The Lady Vanishes

I have to study for the GRE so don't expect to hear from until friday at the earliest, may not even until monday. I apologize, but getting into grad. school does kind of take precedent. I have more than enough links to keep you all entertained, but don't forget to come back next week.
Oh wait, it gets worse

Ok so I haven't actually spoken to Israel since friday. he sent me an email today asking me if I was still crazy as my behavior is scaring him. SCARING HIM? As if this sudden radio silence is doing wonders for my skin.I look ashen. I can't eat or sleep. Ok that's because of the math section of the GRE but he isn't helping. The problem is knowing the right thing to do in any situation. I've already thrown the rules book out the window so deciding what to do, when you play by your own set of ideas, is always more complex. Well I did the one thing that probably every woman in the world says you shouldn't do, I wrote out an explaination, a truthful one.
of course, I haven't heard back yet. But at least I know that I said what was I thinking.
Oh you want to know what I wrote? Well, nothing incendiary. It was simply an explaination, in non blaming terms, why I was nervous and what caused me to panic and why I wasn't sure how to address things with him now. I didn't blame him for his radio silence, in fact I didn't even mention it, except to say that understanding the correct thing to do when the territory is unfamiliar is always difficult at best. Just look at my students I give them clear rules and they still rarely have a clue.
Actually it was quite a lovely little letter (go figure, english teacher and all, so I'm curious to see how he'll re-act to it) I'll let you know.
Why I am taking the GRE

I think I may have finally found the perfect fit for grad school.
"I recently received a letter that said 'Darling, Marry me or I'll kill myself.' Well I was disturbed until I looked and realized that the letter was addressed to 'occupant'" Tom Lehrer introducing his song "National Brotherhood Week"

OK I wasn't going to blog about this, but well it has turned into an ongoing debacle so I feel the need to vent. A woman in my office is getting married. Now I see this woman maybe ten times a year, and we have never spoken, except for an initial interview three years ago, for more than twenty minutes. And yet apparently simply by virtue of being a woman and being in the office with her I'm supposed to care that she is getting married.

Now I don't mean to be petty and cruel and divisive, but, well, ok I will.

I don't see why working in the office with this woman obligates me to attend her bridal shower ( which threw me into such a serious depression last week I had to down two TWO martinis). I don't know when she is getting married or even the name of her intended, and yet supposedly I should care. Mainly because I AM NOT FRIENDS WITH HER. Not that she's a bad woman but I didn't care to be her friend before she was married, I don't really want to be it now simply because she is "getting hitched." All the other women in the office are a flutter with "Can't you believe it" and "Isn't it wonderful?" And I could really care less. I would rather keep my money and spend my thursday night sleeping or vaccuming or analyzing the deep symbolic content of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Now don't get me wrong. When my close friend had an engagement party in CT, I never thought of not going ( although I did resent it). But I've known her since we were five. I'm in the damn bridal party. I wasn't going to even try to weasel out of that one.

But what I do object to is that all the single women in my office seem to have the goal, not only for themselves, but for the rest of us single women, to get married. The Mistake bought the Rules for me so that I could get married. Another prof. is all on about me marrying Israel. Now is it so inconceivable that I might want to, oh say date, before I get married? Or even more heretically, might I not want to get married and remain a single gal with a full male harem?

And after I have sacrificed money for a bridal shower, my thursday night when I should have been studying for the GRE for the shower, my wednesday night to buy the gifts for thursday night, now I have to give another couple of bucks for the wedding present.

In the words of the drag queen in the film Trick "Am I bitter? Absolutely."
"I give you these fifteen" drops tablet "ten, ten commandments"

Mel Brooks in History of the World Part One

Filled with anxiety, I am turning to you my readers for help. See I don't believe in G-d or fate or destiny-so I have to rely on the same principle as Todd TV-that basically a bunch of random people will eventually come to the correct conclusion, we hope.

Basically here's what's going on. You know the situation with Israel, he was being wierd and distant. I was feeling like he knew he "had" me, and that also maybe he was reconsidering dating me and was using work as an excuse to hide his ambivalence.

Now if I was a smart well adjusted woman, which I so clearly am not and he already knows this, I would have said "Fuck him" and gone on with my weekend without even aknowledging that anything was going on.

But as I have just admitted, I am not a well adjusted woman. In fact, I don't think I can even see well adjusted on a clear day. Even mildly disturbed is a bit murky.

Now, true, there were lots of mitigating circumstances, including my identified previous relationship history and a huge crisis which occurred on friday. His behavior, I still maintain, is highly suspicious.

But on the other side, I can see where he would view my behavior as indicative of serious mental defect, which let's face it, it is, and I never maintained I wasn't. ( I never said "Nope I'm totally well adjusted." I don't think I could even try to maintain that one with a straight face.)

So I am at an impasse. I am filled with anxiety. There is a side of me that's like "Well, so much for that." And there is the side of me that really wants him no matter what.

And which side to listen to ? And which side's advice should I go with?

I was talking to the Mistake today ( married twice) and she, in a shocking act of selflessness, bought a copy of the book the Rules. Now I've read the Rules, and I have even been lectured about the Rules in a Psychology of Marriage course.

Now according to the Rules I should create longing and desire by acting like I could care less. Just be like "Well, that's great, I have to go."

My impulse, and admittedly I have that jewish guilt going on, is to think I did something wrong and apologize and be subservient.

But I still have a lot of rage about how he was acting. And I still maintain that his distance and so forth is serious cause for concern.

So I have no idea what to do. I do really like this guy and up until last week I had a great time.

Damn it.
Conversion theory

"I turned a lesbian straight."

Yep, I've heard that line a couple of times from a couple of men. And I don't believe it one bit. Not that straight men are the only ones who have fantasies of "converting" straight women ( the ideology being that the man is just SO good that she can't go back to women-when it could be say that she is a bisexual, or she was just "experimenting", or that maybe in this particular case she found herself attracted to a man, but she is still predominantly attracted to women), gay men often fantasize about "converting straight men ( all those ads at the back of the village voice-gay men offering blow jobs to pent up straight men). Straight women often have fantasies about converting gay men. In fact, it's hard for me to think of one woman I know whe hasn't at one time or another dated or tried to date a gay man.

I don't buy into conversion theory. One of my former roommates was hanging out with a guy who claimed to be gay. I wasn't convinced. I watched how he looked at women, and sure enough a week later he was in my roommate's bed. At breakfast she told me "He turned straight." My response was "Listen, it's not like he's bad milk. He didn't pass his expiration date and whoops he's straight. He didn't spin a chrysalis and emerge a straight man." But she really liked to believe that she had "turned" him.

I'm one of the very few women who is rarely attracted to gay men. Once I know a guy is gay, I immediately disengage. My students, who were discussing gender and sexual identity issues today, said they would be very upset if an ex came out of the closet. They seemed to take it personally, like they were SO bad that the person had to eliminate the whole gender. My theory is you don't eliminate a whole gender based on one performance. If that was the case, I would have become a lesbian a long time ago, and trust me I have deeply contemplated it. I have had some very lovely women make some very attractive offers, but alas I just can't act on it. And as someone who has dated a gay man, I never took it personally. I never thought his decision to be gay had anything to do with me.

Any conversion fantasies or stories you'd care to share?
Courtesy of the long lost love of my life, the man who vanished

Minnie Driver in Grosse Point Blank

What is it about me that makes a man turn into Houdini? ( Could it be the shakles at the bottom of the fishtank? I wonder)

What the eye sees, the mind believes
Harry Houdini

There is something in me that makes men vanish. Something about me that makes men think they don't have to break up or leave me a note or even a postcard "Can't see you anymore PS it wasn't your fault." They just stop calling.

Now I'm not talking about after two or three dates. I'm talking about men that I've dated for months. In at least two cases, a guy I dated for 9 nine months suddenly vanishes without even so much as an email saying "It's over." I mean take thirty seconds out of your life just so I don't have to sit by a non ringing phone for the next month pondering if you've been taken hostage by commitment phobic pygmies or are trapped under a large piece of furniture with your cell phone just one tenth of an inch beyond your reach.

And my guess is you'll never hear from him again
Kevin Spacey in the Usual Suspects

Israel's been distant and wierd all week. I had a serious crisis on friday and so I called him and had the following conversation:

Bunni: If you re going to break up with me, do it now.

silence

Bunni: You are not going to break up with me, are you?

Israel: If I wanted to break up with you, I would have done it by now. I wouldn't plan and wait. I would already be gone.

Bunni: Right.

And then he doesn't call for three days.

Now I know men and women think differently, but this is a lot of strain to be putting a "relationship" the third week in. In fact, at this point it's like not having a boyfriend ( I don't hear from him or see him) but with more emotional stress and rejection issues. And with the past men who have vanished, I'm beginning to wonder. My friend Ami and I had the follwing conversation about it today.

Ami: first, don't pin all your hope for love on one man

Bunni: I'm supposed to call the harem back?

Ami: second, take the good stuff from him as a sign that you can still meet someone great

Ami: third, don't give up on him yet, he might suprise you yet

Ami: no, i wouldn't call them back

Ami: you were in a rut, it's good to shake free of it

Bunni: oh yeah I feel much better now emotional unsatisfied AND sexually frustrated

Ami: fourth, ignore me - i'm just babbling

Bunni: what? were you talking? I totally missed it

But getting back to my theoretical point. I have long believed that there is a special place in hell for people who use text messaging, fax, email, im, or answering machine messages from break ups. Particularly if it is a long term relationship. But still, at least you put in the time to break up, as opposed to the men who vanish, who always leave a question about what happened. I wrote it all down once, the process I go through when a man vanishes. Here is the quick quick version

Phase 1 (the first week) is upset, but makes excuses-work, crisis, etc

Phase 2 understands being rejected but still hopes/fears that something is seriously wrong with him-watches the news and reads newspapers for car accidents, comas, drug overdoses, accidental shootings

Phase 3-begins to hope that he is dead because that would at least not be a personal rejection

Phase 4-he becomes added to passed dating mythology- he becomes a sort of faceless man-because of his absence almost any quality can be projected upon him-he comes a filler, a place holder, a symbol of unattainable desire and also the worst qualities of men

Phase 5 He is replaced by yet another man who doesn't call or he is simply forgotten

The truth is that I would rather be broken up with and be done with it and just move on. I have better things to do with my time, and I like to give the harem a heads up when their services are needed.
The best news I've had this week


You are the playful pin-up! Do you know how to be
serious?


What Type Of Retro Gal Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

courtesy of Aethele