Me at the beginning of "No Boy April," full of lots of promise and lots of wine
On the first day of my self-proclaimed month-long hiatus from men, I woke up in a boy's bed...
...So, like, yeah, I guess you could say "No Boy April" did not begin with as strong of a start as I had originally hoped when I'd verbalized my decision to take a break from men to Serria and Zach just days before.
Granted, it's not like I woke up in the bed of just any guy (don't you worry, Mom). No, I woke up in the bed of my friend Adam West after I'd spent the evening at Barfly and walked to his apartment (conveniently located directly across the street from Barfly) where we spent the remainder of the night listening to Kanye, watching clips from "The Land Before Time," and, apparently, falling asleep from pure exhaustion before I had a chance to take a cab back home.
A thing you should know about Adam West that is unrelated to the rest of this story, yet still notable -- Adam West has told me multiple times that his last name is not West, but much to his annoyance, I refuse to remember his real one. That's because we'd met on my 24th birthday, a night where my only goals were to discuss Kanye's new album with a complete stranger and, also, not end up in Jersey. Adam fulfilled one, if not indirectly both, of those goals by the fact he'd spent the evening approaching people in the club and asking if they'd listened to "The Life of Pablo." When he asked my best friend, Chelsea, her eyes immediately widened, then (with strength that made it obvious she's been doing CrossFit for awhile), literally threw me at him.
It was nothing if not subtle.
Anyway, because Adam West had (literally) made my birthday wish come true, the two of us got along incredibly well. We ended up spending the remainder of the evening sitting on a bench, drinking beer and discussing TLOP so in depth, it could perhaps be deemed as unhealthy. And, now, months later, we are friends -- conversing mostly in Kanye gifs via texting and hanging out at his apartment when my friends have decided Barfly Thursday is over, but I am not quite yet done with the evening.
Still, despite our friendship, waking up in a guy's room on April 1st was not the way I'd seen my month of no dude's starting, especially because I already had realized I should have started this self-discovery project a month earlier, considering "No Men March" flows off the tongue way better than "No Boy April."
So, after saying goodbye to both Adam West and his cat, I took a cab home that morning and thought about how I would approach the next 30 days of my life without men. (These thoughts were immediately interrupted when I realized Kanye had finally released TLOP on Spotify and that there were multiple revisions). But, it has been many days since that cab ride and, seeing as we are now approaching the end of the month, here is what I have learned during "No Boy April."
1. I was not great at it.
The rules of "No Boy April" were vague and, based on my semi low-lack of self-control and extremely high-knack for liking boys, I tried to edit them multiple times to squeeze into whatever life constraints I was currently faced with. Luckily, I have a friend like Serria, who either g-chatted or texted me almost daily reminding me it was "No Boy April" which meant, no, I could not go out with the cute guy from the coffee shop and no, I definitely, definitely could not answer the texts of the guy I'd been sort of/not really seeing since October.
Of course, while I would not say I'm bad at commitment, I would not say I'm necessarily good at it either. For example, when Lent started and I decided to give up chicken sandwiches from the diner by my apartment, I ate one four out of seven days that week. (On the third day, the guy who delivers them finally told me he thought I was eating too much chicken, a thing I've been inevitably waiting to happen to me since I discovered Seamless last year).
So, full disclosure: I kissed one boy during "No Boy April." It happened in the middle of the month and, while I would like to blame it on the fact we were listening to the newly-edited version of Kanye's "Wolves," a song that makes me feel a lot of feelings, I am owning up to my slip-up.
Luckily, this tiny slip-up did not fall into the perimeters of the bet Serria, ZG and I had placed on the month of April. The rules were simple -- whoever falls victim to their vice first has to buy all of the drinks at a Barfly Thursday. ZG's was drinking beer, mine was going to the bar of the guy I had been sort of/not really seeing since October and, honestly, I'm not entirely sure what, if any, Serria's was. (Thinking back on it, she may have just been coasting and assuming one of us would fail, resulting in her getting free drinks for doing literally nothing different. She may be the smartest one out of all of us).
Still, the amount of money we spend at Barfly Thursday (high) and the amount of money in my bank account (low) directly correlates to how well I did at this bet and, so, despite that one accidental Kanye-related kiss, I would consider this aspect of "No Boy April" a success.
2. I STARTED CARRYING A BURNER PHONE.
This, actually, was coincidental, but hear me out.
I will never forget the first time I actually saw someone use a burner phone. It was shortly after my family had moved to Boston and my brother Jonny and I were on the T. Jonny, Dana and I all have the ability to silently communicate with each other very, very well, so when a young couple walked into our car mid-argument, I knew without even looking at my brother that Jonny and I would be discussing these people in-depth later.
Everything about this couple was bizarre, but the thing I was focused most on was their fight. It appeared they were arguing about whether or not the guy was cheating on the girl with another woman whom she described in colorful adjectives that are much too vulgar to use on my professional website.
The girl demanded he hand his phone over to her so she could check his text messages and call history. He did so with a surprising amount of non-reluctance, but then, as she was scrolling and seemingly finding no evidence, the most incredible thing happened.
A SECOND PHONE IN HIS POCKET STARTED RINGING.
The timing of this moment was impeccable.
The wideness of my eyes at my sheer glee from the situation at hand may have rivaled that of the girl's, who was far from gleeful, but just as (if not more) surprised than I to find her boyfriend had a second phone number.
The guy started warding off his girlfriend's advances to grab his new phone, loudly exclaiming the person calling him wasn't the girl she'd already so colorfully described, but was instead for his drug-dealing business. Unfortunately, Jonny and I had to get off the train at this point, so I never found out if his burner phone was for his side-boo or his side business, but again, it was among the more unforgettable experiences of my life.
Now, I am not in the drug dealing business (despite my neighbor, Arthur, very much thinking I am), nor am I in habit of keeping a honey on the side (I'm pretty sure you have to have a main squeeze first for this), but I do now know what it's like to carry around multiple cell phones.
Because I recently got promoted (!) and hired full-time (!!), I also received a work phone (!!!) that is now doubling as my personal cellular device. Despite being a very exciting situation for both me and my family's data plan, this actually has been a difficult transition because I've had the same cell phone number since the sixth grade.
Thus, my contact list reaches pretty far back down my past.
Trying to put every number I've ever gotten in my new phone turned out to be too exhausting of a task for me, so instead, I decided to embrace this change as an opportunity to delete people from my phone and, essentially, my life. I realized there was absolutely no reason I had to tell ex-boyfriends or people I've casually dated in New York that I had a new cell phone number. (There's probably also no reason I need to alert "Indian Dude Dressed As Jesse Pinkman at The Chug From Senior Year" about the change, although I did and still do appreciate his costume choice).
Getting a new cell phone number during "No Boy April" actually helped a lot with not contacting guys I shouldn't because Apple makes it literally impossible to delete numbers from iPhones. This is a thing I appreciate quite a bit when I accidentally get rid of my father's work phone number, but becomes annoying when I'm doing my best not to talk to the guy who is the absolute worst (yet real, real cute) and, despite deleting his number multiple times, will still show up tauntingly in my contacts. By not adding certain people into my new phone, I've gotten rid of this problem.
And, so, I've been carrying around two phones -- my new one and, also, because I haven't actually told a lot of people I have a new cell phone, my old one. I'm still in the process of getting my new number out to other humans (honestly, the only people I've really told are those who I contact daily, which can pretty much be narrowed down to my parents and anyone involved in a group text with me and Zach Groth), but I've made the decision to not tell some specific people I have another phone...
...which means, eventually, after I get my new number out to all the other humans in my life, I'll stop lugging around my old iPhone, which I've affectionately started calling my burner, therefore effectively eliminating boys who made me cry and "Breaking Bad" fans I met on Halloween in college from my life.
3. WHATEVER MONTH IT IS, feelings are still a thing.
There were a few reasons I originally embarked on "No Boy April," one of which was inspired by Serria's "Month of No Dating Apps," an endeavor she wrote about that you can read here. Perhaps, though, the most important of them was that before this, I went on a date with someone I really, really liked. For issues that are too complicated to explain (literally, I tried to tell the situation to my brother's roommate Graysen when he stayed with me for two days and it took the entire visit to get through all the details of the story and, even then, I think I missed some and that he was still confused and, also, concerned), we decided to no longer continue the relationship.
This, while making so much more sense than I could ever describe, kind of sucks, like, a lot.
Back in January, when I found out the guy I thought I was sort of dating was actually dating other people, I realized I too had to start casually dating again. But, here's the thing -- I didn't want to. For the first time in my year of living in New York (and, potentially, in my adult life), I didn't want to go out with multiple people. I'd finally had an experience of genuinely being connected with someone and I liked that, liked it much more than dating a lot of humans and getting great stories, but no emotional spark.
So, because of this, I held onto the remains of that semi-relationship for far, far longer than I should have (ZG is fond of saying I had so much perseverance, I refused to let myself be ghosted -- a humiliating, yet quite accurate statement). And, to be completely honest, when I did finally say yes to going on a date with someone else, my first with a different person in almost six months, I was nervous, but also did not think I would be able to have an immediate connection with someone like that again.
It turns out, I was very much mistaken.
As far as dates go, this one was fabulous. When I tried to explain what had happened over beers to ZG and Graysen, I literally said I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach when he kissed me. (Both of them looked at me in confusion until I told them I meant in a good way, but even then, they seemed worried). Still, despite the date being incredible, again, there were so many tiny, complex details stacked against us that it made more sense to end it while we were ahead, rather than complicate things even further. The confusion of sorting through those feelings, combined with the fact I didn't think I was ready to jump into any kind of relationship -- serious or casual -- yet, led to this experiment of "No Boy April."
I don't want to say I learned a lot about myself in "No Boy April" because, genuinely, I don't think I did. I'm pretty much the same person I was on April 1st -- though, granted, I have not accidentally fallen asleep at Adam West's listening to Kanye since the beginning of the month. May 1st is rapidly approaching and, despite a month's worth of time, I'm still not sure if I'll keep declining dates the way I did in the month of April or if I'll start accepting those invitations, venturing back out into the world of casual NYC dating. (If this is the case, please get ready for a lot more posts like this).
So, I wouldn't call "No Boy April" a success, but I also wouldn't necessarily call it a failure. I do think it gave me the appropriate time I needed to separate myself from events that have happened in the past and I'm glad I did it -- though, not quite as glad as I am that I made a Barfly bet with Zach and Serria...
...because I have photographic evidence of ZG drinking a beer and, truly, the promise of free Barfly on a Thursday is more enticing than any date I could have gone on this month.