bulgarian cock
Heeeeey, wait a minute! I'm posting a bit later than usual today for a bit of an odd reason: I just wasn't thinking about it. Normally I have most, if not all, of the day's DLU drafted before I even take my lunch break. If nothing else, I have the html all set up for the photo links. Today I had neither done before I realized I still had to find even today's photos -- which happened while I was on the toilet, after going to the bathroom once done eating my lunch. What the hell has gotten into me? I guess I got distracted. By . . . actual work!
The quasi-irony there is, I don't even have a large work load. It's quite small by usual standards at the moment, thanks to the five-week promotion period that only happens three or four times a year. I mean, I still checked Twitter and Facebook regularly -- I'm not dead. Still, I rather surprised myself today. Somehow I was more engaged by, say, a semi-steady stream of emails that didn't even demand my attention but I had to get to them sometime.
Also: Scott is in the final week of two and a half weeks' vacation, not back until Monday. Noah's off the rest of the week as of yesterday, although making him available from home since Scott is out -- and has been very responsive the few times I have needed him. Even Kevin is out working on resets at the stores today, not that it matters as much with him since his desk is on the other side of a small conference room and two "phone rooms" from me (as are those of both Justine, the Center Store Director, and Darrell, the VP of Merchandising). In any case, well, when the cat's away . . . the mice get their shit together, apparently.
I did kind of sit around doing not much at all yesterday afternoon, I'll admit, killing time. It amused me that no one was around to notice or give a shit. I did get stuff done yesterday too, mind you. Just not as much as I could have, and also, there just isn't quite as much to get done right now. This afternoon I'll work on the 9/19 ad copy that's not even due until next week, simply because I'll have nothing better to do.
What about last night, then? I rode my bike home in the wildfire smoke -- I didn't bother with the mask this time, figuring it was just half an hour, and this time I wouldn't be taking two more bike rides later in the evening like I had the previous day. I made macaroni and cheese with chopped Boca Burger pieces in it for dinner. I would have preferred using Boca "Chik Patties," but I have only one box of those at home, and four boxes of the burgers -- because Shobhit grabbed a bunch of them the last time we went grocery shopping, as soon as I told him I had just keyed all Boca products to go on clearance. Apparently they no longer meet our ingredient standards. They weren't even on While Supplies Last pricing yet, but since we were using the member coupon that takes my 15% employee discount up to 25%, he wanted to grab as many as he could while we could. We'll shop again this weekend, and they may be sold out then. If not, I suspect Shobhit may want to grab more, clean them out.
Shobhit went to Howell Park Beach yesterday afternoon, as he often does on Wednesdays when he gets off work at 3:30, for the requisite nude sunbathing. The smoke did not deter him. He was home soon after I started cooking, though. I quite liked how the macaroni turned out, actually. And then we watched last Friday's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher and then the two latest episodes of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and now we're all caught up. We'll get back to Harlots on Hulu tonight, probably.
Guess what you guys, I got my first unsolicited dick pic this morning! I mean, outside of Grindr. I've gotten a few unsolicited dick pics on Grindr -- in those cases almost always from black guys who were too old for me to have any interest. This one I got via Facebook Messenger. It was actually sent to both me and to Ivan, in an ongoing group chat we've had going on.
I have to digress for a moment. The sender is a Bulgarian man, apparently much closer to my age than to Ivan's -- Ivan's pretty certain he's in his forties -- who has been Facebook friends with him since well before Ivan moved out. Ivan has had a longtime love affair with the country of Bulgaria, and I can't remember how they met online but it allowed Ivan to ask him many things about his country. When Ivan was traveling Eastern Europe in the spring, he met up and hung out with this guy at least a few times. "He's totally in love with me," Ivan has said to me before, and I think he may not be off base. They hardly know each other and maybe a month ago I noticed a Facebook post by the Bulgarian that declared Ivan to be his "best friend."
After Ivan had sent texts via Facebook Messenger (always his preferred mode of texting) to both the Bulgarian guy and me at the same time, the Bulgarian sent me a friend request. As a general rule I don't accept friend requests from people I never met before in person, but in this case I made an exception due to both a mutual friend (Ivan) and having communicated with him a few times -- sometimes about Ivan, but certainly not always. Ivan finally sent me a photo of him a while ago, as the Bulgarian has not posted a single photo of himself on his Facebook page, and I was surprised to discover he's bald. I once asked Ivan, that even though he clearly had no romantic interest in him, was he attractive at least? -- and without hesitation Ivan said, "No!" The photo I saw was kind of blurry so I can't really make an informed decision on my own. There have already been times when the guy has gotten overzealous with the messaging with both me and Ivan, to the point of telling me he thinks the guy is mentally unstable.
Now, getting back to this morning. When my phone is on lock and I get a Facebook Messenger text, the text will show up onscreen -- if there is an accompanying photo, though, that does not come up. So while I was getting ready this morning, this came up from the Bulgarian: my new watch. My only real thought was, what would I give a shit?
Bear in mind that when I looked at Facebook on my desktop later this morning, I was at my work desk. I'm just lucky it was well before 8 a.m. and virtually no one else was here. I opened Facebook Messenger and didn't even register the entirety of the photo until I clicked on it to view full size.
It was a photo of a watch, all right. Left wrist, and most of the back of his hand, taking up slight more than the upper-right half of the photo frame. The left half? It showed him from just below the waist down to his feet, standing on linoleum -- not only were both his legs and feet visible, but so was his fairly thick, uncut (not a surprise, for Eastern Europe) cock in the middle. I think he's even got a cock ring on. He sent this to both Ivan and me. With the note, my new watch.
Now. I have reached a point in my life where I have no problem asserting myself. Fifteen years ago I would have been shocked and acutely embarrassed by this. Today, I was just plain annoyed. Where does this guy get off pulling this shit? And how, exactly, should I respond? Ultimately I wrote this back:
This is neither appropriate nor welcome
Roughly an hour later, Ivan responded:
[The Bulglarian] has waaaaaaay too much time on his hands. This is the behavior of a bored adolescent.
Indeed. And -- indeed.
Now, the thing is, at this point I don't think the guy truly understood how seriously I was offended by this. He responded to Ivan's text with a "laughing" reaction, indicating that he thought Ivan was saying that in a kind of playful way -- the way Ivan has, say, in the past told the Bulgarian guy what a "loser" he is. The guy tends to lean into it.
So the guy responded, so have u Ivan -- which, by the way, is not true at all -- above a copy of one of Ivan's own photos from Bulgaria, holding a thumbs-up and showing his own watch.
Then the Bulgarian guy added, Matthew which watch do u like more?
I needed him to know that I wasn't playing. I wrote back, The one without a fucking cock right next to it. Don't ever send a photo like that again. I opened that at my desk at work and it was not okay
I had already decided that if at this point, the guy still didn't get the hint, I would simply unfriend him, perhaps even block him, and move on with my life without giving him another thought. His response then was a simple apology, so he's on thin ice but not yet under water: I am sorry
He then asked, what do u work ? and I opted not to respond to that. Ivan already knows what I do for a living and doesn't need some extended conversation that has nothing to do with him in a group text.
That said, the Bulgarian guy later sent a meme that featured a guy making a terrible pun about attaching watches to a belt and then deciding it was a waist of time. Ha! Okay that's funny. I still haven't sent any further responses, though. This guy still needs a bit of a time-out, I think.
[posted 1:10 pm]