Meeting Bali Boy

So, I’m sat in the Opus Hotel in Vancouver, waiting for Bali Boy who went out on a food run. Things are going good, really good. He picked me up in his red convertible at 1pm yesterday and we went for Thai food. I was so nervous I hadn’t managed breakfast (nervous about handing my daughter over to her daddy for ten days, because I’ll miss her not because she is in any danger, as well as nervous about finally getting together with Bali Boy), so I was pretty ravenous by the time we went for lunch.

Its funny how I can have so much confidence at times but then be so chicken at others. As soon as I saw him I became incredibly shy and hardly knew what to say. He was cocky and more confident, until we were alone and then he became the shy one. It took us a while to relax in each other’s company, but once we did, it was brilliant. Bali Boy is an excellent kisser. Making out with him was divine.

Its been two days together and so far we are having a lot of fun, just hanging out, smooching, being silly. We went and watched Star Trek together, and went for a great lunch, which was (I guess) our first date. We had a fantastic dinner at Elixer, the restaurant in the Opus hotel, last night then got drunk and watched South Park episodes. Hanging out with him is so fun. I really do like Bali boy, he is everything I’d hoped.

That said, we have discussed where this is going and are on the same page. This is a fun diversion. A really fun diversion. He can be my Vancouver friend with benefits until either of us meets someone else and isn’t single anymore. Oh, here he is with food, gotta run.

Boys are confusing

I thought that I had finally met someone worthwhile in Halifax, but I very quickly discovered that I was wrong. Thankfully nothing had really happened and I wasn’t too heavily invested in this thing, so I got over it pretty fast. This new boy, lets call him ‘Sailor’ because he owns a boat, was someone I met last Friday night at a party. In all honestly, when I met him I didn’t think much of him because he acted like a bit of a doofus, thought he was much funnier than he was and was was leering at me. But, the drunker I got (and the more time I spent in his company) the more I liked him.

I ended up spending all night on his boat, because I was too drunk to leave, and the next morning we spent a few pleasant hours together. He seemed quite interested, and as I got in the cab to leave he asked me to email him when I got back from Finland (I was flying there later that day). Although in the cold light of day he was quite cute, and had a pretty tattoo, I still wasn’t convinced I was interested. So I told him I didn’t have his email address. “Facebook me,” Sailor called over his shoulder. “I don’t know your full name, I’ll never be able to find you,” I said, closing the taxi door. I impressed myself at how cool I was being. But then I wasn’t expecting to start liking him.

I get on the plane to Helsinki and look through the photos on my camera, and there were all these fantastic pictures of me and Sailor together. He looked very cute, and extremely happy with his arms wrapped around me, I was grinning ear to ear. I started to think that maybe I should cut the guy a break, perhaps he wasn’t such a doofus and just acted like one to cover up his loneliness or fears or whatever. He had said some lovely things to me that night….

At this point I started acting like a girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So I find him on Facebook pretty easily, and we become friends. I see that he has posted that he had “The Best Weekend Ever” and smile. I see that another chick says “Thanks for a great night Sailor” the day after I saw him but I think, whatever, its okay, doesn’t mean he screwed her. We communicate back and forth and talk about getting together when I get home.

I get off the plane in Halifax and see that he’d messaged to ask when my flight got in because he might be able to see me there (he works at the airport so its not that big a deal), I message back to say I’ll just see him another day (I’d been flying all day and looked like shit, the last thing I wanted to do was see anyone). I walk through customs and there he is waiting for me. That’s showing an interest, right? I was impressed.

So, my ride had forgotten to pick me up so I was sat there for ages talking to Sailor, and it was fun, flirty and we talked about when we’d see each other again. I went home with a smile on my face thinking that I might have finally met someone cute in Halifax.

We emailed a couple of times that night, he said he was looking forward to hanging out and that he was off work on Thursday. Last night when I emailed to ask when we’d be getting together he totally brushed me off, said “I already have plans Thursday night, but if things change I’ll give you a holler”.

WTF?

Seriously, WTF?

After a day of questioning myself (was it because I looked like shit getting off the plane? Because I have a kid? Because there is another girl? Did I say something? Because I mentioned on my blog that I’d met someone?) and feeling like crap, I snapped back to reality. This guy is totally not worth my time. I didn’t think he was worth my time until I saw pictures of us looking happy, until I projected something that wasn’t there on to an entirely inappropriate person.

Sailor is hot, sure, but he is a 40 year old man living like a teenager, on his boat, getting drunk and high. Very fun, but that’s not my life. It might have been fifteen years ago (without the boat), but not now. I took him off my Facebook, because he isn’t a friend (my friends treat me better than that) and even if he suddenly regained interest there is no way I will ever go there again.

montreal boys

I know that I already confessed my adoration of the French-Canadian male, but I feel that this is a topic that deserves

No, really, I was just taking a picture of my daughter.

further attention, especially as I actually took a few pictures to use as evidence of how gorgeous Montreal boys are (you will notice that my toddler is in some pictures, as I didn’t actually want to be caught taking pictures of hot strange men).

In Montreal, it really did seem like there was a disproportionate number of attractive men. They were everywhere. My friend joked that it didn’t matter where we were, in the Metro, a restaurant, any store, there were at least three attractive men in our sight. The young men were gorgeous, as were the old men and everything in between. It wasn’t just that they were just naturally attractive, it was also that they took good care of themselves. Montreal men dress well, even if they were wearing a Ramones T-shirt and jeans, dressed like a hippy or in a suit, they could carry off their look better than other Canadian men can.

The sexual confidence that Montreal men display is dead sexy. They are not afraid to flirt, hold your gaze and even talk to you. Then of course the accent drives me wild too. I am a sucker for that sexy French accent and could have someone read me the news with that purr and get turned on.

Doesn't my daughter look cute? Oh and look, there's a hot boy!

I spoke to a few Montreal guys about the sexiness they had and they were both surprised, they thought that it was very hard to be a man in Montreal because the women were snooty and did not appreciate them. “It is hard to be a single man in Montreal,” said one young hottie, “there are not enough women here and it is hard to meet someone special.” I felt so bad for him, I wanted to move straight to Montreal and address the imbalance!

the un-date date

I am in Montreal for a couple of days, and being here has me wondering why it was that I moved to Halifax. There are hot men everywhere. Beautiful men that make eye-contact, smile at you and touch you gently on the arm with a ‘pardon’ if they bump in to you. I swear I haven’t stopped swooning since I arrived. Of course it helps that they all have sexy accents too. I am here for a job, I’m writing a story on ‘hippy Montreal’ for a women’s magazine, and I’m traveling with my daughter and a lovely friend, who is offering babysitting back-up, which allowed me to go for an evening out with a very handsome man.

I met this man, lets call him Francois, on a press-trip a few years back when I was six-months pregnant and thought him the most charming man that I had ever met. When I walked in to a room he would stand, he opened doors for me, and was incredibly chivalrous. I was totally enamored with his behavior, and loved his flirtiness. Francois and I stayed in touch thanks to Facebook, and when I knew I was coming to Montreal, his hometown, I asked to meet for drinks because I knew he would show me a side of Montreal I couldn’t discover alone.

We had a really lovely time together. He was just a charming as I remembered, told me half-way in to out first beer that he had never found pregnant women attractive and then met me, “You were there with a big-belly, chubby, and very sexy” he said. I think the word “chubby” was meant as a compliment and took it as a lost in translation kind of thing, because obviously its not an entirely flattering word! Anyway, we drank more, he was fantastic company and I had the best night out that I’d had in ages. Here comes the catch.

Francois has a girlfriend. A beautiful, young girlfriend who he is madly in love with. So, our evening together was not a date, even though it felt a lot like one, especially at 1am with three beers and a couple of rum and cokes in my belly.

A picture Francois took on our un-date. Yes, I am flirting through the camera lens.

We both laughed at how much fun it was to be on such a date like un-date and I cursed the fact that I don’t meet men like Francois who are single. Francois is quite a catch, I think that his girlfriend must be a very lucky woman (and have the patience of a saint considering what a flirt he is!) Being the victim of infidelity made it easy to draw very clear boundaries and know precisely what this was, and the fact that we were able to completely frank about so many things made the evening feel very mature and responsible, and I never felt like it veered in to anything inappropriate despite the fact that under different circumstances, I would for sure be falling for this charming man.

It was a fun and perfect evening. All the best qualities of a really perfect first date, with none of the expectations. I was reminded of how fun it is just to flirt, and realize that I should try to do so more often, which probably means that I need to drag my lazy ass off my sofa and go out in Halifax more often. Perhaps in the future I’ll just target French-Canadian men though, fortunately there are a fair few here in Nova Scotia so it shouldn’t be that hard to find some.

Sleepovers. This Single Mom’s Guilty Secret?

Since my daughter was born, I have been incredibly discrete in my (failed) relationships. Only once has my daughter seen another man here when she woke up in the morning, and she never saw us in bed together or even holding hands. I am perhaps a little paranoid about this whole thing, but I do not want to be “one of those kinds of mothers” who imposes her “special friends” on her child, only to leave the little mite heartbroken and confused when things didn’t work out.

My bad mother paranoia even goes so far as to panic over going out too much or leaving my child with new babysitters. My weird tangent nightmares have me dressed as Ann Margaret singing “Do you think its alright, to leave the boy with Uncle Ernie”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Qbidac8J8. I am trying to decide whether making my love affairs completely covert operations is going over-the-top or in fact the right thing to do.

The only man in my life that my daughter has ever met is the Brooklyn Boy. When the Brooklyn Boy came to see me the first time I made him stay in a hotel, and only came to see him when my daughter was either staying with her father or asleep. The second time, I let him stay in my house and for four days he was a part of our lives. It was lovely, he is a sweetheart (works with children and very good with them) and my girl adored him. When he left, she asked about him for weeks and now four months on seems to have forgotten all about it.

I am seriously attracted to the boy I’ve been chatting with in Bali, and when he comes back to Canada in three weeks, I want to go see him.

Problem is, as usual, I’m pretty broke, so there is little chance I can afford to fly to Vancouver (where he lives, where I just moved from last year, where I will never move back to). Going there would be ideal because the darling child can go stay with her daddy (which would make my ex very happy, as he hasn’t seen her since we were last there in January) and I can pretend to be a carefree single woman for a few days. However, stumping up for two return tickets to Vancouver for what will be a fling, seems a little daft when I should be insulating my house and paying down my credit card.

A possible solution would be to invite Bali Boy (as he shall hence be known) here. I have known Bali Boy many years, he is close friends with a very good friend of mine and I think it could work. If I can shake off the guilt about having a life outside my child and allowing her to see that. If I do invite said boy, I still don’t want my daughter to see me being affectionate with him or anything else, and I guess this may be a little odd.

Oh I don’t know.

I am trying so bloody hard to be a fantastic mother, and the idea of doing anything at all to provide a less than healthy model for my little girl scares me.

Running in to Mr Superlover

The sun is shining in Halifax at last, people are out in their gardens and it seems that spring is actually here. So, I knew it was just a matter of time before I ran in to a mistake I made: the neighbor I was in lust with last summer, Nick. What we shared wasn’t even a fling, he was supposed to be a friend with benefits but the friendship never really happened and the benefits were of questionable quality.

Nick is beyond hot. Tall, muscular, smart and employed (doesn’t live with his mum either, bonus!), the first time I saw him up on scaffolding and bare-chested as he fixed up his house I swooned. He really is an absolutely beautiful specimen of mankind. We’d actually been fixed up by a mutual friend on Facebook when I first moved to Halifax last June, he’d pissed me off with some comment and I’d decided not to pursue him, but then I ran in to him two blocks away from my house, where he lived. Because he was so incredibly gorgeous, I invited him over for a beer.

We hooked up, it was nothing special but I put it down to the fact that it was our first time and thought it might get better. Nick came round and helped me fix some stuff in my house, he was a sweetheart, I looked after his dog one day and he asked if he could come round later. He did, we did, but the second time was pretty bad.  Then I had a date with the guy who called his mother a bitchwhore and I was feeling so crappy I invited Nick round to make it feel better. The hook-up was okay, still not that special but I felt a connection. (There I go again being a girl, of course I’d started to like him, especially compared to the rest of the losers I was meeting.) We got on really well and were talking about doing other stuff together, no way was there any relationship talk but I thought the friendship side was going to happen.

Then nothing. I’d run in to him outside his place, which I have to walk past to go ANYWHERE, including to take my kid to daycare, and we’d make small talk but I’d been given the brush off. I invited him over and felt like an idiot when he wasn’t interested. Then he contacted a friend on lavalife with some cheesy message about how big and strong he was and I wanted to gag. I got fed up of notices coming up on my Facebook feed from girls to him about how much they were looking forward to seeing him and so I unfriended him (not because I was jealous so much as I was starting to feel like the least liked member of his Facebook hareem). Nick loved himself, but had every right to I guess, he had so much going for him and obviously no problems attracting girls.

However, like I said, I have to walk past his house at least twice a day and I don’t want awkwardness so I asked for a ride to Home Depot one day (we are both renovating houses, one of the things we had in common) to clear the air and let him know we were cool. We went it was fine, but awkward. That was in September. I was genuinely sad that we couldn’t be friends. On Christmas Eve I emailed to say that I was hoping we could go for a beer sometime, he emailed back the next day to say sure, but he was in Mexico so he would call me when he got back. Of course he didn’t.

So, today as I dragged my daughter to the store in her wagon, wearing track pants and with no make-up on, there he was in his yard. I tried to walk by but he called me over and started making small-talk, I was polite but when he said he hadn’t seen me around I just had to leave. At least the first awkward encounter is over. And, I totally don’t find him as hot as my mind had built him up to be over the past five months. Maybe I’ll just have to cross the street before I get to his place from now on, and remember not to play so close to home next time.

Oh, and for light relief you might want to check out this video, cheesy but too true  http://bit.ly/M9wt6 One of my girlfriends sent it to me because she thought it rang true of some of my experiences!

He looked good on the dancefloor, but….

I ventured out on Saturday night to go to a club here in Halifax for the first time, the Paragon (which used to be the Marquee) where Skratch Bastid was playing. It was a fun night, Skratch Bastid played an incredible set and I danced for hours. There were lots of hot boys, and one in particular kept dancing near me and eventually we locked lips and made out. Thrilling! He was super cute, but it turned out he was only 26. He thought it was no big deal, and we kept hanging out together. I had an overwhelming urge to drop the ‘I have a kid’ bomb to save wasting my time, or his, and when I did he responded with interested questions. I liked him.

So, he and his roomie were having a little party after the club closed and my posse of six decided we’d go. More beer? For sure! I fully took advantage of the fact that my neighbor who was babysitting said to stay out a late as I wanted, although I was feeling a little guilty every time I saw a clock. I held hands with the boy in the cab on the way home and everything was going well, until we got to his place.

We walked in to his sparsely furnished bachelor pit and I realized that his lifestyle was so far from mine that nothing was ever going to happen between us. We’re talking a framed picture of dogs playing poker (I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be ironic, but maybe not) above a thrift-store sofa, and very little else in the room. The floor was bare tiles. There were four garbage bags full of empty beer-cans on the balcony. It was like student digs, but he wasn’t a student. It wasn’t just his place that was shocking; once in the cold harsh light of his apartment, the appeal of him had worn off.

I sat there for half an hour, but I just wanted to get home to bed. Suddenly I felt too wasted to even pretend to be interested in the drunken conversations going on, and I was feeling REALLY guilty about my neighbor there waiting for me to get home (who I assumed was asleep, but it was 3am now, what if she wasn’t?)

I made for the door. The boy got up and asked if we could exchange numbers. I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, “Sure, give me your number and I’ll call you,” and he asked if we could go out next Saturday. I said yes, then I felt really guilty, but there was no way I could cope with seeing him again (but being in Halifax I believe the likelihood of this happening is pretty much 90% going to happen). I wrote his number on my hand and went downstairs to wait for a cab in the lobby. Horror of horrors, I was waiting an hour for a cab, and didn’t make it home until 4.30 am. It was the latest I’ve been up in years and years.

Once home, I had a bath and sat there scrubbing his number off the back of my hand. In my drunken state I started thinking that I missed my ex-husband. But then I remembered seeing him recently and that ridiculous “Dumb and Dumber” haircut he has now, and it made me smile, and I realized that no matter how lonely I feel, or how much I want a man in my life, I don’t want my ex-husband any more than I want the interior design challenged 26 year-old. Better off alone than in another crummy relationship.

Introducing little old me

Considering how I’m about to share the intricate details of my life with you good people, I suppose I had better introduce myself. I’m a single momma living in Halifax and swimming through the murky waters of single life here. Halifax has a bit of a reputation for sucking as a place to meet other singles, but I’m not about to give up hope as I only moved here last June and I had a lot of fun in the summer (followed by a massive drought in the winter save a brief fling with my Brooklyn boy toy in early December). Lets see, what else? I’m 32, originally from London (England, not Ontario) and have lived on three continents. My kid is aged two and unbelievably awesome, I get to travel lots for my job and do all kinds of interesting stuff in the name of research for stories for Click and elsewhere.

Since getting divorced two years ago, I’ve had a lot of fun but not met anyone special. (At least not special as in the good meaning of that word.) I’ve dated a clutch of weirdos, including a guy that believed he had been abducted by aliens, several men in their thirties that still live with their mom, one that called his mother a “Bitchwhore” and one that was so incredibly negative I left the date feeling downright depressed.

Not that I was the perfect date I’m sure. One brunch date I actually broke down in tears when the poor unsuspecting guy asked whether I got on okay with my baby’s father. Its taken me some time to stop wearing my broken heart on my sleeve, but nowadays I’m not broken hearted and just bloody grateful not to be married to someone I really never had very much in common with. So here I am, honest as the day is long and ready to share my adventures with the blogosphere. Am I scared? You betcha! But I promise to share the highs and the lows in the hope you’ll stick around for the ride.

Ï

Haven’t I seen you somewhere before…?

Hello LavaBabies! A lot of you probably know of me through my SexyEats, Drinks, Resorts series (and if you don’t, then get your virtual behinds to the archives and read them the second you finish this post. Otherwise I’ll get offended).
I’ve been the unofficial NC-17 Travel Queen for a while now—you could almost say it’s my calling. I’m inappropriate, up for anything at any time, and try like hell not to reget it the next morning. My hobbies include:

• Boozing
• Boxing
• Dancing to Damien Marley like I think I have rhythm or something
• Making out with random guys in seedy bars and ditching them by the end of the night
• Late-night Las Vegas strip-club adventures with sexy Scandinavian boys  (yum!)
• Foie gras and sweet wine
• Sex and scandal…

I would never be so bold as to think I know exactly what y’all are looking for, but I think as a fellow single, I have a pretty good idea: Potential hotness, Kodak moments, dirty little secrets, VIP tables. Love. Lust. Fun.

One of these days I’ll probably be shacked up in Suburbia and pregnant and happily shopping for china patterns. (Well okay maybe not, but you get the idea.) And I assume lots of you will be too. Till then, I figure, life is juicy–why not take a big ol’ bite? If you’re with me on this, stay with me, and I’ll happily pass along any tips, tricks, parties and must-hit destinations that I can find. Who knows…maybe I’ll bump into you at one of them and buy you a drink. Till then, let’s just be good li’l Web friends and I promise to post lots of crazy pictures for your enjoyment.

Love and kisses,

Lena