bad girl/good girl

a couple of weeks ago i acted rashly. it seems i've been doing that a lot lately (see previous post)! for some, my behavior amounts to just another night in a bar but it was fairly out of character for me.

two weeks ago, psmee and i booked tickets for a fabulous vacation. naturally, after said booking we felt the urge to celebrate, so we headed out to the strip of bars near her place to toast our future travels and make plans for bikini purchases. the first place we went to was an odd duck - irish name, asian staff, country&western music on the speakers. it had a short bar populated by a couple of regulars and a row of invitingly empty stools. after a couple of beers and a lot of chatter we were ready for something a little more raucous, so we moved on. our second choice was far more typical for the area - loud, dark, and packed with hill types. miraculously, psmee ferreted out two empty stools on the corner of the bar. so we laid claim and ordered another round.

not five minutes later there was a guy at my elbow, chatting me up. in my typical fashion, i sort of halfway responded to his questions, not interested in him, but not interested in being rude, either. plus, there's always something intriguing about getting hit on, no matter what the guy looks like - it's like, what's going to come out of his mouth next? what's his motivation here? what did he see in me that made him think we should be talking? proximity? an obvious point of commonality? attraction? it's an interesting game, and you know they're playing it too, so it's not cruel. this time around i kept drawing blanks - he was dressed very differently from me, and i was taller than him, and we didn't seem to have anything in common (although it later turned out i know a friend of one of the guys he was with - but that was a surprise coincidence). so we keep talking, and psmee starts talking to some hoodlums, and everything's funny, just another random bar night, and next thing i know this guy's making some bet with psmee about how many questions he can answer "right" in my eyes - at some threshold of correctly answered questions, i have to kiss him. by this point i'm completely confident that i won't hear the answers i'm looking for, so i agree. psmee sandbags me, though, lobbing softball after softball at this guy! she would probably disagree - to be fair, there were some real questions in there - but the fact remains that i lost the bet.

i'm a raised-right kind of girl, so i have to honor my commitment, and do so, there in the bar. i pay in full and then some, and next thing i know he's talking about how he wants to see me again and i'm not on that page, so i tell him he's "not my type," thinking that

a. this is true, and
b. it's a nice way to let someone down - it's no one's fault, it doesn't mean he's bad or ugly or not cool or stupid, it just means he's not for me.

he presses me, and dumb drunk girl that i am, the only reason i can give him is that he's not "edgy" enough - the world's dumbest answer, but what i meant was that most guys who catch my eye aren't wearing buttondowns and leather boots - really nice clothes, true, but not my speed. a superficial judgment to be sure, but come on! it's a bar hookup! anyway, one thing leads to another and next thing i know we're all headed back to psmee's place, then her door is closed and he and i are on the couch, and... good grief! so he starts talking about calling me, seeing me again, etc but i repeat my "not my type" protest, and he's having none of it. finally, we exchange numbers but since he knows there's someone else (who'd been texting me that night... he's going to need a name of some sort, but for now, know he's the one in the picture these days), he says he's not going to call me - if i want to see him, i have to call him, but i should know, he really wants to hear from me. i, of course, agree - perfect, right? so i drop him off, drive home, and delete his number from my phone just in case i'm tempted - i've got a good thing going and a tendency to self-sabotage (duh, why did i make out with this random stranger when i have a sweetie?), it's not about him. i feel guilty the next morning, and by saturday night i've confessed my sins to the boy, he responds in the best possible way, and i wash my hands of the whole thing.

tuesday, i receive this text:
"I can be edgy."

!!!!!!

no i did not write back.