2002-03-25 - 1:08 a.m.

Insomnia, a do-nothing weekend, Trivial Pursuit, and a little shrinking my own head.

TThis is one of those nights when insomnia brings out all of my demons. When all my doubts and self-recriminations strut around my head like they own the world. When my stomach ties itself into knots. When the things that usually skulk and lurk instead leap and cavort and cry death to sleep.

This is not a good night.

Friday night I went to the show. TattoedFriend stood me up. Not a huge surprise. I talked eRoommate into coming with me. It was a great show and I found myself laughing all over again at jokes that should be stale by now. After the show the cast said they were going to stick around for the next show before going out, so eRoommate and I trooped back in. The cast apparently changed their minds and blew us off. eRoommate, still recovering from surgery, got sick to his stomach during the show, so we left early and went straight home.

Saturday I did very little. I cleaned my bathroom. I straightened up some papers. I did not work out. eRoommate and I played a little Diablo. Then I went to jo3, ChefsKey and Ng's birthday party. It's always been a fun event, and there are certain traditions that must be upheld. Chief amongst these is jo3 and I smoking cigars on the front porch.

In years past it has been a raucous affair. This year it was almost dead by 10. I was very dissappointed in most of the party-goers. 10pm on a Saturday? What's your freaking problem? Anyway, by 10:30 is was down to the afore-mentioned birthday boys and girl, myself, RockGirl, HeroMan (who I

haven't seen nearly enough of since he moved to Broomfield) and Rudy.

If you're going to get together seven people to breathe life back into a party, that's a damned good place to start. Except that we didn't really breathe life back into the party. Instead we sat around drinking wine and scotch (not at the same time, mind you) and reading questions off of Trivial Pursuit cards. We made the arrogant statement that we were smart people. Then we set about proving ourselves wrong. The first challenge was to answer five questions in a row from a single category. We got History and Geography on the first try. The others we eventually got after several attempts (with the exception of Entertainment, where the best we could do was four out of five). Next, we decided we should be able to pick a card and correctly answer all six questions. It took us

until 1:30 in the morning to do it.

Today I slept until noon. Did my taxes (online). Played more Diablo with eRoommate. Watched maybe five minutes worth of the Oscars. Did not go outside at all today.

I am a worthless slug.

Okay, I actually am feeling somewhat better just from the act of writing. But there's one more thing I feel I need to address.

I know you've heard me whine incessantly about how terrible it is that RockGirl digs me. You know, here's a smart, funny, attractive woman who really likes me and wants to spend all sorts of time with me. And all I can do is bitch about it because I don't seem to like her the way she likes me and I have all this guilt and angst and bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And Mom has floated the idea

that I'm subconsciously sabotaging my relationships (and if I'm doing that it's probably because of intimacy issues, and if I have those, I wonder where they came from. Mom.) and other people have

concurred that it's a possibility. So I'm going to forget for a second that I never really did feel terribly, outrageously, twitter-pated-ly attracted to RockGirl and explore this possibility for a second.

Cause you see a thought occurred to me. Before RockGirl I spent five years without a girlfriend.

Five years in which I never went on more than three dates with the same woman. (The three-date woman was the one who declined a fourth on the grounds that I was too smart for her. I'm not making this up. I wish I was.) During this time I got to have pretty poor self-esteem (I think understandably). But more than that, I developed a pattern in my opinion of women. See, I met and got to know a ton of women during that five years who I would have loved to date. You have no idea how often

I had crushes on different women. They all had one thing in common. They were either unavailable

or unwilling to date me.

Women to whom I was attracted where unwilling to date me. Now flip that around. Women who were unwilling to date me were attractive. I wonder if some where deep in my mind a connection was made whereby being attractive became dependent on not wanting to date me. If so, a logical corrollary is that women who *are* willing to date me become unattractive? Is part of the reason I have my doubts about RockGirl just the fact that she actually wants to be with me, and somehow my warped mind has decided that that makes her undesirable?

Or am I just overanalyzing this *waaaay* too much?