ChamPAIN Tuesday

I love champagne. I used to stock bottles of my favorite vintage in my fridge, just for a pick-me-up on a bad day (drinking problem much?). So when my friends and I found out that a bar downtown was having unlimited champagne on Tuesday nights for $25, served out of a giant bathtub by a midget in a pirate suit (don't ask me why), we obviously made immediate plans to go.

As I should have earlier anticipated, the night turned into an absolute shitshow. Apparently a case of champagne + my friends + a midget= just a complete and utter disaster.

Since this is Manhattan and we pretty much can't go anywhere without running into someone that one of us has slept with, of course this guy that bestie R may or may not have had sex with, Vanilla, walked into the bar. It turns out that he was there for his girlfriend's birthday party. The second Vanilla spotted R, he looked like he wanted to poop his pants and appeared constipated for the remainder of the night.

The girlfriend and her friends were clearly not fans of ours after they figured out the situation, which resulted in a little bit of a turf war. Thus, on top of the readily available champagne, we drank even more in an attempt to combat the awkwardness. This accounts for the multiple blackouts that occurred later that night.

I thoroughly blame the midget for what ensued. He took a hankering to me, so much so that at some point when I indicated my glass was empty, he responded by blowing a raspberry on my belly button. Luckily I was sufficiently inebriated and did not respond by kicking him in the balls. The (maybe) positive outcome of his affinity was that my glass was rarely empty, since he kept topping me off.

I noticed that Vanilla was nearby talking a very, very cute boy, so I injected myself into the conversation by discussing the baseball game that was on TV. The moment Vanilla's girlfriend saw him casually talking to me and R, she came over to claim him and give us dirty looks.

The boy and I hit it off, which really wasn't a hard task since at this point in my drunkenness I could have hit it off with a bar stool. When R asked him what year he had graduated from college, he told her 2010, which raised some eyebrows since that would mean he's still in college. He then corrected himself and said 2008, and red flags should have gone off, but once again, I wasn't thinking clearly.

S and R decided it was time to take shots, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I have come to the conclusion now that hard alcohol and champagne DO NOT mix. This, of course, made us even rowdier than we were before. I have little doubt that we were the loudest, most obnoxious people in a twenty block radius.

Very very drunk at this point, I found out that the boy's apartment was a block away, which was much closer than mine and so I announced to him that I was staying over but he wasn't getting any. His reply was less than enthusiastic, but I don't think he realized that I meant it. Or maybe he was just optimistic.

I don't know what it is about me that makes guys lie about their age, but it's definitely a recurring theme in my life. Curious about the boy's vagueness about his graduation year, I asked him how old he was.

Him: Er, 25.

Me: Really, so what's your birth date?

Him: October 4, 1984.

Me: Really?

Him: Uh, yeah.

Me: Well, show me your ID.

Him: Why?

Me: Because I don't believe you. If you're telling the truth and that's really your birth date, I'll have sex with you right now.

Him: No....

Me: Why not?

Him: I just don't feel like getting my ID out.

Me: I may not know much about guys, but I know this much. If you are not willing to do something effortless like pull out your ID for the guarantee of sex, then you are clearly lying.

Him: Fine....I'm 23 1/2. I didn't want to tell you how old I am because I know girls like you and you wouldn't talk to me if you knew how old I am. You think you're so cool just because you're older.

I made a mental note to remember this conversation so I could tell my friends and make fun of the fact that he still counts his age in half years and then crawled into his bed, entirely intent on going to sleep, and hoping that the morning-after hangover wouldn't be terrible, when he kissed me. I was exhausted, but figured that a little making out couldn't hurt. Boy, was I wrong.

In his over enthusiasm while we were making out, he ended up tossing me off his bed. I am a little fuzzy on how it went down, but I landed on my foot and ended up howling in pain on his floor. Drunk with a throbbing foot, I demanded he bring me painkillers and a glass of water and then was so annoyed that I wouldn't let him touch me again and went to sleep.

In the morning, he woke up to go to work, awkwardly gave me his phone number, and left me alone in his apartment. When I woke up a few hours later, the hangover hit me like a brick wall and I found myself prostrate in his bathroom puking my guts out with my foot swollen to twice its normal size and black and blue.

I called S to let her know that I was still alive and the zygote had not kidnapped me, but that I was trapped in his apartment because I couldn't walk and I was seriously sick. After laughing at my predicament, S responded by yelling, "You're still at his apartment? Go home! Grab a plastic bag, steal one of his socks to wear over your broken foot, get your shit together, and get in a cab. If you puke in the cab, you puke in the cab. We've all been there. Just get the hell out of there!"

I did as she said (minus the sock-stealing) and eventually stopped puking long enough to limp my way out of his apartment and literally hop into a cab. The entire ride home I kept repeating to myself, "Don't puke. Just make it home and then you can puke. Just make it home. Then puke." I was a hot mess: nauseous, hair a disaster, clothes wrinkled, pants unbuttoned, hobbling on my left foot. My doorman took one look at me and burst out laughing.

I spent the remainder of my day dividing up time between the bathroom and my couch where I iced my foot and tried to keep it elevated to lower the swelling.

I called my soon-to-be-doctor friend T to get his advice and he reassured me that my foot wasn't broken but it sounded like I had severely torn a ligament so it would take a few weeks to fully heal. And then he asked me if this was a sex injury. I laughed outright and told him this was absolutely not a sex injury to which he responded:

"Well then it serves you right. When you go home with a guy, that is a verbal agreement that you are going to have sex with him. You didn't follow through on your side of the bargain and so you got punished with a sprained foot. That's a fact."

And shockingly enough, even taking into account my limp and the fact that my friends have started calling me "Gimpy," I was not the worst off on Wednesday. Girlfriend A woke up on her floor, fully clothed, in a puddle of vomit, covered by a slew of bruises and cuts of indeterminable origin. After careful examination, we have reached the hypothesis that she fell into a bush on her way home, before getting sick and passing out on her floor.

To sum up, what did I learn on ChamPAIN Tuesday?

1) There's a reason the word "pain" can be heard in "champagne."

2) Champagne and hard alcohol together are astronomically evil.

3) A midget pouring champagne in a pirate costume is just as ridiculous and extraneous as it sounds.

4) Boys lie about their age all the time.

5) When you renege on agreements by going home with a guy and then not sleeping with him, you will be punished with physical injury; in my case, a bruised foot and the inability to walk normally for the next few weeks.

But clearly I haven't learned my lesson because as soon as the foot heals, we're definitely going back again.

Bring on the (cham)pain!

I Hate: Therefore I Sex

To cope with multiple years of being single in New York City, a while ago I came up with a brilliant policy that some people find anti-intuitive and baffling: I don't sleep with guys I actually like. I only sleep with those that I am thoroughly uninterested in dating.

What? Huh? Does she have that backwards?

Nope, absolutely not. A guy is more likely to get into my pants if I hate his guts than if I want to spend the rest of my life with him.

The reason is pretty simple. I don't want to let myself get attached to someone by sleeping with him. Therefore I only sleep with the guys with whom there is no remote possibility of affection.

Biologically, women more so than men associate emotions with sex due to a hormone called oxytocin that is simultaneously produced as a result of sexual stimulus AND causes feelings of intimacy. Therefore, as much as most single girls would like to deny it, it's much more likely for sex to mean something to us than to the average single guy.

I guess this explains why really good sex can be a drug, just as potent and addictive as any other mind-altering substance. I mean this is all well and good for women in longterm committed relationships, but where does that leave the rest of us?!

So for years, after being brainwashed that this was what I was supposed to do, I would only sleep with guys I had actual feelings for. Such a rookie mistake. Seriously...

And after one too many situations where I slept with a guy I really liked (you know, imagining what our babies would look like and counting the hours until I heard from him again, which I obviously now blame on that damn oxytocin) and then he stopped calling or disappeared off the face of the earth, I'd had enough.

It was at this point that I figured out if you just have sex with someone you don't even like to begin with, the chances of actually getting attached are slim and then you don't have anything to worry about when it inevitably ends and/or when you find out that he's a total skeezeball who's already sleeping with half of Manhattan. Just a hypothetical example...

Once you think about it this way, my policy actually makes a great deal of logical sense and works out better in the long run if you want to avoid messy tears and hysterical breakdowns and emergency 3AM phone calls to your girlfriends bitching about what an asshole he is and how all men suck.

So how does this work in real life situations, you're wondering?

Well when I am dating a guy, at some point I assess whether I like him and have any desire to date him in the future and if the answer is a resound NO ABSOLUTELY NOT, then I just take my pants off right then and there.

For example, when I was on my second or third date with Dry Cleaner Guy, I had the following internal dialogue:

Wow, he's such an idiot. And totally arrogant. And has a totally unrespectable job. Is he really serious right now bragging about how he has the most Xerox sales on the east coast? He cannot be telling me this for real. Am I on Punk'd? Where is Ashton? Nope, looks like this is for real...

AND on top of all this, he is younger than me and lives with his parents in Long Island. I pretty much abhor absolutely everything about him with the exception of his blue eyes and biceps.

Hmmm...so I have no desire to go out with him again and I definitely don't want to date him because that would involve, I don't know, actually spending more time pretending to listen to him and one of us wouldn't live through that. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy if I never had to be in his presence again for the rest of my life.

Ok I guess in that case I might as well sleep with him. Hey, want to go back to my apartment?

And because of that, I was in no way disappointed when his brother confirmed my suspicions that he was completely not worth my time. Which made it all the easier to delete his phone number and forget that he ever existed.

No crying. No regrets. No feeling stupid or ashamed about myself. No emotional baggage. In many ways, it was the perfect encounter. I got some free dinners and booze AND a funny anecdote about picking up a dude at my dry cleaner's out of it. If only all of my relationships were that productive!

On the flip side, on the very, very rare occasion that I go out on a date with someone who isn't a gigantic bandanna-sporting idiot, my logic is as follows:

Hmmm, I might actually want to go on another date with this guy and/or use him for one of the following: free food, free drinks, cute friends, good credit. Therefore, I should probably just yawn, make up some bullshit about an early day tomorrow, and bail. Sorry guy, looks like you just spent $100 on me tonight for a romantic night with your left hand. Good luck with that one.

I am aware that there is one glaring rational inconsistency in this otherwise logical behavior, which is that the douchebags get rewarded for being totally undatable jerks with sex and the ones who might actually just be nice guys walk away with nothing (if you don't count blue balls and the pleasure of my company...so basically, nothing). It does seem like quite an unfair situation the way I've set it up.

All I can say to that is: tough.

I mean if I were to meet someone who I thought I might have a future with, and has already proven himself worthy of seeing me on a regular basis, I'd probably eventually let him into my pants. But really, how often does that happen? Especially given my track record of losers. That's right, it's even rarer than a blue moon.

I've been advocating this policy to my friends, so far with varying success rates of implementation. Of course my guy friends have joked that they should help out the guys I meet by giving them anonymous tips to act like huge jackasses if they want a guaranteed way to get in with me.

True fact. So if you know a semi-attractive guy who has an absolutely repulsive personality and/or no prospects whatsoever, please do us both a favor and send him my way!

Holy Inappropriateness Batman

So just when I think I've reached new lows of what is considered normally acceptable social behavior, I find an entirely new way to prove that I should not be allowed out of my home and permitted to interact with the rest of humankind.

As I blogged about a little while ago, I started a new policy of slapping guys in the balls when they say something that I feel warrants such behavior. Whenever someone offends me and crosses the line, I retaliate by waiting until his defenses are down and hitting him in the balls with my palm.

This is my act of making the world a better place, two sore balls at a time. I mean not only am I teaching assholes not to be jerks to girls, I am also possibly sterilizing the douchebags who should not be allowed to procreate in the first place. If you think about it this way, I really deserve a Nobel Prize for my efforts.

So far the only tangible effect it's had is that I have developed a reputation around my friends and acquaintances. When guys are around me that have witnessed my ball-slapping behavior in the past, they not-too-subtly try to cover their genitals when speaking to me and/or tell me they donned a cup in preparation for seeing me.

My girlfriends find it more amusing and when a guy says something borderline inappropriate to me, they warn him, "You might want to watch what you say with S. She may look sweet and harmless, but she's feisty. She'll hit you right where it hurts."

It's ALMOST like being a superhero, where my arch nemeses are douchebags and I take them down by using my magical gnads-injuring superstrength.

The other entirely unanticipated side-effect it's managed to have is that I apparently have diminished inhibitions about touching guys' crotches in public.

Last weekend I was out with my girlfriends when we met these random dudes in a bar. I was chatting with Dude One when his pal, Dude Two, came up to us and said, "Dude, are you going to close the deal with this girl or what? She's hot!"

Dude One: "Yeah, she is!"

Dude Two: "She's wearing knee-high socks. I really dig that."

At this point, I interjected and said, "You know, guys, I am right here so I can hear and understand everything you are saying."

Dude Two: "Well I really like your knee-high socks. They turn me on."

Me: "Really, like they actually turn you on?"

Dude Two: "Yeah, they're getting me hot."

I am going to blame my subsequent actions on the night's alcohol consumption. And my lack of inhibitions after multiple public ball-slappings.

I leaned over, placed my hand on Dude Two's crotch, felt him up, and said, "Yup you've totally got a chubby going on. They really do turn you on."

There was a moment of stunned silence before Dude Two looked at me with wonder in his eyes, threw his arm around me and yelled, "Did you just touch my penis? I LOVE THIS GIRL!!!"

Since I'm mostly used to guys calling me a bitch after I attack them, this was a pleasant and new turn of events.

(Even more surprising, he wasn't the only man to declare his undying love for me that night, either. Later the hot bartender, yes the same one who I made out with in the back room of the bar in front of the Mexican barkeeps, asked me to go home with him and when I politely declined, grabbed my hand, put his right hand on his chest and said, "S, you have a special place in my heart.")

Needless to say, the Dudes were subsequently pretty big fans of me. Like if I had a group page on Facebook, they would become fans without a moment's hesitation. Dude Two even gave me his business card in case I ever have the urge to molest him in public again. (I wouldn't hold my breath Dude Two...)

My friends have come to a group consensus that I need to be muzzled in the future, and I really can't argue with them. Honestly, at this point, I'm pretty sure I'm a public nuisance. Someone should give my picture to bouncers at bars with a warning not to let me inside. Which would benefit both myself and my slews of would-be victims.

No need to worry about me switching up my MO, though. I doubt I will be caressing anyone else's crotch in the near future and sooner rather than later some idiot is going to piss me off and find himself on the opposite end of a ball-slap. I almost can't wait for that day...

Stay tuned...

Totally Ambiguous

I remember a simpler time in my life, also known as seventh grade, when a boy held my hand and that meant we were going out. He was my first boyfriend and "going out" just consisted of more holding hands, getting pizza together, and my first kiss. Oh, those days were lovely.

According to my mother, the days when she was young and single were a lot like my seventh grade experience, when people were either single or in a relationship. There wasn't much of a grey area in between, and this is why she has some trouble understanding my dating lexicon.

Whenever my mom asks me if I'm dating someone, I usually respond by telling her that I am "seeing" someone, and she tells me she doesn't get it. "Well are you dating him or are you not?" is her response.

The truth is I use the term "seeing someone" because it is ambiguous enough to cover a realm of possibilities, anywhere from casually sleeping with someone to dating someone I actually really like.

I mean the biggest difference between my life now and my seventh grade years (and my mother's generation apparently) is the addition of sex. Throwing in sexual encounters adds a whole new dimension of unclear relationships.

Now, instead of just a simple boyfriend relationship, there are countless ways that my friends and I describe the dudes in our life:

Sleeping together
Dating casually
Dating and sleeping together
Dating but not sleeping together
Dating, but not boyfriend/girlfriend
Friends who sleep together
Exclusively dating but not boyfriend/girlfriend
Exclusively sleeping together but not boyfriend/girlfriend

The last two are particularly confusing because in my world, once you throw the word "exclusively" into the mix, it means you're in a relationship. But according to my friends, people can be exclusively seeing each other, but not be boyfriend and girlfriend yet. The distinction is slight, but apparently it's there.

Now tell me you're not confused.

I had my own first-person encounter with this bizarre situation about a year ago when I was dating this one guy for quite a while (by that, I mean more than a month), and we'd even had the exclusivity talk and decided to not see anyone else but each other. Even then, he was averse to the terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," so he refused to call me his girlfriend at any point during the few months we were dating.

I wound up being completely confused about what to call him, because I defaulted to referring to him as my boyfriend, and then would have to backtrack and say "I mean the guy I'm dating, I mean seeing, I mean the dude I have monogamous feelings for, I mean sleeping with exclusively for a long time, I mean I'm not sure, what was the question?"

I attribute his lack of enthusiasm to the boyfriend/girlfriend thing as just general male commitmentphobia, but it really led me to more confusion than necessary given my normally dizzy state of mind.

With such nebulous ways to describe things, it's no wonder that I miss the days of seventh grade when hand-holding was a clear indication of a relationship.

Things I Learned Last Weekend

1) Beergaritas = evil in a cup.

Starting an evening by skipping dinner and drinking beergaritas always leads to poor life decisions and wanting to die the next day when you're puking over the toilet.

2) Don't take on New Jersey. It will always win.

3) Friends don't let friends get unknowingly eye-raped.

When recapping the night that was slightly hazy in my mind, my friend T told me, "Oh by the way, the creepy guy at the bar was hardcore eye-raping you last night. It was kind of disgusting. Literally every time you turned away he was staring at you and f-ing you with his eyes. I wanted to say something, but I thought it would be awkward."

I hadn't realized this was going on, but knew exactly which creepy guy he was talking about. I had talked to him briefly while I was ordering a drink at the bar, which apparently he took as an invitation to ogle me for the rest of the night.

"You should've said something!" I told T.

"What was I supposed to say? Um, could you please stop blatantly staring at my friend's boobs because it's making me uncomfortable? I would appreciate if you could stop raping her with your eyes? Thanks."

I told him that if it ever happens again, he not only has permission but an obligation to say something. Because that's what friends are for.

4) Really really hot bartenders are never good news.

My girlfriends and I have been obsessed with this very attractive bartender at this bar downtown since we first saw him about a month ago. He is everything a man should be: tall and built with dark, smoldering eyes. He's basically the greatest thing to happen to women since Tom Brady.

Every time he's been working, though, the bar has been insanely busy so we never really got a chance to know slash flirt with him, and had just decided he was too hot to be real.

However, S and I happened to catch him during a lull this past weekend and when I ordered two shots for us, he looked at me with those totally sexy eyes and said, "No, no there's no way I could possibly let you girls take shots by yourself," and poured himself one.

I was obviously giddy with excitement just taking shots with him, so I was really over the moon when he said to me, "This must be your first time here, because I'd remember that pretty smile." Just for that, I decided to forgive the fact that I totally had been there before and he clearly had not remembered me.

At some point, I announced that I wanted to pour my own shots, at which point he told me to hop over the bar, so I literally climbed over a bar stool, slid my ass over the top of the bar, and hopped down to the other side. It obviously never occurred to me to just use the door. That's right, I keep it classy.

I poured a few beers for customers, made a few tips despite my obvious inability to properly tend bar, and then picked out the most expensive tequila in the house to pour shots for myself.

In the midst of my "bartending," the hot bartender pulled me into the back room to kiss a little before S yelled at me to get back out to the bar where she could see me. She was totally justified since there were three Mexican dudes cleaning up in the kitchen and blatantly leering at us while we made out. Once again, I keep it classy.

After that, I hopped back to the other side of the bar, but continued to flirt with the hot bartender, so much so that he announced to the bar that he was "in love with me," and asked me to stick around until he closed out. Having nothing better to do at 4AM, S and I did continue drinking until he was finished working, only to watch him leave with a girl in a far sluttier outfit.

S consoled me by telling me he probably has STDs that haven't even been discovered yet, which is probably true. Nevertheless, it was quite the burn.

5) BUT making out with them saves you a fortune on alcohol.

After the multitudes of shots, including the top shelf tequila I had helped myself to, my tab at the end of the night was $18, which may be the least amount of money I have ever spent on alcohol on a night out. (Depressing or awesome? You decide.)

So apparently making out with the bartender is an automatic drinking discount. It's just like bringing coupons to the grocery store!

6) Phones should have built-in breathalyzers.

I'm not quite sure what my train of thought was when I got home that night at 5AM, but apparently I thought it was a good time to catch up with my friends because I called my guy friend R just to chat and called T to leave him a 10-minute message of me just saying his name since I didn't realize that his voice mail was not actually him on the other end of the phone.

Luckily, I didn't come close to making potentially embarrassing and later-to-be-regretted booty calls, which is the primary reason the built-in phone breathalyzer should exist.

7) Tequila is evil.

Perhaps redundant, but I felt it needed to be said again.

8) So many wrongs could only make a right.

All of these lessons crammed into one night made it highly entertaining and so memorable that I wouldn't change any of it even if I could. Except for the puking the next morning part. That I could do without. But otherwise, totally the same.

Back in the Saddle

I've been trying to convince myself for a little while that it was time to emerge from my asexual hibernation, so to speak. But I couldn't really bring myself to put myself out there and every time I had close encounters with the opposite sex, it usually ended up with me injuring someone's nuts. So for the sake of my sanity and the possibility of reproduction everywhere, I thought it would be best if I just gave up.

It took me a fun weekend out with my friends to remind me what I already knew: that flirting is supposed to be fun and when you're ready to start dating again, it'll just happen. There's no use in chasing it. Or in my case, there's nothing productive about feeling bad about your lack of desire to intermingle with dudes.

I think it's perfectly natural when you've been badly burned to take some time off, just get better, and slowly acclimate yourself to the idea of actually opening up to someone else again. And when the day finally comes that you meet someone and think to yourself, "Hey I wouldn't mind having a drink with this dude. Or eating food across the table from him. Or sharing bodily fluids with him," it's pretty damn exciting.

But now I'm jumping the gun, especially on the sharing bodily fluids thing. Let's get back to the beginning.

My trouble trio of R, S, and myself had a nonstop weekend of going out and stirring things up. I had my first beergarita, a margarita made with tequila and beer, and yes it may sound disgusting, but I guarantee you it is quite tasty, and as potent as you imagine it to be.

So my state of mind was, let's say, fuzzy when we discovered the mecca of single boys in Manhattan. Unlike any other bar I've ever been to, for some bizarre reason, this bar was packed door to door with cute, available boys. There was literally a ratio of six guys to one girl. It was pretty much what I imagine heaven to be like, minus the odor of stale beer in the air.

Spurred on by the testosterone in the air, the beergaritas, and the shots we proceeded to consume in the bar, I decided it was the time to start talking to guys again. Which led to a reckless night of flirting with anything that was around and handing my phone number out like I was a car salesman at an auto convention. Later, it occurred to me that it would save time if I just had business cards made up that I could leave at the bar.

(I actually think this is a fantastic idea that I should pursue. I could make up business cards with my head shot, name, and phone number. Later, when S and I were discussing this possibility, we thought there should also be a caveat on the back that yes, I am always this loud and obnoxious, even when I am not imbibing serious amounts of alcohol with my equally loud and obnoxious girlfriends. That's right, Buyer Beware!)

One of my potential suitors put me in a cab (yes, alone) at about 4AM, leaving me to contemplate the success of my night. Especially in the world of dating, I believe in the law of averages, so I had to give my phone number out to several guys knowing that only about half of them would actually call me, and only one or two of those would evolve into an actual date.

And just as I anticipated, within the week two of the guys had contacted me, and both asked to go out with me, but only one of them evolved into an actual date.

(For some reason, the other guy asked me if I wanted to go out and what my schedule was like and when I responded, I never heard from him again. Apparently me agreeing to go out with him was so satisfying for him that he never even felt the need to actually go out with me.)

I'm not too concerned because I can tell you with certainty that none of those fellas was going to be the next great love of my life; in fact the odds that there is even a second date in my future are slim to none. The more likely situation is that I will find dating to be so distasteful and the guy so awful to spend time with that it will throw me right back into celibacy.

(Yes, I have a healthy amount of cynicism, after all I'm a New Yorker.)

But even if that does happen, I think the simple act of putting myself out there and actually going on dates shows improvement of a sort, and my willingness to get back in the game. And it reminded me that this whole process is supposed to be fun! The meeting someone new, the flirting, the handing out your number and crossing your fingers for the best, the exhilaration when you actually hear from him, the whole shebang.

So this is a warning to all the men out there to watch out, because I am officially back.

Rawr.