FA2

When I was travelling, for a few days, I was in the same city as FA2. I had no intention of letting her know I was near, even though I was with E and FA2 could have been in a position to offer insight into the E friendship, and unless she asks outright, I'm not 'fessing up to my travels, though there are signs out there if she chooses to read them.

Anyway, the signs were there even a few weeks ago and I was expecting her to say something while I was nearby, but she never said a word. However, today, just a few days after I return home, she contacts me via MSN. After a little bit of small talk and lectures (all the usual FA2 stuff... it never changes), out it comes. She wants a favour. She explains it to me. It's do-able with very little effort on my part, but I don't consider it to be a small favour to ask. There might be no effort, but it's important to her.

She doesn't deserve it though, so she can, to put it bluntly, fuck right off.

WTF?

While I was on holiday, I spent the best part of four weeks eating out. Junk food, restaurants, pub grub (both fancy and, well, not) plus I was drinking, if not heavily, then regularly.

But I managed to lose just over 4lbs in the process.

Go figure.

Sundays are not great at the best of times, but...

Today has, rather unsurprisingly, been a mixed day already. I got another good night's sleep last night, though woke slightly earlier than I would have liked. That should mean I'll sleep again tonight, ready for an early start tomorrow. USHW kinda promised to put together the list of advice, thoughts and comments on the E situation for today, which I am really looking forward to. However, I needed to kill time because I can't just sit about all day waiting for USHW to get in contact.

To start off with, I made the first move in getting my photos from my trip ready for public consumption and in doing so, realised that almost 15% had simply vanished (and I took a load of pics, so this is not a small amount). I've no idea where, or how, but my memory card had been acting up, sometimes not letting the camera access it, but it usually fixed itself once I switched the camera off and on again a few times. It never showed any signs of simply deleting a complete batch of photos and I know the images were stored there at least temporarily because I was able to preview them on the camera's LCD screen. This has really annoyed me because there were some pics of E on there, taken specifically for her, and now they're gone. This hasn't helped my mood any and I'm still very 'meh' today.

But, I've made arrangements to see my sister and the family today, so that'll help matters, plus my nephews are always good for improving my mood. That'll kill off most of the afternoon/early evening and tonight I can prepare for work tomorrow (eeek) and sort out a message I have to send to E and USHW's thoughts, if she was able to make time to jot them down.

Music

While I was on holiday, the music I tended to hear was old stuff... mostly rock music from the 80s and early 90s, but there was one recent tune that seemed to crop up everywhere I went and has, unofficially ended up being the tune of the holiday. Each time I hear it, it reminds me of my holiday and, perhaps tellingly, E.

Stop and Stare by OneRepublic.

Advice

Over the past week or so, I've been chatting with USHW about the E situations. She's promised to sit down and provide detailed insight into the situations based on my own posts here, plus some stuff I've been telling here in private.

I'm really looking forward to hearing what she has to say. I'm not sure if it can shed any light on matters, but a second opinion would be great nonetheless.

Frustrations

Yesterday was tough. I managed to get myself from the airport to my hotel without any real incident, despite being awake for more than 48 hours straight. Booking into the hotel also went without incident and I was soon relaxing on the bed, watching crap TV.

The weather was crap, I wasn't yet home (being forced into an overnight stay due to no connecting flights), I was fairly despondent due to my holiday being over and I was still pondering the two main E situations, namely the OMG stuff, plus this recurring confusion over my relationship with E. (There was also, as I pointed out to USHW, great potential for the hotel room to be used in a fuck-fest and the recent dalliances on holiday have only made me more aware of my single-ness right now, and that alone was frustrating.)

Just before I left, E mentioned (suggested? asked? I'm not sure) if I might even consider spending more time there, working. She knew my answer before I gave it (we kinda touched on this earlier in the holiday). She knows I can't make that decision right now, but it's something I wouldn't simply discount.

There are plenty of reasons why I wouldn't make that decision (and plenty more about why it wouldn't be right now), but the main one is that I simply am in no fit state mentally to do it. Leaving E, having a great time on holiday and being fairly "down" isn't the right frame of mind to do it, so I need time to readjust to the UK again and put the emotion of the past few weeks behind me. I might not even get into making that decision and I might find life great here and things might really change for the better in the near future, but one thing is sure... it's not the right time to start thinking about working abroad.

No resolution

The problem with goodbyes is that you don't want them to get too negative or downbeat. E was as down as I was about my return home and she admitted herself that she'd not met too many people in her new hometown. I guess that's understandable. Our relationship might be a tad out of the ordinary in more ways than one, but there's a good deal of time and effort invested in it from both parties and I think there's a level of trust/intimacy there that she's yet to have with any of her new friends, so my presence over the last few weeks has been highly valued. She didn't have to say it, I just knew. And she knows I know, and that kinda sums up our friendship.

So, I didn't raise the topic of the OMG stuff because our conversation didn't go anywhere near anything that would allow me to bring it up without being just blunt and crass, which was the last thing I wanted to do. That's been the problem and will be the problem in future because I've been looking for that opportunity to offer my support since she first confided in me almost ten days ago. We've never had a conversation that would allow me to do so, though.

It was gutting to part with her, when we said our goodbyes.

Buses

Sex is like buses. I've been in a drought for so long that it's not even funny and then I go away for a few weeks and I'm beating them off with a big stick.

Still, I can't really complain and I just hope this run of form continues when I go home.

:(

So it ends. In about 6 hours, I begin my trip towards the airport for the start of the arduous trip home and transition back in to "real life". I've had a great time on holiday and thoroughly enjoyed myself, doing tonnes of cool things and just spending some time with E. Of course there are things that still have to be resolved, namely the OMG issues and the ongoing saga of my relationship/friendship with E. But, if anything, my friendship with E has taken steps forward due to the OMG stuff, but I'm not sure what this will actually mean in the long run. 

I'm due to meet E in just under two hours, so things might take a step even then, at least with regards the OMG stuff, which I'm hoping to address if just in passing with an offer to call me at any time if she needs to chat. (Both USHW and A have both been very complimentary about my ability to be there, listen and offer advice, so I'd kinda hope that E would take me up on this.) However I'm not sure the other stuff will ever sort itself out. USHW seems to think that E does have non-platonic feelings for me, but I've never seen any solid evidence of this (one or two flashes of stuff that might be nothing at all). 

Even if it were true, E and myself can be very alike in some ways and I'd guess she is hesitant about revealing her own feelings while my own are well and truly masked (just as I am with regards to hers) and, to be honest, I'm still somewhat confused myself about what exactly it is I am feeling. Still, USHW has promised a lengthy message on the topic (which will no doubt include instructions to just make a move) as I've told her as much as I can on both the OMG and relationship issues and I look forward to that when she gets the time.

Mixed sex friendships

I will post more on this subject at another time, but there's one thing I had to mention with respect to myself and E. A few days ago, we were in a town across the country where we met this really lovely girl (both physically and personally... if only I'd had an extra day with her, I think there could have been something, but typically our time was limited). She was really interested in our relationship as platonic friends as this was a concept she found fairly alien (we're British, she's Australian if that make any difference).

E and I engaged in some banter, which our new friend found really funny. She made a comment about our relationship which prompted a reply from myself and E. E mentioned that she was essentially a little sister of mine whereas my reply was that we were pretty much a couple in everything but sex (and to be honest, why was E telling this girl what my relationship was with her, surely she should have been saying that she regarded me as a big brother figure which is her own opinion?) My reply wasn't meant as a vindictive reply, quite the opposite, in fact as I believe the relationship I describe is actually closer than the brother/sister one E describes, but I think our new chum did agree with me based on the couple of hours of interaction she saw between myself and E. I think that might help pinpoint the differences in viewpoints of our friendship (see the comment above about why E didn't voice her opinion but tried to influence mine). This girl wasn't the first to have made comments - prior to E's emigration, a fair few people had commented on us, wondering if we were a couple.

I've been, at best, confused about our friendship for the past few years, often wavering about whether my feelings crossed the "platonic" line or not (and I've been concerned about hers until the recent conversation, but things have become clearer since then). At the time, I thought they did, but I'm not quite sure right now. But, saying that, I'm not entirely sure my friendship with E is 100% platonic, at least from my point of view. 

From what I can tell, E is 100% certain that she's in a platonic friendship and that things will never change and we will remain like this forever. However, my opinion is that E ticks the majority of boxes of a girl that I'd be attracted to and while I might not be romantically (or sexually) attracted to her now, that could change tomorrow, or next week, or next month or... well, you get the picture.

Ignoring any possible non-platonic attraction, there is a level of, I dunno, comfort in the friendship that I've not really had before and can't see ever having again.

She does seem to get very defensive when it's mentioned that we could end up as a couple/fuck buddies... when I told her that SSCW had asked if we were going to get together on my trip, she was quite agitated, though questions from our friend mentioned above are treated amicably, though she will go to lengths to describe how we're not dating. Is it a case of the lady doth protest too much?

Hmmm...

When attempting to ascertain the boundaries of your friendship with a member of the opposite sex, don't ask extremely intimate questions.

"How much use did it get?"

That's an acceptable question in reference to a pram or a car or a paintbrush... not a vibrator.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. I know two girls that would answer that question with relatively little embarassament (USHW and A, if my instincts are correct) but E answered with an emphatic "NO!". More and more recently I have had to really restrain myself because of my friendships and relationships with USHW and A because I know they're really quite open about the usual taboo subjects and, I assume, their trust in me. My assumption that E would be the same is wrong, to an extent. She will tell me about fuck buddies and getting laid and the performance of boyfriends and the amount of sexual partners she's had, but it appears that there are lines to cross.

Meh.

I've done a lot of great things on holiday, but I think I will always have this one minor regret if that's what you can call it.

I've met some really nice people over the past few weeks on holiday, mostly females (but that's just an aside) but I've managed to meet these people as we split up and go our separate ways. I met two lovely females recently, on separate days, and spent a great few hours in their company with E, only to have to walk out at the end of the night with no contact details and just trundle on. I suppose I could ask for contact details, but it seems kinda weird doing it after a couple of hours of a day trip and/or the pub. However, had we spent a few days together, things would be much different... definitely.

The girl I met today was extremely amused (and interested) in the relationship between myself and E and more specifically how we act on it plus she was great fun and we had a great few hours together, but now it's over. I think she was interested in me, though remained unconvinced by E and myself that there was nothing between us. Also, circumstances meant we would never hook up  - she has a busy day tomorrow and any late night would be a no-no.

That's the kind of thing that I'll regret once I get home and take stock of what the trip has given me, but it's a good kind of regret, you know?

Oh. My. God.

I really don't know how much detail to go into here. I'm definitely not going to post everything, but some things came to light last night that, well, that I've been trusted with and are never going to see the light of day here.

What it did do is explain a lot of things that I've been wondering about E and her relationship towards me and the reasons for the nature of her relationship. I think I've mentioned before that E's a little distant (or seemed to be keeping me at arm's length) and really not tactile in the slightest. Sometimes, she exhibits almost bloke-type behaviour in relationships.

Now everything is clear.

I mean, come on... this is taking the piss...

I went out for a few beers tonight. I left the enclave that is the hostel and went looking for sociable drinks. I found a sports bar showing the highlights of the weekend's FA Cup fixtures (not, as I originally typed, the "FAQ Cup" fixures which is something completely different... perhaps I should suggest FAQs to UHSW? That'd be interesting... actually, not just from USHW but from a few people!)

Anyway, I'm digressing. I spent about two hours there, drinking and chatting to the bar staff, but mainly one, a fairly cute, but not screamingly gorgeous brunette. Female, as if I needed to add. She was OK. Nothing nothing special to look at. Cute, without being gorgeous.

No word of a lie, she was all over me. Keen is not an understatement. We engaged in conversation over a few beers (mine) that didn't involve me having to dig out any "lines" or try to be particularly clever... she was just there and, well, keen. I was going to say "of course...", but that's kinda defeatist, but we were defeated by the bar manager who wanted us, anonymous boozers, out of the bar before he could finally close for the evening which was a shame because there was definitely a spark. She wasn't the prettiest girl I've met on my travels, nor the outright sexiest, but there was enough there to take it from a barmaid/client thing to something a lot more physical (and a lot more fun?) Who knows? The only thing I can say is that, following on from my previous posts, this thing rarely happens to me at home (and by rarely, I mean once a decade). Fuck it. Go figure.

Frustration

You know, I don't know why I'm not this popular at home. That's frustrating.

Maybe it's the holiday attitude and the fact I'm currently travelling on my own, so I'm forced to come out of my shell somewhat, but I've been more forward when meeting people (not just girls) and I'm definitely more relaxed and chilled out and therefore in a better mood (sometimes I tend to behave too much like my online persona and I certainly think my people skills are way lacking which could also explain why I don't get as much action as I possibly should). Whatever reason, I simply seem to be more approachable and, for some reason, attractive.

It's erm... nice (not the greatest word for this, I know), but it's frustrating that this run of form is only happening on holiday. Just like my previous hint of anything sexual happened with a girl that was only visiting my home town for 48 hours and we never had the chance to really bond.

V

The conundrum continues.

I sent a message giving a little information but definitely prompting for a reply, but she's said nothing so far, athough according to my own little information bit, she's been online, adding friends.

I am confused.

The drought is over.

Well, it had to happen sooner or later didn't it?

I'd rather it had been sooner, but oh no, I had to go traveling before it happened. It's probably sod's law that it took me to go away from home for it to happen, but there you go.

I won't post that many details right now... there are no private computers available, so I'll only post full details once I'm home if I feel it's still relevant to do so. In a month's time, it might not be that relevant and to post them then would be only for, what, boasting? Titillation? We'll see what happens.

At long last!

So, I actually got around to sending the message to V today. I'm on holiday, so will not be able to check back regularly to see if she's replied, there's not reason to see why she wouldn't as she appears to be including me in stuff she's doing on Facebook (though I don't see these as I don't install many applications and only see her actions in her own profile.