New year, old story

New Year's Eve was beyond messy. R, A and I went to a club in Brixton to save on taxis and I invited S - a local guy I've been chatting with on Myspace and Facebook for over a year now. It was only ever a mate thing, or so I thought until he stuck to me for the entire evening and tried it on more than once. Fortunately he is pretty cute, if not a total geezer (south London born and bred) so once the love was in full force I was happy to be as tactile as he liked. The four of us arrived back at my flat at around 6.30am and by 11am, were all in my bed moaning and trying to sip water. It was, apparently, torture for S who unexpectedly found himself in bed with three girls in their pyjamas that were preventing him from touching them in anything other than a friendly way (although he did spend a large amount of time stroking my arse under the covers).

I remained in touch with C over the Christmas period (guy I met at Koko in Camden). We exchanged some filthy text messages on New Year's Eve and hooked up last Friday. He cooked for me at his flat for the second time and we had ridiculously good sex until 5am and then again the next day. Interspersed with this were moments of couple-like tenderness but I'm ignoring them. He has yet to ask me 'out', instead our assignations are conducted at one of our flats. Case in point: I am cooking for him tomorrow night. It's fine in a way because it does help me maintain the perspective I need not to let myself fall for him. I've been through this so much lately; really fancying someone, having amazing sex and really valueing those moments of hand-holding, hair-stroking and spontaneous cuddling when in actual fact those are all things men do consciously or otherwise to ensure women don't feel like lumps of meat and as a result become pissed off and resentful or (heaven forfend) needy. This is particularly relevant if they like the girl enough to fuck her again but don't actually want a relationship with her. It's a complicated smokescreen that is easily misconstrued for genuine affection but the fact is, no matter how much you laugh together, how well you get on together, if he cooks you duck a'la orange (he did) and if he spoons you tenderly after rogering you senseless - if you're just staying in and shagging every time you get together, that's all he wants. You aint meeting the mother any time soon. Or any of his mates come to that.

I've been in touch with yet another online bloke who at first seemed really cool. Very 'manly' in build, looks and manner but has turned out to be a clingy, lonely, desperate fool. I hate to say this because he does mean well but it's gone from us exchanging emails and having the odd phone conversation to him ringing, emailing and MSNing me every day, telling me he 'misses me', talking about how great we're going to be together, how he needs me to 'look after him' and that he was 'sad' that I didn't text him one evening. The vital thing to remember is that this bloke lives in Manchester and we haven't even met yet. In the space of a week he has managed to make me see him as an unshakeable annoyance rather than someone I'd ever consider dating. He wants to come and see me next weekend but he's put me right off so I'll have to try and get out of it.

The thing I'm beginning to realise is that there is no happy medium when it comes to blokes. You either like them or loathe them. They either ignore you entirely or text you 17 times in one evening. The ultimate frustration being that the ones you like rarely like you back but the one-man freak shows would happily garrotte their own mother if it meant you'd date them. Why is this so? It's the most unfair rule Murphy ever came up with.