Overheard at the Beach

An unworthy tribute to the hilarious blog, Overheard in New York

Many people said some random things to me this weekend. I ended up out alone two of the three nights we were out so I made tons of new friends and heard tons of weird stuff. Here are some of the toppers.

***

Street Guy: So, how old are you?

Me: 25, You?

Street Guy: 27. Man, you're old.

***

Random Middle Aged Hippie Drunk Lady to Me: (She motions me towards her as if to share a secret)

"I can go out with an old man and have him hit on me all night OR I can go out my myself and have three hot guys hit on me!"

(Then dissolves in to giggles upon completing her line) Oh, and yes, she was out with an old man. Poor three hot guys never got their chance.

***

Cute boy I danced with... and refused kisses from, shamed for killing ducks (I think they call it hunting?), made recycle his beer bottle and gawked at for confessing to peeing in the pool(well, all of his friends did too! And then continued to swim in it.) to me:

"You dance okay for a conservative girl."

***

Bartender to random guy walking in: Hey, are you with her? (pointing to me)

Random Guy: No.

Bartender to kitchen help walking in: Hey, are you with her? (pointing to me)

Kitchen Help: No.

Bartender to thug stumbling in: Hey, are you with her? (pointing to me)

Stumbling Thug: No.

Bartender to room: Ok, just wanted to make sure she was free.

***

That's probably the best way to sum up my weekend. Happy Memorial Day!!

I´m headed to the beach this weekend. Sunshine. Waves. Porch Dinners. I can´t wait!! While I procrastinate packing, I figured I would make a list of what I need to bring. Feel free to borrow the list for whatever excursions you find yourself on this summer!

1. Much Sunscreen. If I get more than 15 minutes of sun, my melatoninless skin burns to a crisp.
2. The random assortment of alcohol that has accumulated at my place. Roommates, sisters, friends, etc have left their fruity, girly, rather cheap, headache concoctions behind at my place. A girls beach trip is the perfect time to clean out the freezer.
3. Dresses. Bikinis. Flip Flops. There's my outfit for each day.
4. My business cards. I have my funky home business cards that I give to the earthy, funky guys, and my actual job cards that I give to more professional contacty people. Ok, well, I've handed out cards like twice in my life. Its a new objective for 09 though.
5. Laptop. Then I can facebook whoever I meet... its the background check of the 21st century.
6. My new pilates DVD. I like to pretend like I'll use it. And pretend like I can dance away 10 pounds before Friday. (A girl can always dream!)
7. My game.
8. My undying hope that I will meet the perfect, fun, single christian man at the beach waiting just for me to sweep my off my feet.
9. Cheese and crackers baby.
10. My girls!!!

Yay!! Ok, now I'm psyched up to pack!!

Europa Part II

So, our jerky friend left us to brave the town alone. So, EuroShe and I head off to the club at 2 am following some strangers, winding through the tiny streets, completely unable to have retraced our steps if we so desired. But who cares. We were going dancing.

So, we dance. I tell off the doorman. We get promoted to dancing on stage. She kisses stranger1 we followed to the club. I text EuroHe and tell him to get his jerk self over here. And we dance the night away on stage in the basement of the club.

EuroShe ends up outlasting me. I was about spent and sat down to rest my dancing booty. I had barely taken a sip of my water and out of nowhere this guy bolts out of the stair case, does a little spin and plops down right next to me and starts speaking in all spanish. So, we converse to the best of my ability.. which mostly included me begging him to walk us to the closest subway so we would be able to get home. I think I asked him no less than 20 times, just to make sure we were on the same page. Haha. Stupido Americano.

AlFrio keeps my tired holidaying booty company while EuroShe shows off her staying awake and alive skills. Eventually we leave. Alfrio keeps his promise, walking us to the subway, all the while trying to kiss me and talk me into hanging out the following day. Quite flattering. Perfect opportunity to use the rejection section from my lonely planet book.

Alfrio sweetly says his adioses at the subway and bids us well. We disappear underground, happily on our way home.

But no.

Wrong way. Point A does not go to Point B.

So we wander.

And wander.

Go in a subway... emerge 5 minutes later looking bewildered.

Curse jerky EuroHe.

Smoke a cigarette (EuroShe that is.)

Wander.

So, in order to get home it took getting my booty grabbed by the cerveza guy, the guy EuroShe lends a light to following us, me using the rest of Lonely Planet's rejection section, hearing "free sex" and "Sexo Machine!" screamed at us every corner we turned and my scream waking all the homeless people in the subway system.

We eventually make it home. And the sky is a light shade of blue. We planned on completing the evening by pulling EuroHe out of bed and stomping on him on the floor but somehow, we made it home before he did.

Oh what a night.

Pasty to Pearly

Work makes me a bore. Buildings. Meetings. Suits. Collars. It seeps into my pasty young skin, threatening to suck me in and turn me into a stupid building office meeting loving drone. Bye bye young fun girl. Hello boring peon.

However, I've made a discovery. I discovered the cure for letting out the young, carefree, spirited me that is absolutely irresistible to all the surrounding men.

European Air.

A week of holidaying like the Europeans has brought me back into my perfectly freckled pearly skin. I rocked it. In the disco tech. In the bar. In the subway system. It was fab.

My two Euro friends and I would embark on the town around midnight and get started. They taught me euro things, like words, how to properly finish a bottle of vino, and how to pay for a drink at the bar. I taught them how to dance like soulja boy, how to act out the words to Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz and how to flirt like an American.

Well, EuroShe and EuroHe had a little thing going... but was way undefined, especially with so many cute fun foreigners around. One night, while EuroHe was on his way to get us drinks, two thirty/forty something blonds with boobs and tank tops snagged him and engulfed him in foreign conversation. EuroShe freaked a bit (rightfully so, he was getting our drinks for goodness sake!) so I asked if she wanted me to talk to him.

"No way." She responded.

"Well, do you want to talk to him?" I offer.

"No way."

"Well, do you want to talk to other guys?" I suggest.

"Yes!!"

So, I look right, I look left, and exclaim in my best accent, "Hola!!! Que Tal!" to the very near rather attractive guy.

And so, the battle begins. We chatted up the entire place and by the end I knew all the guys and girls names. Ok, well, if i could have pronounced them I would have known everyone's name.

The bar closes so we all migrate outside. EuroHe is talking to some Jamaican looking dudes. EuroShe and I are talking to a couple other people heading towards another obscure club.

"EuroHe, lets go dance!!" We call.

"I'm gonna have a drink with these guys." What??

So we end up splitting up. And the adventure begins.

I would tell you the adventure but I have some serious jet lag and after traveling 24 hours, getting in, falling asleep for a few hours, and going to work, I have lost my foreign glow. Therefore, I am off to my wonderful bed to reclaim my glow, and will update sometime when I awake.

Au revoir!

So, a young single dude likes me.

Yup. Unmarried. No kids. Got a job.

But, hes like 5 ft even.

And made the mistake of asking Hubby to "hook him up."

And he ignores me in public even though we totally know each others names. Up until this news from hubby, I thought he hated me.

So, at least I have an admirer. But I can't date a man that is a snot to women.

Act your age. Be a man. Be nice to the girls you like. And don't go through the At Work Hubby.

Memoirs of a Modern Day Geisha

Lets start by saying no, a geisha is not synonymous with prostitute. I am in no way sharing memoirs of my recently turned trick.

So, if you haven't read the book, a geisha is an entertainer of men. These men are usually older and hire geisha to attend their parties in order to enjoy their presence. And, geisha don't marry. Their life is their work. Wikipedia puts it best when explaining the nature of the relationships between geisha and the men they entertain:

"Geisha engagements may include flirting with men and playful innuendos; however, clients know that nothing more can be expected. In a social style that is common in Japan, men are amused by the illusion of that which is never to be."

After reading the enthralling book, Memoirs of a Geisha, I have started to see similarities of these geisha/men relationship in my own reality. Most of my male encounters these days are with older, married men, due to the nature of work I am in. I am one of the only younger people around so these men, like I referred to in my previous entry, just take to me. It has blown my mind how they can be so over the age difference, life experience difference, and um, they are married difference, and just dote on me, telling me I'm beautiful, getting borderline mushy at work parties after a few drinks and just simply helping me when I just need a man to get it done.

The thing that blew my mind about the book is basically the same, these men hiring geisha are mostly all married, much older and have lived totally different lives. However, they have this need and yearning and love for young women. Then you look at Bible times and so many leaders in the Bible had several wives. Its an ancient practice no longer accepted now, but I clearly see these remaining whimpers of desires in the grown men around me.

For example, one man at work, with a position similar to Sayuri's Danna (Danna... man who supports a Geisha for a length of time) from the book, called The Chairman, is a friendly 50 year old man that is funny, takes time to listen to his employees, a bit scattered, but has a good heart and is someone I can call a friend. He makes no effort to hide that he thinks I'm attractive or that he enjoys my presence.

One day I was having an awful day. I was stressed from work but the main thing bothering me was the night before due to exhaustion I had a major distaste at my house... a bookshelf fell while packing up items to decorate at a wedding for that weekend, breaking a ton of my decorations, some handmade, and I had no one to help me put everything back together and clean up the remains. It made me feel so utterly alone. The Chairman walked by my office, stopped in and asked me, "What's wrong?" Those two words were all it took and the whole story and a river of tears just came tumbling out of me. Chairman listened and offered to help me get all the remaining items to the event, help unload and set up so I wouldn't have to go it alone. And he did. In the pouring rain. For an outside wedding.

You can call it friendship, and yes, it is. But now after reading the book and seeing into these relationships of the past, it seems a bit different than friendship. That day he was different than a friend. He didn't want anything more than friendship but enjoyed his ability to bail me out and be the hero of the day. And whatever illusions he had in his head.

My question is (other than what should I establish my hourly entertainment rate at... jk) do other women experience this in their life? Where do you draw the line? Should I cut off friendship knowing these guys are borderline geisha lovers? And how the heck did I get classified in the geisha group rather than the wife group? (Not saying I want to marry these old dudes, just saying why is the male attention I get from the old married and not young single.)

Maybe because I'm not chomping at the bit to get married. Maybe because I break up with my sweet boyfriend after two years because I don't know what love is. Maybe because I see the sweetness in these married men and am glad I have at least someone to turn to when everything crumbles to the floor and I'm alone with a smoking car or furniture to move or broken pieces of home decor all over the floor.

The Hubby vs. The Hero

When being single, 20 something, in a city with no family and living alone, (and being charming as I totally am doesn't hurt) the surrounding random men begin to sort of "take ownership" of my well being. Whether I like it or not.

For example, the old retired, eccentric man that lives across the street from me picks up all the sticks from my yard and pulls my trash to the curb each week. Kinda weird when he goes through my trash but I just look on the bright side (no touching dirty trash cans) and move on.

At work though, it gets a little deeper since that's where I spend the majority of my time. After a while, you get to know people and they get to know you. Well, I think I may have eluded to At Work Hubby before. He is a cute decade or so older than me divorced dude living his own single and fabulous life. He's charming and flirty and so even though he has a son my little sisters age, I enjoy our witty exchanges. We occasionally have lunch together and crash each other's offices to complain to each other about our day, issues or personal lives. He brings me snacks from meetings, lifts my heavy boxes and calls me when we work late to poke at me. He's pretty cool but best left as a friend (a point I make plenty clear) but he has decided that nobody else better be my friend like he is.

Well, another guy, Super Hero, took a liking to me from the beginning. He is married with 2 cute little boys and is in his 30s. However, he continues to bring me little goodies, drops by to talk, brings be Starbucks, changed my tire when he found out it was airless, gets worried about me and calls me to see if I'm ok and even gave me flowers on my birthday.

Sometimes Super Hero makes me a little nervous in that he is married and is so dang nice to me. So, what else should I do but talk to At Work Hubby about it for the male point of view. Well, At Work Hubby has gotten pretty dang jealous of Super Hero. Super Hero is just through the roof with his thoughtfulness, speediness and resourcefulness and even though Hubby I actually consider a friend, which gives him the best position, he can't stand me having a Super Hero in my life.

So, Super Hero and I have been working on this huge project together lately. Well, poor Hubby has to walk past my door to go to the elevator, bathroom, exit, etc., but mostly the bathroom. So here are Super Hero and I, huddled up in my office over our project for hours and hours while poor Hubby walks by for his morning, noon, afternoon, mid-afternoon pee only to see us laughing eating, drinking and being merry while chipping away at our task at hand.

Well, Hubby got onto me one afternoon (I mean, what is this? He totally takes this hubby thing seriously) picking on me about hanging with Super so much. Despite my many explanations, he got all pissy and pouty of course leading me to lecture him on how he needed to get his own life and quit worrying about mine.

So, the next day, Super and I are finishing up our project when here comes Hubby for his morning pee. Well, this time, rather than passing by, Hubby decides to take a new route and comes into my office and proceeds to put on a beautiful act of shaking hands with Super, patting backs, throwing around "How YOU doin?s" and playing catch up like old friends. (How many times did he see the back of his head yesterday while going to the bathroom) So I sit there while Hubby thoroughly enjoys his new found way to crash our "party."

Finally after all the, "Hows the WIFE" and "How're the BOYS, a.k.a. your CHILDREN" I tell hubby he is going to pee his pants if he gets anymore excited about catching up with Super and that he better get on his ridiculous way to the bathroom so we can finish our project.

They nervously laugh and hubby leaves to go pee.

Little boys and their little battles. Hubby should have just invited Super to go play swords if he wants to fight about it.