Crunch

At least two of my friends don't approve of the word "crush". Erin suggested I call it a crunch. Okay, whatever, so I have a crunch. I don't even know why I am humoring someone who drinks the sweetest sugary syrupy vodka drinks on the planet, but I am. Erin, your drinks taste like tree sap. But I love you.

Last week, I gave my cell phone number to my crunch, and he gave me his cell phone number.

Then he raised my cell phone number and gave me his home phone number.

So I countered with a work e-mail.

He met my work e-mail and raised it by calling me this morning. So far he is winning the game of who will be less fearful of this crunch.

Can anybody truly win in this kind of situation? I suppose it is possible.

I rehearsed a show from 11 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. this morning (and again I say to my fellow cast members, it should NOT be this hard to stage an orgy!) and I knew Crunch was going to call this morning. I thought I would be so tired that I might sleep through the sound of my phone ringing, but it turned out quite differently. I woke up at 8:30 and couldn't sleep because of the impending phone call. I tossed and turned and finally just got up and made coffee.

I expected the call around 9 a.m. and wrote in my journal for a while. A few minutes before 9 a.m., I suddenly felt my cellphone vibrating in my orange pajama pants from The Gap. I pulled the phone out and in my usual coy and nonchalant manner blurted out, "Oh, thank god. I couldn't take much more of this anxiety."

So, he'll never be able to say, "you had me at hello." No, he will have to say, "you had me at oh-thank-god-i-couldn't-take-much-more-of-this-anxiety."

Why, oh why can't I be enigmatic?

We talked for an hour and damn if I don't still think he is the neatest thing since ketchup.

I was hoping he would say something like, "I don't have no more time to talk" or at least use the word, "irregardless" so that I could put him out of my head. Apparently, I am not getting out of it so easily.

Whenever I feel a lack of control over something in my life, I like to balance it out by taking charge of a different situation. For example, when M. and I broke up (the first time - one short month) I couldn't handle the feeling of powerlessness. I was especially sad one day as I sat alone having my lunch at a cafe, so I jumped up from my lunch, ran to a pay phone, and came out to my mom on the telephone. "Mom, I broke up with M., who as you know, is a man, but we were dating and not just friends, and so obviously I am gay, just so you know."

In retrospect, perhaps there may have been a better way to handle that.

So, here I am feeling helpless to stop this crunch. I already came out to everyone, so the only action I can take now is to make this promise to my faithful Toaster Oven readers:

I will not blog about Crunch every day. I promise. I am not going to turn into one of those people. I have way too much to say and don't want to waste time gushing about boys or fretting about crunches. I am far too clever for such lunacy.

Did I mention he has a cute laugh?