one night stand | There's Some Guy Out There and He Has My Number

No One Listens to Techno pt 1

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Izzy Mae

This guy has been sitting in my drafts for about 10 months… I decided to finally finish part one and post it. Part two will come in another 10 months, or when I get heartbroken again and consequently feel really inspired to write, whichever comes first.

While no one listens to techno, I sadly love techno ie electro. I listen to it all the time in the car, while I study, while I do work. It calms me, relaxes me, motivates me, and helps me concentrate. I’ll listen to an hour long mix 3-8 times in a day if I really fall in love with it. I love electro so much that when my friend posted a comment on a remix of a song and asked me to join him for a festival, I skipped my third day of graduate classes to drive through the night in order to go to a music festival for the weekend. I’ve had plenty of wild weekends but I think back to this one a fair amount. I feel in love twice, one night right after the other with two different guys. And by fall in love I mean I was riding the induced love that club substances make you feel. Sorry Mom. Side note: Mom if you are reading this, please stop right here.

There are times where I like to do spontaneous things; take a road trip, go out when I still have so much work to do, go on a random date because I’m bored and haven’t met anyone new in a while. Well one of my close friends, Allen, told me about a festival is New York City, Electric Zoo. For those of you who don’t know it’s an Electric Dance Music (EDM) festival and one of my more favorite (or rather a dj that I actually know) Don Diablo was playing. Literally a week before this festival I decided to go. I got tickets from a friend of a friend of a friend and Allen was actually going to drive up to my town in order to pick up some “friends.” I told my dad that my friend was driving up and we were going to drive down together, in the same day. Allen drove 5 hours up for us to drive the 5 hours down. My dad’s friend immediately asked (cause you know we’re Russian) if he was my boyfriend. After I said that no he wasn’t a boyfriend, just a friend, she turns to me and says “too bad, he should be your boyfriend.”

Anyways, we made the plans where Allen would pick up some friends and we would leave in the morning to him picking up friends, me getting drunk at a bar, and us leaving at 1am to drive 4 hours to get to his house, the halfway point to the festival. We get to his house at 6am and pass out until 9am. Literally, so exhausted we went straight to bed. 9am rolls around and we are trying to catch the 10am bus. I get up shower, put on makeup, whatever and then Allen wakes up, takes his dear sweet time and we miss the first train in his hometown, can’t find parking at the second train station and miss that train, only to drive into the city and park up by Columbia. Since that time, that’s where Allen always parks his car when he comes into the city and takes the 1 train down.

So we get to our other friends apartment in Times Square and they leave for the festival. I stay the first day programming and doing a homework assignment because hey I’m still a grad student and have things I need to get done… Ie, I worked for a bit and took a nap. I ventured out finally and met the girl and got my pass for the next day, got dinner with a friend, came back, and took another nap. I started to get ready for the night because hey it’s 8pm and I was ready to go to an after party. So they get back, Allen met a girl at the festival and me, Allen, and his new found love (Lana) head out to a club to see 3lau. So I take a little something something for a good night and we leave. About an hour in the lights look amazing, the music is amazing, the sweaty disgusting gross guys are amazing. Allen and Lana are dancing, I’m having a great time by myself, because at this point in my life I’ve figured out how to third wheel all my happy in a relationship friends and enjoy my own company. I dance next to some guy, give a big smile to another, and then it happens, some guy starts dancing behind me. If it had been earlier in the night I would have pushed them away and moved deeper in the crowd, like I had with the other 2 or 3 guys that tried dancing with me. Most guys that come up and try to dance with you are creepy as fuck, grope you, or honestly are just bad dancers and kill the whole vibe. But not this guys. But again. Maybe it was that substance induced empathy that made me take a second and give him a chance instead of walking away.

Anyways, the new found guy, lets call him John, is dancing with me. I didn’t see his face but as the song ended I started walking away and he just spun me around. He introduced himself to me all suave and invited me up to the VIP section that he had with his friends. My brain literally thought, “No don’t do this, what a stupid idea, why would you do that? Don’t go somewhere with a stranger”, while my body was like “yeah why not? Good idea.” We go up and he pours me a drink and I remember him tasting it in front of me to show me it wasn’t roofied. A+ guy. I take a sip, realize I really don’t want the drink, and give it back to him. We’re chatting and I can’t really talk cause the lights and music are so overwhelming. We’re dancing, walking around, chatting, and then I realize Allen and Lana have been gone a while. So I call them and Allen and her are outside and they can’t get back in. John to the rescue gets them inside, and up to the VIP section after 45 minutes of talking to whoever he needed to talk to. Anything to get laid, amiright? So we get upstairs, are all dancing, drinking and finally 5am rolls around and I am finally ready to leave. John and I take a cab back to his place and I explicitly remember asking him to give his address to Allen so that they knew where I was going. Honestly, this day in age you can never be too safe.

We get back to his place on the upper east side, and head up to his apartment. He’s visiting from Georgia and his parents have a place in the city. He introduced me to his friends who had just played (and lost) in the US Open that day and I met Tim Howard, cause he was casually hanging out there. Tim Howard, the US goal keeper, saw me come back to this guys apartment to sleep with him. I shook his hand and John had to have a conversation with him to tell him that we were sleeping in that room. I’m sure I left a great impression. We hooked up and then ended up going up out onto the roof and talked as we watched the sunrise. We talked about how he’s now in business but he had always wanted to study physics and his parents killed that dream. I talked to him about grad school and my dreams and we fell asleep out there on the roof with the sun beaming on us. Finally after a couple of hours of sleeping outside we went back to his room and fell asleep there. 10am rolls around and I roll out, tell him I have to leave, and take the subway in a black halter dress and heels, stride of pride in all of it’s glory. I get back to my friends apartment and recap my night and pass out.

I never got his number, never talked to him again, never tried to add him on social media, thought about him here and there, and questioned my decisions. The only thing I think back to that night is how Tim Howard must have viewed me and questioned my morals and decisions. But we can’t win them all.

Dancing in the Moonlight

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Izzy Mae

For the longest time, and still, I thought of the whole “dating” thing as obsolete. I mean dating in the sense where you go on actual dates. Those awkward dinners (who’s going to pay?), trying to find some common topic to talk about over coffee and avoiding eye contact when you can’t continue a topic, trying really hard not to show all your flaws to try and impress the person, and at the end of the night either leaving with a hug, a handshake, a first kiss, or jumping into bed. Maybe all four. When I think of dating, I think of it as someone who I have known, who I can enjoy my time with, and the things we do feel natural, not a forced location and time. But to each their own.

Readers, I’ve been tired of dating. I’ve been tired of not having someone find me exciting or not finding the other person exciting. I miss spontaneity, but realize I don’t go for spontaneous guys. I miss getting excited. I’m tired of losing excitement because the other person shows an extreme character flaw. But this blog post isn’t about me whining about dating. Because I actually went on a great date this past week and felt he made the cut to make it onto my blog.

It was a Sunday night. I had just spent the weekend traveling to NYC for one night (12 hours of travel for 15 hours of stay), staying up til 4:30am, having heartfelt talks, realizing my future fears, reading some beautiful short stories that reminded me of what my sister and I are going through (Haruki Murukami for the win), saying goodbye to one of my friends as she left to pursue the next chapter of her life, and starting to work on the stuff for my class that was going to start that week. After this exhausting weekend, one of my friends texted me asking me to come out to the bar that is literally across the street from where I live. I thought about saying no and making excuses and staying in, but instead I said ‘Fuck it’, I’m not going to be flaky, I’ll go.

I invited my roommate who also surprisingly decided to come out on a Sunday night, I mean the bar is literally across the street. We go over and give the bouncer our IDs, mine checks fine and then he sits there with my roommates for about 3 minutes, putting it in and out even though it was scanning green each time. She may look young but for someone who is turning 23 soon don’t mock her ID by trying to get a red light and an excuse, it’s a Sunday night. We get into the bar and see our friend, Matt and his roommate, Joss, and his friend who was visiting out of town, lets call him Liam. I knew Joss but Liam seemed really familiar, turns out not only did we meet back during my freshman year, we were even facebook friends.

So Joss and I went and got a larger table in the back for the 5 of us. Soon the rest of them followed. We had some beers, Joss and I sang our hearts out to Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and danced around to Michael Jackson. In this time frame, I must have charmed dear Liam because he took an interest to talking to me, making jokes, and keeping my attention. As it neared 11pm (PARTAY ANIMALS) we decided it was time to head out, but Liam wanted us to stay out by suggesting we go to another bar. With a 4:1 vote we ended up parting ways and going home, back across the street, it was a Sunday night.

The next morning as I’m sitting at work around 9am I get a FB message from Liam. He told me how great the night before was and invited me to go out to a Music/ Art show thing one of his friends had created. I said sure but only after 9pm because I had a dance class. The rest of my day went by, work, home, food, nap, reading, and finally got to dance. The music/art show thing started around 8:30pm and my dance class ran a little over so I didn’t get there til 9:15pm. 45 minutes late to a date, playing the lets keep ’em waiting card AKA I don’t know how to schedule my life.

The art instillation was amazing. They had a music ensemble with this : The Only Thing I Have Ever Truly Loved. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Liam got me a glass of wine and we went on discussing the workings of these sugar cubes and how the LED lights worked (I surprisingly knew more about the background then I thought I would but hey earlier that year I did a dance collaboration piece that had the similar idea behind it. Dance, the mediums that come out of it, amazing. I can talk about this in a not hookup related blog, HMU). We talked about trying them out but I didn’t really want to play with it. Finally we got our picture taken together in front of it. Ballsy for the first date. But I like it. It was bold and fun just to get a picture with the sculpture. Plus we had some fun poses, a couple tender ones (which I couldn’t take seriously and ended up squirming away). Liam kept saying how we should go out afterwards and his friend who created the sculpture, his brother, his brother’s girlfriend, and two of his other friends ended up going to this Belgium Beer Bar down the street. We joined since who would actually go out on a Monday night?!

So we got there and decided to all sit outside. To get to the restaurant you have to go down a set of stairs, like going into the basement, so the outside had a feel that we were in a pit but surrounded by greenery, wood, outdoor string lights, a lot of open space and a fireplace. Our waiter was a little upset that he got such a big table right near the end of his shift. He was a pretty chill guy except a little spacey. He took our order. Liam and I split duck poutine and I got a fruity beer that had a lot of cherry flavor. Liam got a Belgium White. We chatted, about nothing in particular. I was intrigued to listen to the other people at the table as well. It was like we were having a group date with our tiny date being a subsection of this huge date. Don’t get me wrong, I was really interested in Liam, but more so that we were doing these spontaneous artsy things that I usually do alone.

Time went on, we kept talking, eating, drinking. Then one of the girls had a brilliant idea to ask the waiter to turn the music that was playing outside up. They had a large amount of 50’s going. So the sugarcube guy, after a couple drinks, asked the waiter if he could turn the music up and there would be a hefty tip included with the request. So the waiter did. At first no one got up, but then it happened. The Twist came on. I’m a pretty jittery person so I HAD to get up and dance around. The other girl, May, also got up and danced the twist with me. Liam watched in adoration as I twisted my hips and spun around and made a complete fool of myself. Then he got up and joined me on the next song. We first danced like we had a body between us but as we got comfortable we moved closer and closer together, him spinning me around, bringing me in, moving side to side. Dancing in the moonlight came on and spun around and shared our first kiss. It felt like I was on a movie date. The guy sees the girl, asks her out to an event, goes out afterwards, they laugh, look into each others eyes, and it’s perfect. It felt like that. If I could capture a feeling and moment and relive it, it would be that.

We keep dancing, and finally it’s getting late, I have work in the morning, he has to drive 5 hours to get back home in the morning. So we decided to head in. Now the next part gets a little less romantic. We drove back and I parked in the parking lot by my apartment, we made plans to go back to the bar we had met at, and then we just sat making out in my car for a while. A homeless guy walked behind my car and we spent five minutes debating if he was stealing the actual trash can or just the cans inside it. After all that romantic talk, I invited him upstairs. We hooked up and then I asked him if I could bring him home. Maybe it’s the fact that it was 1am, maybe the fact that I had work in the morning and didn’t want another thing to add to my already rushed routine, maybe I just lost all love for cuddling, but I asked him if I could take him back to where he was staying. He said he appreciated the honesty. I took him home, he asked me if he could text me, and I said yes (granted he didn’t have my number still). And that was that. We texted the next day, I sent him the pictures we took, he asked me to come visit, and I said maybe.

For the first time in a long time I was excited. Maybe not about the guy but at the potential of what a date can be. It didn’t feel like a lets get to awkwardly know each other, I actually felt like he was a friend and we were only hanging out. It felt like the momentum I needed. I just needed to experience one good thing in a sea of bad to realize there are people out there I can have a relationship with. This one may not have worked out but it gave me hope to go forward. Or at least know that a stranger would be willing to dance in the moonlight with me.