monday january 21 2002    |    8:01 p.m.

i don't like liking boys. i don't like not knowing what to make of them.

he has started not hiding away in the breakroom during his break. now he sits where i sit when i'm on my break: on the bench outside the north cashwrap window. also, before he packed a lunch, and now -- like me -- he buys his coffee and maybe a cookie at the café. does this mean anything?

so on his break today, while i was on register, he was sitting on the bench reading an introductory arabic language book ( swoon! polyglot boy! ) sipping his coffee. i was feeling -- i don't know, kind of slap-happy i guess, and i tapped on the window and waved and he came back in and we did the whole flirty-talk thing. ( is it all in my head? ) come on, the entire day was flirty-talk! he's not swagger-flirty, either, he's just really disarmingly cute. oh i hate myself for typing this. but it needs to come out.

anyway, so i don't know, because it was all counterbalanced by the admission that he didn't go out this weekend because he had to do laundry. ( not that we would've coincided, because i didn't go out saturday, and he only mentioned saturday as a missed going-out possibility. ) um, laundry? let me put it this way: if you had a thing for someone, and he or she kind of maybe told you to come coincide with him or her that weekend, would you go out or would you stay home and do laundry?

i mean, come on, men aren't THAT different, are they? maybe the laundry had gotten serious? maybe when you're 32 laundry takes precedence over things like girls asking you out places?

sigh. i don't get it. i need my girls with me so i can analyze the situation in full and obsess to my heart's content without sounding like a complete raving idiot, without having to type it all out here. help! why are you so so far away?

i don't know. i don't think it looks that good. unless he's painfully shy or something. in these respects. ( ? ) but, i mean, if he stays home with the tide and the dryer sheets every weekend, he's not really gonna get anywhere, is he? maybe clubs aren't his scene? i forget he's ten years older than me. not that that means anything. oh i don't know. i need to shut up.

but i can't. there are all these little things that make me think, hmm, maybe. and then there are all these others that make me shake my head at myself for being so juvenile and, i don't know, hopeful. after all the crap i've put myself through, shouldn't i be enjoying a long, long, long period of time without even thinking about wanting to embroil myself in things?

i wish i were wired with an off switch.

n______ keeps bringing me all these self-help books ( i am not kidding ) while i'm on register and she's supposedly backing up. books with names like making room for love and shit like that -- i won't even touch them, keep insisting to her that i am staunchly, permanently, immovably opposed to self-help, and she keeps trying to convert me to the mushy, poorly-written side. she brought me one today -- it was called something like machiavelli for women or something equally horrendous and intellectually insulting -- and started on her whole "poor [ katpowah ], you need to find a way to be happy and love yourself!" you have to understand, i love n______, we get along famously, but she's on some crusade to convert me from my jaded and cynical ways. anyway, the boy and i had a good laugh over that, since we're both jaded and cynical and quite comfortable that way, thank you. see? see what i mean? perfect? no? yeah. i don't see it very clearly either.

in other news, i haven't slept in 28.5 hours. so attribute this massive venting session to that. work was fun today, lemme tell you. bleh.

and i guess i'm not getting fired. it's just... my paychecks are getting a bit trimmed around the edges. i'll live. i was starting to worry again...

i just want things to be exciting again. as in waking up every day looking forward to being awake rather than to locking myself in my room and chainsmoking and listening to tom waits or jeff buckley or those heart-splitting lou barlow ballads, for god's sake. ( yes, lou! ballads! BALLADS! )

ok. i need to stop writing right. now. begin self-censorship ( although, admittedly, too late ).