Two Princes?

OK. Things are getting deep in the BX as the place I'm so ashamed to admit I'm from has become my main source of torrid lust affairs. Can I just take thirty seconds out of our lives to demand from all the single women of the world; single, successful, really going somewhere, beautiful, and intelligent, can I demand to know What is it about bad men that will keep you coming? Have become common trash, you see, arguing at 4 AM outside of local bar, with standard boy with beer in hand, cheap tie and badly matched suit ensemble. Oh, but he's so pretty, I assure you. I'm like a girl possessed lately, just like with that joke Mike the Med Student, you can't get enough of what you don't really want nor have. I'm doing all I can, I cannot tell you the amount of men in my life who'd laugh to see it. I'm smiling like a Crest kid at the friends, who I've genuinely come to respect, playing beer pong like a pro and downing Coors in public.

Am slightly disturbed by increasing fantasies of life panning out to my wedding where I know everyone on both sides - and respective dates, have gotten my hair done in an updo with the curls on the side, know the photographer personally, and will proceed with my new husband to Villa Barone where choice of chicken or beef will be served over open bar stocked with Budweiser...

But there is something so exciting about all that, isn't there? Never a dull moment with this "neivahood." Never a dull moment. Chrissy used to say I loved drama, I never understood what he must have meant until recently.

But is it wrong to want something rational? We fight, we yell, we don't call for days, we make up, we have those moments of silence you wish would last longer, but this is real... This is real. This is tangible. It's so mundane but I don't feel like I'm acting. It doesn't feel like another thing I ought to do, but rather something I want to do.Is that so strange, afterall? Should I think of it as mere frivolity? Maybe. But i know I'm having fun, and will ride this wave so long as it'll carry me. My strange life has been full of men, in and out, one here and there, always the same kind of man, the kind that spoils you rotten and never takes you seriously. The kind that dates you for the same reason you stick with him, these things are simply mandate. It is nice to be fancied as the proper girlfriend of the proper man, the kind that get quoted in the Wall Street Journal or the Times Travel Section, we'd take the photos like still life, every movement dictated by some unseen dance to a music we'd both be hearing. The stuffy suit, the hand on the lapel. Smile now, the flash comes. You'll be taken care of all your life. You'll never want for anything, dear. I'll hire the nanny, you get the lawyers. I'm going to go and shop and lunch with friends and you go and build me an empire. I'm not going to leave, you won't leave me. And here we're going to stand, you for the world you created, and me, to be the prop, another trophy won, another accomplishment for you to recount in Fortune 500. Keep me warm and coutured. I'll keep you impressive.

I've never asked; is this really all there is? Maybe not? Everything happens for a reason he once said. Maybe I've already gotten mine out of this and am squeezing a juiceless pulp. But really, I know I want more. I'm having fun. Really, I'd be sad to see him go.

On the flip side, Corless is back in the picture. He's very devoted. Doting, even. But Corless is the man I've just described. But maybe I was better off in that world, where imperfection never touched me. Could I give in to be pampered by another wealthy man willing to give me everything I want to give up what I didn't know I wanted in the first place?

Depends. Sometimes things just don't go as we want to. Sometimes we just put more into people than they ever wanted out of us. Sometimes things aren't pretty any longer... Sometimes you're simply a certain type of person and can't change that. And everyone would say, "Casey, you've come out on top, you've got everything you wanted now."

And I used to think they'd be right.

I guess we'll see.

What is it about the wrong men that always feels so right?