Perplexed

Grades were posted today, so barring a failing grade on my 3L paper, I will actually be getting a diploma next week.

(Amusing sidenote about my 3L paper, by the way: on Tuesday, I got an email from my advisor while I was sitting in Barbri class, which simply said, "hi - could you give me a quick call - nothing important." When I called him about an hour later, he said, "Oh, yeah, don't worry, I found it." Found what? "I couldn't remember if you'd given me a hard copy of your paper or not, but I found it." Um, I only gave you a hard copy. Do you want an electronic copy? "No, no, it's fine. Great. Thanks." Mind you, this is 2 days before grades are posted, which means that grades were due last week.)

I got a B+ in admin, because I get a B+ in every traditional law school class, no matter how long or little I study, so I am relieved, but not surprised. I got a big, fat A in my global governance class, which surprises me a little, since that would mean that my crazy proposals to leverage Southeast Asia trade relations, use anti-American sentiment and accept China's designation of North Korean refugees as "economic migrants" as part of a plan to help North Korean refugees in China actually sounded sane to my professor. He might have just been amused, though, and given me an A for the sheer fun of it -- he seemed freewheeling enough for that. (North Korea should still DIE, though.)

But here's where I'm perplexed: The Turtle gave me an A- for both his class and the clinical. Now, an A- ain't shabby, true. But he was so effusive in his praise throughout the term, I don't know what to make of the minus. What could have I done to get the straight out A, if he wrote things like "your ethical and professional values were on shining display this semester ... excellent job of educating yourself ... demonstrated a high level of independence, initiative, and reliability" on my final evaluation? I mean, really, what more was I supposed to do? Boo.

Sigh. I've gotten three flat out As during school: my history class at the grad school, my governance class at the school of government, and my clinical last term at the state civil rights agency. Not to beat a dead horse again, but -- what the heck, let's flog it one more time for the Gipper: it's so telling that 2 of them were classes I took outside the law school. Those 2 were the ones I enjoyed the most, too.

Emotional temperature today: still feel like tears are just underneath the surface, somehow. I don't know what's what, but it's not good. No. Wait. I DO know what's what: I'm discouraged about funding, stressed about graduation, annoyed with Barbri, sleep-deprived, and frustrated with Scientist. That seems like enough.

Oh, and speaking of Scientist, there's been no contact (from either side) with him since midday Monday.

Honestly, I'm this close to throwing in the towel with both The Turtle and Scientist (who, amusingly, have the same first name. and blue eyes. and both run. and are both tall and thin. huh) and just moving to New York. I can't deal with this state of indecision.

13 seconds

Mathgirl and I were walking to Barbri class this morning, grousing about commencement, the $75 rental fee for gowns that apparently stain your clothes if it rains or if you sweat, and various other grumpy topics, when we realized that it all comes down to about 13 seconds.

The ceremony's about 2 hours long. There are 550 graduates this year. We'll each get 13.09 seconds to bask in our diploma'd glory before the next person gets called.

Of course, as bigbro pointed out, there's bound to be speechifying and such, so it's probably closer to 5 or 6 seconds.

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Dance of the parasites

I know, I know, it's a singularly hostile and ugly name for fetuses, but let's face it -- it's not like it's a symbiotic relationship. Even so, I apologize. It's not because I won't love the babies of my friends and family -- I will! I do! And I'll lie very convincingly if I don't!

But really -- today a high school friend had his first child AND I discovered that Fearless T is in that maternal way. Def and Stave are due in August, and of course, The Nephew was born in January. Suddenly, it's babies, babies, all round, and it's just a leetle, teeny bit creepy.

And because it's always about me, in the end (yes, me and Meredith Grey, together, forever, as one), I just have to say -- congratulations, my lovelies. I am not envious at all, since it's well known that I don't get along with humans under the age of, oh, 25 or so, but there is a teeny, leetle part of me that sighs, because here is another thing that so many of my loved ones are experiencing, that I am nowhere near.

And now, I'm going to be wise, and go to bed at 10:38, and be rested when I wake up, inevitably, at 5:30.

In love

It's a quarter to midnight and I will be undoubtedly paying for this late night tomorrow, but I had to put down a little of what I am feeling.

The Korean Team is here.

My dad, his mother, his aunt, his sister, and his friend -- 5 in all came off the 16 hour flight from Seoul through SF here to Crimson City, and when I saw them all rounding the corner in the washed out light of the airport, my heart leapt.

This was the first plane ride my great-aunt has ever taken. It is the first time she has ever been out of Korea. And there she was, hobbling toward me on her bad leg, a wide smile crinkling her face.

My grandmother -- good-natured, generous, indulgent, autocratic, live-and-let-live, pushy, laughing -- enduring the better part of a day on a plane with her bad back, with that same smile.

My aunt, who lost a son to a construction accident and a husband to cancer, the owner of a fine, sly sense of humor and a pragmatic busy-ness about her, chattering about how thin I'd gotten.

Uncle Know-All, my dad's best friend, here to help drive the RV -- brusque, hurried, rude, generous to a fault, filled with love for my dad.

And my dad -- the irrepressible, unreliable charmer who is somehow able to cut to the front of lines, get pastries from random hotel staff at 9 at night, and talk his way past immigration with dubious documents every six months -- looking tired but pleased to see me, on a trial run of his dream, where he roams the country traveling from temple to temple in his RV...

I laughed with delight when I saw that half of my grandmother's suitcase was food, and a separate huge box was also full of food, and when we were all sitting in one of the hotel rooms eating the instant rice, the ramen and the banchan (side dishes) that my grandmother had packed -- along with a rice cooker, chopsticks and utensils, mind you -- I laughed again, with the sheer, delirious joy of the absurdity and the forethought and the care and pragmatic "yeah, I brought my entire kitchen with me. What? What?" attitude of it all.

But after I had laughed, I also teared up a little bit, thinking of them making this trip to see me graduate from Crimson Law School. Crimson may occupy an important part of American popular culture and imagination, but the effect is magnified in Korea, where so much importance is placed on education and hierarchy. (I was once asked to autograph a restaurant owner's autograph book once because I went to Crimson.)

The Korean Team has never asked me for anything, which was easy enough when I was growing up half a world away, but even when I lived with and around them, all they did was give and give. My aunt came bearing envelopes of money from my cousins and my other aunts and uncles; my grandmother came with a wad of cash that hurt me to take; and my great-aunt, who has very little money, came bearing that wide, wide smile, finally on a great adventure out in the big, vast world.

It hurt my heart to leave them at the hotel (they'll be picking up the RV tomorrow and gallivanting around the Northeast and Canada until graduation day) tonight. While waiting for a cab, my dad said, "You make them so happy. That's good." And so I'm glad I stuck it out (which maybe was never really in question), in part because the Korean Team is so proud and so happy about that $80,000 diploma. I can't cook and I can't speak Korean and I can't do much of anything that's worth a damn, but I can give them that diploma, and this experience, and in a way, it was all worth it for that moment tonight at the airport, where I walked toward five people just brimming over with love.

Soggy

If I were to be tortured via sleep deprivation, I would break as easily as I imagine Nicole Ritchie's arm would break if stepped upon by an unhappy, flatulent, obese hippopotamus.

You see? I can't even make up a decent metaphor. I mean, why the flatulence? What does that add to the imagery? Nothing. I suck.

Yesterday I went on a day hike with Scientist at a ski resort area in the western part of the state. It was a good hike -- lots of rocks to climb up and down over, long stretches of fairly flat path to stroll along, clearly marked signs, and a pretty if not stunning view from the top. We brought sandwiches, sweated profusely, got bitten by mosquitoes, and did the whole thing in about half the time the website estimated it should take. It was great.

Afterwards, I suggested we sit by the artificial lake and the two artificial swans bobbing in it for a while and rehydrate. The grass was soft, the sun was shining, the breeze was refreshing -- it was extremely pleasant. I started playfully poking Scientist in his side, the way you do when you like someone and want to annoy them, just a little bit, so that they ultimately grab you to stop the poking and maybe give you a kiss to distract you from trying to annoy them. You know.

Scientist doesn't like being tickled, which I didn't know, and he reacted by rather vehemently wrestling back, which ultimately resulted in him accidentally kicking me. The horseplay stopped after that. He apologized. He said he didn't like being tickled because his brother used to do that to him as a kid.

He was genuinely sorry for having kicked me, and I understood completely that the poking brought up unpleasant memories, but I started feeling upset. I got up and took a walk around the fake pond with the fake swans because I seriously thought I was going to cry, and somewhere around where two Canadian geese were looking suspiciously at me, wondering if I was going to come attack and try to eat their four goslings, I figured it out -- I felt I'd shown some affection toward Scientist and had just gotten rejected.

Did this make sense? No. He didn't mean to kick me, obviously. He explained why he had that reaction. And he tried to be cute about it afterwards, gently poking me after we stopped horsing around. But I felt hurt.

On the way home, the ever-ready Parliament of hkLand called an emergency session and started in:

"We feel rejected!"

"Oh, puh-leeeeeez. He explained, didn't he? He apologized, didn't he? Stop being such a little drama queen."

"We don't care about his explanations and we don't give a flying hoot about his apologies! He should have been abject! He should have smothered us with kisses! He should be grateful that we show him affection at all!"

"He probably is! You are being completely irrational. You tickled him; he doesn't like being tickled -- that's that. Stop reading into everything!"

"He doesn't care about us! He rarely shows us affection! Why isn't he more affectionate with us?"

"He's just a Y-chromosome carrying twit, is why, you muddle-headed morons. They don't think about that stuff! It doesn't mean anything!"

"A freakin' copout -- you know as well as we do that he's a SNAG [Sensitive New Age Guy]. They DO think about that stuff. It means something."

While it was very noisy in my head, it was very quiet in the car, and the SNAG picked up on it. "What's wrong?" he asked. And with one faction of Parliament screaming "Tell him!" and the other hissing "Work out your own irrationalities and leave him out of it!" I did the easy thing and said, "It's not important. It's nothing."

At his house, we dithered about what to do -- take a nap? Play Scrabble? I could see he was tired, so we opted for the former. Except that it was daytime still, and that meant I could not fall asleep, naturally. So I lay there, feeling worse and worse, for half an hour, until I just couldn't take it, and got up.

"I think I'm going to go home."

"Just like that?"

"What do you want me to do?" I asked while sliding off the bed.

"I don't know -- a little dance?"

I came around and stood by his side of the bed. "I'm in a strange mood, and I don't want to subject you to it," I said in my last-ditch effort to be an adult.

"Talk to me," he said.

I started crying. He pulled me back onto the bed and held me, which made me cry even harder, until it was a total all-out bawling session. I put my hand over my eyes. He got up and got tissues, and put them in my other hand.

"I can't help you if you don't talk to me," he said helplessly. "Talk to me. Tell me what's wrong. Is it me? Is it because you want me to be someone I'm not?" (What a strange comment to make, no?)

"I'm just so tired," I sobbed. "I'm so tired of having no place to go."

Scientist is a good listener. And after listening to me talk about various things for a while, he started tearing up himself. "You aren't the only one who gets sad sometimes," he explained. "Or lonely." (I found this disconcerting -- was he crying in sympathy, then? Or thinking of his own problems?)

A little later, I finally broached the topic of what happened earlier that day, explaining that I felt I'd extended some affection and been rejected. And, somewhat horrifyingly, he said quietly, "It's true that I haven't show as much affection toward you as I could. I hope you don't think I'm not affectionate."

"That makes me feel worse," I said. "You're saying that you don't want to be affectionate with me."

"No," he protested, "I do feel affection for you. I care about you. I think you're an amazing person. But I can't show affection unless I have some degree of certainty about where the relationship is. And I have some doubts about it."

I looked up at the ceiling. "Do you want to talk about them?" I asked resignedly.

"We can if you want to."

"If it's going to be a list of my faults, I don't think I want to hear it."

"It's not -- it's mostly me. And about us. But not you -- you don't have any faults."

I was silent for a while. He offered to make some dinner while I rested, and I agreed. I read while he made a rather tasty pasta dish, and we ate companionably, without talking much.

After dinner, I felt much better, and I thanked him. "For dinner," I said, "and for being my friend."

"My pleasure. On both counts."

I put an arm around his neck and absently started stroking his hair. A minute later: "Don't do that."

I pulled my arm away and sat back. "Okaaaay. I'm just not going to touch you."

"No," he explained, "it just feels like you're picking things out of my hair, and I'm all sweaty and sticky..."

"Fine," I said, and promptly started crying again.

"No, no," he said coaxingly, "I thought the crying part of the evening was over."

"Can I just have one bad day?" I exclaimed heatedly. "It's not even one day -- it's one evening! Can I just have one bad evening?"

He murmured assent, and I cried on his shoulder (again), and we had another discussion about affection and the lack thereof, which I don't remember and was probably very boring. I do remember telling him, "You're so ... nice to me. When I'm upset. I don't understand how you can be so kind but withhold so much from me at the same time."

"I just haven't been able to overcome my ... inhibitions yet."

A bit later, after asking if I wanted to stay with him, he took me home. On the way, he asked again if I was sure I didn't want to stay with him, and I cried some more. Finally, in Mathgirl's driveway, I kissed him on the cheek and said, "Thank you for the ride. And for dinner. And for being so nice earlier."

"You can talk to me anytime," he said. "I mean that."

I nodded, about to start crying again, and he unbuckled his seat belt and reached out to pull me in for another hug, but I resisted. "Stop it. Don't do that."

"Why?"

"It's too confusing. I don't understand how you can pick and choose like that."

He paused. "Am I bad for you?"

"Maybe," I said. And then I got out of the car, and without looking back, went inside.

All this time, we've been talking about how Scientist is trying to develop healthy relationship habits. Trying to have a healthy relationship. Isn't it funny how, in the end, it looks like Scientist is unhealthy for me? What am I trying to do here? Can I really still be punishing myself for John? Do I have some heretofore unknown proclivity to seek out men who don't really want me?

Sigh. And it's 3:30, and I still haven't started studying Barbri.

Bliss

You know what bliss is?

It's waking up after getting enough sleep and lolling in bed for an extra 45 minutes reading Calvin and Hobbes.

It's then getting up and "going to the gym" by walking down two floors to the basement, where an elliptical and a 57-inch TV await.

It's eating breakfast with friends and then going with them to clean their old apartment, on the way to which you happen upon a great sidewalk sale from the running store on the ground floor of their building and from which you pick up a jogbra for 50% off.

It's eating leftovers at your new, temporary residence with your landlord friends, who urge you to eat anything in the house, please.

It's taking a shower in your landlord friends' marble-finished bathrooms.

It's straightening out all the boxes and paper and crap that have been scattered all over the bedroom since moving last weekend.

Bliss even includes unpacking the two 14-pound boxes of Barbri books, putting the empty boxes away, and stacking up the 9 volumes on your desk, and you know why? Because bliss is tidiness, organization, and not feeling hopelessly defeated by the mess and chaos from physically uprooting yourself in the midst of stupidly busy end-of-school-and-into-lawyerland times.

Someone paid it forward... to me!

Sometimes, you just need someone to be nice to you. Like when you're tired and wacked out from lack of sleep, and you haven't opened any of your Barbri books, and you're worried about feuding family factions on graduation day, and you're meeting all kinds of wrongful negativity about funding for your last-ditch effort to avoid corporate law whoredom -- that's when a few nice words really have a huge effect, you know?

So yesterday, two nice things happened. They were small, but I was in that place where everything seemed very big and bad, so the fact that (1) Friend (yeah, that Friend) sat with me at lunch and saw that I was very, very tired, and set out a plan for the afternoon for me and bought me a bubble tea was very, very nice and made me happy. And then (2), when the Neener sat with me at dinner and said, "You're dealing with lots and lots of stressful things, you poor dear. What will make you happier? Let's do that," I looked at her with gratitude, because sometimes you just need some recognition that things are a little bit, just a wee bit, crazy and overwhelming.

Resurfacing

Last Friday was the day I turned in my last law school assignment. So this journey of a thousand mind-bogglingly boring cases and classes is over, and -- barring the extreme displeasure of the grading gods -- I will be done with the overall wretched experience of getting a law degree in a few weeks when I walk away with my diploma.

It was anticlimactic to turn in the paper; my advisor, with whom I have exchanged at most 20 words in person, looked at me as if he were wondering, "Do I know you? Should I know you? If I should know you, how well should I know you?" and brusquely took my written product with a thanks and a "looking forward to it." I went home to the dorm and took an hour break (watched Desperate Housewives online over food) and then set to packing up my room.

In the pouring rain, Scientist and Mathgirl's husband and I crammed all my stuff into three cars and then it was done. Three years of living on campus, gone. The building where I lived the past two years will be a heap of rubble before long (that was why I had to move the same day I turned in my paper), and so even the physical place where I slept and studied and ate will be gone.

Moving is exhausting, even with the help of friends, and I was tres tired indeed last weekend, and thus probably not much fun to be around at The French King's wedding, which was emotionally moving during the ceremony, and light and fun and relaxed during the brunch immediately afterwards. The rain, which had been non-stop for days, stopped an hour or so before the ceremony, and then after the brunch, the sun broke out like a benediction. It was lovely. The French King did a nice thing for me by seating me next to the only single man on the guest list -- trouble was, his Queen also did a nice thing for her single female friends by doing the same. It made me laugh on the inside.

On Monday, I started bar review classes at 9 am, which was not very pleasant. The meeting I had afterwards at 2 pm was not much better, but the dinner I attended at 6 was very nice indeed; both events were for Student Org #1 and involved people I enjoy being around, but the meeting also included some blowhards on the faculty whereas the dinner was just celebrating longtime members of the group.

After the dinner, I decided to go grocery shopping, and because I had a car at my disposal, I traipsed through the aisles loading my cart up with heavy, ungainly packages that I would never have bought if I had to carry it home on my back and shoulders. Canned foods! A gallon of soy milk! Whee!

After dropping off the groceries, I went over to Scientist's house at his invitation, where we did not talk about our relationship, glory be. But for whatever reason, I was tired and sad, and he could tell, and he said: "Sometimes when I'm tired I get sad too." I appreciated that nonjudgmental validation. I also appreciated his next statement, which was: "Have you tried omega - 3s? I have some you can have." I agreed to take some, expecting that he'd give me a handful in a plastic bag; no, he gave me a bottle of 180 pills, plus -- this was what really made me smile -- a gummy worm. Hee! It was sweet. I may have to reattach that adjective to his pseudonym here. The next day, he emailed to see how I was doing and whether I'd tried the pills. Aw.

I took a couple hours yesterday to read a novel by myself on campus, and the solitude and absorption helped relieve the terrible fatigue of the past few days. And then Resident Evil and I went to see Waitress. Nathan Fillion, call me, honey!

Sorry this has been a totally boring ass catalogue of events for the past few days, but I have been busy and tired beyond belief (it doesn't help that I wake up at 7 am because of the light pouring into this room in the mornings), and today was the first day in weeks where I wasn't studying, writing, moving, helping someone else move, packing, unpacking, or going to meetings up the wazoo. The first day in weeks I feel like I can actually breathe. There is an end to the madness... and I wish I could say I was almost there, but I now have to really start the search for funding, and study for the bar, and... and... and it never really ends, does it? I feel like I've been saying for years that after the next deadline, the next step, things will get a little easier and I'll get to sort of relax a bit, but somehow that never seems to be the case.
It just stays busy and you squeeze fun and reflection and friends into all the crevices where you're not doing something you have to do.

Well. Constant reflection makes hk a dull girl anyway.

DONE

Done done done done done done done done done done done done.

I win!

The sex is back on!

Plus, the concession to try things my way, for a change (i.e., trying all those crazy wacky things like doing activities together, meeting each other's friends, hanging out more often, and -- let's not forget -- sex).

Ha!

12,000 words!

Yes, the equivalent of 40 double-spaced pages, and the entirety of my script. Whee!

Parts of it are a little precious, parts of it are unbelievable (but hey, people, it's television), and parts of it, frankly, are atrocious and total crap writing. But -- 12,000 words!

Now, I'll put it aside for a night, polish it up tomorrow, revise my format, and turn it IN, baby.

Maybe I CAN pack up my room before Friday night! (My official move-out deadline is midnight on Friday night.)

And then there were 10

Ten pages, that is. Left to write, so that the script is a nice, round 60 pages long. Which is, because of my amateurish indentations and such, is actually probably more like 90 minutes of television. Which, as it turns out, is just fine, because I've been stressing about turning in only a pilot and not a pilot AND another episode, and a special 90 minute pilot kind of bridges the gap, right? Right?

I'm finding that I am unable to sit in the carrels and long desks and seminar rooms that have been my usual places to write papers and study during my sentence here -- it's just too much seriousness and stress -- and so I've been fluttering around the university. Right now, as for the past two mornings, I am somewhat uncomfortably ensconced in a huge beanbag. Yes, incredible as it seems, there is a hallway at Crimson, connecting two buildings, that sports 14 oversized vinyl beanbags. I don't know if it's used much during the school year, but it's been very quiet here the past two days, and it's just relaxed enough to allow the right side of my brain to sigh softly and arise without too much complaint from the slumber to which it has become accustomed in law school.

The other place I have been writing is in the undergrad libraries. Despite being stuffed with studious undergrads, they are so much less stressful than the law school library. I enter the college libraries and see the kids and think, "Aw. Cute little undergrads." And sometimes, upon seeing a not-so-little but very cute undergrad, I think, "Mm hm! Hot little undergrads!" (Apparently, I have become a lech in my 30s. I'm okay with it.)

Sigh. Everyone is moving out of my dorm, and the campus is slowly getting emptier and emptier. The birds are chirping and figuring out how to get shiny things into their nests, and the trees are saying damn, it's finally time to bust out the leaves, and it's the exact wrong time for any tests to be taken and any papers to be written, is what.

It's also the exact wrong time to be mucking around in state-of-relationship land, especially when the talks never reach any kind of satisfactory conclusion. Tonight I've arranged to see an increasingly less cute non-undergrad, to talk about this thing we are doing. My question is, is the thing we are doing dating, or is it breaking up? If he says he doesn't want a fling, but he's also got commitment issues, then what in tarnation IS he doing? And, more importantly, what is it that I want? A happy, non-pressured thing with a reasonably well-adjusted man who isn't afraid to have sex -- that would be good.

Bluagh. Spring is the season of my discontent.

Sleepless

I manage to fall asleep just fine, but I wake up 6 hours later, unrested and generally feeling like crap. Ugh. Decreased mental and motor function, madness, and death to follow, I tell you.

I have 40 pages of a script, and because of my inability to focus (see: lack of quality sleep), I think I'm just going to risk turning in only a pilot episode and a format to my advisor on Friday. I originally thought I would write a pilot and a regular episode, but the pilot alone is going to be 50-60 pages long and somewhere in the area of 12,000 words, plus, the format is another 10 pages and another 2800 words, so ... I think that's enough. God, he wouldn't fail me because I only turned in one episode, would he? Dear lord, let it not be so. I really need to graduate.

I've been focusing on the script and nothing else these past few days, and it's been the funnest work I've done in years. Love. It. It's work, I assure you, and I take it seriously (pages of notes from watching a dozen different TV pilots and shows), but it is the best kind of work possible. Creating imaginary drama for imaginary characters! Whee!

A day bookended by bummers

Last night I was out til 1 or so drinking with Resident Evil and her friends and Resident Evil's (kinda hot) twin brother and his friends for the twins' 25th birthdays -- it was like college, complete with a shot of tequila and a pizza run at the end of the night. It was pretty damn fun.

But then the morning came. And it was a bummer. Although not for the drinking the night before.

It takes a lot of energy to be angry, and I felt that at 7 am this morning, as I lay awake for what seemed the umpteenth time this school year of waking up far too early and being unable to fall back asleep. It is undoubtedly the lack of sleep -- the continual, repeated, dreaded lack of sleep -- that is contributing to this uncharacteristically angry state of being I seem to be entertaining lately. But understanding the reason behind it doesn't help all that much in dealing with it, which is one of the things I told Scientist this morning.

We were supposed to hang out today. That's what we had agreed on Friday night, when he dropped the whole "I need to not have sex with you because it's too confusing for me" bomb (again). But I woke up today and I still felt so angry, that when I came back from the gym and found a message from him on my voicemail, I thought about just not calling him back.

Of course, you know I did.

He, to his credit, immediately picked up on the fact that I was upset about something, and when he asked, "Are you all right?" I replied, "No. I'm not all right," and told him that I could not hang out with him today because I was still really angry at him, and that I couldn't quite articulate why, but that I needed some time to think about it. That I'd call him in a few days.

He got very quiet. Asked a couple questions. I answered them the best I could, including: "I have a lot of stuff going on, and I don't need another thing that makes me feel bad and sad."

"You don't need to deal with my issues."

"Yes," I said, I hope not too unkindly. "I'm deciding things about you, and you're deciding things about me. I know you want me to be patient with you, but I don't know if I can be. I don't know if I have enough patience."

"I guess this means you don't want to come to the Pond with me."

I sighed. We'd talked about this on Friday, and I had been happy then to hear him say, "You've only been there once? We should go sometime." It was beautiful out, and I did want to go to the Pond, and I said so. "But I don't think I would be very good company for you today."

There was a silence. He said awkwardly, "I hope -- if you want -- if you wanted to talk more about this, I'd be interested in doing that."

"I just -- I need some time to figure out what it is I need to talk about. I might have some things I need to say, and we might have some things we should talk about, but I don't know what those things are yet." I waited for a moment, and then said, "I'm going to hang up now, and I will call you later."

"Wait," he said. "Hold on a minute."

I waited.

When he spoke again, his voice was thick, choked up. "Please," he said, "please... don't be mad at me. It doesn't -- I don't want you to be mad at me."

I shook my head, sort of despairingly. It was the kind of thing someone pleads when they're so insecure about themselves that anger -- completely justified anger, I might add -- shakes them to the core. (On the other hand, I've discovered in the past few years that I am fairly terrifying when I'm mad.) "I know. It doesn't feel good to have someone mad at you," I said as neutrally as I could.

"I guess it doesn't feel good to be angry at someone either."

"No," I replied. "It doesn't." I thought for a moment. "I know you haven't done these things on purpose."

"I -- I'm just trying to -- I don't mean to make things hard for you."

"And I'm telling you," I said slowly and carefully, "that I know you aren't doing this on purpose."

"So I'm not a totally evil person."

"No," I said. "You are not."

"That's the best thing anyone's said about me in a while."

I didn't say anything. I may have closed my eyes. And then I repeated, "I have to go now. I'll be in touch later."

"Okay." There was a pause. "Have a good day. Bye."

"Good-bye." I hung up.

And immediately felt like total and utter shit. After my last boyfriend, the last thing I want to do, the thing that terrifies me the most, is to hurt someone else. The thought came to me yesterday that part of the reason I liked Scientist is that it didn't seem like I could hurt him as badly as I did my ex. But it turns out that it only seemed that way because he didn't really believe I'd really do anything. On Friday night, I told him I was angry, and he said something that he's said before: "I understand why you'd feel that way, and I'd understand if you felt you couldn't do this."

"Are you trying to make me break up with you?" I asked in disbelief that night.

"No! No, I'm not."

"Because it really sounds like you are."

"No, I don't want you to do that. I would be sad if you did."

I guess he was being honest. He did sound awful this morning. But he can't have thought this wasn't coming, could he have? Perhaps I'm better at masking my emotions than I think -- I remember "breaking up" with my first shrink, who was totally taken aback by my opinion that I wasn't moving forward and that she hadn't been very helpful the past several weeks. (God, that sounds totally harsh. But it was true.)

Anyhoo. Whether I wasn't clear about the depth of my frustrations or whether he's a total space alien who can't comprehend the effect of whiplash-inducing mixed messages on a human being, the end result was that he seemed stunned and deeply hurt. And that makes me hate myself a little bit. Even if I was justified in saying what I said.

And I still haven't decided what to do. I have been so frustrated and confused about Scientist's actions and true feelings these past few weeks, I don't even know anymore whether I find pleasure in his company beyond the sex. Sex was just about the only joyful, carefree thing in our interactions over the past few weeks. Everything else has been violin-heavy melodrama -- something that both of us acknowledge and that frustrates both of us; on Friday night, Scientist said, "We have a lot of serious conversations for people who have only been dating 2 months." That was before he said he wanted to take a step back and take things less seriously.

The crazy thing is, I think we might want the same things. I want things to be less serious too, insofar as the state-of-relationship talks are driving me batty. I'd like to do other things with him besides sleep with him. I'd like to see where things go now that the July 31 deadline's been sort of lifted.

But I hate the fact that he feels he has to consciously decide to enter into a longterm, serious relationship with me -- and that I'm sort of on probation until he decides that. I like him (or I did before we started having these talks regularly), and for me, you start out there and feel your way toward what kind of relationship you want. You don't catalogue the other person's traits into pluses and minuses and tally them up, which is the impression he gives me of what he thinks he should do.

I hate the fact that he runs back to the excuse that he has commitment issues and is working on having a healthy relationship. Honey, we all have issues. I have issues too, ones that may have doomed past relationships. But do I talk about them incessantly? I do not. Do I use them as excuses for jerking people around? I do not.

Most of all, I hate the fact that he couldn't immediately express happiness about the possibility of me staying here. That to me seems like a fundamental character flaw -- and more than anything else, gives me real pause. Everyone deserves to be with someone who is happy to be with them. I don't feel that way around Scientist, even though he has said he is happy to be with me.

So. The jury's out, and will stay out until they've given the topic more thought. And then, undoubtedly, they'll want to talk.

Oh, right, I did say the day was bookended by bummers, didn't I? Well, it's Mother's Day today, isn't it? And I had to call my aunt and uncle, didn't I? And because I -- like the space aliens I excoriate endlessly -- can't deal with certain things about them (namely, their horrifyingly sad self-identification as "old people" who can't do anything anymore), I was distant and monosyllabic with them, wasn't I? And I felt like a toolbag while I was doing it, because they totally felt something was wrong, but I denied it. Aaaaaand my mother -- another space alien if ever there was such a thing -- wouldn't answer her phone today. Lovely. And my aunt and uncle didn't even see her today, did they? Even more lovely.

So today, even though I got a good amount of writing done on the 3L paper and had a fabulous time doing it, was a toss-up, chiclets. Please god, let there be a lot less rage on my part and a lot more human rather than space alien behavior tomorrow. Please?

Celibacy! Is! The! Latest! Fad!

Everyone should do it! (Or rather -- NOT do it, ahahahaha!)

He called on Tuesday night, right? And though we usually trade phone calls on alternating nights, I didn't call on Thursday night because, hello, I was at a concert? In Madison Square Garden? In which two Frenchmen dressed in skin tight white jeans told us, "We love you"? And which included lots of flashing lights, to which Joiner leaned over and said, "Um, I think I'm going to have a seizure"?

So he called tonight. And I almost did not call him back, because hello, I am so fucking tired after helping move Joiner to New York and unloading all her crap from the UHaul by ourselves and being unable to sleep more than 6 hours because of the light pouring into her posh one-bedroom on the Upper West Side at 7:20 am this morning.

But you know I did, because hello, I love drama.

It's true. My name is hkinseoul, and I love to whine. And what better subject to whine about than a man who says -- you guessed it -- that sex is something he wants to have only during a longterm serious relationship, and he has concerns about our compatibility (which he thinks is being minimized by the intimacy caused by sex), so he doesn't want to do it anymore unless he's decided that he does want a longterm serious relationship with me.

So I asked, "So what is the difference between a longterm serious relationship and the buildup or the figuring out period before the longterm serious relationship? What do you do that's different in one than the other? What does that look like to you? What does that mean?"

He doesn't know.

So I say, "I'm going to take a stab at it -- does it mean that we spend more time with each other during the day? Doing activities that aren't horizontal? Does it mean that we see each other more than twice a week? Does it mean that I meet some of your friends and you meet some of mine? Because I'd like to do those things too. This relationship hasn't moved forward in the past 4 weeks because we haven't done any of those things."

I also say, "I am so angry with you."

"Why?"

"Because this is the exact conversation we had last month at this time. When you decided you weren't going to have sex with me the last time. And then you got some clarity -- and where did that go, by the way? -- and then you started sleeping with me again ... and that was why?"

"Because I'm weak?"

I closed my eyes in disbelief. I think that was the point at which he said, "You know, I really love the way you communicate with me." I almost threw the phone across the room, but stopped myself by counting to 10, after which I said in a controlled tone, "I am trying. So. Hard."

I don't know, I guess I am in a loopy, loopy mood, because it all seems kind of funny to me. I mean, I am still really angry and frustrated at Scientist, and that came out during the rest of our 2-hour talk, but it was a controlled kind of fury that manifested in sharp, humorous remarks that seemed to spur more conversation than not.

I know it seems incredible that I am putting up with his bullshit -- and it IS bullshit, and I recognize that -- but part of what keeps me in this (I just realized) is that I feel able to be this smart, funny, wise person with Scientist, on a different, higher level than with anyone else. I guess he makes me feel smart, funny and wise, even as he also makes me feel insecure, angry, and jerked around. He tells me that I'm brilliant and articulate and smokin' hot (finally! a man who appreciates me for my body rather than my mind!), and because he himself is academically pretty frickin' brilliant, his comments carry for me a weight and meaning that have some kind of ... value to me.

When my ex used to compliment me, I guess I never really believed him -- or rather, I never really thought he had a fair basis for comparison, not knowing the same Ivy League types I did. How could he know how smart I was, when he couldn't compare me to the really smart people I felt intimidated by in class?

With Scientist, it's different. He just seems to have a better basis for those compliments. I kind of ... bask in his respect. And that is part of why I didn't -- even though I spent most of the past two days thinking about it -- end things with him tonight. Even though he does hurt, frustrate, and anger me with his confusion and back-and-forth celibacy and all his unjoyful, ridiculous overthinking.

Besides. It is no coincidence that the trait I most hate about myself is my indecisiveness and my tendency to teeter on the fence, seeing both sides of the situation and being unable to make that leap of faith. Seeing it in Scientist is incredibly painful on a number of levels, not the least because I find it frustrating beyond belief to be that way myself.

And in other, non-Scientist related news? Moved Joiner to New York (see above about UHaul unloading; also seem to have wrenched a muscle in my forearm, damned RSI), saw Air in concert (see above about Frenchmen in tight white pants), felt momentarily bad about not seeing my dear New York friends (really so sorry, dear friends, but I was there for literally 24 hours and was completely busy the entire time), heard from a second source that all traditional funding routes for anything like my clinical project are long closed (wonderful), and am suffering from severe sleep deficit. Hence, off I go, to hopefully slumber for 14 hours.

Unhelpful people suck!

You would think, would you not, that the news of a student putting off the big firm to working for the public good would excite a member of the public interest office, no? You would think that the director of said office would smile and be joyful that just one more student is thinking of furthering her mission, no? And even if all the deadlines for funding have passed, you would think, would you not, that said director would -- after being joyful and smiley -- sit down and say -- in a serious tone, but not discouragingly -- "So look, all the deadlines have passed, but that doesn't mean you can't do this. Let's think about what we can do together to make this happen"?

You would think, wouldn't you?

The fact that said director did not do anything close to any of those things makes me unspeakable pissed off. I know that the office -- like the school in general -- is uncomfortable with people going outside the lines, but for said director to be so negative and discouraging is just plain unacceptable. The last thing she said as she ushered me out -- after our 7 minute conversation (I kid you not) -- was: "If this doesn't work out and you want to find a public interest job after your work for the firm, just come back!" Yeah, right. Because our interactions have been so helpful til now. God.

Dear Sweet, Smart Scientist:

I'm beginning to doubt the moniker I've bestowed upon you. I mean, you're a scientist, yes. But the other two adjectives? Hm.

Case in point: I went to your place last night after dinner with friends (and mind you, we had sort of agreed to have dinner together, but then you wanted to go running and wouldn't have had dinner til 8, and I was trying to be agreeable but also was indecisive, so -- whatever, I had fun at dinner with my friends). I'm walking in the balmy spring evening air, the trees are blooming, it's nice and verdant and fresh, and I feel pretty chipper when I call to tell you I'm on my way. At your front door, I call up, and you tell me you've just jumped in the shower, so you'll be down in 3 minutes. Eight minutes later, when I've determined that my phone tells the time in 53 different capitals of the world and has 28 possible pictures for the background screen, you open the door. You're apologetic, I'm forgiving, you kiss me on the cheek, it's nice.

Small matter, of no moment. Yes. But I was a humanities major, and I see parallels everywhere. You kept me outside, you see? You didn't open the door. And when you did, I was all nicey nice and accepting and shit, and that is -- I don't know. Not ... acceptable.

You don't know what I'm talking about? Okay, you're a scientist, you need things to be spelled out for you, fine.

I told you the story of how I might be staying here for another year. I did this carefully, you know, because I didn't want to freak you out. I started from the beginning, and explained how The Turtle approached me about staying, and blabitty blah blah blah. You asked me about the funding, how that was going to work. I answered. And then we looked at each other, and you smiled and said, "I'm really happy for you." And you patted me on the shoulder.

Patted. Me. On. The. Shoulder.

The whole reason you've been conflicted and crying this whole time is because I was going to be leaving. But you didn't want to detach from me because you liked me. You really liked me. And so I tell you this piece of news, and -- okay, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Let me recount for you what happened next.

So, kind of stunned at your lack of reaction, I masked my own feelings, and we started talking about something else, and eventually, we wind up in bed, and after all's said and done, I started crying. And you were sympathetic and nice, as always, and you didn't let me get away with not explaining myself, which was good, but all I could think to say was: "I just want you to be happy to be with me. I don't want you to be conflicted." Because that is what I want.

So then you brought up the news. It's big news, you said, and I agreed. But -- "you didn't have a reaction," I pointed out. "You don't have to be happy about it, but I expected you to have some reaction."

"It takes me a while to process these things," you explained, "and it was a big piece of news. It changes things." Uh, YEAH it does.

"I didn't do it for you."

"I know."

I explained that you were part of the mix, as was the advent of spring, and that was exactly why I took a couple days to think about it, and only decided to do it after I went to my meeting last week and realized that I was having fun in my lobbyist, project managerist role. And I knew that it was the right choice because when I decided to do it, I was just... happy. I had been dreading my job in New York. I had been having a good time with my project. This was a very, very good thing.

I was pretty upset by this point, Sweet, Smart Scientist. Because in the hour since I had delivered the news that I might be staying, you had not expressed one reaction to me. Nothing! You kept trying to hold me and reassure me in your own way, I guess, but I physically kept pulling back from your embrace because I was mad, I was frustrated, I was disappointed, I was sad.

"Look," you said, "you clearly have a lot of expectations and hopes, and --"

"Stop it!" I think I actually screamed this. "I do not. Want. To talk about it!" And I literally struggled with you for a second, trying to get up and out of bed, because how dare you tell me what I am feeling? And phrase it in a way that makes it seem unreasonable? How dare you make it seem unreasonable that I should want you to have some kind of reaction to this big news, this news that could change everything? How dare you put me in the role of ... supplicant, or whatever? It is not strange for someone you have been dating for 2 months to expect something from you. It is not strange for someone you have been sleeping with and calling and seeing a couple times a week to have hopes.

Yes, Sweet, Smart Scientist. I have expectations. I have hopes. I hope that the man I am seeing will be happy -- overjoyed, even! -- that I will be in the picture for longer than he expected. I hope that I can be with someone who is fully present in a relationship with me. I hope that I won't settle for someone who can't respond to happy, joyous news with happiness and joy. And yes, I expect things. I expect more from you.

After I calmed down a bit, you said "hk," and the thought came spiralling out of nowhere that that might be the first time you've called me by my name since I met you. "hk. I am happy when I'm with you. I'm not conflicted about that. I like you." But I called you on that bullshit, because you like me, sure, but you don't want to like me. Therein lies the conflict, Freud.

You said, "I am happy that you're staying." And you looked at me earnestly with those big blue eyes and repeated: "I'm happy that you're staying. But ... I have commitment issues."

"Hey," I said sharply. "I have commitment issues too! And my commitment issues might be even bigger than your commitment issues, but we'll never get to my commitment issues because we're too caught up in your commitment issues."

"You're not very forthcoming about that stuff."

I sighed.

"Don't be frustrated with me," you said. "Be patient with me."

"I'm trying," I replied. "But it's hard." And a moment later, I blurted out: "You know what you are? You are the classic nightmare. You're the guy who calls and says he likes you and sleeps with you and wants to see you, but then says he can't commit."

That may have been the point when you sighed. I don't know, it's all kind of a blur, because I didn't get much sleep afterwards at your house because I never sleep well at your house, and I was going to leave, but then you asked if I wanted to stay, and I said, "Well. Yes and no," and I asked you what you wanted, and you said, "I want you to stay. If you want to stay," which is again such the classic non-commital answer, but you know, you opened the door, and were apologetic, and I was forgiving, and so I stayed.

And this morning? When you offered breakfast? I actually wavered about it for a moment, but then I decided I was still upset and mad and I just wanted to leave, and so I said, "No, I think I'm just going to go." And you said, "Oh," in that cute, disappointed way you have, but ... but ... don't you see how mixed your signals are?!?

"I'm a commitment-phobe!" "No wait, don't leave!" "I can't react to your news because it's such big news and changes everything!" "No wait, don't leave!"

God, I'm getting angry all over again just thinking about it.

So here's the thing, Scientist dude. I do have expectations. I do have hopes. You had that right. I'm not going to give them up, and I kind of hate you for making me feel so shitty about them. But I like you. Despite all that. Considerably less than, say, two weeks ago, but ... yeah, I still like you. So sack up, Scientist man! Get a fucking clue! 'Cause eventually? I will get a fucking clue, and drop you and your nonsense.

Cordially yours,
hk

Done! (...almost)

Turned in admin final. Turned in 20-page strategy paper. Now, just a 3L paper to go...

Also: find funding for next year, help Joiner pack and up drive her shit down to NYC, enjoy a visit from Double M for four days, and pack and move my shit -- all before May 18.

Whee!

Bored, tired and sick (of admin law)

I didn't eat a lot of candy as a kid. When I study now, though, I eat candy. I eat Cheetos. I eat Twix. Snickers really does satisfy me. On Thursday I had some Oreos. Last week I branched out and had some Sour Patch Kids.

Right now, I have M&Ms and Cheetos in my room, but I cannot taste the sweet, sweet chemical neon cheesiness, nor the cloying sugariness of the M&Ms. Such is life with a cold. I have, however, lined up the M&Ms I did shake out of the bag into a neat row, in rainbow color hierarchy. I've been doing this with M&Ms lately -- lining them up and eating them in a coordinated sort of fashion. I didn't do this before. When I was a kid. Law school does strange things to you.

It's almost midnight here in Crimson City, and I have gone through all my admin notes, and I have made an outline, and I really, really, really should go through an old test and create a decision tree so I don't have to do it on the fly tomorrow, but I really, really, really don't want to. Blech. I can't even muster the energy to be hatin' on this final. Or the crappy strategy paper. I'm just bored. It's time for it to be ovah!

Tomorrow, after I turn in my exam and paper, I've got plans to see Sweet, Smart Scientist, who called last night. He said he thought of me when he was grocery shopping earlier in the day, and thought he should maybe call and see if I wanted anything. But he didn't. (So: 5 points for thinking of me -- aw, sweet -- but minus 3.5 points for not actually doing so -- uh, thanks for nothin', dude.)

Anyway, I'm going to tell him tomorrow that I might be sticking around here for another year. I wonder what his reaction will be? You'd think it would be joy, but I could see it being all weird, since he's been struggling with the expiration date since he met me. Plus, there's the danger that he'd interpret my staying as a reaction to our dating (which it isn't, but it could seem that way), and things could turn into a "I'm so weirded out by the fact that the big drama-causing factor is gone, I can't deal!" situation. Let's hope not. As I wrote before, the fact that I feel affection for Sweet, Smart Scientist definitely put a twist on the leaving situation, but the bottom line is that I enjoyed working with The Turtle and I have a lot more to learn from him, and I enjoyed working on my project, and it just feels right. I made the decision and my mind didn't turn into a roiling, heaving sea, it just went, "Oh. Okay!"

Okay, I will just study until 1 and then I will go to bed. Just. Pass.

Al...most...there...

After dithering about my North Korean refugee strategy paper for two mornings in a row (and this after I dithered and whined and wrote for five days earlier this week), I decided to post it to the course website and stop the second-guessing. Yes, it's completely unrealistic and that's exactly what the professor didn't want, and yes, it contains some extremely questionable assumptions, but it's 5,400 words (20 pages) of soothing prose and wacky laughable ideas, and really, all I need to do is pass. Just. Pass.

Which is just what I told Joiner on the phone, since she just experienced the nightmare that we all dread -- finding out that her final is actually tomorrow, not Tuesday. Ack! Panic! Heart! Fluttering! (But thank goodness she checked today and didn't miss taking the exam tomorrow, eh?) Fortunately, professional responsibility (ethics) is not a substantive law class, so it's not like she needs to read and absorb the holdings of 50 cases about, say, admin law (hate) in the next 20 hours. Triage, I told her, triage and strategize about studying for the next 19 hours, and hey, it's all 3Ls anyway, so you can bet that some of them haven't even started studying yet. And remember -- all you have to do is pass. Just. Pass.

Which is good advice for me to take as well, since it's 3 pm and I've still four weeks of class notes to get through for my administrative law class. Strangely, I have not been experiencing much panic about this exam or the paper. It could be the drugs I'm taking for my cold, or perhaps it's impending graduation-induced sang froid. What does it matter, in the end? I just need to pass. The worst thing about it is that I'll have to sit, bored, for 8 hours tomorrow, while I struggle to find pertinent things to say about the constitutionality of the administrative state, whether rulemaking or adjudication is the best way to go about making policy, and what role judicial review plays in shaping how agencies do their business.

Blah. I read a lot of regulations in one of my previous incarnations, and I'd rather read those than grapple with the legal questions that surround them. It's all fine and good to ponder the legal reasoning behind why an agency should be able to decide between rulemaking or adjudication, but in the end, regs are much more immediately about people -- how many and what kind of bathrooms should be available for migrant farmworkers, or what level of dangerous chemical is permissible in a workplace, or whether a bankrupt business owner can own capital in the reorganized company, or what the Department of Transportation has to prove if they're going to approve a highway through your city park -- while the legal reasoning? Just (joyless) mental masturbation. Like all of my law school experience, I find the class devoid of the very things that make law relevant and important to life.

Whatever. Just. Pass.

Sick but not depressed

I dosed myself last night with Benedryl and was floating amongst the drug-induced sleep clouds this morning when I got a call from my firm -- they're going to let me defer my start date! Yay!

Now, all I have to do is find money. Girl's gotta eat while she helps victims of discrimination. But since The Turtle has said more than once that he "will do whatever it takes to get [me] the funding," I feel pretty ... happy.

Yes, happy!

I went to see the career shrink today and he said, "Nothing you've said today surprises me. It's what you've been saying in various ways over the past several months -- you wanted the time and the flexibility and the autonomy and the space to figure things out, and you got it. The only thing that surprises me is how much of it is done already. You aren't really much of an agonizer as you think. You just keep getting caught between choices you don't really want."

I was wondering and worrying a little bit about the unconscious effect of Sweet, Smart Scientist on this decision. But I believe that while yes, the sunny warmth of spring and the affection I feel for SSS were part of the factors in the mix, the true reason why I chose to do this clinical fellowship was the satisfaction and interest and fulfillment I got out of doing the work. And that, bunny rabbits, is pretty darn happy.

Now, excuse me while I figure out how to delegate legislative authority to administrative agencies and NOT get beat up by the Constitution.

I hate you, North Korea

Because of you and your human rights violations, I have been drinking coffee like it's going out of style, trying to finish this damn strategy paper about you and your problems and how to solve them (like THAT'S possible), and now I have a crappy, crappy, totally unrealistic pie-in-the-sky 20-page strategy paper about you and your unsolvable problems when the professor wanted a realistic proposal and no pie-in-the-sky proposals, and I also have a sore throat and am run down, and I have to start admin studying tomorrow, and you SUCK.

DIE, NORTH KOREA, DIE!

I will say that I learned a lot about you and your refugees, though, and that's kind of what matters. But you should still DIE.

More decisiveness crack, please

I must be on some kind of crack today, because I decided that yes, I am going to try to stay here another year and continue this clinical project with The Turtle, and this is the reason why: I was flipping through a guide to New York last night, and I thought, "Meh." Seriously. And when The Ringleted One and Miracle Gro encouraged me to do it, I was all, "Hm... yeah... could do..." And this morning, in my and The Turtle's meeting with the state agency chair and his lackey, I had a rocking good time. I did! Being all kind of lobbyist and shit!

So when The Turtle took me out to lunch afterwards to debrief and compliment me on my work this term using all kinds of superlatives, I was just ... hooked. Why the hell not? I love working with The Turtle, and I loved all the strategizing and the information-gathering and the few instances where I got to be a smooth talker, and I ... am going to try to stay here another year. Jesus.

You know what it is? I've been hoodwinked by spring, that sly bitch. It was a gorgeous day today, warm and breezy, and everything seemed full of promise. And so I told The Turtle that I would commit to finding out if the firm would let me defer my start date for a year if he would start thinking about possible funding sources, and he agreed and said he'd do anything it took to get me the funding and gave me a hug, and I sent an email off to the firm this afternoon, and I am now stupidly, instinct-followingly, spring-maddenedly unsettled once again.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with solving North Korea's human rights crisis, but -- eh, that's easy enough. Just 13 pages to go.

Latest Sweet, Smart Scientist news: I was getting all pissy and annoyed about the fact that he hadn't called since Saturday night, but he called tonight. What do you do with a man who says he thinks it's not fair to himself to commit to dating me exclusively for 4 months, but then keeps calling? Am I getting played? Or is he really that conflicted? Because am I really that fantabulous? Really that irresistible?