Why I Can't Tell You I Have a Boyfriend

*Note the following is a form of humorous fiction and is intended to be regarded as such. Any resemblance to real people alive or dead is purely unintentional and the author apologizes in advance for any such similarities made in this regard.*

Dear John:

I know you've been casually flirting with me lately and even mentioning that we should "get together" sometime or "hang out" in the future or meet for "drinks" and I'd love to, I really would except that our cat and mouse game has descended to tedium from overuse. I can only laugh or smile or move out of hearing range quickly when you invite me over for coffee just so many times and I am growing tired of it.

My laugh is meant as a response to your question to say this, "I am obviously flattered by your request and although I don't find you personally attractive, I'm sure someone else will find you so and take pity on your bereaved form. Also I have a boyfriend and I can't tell you, so please don't ask me again."

My smile is meant to carefully inform you that I am trying desparately to be polite and maintain a girlish image of one who is aloof and careful about who she is seen with and does not wish to sully herself with more than casual conversation with men who find her interesting, or "perky". Also, I think you should know that I have a boyfriend, and I obviously can't tell you, so please go away, but feel free to mention on occasion your flattering thoughts on my new outfit or hairstyle.

Whenever you drop the dreaded sentence mentioning lunch sometime I inwardly cringe and my stomach feels like paste and I am forced to excuse myself from your presence with the impression of mirth and a quick joke perhaps and some spot on genius reason for having to hastily exit your immediate vicinity. I think it should be obvious to you by now that I have a boyfriend that I cannot tell you about, and it is starting to sicken me about how dumb you are in not realizing this.

I can't imagine to what lengths I shall have to go to in the near future to avoid mentioning to you that I have a boyfriend should I ever chance you upon again in a room crowded with people or in some freak happenstance outside near a hot dog stand.

I suppose I shall have to have a friend with me at all times to swoop in and remind me about that appointment that I forgot about in order to more efficiently rendezvous from the area that you are standing in.

You probably have this idea stuck in your head that I am an ogre or a tease for leading you on by just not saying "no" to your queries, replys and pleadings but in fact John you would be completely wrong.

Despite my general repugnance and lack of feeling for you; by not telling you I have a boyfriend, I am actually trying to protect you. I don't want you to go away feeling discouraged that you have struck out with yet another woman and that there is absolutely no hope for you in the future of finding a person with mammary glands to exhibit any sort of interest in being around you for longer than 30 seconds at a time.

I just want you to go away with exactly the same outlook on life that you had before our brief encounter and talk to some other woman that you may perhaps have more luck with than myself. My fondest wish is, that to you, I simply stop existing, because you are clearly not in my solar system and I feel that you would be a lot better of if I was the same in yours.

Sigh. I suppose it would be a lot easier if I just told that you I simply cannot be seen with you because I already have a boyfriend, but I can't take something like that on my conscience. I already feel guilty enough from eating that pint of Haagen Daz last night during Grey's Anatomy.

So, anyway John as you can see there's absolutely nothing personal at all in my absolute rejection of you. It's not you; it's me. And that is precisely the reason why I can't tell you that I have a boyfriend.

yours sincerely,

someone I hope that you will quickly forget

ps. toodles!

Frustrated Incorporated

Ladies and Gentlemen. I come to you this morning very tired and in need of sleep, but I have awoken this morning before 8 am in the morning on Sunday which is extremely unhealthy, just to call a black friend of mine and ask him when his church meets, hoping it was at 9 or 10 in the morning, so I could visit it.

Unfortunately, my friend explained the the church he preaches at only has worship meetings one Sunday morning every other month. Apparently he is trying to phase a church into regular every week meetings. Since I am very tired I could be getting the dates wrong and maybe they meet more than once every month, but that was the gist of it. He is hopelessly charismatic and incorporates the mannerisms and ideals into his everyday life where I have never really seen him without a suit and top hat or being at anything but a super enthusiastic level of excitement about virtually everything. He probably feels that the Lord would never have him express a negative emotion.

I felt I had to call him in order to get a monkey off my back because I just met him for lunch the previous Friday, after he had been pestering me for weeks to meet without saying what he wanted to meet for, and we don't have enough of a relationship that I can assume we're just meeting to be friends and hang out or "catch up".

I had gone to a Tex-Mex restaurant with him for lunch with him after some persuasion (he just wanted to meet at a coffee place it sounded like) and I made him laugh for most of our time there. Eventually he busted out the big guns like he knew he would and asked me for volunteer help at his church. I had been trying to avoid him for some weeks because I knew that the reason he was asking me to meet was that he wanted help in some fashion with his church and I didn't like the way that he was making a pretense of wanting to be friends only for the purpose of church business.

That kind of business model always leaves an icky taste in my mouth but church planter seemed so enthusiastic, and sincere that I didn't want to hurt his feelings so it was tricky. He would call repeatedly on one days notice to meet at the Empire State building and fortunately for me work or an engagement with a much better friend would come up and I would have to cancel or not return a call and I would get repeated messages on my phone from him about this about how I had forgotten to return his call and I might be avoided in the future but that I was forgiven.

I was bewildered that this guy didn't realize that we didn't have the relationship necessary to talk like that to each other. It was highly inappropriate but I'm not the best person at explaining that to other people since I am usually the inappropriate one.

After our lunch meeting he called repeatedly and left several messages on my phone the next morning. When I finally returned his call he said he had forgotten to mention something at our meeting and wondered if we could meet again to talk about it. I was exasperated, thinking I had gotten my lunch engagement out of the way with this guy and was now free of him again for a little while so I told him that we just met and anything he had to talk about he could break over the phone.

So with a heavy heart he explained that he wanted me to sign for the opening of a new bank account for his church, and that this was a position of trust and responsibility. I was blown out of orbit by this request and didn't know how to respond to it over the phone and I may have to meet him in person to explain how inappropriate it is and how I can't possibly be tied up with any financial or otherwise responsibility to a church that I have never attended based on the description of it by someone that I have not known for that long.

So tomorrow we're meeting at the Empire State building where he always wants to meet for some reason. I suspect its because he doesn't get out much and doesn't know too many places in the city. Then he suggested we could walk to Starbucks at 1:00. I explained to him that man cannot live on coffee alone and he just laughed.

So we shall see how reacts when I break the sad news to him that I am just not on board with his crazy scheme.

It's a Record

I was just on set of Law and Order: SVU doing background work for television which usually shows up as a blob on television and I met 2 different girls on set and they both had boyfriends. I think that has to be a record. Usually I only meet one girl on set that I'm interested in that has a boyfriend, so this was completely unexpected and an awesome to cap off my day.

I just realized that I am too tired to complete this post which would consist of describing this girls well, if I type long enough without thinking about it, I am sure that I can come up with something.

The first one had hair in her face and was untraditionally beautiful and had just written a screenplay and had a kid I enjoyed talking to her all day and discovered she had a boyfriend when I told her that I've been accused of living my life like I'm in a movie and my life quote for that would be, "I think life is one big inside joke and I'm looking for someone to share it with." She said it was sweet and my pseudo gay friend Scott that I see at least once a week on set (he's actually not gay, I just tease him about it for fun) said, "You could be that person." I guess he was trying to help but she said she was going steady.

It didn't dampen my mood at all because I enjoyed talking to her still and because Scott makes me laugh.

Later we were doing a courtroom scene and I ran into a production assistant eating beef jerky which I noted as unusual and she said everyone on the SVU set always eats beef jerky. That's really all i can remember about her other than the fact that I thought she was cute and you'd think that wouldn't be much of a reason to ask someone out but you misunderestimate how much I like beef jerky. I wrote a column about it on my old Joshua Dudley website at joshdudley.tripod.com.

I mentioned this to some of the other PA's that I was friends with and they told me she had a boyfriend on site. So I went around explaining this to everyone else that I saw later about how ridiculous it was.

So overall it was a fun day because of the screenwriter with a kid and a boyfriend and my friend Scott. I got to talk to them all day and work 15 hours in the cold cold weather. What could be better than that?