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November 14, 1998

Sex and Bowling

Today, Mike and I went bowling. It's been a long time since we've been bowling together and I've been bugging Mike all week to think of something for the two of us to do together this weekend. He suggested bowling. Kosher with me. I dressed up for the occasion as can be seen by my fancy dress in the picture. Mike kept warning me off wearing the dress. He claimed I couldn't bowl in it. If women can play basketball in high heeled shoes, I knew I could bowl in my stretchy and comfy blue dress. Mike and I went to a place in Clifton, New Jersey called AstroBowl. He vaguely remembered being there a long time ago when I dragged him out for some cheezy dial-meet several years ago to meet Ken (Miller, a classmate of mine from high school). AstroBowl holds some strange memories for me. Den (an.. um.. friend from many years ago) used to work here and George (my first boyfriend) used to laugh about Den's girlfriend at the time would come to AstroBowl to see him and he would run out the back door. I forgot her name, but her strong, high-pitched Jersey accent has been ingrained in my brain for my lifetime. Heather. Yeap. That was her name. Now, Mike typically wins most of the games that we play together. Bowling is one of them. I tend to play with the very light bowling balls, 8 or 9 lbs. Otherwise, by the third game, my fingers feel like they are going to fall off. However, this doesn't give much power to my swing and I find that I often miss the pins behind the 1 pin due to lack of power. Mike, being the strappling man he is, can use a much heavier ball. The lightest ball I could find was nine pounds, and even that I found uncomfortably heavy. I shrugged and tried as best as I could to play. My first game was pretty bad and Mike won easily, although I did put off some impressive strikes and spares. My second game, however, started off with a bang! I bowled a 150! That's like, the highest I've ever bowled. Ever! Mike did terrible and didn't even break a hundred. He kept getting gutter balls, since it looked like he was putting a bit of a spin to it. I attribute my wonderful score to my newfound bowling mantra. "Center. Center. Center. Center." It worked! My the end of the second game, however, my fingers felt like they were going to come off. Thus, my third and last game was pretty bad, and Mike won again. I kept getting gutter balls. After bowling, Mike and I had decided to go to a greek restaurant. Earlier in the day, I spent about 15 minutes looking for a greek restaurant and found it on Route 46. I didn't call. I didn't get exact directions, but I knew where it was kind of located. Mike felt this was a bad idea from the get-go. I didn't really even knew the name of the restaurant, except that it started with an M. We got on 46 and started driving around and I spotted the sign for the restaurant. It looked kind of dubious, being next to what appeared to be a very seedy motel and there was no one in the parking lot. What made it even worse was the sign. "Live Floor Shows Nightly" underneath the yellow sign. Was this a strip bar? Mike was leery about going in, but I convince him that we should atleast step inside and if it looked like there were nude women, we'd leave but otherwise, let's try it! We stepped inside... Into an open but definitely desolate restaurant. I told the guy in the front "table for two for dinner". They led us to a table and told us that we were VERY early (at 7:00) since people typically don't start showing up until 9:30 and the floor show didn't start until 10:30. But, we were starving and decided to sit it out and get dinner anyway. It's strange eating dinner in a completely empty restaurant. It feels ghost-like. We got to see the workers repairing the lights and things. Without people around us eating, we were free to look at the decor. It was awful. Tacky greek statues all over the place, mirrors in the oddest places, glittery gold here, flashy silver there, lots of white classical columns and borders. And urns. Tons of urns. It was tacky to the nth degree. We chuckled at it. Thankfully, their food was much better than their decor! I had a very delicious and tender and fatty lamb. Mm. The music that they pumped in was greek and Mike noted the strong arabic influence in the sound of their music. I agreed with his assessment, also noting that it sounded like a lot of modern Indian music that I've heard with high-pitched female singers and throaty high-pitched male singers. We took our time enjoying our meal and the lack of fellow diners. It was strange and yet, very cool to be treated to dinner in this manner. Mike found it all very funny and told me that we will do more than 15 minutes of web research next time. We will call, he threatens. All I can do is nod meekly. A Glimpse Into Iko's Life A Letter to ScribeTribe My partner is very low maintenance. Seriously, low maintenance. We live in my parents' house and house rules dictate that we not sleep in the same room as each other. No problem. He is currently sleeping in my room in the basement and I am sleeping in the computer room upstairs. (No comment on conjugal visits.) I am one of those people who have lots of varied interests, none of them involve being outside or being physically active. Most of them involve computers (I am my father's daughter.. we're both nerdlings in this respect. I've got two networked computers in the computer room to play with... one that has the digital camera and the internet connection, the other has the scanner attached. My partner is using mine in the basement in my room, my father has three on his desk in his room, my sister has one... that's not counting the numerous computers that we don't have attached to monitors). My time during the day at work is spent in front of a computer, I take the hour commute home (typically writing out a journal entry on my pilot), eat dinner (which my partner prepares for me! I love a man who cooks), and then proceed to sit in front of my computers until bedtime. This schedule tends to leave very little time for mon petit homme. <sigh> I've been trying to spend more time with him, and he's very appreciative of it... but I have found that if I pay attention to him for about an hour or two two times a week, he's perfectly happy with me being a virtual zombie in front of my computer. Talk about *low maintenance*! He'll sometimes sit with me on my bed while I bang away on my keyboard and offer the occasional comment on what he's reading. I need quite a bit more attention when I'm needy than that. Often, we'll be sitting around reading when I'll get the urge to snuggle up next to him and go "hi there." and bug him every, oh, 5 minutes or so with that behavior. After about 45 minutes of this, he'll tend to put down his book and tell me, "so, does someone need a little attention?" I will often deny such treatment is necessary and proceed to read my book while he decides to rub my toes or my tummy for about 15 minutes which is my required maintenance for affection. <grin> I tend to be high maintenance emotionally and need reassurances. I like giving gifts and I hate receiving flowers, but I do appreciate the occasional note slipped into my purse or jacket pocket (along with a few hershey kisses!) saying "I love you", which my partner knows to give me to keep me a Happy Partner(tm). But, I don't consider myself high maintenance, unless the above listed behavior is high maintenance to you. For my partner and I, it isn't, but I know many other people that would consider my behavior high maintenance/highly annoying. ...I think that high maintenance people have a hard time with other high maintenance people because typically, high maintenance requires a great deal of attention that one partner needs to give to the (high maintenance) other partner in order to keep them a Happy Partner(tm). If both partners are high maintenance, then they both have a great deal of needs that need to be satisfied by the other and sometimes there just isn't enough time in the relationship for both to be a Happy Partner(tm). Thus, these relationships end up not lasting. A relationship with one high maintenance and one low maintenance partner does work because the low maintenance person can devote more energy to the high maintenance one. The low maintenance person typically won't look at the tasks they do for their partner as a "necessariy evil" because.. well.. low maintenance people just seem to think that way. Ideally, the high maintenance partner would recognize that they are high maintenance and would attempt to do things for the low maintenance partner that would balance out the relationship. Now, I know that there are high maintenance people out there that are reading it. Is it bad to be high maintenance? I don't think so. People have different emotional/physical/mental needs in relationships and that's completely understandable, as long as you recognize that people do invest their time/money/energy into you and you reciprocate. I'm happy that I'm relatively low maintenance overall because I'm emotionally high maintenance (and I don't need any more guilt when people do things for me *because* of me... if that makes any sense?). I don't like being a burden or annoyance to anyone, so the less I see myself as an annoyance, the better for my emotional health. ;) Ok. Iko will stop rambling now. End of line...

© Copyright 1998, Eileene Coscolluela
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