Every Little Thing That You Say Or Do

WARNING: Self-indulgent-depressive-whiny-Bartender-related writing ahead. Proceed at your own risk. And don't say I didn't warn you. Cause I did. I'm doing it now. Heed, Bitches.

So here we are again. And before everyone starts commenting "Oh, you're too good for him." or "I told you so." or "For Fuck's Sake, Get Over It!" Just stop. Cause I've heard it all before and I have tried and I hear it every day from A* and Beth and Lines and Leslie and Audrey and Chris and countless others. But at the end of the day, it's harder than it seems to just quit. Because the game is more addictive than Freecell was back when I was in college and would play so much that I actually started having fucking Freecell Dreams.
I'm not going to go into all the details of every tiny insignificant occurrence from the last month. The Cliff's Notes version is that, well, things have been the same as always, but they haven't. We go to the movies. We go to dinner and hang out all weekend. At his birthday Lines managed to capture, unbeknownst to me or Bartender, a picture of the two of us unconsciously holding hands. Natural as Tom and Katie.
When I was out wednesday night I get a text at 1 A.M.: "Having Fun?" (God this sounds eerily familiar). We texted on Thanksgiving. We talk almost every day. We had plans to go to a screening of Brokeback Mountain last week until both of our schedules made it impossible. He asked me if I was seeing anyone. I said no. I asked him. He said no. We discussed his ex who is living in South America for 5 months. We discussed our upcoming holiday plans. We went out last weekend and all but sat in each others' laps all night.
And last night at the bar, one of our mutual friends points out this guy that was with him at a birthday party about 3 weeks ago and says, loud enough for said acquaintance to hear, "I can't believe Bartender is dating him."
This is the point where Dan does the Cartoon Wide-Telescope Eyes Double Take.
Now. I met this guy about 3 weeks ago. Let's just do the math here... hmmmm.... 2 dinners, one movie, countless late night text messages.... carry the 3.... subtract what little dignity I had left...
I'm sorry people, and I know this was inevitable. And I'm not pissed that he's dating someone (what right do I have in that respect? None.) I'm pissed because this just seemed to have slipped his mind all this time. That I have basically made an ass of myself. That he made an ass of me. That he knew, that our friends knew, that this was never brought up, that this guy may as well have not existed in all the conversations we've had together and all the time we've spent together. That I finally stopped moping around, took Elvis' words to heart and tried the whole "A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action" approach. And the whole fucking time I was oblivious. Which explains so much. It explains why I don't get an answer when I respond to the 1 am text with "Where are you?" (Answer: leaving the house of the man I'm dating) or why his answers to "What did you do last night?" are more evasive than W's explanation of our withdrawal timetable from Iraq.
The real kicker is that when I was all adult and called to ask him "Why didn't you tell me you were dating this guy?" the response was "Am I dating him?"
Answering in the form of a question? I'll take Potent Potables for $500, Alex.
The next answer: "Why do you care?"
You know why I care, asshole.
Fuck.