You’ve been cut off. You cut it off. Whatever. It’s over.
In 2000, the city population was at just over 45,000. It’s grown, sure, but let’s say that it’s 50,000 for simplicity.
In the course of, say, five years, one might go out with or show interest in about 50 people. It’s realistic. Think of all of the women who you flirt with but it doesn’t go somewhere, or the guys you go out to lunch with and find out that it was a date in their minds when they insist on paying the bill and opening your car door. So that’s a 0.1% chance of running into one of these people at any given time. It sounds impossible, right?
And yet everywhere I go, I see one! He finally shaved that beard?! He went straight back to her?! He’s not a vegetarian any more?! Why couldn’t there be chemistry?! Was it so bad that he had a pet lizard?! And so on. My strategy is to smile, wave, and greet the guy AND new girlfriend and say hi. Why? Because I’ll be darned if someone is walking around this city thinking I’m insecure, resentful, or worse, “bitchy.” It’s a little dance we do to save face and keep the peace we love so dearly in Charlottesville. But it can really hurt.
Story time. Anyone have any nightmare stories? You can always change details like locations and times for privacy!
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Men, Singles Scene
You cannot possibly want me to get into this topic.
I possibly want you to.
There have been a few girls that I have gone out with or asked out or been stood up by that I have seen at some later date, and that’s always a bit weird. It met them in bars, so there was a certain randomness to our meeting anyway. Then on the other hand, there are two girls I have gone out with at least once that I see fairly regularly. I have or have had class with these girls, so I see them more regularly outside of date-like functions, and I’m friends with them without any awkwardness even though it didn’t work out in my favor for one reason or another.
I used to swim at ACAC and would frequently end up sharing a lane with this really nice guy. We’d occasionally strike up a conversation, but while I tried to be very careful about not leading him on as I was dating my now husband (intentionally dropping in phrases like “oh my boyfriend loves that movie”), he definitely thought he had a chance. When I’d come home from the gym, now-husband and I would laugh about pool guys’s latest attempts to woo me (he once said I had beautiful hands - just came out of nowhere, which is an odd thing to say when someone’s been in water for an hour and looks like a prune).
One night while sitting at a bar with friends having the exact conversation lilith is trying to key up here about awkward encounters, I launch into some of my many pool guy encounters. Not ten minutes later, in walks pool guy (with a date). He comes over to say hello and does a double-take when he recognizes my boyfriend. After they chit chat and he leaves for his date, I find out pool guy and now-husband used to hang out together before we were dating, commiserating about how hard it was to meet girls in this town. Not juicy but classically Charlottesville
Well, yes ex’s are common sightings in Charlottesville. For guys, it’s basically… is she still hot? damn, that sucks; or, serves her right.
Sorry, had to say it
True story as to how ridiculously small Charlottesville is. After very casually dating a guy who lived in my apartment building (okay, a couple meet-ups and at least one very interesting, no handsies, makeout session), I end up having a bit of interest in a different guy I’ve seen around town. Completely enthralling, no handsies, makeout session with the second guy…only to find out he’s the roommate of guy number one and ALSO lives in my building. I thought that sort of thing ended, once you graduated college!
Oh shit, ThatGrrl, I think I know who you are.
Ha! Doubt it! But if that event is so easily capable of repetition, around here, just goes to show you. Oh, and ask for references before things get too hot and heavy. I’m just sayin’!
Language!!
And I think I know who she is too, assuming she uses her nom de plume in an area other than online (if so, I’m assuming this will make sense to her)
How a propos
Oooo. Now I’m going to have to figure out how I know oy! Dammit. Wish I’d gone to that Zinc thingie, instead of lounging around all sick and sniffly. Hey, it was for your protection, people.
We’ve never met, but if you are who I think you are, I’ve “known” you longer (a LOT longer) than I’ve “known” any other villain. Probably 5 or 10 years since I’ve first seen “ThatGrrl”.
Ah, well, THAT makes sense. Yup. Same ThatGrrl. Using the same posting name for everything makes it easier to remember what it is, when I’m drunk.
only reason I remembered was I thought, the first time I saw you, “she doesn’t look like Marlo Thomas!”
(I watched waaay too much TV as a kid)
ThatGrrl: do not ask for references on me (not that you would), you will be lead astray. Lies!
I will say this on this topic, well kinda on this topic…. I got driven out of making personal posts on myspace (although today I broke that rule in a huge way), because I was being ‘monitored’ by several exes who still carried a torch. Then came Craigslist, where I initiated this nom de plume. I came to find out that one of these torch bearers was actually printing out what I wrote and keeping it in a meticulous file, with other items. It really cramped my ability to be honest and keep my writing free. So I just stopped writing alltogether. I was overjoyed when Oy turned me on to this site. Finally an fun interactive community where I think very few of you know me (despite my nonanonymity) and the few that do don’t want to obsessively get into my pants. Of course there are way more readers than writers here so I could be slitting my own throat by even saying this. But its hard to escape. I think at least one, possibly two of the rants in the cville this week are directed at me, but then again I could be riding the express train to paranoiaville at this point, so loose has my grip on reality become.
Small town? Yeah. Small internet. True too. Time for daddy to start cultivating some apathy.
I looked a lot more like Marlo Thomas about 10 years ago, oy! Although, I can’t for the life of me figure out where I would have been posting that long ago. Bizarro.
That’s okay, belmont. You need no references. But WOW, sorry about the stalker ex! Those suck. And not in the fun way.
it wasn’t from posting, ThatGrrl - I first associated “ThatGrrl” with you (assuming that’s you) from something I saw offline…
Ah ha! Gotcha, oy. I think I’m following. Yup. Probably IS me. Gotta love these small towns!
Girls/women I’ve dated fall more or less into a few categories:
There’s the ‘we should have just been friends’ ones. These are girls I’ve had a lot in common with, liked a lot/has some attraction to, but it just wasn’t enough to make a serious relationship work for very long. When I see these girls after having dated them, I go out of my way to talk to them, some are friends to this day. What drew us together was real enough that I feel a connection, just not ‘that kind’ of connection. If they’ve got new boyfriends, then thats great. I truly wish nothing but the best for them. This is the largest group.
Then there’s the ‘what was I thinking’ relationships. I’ll cross the street so as not to run into one of these (if I’m lucky enough to see them coming). We have little or nothing in common (alcohol may have been involved {this is becoming my standard refrain}), and since I’ve got all the social skills of a Steve Carrell character, I don’t even know what I would say. Luckily there aren’t many of these.
Lastly there’s the ‘if only I’d…..’ ones. Only a couple of these, of which one truly stands out to this day. This is the relationship which still feels like a fresh wound after a decade. So much passion!, so much chemistry!, so much fun!…what happened?!? If I saw this girl today, I would treat her like the first group,… but ….if I did, could I keep my cool? should I? What if this was the one? Does she feel anything? What exactly? These are the relationships that leave you profoundly changed forever, and with a clearer view of what you’re looking for and no idea how to achieve it.
[by a strange and twisted set of circumstances, I happened to be in the Clerk’s office of a local courthouse not too long ago. The woman in front of me asked for a copy of her daughter’s marriage license (what was that name? could it be her? after all these years? emotions…emotions..){I didn’t think she lived here anymore, and because they lived abroad I’d never met either parent}. I’d like to think she has a great life now, god knows she deserves it.]
Never done the ONS, NSA, or FWB thing, I think it would make being single in this town much more difficult (for me at least) if I had.
Sorry for the lack of humor… perhaps later..
i know this girl from staunton who lives in sandiego now, who is just absolutely fucking bonkers. for example, she once slashed my tires in college so that i couldn’t go visit my girlfriend for the weekend.
now she comes home for christmas every year and wants to “hang out,” ostensibly so that she can “dismember me and make a lampshade out of my torso.” so i’m pretty busy and hard to contact at christmas time.
of course, she’s fantastically hot. especially when she acts all looney tunes.
parlie, if it’ll get you off the hook you can give her my number. I’ve got a soft-spot for the crazy ones. well the fantastically hot crazy ones at least.
you gotcherself a deal, buddy! but it’s your funeral…
Thor was there a few years ago when a ridiculously hot girl we both knew went koo koo for coco-puffs at a Christmas party. I won’t tell it for the sake of his anonymous-ness. From my perspective it was Seinfeld-esque.
oh i had one of those too, christmas party lunatic. her bright purple dress went well with her wine breath and her head-exploding manic/panic nonsense.
also, thor is only anonymous if you let him be. to the rest of us, it’s pretty obvious that he’s the bucket man from the downtown mall. sit on a bucket, play a harmonica, post on a blog. repeat.
you forgot poop in a bucket.
parlie, you’re C _ _ _ _ _ _, and we’ve met at O _ _, right?
play a harmonica, poop in a bucket, post on a blog, repeat… hey! that sounds like me.
Lilith, “ITS OVER, NO MORE DATING…”? You haven’t given up on men without even being pushed to that extreme by me, have you? Day late/dollar short… story of my life…
She has the body of a twenty-two year old…in her freezer.
(N.B., I don’t know how old parlie actually is.)
parlie, I know you’ve got better stories than that.
Is that a warning or a dare?
My comment? lets say dare..
I don’t think you’re up for it though. (I’d even let you blog all about it, if you wanted to)
*ahhheemmm* sorry, just clearing my throat
@28: it was my only good story, ever.
The real reason why I have to travel for work, often, is best exemplified by my drive from San Antonio to Houston on Wednesday. I pulled over at a gas station/food store with enough billboards on route whatever to rival “South of the Border,” and, for the first time in my life, I could not handle the jerky. If it can walk, it can be shot, skinned, and dried out in central Texas. I bought a piece of elk jerky (seriously!) and loaded up on sweets mostly, like a skewer of marshmallows dipped in chocolate then nuts then covered in icing. YUM! Maybe a hundred miles later, I pulled over to pick up one of those Mountain Dew energy drinks (way better than Red Bull or Rockstar, promise!) and the store clerk was like, “Honey, you having a rough day? You want a scratch-off?” I was like, “Yes, today IS a rough day, how did you know? I never do this, but I’ll take a scratch-off.” I got a dud, of course, and I kept on driving another hundred mjiles until I pulled into the Rice University parking lot where I was to meet for an appointment. I checked myself in the mirror real fast and… I had chocolate all around my mouth the entire time!!!
So I have to travel to spread my embarrassingness across as many states as possible. That’s all.
Yupster….Should have told her you had just left the movie set where they are making a new updated version of ‘2 girls One Cup’.
Office party last night and I had one plastic glass of room temp Chardonnay before I could fake a phone call from home telling me that my non-existent 3 year old triplets had all simultaneously fallen down the stairs, spontaneously combusted and impaled themselves on a foolishly sharpened Barbie and so I just HAD to go home early to organize Pegasus landing in the yard so the landscaping didn’t get too trashed. I didn’t even wait for my secret Santa gift. Party?! Kiss my ass… I’ve had more fun on the crapper after a bad Shrimp Madras and 8 bottles of Elephant beer.
hipster: oxo? i’ve been once. if i met anybody there, then congrats, you were a guest in my blackout. it was halloween and i was dressed like a bottle rocket. whatever that means.
stanley: i’m 25-esque. but 30-ish.
heckleberry: i have a lot of great stories. if you are who i think you are, then you’ve already read the best one.
10 potential paramours a year in Cville for 5 years straight? Am I the only one who thinks that’s a lot?