The year after yesterday’s post I was seeing a different guy (we’ll call Billy). There were two parts to this horrible holiday.

It was our first Christmas together, and it was pretty rocky. I had gone home to North Battleford to visit my family. Because I went to school full-time and worked full-time, I didn’t have time to get a badly-needed haircut before the holidays. I thought it would be a good idea to go to my high school hair dresser while I was home. I think she was pissed off for having to work that day, for whatever reason, I don’t know…I hadn’t seen her in 5 years. I brought in a picture of a really nice Cameron Diaz style haircut that I thought would look good on me. She said it would be no problem, but she ended up chopping off way more than necessary….like above the ears short. My family still calls me GI Jane.

So I went back to Regina on Christmas Day, and Billy was supposed to meet me at my house. I had to grab something from my car, which was parked accross the street when he showed up. I saw him walking to my house, so I yelled his name and began walking swiftly to catch up with him. He didn’t recognize and began walking faster. I yelled his name again and he ran to my house and began furiously knocking on my door thinking some crazy person is running after him.

When he realized it was me, he laughed and told me I looked like a little boy. He treated me differently from that point on.

On that night, I began asking him what his plans were for New Years Eve because I wanted to spend it with him. He kept avoiding the question, or telling me he didn’t know what was going on. I could tell he did know and just wouldn’t tell me. I kept pushing it all week, to no avail. Somehow I had found out that he was going to be at the same party I went to the year before; and if I know anything about men, it’s that if they clearly show they don’t want you around, you should show up anyway.

My friend Krista, her now-husband and I went to the party together. I found him after an hour or so, when it was close to midnight. Krista was a chronic bailer, and as soon as she saw me with Billy, her and her boyfriend left. So I was there with no friends and was latching on to a guy who clearly didn’t want me near him. He actually tried to ditch me by going to the bathroom and leaving the other side of it. I cornered him and forced him to have it out with me…giving him the ultimatum of either spending the rest of the night with me or never seeing me again. He chose to never see me again. Right at the stroke of midnight.

Devastated, bawling, listening to everyone else merrily ring in the new year, I made a dramatic exit, storming off. That was horrible. But the night wasn’t done ruining me.

In Regina, everyone drives everywhere, so there are very few cabs. They were all out on that day, but they refused to take single passengers. Another reminder of how alone I was. So, even though I tried to leave at midnight, I was the very last person to leave, at 3am. I even saw Billy and his friends leave before me.

That was the year I decided me and NYE didn’t mix well.

This year, I am spending it at Charlene and Joe’s watching movies. I’m bringing the veggie platter.

This story happened the NYE of the millennium. Every year, in Regina, Saskatchewan, there is a big party, with something like 3000 people. There are several rooms, all with different kinds of music and atmospheres. I was there with my friends Amanda and Janice. I was drinking. We ended up in the main hall, where, around 11:45, the local radio guys got up and started doing their thing.

At this point, Amanda was in the bleachers making out with some guy, and I was right in front of the stage with Janice, the first guy she ever kissed, and the Fat Guys who were well known around the University section at Saskatchewan Roughriders games. Just to give you an idea of the caliber of guys these were, they would come to the games with no shirt on and green paint on their bodies with “Fat Guy” and “00″on their back and chest. They drank beer out of a rubber boot.

Anyway, somehow, I ended up on stage…with my own microphone. I was part of the show. Of course, someone in the crowd shouts “Take your shirt off!” I say “Not for free!”. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea, but then when I saw the cash that was coming up from the crown onto the stage, I realized, it WAS a good idea! The radio guy had taken in $100, which was promised to me when I took my shirt off.

The crowd kept yelling for it, and the radio guy was flashing cash in my face. It was pretty hard to say no to that. I looked down at Janice and the fat guys. Janice just had a look of utter shock on her face. She knew me well, and wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out. But it was the Fat Guy who surprised me. He had this look of horror of his face and was shaking his head “don’t do it. don’t do it.” Something inside should have clicked at that moment. The guy who drinks beer out of a rubber boot and shows up to football games when it’s -30C without a shirt on is begging me not to make an ass out of myself.

I do it anyway. Of course, I was wearing a bra, and knew that to get the money, I had to go fully bare-chested, and was prepared to do it. But, there is something awfully sobering about standing in front of 3000 people without a shirt on yelling “Take it off! Take it off!”. It all kinda registered when I saw my boss looking up at me.

So I jump off the stage and run out of the room. It was impossible to hide. I was wearing a hot-pink shirt with pink fur around the collar. I didn’t get any money. Thank you Janice for driving me home immediately.

When I got home, I figured I should tell my boyfriend who was out of town at the time. Regina isn’t that big, and 3000 people were there. It was bound to get back to him. He nearly dumped me. Threatened not to come home ever. (Hindsight, I should have let him).

I’d had bad NYE’s before, but this was the first time I’d really had a shitty one.

The Fat Guys never talked to me again after that.

Tags: NYE Regina, Roughriders, Saskatchewan Roughriders

The last time I didn’t go home for the Holidays, I spent Christmas with my friend Jen. We watched movies and got drunk. We also both decided that we wouldn’t go out for NYE because they always suck.

On the 31st, a friend, who we’ll call Michelle, called in the afternoon and asked me to go over for dinner at her place. I thought it was innocent enough. My friend Shelly was going to go as well, so I thought it would be a nice quiet way to boycott NYE. I wanted to kill myself by stuffing the baked asparagus that she cooked for dinner down my throat about 5 minutes after walking in and having to hear her ridiculous life stories. That was the night I decided she was one of the dumbest people I’d ever met and I would try to slowly ease out of my relationship with her.

Shelly, on the other hand, was pretty cool. And she asked if I wanted to join her at another friends house for some poker. I called Jen, who, despite having decided to boycott NYE with me, decided to join me for the party. We showed up, played some poker, called our cop boyfriends at midnight, and thought it was going pretty good. Then they brought out the board games. I am all for quiet evenings in on NYE, but board games??? I was having none of that. Jen and i decided to leave.

We’re driving through downtown Toronto, which was a zoo, when we were stopped at a red light. I had my head turned to her while we were chatting and I noticed a guy coming towards the car. I shouted at Jen to lock her door (the ‘98 Neon does not have automatic locks), and she did, just in time. The guy had just been in what seemed to be some sort of knife fight, and was bleeding all over and trying to get in my car!!! No, we didn’t call 911.

So, I spent the next day washing blood off my car while trying to keep it warm so the water wouldn’t freeze on it.

That was the last time I celebrated New Years. Every year since, I’ve watched movies with my mom and gone to bed before midnight.

I’m a NYE boycotter. I’ve never had a successful New Years Eve, and have given up on trying for one. All the NYE’s from my youth that I can remember were pretty lame. I either babysat, or watched the countdown on some tv station from the East Coast so that by 10, I had already rang in the New Year (we only had 2 channels). This week, I am going to tell my top 3 bad NYE stories. Not included in the top 3 are the following:

- the NYE my dad and I went to rent movies, and I picked what I thought was a dance movie. It was Boogie Nights. I watched the whole thing in awkwardness. At the end, when Dirk takes out his Dirkness, my dad, who I thought had fallen asleep, said “That’s not so big.”

- the NYE I went home to spend it with my high school best friend. She had to go pick someone up and asked me to watch her apartment while she was gone. She came back at 2am.

- the NYE that because of a snow storm, I had to fly home a day late and spend the countdown at the baggage carousel at Pearson airport. The entire airport staff took a 20 minute break to ring in the NY, with all our baggage still on the plane.

- the NYE my friends got married…and had a dry wedding.

- the NYE I made out with two guys, and got caught.

Check in for the next 3 days as I give you the top 3 worst New Years Eve parties/stories of my life.

Wishing someone a Merry Christmas has become so impersonal. I remember back in the day when my mom would sit at the table, with a notepad of plain white paper, under which she would stick a darkly lined paper so she could write out her Christmas letter…one at a time, individualized for the person she was writing it to…that she would then stick in the card that she would mail out.

I think I got 3 Christmas cards in the mail this year. There’s something so nice about getting a card, with my name hand-written on the envelope and a little personal note on the inside. Here were my 3 personal notes this year: “Hope Santa brings you a big black guy to ’stuff your stocking’”; “I remembered to write something this year”; and “Thanks for all the stories and laughs.” Simple, little notes that really show that I was really being thought of when the cards were going out.

For the record, I don’t do cards. I personally wished everyone a Merry Christmas, either to their face, or via e-mail. I sent out one test message on Christmas, that included the name of the person I sent it to. I got 20 text messages sent to me from someone going through their phones and checking off all the people they talked to once throughout the year. I got one from a number that I don’t even know!

The most personal Christmas wish I got was from my friend Twyla. Because of my trip last week to Mexico, I wasn’t going to make it home to Saskatchewan to be with my family, so Twyla, who lives upstairs, ditched her family to fall asleep on my couch while watching movies. She came down in her Christmas outfit.

So, I left off yesterday about the young guy I met at the club. Well, I didn’t mention that I actually walked out of the club with him. I have no idea what happened to him, or why I lost him…it was probably my own doing, but it didn’t matter, another man appeared almost as if on cue.

A few nights earlier, we had the Bachelorette party. For the party, we hoped from hotel to hotel on the resort to have a drink at each lobby bar. We were on our third, and drunk enough to be on our 7th, when we walk into the hotel to find a group of men as large as our group of men almost in waiting for us. They were all from France, and, since most of us were from Canada, most of us spoke French, so it went pretty well.

So, the night of the wedding, as I was leaving the club with the young guy, I run into one of these French men. His name was Nicholas. I let him walk me back to my hotel. I’m Bachelorette-party drunk, and my French gets pretty bad when I’ve booze, so the conversation wasn’t that interesting. All he did was tell me how much money he makes. I told him I never drink and that moment I was totally sober.

We get to my hotel, and I’m slowly beginning to vaguely sober up. A few thoughts start to run through my mind:

“This guy is really not that good-looking”

“I don’t take guys back to my hotel room”

“I especially don’t take ugly guys back to my hotel room”

“I have a roommate in my hotel room”

“I really need to ditch this guy”

So we get as far as the walkway, and I turn to him and say: “I just remembered that my friend is in the room. We can’t go back there.”

Seeing that his chances are now slim, despite what was probably an exciting 30 minute walk for him (side note, it would have been 10 if I could walk straight), he decides to act quick. He grabs me, pushes me up against the pillar, and starts macking on me….like sticking his tongue directly onto my tonsils. For a French guy, he couldn’t kiss worth a shit.

I push off of him and turn to just walk away. He grabs me by the arm and pushes me up against the pillar again. Luckily for me, I am really strong and I pushed him off again, then RAN to my hotel room.

I tried to think where I led him astray and why he thought he had a chance of getting lucky with me. It dawned on me: on a resort in some tropical paradise; I’m the drunk chick; I let him walk me all the way back to my hotel; I let him walk me within 100 feet of my hotel room; and I’m the drunk chick.

Poor guy.

In yesterday’s post, I said that I hadn’t a chance in hell of hooking up while on my trip to Mexico. The situation seemed more and more desperate when I looked around and saw only two types of people: couples, and couples with children. I searched ever bar, pool, pool bars then every bar again. Nothing. Of course, my chances were decreased even more by the huge rash I developed on my back the first day from god-knows-what.

The night of the Bachelorette party, we walked around with penis straws and whistles…still, no attention. For a brief period that night, I had the Bachelorette’s penis flashy headband on. Nothing. I spent the majority of my time third wheeling with Charlene and Joe (btw- thanks guys).

The night of the wedding, I (naturally) go myself quite wrecked. The rest of the folks who were also quite wrecked went out to the club on the resort.

So we get to the club. It was not busy. The resort in general was at about 40% capacity, and from that about 90% were, as I mentioned yesterday, there with their spouse. So there were slim pickings. I did my best though. Because I dance so awesomely (for those who have never seen me dance, I just flat out lied there), some kid came up almost immediately after arriving and started grinding with me. I didn’t push him off for a song or two, I mean, it’s not like I had a ton of options, but I needed a drink, so I left him and walked to the bar.

If you’ve never seen me drunk, let me tell you that I am usually a happy drunk (unless you are asking me if I am ok, then, as another of the wedding guests will tell you, I am not a happy drunk). So, standing at the bar, I immediately made friends. Unfortunately, the only person around to be friendly with was a skinny biker guy, probably old enough to be my uncle. I made excuses about why I couldn’t dance with him, but then he just grabbed me out to the dance floor.

I was making barfy faces at the others in my group, and I found out the next that they saw, thought about rescuing me, and decided it was ok to let me finish the song in agony. The young guy from before was not quite as cruel. He stepped up to the biker dude and pushed him out of the way, blocking any chance the guy had touching my body by completely covering it with his. I didn’t mind. The biker guy did. He kept trying to pull me back to him…but I mean come on….on a resort, that I’m at for only a week, you think I’m going to waste it on the skinny biker dude? No, I am going to accept my position under the young guy who looks pretty great without a shirt.

There was some back and forth that went on, but, unfortunately, no real physical altercation took place.

The next day, I was lounging on the beach with some of the other wedding goers, when the young guy walked up. Here is how our conversation went:

Him: Hey. Don’t I know you from somewhere?

Me: Yeah, we met at the club last night.

Him: Huh. Oh. Sorry, I was probably inappropriate, I was really drunk.

Me: I didn’t mind. I was drunk too.

Him: Ok, well see you around. (Then he sees me reading a book- Slash’s autobiography). I like to read. Do you like to read.

Me: Yeah. That’s why I’m doing it.

I probably should have asked him to go for a drink or something. It’s not like I had anything else going on.

I posted eons ago about Mustang. He’s a guy that works out at my gym, who I talk to everyday, whose name I don’t think I ever knew. I posted about him again here when I complained about his passive/aggressiveness. He got over it today, because he asked for my number. I gave it to him. Here are some pros and cons about this situation.

Pro: He’s a big black guy.

Con: I don’t know his name.

Pro: He’s a really big black guy.

Con: This may lead to me having to tell him about my blog.

Pro: He asked for my number so he can call me on Christmas when I am home alone…

Con: …so that he can stop by.

Pro: He’s the biggest guy at my gym.

Con: He’s coming over on Christmas.

Pro: Then I wont be drinking alone.

Con: I have to clean my house.

Pro: …

Con: This is sounding worse and worse.

I just got back from a trip to Mexico last night. I was there for 8 days/7 nights for a friend’s wedding. We stayed at a beautiful all-inclusive on the Mayan Riviera. I believe the total count for the people who came for the wedding was 35, which is a pretty good turnout for a destination wedding, in my mind.

So, before I was leaving, I had these fantasies about meeting some exotic man and having a romantic week-long love affair…or, better yet, having a romantic week-long love affair with a guy from Toronto that would turn into a romantic life-long love affair. Within an hour of getting off the plane, I realized that was not going to happen.

I went down there with 5 of my close friends, Charlene and Joe, who I blog about all the time, and Dharshan and Dilini, who just got married in June. Naturally, Randy and I, as the two singles, travelled together and split a room.

This story starts at customs in Mexico. You have to push a button that shows up as green (go on through) or red (they manually check your bags). Randy pushed green and forged ahead. I pushed red and walked 2 feet. The Mexican customs dude tells me to put my bag up on this table so they can search it. I heave all 40lbs of it up with one hand and make a bit of a show of it so that people will notice my strength. The two Mexican agents start riffling through it, talking in Spanish to each other, looking ahead at Randy, and laughing. Then one of them says to me “Is that your boyfriend?”, I say “We’re traveling together”, he talks in Spanish to the other guy, then says “Why he no help you?” and continues to laugh.

Shit. This guy assumes we’re a couple. I bet everyone does.

I don’t even have time to get this story out to Randy before some woman in the airport stops him and says “Honeymooners?” He laughs loudly and says “No!” to which she replied “Sometime soon perhaps?” Maybe it was the pissed off look and my shouting at him to hurry the hell up that indicated we might be in a relationship.

We get on the bus and head to the resort (Barcelo Mayan Palace, if you ever want to go. Excellent hotel. I recommend the Japonese restaurant.) and are checking in. I remind the hotel clerk that it’s to be two beds, not one. He looks up from his computer screen and says “Are you sure?” Charlene and Joe, standing 6 feet behind us heard this and yelled from their spot “NO! NO! NO!”

Yup, that was pretty much when I realized I was NOT getting any this trip.

I have a few more good stories from the trip, so stay tuned this week!

Tags: Barcelo, Barcelo Maya, Barcelo Maya Palace

Talking with the ladies last night, I was reminded of a story from when I first moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto. I was 25 years old and I moved into a basement suite. The guy living upstairs (who remained in my phone as Creepy Dude Upstairs) was 40 years old, with 2 teenage kids. Within my first week of living there, we bumped into each other and he said he’d take me out to show me Toronto, as a welcome gift. At 25, I never in a million years thought that a 40-year-old would be hitting on me, because that was just gross (see my post about how 20-year-olds are ruining it), so I agreed to go.

A few nights later, he showed up at my door with flowers, chocolates and wine. At that point, I just thought that’s what old people did when they were being nice to younger people. We went out for dinner, and then martinis, then to a cougar bar. I still didn’t clue in…until he put his hand on my thigh and leaned in to kiss me. I was able to shrug him off pretending to lose my balance due to alcohol (ok, maybe I didn’t pretend), then I left to use that washroom. On my way back from the washroom, so guy approached me and asked if I was ok because I looked really uncomfortable. It was that bad.

Though I think I have become somewhat wiser in the 5 years since that happened, it still happens from time-to-time that guys will pretend they just want to be friends, but then WHAMO, you’re ducking from their slobbery mouths. This goes back to what I’ve complained about before- passive-aggressive men. If a man wants to go out with me, he should just say so- that way I can make an informed decision about whether to go out with him or not. It’s probably in their best interest anyway. Think about Creepy Dude. If he had told me he wanted to go out with me rather than “welcome me to the city”, I would have said no, he would have saved $200, and I wouldn’t have yelled at the hookers (no, I didn’t tell that part of the story).