The Makeover

Now I adore all of my friends, but I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for my guy pal L. He's a really genuinely nice guy, which is kind of the mark of death for him. Because even though we girls always SAY we want the nice guy, the hot asshole guy is SO much more appealing in the end. Therefore, L has been striking out regularly with girls since he moved to New York a few years ago.

So a few months ago, I decided he would become my pet project and I would transform him into someone desirable to the ladies. We used to joke that if this was a romantic comedy, after I was done with the transformation, I would totally fall for him but then he'd be too cool for school to date me. (So not happening...)

The first step, and the easiest one, was his wardrobe. We spent about a month going to Barney's and Bloomingdales and Saks, picking out clothes and shoes that were stylish. I made him try on probably 50 pairs of jeans and had him turn around to "show me how his butt looked" in front of all the salespeople, much to his embarrassment.

Then I started educating him on pop culture and making him a more interesting person, giving him books to read and telling him all the ins and outs of Gossip Girl. Part of this was educating him on girls and what our pet peeves are, the kinds of things you should NEVER say to a girl (like telling her she's crazy).

Finally, and most crucially, I have started the lessons on how to be more of an asshole. The problem with L is that he is so upfront and friendly that there is absolutely no mystery, no mystique, none of that hot guy aloofness that makes us want them more. When a girl he liked called and asked what he was up to, he proceeded to give her the details of his afternoon, how he was shopping with his friend and we were currently at Jamba Juice waiting in line and blah blah blah.

Way too much information. Not sexy. And he said he was with a generic friend, instead of saying he was with a girl, which would've made her curious (and possibly jealous). So I've been coaching L by telling him he needs to act like he doesn't care, and stop being so open, so girls will be more intrigued by him instead of automatically tossing him into the friend zone.

We finally tried out the new L the other day at Saks. The saleslady and I were conversing about denim and L just grunted random responses when one of us would address him. As we walked away from the counter, I burst out laughing.

"What? Was I not aloof enough?" L asked me.

"I'm sorry, but instead of coming off aloof you just came off constipated the whole time," I told him.

Back to the drawing board...

Girls Gone Wild

The alternative title to this post was: "Girls don't try this at home!" I write a lot about crazy, sketchy guy behavior, but I thought it was time to devote some space to crazy girl behavior.

Now, I will admit this straight up: sometimes we women are not the most rational of creatures. Sometimes we do stuff that seems to have little reasoning behind it. SOMETIMES we are a little crazy.

And I can't explain why this happens, or what goes on in my brain when I feel myself boiling over with fury over something seemingly inconsequential. But if I do know one thing, it is that if I am at that point, you should never, EVER tell me that I am being crazy. I mean, unless you WANT me to flip out on you and never speak to you again. Cause that's what'll happen...

But even knowing that sometimes I can be a little nutso, there are still some stories that I hear about girls where I am just flabbergasted.

Case Study #1: The Abusive Girl

People frown upon abuse in general, but rarely is it the girlfriend who is the abuser. Recently, I have heard a few stories of totally pussy guys who were taking shit from abusive girlfriends. My friend C got into a fight with his girlfriend and when he walked out of her apartment to try to end the fight, she followed him and threw a brick at his head. Another guy, M, had a beer bottle broken over his head by his girlfriend and needed to go to the hospital to get stitches. And neither of these guys broke up with their girlfriends afterwards. Looks like it's not just girls that stay in abusive relationships....

Case Study #2: The Obsessive Girl

Now obviously in the internet age with the advent of Facebook, it's almost too easy to stalk people. But there are still those people who cross the line of fun stalking and become legitimate stalkers. Friend M went out to celebrate his birthday last week with the guys and his girlfriend wouldn't stop calling him every ten minutes, despite knowing that it was a guy's night out. M arrived home that night only to hear non-stop banging at his door. Turns out the girlfriend had been camped outside his door all night, and ended up hanging out with his neighbors while she waited for him to come home (since she didn't have a key to his place and couldn't get in). Needless to say, he broke up with her the next day and she didn't take it so well.

Ladies, we all have those days, but come on, you're making the rest of us look bad!

Calling an Audible

Being a huge football fan (and having spent far too much time with frat guys in college), I know what it means in football speak to call an audible. (For those of you who don't, it's when a quarterback gets to the line of scrimmage and changes the play call when he sees how the defense is set up.) But when someone actually said it to me in regular conversation the other day, I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

So, obviously, being a good internet junky I went home and Googled it. According to Urban Dictionary, in dating terms it means when you are talking to someone and they express they are not interested in you by working a rejection into the conversation, such as dropping the boyfriend/girlfriend bomb.

Now, this is a known strategy for getting out of some sticky situations, such as the way I let Neighbor Man know that I had no romantic interest in him. But up until this point, I had no idea there was an actual definition for it in boy speak! Brilliant!

No one really enjoys hearing that someone they are interested in, or have been involved with in the past, is currently dating someone new. It's obviously always a blow to the ego at the very least. But, I never really thought that it could bother people so much.

For example, if I rejected someone in the past, say Neighbor Man, and I found out that he had a girlfriend now, I would actuually be relieved and happy for him, and know that I could stop hiding behind the ficus in my lobby for fear of running into him. But apparently some, namely guys as R has informed me, find this to be a dig when you tell them you have a boyfriend and they don't appreciate it. I find this to be entirely baffling behavior.

But then again, these are the people that find it entirely normal to reach down their pants multiple times a day and adjust their balls, so really I can't be that surprised.

Repeating Mistakes

Piggy-backing on my post from yesterday, in typical Carrie Bradshaw fashion, I have been pondering a question: if we can never break out of our set point, does that mean we never learn from our mistakes?

(Just to clarify, because there might have been some confusion, unlike physiological set points, which we are pretty much born with (due to genetics), I think psychological set points are acquired and honed over time. My boyfriends throughout high school and my first serious boyfriend were very different from the guys I have dated since, and don't at all resemble from my set point guy.)

Now, there have been multiple times that I have broken out of my typical mode and dated different guys, such as the blonde jock NJ Boy, the blonde unemployed stoner Logan Boy, and that idiot meathead guy I dated in college who couldn't spell so he always sent e-mails with their phonetic spellings (i.e. "succeed" became "suxeed." Actual exampull, I mean example).

(And just in case you were wondering, he went to one of the top medical schools in the country and is now a neurosurgeon. That's totally the guy you want operating on your brain...I mean he should be fine as long as the job doesn't involve spelling.)

But inevitably, no matter what, I always return to my type at the end of the day, my set point. Which led me to wonder today if we can ever really break out of that pattern for good. Clearly, dating assholey nerds hasn't been working out in my favor, but yet, I continue to do so. So at the end of the day, I have to wonder if we ever do learn from our mistakes, if we are even capable of it, because we cannot help who we are attracted to and will always return to our set point.

So even though everyone is always rationalizing breakups and shitty relationships by saying that we learn from them, do we ever really? Yes, I have learned from my failed relationships; I know now that I can't be with someone who's a complete moron, or who doesn't support my writing, or who is intensely hated by my friends and family, or who is heir to a steel fortune. But does all that stuff really matter if I keep returning to the same type of guy?

At this point, I am convinced that we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again until we are smacked so hard on our asses that we have to change our ways.

Oh, and sorry peeps, I didn't end up talking to the hot nerd at the bar. Next time...

Lessons Learned

In Biology, there is something known as a "set point," which is the "level or point at which a variable physiological state (as body temperature or weight) tends to stabilize." This has entered the lexicon lately as experts debate whether dieting can actually ever cause some people to permanently lose weight, because there is a weight that is natural for them to return to, no matter what their eating habits are.

Don't worry, this has absolutely nothing to do with obesity, but I've been starting to think that there are also psychological set points. For example, people all have a repeated pattern of dealing with stress: for some it's drinking; for some it's drugs; for some it's chocolate; for some it's physical activity (those bastards); for me, unfortunately, it's smoking. Everyone has patterns and habits that are second nature to them, and similarly I think most people have a "type" of person that they are innately attracted to.

For example, my friend S always dates oddball artist types who tend to not have health insurance and/or full-time jobs. My friend R is always attracted to smart girls who are also athletic and into sports. L is drawn to very typically pretty girls who are lacking in the personality department (and almost always strikes out with them).

And as much as I hate to admit it, I have a very clear pattern in the guys that I date and find myself interested in. They all tend to be slightly arrogant (or totally egocentric as the case might be), ambitious, funny brunettes who are smart and slightly nerdy.

Just to prove my point, when I was out at a bar with my friend K the other night, I was eye-banging a very hot brunette guy. When I asked my bartender friend who the hot guy was, he told me, "Oh that's P. He's a nice guy, but he's actually kind of nerdy."

At which point my friend K rolled her eyes, laughed, and said, "Well now it's a done deal. Before she just thought he was cute, but now she's alllllll his."

I would've protested, but it was so true that I couldn't really do anything but laugh.

I have a lot more to say on the subject, but this post has already gotten quite long so I'm going to turn this into a two-parter. More tomorrow. Stay tuned...

Blasphemy!!!

Alright, it absolutely pains me to say this (especially since my friend J is going to get so much pleasure out of it), but in the past few weeks my Bible, my guide, my best friend in book form, He's Just Not That Into You, has been wrong on several occasions.

Now, this is precisely why I hate books of this sort in the first place; they don't always apply to real life scenarios and then you end up assuming something stupid because HJNTIY told you so. And then you end up having totally pointless fights and quoting HJNTIY until guys tell you to shut up and stop letting a book dictate your life (other than, you know, the novels that I write and Harry Potter, obviously).

I hadn't heard from Celebrity Connections Boy in quite some time, which was fine with me since I had decided I was ambivalent about him anyway. And according to HJNTIY, that just meant he was never that into me anyway and couldn't make the extra effort to involve me in his life.

Well out of nowhere, I heard from him the other night. It turned out he had just been through a particularly turbulent few months at work (what with the economy going the way it has been), was worried he was going to get laid off, and was just in a shitty place. But now, he's finally feeling better and is "dying to take me out." His words, not mine.

I'm not particularly interested in this proposition, considering I had written this guy off months ago, especially after he told me he was "immature but a really serious relationship guy." Alarm bells, much?

The most jarring thing about hearing from him is that he was (and is) actually that into me, and he really did just have a lot of difficult stuff going on, which is why I hadn't heard from him, which means that HJNTIY was wrong. Wrong! WRONG!

Now what am I going to rely on completely for relationship advice? Damn...

Girl on Girl Action

Now, I am aware this is a dumb question and I have been pondering this ever since I found out in 9th grade that guys really like lesbian porn, but really: What is it about seeing two attractive women together that turns otherwise sensible, grown-up men into totally incoherent idiots?

The other night I went out with my friend L and some other guy friends to the bar where hot blonde Polish girl works. She was really excited to see me, and we promptly began complimenting each other and discussing girl things like where we shop for earrings and jeans.

But of course, the guys (sitting in the corner, watching our every move, I might add), of course interpreted this as us discussing what kind of underwear we were wearing and what kind of sex positions we might like to engage in together. And so when I turned around to bring them their beers, I found them totally bug-eyed with their jaws on the floor.

And for the remainder of the night, they could not stop discussing the possibility of me hooking up with hot Polish bartender and alerting me every few minutes that she was looking at me and reportedly "eye-banging" me.

Now, I am going to say that I am pretty aware of when guys are into me, and like most girls, I am entirely used to being hit on by guys at bars. But never in my life have I been hit on by an extremely attractive female. So the experience was entirely jarring, even without the guys ogling us, but there is little doubt in my mind that hot Polish bartender is at least bi-curious and would be open to a little girl-on-girl action.

The long-term consequence of this encounter, of course, is now my guy friends are all obsessed over the idea of me hooking up with hot Polish bartender, and bring it up any chance they get. Which of course, brings me back to my original question of why this is SUCH a big deal.

Silly boys...

(Funny Side Note: Just to prove how foreign girl-on-girl action is to me in my daily life, when my ex-boyfriend D told me his sister was getting married in Boston, I said, "That's great! What's his name."

D: "Amanda."

Me: "Amanda's a funny name for a guy."

Long awkward pause.

Me: "Oh my god your sister's a lesbian! I get it now!"

This once and for all proves that I always have guys on the brain in addition to being a complete and utter idiot...sometimes.)

Multiple Rejections

I am SO sorry for the long delay in posts, but I was busy sending out my manuscript to literary agents (15 rejections so far, but really, who's counting?).

Now, there was a time (like a few months ago) when I would've claimed that being rejected by a guy you like is the worst kind of rejection that exists. I have now experienced a whole other level of rejection: the kind where you take a year to write a novel that you pour your heart and soul into, and then take months to perfect it and lovingly send it out in packages to literary agents only to receive a constant flow of form letters that say, "Sorry, but this is not for us."

Now, THAT stings.

On a similar note (not really, but hey I'll tie it in somehow), it had been about two weeks since I had last heard a peep from Client Boy and I was discussing the situation with my friend L. I told L, "Well, I think he finally got the point and I won't be hearing from him again."

L laughed at my naivete and said to me, "Trust me, you will be hearing from him again, probably on a weekend night. He is the kind of guy who will NOT get the point just by you ignoring him. And even after you ignore this coming text, you will still probably continue to hear from him every couple weeks."

I doubted L, but that very night at about 2AM, I got a text from Client Boy, saying, "What are you up to?" which is obviously boy language for, "I am horny and alone and therefore was hoping you would be open to coming over and getting naked with me."

I told L he is officially a genius and once again proclaimed that since I had not responded to this text, I thought it was over. But no, no, no. The other night at 1:33AM I got a text with just my name in it, which clearly translates to, "I am bored on a Thursday night and I just got home and I am hoping that me texting you your name is so stimulating that you will immediately come over and entertain me."

Now, since my silence and disappearing act isn't discouraging Client Boy, I am choosing to be continually bemused by his persistence. Plus I have the feeling that even if I did outright reject him and send him a letter that said, "Sorry, but this isn't for me," that wouldn't stop him at all...

Write Me!!!!

I'm starting something new! I have always used the stories of my friends and acquaintances as blogging material, but now I would really like to hear from you. Send your dating stories and questions to me at stingerstinger8@gmail.com and I will incorporate them into the blog.

Thanks!!!!