watching TV shows that you thought you would never ever watch. Ever. Spencer is such a tool, by the way. Whatever.

The friend that can quote TV and movies with you on the spot, just to break up the boring work day.

The friend you know that you will do absolutely anything to make sure she is happy. Absolutely anything.

The friend that you don't have to worry about intentions with. You just be.

I was told a bit ago that I have such heart for my friends. I may be picky with relationships but one thing I know is that I've got some great friends in my corner. The kind you will protect with your life. Now if they would only introduce me to one of their single friends.... jerks.

Guest Posting day 1: Mo.Stoneskin

Today is the first day of Penis Week - my all male guest posting extravaganza. I'm overworked, underpaid, and I've misplaced my blogging mojo. What better way to take a break than to showcase some of the best male bloggers out there? They'll be talking about the women in their lives, past or present...good, bad, or ugly.

First up to bat is Mo.Stoneskin. His humorous tales of strangers and their quirks are a treat to read every Monday. Occasionally he gives us a story about his own life, like the following, and it's just as entertaining. Read it. Love it. Then go visit him at his place and beg him to post more often.


I slouched lazily with a can of Stella in my hand, casually held at a slight tilt. I rotated it slowly, the gold top reflecting images from the TV and light from the fish tank. Fascinating, could have done that for hours. Nothing compares to watching shadows of fish dancing across a can of lager. I suppose fish swimming in my can of lager would be pretty awesome, though it might spoil the taste and cause the fish to get rowdy.

"Can I tell you about my fantasy?" I asked.

My wife looked up from her cookery book and raised an eyebrow. "Go on," she said.

Fantasies, fetishes, quirky personal preferences. Fascinating subjects aren't they? Everyone fantasises at some level, but it is tricky to determine where fantasies come from or how they develop. It has been suggested that they express an aspect of our unconscious and often incorporate fetishes, some of which are understandable. Heels and boots for example, what man doesn't love them? But some are just weird, especially if they involve feet. Some people have a foot fetish, but how weird is that? Feet are disgusting, I've long believed that feet are the most revolting part of the human body. Grotty, cheesy, skanky, stinky, I just don't get it, what could possibly cause a foot fetish to develop? Overexposure to cheese as a child? Unhealthy proximity to a pedicure clinic? But anyway, that's just me, and it is healthy to talk about these things with your partner.

My wife waited patiently. Fun-loving criminal that she is I sensed surprise. Surprise and scepticism. Married for five years, I suppose she thought she knew me as well as she possibly could.

"Well," I said, glancing down at her cookery book, "when we were kids we used to have roast lamb most Sundays. We only got a couple of slices each and it was never enough. I've always fantasised about buying a huge leg of lamb, dragging it home, roasting it and then scoffing the lot. It would be the most incredible moment of my life."

I have never seen her laugh so much.

Peter Pan syndrome and Penis Week

This morning when I left my house at 6:30am my mother stopped me at the door and said, “You do know there’s a towel on your head, right?”

I think that’s a pretty good indication of how today will go. I have my absent minded hat on and it’s blue and white striped terry cloth.

Anyway, isn’t my best friend lovely? I was worried that she might tell an embarrassing story or make fun of my crush on her brother, but there wasn’t one snide remark. I didn’t edit her entry at all...except to put spaces in because I’m anal like that. (No butt jokes please children.) AND not once did she call me a lesbian! Bravo, Rachel. (Haven't read it yet? Do.)

We’ve both been moaning lately about how boring our lives have become. Just the other day I called her on my way home from work and our conversation was a little disheartening.

“What did you do today?”

“Well...” She launched into a list of household duties and internet rubbish. Then came the kicker...

“Oh! There’s this pan that had eggs stuck on it for days. No one has been able to get them off, not even my mom when she came to visit. But today, I scrubbed and scrubbed that bitch and I FINALLY GOT THEM ALL OFF! I was standing there, grinning over my accomplishment, and then...I wasn’t. Because all of a sudden I realized this is the most excited I’ve gotten in a long time, and it’s all over scraping a fucking pan of eggs!”

I howled with laughter. Then I told her about my own excitement.

“We borrowed this really kick ass carpet shampooer. I was tired when I got home from work and I didn’t want to do it, but we had to return it the next day. So, I filled the bastard up with the soap stuff and water, threw all my shit on my bed and started shampooing. And for some reason, I got all hyped up. I was all “OUT DAMN SPOT!” and “HAHA!” and “HEY YOU GUYS! LOOK AT THIS SHIT! LOOK HOW WHITE THIS IS!” Dear gawd...what’s happened to us?”

She was laughing. “I don’t know.”

“I have nothing else pertinent to talk about. I’ll call you later if I have an interesting run in with the laundry.”

“Ok, later.”

And that was that.

Honestly! What have we become? Is that what adults do – get excited about cleaning? Am I doomed to discuss things like politics and the weather? Would it be cliché of me to go all Peter Pan and declare war on adulthood? Sigh. Probably.

We used to do crazy things!

Like climb into parked vehicles that weren’t ours and talk our way out of getting arrested for it, dance in the fountain downtown, yell belligerently at cars driving by with their windows rolled down, dance with hot foreigners and maybe sleep with them and maybe laugh at each other through the walls because things are a little too vocal on one side and not vocal enough on the other, wear ridiculous outfits on St. Patty’s Day and get so drunk by noon that when they vacate the area for a tornado you wonder where everyone has gone while you were in the bathroom, pull over the car every 10 yards so one of you can puke but on the 3rd stop come back to the car and declare you must go another 5 yards because a couple is sitting on a bench right in the puking area and you’re positive they are getting engaged, get tattooed together, have ridiculous contests that no one else can ever know about, attempt to attack a flock of geese, do the worm and tell the guy that said you can’t dance that he has a receding hair line and sucks at life then do the Pee Wee Herman off the dance floor and hit on his friend, make out with each other and find pictures of it the next day and destroy the evidence, trick a fireman into believing he’s getting a threesome then drug him and crawl around on hands and knees looking for pictures that were probably deleted ages ago but leave laughing because one of you had to dress up like a dominatrix for no apparent reason, teach the kid to tell her grandma she wants to go to the liquor store and get wasted, put I’m Bringing Sexy Back on repeat for 45 minutes and refuse to change it when people complain and instead make them line up and slap your ass.

Yeah, we were cool once.

If I’m going by the conversation from last night, maybe things will get...better. Ok, maybe not.

We talked about the Halloween party (unfortunately she has to work and can’t be there), the costume I chose, what she was going to dress up as for work, my conquest plans for Nate, and her recent drunken night with her boyfriend.

Apparently they ran into a group of his friends and she regaled them with stories of how enormous his cock is.

About the time she was telling me this; I was attempting to put on my robe and holding the phone with my shoulder. My face hit the speaker button and out into the living room came, “...HIS HUGE COCK! IT’S MY HUGE COCK AND YOU BITCHES CAN’T HAVE IT. THE COCK...”

Giggling like an idiot, I finally managed to take it off speaker. My mom sat on the couch gawking at me, which made me laugh even harder.

“What in the hell is that girl talking about”, she asked.

“Her boyfriend’s cock, obviously”, I said.

She rolled her eyes and from the next room the kid yelled, “GOOO COCKS!”

Mom glared at me. I shrugged and went outside to finish talking. At least the kid was associating it with football...

Anyway, maybe one day when we aren’t both broke and tired from work...we’ll got out and get into trouble again. I do so love trouble.

In other news:

I’ll be taking next week off from blogging. I’ll still read and comment where I can, but I need a break...and possibly I need to get some work done. Eh, whatever.

Fear not! Next week I’ve asked some of my favorite male bloggers to take over. It’s sure to be interesting. Just...don’t let a week of yummy men make you forget what’s important around here: Me.

I’ll announce the line up and the topic by the end of the week. (Fellas, remember the deadline is Sunday.)



Oh! AND I just reached 100 followers! WOOT! That's exciting business. Maybe I should do something to mark the occasion? Suggestions? Other than sexual favors please...I'm far too busy. Anyway, welcome to you new folks who have yet to comment. Have a look around and feel free to give me money.

Oh, and one more thing. Those of you that don't have a blog, no picture, and just one letter for your name....say, my mom's initial....who are you? Seriously. Creepy....

Thank you. Come again.