That’s Stella

My boy friends have been pushing me to get back into the dating scene. I admit that my love life has been super lame this year. I’ve met lots of great guys, but they’ve either become platonic friends straight away, or like Jason, I start seeing them, we become close, and all of a sudden he’s my best friend and romantic feelings are thrown out the window. This happens all the time. sigh.

When I moved back to NY last year, I met so many guys and was a lot more confident and daring and brazen. My favorite encounters was this guy and this guy. I used my foreignness to my advantage and threw out my Australian accent whenever I got a chance. But this year, that brazen foreign girl that was once me seems to have disappeared. I’ve become too comfortable with my group of friends and being the center of attention with my guy friends has almost replaced the neediness for sex/love/romance.

So Eric (who has been the biggest pusher for me to get back to my brazen self) set me up with his friend on Friday night. I met Eric, his friend John and John’s friend Jeff at a bar on the Lower East Side.

As soon as I saw John, I thought “Holy crap. Eric has really pulled through”. He was just my type. Brown floppy hair and big, thick, brown rimmed glasses. We had a great conversation and exchanged numbers, but he was far more interested in talking to Eric about business, and Jeff was far more interested in me. But I wasn’t interested. Jeff was a little prickly at first, but the more we got to talking, the nicer he was. He bought me drinks because he told me, “I don’t want you to leave”. Conversation was good enough but I felt like he was trying to up me all the time. There was no spark. In fact, I thought he was gay when I first saw him and ruled him out straight away. John left the bar a little earlier then we did. Jeff ended up walking me home.

Erik messaged me the next morning asking if anything happened with Jeff. I texted back…

“NO”.

Saturday night was another story. Two words.

Drunken. Debauchery.

Stay tuned.

In two hours, I am going to meet Jason’s new girlfriend. We were seeing each other intensely earlier this year, but now he has become one of my best friends. I’ve met his family and my dad has added him as one of his Facebook friends so there’s no backing out now. There are no romantic feelings whatsoever. How do I know this? After I realized the thought of shagging him repulsed me, I figured pursuing anything romantically serious with him was probably a bad idea. I should set things straight. He is one handsome guy - whenever I introduced him to friends they would harp on about how good looking he is, but what can I say? There was just no sexual chemistry.

He’s been seeing this girl for a month and called me on Friday to say things had progressed and were now using the “bf” and “gf” terms. Spew. I am really fucking nervous about meeting her. Jason said to me “She knows all about you - and she’s going to treat you like a princess”. Jason hasn’t said the most positive things about her so I’m slightly cautious.

I keep thinking… What should I wear? What if she hates me? What if I hate her? Do I tell him? Will this effect our friendship? Will he chose me over her? Is this going to last? Is it worth becoming friends with her? Oh god… I hope I don’t have to hang out with her every time I hang out with Jason. I hope she’s not too pretty. I wish I was slightly threatening looking….

The other day, our friend Johnny got back from a trip overseas and called me to catch up for a drink. We usually hang out in our group of friends that consists of me and five boys. I met all the boys through Jason because he went to college with them and I am super close to all of them but am definitely the odd one out being the only chick and foreigner. Johnny asked “So how are my boys doing?” But he quickly went to correct himself and said “Or should I say, how are your boys doing?”.

But am I losing a boy? Is Jason no longer one of “my boys”? I am insane.

There are a few relatively simple human things that still surprise me and give me warm and fuzzies. These are simple human behaviors that give me faith in the human kind. That is:

1. People in traffic using their common sense and giving way to flashing ambulances.
2. Seeing someone drop a penny or two or a few bills into a homeless persons cup.
3. Merging (in fact, this is a miracle if you ever see it happen in Perth)

I was at work this evening when I got a call from one of my boy friends Nick. He was all panicky and asked if I had heard about our friend Eric. I had no idea. He told me that Eric had collapsed on a side walk and was taken by ambulance to hospital. They had called the last person on his cell phone who was Nick’s friend and more of a business associate of Erik’s. So I am worried and I quickly call Jason - me and Eric’s best friend - but he wasn’t picking up. I call Eric and he tells me he’s in ER waiting to see a doctor, and that he just felt pressure in his head and blacked out and the next thing he knows he’s in hospital.

Half an hour later, Jason, Nick and I are sitting in ER hanging out with Eric. And you know what? That is fucking cool. In New York, friends are all you have. All my friends here moved away from their family and we’re all orphans in this city. You can always count on your family to do the hospital hang out, but knowing I have the friends that would do the same thing is kinda special.