What I'm Thankful For...

Happy Thanksgiving! Let's take this time to reflect on our favorite Thanksgiving memory. Mine happened only two years ago, when our aunt decided to out Grayer as a lesbian. Classic caper of mistaken sexual preference. Ah, the holidays.

Today I added to the holiday memory bank by sharing a falafal with Luigi and eating a reheated enchilada while watching Friends with my flatmate, but let's rewind, shall we?

My life in London is just like Sex and the City. Exactly like Sex and the City. Mostly because the group of close friends I've made at school comprises of 4 women and we hang out in bars drinking and discussing sex and stuff. Only without the money (no cosmos for us, just cheap beer). And without the shoes. And without the sex really. But other than that, it's really exactly the same.

Earlier this week, it was Ruth's birthday. She was in Paris with her class (why can't I go to Paris with my class?!), so Amelie, Cecelia, and I devised a plan to meet her train with a cake (made from scratch by yours truly), flowers, and champagne. (Cecelia: This is so cute! WE are sooo cute!) While we were signing her card and waiting for her train to arrive, the conversation went a little something like this:

Cecelia: So what'd I miss this week?
Amelie: Haha, why don't you ask Violet?
Cecelia: Ohmygod, did you sleep with the Italian guy? (much too loudly) You totally slept with the Italian guy!
Amelie: You slept with the Italian guy?
Me: SHHHHHHH! (thinking of the ancient woman sitting behind us and if her poor heart was up to this conversation) I did NOT (dropping to a whisper) sleep with the Italian guy!
C: But you've seen the Italian guy?
A: Did you go on a date?
Me: We went out for lunch on Thursday. On Friday, I was going out with Pedro and his friends in Clapham, so I texted Luigi to join us. He ended up taking the tube all the way down from his place (not a short distance) at midnight.
A and C: awwww
Me: When we left, I suggested he come back to my place, since it would only take about 10 minutes, but it would take about 2 hours for him to get back on the night bus.
A and C: AND?!
Me: And I was having my period, so I was awkwardly trying to keep everything above the waist.
A and C: ahhhh
Cecelia: But you like him
Me: Oh yeah.

Later....
Ruth: So what'd I miss?
Cecelia: Violet has a boyfriend.
Me: I do NOT have a boyfriend!

Let's come back to today, Thanksgiving. Before meeting up with Luigi, I worked on a homework assignment with a classmate of mine. When we were finished, I'm pretty sure he asked me out. It was kind of awkward, as I'm not that interested. (I could be, but he's a smoker. Plus, Luigi is just so cute.) I tried to suggest he join me and other classmates for a drink after class sometime, but he suggested a Saturday. Uh-oh. I'm going to do the totally mature thing by ignoring this for as long as possible.

I left him and went to meet Luigi. He was carrying a bag with a wrapped gift in it. The wrapped gift (in actual wrapping paper- but not taped, he couldn't find scotch tape- was for me. It was a GLEE ADVENT CALENDAR! You know those advent calendars that have little windows in them for each day of December, and behind the windows are little pieces of chocolate. It was one of those, only glee-themed! I think it might be the cutest gift I've ever received. It makes me happy.

Luigi was determined to find me some turkey to eat on Thanksgiving (even if it was in a sandwich), but we settled for falafals. They were ok. (Don't feel bad for me, I'm having Thanksgiving dinner with Fen over the weekend.)

Sadly, Luigi won't be around this weekend, so going "below the waist" will have to wait. It will just add to the anticipation. Did I mention he bought me a glee advent calendar?!

My life in an e-card

This e-card sums up my life so beautifully I want to send it to everyone I know. In fact, I already sent it to my mother as a reminder of how proud of me she should be. She'll just be so tickled.

Change of subject:
You know how guys ask for your number and say you should get together sometime and then they never call you? Or they cancel on you? Well after Luigi and I exchanged about 10 text messages trying to find a time to get together and settled on lunch on Thursday, he called me while I was in class on Tuesday... to tell me that he had changed his plans, and did I still want to get a drink after my class? Um, yes please.

So we met up for a drink that turned into dinner. My crush is definitely justified. He's still adorable. Still funny. Still comfortable. And he doesn't smoke. Whew! (Seriously, while I was walking to meet him, I kept thinking to myself, "if he's a smoker, I'm going to be so crushed." It's just so gross.) We shut the restaurant down. The staff was polishing silverware by the time we finally paid the bill. Or, rather, the time he paid the bill. I had gone to use the bathroom, and when I came back, I realized he had already asked for the bill and paid it. When I asked how much it was, he ignored my question and changed the subject. Awwww.

The best part is that our lunch date for tomorrow is still on. I was already looking forward to it by the time he kissed both my cheeks and said ciao ciao!

I'm not a player, I just crush a lot

I don't generally crush a lot. But now I have a crush. And no, it's not Don Quixote.

Don Quixote has actually fallen out of my favor, shall we say. My friend Cecilia, who was playing double agent by getting the scoop from him and reporting back to me, asked if I wanted her to give him my phone number. I told her she could give it to him if he asked for it, but not to push it. And I meant it. He didn't ask for it. I didn't too much care. Don Quixote was just... fun.

On Saturday, Don Quixote had people over to his tiny flat for his birthday. My friends and I were invited, so we all went. The last time I had seen him was in his tiny flat, when he showed me out the door while he was stark naked. This time, though, he was fully clothed when he answered the door. It wasn't awkward or anything, and while I had shaved my legs (just in case), it wasn't long before I realized that I really didn't want to be spending the night again at his place. The flat had an odor to it that I hadn't noticed last Saturday night. Then again, so did Don Quixote. It was a bachelor odor. Sweat and alcohol and a lack of fresh air. It wasn't a turn on. 

But it wasn't just the odor. There was something about Don Quixote that I just wasn't feeling as much as last Saturday. Then he got sloppy drunk and kind of obnoxious, and my view of him really went down. 

But not all is lost. Between the time that I realized I didn't want to hook up with Don Quixote again and his obnoxious drunkenness, I met Luigi, the Italian. He was friendly and funny and (even better!) he thought I was funny. And he was kind of downright adorable. Or, as my friend Amelie put it, he's "not too ugly." He's not ugly at all, but she's French, and they are a very negative people. To them, "not too ugly" is probably one of the highest compliments. (Luckily, he had only met Don Quixote about two days prior to this through a mutual friend so it's not as if they're BFFs.) 

Finally, it was time to leave Don Quixote's stinky apartment and go out. I asked Luigi if he was joining, but he said he was due at someone else's birthday party about 3 hours earlier. He might want to join up with us later though, so he asked for my phone number. You know, in case he wanted to meet up with us later. 

We managed to ditch the drunken Don Quixote and his drunk Spanish posse by ducking into a random bar, which seemed great until we looked around and realized the average age of everyone around us was approximately 18. We tried somewhere else, but we had lost the motivation to be out, so decided to head to the tube... just as Luigi texted me asking where we had ended up. 

I decided against making everyone stay out on the off chance Luigi actually found us. If he didn't, I would have ended up feeling pretty stupid, and I don't like that feeling. So I told him we were heading home, but that we should get together for a beer soon. He agreed. 

He texted me today to wish me luck on the assignment that I have due tomorrow that I had been complaining about on Saturday. (He remembered!) I wondered out loud if I should ask him for a celebratory drink on Tuesday night after handing in my assignment.

"Do you want to?" said Amelie.

 "Yes."

 "Then do it!"

 Ok then. So I did. The rest of the text conversation went something like this:

Luigi: I would love to get a drink on Tuesday, but damn it, I can't. How about Thursday? 

(I took it as a good sign that he was suggesting another time, as opposed to saying "some other time, though.")

Vi: I can't on Thursday. How's your Friday look? 

(Thursday I'm watching Glee with Fen and I won't cancel for a boy.)

Luigi: I might have to go to Italy on Friday for the weekend. How's Wednesday before dinner?

Vi: I have class on Wednesday until 8:30 (Which Fen advised me to skip.) After?

Luigi: I can't, it's my flatmate's birthday. I won't give up though! How about lunch? Tuesday? Thursday?

Vi: Oooh! Thursday! I can do lunch on Thursday!

So we're having lunch on Thursday. I told him that was really complicated and it better be worth it. He told me it would be. I kind of like him. I have a crush. 

Don Quixote

A couple weeks ago, my friend Cecilia had a housewarming party. It was a good opportunity for us, her school friends, to meet her other friends she randomly has around London. One of them was Don Quixote, a Spaniard, who, she told us, had told her to tell her friends about how awesome he is. Followed by, "No. Don't tell them how awesome I am. Just tell them I'm average. Just average." That way we would be blown away and impressed by him when we actually met him. He sounded adorable, I thought.

When I met Don Quixote, he was just as adorable as he sounded. Plus, he sounded just like Antonio Banderes. Sadly, I couldn't stay at the party too late, as I had to catch the last tube of the evening and hadn't brought my glasses along. My blindness prevents me from staying out all night, because I am seriously so blind, that if I don't have my glasses and something were to happen to my contacts (like having them pop out after being in all night), I would pretty much need a guide dog to get me home. Before I left, however, I told Cecilia that I thought Don Quixote was adorable. She said, "That's great! I'll tell him!" At that point, I had had a few glasses of wine and didn't really care what she told him. 

The next day when I met up with Cecilia, she told me that she had indeed told Don Quixote what I had said. Apparently he thought I was adorable too, and asked why I had left. I resolved to get laser surgery someday soon. 

I saw Don Quixote a couple times over the next two weeks, including Thursday. I had spent 3 hours of my afternoon diagramming sentences with classmates, and after that we needed a drink. As happens in an English pub, one drink turned into 5. When we finally left the pub, I dragged my drunken ass to another pub to meet up with Cecilia and Don Quixote. I was chatting with Donny Q when he stopped mid-sentence and grabbed my thumbs. Damn, I thought. He's noticed my mutant thumbs. Seriously, not only do I have faulty vision, but I also got the short end of the stick when it came to my thumbs. And I do mean short. My thumbs are what many refer to as clubbed thumbs, or a host of other completely unflattering names, and they are the bane of my existence. They can never be sexy. Now that he's noticed them, I thought, this can never happen. 

But then he insisted they were cute. Huh. I'm pretty sure the only people who have told me that are people who wanted to sleep with me. But then the 5 drinks and the sentence diagramming caught up with me and I needed to go home and crawl into bed. So I did.

Saturday night, I met up with Cecelia and her obnoxious 21-year-old flatmate, and we met up with Fen for some fireworks. Afterward, we went out, while I reminded myself that the 21-year-old cannot help being obnoxious, and the fact that she was saying that people who wear rain boots look stupid (while I was wearing them) was not because she's a bad person, but because she was born in 1990.

We ended up meeting up with several other friends, including Don Quixote. At one point, Don and I decided instead of paying 5 pounds a beer, we would go down to the nearest convenience store and pay 1 pound a beer and drink it on the street. So we did, and the whole time I kept feeling like I was breaking open container laws, but the cops passed us and didn't so much as bat an eye. Before we got back to the bar, we each received text messages that everyone was leaving us and going home. The night was still young, though, so we powered on.

By the time 2:30 came around, I was starting to get tired, but I had long since missed the last tube. I was really only left with one option: to go home with Don Quixote. (And yes, I had brought my glasses with me, figuring I would crash at Cecilia's or something, but she was already gone, so Don would have to do.)

It started out innocently enough. He even put clothes on, but explained that normally he would sleep naked but didn't want me to feel uncomfortable (awwww). But then we started kissing, and the clothes came off anyway, and things happened. Thank goodness I decided to shave my legs with the rationalization that the power of positive thinking might lead to some positive action. It's like feng shui for your body.

In the morning, when I dragged my ass to the bathroom, I noticed the hickeys on my neck. I have never in my life had a hickey, not because I've never had the opportunity to have one, but because it takes quite a bit to make me bruise, and now I sit here wearing a turtleneck sweater and my hair down because I have two of them. I feel about 15-years-old. I know exactly when I got them too, because I remember thinking in the moment "wow, that could leave a mark".

He was nice enough this morning to bring me orange juice and walk me to the door- stark naked. And no, he doesn't live alone. Oh, those Europeans.

While I was taking the tube ride of shame home this morning, I was extremely grateful that I was wearing supposedly stupid-looking rain boots. It was a lot less conspicuous than had I been wearing heels and a short dress. These are things you learn by the time you're 29. Take that, 1990.

Breaking News: Kim Kardashian gives gay-rights activists their best argument yet

We don't often get all political on the blog, but I'm about to.

It may seem a surprise to open this page and see a political piece at the top, but what may be even more surprising is what has prompted my political outrage: the Kardashians. Namely, Kim Kardashian filing for divorce from her NBA player husband a mere 72 DAYS after their wedding day. 72 days. That's it. That means her marriage was shorter than most middle school relationships. They didn't even spend a single significant holiday together as a married couple. She said in a statement that she decided to end her marriage "after careful consideration." Really?! How long could she possibly have thought about it? I bet I give more careful consideration about what to wear on a date.

The news made me very angry. Irrationally angry. Not because I'm angry that poor Kim and Kris couldn't make it work. But angry because of all the "sanctity of marriage" bullshit that right-wing conservatives throw out there when arguing against same-sex marriage. Let me get this straight. Two people that are in love, who have quite possibly been living together for years, raising children together, and are tax-paying, contributing members of society can't get married (and thus enjoy the legal benefits coming from their legal union) because they happen to be the same gender, but these two publicity generating media-whores can? (For more on their media whorishness, please read this amazing piece by Rob Delaney.)

I imagine Kim's train of thought as she made the decision to marry this basketball player mere months after they first started dating: "It's been awhile since we had a marriage or a baby in this family to drum up a firestorm of publicity. Maybe I should get married and have an over-the-top million dollar, made for E! tv wedding (which I will sell the rights to for $17.9 million), then start the buzz that it's America's own royal wedding!" (You're famous because of a sex tape. Please do not insult royalty or America by making that claim.) But somehow, in this crazy, mixed-up world, Kim Kardashian is allowed to get real-married for a TV show, but gay people aren't allowed to get real-married for real. Something just ain't right.

The hypocrisy of the right-wing is something that never fails to get me riled up, and while Kim really has nothing to do with it, she's just the most public example of everything that is wrong with it. If you want to protect the sanctity of marriage, that's fine. But don't you think you should go after the near 60% divorce rate? It seems to me that the only thing that's destroying the sanctity of marriage is married people. But then again, the far-right, and most especially the Tea Party, is nothing but hypocrisy. I don't understand why they aren't called on it more often. All they do is scream for less and less government, but they only want less government when it comes to their money. When it comes to "social" issues, such as gay marriage, abortion rights, and the death penalty, they want more government. They don't want the government involved in telling people what to do unless it's telling people whom to marry and what to do with your unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is murder, but the death penalty isn't? How is that not a double standard? And while we're at it, the Tea Party and their constitutional fundamentals want to use that constitution to ban gay marriage. The last I checked, the constitution was to give rights, not take them away.

They use Jesus to back up their claims and to get votes.  I find this fascinating, because I'm pretty sure if Jesus were around today, he would vote Democrat, and believe it or not, he didn't say a single word about gay people. Those who quote the Bible in order to prove their anti-gay stance just sound ignorant, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democrat. (Fact. Look it up.)

Maybe it's because I'm on the other side of the pond, and watching the current political situation from afar, but it's downright embarrassing. The rest of the world thinks we're religious crackpots who can't separate religion and politics and are a nation taking huge steps backward instead of forward. To this, I say that England really has no one to blame but themselves, as America was founded by religious crackpots escaping persecution and continued to grow as Europe dumped their unwanted in the New World. (Yet another reason why the Republicans' villeinage of immigrants is also hypocritical: we were all in their shoes at one time or another.) But I also say to them, don't worry. We're not all right-wing crackpots. Michelle Bachmann's campaign is crumbling because people realize that having a racist homophobe for a president is soooo 1847, and Rick Perry's polling numbers are plummeting because, well, he started to talk and people realized he is an idiot.

It may seem like a stretch that I went from a Kardashian divorce to a rail against the right-wing, but the way I see it, if gay people aren't allowed to get married in order to protect the sanctity of marriage, then Kim shouldn't be allowed to get married (and divorced) twice before the age of 31. It also may be embarrassing that the Kardashians are so obscenely famous for contributing absolutely nothing to society, and it may be embarrassing to witness the Tea Party from abroad, but the fact that I can say my peace about the situation and not be punished for it is a beautiful thing. God bless America.

The Great Pumpkin

Wondering why we've been so quiet this month? This is why. I've had a great month, and I've done a lot of exciting things, but sadly, a man isn't one of them. I've done something much more important though, and that's make some really awesome friends. So now that I've filled up my contact list, it's time to fill up this massive bed. Bring it on, November!

The right guy

You Guys!  I've been quiet, I know.  It happens.  Maybe I just needed some time alone.  (Oh wait, I get that all the time).  Apparently, all I needed was a chat with my father.

Two weeks ago our great aunt passed away.   She had been struggling quite a while with health issues so it was no surprise when we got the phone call.  Violet and I did not know her all that well, she was the sister of our grandfather and we can only really remember seeing her a handful of times since we moved so far away from the Bickerstaff clan.   But our Dad grew up around her and took a long roadtrip with his sister to make it to her funeral.  After he got back he was chatting with me about all the family he saw.  It seems we only see each other at funerals anymore, something that was pointed out to him last year at our other great aunt's funeral, when his cousin said, "Gee, it would be nice if we could all go to a wedding."  He was really just asking our dad when his spinster daughters were finally going to get hitched.

This time around, it sounds like family kept asking him if he has any grandkids yet.  "Well no, no grandkids.  I don't have any son-in-laws yet....they're not just looking for a guy, they're looking for the right guy."  For some reason he repeated this to me multiple times.  I think because he had to give the explanation multiple times.  He was sure to add that that was quite ok with him, and that's the way it should be.  Isn't he so supportive?  It's like he was saying his daughters date plenty, they have their pick of men, it's just that none of the guys have been good enough.  He was saying that we just haven't found them yet.  He was also saying that his daughters will not be having kids out of wedlock (cough, like our cousin, cough).  Oh Dad, you're so sweet.  I hope Violet bears you a grandchild real soon.

Last night I went out to a Meetup gathering, figuring maybe I could find my father a son-in-law.  Of course the one person I exchanged numbers with was a girl, who may just be my new single BFF.  We left that bar to go to another with some non-Meetup guys we had just met.  We had a great time, singing and dancing to an awesome band.  I didn't leave without first making out with my dancing partner in the middle of the floor.  I don't know what his name was.  All I know is that he was wearing skinny jeans and had an unfortunate Justin Bieber hairdo.  I also know he was celebrating his birthday.  His 21st birthday.  Don't worry Dad, I'll keep looking.