Editor’s note: Virginia Plain is the pseudonym of a twenty-something woman living in New York who just ended a four year relationship. Read her previous posts here, and check back next week for more.

One thing you quickly learn when you are newly single: boys are everywhere. It’s sort of like a never ending all you can eat buffet. When one boy falls off the face of the planet, there’s three more to take his place. I’ve become a total glutton for dudes.

I think in a way this has a lot more to do with Crazy Jacket than Real Estate. Sex with Real Estate was never good enough to be upsetting when it didn’t happen — there wasn’t much to miss. Crazy Jacket opened my eyes. Sex could be awesome. Casual hookups could be stress free and more importantly fun. Would I just love it if Crazy Jacket e-mailed me again or somehow showed up in New York? Absolutely. Will he? No. And I’ve come to terms with that. There was some crying involved, some intense journaling too, but really things worked out pretty well. Perhaps more importantly though, the whole experience taught me that if I really want and mean to hook up with a guy I can make it happen.

Unless of course I happen to be with another guy at the time.

With all my friends out of town for the weekend, I decided to take one of my buddy’s boyfriends with me to a concert I was covering. It was a band I had seen before and loved. To be perfectly honest I had my eye on one of the lads in the group who had a particular penchant for hats. When your friends are away, it is very important to play. With boys.

My friend’s bf, let’s call him Nature Dude, is exceptionally nice and we’ve always gotten along really well. In truth, I was excited to hang out with him. For one, I don’t have a lot of guy friends to begin with and two, I was interested to see if we could hang out. Nature Dude had been friends with Real Estate, and although they don’t see each other anymore, I was a little worried that things might be weird between us and I didn’t want them to be especially since I suspect Nature Dude and my buddy will be getting engaged soon.

The concert itself was lovely. We talked about everything from jobs to Real Estate of course; there really never was a lull in the conversation. By the end of it, I was completely thrilled he’d been able to tag along. See, I thought to myself, I can hang out with dudes platonically! I mentioned that I wanted to meet the two bands that played that night and he gamely obliged.

I sauntered up to the be-hatted band member and introduced myself. Things were going well enough (playful, flirty banter; he asked for my number, etc) until Nature Dude appeared. Suddenly things changed. After a quick introduction and a polite hello, hat guy left to talk to some other comely young fans. Alright, that was a miss, I thought. I’ll chat up the other band.

That too was going well until they decided they’d really like to score some cocaine and would I like to hang out with them at a bar not too far from my house? My immediate thought was yes. Now, I honestly don’t know that much about drugs (thanks, D.A.R.E.!) and I wasn’t planning on snorting anything, but I was interested in hanging out with these guys. They seemed fun and were actually quite nice. Drug problem and all.

It was decided that me and Nature Dude would start heading over there while they waited with the van for the coke. As we walked, Nature Dude admitted he was too tired to go. Although he didn’t say it directly, I could tell he didn’t want me to venture alone to whatever bar it was they were heading to. Every few corners he’d ask if I was really going to go over there until suddenly we were back at my apartment and I was hugging him good night and wondering what happened.

It would have been easy to pop inside for a few minutes and dash out when I was certain he was gone but I holed up with some cookies and TV instead. Even though I was initially a bit miffed, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Nature Dude had created a sort of Jiminy Cricket style cock block buffer for me, acting as my conscious when all I wanted to do was party and hook up.

Sometimes it is better to go home (alone) and go to sleep. Even if you don’t realize it at first.

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