500.

I watched Knockaround Guys again last night. It was the perfect finish to a somewhat testosterone laden day. Yesterday afternoon I had impressed Martin with my ability to manuever a pallet jack loaded with 900 lbs around a cramped warehouse. Before I started he told me it would be tough- guy test, to see if I was as strong as Anne, and I told him that my guns were unrivaled. After the third load he agreed and kept wanting to squeeze my bicep. But that's because he's a pervert.

At midnight I went for a long and hard run, through downtown, through the old neighborhood, past drunken sorority looking chicks (they exist in Oberlin??) and sped towards home. I was thinking about a conversation that occurred earlier in the day. For the third time in the past week, the boy had mentioned some new person he's working with, a woman named Erin who just moved here from Colorado. The other day we were driving through downtown and we passed her on her bike. His eyes were fixated on the side view mirror, watching her approach as we sat at the intersection of College and Main waiting for the light to change. I think my friendship with Paula has caused me to be overly paranoid about other women and cheating.

Anyway, so he's telling me about this chick yesterday afternoon, and said that she knew me. "How the fuck does she know me," I scoffed. I was still in tough guy mode from the pallet jacking. "I dunno, she said you used to date some dude with a weird name. She said you're really sweet." He knows who Ahniwa is and it's weird that he always pretends he doesn't.

"You mean Ahniwa. OHHHH, that Erin." Flags are going up left and right. The rear view window thing, the fact that he keeps casually mentioning her, the massive insecurity that this very chick caused in my last relationship, all coupled with the fact that someone I've become closer with is "the other woman" in two guys' lives and I've heard all the tricks for how they get away with it, ... it's like a molotov cocktail for paranoia.

So, after the run and the ruminating I'm watching Knockaround Guys, and realizing that I need to lay a little more 500 down in my own life. The threads of this story probably don't tie together as you read this, but in my mind they do. I think I'm too nice. Too willing to guard what I'm actually feeling. Too aloof about my own vulnerability. Vin's character in this movie is absolutely raw, and real, there aren't any layers between who he is internally and who he broadcasts himself to be.

I had a breakfast meeting with Avery and afterward impressed him with my skateboarding abilities. There are these moments in which I can see that there are lots of reasons that people should accept me because I'm me, and not because I'm simply filling some hole in their life (loneliness, transportation, money, etc.) I'm not a punching bag anymore, or somebody you call because you're sitting in your house alone and it's late and none of your male acquaintances have called you so why not call the MLE....

Anyway. I wish that I would randomly meet Michelle Rodriguez on the street one day and we'd hit it off and drive around in an abductor van together, telling stories and getting tattoos and spitting, and stuff. SKRAWK! This is perhaps the most rambling blog post I've ever done.

But Michelle Rodriguez is hot.