I haven’t written for a while. For the longest time it was because I didn’t feel I had anything to say. Well, that’s not quite accurate. I didn’t feel anything I had to say was worth reading. Maybe I’m being obnoxious, but blogs that assume the day to day activities of the average person are worth reading really kind of annoy me. While I am sure friends and family, well some friends and family might find it amusing, but I have always tried to get people reading who don’t know me and won’t ever know me. In fact, I’d rather have readers who don’t know me because while I am 100% open and honest with my closest friends, I am not one who collects friends like baseball cards. And I am also not one to tell every detail of my life to every person I know. It’s easier to be completely open with total strangers you will never meet.

(No, Facebook friends don’t count. Add one ap and all of the sudden you freaking need 2,000 “friends”.)

But for the last few weeks I have been mulling over something I need to say. For those who read this blog back when it was good, you know that is a little hard to believe. I used to write every night, and sometimes during the day as well. I always had something to say or a story to tell, and that always flowed out of me with no problem. This time I don’t have a story to tell, I have something important to say.

Ok, I kind of have a story to tell, but only to explain the real point of this post.

A few weeks ago I was driving my son back to his mother’s and they announced a giveaway on the radio. The prize was concert tickets and a “meet and great” plus acoustic performances from Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday, Shinedown and Blue October. I told my son I wish my phone wasn’t stuck in my pocket because I’d love to win that prize. I figured that by the time I got the phone fished out of my pocket, while driving, it would be too late. But after a few seconds I decided to try anyway. So I managed to fish out the phone and, just as I was about to give up, the phone started actually ringing instead of telling me all circuits were busy. And when they answered I was the lucky winner.

Now this could be the part where I try to tell a touching father son story about how I not only got to take my son to his first real concert, but he got to hear acoustic sets from 4 of the acts and actually meet the bands. I could talk about the other acts we met, including the guys from Aranda, one of whom actually picked my son up so he could sit next to them on the autograph table for the picture. But, if you read much of what I write, you know I don’t do touching very well, and generally assume other people will find stories about my child boring, so I’m not going to go in to any more detail on that score.

Instead I am going to talk about a moment that really hit me, hard.

When Shinedown was performing Brent Smith told the story of writing the song Second Chance. He had the lyrics in his mind for a long time, but he never wrote the song or shared them with anyone. He was worried about how people would take the song. He had to decide between worrying about the feelings of other people, worrying about how people would take the lyrics and being honest with himself. I’d say it’s pretty obvious which way he went.

Brent Smith is a very intense individual, and when he told the story he was very emotional. He also said something after telling the story that really struck me. He went on to talk about not holding back in general. If there is something you want in life you need to take a chance and go for it. The words, and the emotion behind them, hit me hard. I was actually shaken by it for several days after the fact.

See, I’ve been holding back.

If you think of life like a play, my adult life has been pretty much by the book from a literary standpoint. I had a clearly defined first act consisting of my first marriage. That came to an end when I had a dramatic personal event nobody else could possibly understand. The second act was primarily made up of a series of interesting, often dark and twisted, stories. In most 3 act plays the second act is dark, and mine was no different. It certainly made for decent reading if you’re in to that kind of thing, and there was about a 5 year span that gave me more material than the other 33 years of my life by far.

Then something happened. I had had enough. The bullshit that went along with that “second act” was simply too much. When my second marriage ended I briefly dated an ex that I will always care about, but that ended badly. (See what happens when I don’t follow my own rules?) I also got laid off and ended up in an entirely different career at a time that isn’t exactly ideal to be in said career. Life has become a chore. And it was starting to seem like the third act to my life was going to be very anticlimactic.

Then I listened to Brent.

Now I have a choice. I can either ignore the fact that, no matter how you cut it, there is a lot more to me than what is in my life right now. I am not happy not utilizing all of this. I’d say the odds of a career where I can use all of my skills and loves are pretty unlikely, and I’m OK with that. But I have to find some way to put my skills, my experiences and my desires to use. I may not be young anymore, but I am too young to imagine living the rest of my life without making a run at something. I have yet to decide exactly what I am going to do, but it will be something.

I am quite certain one thing I will be doing is a lot more writing, although probably not here. I plan on doing some more substantial writing. I’ve primarily written short stories, poems and even essays, but it’s time to try something bigger. I have had a few ideas for some time, and I think I know which one I am going to try first. Heck, knowing me, I’ll probably have a couple going at once and go back and forth depending on my inspiration and mood. Regardless, I have to try. I do not want to get any further in this life wondering “what if”. I have no delusions of becoming rich and famous, or even published. I am going to get this put of me though, even if it’s just for me.

It happened again.

If you’ve read my blog much you will know what I am talking about. I yet again attracted a woman that just screams drama. Of course, if you’ve been reading this blog for long you’ve noticed that there have not been many “crazy chick” posts lately, and that those I have shared have been more of the “So I said hell no” variety than the drawn out tales that, while they often involved some great sex, more often than not were the result of a series of very bad decisions on my part.

Now, I’m not saying this was an isolated event, because it’s not. In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of two other times recently a woman’s behavior set off warning signs and I turned tail and ran. And I am not the least bit ashamed of running away. I have been in serious self-preservation mode for some time. I’m not up for the drama anymore.

This time a woman on a certain social networking site kept flirting with me. After a while I decided I’d add her as a friend just so I can get some idea what she is all about. A few things jumped out pretty quick. First, her profile pic, which was the only one I had seen, was clearly the best picture ever taken of her. There’s nothing wrong with that really, but once I saw more pics, I will be honest that I wasn’t attracted.

Another thing jumped out at me: she lives about 1,500 miles away. Again, this is one of the details you wouldn’t know until seeing her profile. This wasn’t that big of a deal really because I assumed she just liked to flirt and, as I am single, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

But then she immediately started a chat with me. Within 5 minutes I was told she was married, her marriage wasn’t working out, they weren’t having sex, she really wants to have sex and, of course, she’s in to anal. Now think about that for a second. Within 5 minutes of even having the ability to relay anything outside of canned, mostly innocuous, flirtations, I knew more about this woman than I know about many women I have known much longer.

I actually considered cutting off the conversation pretty fast but, as soon as it started, I mentioned to a friend what it looked like was happening. We were kind of curious about which way this was going to go. The question my friend had, and that I was wondering a little myself, was exactly what this woman was looking for. Did she see me as being safe since I was so far away, or was she looking for a man to save her from whatever is making her unhappy?

Given the fact that she was wondering if I’d be willing to travel to her home state, and even talked about coming to Texas, it became pretty clear that she probably wasn’t in the “sees me as safe” category.

That brought up a very big reality of my life. I am no longer in the saving business. I do not know what it is about me that somehow I naturally attract some women who think they need some guy to save them, but that simply isn’t me anymore. I will be the first to admit I did it before. At first I thought it was something I needed to do to make up for what I had done in my past. Having been a total asshole for so long had me believing I have some kind of karmic deficit I needed to make up for. And by the time Heather came around I figured I deserved any of the pain and drama that goes along with that,

But now I am past that. I am not saying I’m never going to help anyone again, but if you are looking for salvation you need to look somewhere else. I am out of the salvation business, and I can’t imagine ever going back. No matter how bad my karma has been, there’s no way it’s worth all that.

This morning I started to think about the changes I have gone through in life and how, in some ways, I have become a better person, while in others I have a lot of work to do. Then I started thinking about the events that led me to make changes or changed how I saw things. That reminded me of the whole situation surrounding Heather and I came to a realization. If I look at the bad relationships I have had, and I mean the truly bad ones, I was supposedly the guy who was the first “nice guy” for each one of those ladies. When you look at their history before me they were always in abusive relationships.

This kind of hit home for me because, while I was never like the guys I am thinking of, I was a real ass for a long time. I am not at all proud of what I was or what I did, and I also realize I will never be able to undo what I did. On the other hand I realize that I probably got in to some of those relationships to try to make up for what I was. In the case of Heather, for example, I absolutely felt like I deserved what I got. I remember thinking that when we were together. Looking back it was absolutely insane, but it was how I felt at the time.

If I look at the pattern of these relationships I realize I was trying to “help” these women. In some cases I was helping them out of abusive relationships. In others I was trying to help them get back on their feet. In some cases I was just hoping to help these women realize they deserved better. But when you get right down to it, I don’t think I really helped any of them.

I won’t go in to specifics for most of the relationships out of respect for the women involved, but I will try to explain it using Heather as an example since neither she, nor our relationship, are worthy of my respect.

First, when we met she had nothing. I mean that literally. She had just returned to Texas after getting away from not one, but two, total losers. The love triangle she left consisted of the father of one of her children who beat her so badly when she was pregnant that the baby was born with serious disabilities, and the “gentleman” who introduced her to crack, pimped out at least two women after they got addicted, and either planned on turning her out. Heck, for all I know she was turned out by the guy.

So when she came back she had nothing. She had left almost everything she had behind. And her only option when she got here was to live with her ex-husband and his wife. Now, keep in mind, the reason he took her in was because he was still in love with her. Hell, he chose the subdivision they lived in because it had the “Heather’ in the name. (Not sure how his new wife felt about that). Not that he wasn’t an abusive ass too. Yes, he beat her as well.

Needless to say she had lousy self image. She didn’t think she was worthy of a decent guy. (OK, put aside for the moment our relationship and the fact it seems to confirm that, in fact, she wasn’t worthy of a decent guy, even if I am not a decent guy, as some would argue.)

So here we have a woman who has nothing, was used to being abused and who thought she only deserved assholes. So, naturally, I was in full Captain Save-a-ho mode and tried to remedy all of those things. And what, exactly, was the end result? I lost so much weight people assumed I was ill, I was hit on more than one occasion, I was almost arrested for having the gall to try to stop her from hitting me AGAIN and I was out several thousand dollars.

And what did she end up with? She went back to the guy who beat her when she was pregnant (with the assistance of the ex who also beat her). He did it again and she ended up in the hospital. She also ended up with nothing as she ended up having to abandon most of what I had given her to get away from him. I’d say we can safely say from this story that I failed in all three of my goals to make her life better.

So what is the lesson here? I could say that when you get right down to it people can only help themselves, and that is true for the most part, but there’s another lesson. To a certain degree you can tell a lot about someone by the people they chose to get serious with before. (Yes, I realize this also makes me undateable.) If someone has always been in shitty relationships, that is probably what they are going to be used to. And if you don’t give them what they are used to you will be lucky if they just dump you. It seems like they try to turn the relationship you have in to what they have always had.

I am not saying that you can’t give people a chance if they have made mistakes in the past. But I will say that, if there’s a pattern, you can probably expect that there’s a reason for it.

OK, so last night I told part one of this story. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so. Otherwise you will not get exactly what happened. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you.

OK, now that you are up to speed, when we left last night I was sitting at a small table in The Hard Rock mad that I was not getting to see The White Stripes, mad that I had been unfairly accused of “checking out” other women and, at the same time, worried we were going to break up over this shit. Granted, in retrospect, I should have dumped her long before this event, but that is not what I was thinking at the time. I was “in love” and I didn’t want to lose her.

Eventually Heather came out and she was still pissed. Of course leaving meant I had come outside to continue to check out other women, and I was probably going to actually take the opportunity I was being given to actually hook up with another woman. Obviously I left so she wouldn’t be able to stop me in my nefarious plans. Now, of course, that ignored the reality that the woman I was supposedly after was still in the club I had left. But logic was not going to get in Heather’s way when she was mad.

As soon as she got to me she starts tearing in to me again. Keep in mind I was, at this point, sitting completely alone drinking a beer and waiting for her. And she is making a massive scene, which is actually kind of hard to do in Vegas. She is somehow starting to make me feel guilty as if I had done something wrong. The more she says the more I feel like absolute shit. And she kept this up as I lead her to a cab. She kept it up as we ride back to The Venetian. She keeps it up in the elevator on the way back to the room. She keeps it up as I get ready for bed. Then she went too far.

She told me she was going to just go down to one of the bars, find some guy and fuck him.

Yes, even I have my limits, and this was it. I let her know that if she went out that door I would have the concierge come pick up her luggage and she could see if the guy would pay for her ticket home because I would cancel the one I bought. And at that moment I was absolutely ready to leave her in Vegas.

That pretty much shut her up. I say pretty much because she was still wanted to go to a bar. But she said she wanted me to take her to one so she could dance, blow off some steam and get over all this. I thought about it and decided I would go with her, but I admit it was mostly because she was going to make me miserable until I said yes. So I got dressed and we went back downstairs and asked the concierge to suggest a bar. He got us a cab and he and the driver picked a spot for us on the same street as The Hilton.

The selected bar was one with some kind of beach theme. It was absolutely packed and, of course, full of women. But I was very careful this time. I never took my gaze off of Heather except when I had to go to the bathroom or the bar. In fact, as soon as they started talking about a wet t-shirt contest I intentionally made sure I had to go to the bathroom and then snagged a spot at the bar in a place where I absolutely could not see the stage. Heather did try to accuse me of watching the show but as soon as she realized that was impossible she backed down. Drama averted.

Over the course of the evening a guy who wanted to Heather used a rather sly move where he tried to help teach me to dance so he’d have an excuse to dance with her, but I didn’t let that phase me. I just went with it and had fun. Then I totally lay back as Heather danced with some other girls (making sure not to actually watch them dance together) and started talking to a couple of guys I met at the bar.

Let me explain something. One of the 2 guys was military and was in Vegas for work. The other was his boyfriend. Yes, this was a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” situation, but these were some pretty cool guys. We actually had a lot of fun because I knew I didn’t have to worry about Heather getting mad or either of them doing anything that would make it seem like the three of us was checking out the girls. It was an ideal situation under the circumstances.

Eventually the dance part of the bar shut down and we headed upstairs to a separate bar that stayed open later. We ended up at a table with mostly people we hadn’t even been talking to except these 2 guys. And then one of the girls decided she and her man should have a 3-way with Heather. And she made it quite clear she was serious. In fact, she told me Heather would be leaving with them. She kept it up to a point where I finally decided staying quiet was not the way to go.

This time it was my turn for a scene, but I didn’t say anything to Heather or the girl. Instead I turned to her boyfriend and advised him his slut was writing checks his ass couldn’t cash, and he’d better put his bitch on a leash. Yes, those were the exact words I used. Surprisingly, that settled things pretty quick because he grabbed her arm and led her out. She was not exactly happy that he didn’t stick up for her. But he also realized that, at that moment, I was deadly serious. I really hate making a scene in public, but I’d had a very long night and was not in the mood to be pushed anymore.

As the bar shut down around 6 the only people left at the table were me, Heather and my new gay friends. We all decided we needed a couple of hours sleep and would then go grab some breakfast back at The Venetian. They were staying at The Hilton, which was within walking distance, so we headed over there. They had 2 beds and were only using one. (The second bed was so the military guy would have cover from the other military guys that were there for whatever they were doing.)

This is when things got weird.

Let me cut to the chase. Heather and I started making out, and they started making out. We got naked; they got naked. I went down on Heather; one of them went down on the other one. Then they decided to watch us. It seems they found me going down on Heather fascinating. I think she both enjoyed being watched and had been enjoying watching them as well. So we went at it for about an hour with the two guys periodically stopping what they were doing to watch us. Although I was a little drunk I don’t believe they ever actually had sex, although they did get the lube out so I could be wrong. I got the feeling they were too embarrassed to go that far in front of us. It could have happened while I was busy going down on Heather and I wouldn’t have noticed.

This is about as close as I have ever gotten to swinging, and I’ve often wondered if what we did qualified as group sex. Regardless, it was definitely on the list of strangest nights of sex I have ever had. And the fact that the next morning we all woke up and went to breakfast like nothing had happened still makes me laugh a little. I’m kind of surprised Heather never used that night in one of her attempts to make me feel like shit. Hell, she used everything else. Maybe she thought it reflected badly on her. I’ll never know.

I do know I never heard from either of those guys again even though we did exchange numbers. Should I feel used?