I know that it's been unforgivably long since I last posted anything remotely substantial, but that's really because there was nothing going on. And as much as I like to pretend that my life in goode olde St. Pete is really fun and exciting, I'm pretty much bored out of my mind and want to go home. Looking at my life is like looking at the empty desert highway, except maybe even more boring, because in my life, there aren't any tumbleweeds.

That said, there has been some hilarity (read, pain and angst that is now becoming amusing) in recent weeks. This I'll share, since the other person involved has put himself pretty squarely on the douchebag list. So. About a month or so ago, right after I got back, I met an American guy named Dave, who's here on one of the other programs. He seemed okay, definitely not sketchy, going to grad school next year and into lit theory. (Yes, I'm a dork.) Anyway, he asked for my number, so I gave it to him. Meanwhile, he heads home, I keep having beers with Margaret and crash at her place. In the morning, there's a text from Dave. This is cool--he said that he'd call me, and he did. So we go out and walk around downtown in the snow then get coffee. He's moderately interesting to talk to and doesn't make me inordinately uncomfortable. The next day, he invites me to go to the internet cafe with him. So we go and check email and don't really talk to eachother. Which is weird. But whatever. We hang out a couple more times, walking around the city, going to a concert, etc. but it honestly never occurred to me that he might be actually interested in being more than friends. Actually, this is a lie. It crossed my mind once or twice, but not seriously.

So then, we go out for a beer. And here's the point where everything gets weird. I feel like I'm usually pretty good at weeding out the crazies, at least, crazy in this kind of way, but I got totally blindsided. I'll explain. So we're having beers, sitting and talking, and I'm being friendly or whatever passes for friendly these days, and then all of a sudden he says something about how he's told most of his group that he has a girlfriend. Um, what? Excuse me? "Yeah, I told some people that we'd been seeing eachother." Uh. Uh. Uh. WHAT? Since when does an internet cafe and a couple beers a relationship make? I have to admit that although I'm a little repulsed, I'm also enough surprised and intrigued at what I think is his audacity to just declare that we're dating eachother. So instead of doing what I should have done, which was punch him in the face and leave him with the bill, I decided to roll with it. Because he's not a bad guy. Maybe inexperienced, clueless... But then it gets better. Because then he drops that his friend Tim said, "Dave, be careful. She's from the West Coast, which means she's probably a liberal." Again, the double take. Wait, my being liberal is a problem, which makes you...CONSERVATIVE?! Bingo. Not only that, but he was baptized at 16 or some other ridiculous age when he should definitely have known better. The other highlight of the evening turned out that he was dead set on my taking his last name when we got married. Don't ask how this came up, because I really don't know. I said that I wasn't going to take anybody's last name when I got married, and then scandalized him by the suggestion that he take mine. Fan-fucking-tastic. So, at the end of the night, I find myself with a conservative christian boyfriend and wet pants because I slipped and fell like an monkey on the ice.

We don't see eachother much over the next week or two, which is okay, because I'm not at all sure how I feel about the whole situation. Other than creeped out... Anyway. Moving along to drama. We watch a movie together and he indicates that he might like things to get a little more serious. This is a problem, since a) I have a fairly substantial amount of baggage at this point, and b) he's pretty clueless about what comes after kissing. He said he'd been laid, on numerous occasions, but he sure fooled me. I realize that maybe some of you will say that maybe I should take pity on the poor guy. After all, how is he supposed to get any practice if nobody will give him a chance? I say, dude, it's too late. You missed the boat. That's what college was for. If you're 24 and don't know basic anatomy, you're going to be shit outta luck. I'm not a personal trainer. People get paid to do that kind of stuff. So, to save myself the embarassment of having to tell him that he's not that great a kisser (let alone anything else...), I opened one of the baggage parcels I'm carrying around with me, fully expecting him to run. Leaving us both a graceful way to get out of things. He got very quiet and said that he needed to think, which I took as a sign that things were definitely headed in the right direction...

And how badly was I mistaken... The next morning, I got a text that just said, "We need to talk," which, as everybody knows, means "This is pretty much the end, ultamatums will be laid down, the situation will be acutely uncomfortable, there might be some crying, and you will probably both leave angry." However, this was SO NOT THE CASE. Seriously, what is wrong with guy? He said that he was cool with whatever baggage I was bringing along, as long as I was serious about the relationship. I told him I needed some time to think, since I'd been heading into a funk, and didn't want to totally get in over my head. So he told me to take a week and think about things and then get back to him.

That was an awesome week. Actually, not really. I was perpetually grumpy, and probably in the worst mood I've ever been in in my life. And not only for that week, but for the next one as well. It was awesome. Somewhere in there, I was supposed to tell poor Dave that I really wasn't that interested in dating him, but I somehow didn't get around to it. I was having a bad week or two, and was mostly just interested in not inflicting myself on other people. I did see him once, and was kinda rude, and he got better than everybody else.

There's also a good story in there about when the useless waste of space bureaucrat from Washington came. I digress, but this was pretty awesome too. So, we have this bureaucrat from Washington, Tim, come to visit us twice a semester. He's supposed to listen to our complaints, tell us he'll work on doing whatever it is that we want him to do, and then do nothing. He's an excellent asset to the program. Anyway, I knew the drill from last semester and knew that he was stupid, and the meeting was stupid and it was Saturday, and I had to go into school when I could have been working. So I was already in an awesome mood by the time I got to Nevsky. Then the metro station exit was closed for no apparent reason, so I had to make a station transfer and then the police only had one door to the underpass open, which they were closing on us. The reason for this was made evident by the huge armored cars, crowds of people in black, and riot police, who were all waiting for the dissident march. Which was basically all the people in Petersburg not happy with the current political situation, marching together all the way down Nevsky. So I snuck across Nevsky in between the armored cars and took the back roads. I was sweaty and furious by the time I got to school. Then the fuckhead at the door had to check my student card against a list before he'd let me in. I swore at him in Russian. Then when I got to the meeting late, Tim wasn't even there yet. The meeting with everybody was pretty quick, but then we had the gathering of the year kids who are writing papers. We had to go around and say what we were doing and how it was going and how our advisors were, etc. barf ad infinitum. I haven't really met with my advisor (and by "haven't really" means "not at all") since I got back and really have no desire to. It's too much work and makes me feel stupid. So I don't. And I told Tim that I felt like I didn't really need to meet with an academic advisor to "direct my thinking" because I was perfectly capable of thinking for myself and writing my own paper, thanks. After a few more exchanges in that vein, he said that I shouldn't have come to Russia if I didn't want to write the paper. Which was so ludicrous, I just smiled. It was one fo those amazing moments when I was just able to sit and think, Did you just listen to yourself? Because I did. And You. Sounded. Like. An. IDIOT. To make it that much sweeter, I went home and composed a nasty little letter to send in to Washington with my kick-ass paper (which only exists as an introduction).

But back to Dave. After the awkward interaction, I sent him a text saything that I was sorry I was rude, that I'd been having a bad day, whatever, if he wanted to get together later in the week. He said yes, but then canceled with no explanation. Cool. Whatever. I didn't make any other big efforts, and neither did he, until he texted me to ask him he could borrow my Lonely Planet for his trip to Belarus and Ukraine. I wasn't feeling well that day, so I told him he'd have to wait until tomorrow. And again commences the chain of awesome. We were going to meet somewhere at Nevsky after school. I texted him when I got out to see where he wanted to meet. He told me to come to Nevsky Prospekt metro, which is on the blue line. In reality, he was waiting at the Canal Griboedov exit to the Gostinii Dvor metro, which is the GREEN line. Then he tried to tell me that he was where he said he was going to be, which I didn't really want to hear, mostly because he was WRONG, and so I decided to be magnanimous and just let it slide and not get worked up about it. He took my Lonely Planet, was kind of a jerk about it, and then said he was going home. Man, good riddance of bad rubbish. My new rule is going to be that if I smooch someone, they automatically lose any privilige they might have had to borrow any of my stuff. Seriously. So I sat and was angry for awhile and then decided that I'd try to take the high road (see if I ever do THAT again...) and invited him to come out to the bar with us later that evening. We exchanged some texts, and the long and the short of it was that he had been being a jerk (not that he acknowledged this) because he was just confused (whatever) blah blah blah. So he came out to the bar.

I went out with most of the kids who are here for the year, since we don't have anything better to do than have beers and snipe at eachother because we all secretly think everybody else is ungodly annoying but of course can't say so because we're all still here for another couple months... Oh, the joys of the passive-aggressive society! Anyway, we were all having a good time until Dave showed up. And in all fairness, we continued having a good time after he showed up too. Although he sulked and left early because I wasn't going to talk exclusively to him wanh wanh wanh. And that's pretty much the end of that. Definitely not about the passive-aggressive overly-emotional bullshit.

Life has been full of drama drama drama. It doesn't look like it's going to get any better in the forseeable future, although for different reasons I'm not going to get into...