Marine Jeff: Part III – Sarah’s Epic Fail

Ugh.  Looks like we’re still here.  Fine… I’ll tell you the end to the story of Marine Jeff.  For those of you just joining.. here’s a quick recap:

Part I:  I meet Marine Jeff at a bar through The Ex’s best friend, Wayne.

Part II:  I went back to the hotel with Marine Jeff and we had a lot of fun.  My apologies for the lack of 50 Shades-esque details… I’m just not that cool.

Which leads us to Part III – Sarah’s Epic Fail.

The week Marine Jeff was in North Carolina before he deployed to Afghanistan, we talked everyday and it was surprising and awesome… I was pretty into it (rare).  Amidst our daily conversations, Hometown Bff, who lives in The City, friended me on Facebook and I suggested we grab a beer… he and his friend group seemed awesome!

We met up for beers at my homebar later that week and that’s when I informed him I had an adventure for us… but I wouldn’t tell him what our adventure was until he had finished at least three beers.

my old home bar that I miss so much!

We had a blast joking around/recapping how he totally wingman’d me.  Talked a bit about Marine Jeff.  Sent Marine Jeff a picture of us at the bar.  I genuinely had an awesome/fun time… Hometown Bff is way cool.  Beer three was finished and it was time to tell him the adventure.

::Flashback:: Earlier that day my boss dubbed me to decorate the office for Christmas.  I work in finance.  Excel is my strength… why I get dubbed to be the officer decorator is beyond me, but it happens alllllllllll the time.  Apparently things had to look festive for some crazy important meeting that was happening the next day and I didn’t have time to get it done at work.

this is a screenshot of my life… now imagine smaller font and eight pages of legal sized paper and that’s what I stare at all day

::Real Time:: I offered Hometown Bff a case of beer and next thing you know it’s midnight on a Thursday night and we’re on the 44th floor of [The Footvag] Tower wrapping fake gifts, hanging mini stockings, and jamming to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You.’

a very happy buddy-the-drunken-elf Sarah!

THIS guy! What a trooper 🙂 Mad love to Hometown Bff

Sidestory – I had to go to the office (hungover) at 7a the next day to ditch all the beer bottles we had left on my desk before anyone else came in to work.  Whoops.

Hometown Bff and I, with the help of many many beers, learned a lot about each other that night.  I spilled and told him about The Breakup of the century.  He told me he thought Marine Jeff and I would be great together, but wasn’t really sure how it would/could happen.  I told him I want to keep in touch with Marine Jeff but don’t want to be a total creep.  He said it wouldn’t be weird to keep in touch.  He peed in an alley.  I asked if writing letters was weird.  He said yeah, a little.  So what was the happy medium in my drunken overly friendly mind??  POSTCARDS.

I told Hometown Bff then and there that I was going to write Marine Jeff a postcard once a week for the length of his six month deployment.

additional picture for emphasis

I’m sorry, what????? Postcards?? Weekly??  ((Reminds me of my favorite post by Ryan where he wrote a note to a girl with the lyrics to N’Sync color coded by the singer…. hahahaha))

In that moment, Hometown Bff unknowingly discovered two of my biggest personality flaws: 1. I take normal things to awkward extremes.  2.  I hate when people challenge my word.  He said “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”  I told him that I don’t say anything I don’t mean and he responded with “Don’t break my best friend’s heart.”

womp womp

There we have it.  As soon as Marine Jeff publicized his FPO address the first post card was off.  Literally.  Week after week after week… the woman at the post office even knew me.  Sometimes he would email me to tell me he got them, sometimes he wouldn’t.  By January it just got weird.  Shocker!  I even made a New Year’s Resolution to stop sending him postcards, but every time I tried to stop I had Hometown Bff conscious on my shoulder saying ‘Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.’  Ugh.  Postcards continued.

somebody… PLEASE! make it stop!!

Not only that, but for some reason I decided drunk emails to him were a good alternative to drunk dialing people I actually knew.  Of course.  What really sucks about drunk emails is that Google documents that shit forever.  For. Ev. Ver.

whyyyyyyyyyyyy

Oh and let’s not forget me stepping it up a notch and sending DRUNK POSTCARDSSSSS…………..

Finally it came down to a Facebook chat (again, documented for life) where he asked me advice on how to tell a girl that kept sending him packages that he was not interested. #embarrassing

He immediately saw the passive aggressive connection I was forming between me and this “random girl” and tried to back pedal.  I decided to use this as an opportunity to tell him I’m not a psycho and to kind of define what I was doing.  I told him that he had definitely piqued my interest enough that I wanted to stay on his radar, but not enough that I wasn’t seeing other people or putting my life on hold.  Also told him that I have no desire to hear about other girls in his life and I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about the other guys in mine.  Closed with telling him that the weekly postcards were merely a friendly gesture to keep his spirits up while he was in a war zone.  All very true and very honest assessments of the situation.  A few days later HE CALLED ME FROM AFGHANISTAN SO WE COULD HAVE A DTR.

Hello, Sarah? Please stop sending me postcards. That is weird. Kthanxbai.

Leave it to me to have to have a DTR with a guy in Afghanistan that I met one time at a bar.

Good news is things cleared up after that.  I felt way less awkward sending him postcards, he was way less creeped out, AND I didn’t miss a single week in the entire six months.  BAM!  Also learned that I travel a lot.  A lot a lot.  And I kind of love that about myself.

Bad news is, he came home from Afghanistan and I didn’t hear from him.  He even sent out a final email with subtle shout outs to people (read: girls) that had sent him shit while he was overseas and I didn’t even make that cut.  AWWWWKWAAAARD!  I had already put myself BEYOND out there so I kept my distance and did the ‘don’t speak unless spoken to’ tactic once he was stateside.

He ended up calling me when he came to The City (after he had been there for a few days (only because his friends were playing in some bball game and he wasn’t allowed to play with them so he needed something to do that night. (I was his last option… embarrassing but true statement))).  We grabbed beer and Chinese takeout and ate/drank on my roofdeck for a bit.  To be quite frank it really wasn’t anything special… just a couple old friends (that had met once before) swapping the latest goofy stories.

you know it’s not a date when you take someone here… also happens to be my favorite Chinese takeout spot. Also happens to be one block from my old apartment

I haven’t seen him since but for some reason he is STILL my go-to drunk dial.  I mean… he’s great and all, but get out of my drunken head!

Truth be told, I (obviously) think he’s a great guy… but I should have taken the hint looooong long long ago that he’s not into it.  Oh and don’t worry… I share all these posts with him, haha 🙂  I’d consider us friends and I guess I feel like I’ve already embarrassed myself enough, it’s too funny not to let him in on it.

So when Marine Jeff pops up in these drunken stories… now you know what it makes it all the more embarrassing.  Now you know why I am single.  I can stop blogging now.