This is a new one...

I don't think I've ever had to compete before with another man for a man's attention. And if you can get past that sentence, here goes...

G has a friend named John, hereinafter referred to as JTA (John the Asshole).

Last night, JTA decided he was going to cook for us, so while G was at his meeting, JTA came over and started cooking. I was journalling, listening to 94.7 on the radio, and welcomed the company. That was my first mistake.

Being a relatively polite person, I picked up my journal from where I was on the couch and moved to the dining room table in order to be a tad more sociable, but I continued with my journalling because I'm a woman and I can multi-task. JTA asked for the radio to be turned up so I obliged him. And that's when trouble started.

He bitched about my music, to the point where Coldplay was on the radio, which I really like, and JTA walks over, leans down to the tuner and starts going "blah blah blah" or whatever he said. It was rude, to say the least. He informed me that he'd had as much of that as he could take of my music and he was turning it off. In the middle of the song. Not a "do you mind if I turn it off?" Not a "hey, I'm flipping this after the next song, what can we agree on listening to?" Just. "I don't like this. Fuck you. I'm turning it off."

No, that was not the end.

He put Fleetwood Mac (talk about trite and insipid and I actually like Fleetwood Mac) on and turned the music up so incredibly loud that all I could do was put my hands over my ears and run for the door because I couldn't take it.

No, that was not the end.

I'm sitting there journalling, but still chit chatting. And suddenly, I get slammed for journalling. How dare I journal when he's there and when he came over early specifically to talk to me and spend time with me. Well, gee, I thought I'd been multi-tasking. Silly me. Oh, and he wanted to read it. G knows better than to ask to read it.

No, that was not the end.

He was looking at a bottle of hot sauce I'd bought earlier in the day and I mentioned that it was reserved for my making wings one night and that I'd gotten the recipe from my friend, Lee. His first question: is Lee a woman? Well, no, he isn't. So JTA asks if Lee and I are lovers. Then he backed off but it was too late. I informed him that Lee and I are just friends, no matter what may or may not have happened in the past.

No, that was not the end.

By that point I was so pissed off I couldn't see straight and I was sucking it up because of G. Because I know that JTA is one of G's friends. So when G got home, I went in to lay down because I knew I was going to start crying and I wanted to keep it to myself. JTA takes advantage and starts bitching at G that nobody gets to see him anymore because G, of course, now has a girlfriend. (Yes, I have excellent hearing.) I suddenly realized that I was running and hiding and that that really isn't me, so I was going to go out and give him a piece of my mind and G talked me out of it because JTA had been drinking and, frankly, JTA is an alcoholic (in my not-so-humble opinion).

All this from a man who wants me to help him with his computer problems. And everyone who knows me knows exactly what he can do with his computer problems right now, don't you?

I feel like it's a tug-of-war over G and I won't do that to him. G is going to have to make his own decision about who he wants to spend time with or who he doesn't. But I did warn G that the gloves are off and I'm not about to suck anything up anymore.

Now that sounds a lot more like me.