It's a pain in the ass to have someone in my life who takes everything I say (especially flip things I say when I've had a couple of cocktails) totally seriously.

2 weeks ago, on a Monday night, I met R for a drink after his band practice. "A drink" turned into drinking at the theatre bar until 5 in the morning (yet again). When we left, I got the totally stupid idea to try to convince him to come to my place for one more beer. I was being a total brat, took his parking stub and wouldn't give it back, etc. Finally he made me see reason when he said "for gawd sake woman, it's FIVE IN THE MORNING! I'm not going for one more beer" and I realized what a dum-ass I was being and gave in. But not graciously, no, not me. As I pouted my way to my car, I said "Fine. But I'm not speaking to you again EVER, for the entire rest of my life!" I was, of course, joking. I mean, who speaks like that and means it, unless they're 8 years old?

Then, 2 weeks go by. I hear nothing from the man. No call, no email, nothing. He doesn't usually ignore me for 2 whole weeks. I start to get worried, thinking maybe I've done something, or he's finally just getting tired of me, or something to that affect.

So yesterday, I bite the bullet and call him and ask if he wants to have a drink after band practice. He phones back as I'm on the bus on the way home yesterday and says "yeah, I do, I'll meet you at 10:30".

We met up, but unfortunatly, the rest of the band was in tow, so we didn't have much opportunity for talking until about 2am, when the others had left. We were just about to have one last half pint and pay up and go, when I asked him why he'd been so silent for 2 weeks. 2 hours of conversation ensued. It turns out he thought I meant it when I said I wasn't talking to him for the rest of my life and he had his feelings all hurt. He said "Don't you know you can't say things to me like that?". I said "Christ. Have we met before?? I was joking. How could you not know that??"

The upshot of all that (other than not enough sleep before I came to work this morning) is that I had to promise to tell him if I said something like that and was just joking, so he wouldn't go away and stew about it and think I didn't love him any more, or whatever.

Men.