Stinger's Musings

Sorry, I'm Not a Cougar

2011-06-20T00:34:00.003-04:00

I've been having some strange run-ins with younger guys, which, to appreciate, you will need to have a few pieces of background information about me:

1) I look really young for my age. This is partly because I am an Asian female with great genetics (my parents both still look decades younger than they actually are). And yes, people tell me all the time that I should be happy about it and I'll be thankful for it in about ten years. But for now, I absolutely hate it. My parents regularly get asked when I'm going to graduate high school, to which they respond that I graduated high school over a decade ago and soon I will be teaching high school. Speaking of teaching, it's hard to gain your students' respect when you look young enough to be their peer. The other day I was talking to one of my middle school students and her mom, and the mother confessed ten minutes into the conversation that when she'd met me, she hadn't known if I was a student or a teacher. So basically, despite the fact that I am 28, I still get mistaken for a 14 year old. Not good.

2) Since I had no social life to speak of last semester, when my friend S sent me an experimental dating site for our school, I decided to try it out. The site was like Match.com, but specifically for university students, who you could filter by school, so hypothetically you could meet someone at your school. I only went out with one guy that I met from the site, Blah Boy, and as much as I hated him, that turned out to be one of the better experiences.

Finally, 3) I have no interest in dating younger guys. When I was growing up, I always dated guys my own age or older. In my early twenties, I had a long-term relationship with someone two years younger and it raised a bevy of issues. He wasn't mature enough for me; he was at a different point in his life than I was; his mom still called to ask him about his bowel movements (ok that one may have had nothing to do with his age and more to do with the fact that he was a douchebag and a mama's boy). However, since then, I have never dated another younger guy. I have friends who like younger guys and their naivete, but I have no tolerance for it whatsoever.

Ok, now that you have all that information, I can finally proceed with my story.

When I signed up for that college dating site, even though I specified in my profile that I was only interested in guys my own age or older, I started getting e-mails and instant messages from neophytes right away. Apparently, since I look young, they decided to ignore my age restrictions.

The first time, it was a 19 year old sophomore at Columbia University, who wrote me and we had the following conversation:

Idiot Sophomore: So do you want to grab a drink sometime?

Me: Can you even go to bars?

Idiot Sophomore: Yeah, of course.

Me: No, I mean legally.

Idiot Sophomore: Oh. No.

Me: Yeah that's what I thought. I think I'm a little too old for you. (This was my tactful way of telling him that he was far too young for me, hoping he would get the hint.)

Idiot Sophomore: Don't worry. I've had older.

Me: Um. Lovely.

Idiot Sophomore: Well then why don't we just skip the bar and go straight to my bed?

Me: Ha. That's cute. Really. Classy too. Sorry, I'm not remotely interested.

At that point, I blocked him.

A few weeks later, another 19 year old, this time one from NYU started messaging me.

Idiot Freshman: Hey, how's it going?

Me: Good. Look, sorry, I don't mean to be blunt, but you're way too young for me.

Idiot Freshman: What do you mean?

Me: Honestly, you're only slightly older than the kids that I teach and quite frankly, that grosses me out.

Idiot Freshman: Well, what I lack in age, I make up for in life experience and maturity.

Me: Yeah, no offense, but I probably thought the same thing when I was your age, a decade ago. And no amount of "life experience" at 19 would be enough for me to consider going out with you.

Idiot Freshman: Well what do you like to do for fun?

Me: Seriously, I don't know any other way to say this. I am not interested. This is a no go. To me, you are as datable as a baby in the womb.

After that, he got the message and I never heard from him again.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older. Maybe it's because I'm teaching now. Maybe it's because I have a younger sister and have never been able to reconcile dating someone her age. Whatever it is, I cannot wrap my mind around dating, or even hooking up with, someone even a few years younger than I am. I've been tempted, especially since my cousin who is five years my junior has some especially adorable friends. Literally every time I hang out with him one of his friends ends up hooking up with one of my friends, who later bemoan having hooked up with such young'uns.

The other night I went to a friend of a friend's house party and when I was there I met an incredibly attractive guy, who I was talking to for a little while before I found out that he was a senior in college who is interning in New York City for the summer. He had just turned 21. And despite the fact that he was really cute with very blue eyes and a sexy accent, the second I found out how young he was, I instantly lost my lady hard on. After that, I wasn't remotely interested in him any more, which was a real shame.

So yes, this is apparently what my future looks like. I will have to decide between staying home and knitting socks for my cats every night or I will just have to accept becoming a cougar and start accepting the advances of guys a decade younger.

Hot Child in the City

2011-06-13T00:06:00.000-04:00

I think summer does something to people. As soon as the temperature starts to rise, everyone's animal instincts kick in and they collectively go wild like bears that have been trapped in a cave hibernating all winter.

Last summer, I remember around April when it was getting to be warm enough to go outside at night without needing a jacket, every time I went out on the weekends I would pass at least one drunk guy puking on the side of a building. In May people started staying out later and being rowdier. And in June my girlfriends started getting laid. It was definitely summer.

So one weekend last July my girlfriend in DC, L, asked if she could come to the city because she had just broken up with her boyfriend and needed to let loose, and I told her she was coming to the right place. We made an agreement that during the length of the weekend, she needed to make out with five guys.

I told her five guys would definitely be a stretch, but I was looking forward to seeing her make out with four hot guys and one weird one. The weird one would of course occur at 4AM on Saturday when no one was seeing clearly and the options were limited. I was pretty excited on behalf of this one weird guy because I'm pretty sure making out with a hot Asian girl would make his entire year.

Well after Friday night when the count was at zero, L decided to reevaluate the situation and changed the goal to make out with only one guy, if that. Which was a huge disappointment and as Saturday night wore on and no making out occurred, it started to look like it would be zero.

However, around 2AM when things started to get fuzzy, I looked over to see L totally engrossed in "conversation" with a guy at the bar. And by conversation, I mean they were blatantly making out and he was squeezing her ass and running his hands through her hair with gusto.

And of course, because that's what you do when one of your friends is putting on a ridiculous public display, I alerted everyone else to what was going on and we just sat there and watched them.

This was only partly out of morbid curiosity; of course we wanted to make sure she was ok. But it was implied that the second we left the bar, at its 4AM closing time, that the young man would go on his way and L would come home with me.

Instead, drunk L decided it would be a good idea to have him follow us around to get our late-night drunk pizza. And in our few-block trek to said late-night pizza place, we had to keep stopping to make sure she wasn't abducted, only to find her get thrown into a phone booth to make out. (I know, the hygenic concerns alone were disturbing.)

At 4:30, as everyone else started to make their way home and I was thoroughly exhausted, I finally went to tell L it was time to go home. And this is what ensued:

Me: Ok hon it's time to go home.

L: Now? Give me a little longer.

Me: No it's already 4:30 in the morning and everyone else has gone home. It's time to go.

L: Just a little longer!

Me: Nope, now.

L: Well, can he come?

Me: Absolutely not.

L: A little longer. I promise that I won't go back to his place.

Me: So you're just going to stand here on a sketchy street corner by the Queens Expressway? I think not.

L: Well then can I get his phone number?

Me: Are you kidding me? You don't live here!

L: So?

Me: So you're never going to see or speak to him again!

All the while this conversation was happening, I kept trying to walk L away from the dude down the street but she kept turning around and motioning for him to follow. This was obviously infuriating. At this point I had my guy friend M hail a cab, get in it, and leave the door open.

Me: (in my best annoyed mom voice) That's enough L. It's time to go home. Get in the cab.

L: Really?

Me: Really, I'm starting to get pissed at you now. Get in the fucking cab.

(To the guy): It was nice meeting you but we're going home now. Good night.

L: Don't be mad.

Me: I won't be mad if you get in the cab.

L: I just want to hang out a little longer.

Me: Well that's great but you have no idea where you are and it's almost 5AM and you're my responsibility tonight so you're getting in the cab.

At this point, I forcibly shoved her into the cab and climbed in on the other side of her so that she couldn't escape.

The dude finally gave up trying to follow us and convince me that it was safe to leave L with him for the night, gave me the dirtiest look I have ever seen (seriously, if looks could kill, I would've dropped dead right there), and then stomped off in a huff. Clearly I ruined his night.

L: I wasn't going to sleep with him!

Me: That's fantastic that you think that, but that's definitely not what he was thinking so I wasn't going to let you go home with him.

L: But I wouldn't have gone home with him!

Me: Fine, wander the streets in the middle of the night with a stranger, that's even worse.

L: But he liked me and he wanted ass.

Me: Of course he wanted ass, he's a dude, and that is irrelevant. You are dumb.

L: But he was so hot!

Me: No he wasn't, he was pseudo attractive in the bar but the second we left you could see his acne. And he was sketchy.

M agreed with my assessment by nodding.

L: Really? I thought he was hot.

Me: That's because you're drunk. Now be quiet.

Yes, I know I come off like a bitch but really I was just looking out for her best interests and protecting her. And if I learned one thing from this experience, it's that someday I am going to be an awesome mom. Hopefully the situations will be more like, "No you're not getting a toy today for your behavior now get in the car and I will deal with you when we get home" instead of, "No you don't get to stay out all night with a sketchy guy from the bar now get in the cab and I will deal with you when we get home."

Either way, you don't want me to get all Mama Bear on your ass. So behave yourself.

Dating's So Blah

2011-06-06T00:04:00.000-04:00

You'd think with the lack of dating and available men in my life, my standards would be lower. It turns out that the opposite has happened: now I have such little tolerance for another person that the smallest things annoy me and I start internally raging the second someone says something remotely irksome.

My first date with Blah Boy was ok. It wasn't great, but it also wasn't the worst date in the world, which is saying a lot since it was a blind date. Granted, I had low expectations going in, but the conversation flowed easily and he wasn't a total troll. I figured out about halfway through that there wasn't a spark and I wasn't really attracted to him, but also know from experience that sometimes that takes time, so I was willing to go out with him again, but was already plotting how to maneuver out of an end-of-date kiss. Luckily for me, it was pouring rain, practically typhooning that night, and when he put me in a cab, he was unable to maneuver a kiss while trying to keep his umbrella from flying away.

Within two minutes of getting in the cab, I got a text that said, "I had such a great time and hope you did too. Let's do it again really soon :)"

I. Hate. This. I was already trying to evaluate if I was even into him and if I wanted to see him again and right away he put it out there. The text translated into, "I am so into you even though you might not be into me. Please please please please see me again."

I sent him a vague noncommittal text the following day to which he responded, "I'm going away next week for spring break, so can I take you to dinner on Sunday before I leave?"

Me: I have a friend coming into town this weekend, so on Sunday I have a pile of papers to grade.

Blah Boy: But you have to eat, don't you? Just take a break with me :)

First of all, seriously, what is up with all the emoticons? Is there anything more emasculating that one can do in a text? Second of all, I said I had work to do. Asking me again isn't going to make me any more inclined to go out with you. In fact, it's pissing me off, which makes me never want to see you again.

Me: I really can't. I have that much work to do.

Blah Boy: Ok, how about when I'm back from spring break? Are you free a week from Saturday?

Me: I'm not sure. Let's play it by ear.

The odds weren't looking good for him.

However, when I relayed this to all my friends, they said that he was just being eager and since I had nothing else going on in my life, what did I really have to lose.

So that's how I found myself on a second date with him two weeks later, which is great, because it gave me the opportunity to truly and actively abhor him.

Let me say here that there was nothing really wrong with Blah Boy and all that is about to happen was not malicious in any way. He was not a douchebag, not an asshole (I know, rare for me); he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Unfortunately, he was also kind of a rube from upstate New York, who grew up pretty sheltered, is a few years younger than me, and just didn't seem to have much experience with life/girls/normal people in general. So here are some of the highlights of the night:

Blah Boy: So how are things going at school?

Me: Good! I have a ton of work to do, but I really do love it. I even missed the kids during spring break.

Blah Boy: (laughs) That's so nerdy!

Me: Ummmm ok...

Blah Boy: Sorry I was late. I'm so tired because I was out til 4AM last night.

Me: Seriously? What were you doing?

Blah Boy: Went out for happy hour with some people from school and we just got a little crazy.

Me: Wow. I went out to happy hour with school friends too, but I was home by 9 and in bed by 11.

Blah Boy: Really? That's so lame.

Me: (getting defensive) Um, we are all teachers who have to be at school by 8, teach all day, and then have class at night. It's really exhausting.

Blah Boy: Yeah ok.

Me: Soooo...do you live alone or do you have roommates?

Blah Boy: I have two roommates. I could never live alone.

Me: Really? I love it.

Blah Boy: No, I'm the kind of person that always needs to be around other people, so I need people to be there to talk to when I come home.

Me: O...K....yeah I really like being alone.

Blah Boy: Really? That's so weird.

Me: I don't think so. I like my independence. As I've gotten older, I've craved more and more alone time.

Blah Boy: Huh.

Me: Yeah I haven't had a roommate since college. I had a bad experience and have lived alone since.

Blah Boy: Really, what happened?

Me: I moved in with a good friend of mine and we just did not get alone and by the end of the year, we actively disliked each other and haven't spoken since. It ruined our friendship, so now I'm much more cautious about that. I think when you live together, little quirks get on your nerves that don't bother you as much when you're just friends.

Blah Boy: Seriously? That is the weirdest thing I've ever heard.

Me: How so?

Blah Boy: I have never heard of two girls getting into a fight that led them to not be friends anymore.

Me: Are you kidding me? Do you know girls?

Blah Boy: Yeah...the girls I know don't do that.

So at this point, not only did I want to claw his eyes out, I was starting to think that I was the crazy one. Later, when I recapped the conversation with all of my girlfriends and my sister E (who, if anyone, would be the one to never get into a fight with a girl that would end their friendship) and unanimously they all agreed that he has never interacted with females. Otherwise, he would know that girls quite often get into fights that lead to the end of friendships.

After this date, I was not at all inclined to ever see Blah Boy again. During the course of one dinner, he managed to make me feel stupid for liking my job, being tired after teaching all day, and getting into fights with a roommate a decade ago. On top of all of this, I found him to be pretty boring and one-dimensional.

Somehow, despite the awkwardness of this date, he thought it had gone pretty well. The next day, he texted me to tell me what a great time he'd had and how he couldn't wait to see me again and added me as a friend on Facebook. When he received no responses from either of these venues, he texted again to ask me what my plan for the week was. I also ignored this text.

After that, he got the point, and I haven't heard from Blah Boy since.

And that has been the extent of my dating experiences in the past six months. Thank God it's summer.

Finally, the Livin is Easy

2011-05-30T00:02:00.004-04:00

So I realize I've been on an extended blogging hiatus, but I severely underestimated how much my life was going to change once I started school. My first semester, my entire life was dominated by classes and papers. This past semester, I was not only taking classes, but student teaching at a middle school as well. So my schedule looked something like this: during the week I taught all day then went to class at night and on weekends I wrote papers and lesson plans and graded papers.

As a result of this crazy schedule and constant exhaustion, not to mention the fact that any time I did have interactions with normal adults all I could talk about was my students, I did not have much of a social life this past year. In fact, this past semester, I can count on one hand the amount of times I went out with my friends.

Although this probably sounds severely depressing and you're probably feeling bad for me, I have to say that it wasn't as terrible as it sounds. There were a few nights when I had mini-meltdowns, thinking that I would never finish grading all the papers I had to do and I was never going to see my friends again, but for the most part it was the most fulfilling few months of my adult life.

Anyways, since I was too busy to even think of writing and I had no material to write about to begin with, the blog took a backseat. But now that it's summer time and I am on vacation for three months, I'm hoping that I will actually have a life now and enough blogworthy experiences to make up for the dearth of a social life this past year.

My (limited) dating experiences for the past six months are gonna have to wait until next week, though, so make sure you tune in.

And the Livin is Easy

2010-06-21T00:07:00.003-04:00

Today being the equinox, the longest day of the year, (and the anniversary of my sister's birth), it marks the official beginning of summer. Which seems to be an arbitrary distinction since New York has already seen half a dozen days in the 90 degree range, but whatever.

And since that means I'll be spending more time by the pool and out of town (and later in the summer in Europe for a few glorious weeks), it means that I will have less time with my computer. So, unfortunately, I will be taking a summer hiatus from blogging weekly, but worry not because if anything blogworthy comes along, I will definitely be throwing it up.

In the meantime, happy equinox and summer to everyone! And a very happy 23rd birthday to the little one out west!

It's A Girl!

2010-06-14T00:07:00.002-04:00

In honor of Father's Day, I am going to tell the story of how the men in my family became fathers, particularly my own dad and my grandparents.

Now, my parents were immigrants from Taiwan and my sister and I are the first generation of Taiwanese-Americans in our family. So a lot of the customs that my parents grew up with have been lost with us. But one them has been particularly pervasive in our lives.

Patriarchy, aka girls are worthless.

My grandfather on my mother's side is a very successful tycoon in Taiwan, so after he reached a level of success in business, all he wanted was a son to pass his name, legacy, and business onto. Unfortunately for him the first offspring was a daughter (my mother) as were the subsequent four girls. At the fifth girl, my youngest aunt, when the nurse told my grandmother, "It's a girl!" my grandmother literally burst into tears at the prospect of having another child.

Because there really was no other option. My grandfather was (and still is) he patriarch of the family so if he wanted a son, a son was what he was getting. Eleven years after giving birth to my mom, with four other daughters in between, they finally had a son, the son who would carry on the family name and who would be the proud offspring that would care for them in their old age and bring the family pride. It's almost like the story of Henry VIII, except with fewer beheadings.

Except...my uncle JoJo was so spoiled throughout his life that he is now 41 and unemployed, never having had a job in his life, and his wife and three children all live on a stipend from my grandfather. I'm not still not sure what the kids say when their friends ask what their parents do for a living. "Grandpa sends Daddy checks every month because he was born a boy?"

Not that I don't love JoJo. He is far and away my favorite uncle, partly because he lived with us when we were growing up and since he was only 13 years older than me, he always seemed more like an older brother than an uncle to me. Just as now, I feel much more like an aunt to his three children than their cousin, especially given that I am 24 years older than the youngest.

My aunts were not given any of this special treatment and have all turned out to be successful women with families of their own. I think it's pretty awesome that they have all become successful in their own right with minimal help from my grandfather, whereas JoJo is a homemaker for his kids and doesn't have to work since he was born with a penis.

No, I find this whole patriarchy nonsense kind of hilarious, because if you look at it any other way it really is just tragic. So I just listen to this kind of stuff and laugh. But my sister E, oh my crusader the sister E, thinks this is the most unfair thing ever and gets heated up when we discuss JoJo's situation. She wants to sit down our grandfather (once again, the patriarch of our clan), wag her finger in his face, and say, "Well, I hope you have learned your lesson that spoiling your son does not amount to anything good."

I'm sure he'll be quite receptive when she gives him that piece of her mind. I just can't wait to watch.

So the next reasonable assumption is that my parents were hoping for at least one boy in their family. My paternal side was hoping for a male to carry on our family name and my maternal side just wanted a boy because boys are better than girls. (Duh.) They got pregnant only about a year after getting married and even though my parents were struggling immigrant graduate school students, they were ecstatic to have a baby and never considered any other options but keeping it.

Since they hadn't lived in the country long enough to even have health insurance, my mother skipped any sonograms that were available at the time and they opted to wait to find out the sex of the baby. Her mother (my grandmother) and my uncle JoJo flew out a week before her due date to be there when the baby was born. After all, it was to be the firstborn of the new generation, the eldest child of the eldest daughter.

So, on this momentous occasion, they were all crossing their fingers that a healthy boy would be born. And out pops, well, me. It was the first in a long series of woes I would bring to my parents.

My grandmother wasn't allowed in the delivery room, so through the glass window of the waiting area my father had to convey to my grandmother what sex the baby was. So he chose a thumbs down. And my grandma's face fell.

That's right. All those hopes, all those dreams, all that time out the birthing canal, and all I got at the end of that long ride was a thumbs down because I didn't have a penis.

Eventually, they all came to terms with the fact that I was a girl (kind of) and found other things to criticize instead, like the fact that I had naturally dark skin (like the farmers' kids do), and that I was extraordinarily fussy as a child, so much so that I wouldn't let anyone but my mother or JoJo carry me. And later I would start hitting, biting, and throwing fits, but that's a story for another time.

Four years later, my little sister was born, putting an end to my parents' attempts at continuing the family name. Unfortunately, my father's only brother had three girls, so my paternal grandfather is devastated that we are the end of the line.

My mother claims that my father is happy that he had two daughters, but I find it highly suspect that there isn't an ounce of disappointment that he didn't have a son to pass his genes and name onto. I'm pretty sure that this is why my parents chopped all my hair off when I was six and I was mistaken for a boy for the entirety of first grade.

So, sorry Dad, on this Father's Day, I apologize again for being born female (and for being so adamant that I only wanted a little sister, not a brother, which obviously had an impact on the outcome). But I leave you with this tidbit of wisdom, which I am hoping my sister will also impart to our grandfathers:

Girls rule.
Boys Drool.

Oh, So Awkward

2010-06-07T00:01:00.006-04:00

So last weekend at S's birthday party, I had another run-in with the most awkward man alive.

Just to recap, I met this awkward specimen a few months ago, when he stunned me with his new levels of awkward conversation. Then he attended my birthday party and suggested we get together while we were both in California.

We texted back and forth while we were both in San Francisco, but never ended up meeting up since I was busy finding a giant donut with my sister. Strangely enough, he even called me one Saturday night at 2AM, which I would usually take to be a booty call. But considering he was staying with his parents and I was crashing at my sister's, that would've been out of the question. Which just makes me think it was another awkward maneuver.

So I was excited to catch up with Awkward when I saw him at S's party. And surprisingly, he seemed excited to see me too. He gave me a very friendly greeting and hug and then proceeded to once again display his unprecedented power to bring conversations to a standstill.

Me: Congratulations on graduating from law school! How's bar studying going?

Awkward: Studying?

Me: Yeah, you know, for that big exam you have to take to practice law...Didn't you start taking the class this week?

Awkward: Oh yeah, the class started, but I don't need to study.

Me: Errrr...why?

Awkward: Because I'm brilliant.

This was said with no irony or facetiousness whatsover, which led to a brief uncomfortable silence.

Me: Sooo...have you gotten placed at the law firm yet? Because someone else mentioned they're having trouble reaching them.

Awkward: What do you mean?

Me: I guess they're not picking up his phone calls?

Awkward: Oh, they always pick up my phone calls. I'm really important.

Another beat.

At this point, I excused myself and found my friend R to roll my eyes at her and ask if he could possibly be for real.

"Yeah he seems really full of himself, and not in a kidding way," R said. "I had no idea what was going on over there, but it looked like he was hitting on you."

I laughed her off: "No, no way. I think it's literally impossible for him to be interested in me."

"No seriously, he was leaning into you and standing close to you. I think he might really have been hitting on you."

I figured she had to be mistaken until I passed him again and he stopped me to ask me, concerned, "You're not leaving are you?"

Which, unless it's coming from the mouth of someone you're actually friends with, is boy-code for, "I hope you're not going anywhere because I'd really like to spend some time with you and bang later tonight, or at the very least drunkenly make out in the corner of the bar."

I told him I was just going to the bathroom and since I was a few drinks deep at this point, figured there wouldn't be any harm in trying to talk to him again.

Boy, was I wrong.

Awkward: Are you excited to start at that shithole school?

Me: You mean the school you just got your law degree from and that I start in the fall? Yes, I'm pretty excited.

Awkward: Why?

Me: Because I am really looking forward to going back to school. What do you have against it?

Awkward: I don't know. I guess in the law school it was just a bunch of Type-A, arrogant, competitive assholes all trying to get ahead.

Me: Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that describe you to a tee?

Awkward: Exactly! That's why I hated everyone there. You can only have one of those types in a crowd and there were just too many there that I had to compete against!

Me: I see...

Awkward: Plus they were all socially backward and awkward.

Me: Once again, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that also describe you?

Awkward: No! I'm not awkward at all!

Me: Um, sure.

Awkward: Just because I have strong opinions and voice them in dissenting crowds which makes me unpopular doesn't make me awkward.

Me: No...but that doesn't really help.

Awkward: What are you talking about? I'm not awkward!

Me: I have to be honest with you. I think you're one of the most awkward people alive.

Awkward: Most. Awkward. Person. Alive?!?! There's no way. S, do you think I'm awkward.

S: I love you, but you really are the most awkward person I've ever met.

Me: Ha, see?

Awkward: No way!

At this point, he asked another one of their coworkers if he is awkward to which the guy answered without even thinking about it, "Yes, absolutely."

I had previously thought that awkward people have to know that they're awkward, like it's some sort of self-awareness that you couldn't possibly miss, like fat girls knowing that they're fat and short guys knowing that they're short. But my major mistake was forgetting the Spare Tire Girls in college.

You see, my college was notorious for having heinous girls (which it did), which gave some of the ugly girls a distorted self-image where they thought they were much prettier than they were. Which led to a lot of fat girls wearing way too little clothing. Seriously, as soon as spring hit, there were eyesores everywhere. It was painful.

The worst were the Spare Tire Girls, who had giant rolls of fat around their waists but due to their sorority sisters saying, "Nooo you can totally pull that off. You look hot!" would walk around wearing shirts that were many sizes too small. Instead of hiding their spare tires, this would have the opposite effect of flaunting their bulges to the maximum. Just thinking about it today gives me the chills.

Anyways, apparently awkwardness works the same way. And although we thought it was common knowledge that Awkward is so awkward it makes your teeth hurt, he had been in the dark. He proceeded to rant about it for some time and turn to the gay guys in the crowd for consolation.

They petted him on the head and assured him that they didn't think he was awkward at all (false), and before we knew it he had left without saying good-bye to any of us. With the gay guys.

My friend T, being the friend that he is, turned to me and said, "Did he just choose a bunch of gay guys over you? That is a BURN! I can see the disappointment all over your face. Do you need a hug?"

I hotly replied, "I'm not disappointed or upset! I just think it's strange that he left without saying bye!"

"It's ok. I know that you're upset that you just got ditched for guys. You let me know if you need that hug."

I know I probably injured Awkward's ego by calling him out for being in awkward in public but I really thought that he knew.

Especially since after leaving with a bunch of gay guys after possibly expressing interest makes it even more awkward than it was before, which I previously had not thought was remotely possible!

It just goes to show you, just when you think you've seen it all, some fat girl with her gut hanging out of her XS tee or an awkward guy will always prove you wrong.

Home Sweet Home

2010-05-31T00:04:00.011-04:00

I am enjoying my first week at home after a whirlwind month of May. I flew out to Vancouver at the beginning of the month, then went to my parents' house for a few days, and returned to the city only to head out to Martha's Vineyard last week. I'm just starting to get into the rhythm of my daily life at home and enjoying sleeping in my own bed.

My week in Canada was filled with family and nonstop eating of amazing food. (E and I sampled some pigeon, an Asian-Canadian specialty. It was surprisingly juicy and delicious and even the head is edible. I grossed E out by munching on the skull and beak.) The highlights, in addition to finding out that I am cool, are below:

1) Attending a Mathlete competition, complete with a lightning round and buzzers. As if that wasn't nerdy enough, my 8-year old cousin actually won the fifth grade division (he's only in fourth grade). He won a new Wii and got an awesome trophy and an even awesomer t-shirt.

2) My attempt to start an Olympic curling career. Since I am getting on in years, I figured out a few years ago during the Beijing Olympics that the number of events I could actually compete in are getting pretty limited. At this point, they're pretty much limited to archery and shooting in the Summer Olympics and curling in the Winter Olympics.

So I conveyed my desire to curl to my uncle, thinking that's what Canadians do for fun, right? Well, he called around to all the curling rinks in the area and they were already closed for the season. Apparently it's too expensive to keep the ice frozen during the summer, so they shut the rinks down in the off-season.

Which means my curling career was thwarted right from the very beginning. I was really looking forward to it: the weird shoes, the giant stone, the yelling, "Pull! Pull!" without understanding what it means, everything.

Even more embarrassing than my inability to find out if I am a natural curler, my 8-year old cousin doesn't really grasp sarcasm yet, so he asked me in all seriousness, "Why do you want to win an Olympic medal so badly? Why don't you try figure skating?"

To which I had to explain to him that I was just joking about the whole Olympic thing because I am far too old to really win a medal at this point. And that if I had wanted to compete in figure skating, I would've had to start training over twenty years ago. Especially since Yuna Kim and Mao Asada who respectively won the gold and silver medals this past year in Vancouver were both 19. I'm pretty sure that alone puts me out of contention...not to mention my inability to skate.

3) Spending time with my three-year old cousin, who is a technological savant. The kid can't speak in full sentences, but he can operate an iPad faster than anyone I know. He does everything on it: watches movies, plays games, watches YouTube videos on video games he likes.

One day we went to the mall and assuming he was like every other normal kid on the planet, I stopped at the kids' play area to see if he wanted to play. But he ferociously shook his head and pointed down the right. So I followed his directions and pushed his stroller right into the Apple store. Turns out he wanted to play with the iPhones. I would've been sad about it if I wasn't so busy being impressed.

I hadn't seen him for about a year and what was most fascinating was that since I saw him last, he's developed a personality. He is funny and inquisitive, has active likes and dislikes, and has a penchant for being violent (he likes to throw things and has a history of beating up his brother and sister, who are both about four times his size). He already loves sports, especially baseball and hockey (after all, he is Canadian), so they plan on enrolling him on teams in the near future in the hope that it will be a healthy outlet for his aggression.

Perhaps the best part of the trip was the way he would wake sister E and I up in the morning. Usually he'd wake up and call for his Mommy, but during our stay, at 10:30AM promptly in the morning, while E and I were still in bed, the doorknob would start rattling and a little voice would call out to us. He'd eventually stand up on his tiptoes and maneuver the handle to find his way in and then would climb into bed to talk to us in his barely comprehensible baby babble. It was utterly adorable and I still miss his morning wake-up calls.

The subsequent week in the Vineyard was the epitome of relaxing. S and I spent our days sitting out on her porch and beach, eating the best food New England has to offer (How do they make their clam chowder so good?! I'm convinced they put crack in it. Seriously, I don't even know why we bother with this "Manhattan clam chowder" nonsense; it's so inferior it doesn't even deserve the title of "chowder.), and booking our trip to Europe in August (Our itinerary consists of: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, and Croatia and yes, we can't wait!).

After all the traveling though, it is nice to be home, especially since it is my favorite time of year when it's warm out and I can spend my days sitting in Central Park or out by my parents' pool, but it's not so humid and warm that yet that I don't even have the energy to go outside (I'm talking about you, August, but luckily this year I will be in Europe for the majority of the muggy NYC season.).

And since I don't have another weekend away planned until July, it looks like I will be spending the majority of June enjoying summertime in the city. Couldn't be happier.

Middle School Musical

2010-05-24T00:05:00.014-04:00

So it may have taken twenty-seven years, but I am finally considered cool by the 12-year old demographic.

Let me explain.

Middle school was miserable for me. First of all I was younger than everyone else because I had decided it was a good idea to skip fifth grade. Secondly, I happened to be one of the most awkward pre-teens in all of history, in addition to being a straight-up nerd. And I'm not saying this in a supermodels say they were awkward in high school but they were really just tall and misunderstood, kind of way. I was truly awkward.

I was ridiculously scrawny in a manner that only a 12-year old gangly girl could be. And unfortunately for me, this all occurred during the early 90s when we still thought 80s fashion was acceptable daily attire; basically it was the era of spandex. And it was too big for me. So all the neon and patterned tights and shorts I tried to pull off that were meant to be skintight were baggy on my chicken legs. To top it all off, I wore giant, round, red tortoise-shell glasses, had braces, and was so flat-chested I wore an AAA training bra until I was 15.

To this day I cannot look at pictures of myself in middle school without wanting to cringe. Fortunately for me, the summer before high school I got contacts and my braces off, had a slight growth spurt, and stopped wearing neon tights, so high school was a breeze compared to my junior high years.

All of this obviously made me a target for ridicule and I was picked on in middle school so much that the guidance counselor started making regular appointments to see me. Anyone else who has lived through female mental warfare will concur that surviving it is pretty much a miracle.

So why was I recalling the unpleasant low point of my adolescent years? One of my cousins is twelve, in seventh grade, and I helped her and her three best friends get ready for their second dance. Since they go to an all girls' school, the first dance introduced them to the all boys' school and irrevocably, the concept of interest in boys, so they were in a flurry getting ready for the second dance. Their conversation is highlighted below:

Preteen #1: Who do you think is going to be there tonight?

Preteen #2: I don't knooow, I hope there are lots of people there.

Preteen #1: We should call Charlie and ask him!

Preteen #2: Yeah let's call Charlie!

Preteen #3: No I don't want to call Charlie!

Preteen #1: Then I'll call Charlie. Do you think he'll recognize my number?

Preteen #2: Maybe, just call him!

Preteen #3: Whatever.

Lots of girly giggling and calling Charlie, but he doesn't pick up. Major let down

Preteen #1: I want to dance with someone at the dance tonight. I've never slow-danced with a boy.

Preteen #2: Didn't you slow-dance with Ryan last time?

Preteen #1: No, he asked me to dance after the slow dance. I'm the only one who hasn't slow-danced yet.

Preteen #2: What? (To Preteen #3) Who did you dance with last time?

Preteen #3: Charlie...

Preteen #2: Oh yeeeaaah, are you going to slow dance with him again?

Preteen #3: Ew, no! I don't like him!

Me: Oh, that Charlie.

Preteen #1: Do you know Charlie?

Me: Er, no, of course not. I was just joking.

All the girls look at me strangely. Lose all street cred.

Preteen #2: Well, who do you want to dance with?

Preteen #1: I don't know. I wish it could be...Zac Efron!

Preteen #2: Oh he's so, so cute.

Me: The guy from High School Musical?

Preteen #1: Um, that was so three years ago.

Preteen #2: Yeah, I think you mean High School Musical 3.

(That's right. I was just shut down by 12-year olds. And yes, they really did say that.)

Me: Right. Anyway, him. I saw him once outside my apartment building. I took a picture to send to my sister.

Silence and gaping.

Preteen #1: SHUT. UP.

Preteen #2: What??!?!

Preteen #1: HOW? And what was he like?!?!

(Side Note: For anyone who is not in the Hannah Montana demographic, Zac Efron is a young star made famous by his lead role in High School Musical. And although I am unsure why, apparently he makes tween girls, and sometimes not-so-tween women like my sister and my friend S and Kathy Lee Gifford, go batshit crazy. I attribute it to his constant state of oompah-loompah orange tan and hair that appears to effortlessly fall into his face. I'm quite sure that his bathroom closet is stocked exclusively with spray-on tan and hair gel.)

Me: I was walking home and he was filming something at the studio down the street from my apartment. So I stopped to take a picture. He seems fine, I guess.

Preteen #1: That is SO amazing.

Preteen #2: I am so jealous!

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I decided I had hit my high note with this crowd and it might be best for me not to speak for the remainder of the evening. Which prevented me from commenting during the following when the dog entered the room.

Preteen #1: I saw him doing something gross before.

Preteen #3: Like what? Peeing? That's what dogs do.

Preteen #1: No! He was humping the couch, you know, with his thing.

Preteen #2: Ew, gross!

Preteen #1: I know, if you look, you can see his...penis!

Preteen #2: Ewwwwwwwwww!

Lots of giggling from the girls. More stifled giggling from me.

Preteen #2: I think I accidentally touched it once.

Preteen #3: What, the dog?

Preteen #2: Noooo, you know, his thing!

Preteen #1: Ewwwww!

At this point, I couldn't take it anymore and thought I might choke from all the laughter I was holding back, so I pretended to go to the bathroom just to crack up and mentally document what had just happened.

A few days later after we picked up my cousin from school she said to me in passing, "Oh by the way, my friends liked you. They thought you were funny."

To which my uncle chimed in, "Oh yeah, one of them mentioned to me she thinks you're really cool."

My cousin concurred, "Yeah another one also told me that she thinks you're cool."

That's right, ladies and gents. It may be fifteen years too late, but preteens finally consider me to be cool. I am no longer the geeky nerd whose spandex sparkle shorts are too big for her; I have officially been deemed COOL by 12-year olds.

It may be one of the prouder accomplishments of my life to date. I am considering adding it to my resume.

Looking back on it, I am comforted by the girls' innocence. After all, when I was their age the big scandals consisted of girls giving blowjobs and one particular eighth grader getting knocked up, so their discovery that the dog had a penis was adorable in comparison.

However, there was a part of me that was saddened by the whole thing and wanted to tell them, "Hey, slow down! You have your whole life to date boys and think about penises, hopefully ones that aren't canine... There's no need to rush it right now! You will all have boyfriends and slow dance with someone someday and for many years after that, but you will never ever get to be young again."

But even as cool as I am, I couldn't have pulled it off without sounding preachy and I recall people telling me the same thing when I was 12 and just rolling my eyes and ignoring them because they didn't get it, so I doubt it would have accomplished much.

All things considered, there is absolutely nothing, and I mean NOTHING, no amount of money in the world, that could entice me to go back to being a 12-year old again. You're too old to be a kid just having fun and too young to actually be able to do anything fun like drive cars and drink and make out (well at least you should be).

And for every good memory I have, like my first kiss (on my eighth-grade school trip to Washington D.C. in front of the Lincoln Memorial), there are about five terribles ones to match, likes the time a girl pulled a chair out from under me in French class which led to a hairline fracture in my right elbow (causing me to be in a cast for the next three months, including that trip to D.C. where another girl had to help me with the clasp on my training bra).

Yeah, there's nothing like hanging out with middle schoolers to make you appreciate being in your twenties. So I recommend the next time you're feeling down about your age, just pick up this book and let that feeling rapidly pass:

Oh, and just in case you missed it the first half a dozen times I mentioned it, the message you should walk away from this post is that pre-teen girls think I am totally cool. Suck it Justin Bieber.

Meet the Browns

2010-05-17T00:02:00.003-04:00

So my friends and I have this running joke that Brown University isn't a real educational institution. There's no particular reason for this other than the fact that the students there are permitted to create their own majors and when we were driving through Rhode Island once, we were going to stop at Brown to get something to eat but weren't able to since there wasn't one sign on the highway alerting us to the exit for Brown University.

Which has led us to believe it's some sort of invisible or imaginary school, somewhat like Hogwarts, but with a lot less magic and awesome.

A few Saturdays ago I was hanging out with my friend L. She had just been set up with this guy and had made tentative plans to hang out with him that night, but when she texted him to see if they were still on, he replied, "Playing beirut all day, so don't expect anything fancy tonight."

Which is just a bizarre response, unless he was kidding, but I'm not sure that he was. So after some back and forth they decided on a bar that isn't very conducive to a date - it is on a boat in the pier, sells buckets of beers, and tends to be the meeting ground for ex-still-wannabe-current-frat boys. So she asked me to tag along since his friends would be there as well, and therefore she'd have backup if it was awful.

So after getting there and acquiring a bucket of beer, L and I met up with the guy, who turned out to be pretty nice but announced that twenty of his closest friends were about to join us because it was his birthday.

Pause.

That's right, he had made a date with L on the night before his birthday and then tricked her into attending his birthday party instead. I was somewhat puzzled and more curious to meet his "friends," because now I wasn't sure if he had any.

True to his word, ten girls and guys showed up shortly and a flurry of awkward introductions were made, since they all asked how I knew the birthday boy and I had literally met him ten minutes prior.

It turns out they all went to Brown together. Like all of them. As in L and I were the only ones that couldn't join the Brown University Alumni Association. Apparently they still hang out together all the time.

Now, I have no problem with people staying close to college classmates. Some of my best friends are my friends from college. But I said some. As in I have made other friends throughout the years and now my social circle consists of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Which is natural in a city like New York where there are so many people.

That is why I am slightly wary whenever I meet people that exclusively socialize with their group of friends from college. I know some guys like that from my own college, guys that were fraternity brothers and still live together in disgusting apartments with kegs. Basically, they are trying to live out their fraternity years as long as physically possible. And I personally find that wrong and weird on multiple levels.

So yes, I was slightly weirded out by the Brown kids and felt incredibly awkward and out of place, so I started texting my friend S to come up with an exit strategy.

Me: I am surrounded by these really annoying brown people and it makes me want to vomit.

S: That may be the most racist text I've ever seen.

Me: No no!!!! I meant people that went to Brown University! It wasn't racist at all! If anything it was schoolist!

S: Uh huh.

Me: No seriously! I mean it! They're all really white and really really preppy! Popped collars!

S: Sure.

Me: Really! There's a guy here wearing those Brooks Brothers khakis that have stuff all over them. His have American Flags. He keeps standing up and pointing out how patriotic his pants are. And it's nowhere close to July 4th.

S: Oh, gross.

Me: Yeah, I know.

S: That sounds terrible.

After my escape plan failed due to my accidental racism, I struck up a conversation with the birthday boy's roommates, during which they let me in on the fact that they have lived together since college, for seven years now (warning flags, anyone else?).

I informed them that is almost long enough to be in a common law marriage in NY, at which point they got VERY excited.

Roommate 1: Ohhh I'm going to use your health insurance!

Roommate 2: You better start making some money so you can support me!

Me: You two are pretty excited about this. Have you guys ever been, ahem, more than friends?

Roommate 1: That's my girlfriend sitting over there.

Roommate 2: But yeah, there was that one time.

Roommate 1: Which time?

Roommate 2: You know, the time, in my bed.

Roommate 1: Oooooh yeah! That time!

Me: Are you guys messing with me? What time is this?

Roommate 1: No, no. There was this one time when my sister was staying over so I let her take the bed, and I was going to sleep on the loveseat in the living room, which was really uncomfortable. So when he got home he told me I could sleep in his bed.

Roommate 2: I have a really large king bed, so I didn't care if he slept in my bed as long as he stayed on the other side.

Roommate 1: Yeah, and I didn't want to sleep with my legs in the air on the loveseat, so I was all about it. So we go to sleep, on opposite sides of the bed. And in the morning I wake up, and I feel a hand rubbing me on the chest. And it feels really good! So I let it go for about a minute. Then I open my eyes.

Me: And you saw that it was the hand of a man and freaked out?

Roommate 1: Welll I opened my eyes and I saw these bamboo sticks he has on his wall, and I got confused and was like, "Where am I?" And then I looked over and realized it was him.

Roommate 2: So I can't help it. I have these sleep issues where I all into such a deep sleep that you could punch me and I wouldn't know it. I've sleepwalked other places and have no recollection of it. Plus I wake up every morning spooning my pillow, so I guess that night I thought he was my pillow.

Me: Yes, because the hairy chest of man has the exact same feeling as a pillow...

Roommate 2: I don't remember! I guess he kicked me and woke me up.

Roommate 1: I shook him and said, "Dude you were touching my chest!" And he just mumbled something and went back to sleep.

Roommate 2: Whatever!

I was pretty amused by this story. I don't know too many comfortable heterosexual guys that would tell this story to a stranger and laugh about it. In fact, the last time I heard of two hetero men sharing the same bed at a hotel, they made a point of telling me that they slept on the opposite sides of the bed on the edge and had no contact whatsoever.

I should've just called it a night at this point, because clearly things weren't going to get better. However, on my way off the boat to go to another bar, I saw a girl slip in a puddle and as I started to laugh at her, I slipped in the exact same puddle, and totally wiped out.

Full on, legs in the air, skirt flew up, crashed onto my back on the ramp bit it. And somehow in the process, I also managed to unlock my phone and speed dial my parents. So they received a voice mail of me screeching and cursing. My mom was quite confused and asked me later if I had been drunk. I responded that I wish I had been because it would've hurt less and been less embarrassing.

In retrospect, I was obviously being punished for my racist text message earlier. But really, it was all a misunderstanding. I'm not a fan of Brown people, Brown with a capital B!

The giant bruise on my back will be a reminder to never again make that mistake.

Oot and Aboot, Eh

2010-05-10T00:04:00.008-04:00

I'm in Vancouver, Canada to spend some time with my family and bask in the aftermath of the last Olympic games. I try to visit Vancouver once every few years to soak in the scenery of British Columbia (I say this with no irony whatsoever, it is truly beautiful up here), eat lots of really good food, and hang out with my cousins and favorite uncle.

Now, it's obvious that Canada is a different country, but for some reason, it's easy to forget. My mom was under the impression that you don't need a passport to get there and we had to rush my sister's passport to her in San Francisco so that she can cross the border to meet me in Vancouver. When I let her know we were doing this she replied, "At SFO if you're flying to Canada you go to the domestic terminal. Canada is America's hat!"

What's truly odd about it is that immigration in Canada is pretty tough on Americans crossing the border. The last time I went to Vancouver, I was joking around that I shouldn't even need my passport to go, and one of my friends warned me, "Oh no, be careful. They are really thorough. I went there for work just for a day a month ago and they grilled me to find out if I was doing a job that could be accomplished by a Canadian."

I laughed it off, but of course, when I got into Canada, the immigration officer asked me more questions than I have ever been asked entering another country, not even in the years I lived in Tokyo. He had me tell him the address I was staying at, who I was staying with, the names and ages of my cousins, the last time I had been in the country, when I planned on returning to the US, etc, etc. It was baffling.

Of course when I told my friends I would be out of town for a week to go to Canada, it ignited a firestorm of laughter. My friend T happens to be a proud Canadian from Toronto and second to his unnatural love of cats, our favorite thing to make fun of him about is his Canadian citizenship.

My GRE essay was about how Canadians have an inferiority complex to Americans, their tendency to be the red-headed stepchild of North America. I used the South Park Movie Bigger Longer, and Uncut as an example to back up my argument. I remember writing the essay (in my defense, I was really tired, in pain because I had just broken my foot, and slightly zoned out on painkillers) and thinking to myself that I hoped the person who graded my essay wasn't Canadian because then there would be no way I was getting into graduate school.

Well, I turned out getting a perfect score on the essay and when I told T about it, he said, "Oh great, not only did you write a racist essay, but the person who graded your essay was also racist. You must be proud."

I am, actually, and my only regret is that I wasn't able to receive a copy of my essay so that I could show people all the valid points I made about Canada's inferiority complex.

The fact is it's just so easy to make fun of Canadians! They are like Americans, but nicer, more laid back, with funny inflections and access to universal healthcare. Their national sports are lacrosse and hockey. Curling is a really big deal. Bryan Adams. The fact that T once told me that Celine Dion is a national treasure. They put cheese curd and gravy on fries and call it poutine. Vomit.

And strangest of all, they drink their milk out of bags. The first time I heard this, I had a hard time grasping it, but yes, instead of buying milk in cartons, they buy them in giant gallon bags and then place them in plastic pitchers for storage. Apparently this is more environmentally friendly than cartons, but also tends to spoil faster (unsurprisingly).

It's these little differences that set us apart from our neighbors to the north. And also what makes them so lovable.

When I was watching the Olympics with my father, he pointed out that Alexandre Bilodeau "looked so Canadian." And when I asked him what exactly a Canadian looks like, he responded, "You know. He's really handsome but not at all in an arrogant way. If an American guy was that good-looking, he'd be all full of himself about it. But instead, he's just humble and nice."

So, apparently, that is the Canadian look: good-looking but unassuming about it. At least, according to my father. I am only mildly concerned that he will leave my mother for a Canadian man.

For now, I am just going to avoid the poutine and the milk bags, and enjoy my time in the Great White North until I have to return to the land where the handsome guys are full of themselves and douchebags. Which, honestly, though it was definitely not my father's intention, is a pretty decent description of New York.

But, oh well, as they would say in French-speaking Canada(which is a distinction from French-speaking France), "C'est la vie."

What's Love Got To Do With It

2010-05-03T00:02:00.001-04:00

I grew up with this romantic fairy-tale notion that if two people love each enough, it can conquer all and they should be together, despite the obstacles. After all, that's the idea we've been fed, right? That love is the end-all be-all and nothing else should matter as long as there's love.

When I read Little Women in third grade, I remember being devastated that Jo and Laurie didn't end up together. I mean, he married her bratty sister Amy. WTF?! They were best friends and clearly loved each other, so in my eight-year old head,I simply could not comprehend why Jo rejected his proposal and the two of them didn't get married. What kind of happy ending is that?

Now, almost twenty years later, I think Louisa May Alcott is a genius, in more ways than one. Although they cared for each other, Jo knew that Laurie wasn't the right man for her and that if they married, they would destroy each other. And even though I couldn't understand it at the time, I totally get it now.

I read Kristin Chenoweth's book of memoirs A Little Bit Wicked last night partly because I love her and partly out of curiosity about her on-again off-again romance with my idol Aaron Sorkin (the brilliant writer of A Few Good Men, Sports Night, and The West Wing).

And it was absurdly clear that they are in awe of each other's talent, have a tremendous respect for one another, and there's a lot of love between the two of them.

But sometimes, that's not enough.

Their coupledom seems to be fraught with complications. She's a Southern Christian; he's New York Jewish. She has never done drugs; he's had a public battle with cocaine. And as a girl who's had trouble just dating people outside of her political affiliation, I have no idea how they reconcile those differences.

This all got me thinking that sometimes, even if two people really do love each other as much as is possible, sometimes they still shouldn't be together. It makes practical sense, that being in love doesn't necessarily mean that you are meant to spend the rest of your lives together. Sometimes, people just don't work well together in relationships, romantic or otherwise.

For example, I've had friends throughout the years that I have loved dearly and still consider close, but I only speak to them once in a while or see them on certain occasions. Sometimes friendships evolve to a place where both of you can can live with it and continue, but it wasn't how the relationship might have looked in the beginning.

And I have loved people, a few some people, with all my heart and had images of wedding dresses and babies in the future, only to discover that would not be a plausible future.

When I broke up with love of my life to date, my college boyfriend, my mother's words of condolence were that I wasn't accommodating enough to make it work (she's notoriously unsympathetic, E and I have been slapped with this lesson multiple times throughout the years). This may or may not be true; I am not particularly accommodating, but I also think we had too many differences and issues to have lasted.

He is now engaged to someone else and they're getting married this summer and from what I can tell from the outside, she is much more similar in personality and life goals to him than I am. Which I have come to realize doesn't mean that we weren't tremendously in love years ago; we just weren't compatible.

And had we stuck it out, which apparently depended on my accommodation level, I'm positive it would've ended in divorce and/or physical injury. Hopefully his upcoming nuptials fare better.

I think sometimes the couples that you root for (I'm talking to you Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes) and are obviously in love, still have "irreconcilable differences" and just can't make it work together. Which is never easy to face, especially if there is still love there.

I guess it's sometimes too much to ask to fall madly in love with someone who you could actually make it work with and grow together with over the years instead of apart.

Perchance To Dream

2010-04-26T00:05:00.004-04:00

Years ago I landed my dream job and showed up for my first day in my Theory suit and 3-inch high Louboutins, pretty much as excited as a person can possibly be. I walked out that first day with a burnt hand (coffee accident), blisters from wearing heels all day, and the realization that perhaps this wasn't going to be the job I had envisioned it to be.

I didn't last very long, just long enough to be sure that I couldn't make it work, and after that I was saddled with this nagging concern: What am I going to do now? I was only twenty-five and already jaded with the notion that I no longer had any goals to work toward since my dream job had turned out to be miserable.

I was thinking about this today after a conversation with a friend last night who said she had a similar experience when she got laid off from her company about a year ago and she commented in passing, "I never thought I would end up working in finance; I never saw myself doing this."

It made me wonder how many others feel the same way.

I don't know too many people that LOVE their jobs. No one is a huge fan of working. But I do know a few people, a really small select few, who do have an earnest passion for what they do.

My father, towards the end of his career, was one of these people. He is this complete math and finance nerd who used to read textbooks cover to cover just for the fun of it and thrived in a quantitative position at his firm. But even he took many, many years to get to that place, and was terribly unhappy for about two decades while he was working up the corporate ladder.

I think, on principle, it is hard to take something you love and make a career out of it, and the people that have enough talent and passion to do so are almost inevitably successful.

A decade ago, when I was 17 and graduating from High School, I had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life, which is pretty on par for a 17-year old, but surprisingly, I have come back full circle to where I thought I would like to be. I knew I wanted to write and that I loved to read and somehow along the way I'd like to be able to figure out how to build a career around that.

It wasn't until years later in college that I took my first marketing course and got interested in fashion and my career goals shifted. It's funny how things like that work out.

After all, it's the road blocks that define who we will become. Or I'm just paraphrasing what Steve Jobs said at a Stanford Commencement Speech in 2005.

"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple...Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

And I think Conan O'Brien said it best at his farewell address from The Tonight Show: "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get, but if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen."

Pretty inspiring words.

The eHarmony Sequel

2010-04-19T00:09:00.014-04:00

So Part One of my eHarmony experiment was not particularly successful by any definition. Thus, I did not have high hopes for the subsequent chapter.

I was matched up with this guy a few weeks ago who I thought was pretty cute, especially in comparison to the rest of the dudes on eHarmony. However, when I sent his picture to little sister E for her assessment, she didn't seem to agree.

E: He looks like a leprechaun!

Me: He does not!

E: Yes he does, you better watch out for him, I bet he's tricky.

Me: What?

E: If you go out with him, you'll have to keep an eye on him or he'll steal your money.

Me: Yeah I'm pretty sure that's not how leprechauns work...I think they just guard a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

E: But where does he GET the gold?

Me: I don't know, but he doesn't steal it. And even if he did, I don't really carry gold coins on my person on a regular basis.

(Side Note: I looked it up and apparently leprechauns acquire their gold through their day job of mending and making shoes, not stealing. However, they are known to be quite tricky so if you catch one, you need to hold on to him and keep your eyes on him at all times or he will fool you into turning away for a second and hide his pot of gold.)

E: Well, you should still be really careful. He might be a trickster. Are you going to go out with him anyway?

Me: I don't know, he's working late this week so we're trying to figure out a time. He was at the office until midnight last night.

E: Wait, what does he do? Outside of St. Paddy's Day parades and Lucky Charms commercials, of course.

Me: He is a lawyer! He is not a leprechaun! Stop saying that!

(Side Note: Is it weird that I find the making/mending shoes career to be more attractve than the lawyer thing? I mean, I have a LOT of shoes and I don't really require legal advice but fixing my shoes would actually bring something to the table...)

E: Well, I would still bring a friend with you. To make sure he doesn't trick you.

So, even though I didn't agree with E's opinion that eHarmony is a leprechaun, I asked my friend S to possibly screen this dude to see if he is, in fact, a leprechaun.

S: Well, how tall is he?

Me: His profile says he's 5'10".

S: Oh, then you have nothing to worry about! He's clearly not a leprechaun!

Me: I'm glad that you had to ask his height before you confirmed that he isn't a leprechaun.

S: Well, I had to make sure!

Me: Oh, man, what if he's Irish? Or he looks like this?

S: If he shows up and he has an Irish accent, I will laugh my ass off.

Me: If he shows up and he's Irish, I will have to run out of the bar.

After a few scheduling glitches, the Leprechaun and I finally got it together and planned on grabbing drinks on a Friday night while S and I were at a bar.

To prepare for the impending awkwardness and the possibility of meeting a real life leprechaun, S and I started downing shots so I was slightly toasted before he even showed up. Which in retrospect was a terrible idea because if he really HAD been a leprechaun I would have been too drunk to keep an eye on him until he led me to his pot of gold.

Anyways, he showed up at the bar and he was over two feet tall and his only magical power seemed to be that of being able to bring a conversation to an immediate halt with his awkwardness.

He wasn't exactly capable of carrying on a conversation even when given a direct question to answer and S and I continued to glance at each other over the table to raise our eyebrows at each other. And even more awkward, within half an hour he waved at someone across the bar and said, "Oh I invited one of my friends here," which he hadn't mentioned previously.

So his friend showed up with an entourage of six guys who sat down at our table, introduced themselves, and asked how we all knew each other. After a moment of silence, the Leprechaun answered, "We met on the internet."

And his friend asked me, "eHarmony?! Are you on eHarmony?!"

To which I had an entire group of guys turn to look in my direction and gawk.

"To be fair," I told them, "I am a writer and I was doing it as a social experiment so I would have writing material."

As everyone processed this, the Leprechaun asked me, "So if I had taken you out on a date and tried to kiss you, would it have showed up on the internet for the world to see?"

I blushed and laughed awkwardly (seriously, who asks a question like that in front of seven strangers?) and told him I was deferring to my counsel but I was going to plead the fifth.

More shots were consumed by the table and at this point, I realized the room was starting to spin and I wasn't going to be able to make it through the rest of the night if I continued to partake in shots. So I bowed out of the next few rounds, but it was already too late.

Now, this is totally my bad and I take full responsibility for what subsequently followed, but before Leprechaun had officially committed to coming to the bar, I had let my current boy toy, Yawn, know where S and I would be that evening. And through no planning whatsoever, we were at a bar across from the bar he was at.

So when he texted me to tell me he was coming to meet us, my alcohol-riddled brain couldn't think of one reasonable excuse to tell him not to come. When he walked into the bar (keep in mind, S and I are the only girls at a table of half a dozen guys and I am technically on a first date), he came over to give me a hug, sat down next to me, and introduced himself to the rest of the table.

The less-drunk part of my brain thought I could still get away with this if I played it cool and pretended he was just a friend and no one brought up e-Harmony again. However, I was much too drunk to be playing anything smooth at this point, and according to S, within five seconds of sitting down next to me, the rest of the table knew from our body language and the way we acted with one another that he was not just a friend.

S texted me from across the table, "Leprechaun looks sad. I think you crushed him."

Shortly after that, Leprechaun took off, leaving his friends with us, which was kind of strange, but I know now it's because one of the guys had taken a hankering to S and thought he could get somewhere with her.

A little while later, I got that impending feeling of doom, that I was not going to be able to keep down all the alcohol I had just sucked down, and I told Yawn, "I have to go home. Now."

The second I got through the door, I bee-lined for the bathroom and that was where I remained for the next hour. I remember thinking to myself, as I was hugging the toilet, that this was my punishment for having crushed someone'e soul and for dicking over a leprechaun. Those fellows don't take kindly to being messed with.

In addition to getting sick, I woke up the next day at the crack of dawn with a terrible hangover headache and lay there thinking that I had gotten what I deserved. Like seriously, if I was on a date with a guy and he brought another girl, well I would probably punch him in the balls. As my guy friend R later said to me while laughing at me, "Maybe next time, you shouldn't bring your boyfriend on a date."

Not being totally evil, I did (do) feel bad about the whole crushing of Leprechaun's soul and all, so I sent him a casual but apologetic text saying that I was sorry the evening had been awkward and perhaps we shouldn't have had multiple parties present. Unsurprisingly, I did not get a response and really don't expect to any time ever.

All in all, it wasn't my best performance, but at least I didn't get my gold stolen by a little bearded man wearing green.

And in case you were keeping score, it's now eHarmony: 3, Me: 0.

F is for Feminism

2010-04-12T00:02:00.001-04:00

Anyone that knows me at all knows that I spend an unhealthy amount of time watching Bravo programming. And I noticed recently that almost all of the women in these shows, from the vapid housewives in The Real Housewives of Orange County to industry women I really actually admire like Kelly Cutrone and Rachel Zoe are constantly fretting about whether they are making the right decisions when it comes to prioritizing their careers and their family lives.

I watch this recurring story play out in various shows time and time again: Rachel Zoe doesn't have children and stresses over her career so much she's not sure she'll ever be able to fit kids in, even though she wants them, because as is she doesn't spend enough time with her husband. Kelly Cutrone, a single mom, has to make work sacrifices to make sure she picks up her daughter every day from school. Kelly Bensimon worries about the psychological toll that her posing in Playboy will have on her daughters. (Ok that one wasn't really a dilemma. Just keep your boobs covered you hussy!)

In college, I was a hardcore feminist. I took it so far that I minored in Women and Gender Studies and took any occasion I could to rant about how the definition of feminism is that women and men should be treated equally and that you don't have to be a crazy "Fem Nazi" to believe that.

Well, now that I'm older, I think that feminism has royally fucked over my generation.

We were fed this idea that we could be and do anything that we wanted, that it was possible to have a successful career, get dinner on the table, and then put on something sexy for the perfect husband after the kids were asleep.

Which is, frankly, a load of horse shit.

Every girl that I know has had that life-altering dilemma to face: do I focus on my career and make it up the corporate ladder or do I try to have a family. And in many cases, it's one or the other: doing both isn't an option.

I have oscillated between the two. At some point I thought I would rather be a wife and mom and then subsequently decided that my career was my priority, no matter the detriment to my social life and relationships. And now I have settled somewhere in the middle. I want to have a fulfilling career and someday be a mom, but am aware that by doing both, I will be doing neither to my greatest capability.

There is no way to have it all it seems.

Yes, I think it is possible to have a career and to have a family. It has been done before and millions of awesome women continue to do it every day. However, I think there is inevitably a certain amount of guilt that comes with doing both, whether it's because you missed picking up the kids from school because of work, or you couldn't get that promotion because you had a family life.

What I resent is the expectation that a woman is supposed to be Superwoman, that she can do both at the same time. No matter what anyone says, men are not held to that high standard yet. As long as they can provide for their families and have a degree of success in their work-life, they are still considered winners.

As I get older, I can feel not only my biological clock starting to tick, but the consequences of whatever decision I make starting to resonate with me. Only time will tell if I my friends and I will be able to pull off the balancing tightrope of managing a career and children, all while having some semblance of a personal life.

Or I can find an awesomely hot, intelligent man who is so secure in himself he would like to devote his life to being a stay-at-home dad. Let him cart the kids around to soccer practice, make me dinner, and then put something sexy on for me! A girl can only dream...

Boys With Girlfriends

2010-04-05T00:03:00.002-04:00

I am having a string of bad luck where I keep meeting guys that have girlfriends. It's an age-old story: Girl meets guy that she thinks is a potential future husband. Guy mentions he has a girlfriend. Girl curses the heavens asking why the hell all the good ones are already taken.

My friend J in California has a roommate he has been trying to set me up with for forever, except for the fact that they live 3,000 miles away from me. But as a joke, Cali Boy and I would always kid around about getting together if I ever got out there. We talked on the phone multiple times and one night when I was feeling blue, he even sent me a picture of his ass to make me laugh and cheer me up.

This has been going on for about five years, so I was pretty excited to meet him in person. And in addition to being a nice guy, he is quite possibly the most adorable human being I have ever met. He is really cute, kind of nerdy, successful, funny, smart, and knows how to have a good time. Basically, he would be my soul mate if I believed in such things.

But, of course, by the time I made it out to California to visit, he had found himself a girlfriend. They've only been together two months, but they're serious enough that they are going on a trip to Germany together soon (so he can race and buy a BMW, could he be any more awesome?). She seems perfectly nice and whatnot, but really she's just getting in the way of me being with my perfect man.

So now, all I can really do is wait for them to break up and for him to decide to move to Manhattan to be with me. Hey, you never know, it could totally happen!

Then, closely following this heartbreaking tragedy, I went to a barbeque with my friend A to see some of her friends from high school. And the host, Roadie, turned out to be a very cute, successful guy with an amazing apartment and a puppy (two things that independently would be enough for me to date him, so together are astronomically more powerful).

Within an hour of meeting me, he turned to me and said, "So do you have a boyfriend? Because you're really hot so I don't know how you could be single."

Completely thrown off by the question, I blushed and said, "No, and that was really awkward."

He then proceeded to tease me about my discomfort with the question, but when I turned it back on him, he admitted that he has a girlfriend who he has been with for two and a half years and is moving to New York soon to be with him.

Now, I am not one of those girls who thinks guys are more attractive when they are taken. Usually, once a guy reveals that he is taken, he becomes invisible to me. As in later someone will mention him and ask if I remember him and all I recall is empty space where he was standing.

To my knowledge, I have only homewrecked once. It was six years ago, when I was a senior in college, and I met and started hooking up with a guy who had a girlfriend of seven years (that's right, SEVEN years).

They were doing the long-distance thing, and he broke up with her shortly after we became an item. Him and I actually ended up dating for a few months despite the fact that he was a total and utter moron. (In my defense, he had blue eyes AND played soccer and is now at one of the best medical schools in the country studying to be a brain surgeon.)

And honestly, I did feel really guilty about the whole thing. I was convinced for a little while that it would give me bad dating karma for the next seven years (apparently in my mind hooking up with a guy with a girlfriend has a penalty the same length of time as breaking a mirror).

But he ended up moving on and is currently dating someone else entirely, which eased my soul slightly and perhaps lessened my bad karma sentence by a few years.

So, back to my story, when Roadie revealed that he had a girlfriend, I mentally moved him from the "someone I would date" category into the friend zone. He continued to be very flirtatious, though, and kept joking that we were going to get married and referring to me as his "fiance."

A few hours of day-drinking later, he tried to have a serious conversation with me by starting, "So, if I didn't have a girlfriend, would you go out with me? Because I've been thinking about it, and I think on our first date I would come pick you up, take you to this Japanese restaurant that would blow your mind, and then walk you home. I wouldn't even try to get in the front door because I like and respect you that much."

I told him no, that it was a sweet offer, but I don't date guys with girlfriends.

And he looked into my eyes with his pretty blue eyes and said, "But you have to admit, there's something between us. There's chemistry there. I think you are a beautiful girl, inside and out. And I'd just like to get to know you better and hang out. I'm so glad that you came today and I got to meet you."

To my credit, I held strong to my resolve and told him that I don't think it's a great idea for us to hang out together. Which didn't stop me from giving him my phone number, but hey, I'm still human. And I still wouldn't go out with him if he asked. I swear!

Later, on the walk home, A asked me if I would ever consider dating Roadie because he's a really good guy and is questioning his commitment to his relationship, versus being a complete out-and-out scumbag.

I told her that I might consider it if he was single, but that was irrelevant so it wasn't even worth pondering to begin with.

So twice in a week I met someone with dating potential only to have the universe shut me down and reiterate that all the good guys in my age range are already taken by girls that snatched them up earlier.

Damn you, Universe!

The Epic Saga of a Giant Donut

2010-03-29T00:02:00.010-04:00

So I know what you're thinking (and by you, I mean A). You saw the title and you thought to yourself, "Oh no Stinger's life has sunk to such lows that she has utterly nothing to write about, so she's going to tell the story about a giant donut."

Well, worry not, Fair Reader, because my life may be boring but the story about the giant donut is nothing short of legen - wait for it, I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the last part is - DARY. That's right.

Months ago in Puerto Rico, my sister and I were sharing a room and watching Man Vs. Food, an awesome show on the Travel Channel where this guy Adam Richman goes around trying to beat food challenges (this was the direct catalyst for my New Year's Resolution to succeed in at least one food challenge this year). Two amazing things came out of this mini-marathon of watching Adam take on 10-pound pizzas and wings so spicy they cause heart attacks.

First of all, little sister E found her future spouse, Greg Moomsie aka the Great Moomsie, The Great Moomsie is a skinny little shit of a guy who manages to consume massive amounts of food for a living. And there is something about this that my sister finds to be totally sexy. So Moomsie, if you're reading this, feel free to give little E a call because she is just waiting to binge at the Chicken Shack with you.

The second most awesome thing was we started our hunt for a giant donut. In the Austin episode, Adam visits this bakery famous for its donuts and they make a giant donut that's two feet wide and requires a bucket to make the imprint in the dough. And it looked delicious. So E and I just turned to each there and simultaneously said, "We. Need. Giant. Donut."

We searched all over NY for a giant donut but couldn't find anywhere that made them and even found a Yelp posting from someone in Ohio titled, "HELP! NEED GIANT DONUT!" It seems there is a network of people out there looking for oversized delicious pastries, and now, E and I are proud members.

So fast forward a few months and E and I were researching places we could go in California while I was visiting out there. E found a posting on Yelp for a bakery that makes giant donuts and we started scheduling our days around it. Bob's Donut & Pastry Shop does in fact make giant donuts, either glazed or maple-glazed. And they're open 24-hours a day to satiate your giant donut cravings, even at 4AM!

We got the maple-glazed, because it seemed more special, and it was absolutely delicious. You'd think a giant donut would be too doughy in the middle or too hard on the outside, or the bread to glaze ratio wuld be too low, but I am telling you it is perfect. It's so soft it melts in your mouth and might possibly be my new favorite dessert. From now on when I have people over, I'm going to order one and say, "Would you care for some dessert? I can offer you a slice off this giant donut."

When we were leaving Bob's, we saw a guy order a regular donut to which E scoffed, "Oh look at you buying your regular-sized donut when you could've gotten a giant donut. What a sucker!" We thought it would be great to stand outside the shop and heckle the people that bought regular-sized pastries like, "Oh pshaw! A cruller?! What's wrong with you - there are GIANT DONUTS in there!"

We chronicled the giant donut with a photo.

Anyways, you would think that would be the end of the giant donut adventure, but no, there is more.

When I got back to New York, the parents and I went to dinner at Per Se for my mother's birthday and I recounted the story for them.

My father, in typical my father fashion, looked confused and said, "But why would you want a giant donut?"

To which I obviously replied, "Um, why WOULDN'T you?"

Unfortunately, during this exchange the very hot waiter was nearby and he wandered over and said, "Did I just hear someone say giant donut?"

I explained, "Yes, you heard correctly. I went to California last week and my sister and I bought a giant donut the size of my face. It was awesome."

He laughed and asked if we finished it and I told him unfortunately, we did not.

Half an hour later, he came by to pour our wine and told me, "So I told the chef about your giant donut and he laughed and said it's great. He's very impressed."

Thinking the chef was some unknown but hardworking sous chef who I didn't care about, I was amused but didn't think much of it.

Two hours and eleven courses later (yes, it was the longest dinner ever), our desserts came out and the waiter brought us special extra desserts: coffee and donuts. "The chef specially made these for you because of your love of giant donuts!" he said. "I'm sorry, these are regular-sized donuts, but I hope they're acceptable. I know you usually like the giant ones."

First of all, that's what she said. Secondly, the donut was delicious.

Thirdly, the waiter asked if we'd like to meet the chef and take a tour of the kitchen, which we did. And we walked into the kitchen to see this guy:

Thomas. Keller.

Now unless you're a giant food nerd like me, or you just spend a lot of time watching the Food Network, you probably have no idea who he is. But per his Wikipedia page, Thomas Keller has "won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World....He is the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous Michelin stars for two different restaurants."

In other words, if the world of French epicurial arts were a terrorist organization threatening American soil, Thomas Keller would be Jack Bauer. He kicks French culinary ass. He is a legend among chefs. Plus he was in the Pixar movie Ratatouille:

So totally giddy, like a teenage girl in the 80s meeting Scott Baio, I shook his hand, told him what a huge fan I am, and thanked him for his donut. Walking out of the kitchen, I realized what an enormous fool I had made out of myself and for the rest of my days, I will now be known to him as "the giant donut girl."

I may never live down the shame, but at least I can tell people that one of the greatest chefs in the world, Thomas Keller, made me a regular-sized donut.

I Heart NY

2010-03-22T00:04:00.002-04:00

So I recently had a close call. I came thisclose to leaving New York. For good. I got accepted into my dream school in California and last week I flew out there to visit and contemplate the big move west. And although the weather was lovely and I had a great time with my sister and my friend J and a delicious giant donut, it hit me at some point that I couldn't possibly live there, at least not long-term.

The main problem is that I'm spoiled. Living in New York means that I have everything I could ever want right outside my apartment. I probably should've moved to California right after college, and then worked my way up to Manhattan, but now that I'm used to this, there really is nowhere else to go. So I guess, for better or worse, I am going to be here for a long time.

I am not putting down my friends that live in other cities at all. For each person, home means an entirely different thing. And for me, I need a city that is always exciting, where there are thousands of possibilities and you can never be bored. Even though there are times where that can be draining, just thinking about the possibility of leaving got me really contemplative about the time I have spent here, and what the past five yeas of my life have looked like.

I remember moving into my first apartment, a studio on the Upper East Side, full of equal parts terror and elation. And even though none of it was what I expected and it wasn’t at all how I thought my life would turn out, I loved (almost) every minute of it. I grew up here, learned how to fend for myself, learned that being a grownup doesn’t just entail paying rent, eating whatever you want, and having the freedom to stay out all night.

I found out that Manhattan life isn’t the glamorous, shiny depiction Sex and the City makes it out to be, but that it IS an endless party and there is no other city that can compare. I’ve roamed the streets all hours of the night and early morning and taken solace in the fact that there are always other people doing the same, that this city is an alive, pulsating organism that is constantly changing and always exciting.

For the past five years, and what now feels like forever, this city has been my home. That is no small feat considering I spent the majority of my childhood and teenage years moving around, so in many ways, this is the first place I have ever felt that way about. Every time my train has pulled into Grand Central Station, or my plane has touched down on the JFK tarmac, I have felt the flooding of relief flow through my body with the knowledge that I am home again.

If I could boil down my five years down to a mental scrapbook of memories, it would consist of:

1) The night R and S and I crashed a bachelor party and then stayed out all night taking tequila shots and playing beer pong at these random guys’ apartment

2) The first date M and I went on at Momofuku and Bar Jamon and when he finally kissed me and everything changed

3) The hilarious conversations I had over family dinners where my father would dish out non sequitors like his desire to be a gangsta and the fact that he goes to strip clubs

4) The way the city smells when the seasons change and I could just walk outside and know that it was officially spring

5) The night I met A when we started out with beergaritas and ended up having a dance party at Bull’s Head until 5AM

6) That perfect autumn day we spent the entire day at Central Park walking around and watching the monkeys at the zoo

7) The nights I went out with my little sister when she finally turned 21, even the one where she tried to serve me champagne that smelled like feet

8) Speaking of champagne, the Champain Tuesday at Superdive where we had a turf war at the bar and S tried to break a guy's hand and I actually broke my foot

9) Multiple trips out of town, all adventures in their own right, and some of them validation that I live in the best city in the world. Highlights include the weekend in Miami where R and I did nothing but sit out by the pool and party (oh, and I almost died while snorkeling). And of course the road trip up to Martha’s Vineyard where S and I drove T crazy by playing Miley Cyrus nonstop, we crashed a wedding reception at the Holiday Inn in Falmouth, and spent the weekend eating clam chowder and doing jigsaw puzzles

10) Walking home to my apartment in the middle of the night, full of excitement and anticipation because I had just had the world’s perfect first kiss

And that’s not even counting the best nights, the nights when my friends and I would just sit around in someone’s apartment, drinking wine and making each other laugh so hard that it physically hurt.

So thank goodness I am not leaving, because I couldn't even imagine the adventures that I would miss out on with my besties in the years to come!

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.

- Le Corbusier

The eHarmony Experiment

2010-03-15T00:04:00.002-04:00

I'm participating in what I like to call a social experiment, but the rest of the population refers to as eHarmony.

I haven't been going out as much as I usually do, mostly due to the fact that it's winter and cold out and given the option of bundling up in multiple layers and standing outside in freezing temperatures to hail a cab, I'd much rather just stay in my heated apartment and watch reruns of House.

Therefore, as a way to make up for the time I'm not spending in bars, and in an attempt to find some writing material, I signed up for eHarmony.

The questionnaire, which I had attempted before and given up on, took literally two days for me to get to. And unfortunately, that was the high point of the experience thus far.

My matches were beyond awful. I mean terrible. Bald. Old. Fat. Jersey. You name it, I was NOT getting the cream of the crop. And what's even worse is that they were rejecting me. On eHarmony, when you are matched up with someone you and him both have the option to close the match, as in, "Sorry I am not interested in you."

And before I was even getting the opportunity to, these guys were closing the match on me! If I had gone into this with any actual optimism or less confidence in myself, well I would've killed myself. It's actually painful to find out that John, 35, bald and overweight, in Jersey City, has deemed me not worthy of dating.

So the first guy I had any communication with turned out to be Sal, 27, Lawyer, Brooklyn. He wrote me an e-mail and even though he was much shorter than my minimum (5'8", usually my minimum is 5'10"), I wrote him back because he seemed really nice.

After the usual exchange of standard information (what we do, where we live, where we're from), I asked him where he went to college.

And it turns out that he not only went to my alma mater, he also graduated in my year. I did not go to a very large school; there were only about 1,000 in my graduating class, so that narrowed it down quite a bit.

I freaked out and then looked him up on Facebook, checked out our mutual friends, and vaguely remembered him being in the vicinity throughout my college years. There was nothing specifically wrong with him. He was just, well short, and kind of blah, and only so-so looking. And since I thought I was hot shit in college, I never gave him a second glance.

So basically, I am being matched up with people I deemed unworthy of dating five years ago. My friend T, when I told him this, just laughed at me and said I should get used to it because male stock rises as they age, and female stock plummets. "Face it," he said, "You're going down with every year. Better snatch this guy up while you still can before he climbs out of your league!"

Wise words from T...

The next guy that wrote me on eHarmony was Brian, 32, Lawyer, Queens. (Why are there so many lawyers on eHarmony btw?) His e-mail was actually very interesting, full of experiences from his travels and his interests. He plays the guitar, cooks, travels, has a job, all the general good-on-paper qualities that one looks for in a companion.

So after a few e-mails back and forth, I agreed to meet him for drinks. We went to a bar and I was really nervous given that it was my first eHarmony blind date. It turned out that he was a perfectly nice guy and we actually talked for a few hours, but I could tell within the first ten minutes that I just wasn't attracted to him. And as much as I tried (more beer, squinting, tuning him out when he talked), I couldn't really change that.

He insisted on walking me home, which made for a super awkward door moment when he tried to kiss me, and I ducked. Struggling for something to diffuse the situation, I said, "Sorry, I have a policy of not kissing on the first date."

Later, when I recounted this to my friends, my friend R said, "Oh wow, that's cold. I guess he doesn't know that you usually put out on the first date." Even my little sister burst out laughing. I am pretty sure my friends are telling me indirectly that I am a giant ho-bag, but I will gloss over this for now.

So, after accepting my excuse that I don't kiss on the first date (What am I, Mormon?), he e-mailed me first thing the next day saying he had a great time and wanted to go out again. I told him I was going out of town to buy myself a week to figure out how to proceed. And then after a week, I sent him an e-mail that he's a really nice guy, but I just wanted to be friends.

He wrote back saying that he definitely wants to be friends, so we made plans to go out for drinks the following week. Having an inkling that things might be weird, I invited my friend S to come along as backup, and she brought her boy toy, so my plan ended up backfiring because it resembled a double date.

Thus, I resorted to my back-up plan, and to make it utterly clear that I just want to be friends and have no interest in dating him, S and I started discussing the various bartenders that I find to be really hot and the guy that I'm currently seeing.

I made my point so much that when eHarmony got up to go to the bathroom, S's boy toy looked at me and said, "So you're not interested in dating this guy, right? Because you've been talking about other guys non-stop. At first I thought you guys were on a date, and I felt so sorry for him. But I gather that's not the case. Poor guy."

A few beers later, we all left together and I said goodbye to S and boy toy and hailed myself a cab. I turned around to say good night to eHarmony when he jumped into the cab without my permission.

Me: Um, where are you going?

eHarmony: To the subway, but I'll drop you off at home first.

Me: But I live all the way across town and the subway is right here.

eHarmony: It's ok.

Me: But...I'm actually not going home...

eHarmony: Oh, where are you going?

Me: I'm going to go meet someone...

Pause.

eHarmony: Oh I see. Well I'll just get out there.

Yep, that's right. He basically rode a cab with me to let me go hook up with another guy. Totally humiliating for him and awkward (and slightly whorish) for me.

Needless to say, I haven't heard from eHarmony recently.

In my defense, I did make it clear in every way that I know how that I am not interested in dating him. I sent him an e-mail saying I wanted to be friends. He acknowledged and responded to the e-mail, agreeing to be friends. Then I talked about other guys I AM attracted to in front of him.

And after all this, he thought that if he just climbed into a cab with me and took me to my apartment after two beers, I might change my mind? Just because he was there? Or maybe he thought I'd be easier than before and put out anyway? Either way, it didn't really work out in his favor.

The eHarmony experiment ends at the end of this month, after which I am cancelling my subscription. To anyone truly looking for a relationship, I wouldn't recommend eHarmony just because of the sheer volume of crappy dudes and the lack of anyone that remotely resembles someone worth dating.

But if you are looking to be amused and to meet guys that are nice, good on paper, and generally blah, well then, you are in the right place!

Birthday Party in the USA!

2010-03-08T00:01:00.002-05:00

I think the mark of a good birthday party is that I am still drunk the next day. So if this post is slightly incoherant, you can blame it on the 15 birthday shots I took last night.

Now, I have had some awesome birthday parties in the past. Last year was at a bar downtown with stripper poles. The year before was an open bar with food in Union Square. With food because my father was afraid that if I didn't serve food, nobody would come. He doesn't really understand that my friends are alcoholics. There was my 21st birthday where I started throwing up in the bathroom of the bar before it was even my birthday.

Oh and there was the awesome 13th birthday party I had at a dance hall where the boys and girls stayed on opposite ends of the room pretty much the entire time until we had a hula hooping contest that my little sister lost in the finals (she's still pretty upset about that, so I wouldn't bring it up around her). And I had my first slow dance with a boy to Boyz II Men's On Bended Knee.

But all of that pales in comparison to the awesomeness that was last night.

Sick of disastrous birthday parties and not so pleased about getting older, I didn't want to make a big deal of this birthday. I drove my friends crazy for weeks because I refused to make any concrete plans. However, when I figured out that this may be my last birthday in New York City for a while, I wanted to get my friends together.

So we all gathered at our favorite local dive bar to celebrate the day of my birth. With some Miley Cyrus on the jukebox, a constant flow of alcohol in my direction, and pretty much everyone I love in the same room having a good time, I felt like the luckiest (and drunkest) girl alive.

I don't think there's anything as wonderful as taking a step back in a room where your worlds are collding and seeing all your groups of friends collide and mesh well together. It's nice to see your friends from work laughing with your college friends. And it's even better to feel loved by amazing people that I am proud to call my friends.

But enough of that, on to the comedic highlights of the night:

1) A and I were the first ones to arrive at the bars, both of us in slightly skimpy outfits. So immediately we were spied by two creepsters at the bar, who proceeded to physically turn their bar stools around so they could blatantly stare at us. I, being scared of weird men, avoided eye contact like the plague and stared awkardly at the wall. A, on the other hand, decided to smile at them.

Well after that, they didn't even try to hide the fact that they were contemplating a plan to make an approach. They would look at each other, discuss, look at us, look at each other, discuss, look at us, etc, etc. Luckily other people started to arrive shortly thereafter, which at least took my attention off of them. Then my guy friend T showed up and A started waving like a maniac to get his attention.

Unfortunate timing: Creepster Numero Uno happened to be in between T and A (ha, T&A, awesome) and thought A was trying to get his attention. So she literally shook her head and pointed at T, as in, "No Weird Guy, I am not wildly gesticulating at you, I was excited to see my actual friend, the guy behind you."

The look of disappointment on Creepster Numero Uno's face was epic.

This, however, didn't detract him from trying again. At some point both the creepsters managed to sneak their way into our crowd and start talking to my friends, pretending they knew them. Creepster Numero Uno literally said to a girfriend of mine: "I've heard things about you, like you can tie a cherry knot with your tongue in under 20 seconds."

Weird. And no, it did not work (in case you were under the impression that's a good way to pick up girls.)

2) I had a ridiculously awkward conversation with Awkward (redundant, much?). Now, this is not a new development since pretty much all of my interactions with him in the past have been intensely uncomfortable.

Since I was drunk and I thought it was the pink elephant in the room, I decided to tell my friends, strangers to him, the whole story of how he had tried to give me my phone number back and then had never called me. He, naturally, got defensive and was totally put on the spot. Bad move on my part.

But then when he was leaving, he came to say good-bye to me and wish me a happy birthday and I apologized for my poor behavior but said, in all fairness, he had just told one of my friends that he only spends time with people "he wants to get to know," so he probably shouldn't have said that in front of me.

He said that he does want to get to know me, and that was why he had made the effort to put in an appearance at my birthday. I told him there were no hard feelings and things were cool. Then we proceeded to have this conversation:

Me: So I'm going to California on Thursday and I'll be there for a little less than a week so maybe when I get back, we can chat.

Awkward: Why are you going to California?

Me: I got accepted to a school out there so I'm going to go to the open house and see if I want to go.

Awkward: Where will you be?

Me: I'm spending a few days with my sister in Silicon Valley but we're meeting up with friends in San Francisco on Saturday.

Awkward: Um, I'll be there.

Me: Where?

Awkward: In San Francisco. That's where I'm from.

Me: I know you're from San Fran, but why will you be there?

Awkward: I have Spring Break so I'm going to go see my family and friends.

Me: Wow that's a coincidence.

Awkward: So you'll be in San Fran on Saturday night?

Me: Yeah I'm getting dinner and going out with my sister and some friends.

Awkward: Well maybe we can hang out.

Pause.

Me: (confused) What?

Awkward: We should all go out.

Me: You want to hang out with me and my sister and my friends in California?

Awkward: Yeah, why not?

Me: I dunno...

Awkward: I'll call you, we'll talk about meeting up in San Fran.

Now, does anyone else find it intensely strange that this is the same guy who didn't want to go out to dinner with me in the city where we live about 40 blocks from each other, but wants to hang out with me on the other coast when I'm spending time with my sister and friends out there?

Like yes, I know the kid is awkward, but this is now just bizarre. I have no idea what to make of this behavior. I am going to assume that he was just drunk and had no idea what he was saying and I'll never hear from him.

3) I had a slew of inappropriate things to said to me, yet again. I guess this time I can blame it on the short skirt I was wearing, but my friend's roommate (who has a serious girlfriend) grabbed my ass and pretended he didn't have a girlfriend.

My friend J brought a guy friend of his and after I was introduced to him briefly, the friend told J, in front of me, "So have you two ever slept together?"

J and I laughed since we have been friends for a long time.

Then his friend said, "I don't understand why you've never slept with her. I would do the dirtiest things to her if I could."

Right in my face. I laughed really awkwardly and extricated myself from the situation and avoided him for the remainder of the evening.

Awkward and uncomfortable situations aside, I had a great birthday weekend. Normally, I make a list of presents I want months in advance to hand out to my friends and family so they will get me something I really want. And when they asked for my list this year, I told everyone that I'm actually good this year. Little sister E was so confused she asked me what I had done with her sister.

But the truth is, I have everything that a girl could want and asking for any more would just be too much.

So happy birthday to me!

New Levels of Awkward

2010-03-01T00:07:00.003-05:00

Just when I think I've conquered every awkward situation possible, I find myself in the face of entirely new levels of awkwardness that I previously did not know existed.

A few weeks ago at my girlfriend S's work event, I met a guy who actually seemed really fun and interesting. When I expressed to S that he seemed cool, she thought about it and told me, "Actually I think you two would be really good together. Make that happen!"

"But," she warned me, "You need to know, he is EXTREMELY awkward"

I laughed her off, since I have a Ph.D.'s worth of knowledge on awkward men. Some people specialize in physics, some finance, I have mastered the art of loving men who can't look you straight in the eye because they're scared of girls. Fact.

So, all full of hubris that I could totally handle this, I asked Awkward if he'd want to go out for dinner sometime. That's right, I asked HIM. And then when he stuttered an affirmative, I wrote my number down on a scrap piece of paper and gave it to him.

This is where it starts to go off the rails. A few minutes later, he said to me, "Hey did you give me your number?"

To which I replied, "Um, yes, I wrote it down on a piece of paper."

He looked at me all confused: "You did?"

"Um, yes it is in your pocket."

At this point he fished it out of said pocket and I jokingly said, "Well, now forget it. I want it back!"

And the poor boy actually handed it back to me and apologized. (Yes, he was drunk, but still.)

So now I was flustered and I explained to him that he could keep it, but clearly this situation was not off to a great start.

A few days later, he told S that he'd had a great time with us and we should all hang out again soon, and then apologized because he had acted like a douchebag to her friend by trying to give her phone number back to her.

Yes, already cringeworthy, but it's about to get worse. Brace yourself.

I decided, in my infinite wisdom, that he was going to be too much of a coward to call him so I got his number from S and called himself. Which is the set up to what will go down in record as the Most. Awkward. Telephone Conversation. Ever.

After explaining that I wasn't upset about the phone number debacle, I tried to open up a conversation. I think one of my talents is my ability to have a conversation with pretty much anyone. But my conversational tactics proved to be no match against his intense awkwardness.

Not only did we have zero phone chemistry, but the constant long pauses made me so uncomfortable that I started babbling about whatever came to my mind, which really was not that impressive given that I was banging my head on the coffee table just so that I could hear something other than the dull buzz of dead silence on the cell phone.

The following is an actual excerpt from our conversation:

Me: So you grew up in San Francisco, right?

Him: Correct.

Me: Did you like it there?

Him: Not really.

Pause

Me: I actually just applied to school out there.

Him: Oh.

Long Pause.

Me: You know what's funny?

Him: What?

Me: My little sister just moved out there and you never think of a three-hour time difference as being significant, but it's actually made a difference.

Him: Really.

Me: Yeah, well we talk a lot, and now whenever I want to talk to her at 11AM my time, she's still asleep. And when she wants to chat at midnight, it's 3AM for me...

Him: Yes. That is how time zones work.

Me: Yeah, I know...

Longer Pause.

Me: Sooo...would you like to hang out sometime?

Really Long Pause.

Him: Um, I'm going out of town next weekend, but I guess I would be open to that.

Me: (confused) Ooooook.

Him: I'll, um, friend you on Facebook and we can open the channels of communication that way.

Which put an end to the most awkward hour of my entire life. That's right, this painful banter lasted a WHOLE HOUR.

I obviously called S right after and told her the whole story about how I had just gotten blown off.

She laughed hysterically and said, "To be fair, I WARNED you about him! He gives a whole new definition to awkward. He is really awful with girls. I tried for four years in college to hook him up, and he just couldn't do it. He is terrified of girls! I feel so bad for him!"

"What?!" I exclaimed, "Feel bad for me! I just had the worst phone conversation in all of history."

"Yeah, but you'll be ok. He, on the other hand, will be alone and awkward for the rest of his life. You are the only person I know who actually LIKES awkward guys and even he is too much for you, which means he will never find anyone!"

To his credit, he did friend me on Facebook immediately after I hung up on the phone. As in, he must've been sitting on his computer staring at my profile just waiting to press the "Add as a Friend" button. Which makes the whole thing even more uncomfortable.

So after all of my friends made fun of me for an adequate amount of time, they tried to console me by telling me the obvious, that I would never want to date someone THAT awkward. Which is entirely legitimate, but I'm thinking with copious amounts of alcohol, it might be actually bearable to spend time with him. But that's probably not the foundation for a healthy relationship, right?

Either way, I have found my new benchmark for awkwardness. A significant accomplishment any way you look at it.

Boredom...

2010-02-22T00:07:00.008-05:00

I've been feeling restless lately. And I don't think it's because it's winter and I've been staying in more than I normally do. Or at least, those aren't the only reasons.

My five-year college reunion was last spring, and my ten-year high school reunion is quickly approaching, and I think that there's a feeling in the air that five years after college and ten years after high school, I am at a crossroads and something should be happening.

After all, a lot of my friends are getting engaged, having kids, moving on to the next phases of their lives. And even though I am not ready to go to that place yet, I don't think it's unusual to feel left behind and wonder if it's time for me to do something new.

My friend A has this theory, that we are mentally trained to have big life changes occur about every four years. After elementary school, we have middle school for three years, then go to high school for four, then college for four. So now, five years out of college and over four years in Manhattan later, I am waiting for the next big phase of my life.

Sometimes I feel like I have been waiting for something for such a long time that waiting has become the status quo. Which means at some point I stopped acting of my own volition and got complacent, allowing things to happen to me rather than for me.

In an attempt to be proactive, last autumn I applied for graduate schools that would start in the fall of this year. And although I have been resistant to the idea of leaving Manhattan for many years, I applied to one school on the West Coast, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for me to experience something new.

After all, I plan on spending the rest of my life in New York, whether it's in the city or Westchester, and with the exception of a few years in Asia, I have spent most of my life in the Northeast. So perhaps it would be healthy for me to live in California for a few years and see what life is like on the other coast.

Within the next few weeks, I will make the decision of where I will be for at least the next two years. As the time approaches, I have been wondering if I could realistically leave New York for an extended time.

As difficult as it is to even imagine leaving behind the four important f's in my life (friends, family, food, furniture), I'm kind of excited at the prospect of a new start. I guess it reverts back to that feeling that I am at the point in my life where something has to happen or I have to start making moves. And California is a pretty big move.

(And if you're thinking furniture seems out of place in that list, you have no idea how attached I am to my bed. It's a grey suede bed frame with the most comfortable pillow-top mattress and the softest, fluffiest bedding on top.

I have an unhealthy relationship with my bed. If I am away from it for an extended period of time, I literally have a pep talk with it when I get home where I speak out loud to it: "Oh Bed, I've missed you so. I missed the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you support my lumbar when I am falling asleep. You are the most wonderful Bed in the world and I just want you to know that other beds may come and go, but you will always be the only Bed in my eyes.")

Either way, wherever I end up deciding on, graduate school will be a new development in my life, and in its own way, continue the cycle of starting a new phase of my life every 4-5 years. Which leads me to worry, if I'm still not ready to get married and start popping out babies in the next five years, what the hell am I going to do in 2015?

Hopefully something awesome, like winning the Olympic gold for curling in 2014, or even MORE awesome, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

It's good to have goals in life.

Happy V-Day!

2010-02-15T12:08:00.007-05:00

The holiday season is filled with minefields for single people. The months between November and February can be hell for someone unattached as you watch your friends get engaged under the mistletoe at Christmas, attend New Year's Eve parties together, and then make lovey eyes at each other over Valentine's Day.

As torturous as Valentine's Day is for most single girls, a lot of them breathe a sigh of relief as soon as it's over, because it means the end of this period of being regularly reminded that you are alone. For me, it lasts a little longer, because my birthday is 3 weeks after Valentine's Day, so I usually wait until March 8th to officially exhale.

This is only the third year in my life that I've been through the holiday grind on my own. And I won't sugarcoat it - the first year was horribly depressing and I only got through it with copious amounts of alcohol. The second year was characterized by anticipation of the horridness, and reciprocating with nonstop coping mechanisms all winter.

Oh, that and getting the flu several times, which meant that I spent last Valentine's Day in bed with a 102 degree fever, watching old episodes of The West Wing. All in all, it wasn't a bad V-Day. I know at least one person (S, I'm looking at you) for which that would be the ideal day. Minus the fever, of course.

This past year has been the first that I've been comfortable with my single status. I suppose the third time's the charm, or maybe I can attribute it to a fun-filled holiday season packed with friends' parties, a trip to Puerto Rico with my family, and a not-so-interesting guy on the side who made up for his lack of intellect with his convenience.

It's also possible that I've just gotten used to the idea of being single on holidays, and am making the most of it. The first year I was still getting over my ex, the second I was adjusting to the idea of being on my own and constantly getting ill, and now I'm just used to it. I'm not sure if that idea is depressing or empowering, but I'm going to go with the latter.

Any which way, I'm no longer depressed/angry over the idea of Valentine's Day. After all, it's just another day, and I'm celebrating by heading up to my parents' house to eat lots of food and watch movies with my girlfriends, which is quite possibly the best way to spend any day, not just a sappy holiday I dislike to begin with.

So, everyone, embrace the last holiay of the season that reminds you what it's like not to be part of a duo, get together with the one(s) you love, and stock up on 50% off candy at the drustore on Monday!

Let the Games Begin!

2010-02-08T00:18:00.000-05:00

Today is one of the greatest days of the year, the annual celebration of testosterone-fueled nimrods running into each other, oh and eating lots of buffalo wings and drinking beer.

It is also, not-so-coincidentally, a yearly reminder of why I am still single.

This isn't too surprising considering last year when I went to a bar for the Super Bowl, I met a kid who turned out to be a complete moron who had never been to a museum and didn't know what dinosaur bones looked like.

Also, I'm not sure if it's the onset of cold weather, which includes the few months that I am perpetually catching the flu and/or bordering on death, or if I'm just getting more ornery in my old age, but I am becoming more and more of a homebody with every passing freezing day.

In years past, I have prided myself on being the girl who is up for anything, stays out all night regularly regardless of the occasion, sleep deprivation, damage to my liver and work life, you name it. But this past winter, there has been a decipherable shift. Now, even if there are fun events going on and my friends are out, I can't seem to find the momentum to get out of my pajamas and venture out into the streets of Manhattan.

My apartment is just too warm and cozy, and here I don't run the risk of running into anyone that I don't want to see and having the inevitable awkward conversation.

Plus, I am increasingly annoyed by crowds, and just people in general. I can't seem to go out without getting irritated by someone who is too drunk or just plain stupid, and have to bite my tongue to keep myself from picking a fight. It's not a great way to be, and when I stay home the only people I risk picking a fight with are the characters on my TV.

Yes, sigh, I am aware that all signs point to spinster, that every day I am creeping closer to my worst nightmare of the old cat lady with curlers and a hairnet, screaming at kids to get off her porch while crazily waving a broom around. I wonder if you can buy the plastic covers for your furniture online...

So this year, instead of fighting crowds for elbow space at a bar to watch the Super Bowl, I just went to a friend's apartment and feasted on snacks while making snarky commentary at the TV and repeatedly and vehemently yelling at Jeremy Shockey to drop dead. I even got to try on a Snuggie, which obviously makes the night a success!

I think from now on, I will just have to make a conscientious effort to go out and be sociable, which was something that I naturally wanted to do before. I have to fight the urge to go to bed early and read instead of partying. I never thought I would hear myself say those words before...

And no, friends from college and high school, hell hasn't frozen over (even though it is very cold out). Come the spring thaw, I am positive that I will be back to my usual party-until-the-sun-comes-up self.

So with my spinsterhood at stake, come on March, hurry up and get here!

I Wanna Get Lost

2010-01-31T00:09:00.006-05:00

In honor of the premiere of the last season of everyone's favorite desert island show (sorry Gilligan's Island), I'm contemplating the hotties who make Lost even more worth watching.

There seem to be two trains of preference as far as the hot males on the island go. Some people fall into Team Sawyer, and like the rugged bad boy, a reformed con man who is unpredictable and a romantic underneath his rippled exterior. And I am not exaggerating when I say rippled. The scenes of him cutting firewood with his shirt off are totally extraneous to the plot, but ABC's gift to women everywhere.

The other people fall into Team Jack, and have a preference for the somewhat reluctant leader of the pack, a spinal surgeon who once was addicted to alcohol and pain pills but now tries to lead the survivors to the best of his ability. Despite his previous problems, he is a capable, mostly clear-headed decision maker who is constantly worried about the well-being and survival of his people.

And yes, there is one woman rounding out the love triangle, a little piece of eye-candy for the men: Kate, the girl-next-door tomboy beauty who has a fugitive past and a streak of rebellion in her. She kissed Jack and told him she loved him, but then slept with Sawyer, but then started dating Jack and got engaged to him, but he broke up with her because she did a favor for Sawyer she wouldn't tell him about, and looked like she still had feelings for Sawyer, who possibly reciprocated but was dating Jack's ex-girlfriend because they were stuck time-traveling together on the island. And if you're not confused yet, then please explain it to me because I sure as hell am.

I can't think of any girl who wouldn't want to be Kate, stuck between two gorgeous men who both love her and want to make a life with her. Plus it doesn't hurt that she can kick ass, shoot a gun, escape from the FBI, all while looking magazine-perfect and naturally gorgeous.

Now, I understand the appeal of Sawyer. I don't know why, but girls always have a weakness for a bad guy with a good heart. This is probably why so many girls fall in love with an asshole at one point in their lives. We seem to think that deep down underneath, they are good people and if we work hard enough, the good guy inside will eventually emerge. Unfortunately, most of the time, they are just jackasses. After all, if it looks like an asshole and talks like an asshole, well it's probably an asshole.

But Sawyer is a guy who on the exterior only cares about himself and makes a living by deceiving and cheating others, but once in a while his real character shines through and you see that he has good intentions and realize he is constantly caught in a battle between these two sides of him. That makes it easy to root for the good Sawyer, and why we constantly overlook all his selfish deeds.

Plus, let's face it. One of the biggest appeals of the dirty, hot asshole is that he looks like he'd be really, truly fantastic in bed. There is something about Sawyer that just exudes dirty, awesome sex, the kind where he would just throw you around and have his way with you and afterwards, you'd just want more. Case and point, this scene of him and Kate, having sex for the first time in a bear cage:

Despite my lust for Sawyer, at the end of the day, I am fully embedded in my position on Team Jack. There's something about his masculine jaw-line, his brown eyes, his rugged good looks, and the sureness he exudes with every word that he knows what is best and is going to save everyone that gets me every time. He is a good guy struggling with his own demons, a man of science who might have some romance buried deep inside.

Not to mention, Dr. Jack Shepherd puts the sexy back in cut-out sleeveless shirts (but that only works when you're trapped on a desert island and it's too hot when your button-down shirt are sleeves covering up your rippling biceps, so seriously guys, please don't cut the sleeves off your shirts, you look ridiculous).

There is something so sexy about a great set of biceps with a tattoo across them. It implies that there is a hint of badass in the nice guy, doctor exterior. The tattoos are not actually a part of Jack's character persona; they are actor Matthew Fox's actual tattoos.

(Side Story: I actually spotted Matthew Fox about a year ago in the city. I was late for a train at Grand Central, and running with my luggage to catch my train when I spotted him walking down the street. I was hit with the urge to turn around and follow him, but then fought my instincts and caught my train.

I tried to rationalize it afterwards by telling myself that it wouldn't have accomplished anything if I had followed him; after all he's happily married with children. So instead of escorting him back to my apartment and undressing him, realistically, he probably would've walked into a Starbucks and asked a policeman to get the creepy girl with the duffel bags to stop trailing him.

Even knowing that, however, to this day I regret not running after Matthew Fox and am pretty sure I made the wrong decision. As my friend K gasped to me later: "Forget the train! You ALWAYS choose Matthew Fox!")

In my ideal world (so basically not an island with polar bears and smoke monsters and hostiles running rampant), I would get to sleep with Sawyer but end up with Jack. That's totally going to happen, right? Well, a girl can still dream.

In the meantime, I will settle for some answers to the burning questions I have about what is happening on this island. Who is Jacob and why did Fake Locke want to kill him so badly? Did detonating the bomb undo the crash of Oceanic 815, meaning they could've led parallel lives where they never ended up on the island? Do Jin and Sun finally reunite? Is everyone who died on the island really dead? Meaning, if I really cross my fingers, will Boone finally return from the dead and join my list of hot men I'd like to spend some time locked in a bear cage with?

Stay tuned...

They Make the Rockin' World Go Round

2010-01-25T00:08:00.004-05:00

I have this theory that nerds are better in bed than hot guys for the simple reason that they try harder. The hot guys always easily got girls and therefore never had to actually put any effort into the sex to keep girls coming back, whereas the nerds needed to bring something to the table to have a chance to have sex at all.

And to quoth the genius of Revenge of the Nerds, "Jocks only think about sports. Nerds only think about sex."

I've honed this theory over time. A while ago, I was dating Client Boy, a self-absorbed and sociopathic idiot I had once worked with who stood me up multiple times and then sent me inappropriate text messages for about a year, even after I had blown him off repeatedly.

The only reason that I dated him in the first place is that he is ridiculously good looking. I'm talking model good looks. He's 6'5", with a lean muscular body, deep soulful brown eyes, perfect hair, sexy lips, sigh. Back in the days he was my client, the girls in my office would just sit around and stare at pictures of him.

So I had high hopes for him in the sex department, but soon discovered that he was awful, just terrible. I mean, he gives new meaning to the term "jackhammer." It was one of the most disappointing experiences of my life.

I later found out through mutual friends that he has a reputation around some circles of being terrible in bed. Apparently (many) other girls around the city had fallen for his boyish good looks, just as I had, only to suffer through the ordeal that he is under the impression qualifies as sex.

He also confessed to me later that many meant MANY, as in he had slept with over 100 girls already, which is no small feat considering he was only 27 at the time. This was a whole new level of manwhore, so it's no wonder he had a reputation throughout the city. It's only a shame that I didn't know about it prior to my wasting my time.

Knowing what I know now, it's no surprise that he was horrendous in bed. I mean the kid didn't give a shit about anything but himself in life, so why should sex be any different? Let that be a lesson to you girls. If a guy is selfish in life, he's probably also selfish in bed.

So in the multiple ensuing conversations I have had with friends about my theory that nerds try harder, I've found out that guys have a similar theory, only it applies to fat girls.

According to my male sources, fat girls try harder in bed because otherwise they don't get laid. Unlike attractive girls who can just pick up a guy whenever they feel like it, the fat girls need to put on a show and do something special so that they have an edge over more attractive females, and can keep a guy coming back for more.

My initial reaction was that this doesn't logically make sense since girls who have positive body-image and self-confidence are more comfortable with themselves and subsequently tend to be better in bed. That isn't to say that I don't think a heavier girl shouldn't be happy with her body; it just happens that in my experience, as a girl's weight increases, her physical self-confidence plummets.

I've been hard-pressed to find a guy that will actually CONFIRM this theory, since most guys don't like to admit that they sleep with fat girls. I'm pretty sure my guy friends are just covering for a night that they choose not to remember, because every one of them has told me, "Well I heard that from my friends. I personally wouldn't know." I'm calling bullshit, guys.

I don't really have any fat girlfriends to ask about this either. I'm not weight-ist or anything; I just happen to have friends that are very active in their day-to-day lives (two of them just ran half-marathons, you go girls!). And I don't really care to have a token fat friend just to make me look skinnier when we go out together.

Not to mention that even if I did have a fat friend, I'm not sure how I would even broach that question: "Hey, do you think you're better in bed because otherwise guys wouldn't have sex with you because you're overweight?" Yeah, that would be an easy way to prompt someone to commit suicide and I'm not comfortable with being held responsible for that.

So basically, unless I can convince a guy I know to go sleep around with a lot of skinny girls and then a lot of fat girls and draw up generalizations for me, I have no way of confirming or denying this rumor. And really, if I know someone who is willing to do that, I'm not sure I want to be friends with him.

I am highly skeptical there is any real correlation between weight and being good in bed; it's probably one of those rumors that guys spread around to convince their wingmen to take one for the team and hook up with the fatter girl so they can have the more attractive one to themselves. That sounds about right.

But, I stand by my theory about nerds. If you're ever looking for a night of good sex, bypass the hot, cocky guys at the bar and go find the unassuming science nerds discussing the intricacies of mechanical engineering in the corner.

Living in a Digital World

2010-01-18T00:08:00.009-05:00

I read a fascinating article in the NY Times the other day about how breaking up has become astronomically more difficult since the advent of the digital age.

Anyone that has gone through the hell of changing their relationship status in Facebook to "single" already knows this to be true. But once you factor in legality issues in divorce cases, online stalking, and just the constant omnipresence of an ex in your life even if you can get rid of them physically, everything gets much more complicated.

I didn't come of age in the Facebook era; I didn't become a member until a year after I graduated from college and even then I deactivated my account and have only been an active member for the last year and a half.

However, last year I found out the ex-love-of-my-life had gotten engaged and is getting married this summer. Now, I had already defriended him years ago, and maintain no ties whatsoever. We have literally had no contact in three or so years.

BUT when he got engaged, he changed his profile picture to a photo of his fiance's engagement ring, and I was suddenly informed by numerous mutual friends of ours of his impending nuptials.

Now in traditional pre-social-networking society, I would've found this out the old-school way, like at our ten year college reunion when he had become so fat he was unrecognizable and his wife had turned into some hideous minivan-driving soccer mom.

Instead, I knew within DAYS that he had gotten engaged a girl he met in law school. AND how many carats the ring are and when they were planning on getting married. So obviously then I had to see for myself so I spied on his profile to check out what she looks like. (Whatever, you know you'd do it too.)

In the old days, I would've had to hire an expensive private investigator or travel hundreds of miles and put my life on hold to physically stalk him to attain this level of information. Now, it was just one click away.

And there's no nice way for me to say this without sounding petty, but she's not a looker. I'm sure she's a lovely person but she has a strange face and yellow teeth. I swear. I may or may not have sent photos out for my friends to judge and guy friend R, who doesn't know the meaning of tact, told me she's not attractive and little sister E said, "It looks like her face was shrunk bizarrely. She's really unattractive...I can't look too long at the pictures without cringing and needing to look away."

Which then spun me into a weird emotional dilemma of whether I should feel relieved or insulted. My initial reaction was, "Ha, he's going to have to wake up next to THAT for the rest of his life," before "Waaait...do I look like that?" settled in.

Talk about too much information...

I can't help but think there's something wrong with a society in which we take such stock in status updates and wall posts, and can use these facile interactions on which to base entire conversations, friendships, and even real feelings like sorrow and mourning.

And logically, I'm concerned about my own digital footprint, and what other people are inferring based on my Facebook profile. I know this seems incongruous considering I write a blog for the world to see, but I am actually a very private person and there is information I reserve solely for my close friends. Thus, the idea of people, especially exes, finding out personal information about me online, frankly, scares the bejesus out of me.

But if I feel that strongly about it, why not just cancel my account, right? Because I don't want to be left out of any of the social interactions either. It's a regular Catch 22 - damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So I'm left with a lingering concern that this is how relationships are destined to end from now on; with status updates and photos of new paramours being spread around the internet at faster-than-light speeds. I never really believed in the idea of a dignified break-up to begin with, but this is definitely NOT dignified.

Maybe we weren't meant to have so much information readily available. Maybe sometimes it's better not to know. Maybe we were meant to have to dig around for and/or wait for devastating news, instead of having it there just a button click away.

Or possibly I'm wrong about all of this and knowing is better than not knowing because it leads to, if nothing else, absolute closure in text and pictorial form that cannot be denied.

Love Question Mark

2010-01-11T00:35:00.010-05:00

I recently watched the movie Paper Heart, a mockumentary about love, centered around a girl who's not sure if she believes in love and is even capable of falling in love. (Rent it immediately. It's adorable.) And it got me thinking about the idea of love in general.

Interesting fact I'd never really thought about before: since love is a chemical reaction that occurs in your brain, it is technically possible for someone to be lacking the chemicals necessary for this process. Therefore, it is entirely likely that a person could be physically incapable of love.

(Thus, to all those guys who have been using that as an excuse to get out of a relationship, now at least you have some scientific research to back that shit up!)

For most of my adult life, I have been opposed to the idea of people getting married too young (by young I mean before or during your early twenties) for all the logical reasons: high divorce rate, being too young to know what you want in life, lack of real-life experience, the necessity to date around to know what qualities you need in a spouse, etc, etc.

I am, however, now questioning my previous judgements on the matter.

My cousin, who just turned 21, looks like he is on the verge of proposing to his girlfriend of over three years even though they're only seniors in college, and a bunch of voices (including his parents') have chimed in that they're too young to get married. Although I understand their reservations and the rational part of me agrees that they should wait a few years before they get hitched, I am actually, for the most part, very supportive of the idea.

This particular cousin used to be somewhat of a nightmare, the black sheep of the family (which worked out well for me, because my exploits paled in comparison), the one who got arrested in the middle of the night during high school and had to wake his parents up to bail him out of jail. He was also, and I say this with love, somewhat of a jerkface, which is why we weren't particularly close growing up.

Since he started dating his girlfriend, though, he's a completely different person. He's nice, thoughtful, a hard worker, and actually fun to be around. And seeing him around her was bizarre experience at first. He's attentive and protective, constantly checking to make sure that she's ok. I'd never seen him like that before. If this is the person that he is when he's with her, I see nothing wrong with committing to be like that for the rest of his life.

After all, if you love someone and you're 100% sure that they're the right one for you, there's no real reason to wait to get married. A few of my friends have parents that were high school sweethearts and are still happily married today, thirty years later.

There's something to be said for young love. One of the couples that was interviewed in Paper Heart met when they were only 14 and got engaged their junior year of high school. They said of their early marriage:

"I think the young love can sometimes be the most important. I know that many people now are waiting until later to get married, but I think you lose something. We could've chose not to marry before he went to college, but waiting five years would have lost much of the magnetism that we had for each other."

Although I definitely don't condone teenage marriage or the (kind of creepy) idea of getting married at 17, there is a spark of truth to what they said.

My girlfriend S and I went to college together and actually dated two roommates for the majority of our college years. One day, we were discussing our college sweethearts and what had happened to them in the past five years. Both of the exes have gotten fatter since they exited our lives (not being smug, just stating the facts!) and (more relevantly) got engaged this past year.

So even though both S and I know that we are far better off without them in our lives now, we both agreed that there is a part of us that still misses them. And it's not the physical guys that we miss (after all, they did get fat); it's the feeling.

The feeling of being twenty years old in college when your life revolves around learning and having fun, when your entire life is ahead of you, when there aren't any real world worries to weigh you down yet, when there's just the magic of being in love for the first time in your life and believing wholeheartedly that it will work out and you will be together forever and ever.

I honestly don't think things would've worked out between me and the college boyfriend; there were too many long-term obstacles that would've resulted in us hating each other eventually. But, and I can say with the certainty of someone who has been in love since, I will never again feel the way I felt about him. There was something pure and magical about that first love that I will never be able to recapture.

And perhaps, that's the main reason that I am optimistic things will work out for my cousin. Watching them from across the room one night, I couldn't take my eyes off them. And after seeing him reach over to take her hand, I figured out why they made me happy and sad inside all at the same time.

I realized that's what love looks like. There’s something about the way love looks, about the way that people who are in love just glow and pulsate with their own energy, and it hit me all of a sudden that I will never look that way again and it simply knocked the breath right out of me.

At the end of the day, there's something to said for marrying before cynicism and being jaded settle in and you wind up a cranky adult (like me). There's something to be said for marrying your first love and making it work by holding onto that feeling.

So maybe I'm not as cynical and jaded as I originally thought, because I really believe it'll work out for them.

Welcome, 2010!

2010-01-04T00:05:00.003-05:00

I hate holidays that have a lot of pressure associated with them. There are always so many expectations for holidays like Valentine's Day and Halloween and New Year's Eve, especially in a city like New York, that people start making their plans months in advance and then discuss all the awesome things they are planning on doing.

So now as I get older (and crankier), I am less inclined to do anything at all and would rather just sit in my apartment wearing my pajamas instead of fighting for my personal space on the streets of Manhattan.

And due to my inability to make plans this year for New Year's Eve, I finally just decided to host a party at my apartment and invite everyone I like and trust not to mess up my furniture, which is only like five people. (Once again, the getting crankier with age spinster thing. It's entirely likely that I start covering my furniture with plastic in the next couple years.)

I didn't get to wear my sweatpants, but I did get to ring in the new year inside my warm apartment with people I actually enjoy spending time with, pink champagne, and red velvet cupcakes.

When R and I decided to try to venture outside for the after-party, we encountered a shit-show of proportions I haven't witnessed since that spring break I spent in Cancun a decade ago. It consisted of my two least favorite types of drunk people: the fighters and the pukers.

Apparently New Year's makes other people feel violent as well because there were multiple fights breaking out and I saw a guy whose entire shirt was covered in his own blood. Then there were multiple people puking in the streets and after I got into my elevator, the guy that entered after me announced, "I don't think I am going to make it to my apartment...If I don't puke in here I'm definitely going to puke in the hallway."

I politely asked him to aim away from me and got the hell outta there as quickly as I could. Luckily he lived on a higher floor so I didn't have to find out if he did end up puking all over the hallway.

And yes, I am an asshole, but I did laugh when I saw a woman literally fall face-first out of her cab and into a bike rack. Yes, it was slushy outside, but she was definitely completely wasted.

People, what is the point of getting so drunk that you can't make it to your own toilet to puke and you face plant getting out of a cab? Yes, it is a holiday when we celebrate a brand new year, but really, if you think about it, it's just another day. If you want to get that drunk, OBVIOUSLY you save it for an actually important day like ChamPAIN Tuesday.

I suppose in an ideal world I would have Mary Poppins-like powers that would have allowed me to clean up my apartment with a snap of my fingers, and there would've been a special someone for me to kiss at midnight, but even taking those things into consideration, it was a pretty great start to 2010.

Days of Auld Lang Syne

2009-12-31T00:01:00.005-05:00

On the last day of 2009, I reflect and reminisce over the adventures I had over this last year. Let's sum up the highlights, why don't we?

- I dated some real winners, including the biggest fail in the history of well, history, a dirty manwhore who told me on our first date that I'm too arrogant and confident, the genius who couldn't recognize dinosaur bones and had never been to a museum before, and the creme de la creme, an idiotic bandanna-sporting douchebag.

- My girlfriends provided me with endless hours of hilarity and multiple nights of hijinx; one of the best included crashing a bachelor party, a lot of tequila, and then scamming some guys into a beer-pong tournament on their roof.

- I played Spin the Bottle for the first time in over a decade and discovered why I should stay away from Murray Hill.

- My family decided that I am officially a spinster.

- I found out that unlimited champagne served by a midget in a pirate suit leads to an absolutely horrendous hangover and a sprained foot.

- I started punching guys in the nuts. Good for mankind, bad for douchebags. And sometimes, bad for me.

- I relived the glory days of college, complete with tailgating, sketchy fraternity parties, and even more importantly, sketchy fraternity guy late-night booty calls.

All in all, if I had to sum up the year in a phrase, it would be "banana pancakes," the code words I came up with to let my friends know when I'm in trouble (i.e. if I slipped "banana pancakes" into a phrase like "I have a hankering for some delicious banana pancakes for breakfast," they would interpret it as an SOS and get me the hell outta there). There were a great deal of "banana pancakes" moments in 2009.

So I'd like to thank my girls for a year filled with more laughter and memories than I know what to do with. In all seriousness, I'm not sure I would've survived the disaster we will come to know as 2009 without my besties by my side. R, S, A, this one's for you:

Happy 2010 everyone!!!!!

Vanilla Overdose

2009-12-28T00:14:00.002-05:00

What kind of night starts out at a classy cocktail party and ends with a Lady Gaga dance party at a dive bar?

Only the best kind, obviously.

So a few weeks ago I was invited to a magazine party sponsored by Stoli and R and I put on our finest black cocktail dresses and went to sip on awesome (free) vodka cocktails.

Mid-way through the party, we made friends with a group of very nice, very sweet, very white-bread boys who were all from the Mid-west and went to Harvard. We have appropriately termed them "The Vanillas."

One of them was so dapper and put-together that we are convinced he is none other than Freddie Fackelmayer's doppelganger. Seriously. Down to the jawline that looks like it was chiseled out of marble and the orange fake tan and the douchebaggy personality.

I'm actually afraid that someday they will find themselves in a room together and the universe might implode from the sheer force of their combined douchiness. It's a weapon to be taken seriously, people. (Case and point: have you SEEN Jersey Shore on MTV?)

His Vanilla friends, however, turned out to be nice guys, which isn't surprising since they are young (24) and born and bred in Arkansas and Ohio or some other state in Middle America where it is instilled in them to be gentlemen and hold doors open for girls. So when the open bar shut down at midnight, I agreed to tag along with them to another bar.

The Vanillas subsequently got into a fight about whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower and whether Vanilla Two's grandparents were the indentured servants of Vanilla One's family in Ohio. That was about when I started planning an escape strategy, worried I had wandered into another minefield of intensely boring guys.

(But seriously, could you imagine a whiter conversation? I mean other than an argument over where to buy the perfect pocket square and which club to use on the par-4 ninth hole.)

That was when my favorite song of the moment, Lady Gaga's Bad Romance started playing on the jukebox. Apparently Vanilla One is such a fan of the song that he put in $20 and set the song to play on repeat, much to the dismay of everyone else in the bar.

I, however, was in heaven and since I wasn't going to bail on a jukebox playing Lady Gaga nonstop, I suggested a game of "Never Have I Ever" to loosen up the Vanilla boys and that is when they disclosed something truly shocking.

Vanilla One: Never have I ever had casual sex.

Me: Well how do you define casual sex?

Vanilla One: I've never had sex with anyone I'm not in a committed relationship with.

Me (Thinking I misheard him; after all the Lady Gaga was blasting pretty loudly): Excuse me what now?

Vanilla One: I only sleep with girls if we're in a serious relationship. I've never had sex with anyone that I just met.

Vanilla Two: Yeah, I'm the same way.

Me (Flabergasted): I'm sorry. I just don't understand. You don't sleep with girls unless you're in a monogamous long-term relationship? When did you lose your virginity.

Vanilla One: Not until I was 22.

Me: What?! That was only two years ago.

Vanilla Two: Well, sex is so much better if you're in a relationship and you really know and love each other, so I agree with him.

Me: Well obviously you just haven't had really good casual sex yet. Sometimes it's better if there are absolutely no feelings involved and it's just raw and physical.

Vanilla One: That's quite possible, but I don't plan on finding out.

Me (More confused than ever): OK then. Good talk. See you out there.

As if this wasn't baffling enough, a week later R and I met Vanilla Two for drinks at a party downtown. Somehow his ex-girlfriend came up and we asked him why they broke up.

Vanilla Two: She was just kind of boring, you know?

R: No, I don't know. Was she too vanilla for you?

Vanilla Two: Well we were together for four months and she just wasn't very interesting.

Me: Like what? In bed? Was she not exciting?

Vanilla Two: Excuse me?

R: You know, were things boring in the bedroom?

Me: Yeah, did she not spice things up enough? No handcuffs? No lingerie? No fetish closet?

And at this point, poor Vanilla Two was so shocked and taken aback by the dirty-mouthed New York girls that he toppled backwards off his stool and fell on his back, followed by the stool.

It made such a commotion that the entire bar turned to see what had happened and the guy at the table next to us had to ask R if she was OK because he thought she was having a seizure, but found out she was just laughing so hard that she couldn't breathe.

Vanilla Two (After getting up and sitting back down on his stool and regaining his composure): Good lord, I can't believe you girls are asking me about my sex life. I don't talk about things like that! I never kiss and tell. It's disrespectful. I would never do that!

Now on one hand, I think his behavior is entirely commendable although surprising. I don't know too many (meaning any) guys in Manhattan who refrain from having sex with girls they don't know and then discussing it afterwards. This is a legitimately nice, wholesome boy with morals and values and whatnot.

On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of behavior that takes away from any sort of sexual mystique whatsoever and why I could never be attracted to someone that innocent. I mean, I don't want to date manwhores, but at the same time I don't remember signing on to hang out with Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock.

Clearly this is the type of guy that finds The Brady Bunch too raunchy because Mike and Carol didn't sleep in separate beds. So there is no way in hell that he could handle my lifestyle. I think one dinner conversation with my girlfriends would send him to the hospital with a massive coronary.

And the last thing I want nor need is the death of a Vanilla weighing on my conscience.

Ho Ho Ho!

2009-12-24T00:19:00.003-05:00

Dear Santa Claus,

Although I am sure that I have done some things this year that would automatically qualify me for the "Naughty List," I would like to take this opportunity to point out the good deeds that should be factored into your in-depth evaluation:

1) I taught several assholes that they shouldn't make inappropriate and/or racist comments to strangers by hitting them in the nuts. Now, I know initially this may be mistaken for violent and unstable behavior, but really if you consider my motivations behind the ball-slapping, you will see that I am just a do-gooder trying to ensure that these douchebags don't offend anyone else in the future, and ideally render them infertile so they don't pass on their racist views to future generations.

2) If you don't count the guys who held back tears while icing their balls after I launched my stealthy attack on their gonads, I only made one guy (that I know of) cry. And I managed to avoid killing anyone, which is no small feat when you consider the fact that I spent a good amount of time in Murray Hill.

3) I single-handedly did my part to boost the economy out of a recession by repeatedly going into debt with my shopping problem and traveling around the US to exotic locations such as Puerto Rico, Miami, Chicago, Martha's Vineyard, Newport, and Pittsburgh. You haven't really lived until you've driven across the middle of Pennsylvania through miles and miles of farm-land and stopped at a Sheetz outside of Altoona. In fact this was the first year in about a decade that I didn't use my passport because I was only traveling within the good ole' USA.

4) Out of the goodness of my heart, I set up a guy friend on a non-consensual man date. This was clearly an altruistic act since I didn't even stick around at the bar to see how Operation: Bromance turned out. And even though I got a lot of amusement out of the whole thing and the parties involved weren't quite as enthused, I still think I am owed a thank you card or some sort of gift basket.

5) Over Thanksgiving, Little Sister E and I had a craving for cake in the middle of the night and decided to make some from scratch. Since we couldn't find the brownie pan, we were forced to use the bread loaf pan and subsequently made a delicious snack concoction that looked like pound cake, but had the consistency and taste of yellow butter cake; thus introducing into the world to what we have termed "Cake Loaf." If that's not a contribution to society, I don't know what is.

In conclusion, I think I did a pretty good job this year of behaving myself and doing unto others and all that other bullshit. And as a reward, all I would really like to find in my stocking tomorrow morning is that clutch I've been eyeing from Bottega Veneta. And some sort of hand-eye coordination so I stop injuring myself regularly. And a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps because you know how I love free booze. And Chris Pine or Corey Monteith. (If they don't fit over the fireplace, feel free to just send them up to my bedroom.) And a puppy. And someone to take care of the afore-mentioned puppy because I question my capabilities to handle that much responsibility.

Actually you can forget all that other stuff if you could just throw me a bone and relocate some cute, intelligent, not-crazy, single guys to Manhattan. And make me 22 again. You have that kind of power, right?

So Mr. Claus, enjoy the slice of Cake Loaf that we have left out for you and sorry about the 2% milk, but my parents decided whole milk was too fattening. And you're welcome for the kalhua that I may or may not have slipped in. I figure no one can be that jolly on the most stressful workday of the year without copious amounts of booze. Don't worry; it'll be our little secret.

Merry Christmas!

Until Next Year,

Official Nice List Applicant,

S

Meeeeee-ow!

2009-12-21T00:01:00.006-05:00

So I constantly make jokes about how I am on the path to becoming a cat lady and will soon be knitting sweaters for my dozen cats in my apartment if this spinsterhood goes on for much longer.

But what I didn't realize earlier is that my guy friend T is actually not so secretly a wannabe cat lady!

One day, out of nowhere, girlfriend S and I were joking around about how we're going to be cat ladies and the following conversation ensued:

S: Ew, no, I hate cats.

T: What do you mean you hate cats? Do you also hate awesome? Do you hate freedom? Do you hate America?

S: Um, no I just hate cats.

T: What, you need a pet that's going to jump all over you and pretend to love you just because you're there? So when you walk in the door it'll wet itself? No way, I want a pet that I will have for ten years and then MAYBE in year eleven it'll let me touch its elbow. You have to WORK for a cat's affection; they make you EARN it.

S: Look, I'm not saying I like dogs either, but cats are evil.

T: So hypothetically let's say I buy you a pet kitten, an adorable little thing, for your birthday. What would you do?

S: I would drown it in my sink.

Me: Whoa that's slightly extreme. You wouldn't just give it away to like a child or something? You would have to kill it?

S: Yes that's how much I hate cats.

T: Wow. Just wow.

(In S's defense, cats can be pretty scary...)

S: The real question is if you know that I hate cats, why would you give me a kitten for my birthday? You would be the one responsible for its death!

T: Well I didn't know you would kill it. I didn't think anyone hated cats that much. How could you hate cats? They're such clean animals. I want to get in a bathtub with a cat and have it clean me.

S: Gross! What is wrong with you?!

Me: That is a disgusting image that I will now never be able to get out of my head.

T: Too much? Did I take it too far? I take it back...

So after that, it obviously became a running joke between all our friends that T loves cats and S hates them with a passion. We even started recruiting teams: Team T wants to adopt a litter of cats and bathe with them and Team S is not a fan of the proposition.

About a month ago, driving past a convention center in my hometown, we spotted a giant sign that said there was a "CAT SHOW" occurring, and immediately sent a picture of the sign to T. He got very excited and sent out e-mails asking if we all wanted to get dinner after the cat show, since we were obviously all going. And one by one we all made up excuses we couldn't make it (just kidding, I was out of town, but I wasn't going to go anyway...)

I did, however, have many questions about the whole cat show thing.

Was a cat show like a dog show where they were paraded around by breed? Was that even possible since I can't imagine a cat obeying the orders to walk around in a circle on a leash and have its privates examined without viciously scratching the judge's face? Were there prizes? Did the cats dress up in costumes and do a runway walk? Did you have to bring your own cat or could you attend cat-less? Did the human beings dress up as cats?

It looked as though I would never get the answers to these burning questions and would have to go through my remaining days wondering about the cat show when bestie R sent me a photo of a creepy old man holding a cat dressed up in a leather biker outfit, complete with sunglasses and hat.

It turns out one of R's "friends" owns a cat furniture business (yes, a business that manufactures and sells high-end cat furniture, such as beds and sofas that cost hundreds of dollars) and sponsored a booth at the cat show. He had also been recruiting for people to help out at the show.

So not only did T miss out on a chance to attend the cat show and spend a day with his beloved felines, he would've been paid to do so. And if that's not the American Dream, I don't know what is. Wasn't this country founded on the hope that someday its citizens would be able to do what they love AND get paid for it, even when it's something totally disturbing like hanging out with cats in creepy costumes?

Needless to say, T is still a little bitter about the whole situation, missing out on the cat fiesta and whatnot. I'm not sure if he's going to get over it anytime soon.

I'm thinking that a cat sofa might be just the thing to appease him though, and now I know where I can get a discount on some cat furniture.

In addition to the awesome Christmas present I already picked out for him, "Kitten Mittons" from Paddy's Pub, home of the original "Kitten Mittons." What more could a cat-lover want?! I mean, other than a pet cat...

Sorry T, maybe next year we'll get you an actual kitten. And I promise to keep S away from it, so there aren't any cat demises on my conscience.

A Story of Closure

2009-12-14T00:09:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, on this exact day in 2007, I started writing a blog. (Happy anniversary to me!) The impetus behind it was that I had gone through a terrible, painful, earth-shattering breakup after a relationship of three years and was for the first time in my adult life learning now to be single and to date and I wanted to share my adventures with my friends and the rest of the world.

The relationship was, for the most part, bad. He was immature and obnoxious and a total mama's boy whose mother still did his laundry and asked him if his bowel movements were regular. But, as I learned the hard way, you don't get to choose who you fall in love with, so I just ignored the warnings from my friends and family for years that I was out of his league in every possible way and he would never be able to make me happy.

After he moved out of our apartment, leaving me with a slew of memories I wanted no part of, I moved onto my couch and cried for a month before I was ready to enter the outside world again. It pretty much resembled a Bridget Jones movie, minus the charming Brits.

And every small step was a giant victory, the first time I gave out my phone number, the first kiss, the first date, the first time I got caught dating a coworker, the first time I dumped a guy over instant messenger and posted the conversation online...

So in a way, this entire blog was a reaction to my painful breakup, my way of coping through the crazy guys in NY and the bad dates and the day I finally went to sell the ring he had knelt down and put on my finger. I suppose, then, that I have him to thank for this.

(Oh, and my friends and family were right all along; six months after we broke up, I found out through mutual friends that he had been cheating on me, and was now dating the girl he had cheated on me with. I wish her the best. Seriously. It's going to take a very resilient woman to put up with his bullshit. And his overbearing mom.)

Now, why am I giving this dry, rambling history?

Because a few Tuesdays ago, at a ChamPAIN Tuesday repeat, to be precise, I ran into this guy who I haven't seen since he broke up with me and moved out of our apartment over two years ago.

Now, being a writer, I had written this scene out a dozen ways, all of which obviously ended with me looking fabulous on the arm of Bradley Cooper or Chris Pine, while the Douchebag Ex whimpered and stumbled away in agony.

In reality, though, this is how the scene played out:

Douchebag Ex: Hi, I thought it was you.

Me: Yep, it's me, how are you doing? I heard you were laid off, did you get a new job?

Douchebag Ex: Yeah, yeah I have a new job, working for a French bank doing the same thing. I like it I guess. You? I know you left your last job...

Me: Yeah, I quit my job last year. I just really wasn't happy and I wanted to write. So I'm doing that now. Working on novels and my blog and freelancing for magazines and whatnot...it's really great work.

Douchebag Ex: That's nice. Are you still living in the same apartment?

Me: No, I moved, where are you living now?

Douchebag Ex: I live down here. I moved in with my girlfriend. What about you? Any dudes in your life?

Me: Many dudes.

Awkward Pause.

Douchebag Ex: It's weird to run into you like this. I actually thought of contacting you the other day.

Me (Hostile): Why would you do that?

Douchebag Ex (Taken Aback): Um...I saw this picture of you on Facebook - you were in a Halloween costume dressed as a sailor or something and you looked great so I was going to friend you.

Me (More Hostile): Yeah, please don't do that.

Douchebag Ex (More Taken Aback): Oooook...well do you want to get together sometime? Do you have the same phone number?

Me (Blatant Lie): Nope, I changed my number

Douchebag Ex: Can I have it?

Me: No.

Douchebag Ex: Well...mine is the same, do you still have mine?

Me: No I deleted that a long time ago, and I've been much happier that way.

Douchebag Ex: So I guess you really don't want to talk or let me explain anything my side of the story to you at all?

Me: Nope, I don't want you in my life. I think you're toxic and you clearly didn't care about me. I think you proved that with your actions, so the last thing I want is to have anything to do with you.

Another Awkward Pause

Douchebag Ex: Well you look really great, you haven't changed at all, I remember those jeans...but since this is what you want it I guess I'll go this way...until the next time we run into each other.

Me: Bye.

And I got to watch him walk away from me yet another time.

But this one was different; it was on my terms and it was because I had done my best to make him feel about thisbig, hopefully succeeding in that endeavor. And because I had laid out my ground rules and set incredibly clear boundaries, he left knowing in no uncertain terms to stay away.

After all, he lied to me, he cheated on me, and he broke my heart; so really I don't know why it ever occurred to him that he might be allowed back in my life in any capacity whatsoever. This is just further evidence that he is a complete moron.

So this time, I felt no regret watching him walk away. I felt proud and relieved and sad (the little sad is natural, I think), but the rest of it was good. I felt surprisingly very few violent urges as well; who would've seen that one coming?!

I think in the end, the lesson I can walk away from this is that closure will find you, one way or another, whether you want it or not. Whether it's pretty or ugly, you will get thrown together with someone you have issues with until they are resolved. And even though this meeting was two years in the making, it was a relief to finally see him and to let him know that I am doing fantastic in every way without him.

College Days Are Here Again!

2009-12-07T00:07:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, bestie R and I decided to visit her alma mater for their biggest football game of the year and take part in some good old-fashioned tailgating and college-style partying.

The only flaw in this otherwise perfect plan was we had forgotten that we are both now five years out of college and therefore much, much older than the kids still attending. Like ancient.

On our first night in town, we went to get dinner with friends in town and the drunk guy at the table next to us offered me some free wine. Not one to turn down free booze, I accepted, and struck up a conversation with him. I obviously asked him if he was even of legal age when he told me he was a junior in college and asked me what year I was.

I then informed him I had already graduated from college. In 2004. To which he looked shocked and one of his female dinner companions visibly rolled her eyes. I exclaimed to R, "I think that bitch just rolled her eyes at me when she overheard how old I am!" Only two hours in and we already felt old and almost got into a fight...

After dinner, R and I headed to, that's right, a fraternity party. We had to sign in and show ID at the door and the older security guard who was working actually burst out laughing when he saw that we were well over 21. Later, just to mess with me, when he saw me holding a beer, he asked me for my ID again and then laughed at my bewilderment.

The party, of course, was packed to the brim with drunk underclassmen chanting their greek letters and freshman girls. The only refreshment available at the bar was Natty Lite, which I have not had the pleasure of being in the presence of for quite some time. (Well, after we sweet-talked one of the underclassmen, he offered us shots of Banker's Vodka, which is equally low on my alcohol barometer. We politely declined.)

But the highlight of this party was that there were familiar faces present. First we ran into Murray Hill, the same classy fellow who talked R and I into a rousing game of Spin the Bottle over the summer. He was (surprise, surprise) thoroughly involved in hitting on every freshman girl in sight, with no shame whatsoever.

A little later, when R and I decided we couldn't stomach any more Natty Lite and needed to head to a real bar to get some real booze, we ran into Zygote, the same 23 and a half year old who broke my foot on ChamPAIN Tuesday.

Well it turns out Zygote has a girlfriend, who he has been with for the past two years, meaning yes, he cheated on her the night he broke my foot. Therefore, he was none too excited to see me. After he did a double take to confirm I was indeed, the very same girl he had tossed off his bed, the little shit had the gall to INTRODUCE HIMSELF TO ME. As in he stuck out his hand, told me his name, and shook my hand. All while looking over his shoulder, worried, to make sure his girlfriend wasn't suspecting anything not kosher.

R and I took off, feeling old and full of laughter, and decided to call it a night since we had to wake up absurdly early the next day to tailgate. At 2AM, both R and my phone started ringing over and over again. I finally picked up to put an end to it, and on the other end was Murray Hill:

Murray Hill: Hey, where are you girls? Let's hang out.

Me: We are SLEEPING.

Murray Hill: Why would you come down to college only to sleep like old women? Come out and party with us?

Me: Who's us?

Murray Hill: I'm with my friend, you'd like him.

(Aside to his friend): Yeah I'm on the phone with two hot girls. Which one do you want, the Asian one or the other one?

Friend: Yes.

Murray Hill: Cool, cause I'll take either of them.

Me: You are disgusting. Stop calling. Good night.

The next morning R and I woke up to the following texts:

"Come over, I have booze and coke."

"Are you at the Comfort Sweets? We'll come over."

"Don't tell her, but I want to bang you."

And yes, he typed in "sweets" as in candy, not "suites" as in a room one may be staying in for the night.

When we ran into Murray Hill a few hours later at the tailgate, he wasn't even remotely embarrassed about what had elapsed over the course of the previous night; instead he didn't hesitate to brag to his friends about it. And luckily for me, Zygote was present, this time without his girlfriend.

R and I started screaming at Murray Hill about his sketchy behavior and R turned to Zygote and said, "Have you met my friend? She couldn't walk for a month after she hooked up with you."

Obviously, her choice of wording was not fantastic because Murray Hill turned to Zygote, impressed, and commended him on his conquest, all while I protested he was misunderstanding R's words.

A few hours later after the game, R and I decided to take a nap to rest up for the night when Murray Hill started texting R again that he wanted to meet up. This time, R and I decided to have a little fun with him. I called him and told him we wanted to hang out, both of us, so to meet us at the Comfort Suites in room 410 (we were staying on the opposite end of town).

The idiot boy actually ran over there and five minutes later called to say, "I'm knocking on the door, why aren't you guys answering?" to which we replied, "Just knock harder. We can't hear you!" before dissolving onto the floor laughing. About ten minutes later he finally gave up and texted us that what we had done to him was "not cool." Well, kid, that's what you get when you interrupt my sleep to attempt to pimp me out to your friends.

Our last night out, we were intent on keeping up with the college kids and stayed out all night before we finally called it quits and passed out. The highlights included:

1) Sake bombs.

2) More frat parties, including one at the football fraternity where the quarterback was getting a belated pep talk about what a great job he had done on the field earlier that day and started charging through the house, narrowly missing killing me and R (he was twice our size, combined).

3) Bar-hopping through town and hanging out with some very creepy local townies.

4) Me punching an asshole in the nuts and then yelling at him that I hadn't even hit anything substantial since he had "nothing down there."

5) A dance party under blacklight at someone's deserted house.

6) A snack and sandwich run in the middle of the night.

R and I didn't get up until 2PM the next day, but found ourselves surprisingly not hungover, due to the pacing of our shots throughout the night and the 4AM snacking.

All in all, we relived the glory of our college years and kept up with the college kids, but with the sophistication of city girls who have been drinking for much longer. And we managed to get through the weekend with minimal confrontation and awkward situations, one awesome prank on a deserving patsy, and the ability to brag that we can still hang with the twenty year-olds.

And that's nothing to sneeze at. Especially at my age.

You're So Blah

2009-11-30T01:02:00.001-05:00

Months ago at a bar out with my friends, I met a guy who I went out on a date with (dinner and a movie, he paid, talked too much during said movie), and decided there was absolutely no potential there (partially because of the movie-talking), but continued to see him anyway. What, he's got a really good body AND pretty eyes! And I've already discussed how those are my weaknesses.

Well every time I sat down at my computer in an attempt to write something funny or anecdotal about him, I ended up sitting here and getting weirded out by Lady Gaga music videos (Seriously, I love her music, but why does she have to be so weird?). Basically, the kid is not particularly bright and even worse, not particularly interesting in any way, which is why I affectionately refer to him as "Yawn."

Even now, I'm trying to think of something funny Yawn said or did at some point ever, and I really got nothing. This one time he told me that his family business makes neon sign lights. And he's really proud of being from the Mid-west. And he owns the DVD of "The Notebook" because he thinks it's a surefire way to get a girl to sleep with you. Ha, ok that last one was kind of funny, but also sad.

Once again in my defense, he's tall. And has REALLY pretty eyes. And fantastic arms and shoulders. And if he didn't talk at all and was about fifty IQ points higher, he might actually resemble someone worth dating!

Unfortunately, though, I seem to be meeting dullards more than anything else. The only guys who have asked me out in the past couple months have been incredibly generic, nice, blah, white guys. And yes, there is far worse out there in the world.

Far, far worse.
- Like Chad Ocho Cinco.
- And that guy who yelled BAM! and karate-chopped my face any time he said anything he thought was amusing, Shmucks.
- Oh, oh and I can't forget Epic Fail, who made out with another girl next to me on our first date and cried when I said I just wanted to be friends after knowing each other a month.

Yeah that's right. You take a look at those guys and a boring guy who owns "The Notebook" to score with chicks doesn't look so bad anymore, now does he?

So then last weekend I went out to meet a friend of mine from college, G, who is now a lawyer, so I knew the party was going to be an assortment of his law friends. It turned out that I was the only person present who was not a lawyer, which seems like the set up to some sort of joke. But when I asked them hypothetically if I was to get arrested, how quickly they could take care of the situation, all of them told me they were corporate international lawyers, so they couldn't do anything to help and would basically leave me rotting away in a holding cell. Lame.

After listening to a few conversations filled with words I didn't understand, I pulled my friend G aside to ask if there were any single, nice guys that he knew. G and his fiance thought about it, saying that they know so many single girls but so few single guys (story of my life...) when she suddenly said, "Well what about Ohio Guy? And G lit up and said, "Yes Ohio Guy is really nice and he's single; he is really, really a nice guy."

Well it had been quite a while since I heard so many "nice" adjectives peppered into the description of a guy, so I assumed Ohio Guy had to be something special and from across the room looked quite cute, so I let G's fiance introduce the two of us.

Ohio Boy is from Ohio (duh) and actually currently lives in Cleveland right now because he is doing his clerkship there and will return to the city to work at a firm in the middle of 2010, not too far from now. And right up front let me say that G was true to word and Ohio Guy is completely, absolutely, just really nice.

I think the niceness is partly due to growing up in the Mid-west, where they tend to be bred nicer than New Yorkers. But it's also partly due to the fact that he is very, very, very innocent.

The first hint of this was when we got into the cab and he fully strapped himself in in the backseat. In all the years I have lived in New York and climbed in and out of hundreds of cabs, I have never EVER seen someone put their seatbelt on. In the backseat of my friend's cars, I can't remember the last time I wore a seatbelt. It's just baffling behavior. Very safe, very punctilious behavior, but so confusing.

Anyways it just got stranger after the seatbelt act. He then told me he had never drank alcohol before he turned 21 and he celebrated his 21st birthday by having a beer with his parents. One beer. To which my mouth fell open and I asked him what the hell he did during college. Apparently it was a lot of weekends home and movies.

(I, on the other hand, had already puked in a cab from alcohol when I was 15, and spent my freshman year of college taking shots of grain alcohol and Absinthe because it was cheap and potent. I have no idea I was thinking. Oh, to be young and hangover-free again...)

In the midst of me asking questions about when was the first time he had ever gotten drunk and what was that like, he tried to divert me by volunteering the fact that he didn't lose his virginity until he was 23. That's right. TWENTY THREE. He's 27 now which means he has been sexually active for FOUR YEARS.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Now I don't know about you, but that knowledge rocked my world. He finally lost it to some girl when he was drunk. And he admitted he was awful. At this point I obviously stopped picking on him about the drinking and pestered him with questions about his lack of sexual activity until he was clearly uncomfortable and kissed me, pretty much just to shut me up.

Of course, the whole time we were making out all I could think about was how I have been having sex for twice the amount of time that he has, and that I could probably outdrink him on any given day. Which, of course, led to me bursting into a lot of giggles, really sexy I know.

So needless to say, poor Ohio Guy met an obnoxious NY girl on his weekend visiting from Cleveland, she made fun of him all night about his slow social-development, and all he got was a little making out interrupted by laughter and sleep.

What can I say, I'm a great date.

Ohio Guy flew back to Cleveland the next day, and just to prove how ridiculously nice he really is, has already texted me to say he got in and would like to hang out again when he's in town. Any normal guy would already have deleted my phone number and headed for the hills, but no Ohio Guy is not freaked out by my tormenting him and not putting out. He actually wants to make plans to see me again.

Now, this is just me being a bitch, but I feel like even the niceness would get old after a while. I like my people to have a little bit of an edge to them; after all we are in New York.

So while I am definitely not advocating bringing the douchebags back into my life, I am somewhat bored by the amounts of blah I've been encountering lately. Is there a happy medium between fun douchebag and boring nice guy? I mean, they have managed to make an animal hybrid of a lion and leopard, so I definitely think there's hope for me.

(And no, that picture isn't photo-shopped, it's an ACTUAL leopon. What are those crazy scientists going to come up with next?!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T00:06:00.001-05:00

Amen to that!

I plan on stuffing myself to the brim with turkey and stuffing, and hoping that I don't get so drunk at dinner that I puke up my whole dinner before dessert has even been served (two years ago) or wake up the day after with the worst wine hangover I've ever had (three years ago) or find myself in the corner polishing off a bottle of Chardonnay by my lonesome (four years ago).

Obviously, Thanksgiving to me means time with my family, copious amounts of food, and the combination of alcohol and tryptophan leading to either the best night's or worst night's sleep I have all year.

And if that isn't something to be thankful for I really don't know what is...

Do Not Date These Guys

2009-11-23T00:06:00.003-05:00

My guilty pleasure is crappy reality TV. I watch it all from the melodramatic contrived crap on MTV like The Hills, The City, The Real World to the almost legitimate talent competitions like Bravo's Top Chef and Former Bravo/Current Lifetime's Project Runway.

And yes, before you ask, it does occupy a great deal of my time and take a great deal of commitment to watch every single season of The Real Housewives of Insert State, County, or City Here. And yes, I am already aware that I should get out more.

But you know what? Watching MTV fake reality TV even though I am probably a decade over its target demographic has given me a wonderful basis for laying out the kind of bitchy girls that exist out in the world that you should not associate with, as well as the guys that you should never, ever date!

And, lucky you, I have decided to share my knowledge with you. So, as follows, the lustrous guys from horrible MTV reality shows that are stereotypes of guys to run far, far away from should you ever have the misfortune of encountering someone like them.

1) The Manipulator, Spencer Pratt from The Hills

I think Spencer Pratt is one of the most reviled reality characters to ever hit the airwaves, which either makes him a genius or just a really, really sleazy dirtbag. Considering I have no evidence for the former and a plethora of proof for the latter, I'm going to go with the sleazebag theory.

He first entered the scene by dating Heidi Montag on the second season of The Hills, back when she still resembled a nice, albeit idiotic, girl from Colorado just trying to make it in LA. Multiple plastic surgeries later, I can only blame Spencer for the transformation she has made into full-on Playboy bimbo, aspiring singer, and butt of jokes all around the world.

But what makes Spencer a Manipulator instead of just a regular old sleazy weirdo, is the shit he has managed to pull in order to coerce her to stay with him, marry him, and break off ties to her friends and family.

First, he made sure she didn't have a friend left in the world after he pressured her into moving out of her pad with ex-bestie Lauren Conrad to move into an arcade room with him. Then he spread sex tape rumors about Lauren Conrad to ensure that Heidi and her could never be friends again.

Next, he sabotaged her job by repeatedly making scenes at "events" for the "PR company" MTV claimed she worked at. She eventually got demoted and permanently screwed up any chances she ever had of having a fake MTV career.

The final denouement occurred when he alienated her family to the point where Heidi's mom was in tears over the prospect of her daughter being attached for life to this vile human being. When Heidi's sister moved onto their couch while trying to find a job in LA, he gave Heidi an ultimatum that it was "him or her sister," because sister was monopolizing the time that he wanted to lounge around on the couch, which resulted in Heidi tossing her sister out on her ass. And I didn't even mention the time he poured tequila shots down Heidi's throat in Mexico so that he could coerce her into eloping with him (knowing that her family would disapprove).

There are some crazy guys out there (read: wife beaters) who can't bear the idea of their girlfriends/wives having a life of their own. And should you ever run into one of these guys, you would be wise to change your e-mail address, phone number, and identity as quickly as you can (think Julia Roberts in Sleeping With the Enemy).

Unfortunately, I think it's too late for Heidi Montag, since she is clearly too stupid to get a grip and reclaim what little bit of a life she once had. But that's ok, because who really ever cared about her anyway?

2) The Douchebag, Freddie Fackelmayer from The City

If Spencer Pratt is representative of the typical LA sleazebag who will do anything to get on TV and "famous," then Freddie Fackelmayer is his East Coast doppelganger, the New York douchebag that thinks he's the hottest shit the city has ever seen and will take any opportunity he can to brag about his summer home in the Hamptons.

Facts:
- He's from Greenwich and uses the word "summer" as a verb as in "We summer in Nantucket!"
- He "works" in real estate.
- He is always immaculately groomed down to his orange fake tan, super white caps, and shiny coif.
- He wears gingham shirts.
- He brought his father on his second date with poor, clueless Whitney Port.
- He dated Whitney despite the fact that he already had a secret girlfriend.
- His uber white teeth against the background of his orange, shiny skin give me nightmares.

Assumptions:
- He probably grooms more than any girl I know, maintaining weekly fake and bake, waxing, teeth-whitening, hair, and manicure appointments.
- He almost definitely wears Lily Pulitzer seersucker suits in the summertime, not only for the perfectly-coordinated family photos in Nantucket.
- He spends his weekends at Ten June ordering bottle service and talking to his friends about how superior and awesome they are since they don't have to order drinks at the bar like those poorer, less-orange folk down below.
- He reeks of Cool Water and, to quoth Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, "self-tanning cream and teeth whitener."

Unfortunately, most New York girls have made the mistake of dating a typical New York douchebag at least once (in my case, it's been many of a variety!), but if a guy's teeth are that white, I think it's a fair statement to say that you should run as fast you can in the opposite direction. As much fun as it is to say "Fackelmayer," it's definitely not worth the summers in Nantucket you would have to endure while his dad calls his mother "Bunny" and asks the butler to fetch more ice for his 30-year-old scotch.

Plus he might be a vampire...and not the hot kind.

3) The Cheater, Jason Wahler from The Hills/Laguna Beach

Jason Wahler, during two seasons of Laguna Beach, managed to cheat on pretty much every girl he got within a 10-foot distance of. He would cheat on one girl with another, start dating the other one, and then the new girl would actually be shocked when he then (gasp!) cheated on her!

Really? You didn't see that one coming?

But the most blatant of these infidelities happened while he was dating the aforementioned Lauren Conrad. The idiot made out with his ex-girlfriend, Jessica at the backstage of Lauren's fashion show right in front of her. And then lied about it and said, "Well she kissed me Babe..." The nerve! You're on national TV Babe!

I almost have to give him props for his brazen disregard of TV cameras. And logic.

What's truly unfortunate is that even after Lauren did the right thing and tossed his lying ass to the curb, they later reconciled and she forgave him for that whole "cheating right in front of me at my own event" thing, and even went so far as to forgo a dream job opportunity in Paris to shack up with him on the beach for the summer.

(To be fair, that was her own fault. Feminists all over the world screamed at their TV sets that you never choose your crappy boyfriend over your career. At least the feminists that watch The Hills. Ok by feminists, I obviously mean just me. And yes, I have already acknowledged that I get too caught up in this faux melodrama and I need to get out more!)

Not too surprisingly they ended up breaking up after he had a violent outburst that forced her to move apartments. Oh, and he got a DUI and wound up in rehab. He's a real winner, that Jason...

4) The Bad Boy, Justin Bobby from The Hills

He rides a motorcycle. He wears leather. He doesn't know how to shower. He apparently has no concept of what a razor is. You kind of want to force him into a SuperCuts and tell them to lop it off. Everything, you say, I have no idea what his face looks like under all that mess.

And in addition to these totally attractive and redeeming qualities, he is also a total flake! Because his bad boy image entails disappearing for days at a time without contacting you to maintain his mystique (I mean what kind of street cred would he have if he was volunteering at animal shelters in his spare time), meaning that you will be stood up multiple times and he will not respond to your multiple texts/calls, but just expect you to put up with it when he shows back up on your doorstep.

I get the attraction to the bad boy. They look dangerous and hot and like the sex would just be so dirty and awesome you would never look at a bar of soap the same way again. And when they actually do something nice, like break into your apartment to make you dinner or give you a promise ring, it means all that much more than it would coming from a nice guy because you think he's finally reformed and is going to settle down for you.

But it never really works out that way because he never actually changes and you just end up feeling dirty and used and itchy.

So there you go, folks. My comprehensive guide to the guys that MTV and I don't want you to date. Be wary, and for God's sakes, if Freddie Fackelmayer asks if he can blind you with his magically white teeth, JUST SAY NO!

Just Call Me Sloth

2009-11-16T00:01:00.008-05:00

As my FORMER friends have pointed out to me, my last blog post was lackluster and anti-climactic. My explanation is that my life has been considerably less exciting as of late, partly due to a nasty cold that lingered for two weeks, a sprained right foot, and a standardized test slash grad school applications.

So aside from ranting to my friends about how the standardized testing system is clearly an elaborate pyramid scheme invented by some greedy psychopath and watching every minute of the World Series, I really haven't been getting out that much.

Therefore, instead of booze and boys being a prevalent part of my existence for the past few weeks, my life has pretty much revolved around:

1) Reruns of 30 Rock. Who knew that Alec Baldwin could be so funny? And that Tracy Morgan could have a real career?

2) The discovery of curry fries, a delightful synergistic combination that I cannot believe I didn't discover years ago. The scarfing down that ensued would make Liz Lemon proud.

3) New vocabulary words. I don't care how much my friends make fun of me. Imbroglio (definition: a complicated and embarrassing situation) is quite possibly my new favorite word in the English language. And no, when you look up the definition in the dictionary, there is NOT a picture of me present. But there really should be...

Also genius, the sentences I came up with to help me memorize vocabulary words, such as:

Truculent (definition: argumentative, belligerent): My friend S tends to be very truculent when people root for a different college football team than her. It scares boys when she gets in their faces and yells at them aggressively in bars.

Punctilious (definition: careful, concerned with precise accordance with the details of codes and convention): Ha, my sister is such a law-abiding citizen she refuses to cross the street unless the light turns green. She once stood at a light that was broken for a full minute after I had crossed; how very punctilious of her!

Impecunious (definition: penniless, poor): Ew, if any dude I meet is impecunious, he is immediately put in the rejection pile

I think I should definitely run an SAT-prep class for teenagers. My vocabulary memorization strategy is the best!

4) Glee. I like everything about it. The hilarious Jane Lynch. The guest appearance by Kristin Chenoweth. The yummy but not particularly bright Corey Monteith (awww honey, girls can't get pregnant from hot tubs). And especially all the music, which I cannot stop listening to.

Glee - Don't Stop Believing

5) Sudafed and Mucinex. The real stuff that I need a pharmacist to give me from behind the counter to prevent people from cooking up crystal meth in barns. I made the mistake of taking the recommended dosage of two pills one day and couldn't understand why I felt so cracked out. I cleaned my entire apartment, including the kitchen and bathroom, and did two loads of laundry, all while talking really fast to myself.

Later, after I made the connection, I contemplated taking three pills the next day to run the marathon. I'm not sure if Mucinex counts as a "performance-enhancing drug," but I guess Andre Agassi would be more qualified to answer that. (Oh, SNAP!)

(Also really hilarious: when I explained to little sister E that I needed to give my driver's license so the pharmacy can track consumer purchases in an attempt to stop people from making crystal meth out of Sudafed, her response was, "I'm confused. Why would someone take Sudafed to get high? What, do they just get really, really decongested? Do they tell their friends, 'Hey, I can breathe so well through my nose now, it's the most amazing thing ever, how clear my sinuses are, you gotta try this!'?")

6) Shopping. Hey, a girl needs a little something to take the edge off when she's sniffly and has been trying to squeeze 26 years of her life into two single-spaced pages. And that is where online shopping and excursions "just to see what's in stores" have saved my mental health.

On a totally unrelated side note, I also learned that when I venture within ten feet of a store, I will inevitably purchase something that I "have to have". I think it's a sickness.

7) More awkward conversations with my father. My parents are going away in the beginning of 2010 and when I asked if they will be back for my birthday in March, my dad responded, "Ooooh, are you still celebrating that? Don't you think you're getting a little too old to tell people that it's your birthday?"

He also complained that I never cook for him (which apparently is some sort of obligation since I'm a daughter and not a son, but don't get me started on that) and when I countered that he hasn't ever cooked for me either he said, "That's not true! I cooked you dinner that one time when your mom had to go somewhere at night. Remember? I made you noodles?"

No, I don't remember - when was this? Oh, that's right, when I was THREE years old. Apparently in the past 26 years my father has cooked for me once and expected me to remember it even though it occurred 23 years ago. He was shocked that I have no recollection of this monumental event.

8) Enjoying the last of the mild autumn weather because as soon as it dips below 30 degrees my natural instinct is to hibernate. That's also my excuse for eating all that curry fries; I am fattening myself up to survive the cruel winter.

One for Trouble, Two for Booze

2009-11-09T00:06:00.005-05:00

I think the movie Mean Girls summed it up best when they described Halloween as follows:

"In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

What's not totally accurate is that even on Halloween, girls still talk shit about other girls who are dressed sluttier. But in general, since I entered college, the entire point of Halloween has been finding the most revealing outfit I can get away with wearing in public on one night of the year. I think my sophomore year costume took the cake: I dressed as a Victoria's Secret angel, donning only white heels, white fishnet stockings, white boy shorts, a white corset, and wings.

So this year, well before Halloween, the process of finding a slutty costume commenced.

R and I spent a Sunday at the costume store, picking out our costumes. We had decided to go as the Village People; I would be the sailor, R would be the cop, and whenever we walked into a bar we would do the YMCA. Personally, I thought it was a genius idea.

This being Halloween, though, we were obviously going as a slutty sailor and a slutty cop. R was using an old police costume of mine that read "Sergeant Sexy," and fuzzy handcuffs I had gotten as a joke present (really, I swear).

I found a slutty sailor costume at the store that was so short that I was having qualms about wearing it in public, especially since I'd be climbing in and out of cabs all night and had no intentions of pulling a Britney. That is, until I found out girlfriend A had actually purchased her French maid getup at a lingerie store. As in it was meant to be worn as a sexy role-playing costume. Amazing.

So there R and I were, standing at the sock aisle picking out appropriate thigh-high stockings (mine, white with little red bows and metallic anchor charms; R's, black fishnets with tiny handcuff charms) when a random stranger approached us.

He eyed our purchases and said, "Wow, I hope you girls are going out on Halloween with some guys. Big ones. Otherwise you are going to get so harassed."

"Excuse me," I asked.

"I just meant with those costumes, you girls are obviously looking for trouble," he said.

Taking his warning under advisement, we bought S a sexy referee costume. The logic behind this was that she would be able to regulate any trouble in her very official-looking costume. Later, it occurred to R and I that giving the loudest girl we know a whistle probably wasn't the best idea we've ever had.

To take advantage of the whistle, we came up with a plan that every time S blew the whistle, it was a sign to follow the sound and find her. If it was one long chirp, it would mean she had been cornered by some weird dude and was in need of rescuing. Two medium chirps would signal that it was time for shots. And three short chirps, the ultimate, would let us know that she had found attractive guys that we should immediately come flirt with.

In short, one for trouble, two for booze, three for men. Wouldn't want to get those signs confused and commit a foul. Especially since the referee costume didn't come with its own yellow flags...

So all in all, despite the initial concerns, the whistle ended up coming in quite handy and I'm not altogether convinced that we shouldn't all carry them even when it's not Halloween. I think a little whistle-blowing would save a lot of guys from dealing with sore testicles, and me from the legal fees involved in my assault lawsuits.

The Best Laid Plans

2009-11-02T00:06:00.017-05:00

It was once wisely pointed out that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

(Fun literary trivia: The original quote, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley," was from Robert Burns's poem, To a Mouse, and it was the inspiration for the title of the John Steinbeck classic Of Mice and Men. And yes, I am a literary nerd and proud of it.)

When Burns wrote this, I don't think he was talking about a twenty-something girl in the city with a sprained foot on the verge of getting a cold who was planning on taking the night easy by meeting her friends at a bar to watch some sports and call it an early night. But this is how I have chosen to interpret it anyway.

The PLAN was just to meet my friends for dinner and a little football-and-baseball-watching before heading home early to catch up on sleep and fight off this impending cold.

Granted, this was not one of the best plans I have ever had because the girls and I agreed to meet up at the bar where I had previously made out with the hot bartender in the back room of the bar in front of the wait staff.

He was, therefore, incredibly attentive to us and kept replenishing our free drinks when they were only half empty (half full, whatever), in an attempt to get us to stay longer (and possibly for me to make out with him again).

Despite this excessive alcohol replenishment, I was doing a good job of staying sober and vowing to go home soon.

That is, until a group of rowdy and attractive men with accents entered the bar and sat down next to me.

(Side Note: There are a couple of attributes that make me lose all rationality whatsoever and transform me into a puddle of drool. They consist of:

1) Pretty eyes, especially of the green and blue persuasion.

2) Chin dimples and smile lines. Some people call them crow's feet; I call them George Clooney bedroom eyes.

3) Uniforms. Yes, it is totally cliche, but I'm still harboring that Richard Gere "An Officer and a Gentleman" fantasy.

4) Muscles. I'm not quite sure there's anything sexier than the cut of a man's hip into his lower abs when he is totally ripped.

5) Accents.

That's right. Uh oh.)

So needless to say, I immediately made friends with the group of guys who turned out to be a mixture of Brits and Aussies who live in New York.

They were charmed and amused by my antics after a guy at the bar asked me to dinner and attempted to give me his business card. I pointedly rejected him (in my defense, he was bald AND creepy), and when he continued to insist that I take his card, I finally got so frustrated that I took it from him and tore it up in front of his face before tossing the bits into the trash.

One of the Brits turned to me and said, "I can't believe you just did that. He looked like he was about to cry! Why didn't you just take his card and then throw it out after?"

"Look," I explained, "I don't do bullshit. I'm not going to tell him I'm gonna call, take his card, and then never call. I have no intention of calling him or ever seeing him again because he's a weirdo, so I wasn't going to pretend just for the sake of it. It's not how I operate."

My new British friend just looked at me in awe and said (without a hint of sarcasm), "Wow, it's simply shocking to me that you don't have a boyfriend."

That's right. Shocking. Have I mentioned he's my new bestie?

He then introduced me to his Australian buddy with crinkly blue eyes and a six-pack. That's right - if you had put the kid in a Navy uniform, I probably would've had sex with him right then on top of the bar in front of all of the other patrons. I'm not particularly ashamed to admit that either.

The Aussie proceeded to make me laugh for about the next two hours. As if it wasn't enough to seduce me with his adorable accent, he actually had a sense of humor and intelligence. Ridiculous, right?

Which is how it suddenly became 4AM and I realized that my friends had long since retired to their homes and I was aching for my bed and some Sudafed. I told the boys that as fun as they were, I was in dire need of some sleep. The Aussie then asked me if he could "take me out for a bite to eat and get a peck on the cheek?"

Now, it's a fact that if anyone without an accent asked me for anything resembling a "peck on the cheek," I would be more likely to slap him in the nuts than consent to his request. But for some reason, when this entreaty is made with an accent, it comes off as endearing instead of vomit-inducing.

So yeah, yeah, I let him put me in a cab and gave him a kiss on the cheek and my phone number. After this, I don't think my hot bartender will be such a fan of mine anymore and the free booze isn't going to be flowing my way quite as much as it did before...

Which I can live with. Because I made new friends.

With accents.

Boobies!

2009-11-02T00:04:00.000-05:00

Now every girl out there has body insecurities and could probably tell you within five seconds exactly what she would like to change about herself. For most girls, the first answer would probably be weight. Having been fortunate enough to inherit a ridiculously high metabolism from my father, my main area of insecurity is probably the second most popular answer, boobs.

Having been a late bloomer, I didn't develop ANY breasts whatsoever until I was about 17, and even then I was still an A cup. This meant, of course, that I spent years stuffing my bra and then once I was old enough to, doing the more sophisticated version of bra-stuffing, working the Victoria's Secret ultra-padded bras.

(This, of course, led to an embarrassing encounter where I let a guy get to second base with me in the tenth grade and he emerged, confused, with a fistful of tissue paper. After that, I switched to socks.)

Once I was old enough and sick of buying water bras, I contemplated getting a boob job for a while. I even went so far as to get a plastic surgeon reference from my doctor. However, I eventually chickened out because the idea of having voluntary surgery to put something alien into my body was too terrifying for me to reconcile.

Plus, given my luck, I was pretty sure I'd be one of those rare people who had a deathly allergy to silicon. Or one of the implants would pop, and I would have to be rushed to the hospital at the most inconvenient and mortifying time ever, like in the middle of a massive family function. I can almost picture my father's face while his daughter is strapped to the gurney, clutching at her left boob and screaming obscenities...

Plus I really couldn't justify the financial costs. Do you know how many pairs of shoes I could buy with a couple grand? And not only that, I would have had to replace half my wardrobe since there was no way my extra small clothing would accomodate double D's. Seriously, who has that kind of time and money?

So, eventually, I just came to terms with the fact that I would never be considered busty by any means, and embraced the positive aspects of being breastily challenged. It meant that I never had to wear a bra, and I could pull off low-cut and backless styles without looking like a tramp. And that I never had to worry about a guy staring at my chest while talking to me. And I was happy with everything else, so who cared if I had the body of a 12-year old boy, right?

Then, miraculously, about a year ago, for no reason whatsoever, my boobs started to grow and I went up to a C cup. It was obviously noticeable, so I joked with my friends and family that I was a very, VERY late bloomer. Apparently 25 years old was the lucky year I finally hit puberty. It was pretty exciting, and don't worry, my girlfriend R already ran through with me the other changes that might be occurring now that I am a woman.

Other than the awkward conversation where my mom told me my boobs looked bigger and asking me if I had put on weight, the most memorable incident occurred when my friend told me that Goldsomething had asked her if I had gotten a boob job. I confronted him about it and he confirmed it, telling me that "they look really good."

Instead of the natural reaction of being offended, I told him it was the nicest compliment I had ever gotten. And you know what? It was. Totally wrote it down in my journal that night: Dear Diary, Tonight someone thought my boobies were fake! It was the best night ever!

This isn't to say that old insecurities never surface. My breastier friends still joke around that I'm the one with no boobs, but I can laugh along now, instead of wanting to run to the plastic surgeon ASAP.

One night, my guy friend T found out that our other friend had gotten a breast reduction because she had been having back problems. Immediately T went nuts on her and said (to quoth Superbad) that she had slapped God across the face by making her breasts smaller and that he was ridiculously disappointed in her.

To emphasize his point he ranted, "Look at S! She has no boobs! Do you know how much she would kill for boobs? When I become a doctor, I'm going to forgo any fees and give her a boob job because she needs it that badly! And you go around spitting in her face by making yours smaller?!?!"

Instead of running to the bathroom to cry in a stall, as I probably would have ten years ago, I laughed about it. And if you think this is not a big deal, imagine telling a girl that is insecure about her weight that she is fat and anticipate her reaction. Or asking a guy with a small penis why it's so little and does it get any larger (not that I've ever done that). That's right: it was pretty momentous of an occasion.

Am I still jealous of my friends with large boobs? Yes. If T really does offer me free breast augmentation surgery, will I at least consider it? Absolutely. But am I happy for the most part? Count on it.

ChamPAIN Tuesday

2009-10-26T00:04:00.009-04:00

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

2009-10-15T00:21:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-12T00:03:00.011-04:00

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

2009-10-08T00:31:00.000-04:00

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

2009-10-05T00:15:00.001-04:00

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

2009-10-01T00:52:00.001-04:00

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.

Embracing Spinsterhood

2009-09-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

Growing up with two immigrant parents means that I don't see my extended family very often. When I was younger, we would spend our summer vacations abroad, but once I entered college and then started working, my visits lapsed substantially.

On one hand, I hate this turn of events because I have a huge family with dozens of adorable cousins, wonderful aunts and uncles, and grandparents that like to spoil their grandkids (including a grandfather who is a famous tycoon with a mistress and illegitimate children, but that's a whole other story). Time with my family is endlessly entertaining, to say the least.

On the other hand, in recent years, I have begun to feel slightly lucky in the situation and this is why:

On my mother's side of the family, I am the eldest of my generation. Little sister E comes next, four years my junior, then two cousins who are a few years younger than her (both in college) and then the remaining cousins' ages range from twelve to two.

Thus, I am in the popular position of being the eldest: the one they all ooh-ed and ahh-ed over at birth, the one who got spoiled the most growing up, the one who went to college first, the one who graduated first, the one who got married and produced the next generation of offspring first...wellllllllll...not so much on that last one, which is the root of the problem.

Since I so rarely see my family, I didn't realize what a dire situation I was in until my grandparents flew to New York to see us two years ago. I was excited to see them since it had been seven years since my last trip, and I knew they were curious to see how I had "grown up."

My grandfather (yes, the one with the mistress) walked in, hugged me, pinched my cheeks, told me I looked healthy and pretty, and then grabbed my hands and asked me very seriously, "When are you going to give me a baby?"

Whoa, back his truck up.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Excuse me????

Grandpa explained to me, "I am getting very old and I have colon cancer and before I die all I want is to hold my great-grandchild in my arms. So when are you going to make me a great-grandfather?"

At some point after they resuscitated me, I explained to him that it was a pretty difficult request considering there wasn't even a boyfriend on the horizon, much less a husband. (And yes, I guess if an illegitimate great-grandchild was acceptable, I could've discussed the idea of sperm donors and whatnot, but could you imagine saying "sperm" to your grandfather? I really, really hope not.)

I had a good laugh about this with my sister and friends, and figured that was it. Then my favorite uncle called to catch up and I asked when him and his family would be coming to visit us in NY and he replied, "Oh we keep wanting to do a trip to New York since your little cousins have never been there, but we've been planning on using your wedding as the excuse to finally visit."

I was obviously thoroughly confused:

My wedding? I have a wedding coming up? When is this wedding? But I don't own a white dress? What kind of cake will there be? I like cake. Mmmmm...cake. Wait up. Focus. Who the hell is the groom?

I told my uncle that if the cousins want to see New York, he should probably come now because if he waits for the wedding, then they'll be way too old to appreciate FAO Schwartz and play at the Toys'R'Us in Times Square (or worse, the toy stores won't even be around anymore because they went bankrupt).

So after all this, it turns out my parents, who I had originally thought were the annoying ones about my plight as a single girl, have gone out of their way to protect me from the scrutiny of my extended family. I finally got it out of the rents last week that our relatives used to call repeatedly to inform them of the growing concern that I'm "no longer of marriageable age" and they should start interfering now or for sure I will end up a spinster.

Even more astounding than the idea that I am no longer of marriageable age in my twenty and six years (and that my family hasn't already arranged marriage for me in exchange for a dowry of twenty goats, three sheep, and a handmade quilt) is that when I asked my parents how they respond to these indignities, my dad told me, "I tell them you're healthy and happy so it's none of their business, and you can get married or not get married whenever you want. And that's the end of it."

Major props to Papa Drone on that one because honestly, I never saw it coming from the guy who was going to resort to picking up men on the street to bring to our house for a group dinner so I could date them, since I was (am) incapable of meeting good guys.

The other unforeseen but pleasant side effect of not being able to keep a man is it seems to have lowered my father's expectations for potential boyfriends. As is expected of men with daughters, he has categorically hated anyone I've ever dated, and had very strict requirements about someone that would be acceptable for his firstborn daughter.

Lately that list of prerequisites has pretty much lapsed to someone who's "intelligent and a nice person," which really could fit the descriptions of most generic guys (well, with the obvious exception of Shmucks and his crew). Apparently everything else is up for grabs. Seriously. I asked him if he would be ok with me dating someone older than him and he shrugged and said, "As long as he's still willing to call me dad even if he's 10 years older than me, then sure."

(So if anyone knows of a nice, moderately intelligent single man in his mid-to-late 60s willing to call a younger man "Daddy," please send his phone number my way ASAP.)

After the incident with my grandfather asking to be made into a great-grandfather, I even asked my dad if he would be ok with me being a single mother someday, if I chose to do so. And he ALSO shrugged at that. I almost made him write out a statement stating that he will be excited when I come home and announced that I'm officially knocked up.

(My mother does not seem to be quite as open-minded and informed me if I do any of the above, she will register for a shotgun. I don't dare imagine what she will do with it.)

But in general, outside of the familial pressure that I do my best to avoid, I don't feel that much pressure on me from my friends and society that I have to rush to the closest altar.

I guess most of the issue can be attributed to a generational difference from those who think a woman's life is over if she's unwed at thirty. And although there are still whispers of this mentality in society, it's definitely not the disaster it used to be when a single woman hits 30 and up.

What matters at the end of the day is that I'm doing what works for me, and I am happy in my singleness and definitely have not met anyone that I would remotely consider worthy of spending the rest of my life with. And if that continues to be the case for another decade, or two, or more, and people want to call me a spinster, or old (hot) maid, so be it.

Instead of cats as my companions, I'll have awesome funny friends and instead of knitting as my hobby, I'll troll the Lower East Side bars a a cougar.

All in all, doesn't look too bad.

Chicks Dig Scars

2009-09-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

I am a huge klutz.

I don't consider myself accident-prone, but I definitely have my share of accidents. I think my guy friend R described it best when he said I was "lacking in that whole hand-eye coordination thing."

It's true. I trip on flat surfaces. I bite it and fall down on my face pretty regularly. I walk into doors and furniture. It's such a natural occurrence at this point that when I do something that would be embarrassing to a normal person, like walking straight into a door in a very public space, I just get up, wipe myself off, shrug it off, and keep going.

I was always envious of graceful girls, ballet dancers, figure skaters, women that carry themselves regally and probably never get concussions from getting hit on the head by refrigerator doors (Senior year of high school, no big deal).

But then again, they probably don't get into the shenanigans that I find myself in, and therefore don't have the fun anecdotes that I have, best chronicled by the scars and bruises leftover from my multiple injuries.

My most impressive bruises were an assortment left after a horseback riding adventure in South Africa. I had this fabulous fantasy in my head of riding a horse into the sunset on the beautiful white sand beaches of South Africa, but it turned out to be much more physically demanding (and smelly. and dangerous.) than I had originally anticipated.

When my horse Chelsea took off into a trot with me on her back, with no previous horseback riding experience (other than that one time I rode on the back of a pony when I was four), I clung on for dear life until one of the instructors saved me. Apparently I hung on so tightly that I was left with huge baseball-sized bruises all along my butt, thighs, and calves.

Later, back on steady ground in our hotel room, my sister fell over laughing as I gingerly examined my injuries. It looked like I had been massively beaten on only the lower half of my body. The bruises were so resilient they outlasted the jet lag. Luckily the trip to South Africa took place in January, summer in the Southern Hemisphere, but frigid in New York, so warm clothing covered up my physical memoirs, and I avoided any questions about the obvious fight I had gotten into with an angry elf.

I haven't always been that lucky with my mishaps. I managed to ram my head into the edge of my armoire once when I was reaching down to pick out a shirt. I did this with such gusto that I wound up with a black eye, and had to go to work for the next few days sporting a lot of concealer and dealing with incredulous looks and a kindly inquiry from the HR woman if I'd been having problems at home.

In less of an accidental move, I got my belly button pierced as my first act of independence my freshman year of college. I, just like every other 17 year old out here, thought it was the coolest look ever, but hadn't anticipated the pain, not only the pain of the actual piercing, but the subsequent pain while it healed.

I learned quickly that every time I sat down and my pants rubbed against the ring, there would be substantial pain from the shifting. I solved this problem by unbuttoning my pants every time I sat down, from class to mealtimes, to an embarrassing encounter when I stood up to meet my friend's father and realized my fly was unbuttoned.

Four years later during my senior year, I decided the ring wasn't so cool anymore, especially since it was continually getting infected and still annoyed me every time I sat down, as well as made wearing high-waisted pants impossible.

So I took out the ring, expecting it to close up. Instead, it just scarred and left me with a small hole at the top of my belly button, a scar I will have for life unless I let my dermatologist stab at it, which is not a feasible option. It's this nagging reminder of my foolish acts of defiance when I got to college, but it still makes me laugh when I think of the awkward moments it prompted.

My most recent injury occurred this past year on a trip to the Bahamas with my family. Little sister E wanted to go on the water rides at Atlantis, so we made a day out of it. We went on all of the fun slides with height requirements before taking a break by drifting down the "Lazy River Ride," where you sit on an inner tube and float around a giant circle in three feet of water. Totally fun and harmless right?

Oh no, not if you are me. About twenty minutes in, my inner tube managed to get pushed into a wall and it turned out that the surface was jagged, leaving me with several deep gashes along my left ankle and foot. We ran over to the nearest emergency station where they disinfected and bandaged my foot.

The next day, the deepest gash on my left ankle was still bleeding, so I was taken to the nurse's station at the resort, where I had to fill out three pages of medical history to get ointment and a full foot wrap. She also told me that I had to stay off my foot and out of the water if I wanted the blood to clot.

Considering I was in the middle of the Bahamas on vacation, this wasn't about to happen, so I ignored her instructions for the next few days until I returned home to NY and kept my foot elevated for three days straight. After this, the wound finally closed up and scabbed, but for some reason, decided not to completely heal, leaving behind an elevated scar.

I was worried it was infected, so I asked several people to touch it ("Touch it, touch my scar!"), which they wouldn't (way to be loyal in my time of need, little sister E). My mom finally took a look; apparently being a parent means you are required to deal with your offspring's gross issues that no one else even wants to touch, literally. She was so worried she told me that I might have skin cancer and I should go to the dermatologist.

Instead, I showed it to my friend T, who is doing his residency in plastic surgery, so he seemed like a good dermatological substitute. He made a disgusted face (always good when a doctor-in-training is disgusted by your scar), and told me that I should get it checked out because it looks like cancer. Did I mention T is going to be an awesome doctor someday? Wonderful bedside manner...

So now, I have this very impressive one-inch scar on my left ankle that in addition to the possibility of being cancerous, was also caused by a children's lazy river ride. There were four year olds on this ride that managed to exit in one piece, but I, of course, managed to get potential skin cancer from it.

I maintain that the scars and bruises are just physical souvenirs from the fun times and adventures I've been on. Especially that lazy river ride. Those mini tides were QUITE exhilarating; I'm so glad I'll remember them for the rest of my life.

I think Keanu Reeves said it best as Shane Falco in The Replacements: "Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory...lasts forever."

That's right kids. Glory. Lasts. FOREVER.

Oh, What a Night

2009-09-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

Despite what you may think, it takes a lot for me to get into the hijinx that I manage to find myself in regularly. A big part of that is alcohol. But the other part of the equation is my two partners in crime, girlfriends S and R. And when we all go out together, it's guaranteed to be an entertaining night.

One of the most memorable of these nights occurred a few months ago. We had a pleasant dinner in the lower east side and then stood on the street trying to figure out what bar we should go to. While we were arguing, this guy wearing a shirt that read, "ERIK'S BACHELOR PARTY" approached us.

"What are you girls doing tonight?" he asked.

Even though I'm usually hostile to strangers, he was a totally vanilla white guy that seemed harmless enough, so I told him we were trying to figure out where to go.

"Well my friend Erik is having his bachelor party at this bar, so if you want to hang out with some chill guys and have free shots, you should come on by," he told us.

Being a fan of free booze, I turned to R and S to see if they were down, and they both shrugged so we followed the dude into the random bar to attend Erik's bachelor party.

On the way in, the bouncer took one look at the guy leading us in and the three of us, laughed, and told R, "I'll be seeing you in a few minutes. Trust me."

Slightly confused, I followed the guy up to the bachelor party, losing R and S along the way, and entered a room filled with about thirty guys watching a basketball game. My lone presence and short dress obviously flustered them because one of them shouted out, "Awesome, the stripper's here!"

I realized that R and S had lagged behind and I was in a precarious situation, so I laughed awkwardly and then bolted away to find R and S and drag them back with me. After we made it clear that we were NOT there to strip for them, we were introduced to the man of the hour, Erik.

"I hear congratulations are in order," I said to him, "When's the wedding? Are you excited?"

"It's in October. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm ready to get married. I mean, if you wanted to go home with me tonight, I'd be totally down," he responded.

My condolences to Erik's fiance because I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm not sure it's going to work out. I declined Erik's invitation and pounded a few free shots with the rest of the bachelors. Despite the free shots, it seemed to be a pretty low-key and therefore disappointing bachelor party, so we decided to get the hell outta there.

The bouncer, of course, laughed when he saw us: "I told you so. I knew you weren't going to like it there."

Then he turned to R and said to her, "You're a really fine lady. Would you mind if I got your number and took you out some time?"

R said, "Um, yeah," and ran away.

She meant, of course, that she would mind and was declining his invitation to go out, but the bouncer took it as a yes, she was enthusiastic to go out on a date with him.

He turned to S, confused, and said, "But she said yes. Why didn't she give me her phone number? When are we going to go out?"

At this point, S and I burst out laughing and ran away to join R and tease her.

We were trying to figure out a plan of attack, since Erik's bachelor party had been such a letdown, when I noticed a table of three guys sitting alone watching the basketball game at a table next to us. They were all super cute and there were three of them, and three of us. Perfect!

So I sat myself down at their table, introduced myself, and started chatting with them. After signalling to R and S that they were cool and they should join us, R and S came over to sit down.

This part of the night gets slightly blurry, because we started ordering tequila shots like they were going out of style. It was as if someone had told us that Jose Cuervo was shutting down the next day, because every five minutes we would hail the waitress over and ask for another round of shots. They had to go down to the basement at some point and restock because they ran out.

The guys, it turned out, were all single, nice finance guys originally from DC, and were pretty entertaining once we started downing tequila. I believe it was S who originally proposed that we take shots and ordered the first round, but I lost track quickly after that. And after the bill came, the guys, being gentleman of course, insisted on paying for the many bottles of tequila we had consumed.

At some point they mentioned that they had an awesome roofdeck that they used to play beirut on, and S and R wanted to get their game on, so it was agreed upon that we would all go back to their apartment to play some beer pong.

They did, indeed, have an incredible roofdeck with views of Manhattan, and more importantly, a table, a case of cold beer, ping pong balls, and Solo cups. We put on music and I deejayed while everyone else alternated playing beirut and trash-talking each other across the table.

I came up with a nickname for S's teammate, after noticing that he had to go to the bathroom about every five minutes, and suggesting that he should get a catheter put in, or at the very least adult diapers. For the remainder of the night we referred to him as "Depends," and I honestly couldn't tell you what his real name is if my life "Depend"-ed on it. (Ha, puns are fun.)

At about 3AM, we ran out of beer, which was clearly a problem, so the guys ordered more (New York is obviously the greatest city in the world, if for no other reason than the fact that you can call and order a cold case of Bud Light to be delivered right to your door at 3AM).

S, bored of waiting, though, decided she was uncomfortable in her going-out clothes, so she threw her shoes in the corner and wandered into Depends' room and went through his closet. Deciding that his Brother Jimmy's t-shirt and basketball shorts were acceptable, despite the fact that they were about five times too big for her, she put them on. Then, feeling like a snack, she wandered down to their kitchen and went through the contents of their freezer until she found some Ben and Jerry's.

We were sitting around, munching on party mix, when S padded in innocently, looking like a five year-old who had put on her father's clothes, eating ice cream. R and I just looked at each other and fell over laughing while the guys were just kind of confused.

At about 5AM, I started to feel exhausted and ready to bail. I went to find S to tell her I was going home and found her changing into her own clothes, ready to go home as well. Then we went to fetch R, and the three of us walked out of the apartment.

We stood on the corner, laughing about our night and then I said, "Wait, I didn't give my phone number out. Did you guys?"

"Nope," both R and S said.

"So those guys just spent hundreds of dollars on alcohol for us all night, didn't get any, and didn't even get our numbers?"

Basically, yes.

So all in all, it was a terrific night out, although I am left with many lingering questions that may never be answered:

Did Erik's bachelor party ever get better? Did they eventually find real strippers? Will Erik go through with his marriage? If so, how many years will it be until she files for divorce? Did Depends ever solve his frequent urination problem? Is that bouncer still waiting to get R's number?

I guess we'll just never know...

Ocho Cinco Dating Tips

2009-09-14T00:05:00.008-04:00

So I was sitting around the other day, frustrated, because I'd run into a dilemma. I simply couldn't think of any inventive new ways to meet guys. But luckily for me, HBO was playing Hard Knocks, and I have now found the answers to all of my problems.

For anyone who doesn't know, Hard Knocks is a show that follows different NFL teams through their pre-season. Last season it featured the Dallas Cowboys and this time around, it was a behind-the-scenes look at the Cincinnati Bengals, struggling after their dismal season last year.

The best part of the show, though, isn't the brilliant athleticism that it attempts to showcase, but the comedic genius of Chad "Ocho Cinco" Johnson, their loud-mouthed wide receiver who wants desperately to be T.O. In the midst of his many witticisms, I managed to get the answers I need on how to properly pick up members of the opposite sex, straight from the horse's mouth.

Ocho Cinco Strategy #1:
Invoke Jesus

According to Ocho Cinco's current girlfriend, Maya, they met on a flight when he "borrowed" a wheelchair and pretended he was a cripple so he could sit next to her on the plane. And then as soon as he had her attention, he stood up and said, "Ah Jesus thank you. I'm saved. It's a miracle I can walk!"

Anyone religious and/or with a stringent moral code might want to shy away from this one, seeing as it consists of stealing a wheelchair, pretending to be a cripple, and then invoking Jesus Christ as your own personal savior.

Yes, this might seem to be slightly problematic, but the bottom line is it is downright charming. I know if a guy kidnapped a seeing-eye dog, then donned dark sunglasses to fake blindness, then said he could see again, all to impress me, well I would be damn flattered. The only thing that could make me want to take my pants off more is if he could throw in a cheesy pickup line, something like, "Thank you Jesus for giving me sight because now I can see if you taste as good as you look."

I mean the best part about this move is if it fails, I could just pretend to get injured, thus re-crippling myself, and at least score a pity date out of it. Right? Can't fail.

Ocho Cinco Strategy #2:
Try a Little Creepiness

So, after the "I was a crippled but now I can walk again" gambit didn't quite work with Maya, Ocho Cinco moved on to the next best strategy, violating her private property. While she was sleeping, he took her cell phone and called his own number, so that he would have hers. Then he put his earphones on, so that when she woke up and tried to talk to him about it, he pretended he couldn't hear her.

I am a big fan of being creepy, especially to strangers. Nothing revs up someone's engine like having their personal space violated, and then being blatantly ignored by the perpetrator.

Personally, I find the grabbing the phone a little too passive. I usually like to go straight for a guy's wallet, so I can copy down his name, address, birthdate, social security number, and at least one credit card. This makes it a world easier to run the background and credit check.

And of course, the major advantage is if the background check turns up something I can't abide by, like felonies related to imitating cripples, I still have the credit card number to buy myself a little something pretty. I mean, he'll never notice since he's already buried in debt from those legal fees. And this way I get a consolation prize.

Ocho Cinco Strategy #3:
Be Afraid of Rejection
and
Ocho Cinco Strategy #4:
Don't Be Afraid of Some Mild Stalking

According to Ocho Cinco, the reason he stole Maya's phone and put his own phone number in is this is the best way to get someone's phone number because you never have to actually ask for the digits, which is obviously always awkward and weird, especially if your request is denied.

His instructions are as follows: "You take the woman's phone, you ask to borrow it, you tell her your phone is dead at the present time, you dial your number with her phone and you just call her later on or text her. It might be some kind of stalkerish stuff but it helps with the rejection process. You don't have to deal with being turned down."

This is quite possibly the most genius of Ocho Cinco's ploys because it is so foolproof. You are guaranteed to get the digits, and then you can resort to stalking as a standby if calling/texting incessantly doesn't work.

I mean for all these years I've been taught not to be afraid of rejection, that there's no harm in failing as long as you try, blah, blah, blah. And now I realize that it was all bullshit rhetoric and Ocho Cinco was right. Who needs the fear of failing when you are guaranteed to succeed aided by just a little white lie? Brilliant!

I don't know about you, but I am going to put these little gems of wisdom to work right away and see what kind of results I get from the fellas once I start creeping them out, stalking, lying, faking physical debilitation, and letting Jesus take the credit when I am miraculously healed. I don't see how this method can't fail.

All I can do now is hope that Ocho Cinco gets his own reality show where he teaches hopeless people like me how to pick up and date members of the opposite sex. It's a craft worthy of a Nobel Prize, which let's face it, at this point is probably more realistic than him holding the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

BAM!

2009-09-07T00:34:00.005-04:00

I think I did a disservice to the last guy I dated, Shmucks, in my last blogpost by painting him as an idiotic, delusional, lying dirtbag.

The truth is he's a really, really idiotic, delusional, lying dirtbag, and I neglected to paint an accurate picture of how truly idiotic he is.

His group of friends consists of about twenty guys who have all known each other (and gotten into trouble together) since high school, and apparently haven't changed very much since those days even though they are now thirty, mostly married, and some even managed to procreate (Bestie R put it best when she said, "If I was unlucky enough to have one of their kids, I would just put a football helmet on its head at birth and cross my fingers for the best").

At least once a month, these esteemed members of society congregate in the city or at their hometown in upstate New York and proceed to shotgun beers and shoot tequila and get belligerent with random strangers (because as I mentioned earlier they are privileged white Jewish guys who are under the impression that they are "gangsta"), until at least one person is puking, one person is missing, and one person is arrested.

I had heard multiple anecdotes about these MENSA conferences, but I figured in typical idiot guy fashion, Shmucks was just exaggerating to make himself look cooler (I have no idea why that would make someone look cooler.) After all, a bunch of thirty-year olds with wives and kids and respectable jobs couldn't be THAT bad, right?

Fast forward to Shmucks' birthday. All of his friends and his older brother came into town for the celebration, about twenty guys in total.

(Quick Side Note on Shmucks' Brother: Shockingly, he seems to be the fuckup of the group. For some bizarre reason, he has this propensity towards drinking and driving. The moment alcohol hits his lips, he feels the need to get in the car and speed down the Palisades Parkway until he's pulled over. Apparently, this is an improvement from what he used to do, which was to blow massive amounts of cocaine, then drink and drive. He's on his third DUI in five years, and on the verge of doing real time.)

The theme for the evening (oh yes, they had a theme) was inappropriate t-shirts. For example, Shmucks was clad in a shirt that demonstrated Karma Sutra positions using cartoon vegetables. His friend C was wearing a shirt that said "I Kick Puppies." He had it custom made because apparently when he tried to text "I Lick Pussies" to a girl, his phone keypad automatically changed it to "I Kick Puppies." This did not have the intended effect on the lucky lady recipient (although I'm not sure she would've been that impressed with the original text either).

They started playing beer pong at 4PM and before they even went out to the bar, had polished off three handles of tequila and eight cases of beer. I started getting drunk texts around 8PM that made no sense whatsoever and by the time I met up with them at the bar at midnight, they were completely wasted.

I walked into the bar to find Shmucks about to throw an empty beer bottle at the head of someone literally three times his size while his friends held him back. I should've known what I was in for, just cut my losses, and walked right back out the door.

Instead, we managed to convince Shmucks it was time for him to go home and we attempted to hail a cab. Unfortunately, at the corner we ran into some other drunk white dudes already trying to get a cab, and one of them stumbled up to me to say, "Which one of these losers is your boyfriend? You should come home with me instead."

Of course, at this point, the pugnacious idiots I was with got in his face and started shoving him and telling him to back off, while I futilely tried to stop them. Luckily for me, at this moment a cab pulled up, and I managed to force Shmucks and his friends into the taxi.

As Shmucks got in, he yelled at the guy, "Fuck you douchebag!" (What can I say - although his vocabulary is limited, he's clearly a poet in the making), and slammed the door. The guy swung his fist towards Shmucks but ended up punching the door of the taxi just as we sped off. The idiots I was with, of course, found this amusing, while I was just exasperated.

I thought at this point the excitement for the night was over. However, we arrived at Shmucks' apartment to find a brand new scene of chaos.

The rest of his crew had made it back there before us. As four of them played beirut in the kitchen (with the case of beer they had just picked up on the way), two of them were passed out and snoring in the living room, and their friend J was in the bathroom puking his guts out (Apparently he had only eaten a salad before the binge drinking commenced and was now worse for the wear. What an amateur).

Shmucks proceeded to find Sharpies in the apartment so that they could draw on the faces of the passed out idiots while the awake idiots took pictures of them in posed positions (seriously, after the ball-slap game, this is the most absurd aspect of boy behavior I've ever encountered).

Then, everyone congregated around the bathroom to leer at J, who was half-passed out on the toilet, and argue about the best course of action to take care of him.

"We should give him some Advil," someone piped in.

"Yeah, otherwise he'll feel awful tomorrow and have a bad hangover," someone else concurred.

"Yeah, let's make him take these Advil right now," someone said, pulling the pills out of the medicine cabinet.

"That's a terrible idea," I told them, confiscating the Advil. "His stomach is all messed up right now, which is why he's puking. The last thing he needs is Advil, which will make his stomach feel worse since there's nothing in it. What he needs is water and bread to soak up the alcohol."

Silence.

"Are you a doctor?" one of them asked me.

"No, just not a moron," I informed him.

They decided to respect my orders and I prepared to go home and call it a night, having done my good deed for the night in not letting these fools kill J, when Shmucks decided he was mad at everyone. I was sitting across the room from him, saying goodbye to his friend C, when he suddenly launched a wooden stool towards us. As it fell the floor, narrowly avoiding both of us, I jumped out of the way and yelled at him, "What the F are you doing you jackass?"

At which point Shmucks yelled at me, "Shut up! I've had enough of your lip for tonight!"

C jumped up and yelled back at him, "Stop yelling at her just because you're an asshole! She didn't do anything!"

Since he was too far away for me to slap his nuts, I yelled back, "Fuck you! I'm not the drunk asshole throwing stools around!"

At which point we all started yelling at each other at the top of our lungs while Shmucks and C heaved whatever was in arms' length toward the other one.

It was at this moment that Shmucks' older brother stumbled into the room, and finding that the bathroom was occupied (with J, still puking), he limped over to Shmucks and projectile vomited all over Shmucks' bare feet.

The throwing and yelling ceased immediately before C and I looked at each other and burst out in laughter. Shmucks, obviously, was not amused and continued to yell at all of us and his brother for being such a "fuckup," but I didn't hear anything he said because we were laughing too hard.

I thanked C for standing up for me, made sure J was still alive, and left the apartment as Shmucks wiped up his brother's vomit while said brother tried to convince everyone in the room to give him his car keys because he was "totally OK to drive home now."

I think we can guess who ended up in the slammer that night...

It shouldn't surprise anyone to know that night was the last time I saw Shmucks. I shall always cherish my last image of him, crouched down on the floor, screaming bloody murder as he attempted to wipe his brother's vomit off his feet and the floor. Oh, the memories.

And hopefully, I have cleared up any lingering doubts you have about the extent of Shmucks' idiocy and douchebaggery. I think it's an understatement to say that he set the bar for how low my standards can be.

Celibacy is the New Black

2009-08-31T05:25:00.012-04:00

Although most people would describe my summer as an extended dry spell, I have decided to liken it to an exercise in discipline and self-restraint.

I have sworn off guys in the past, announcing loudly that I was becoming asexual and celibate, an amoeba if you will. And much to everyone's amusement, that never lasted very long because within a week or so I would meet some semi-attractive and/or semi-interesting prospect, and my proclamations would quickly be forgotten.

But I have discovered the secret to making celibacy work and it's a bitter pill. After finding out that one too many guys I know are total and utter scumbags, including a handful that I had previously actually trusted, I have absolutely no desire to associate with the opposite sex whatsoever.

Which really isn't too surprising when you consider what happened with the last guy I dated, Shmucks. In addition to being a total moron (he underlined words in his books that he didn't understand, which is how I discovered he still had no idea what the words "coitus" and "irrevocable" meant), he was also a complete dirtbag. One night when he had passed out from too much tequila, his phone kept ringing incessantly so I picked it up to find out that another girl was calling him at 2AM because he had previously texted her (while he was with me): "I want to lick you all over your body."

Telling him to never speak to me again wasn't a total loss, except I probably did a disservice to mankind in that I'm pretty sure him and his friends are a step down on the evolutionary ladder and could've provided scientists with endless hours of research. They are a group of privileged white Jewish guys who are under the impression that they are "gangstas," even going so far as to wear red bandannas (just like the Bloods), which was amusing to me at the time, and just embarrassing to look back on now.

So between him, the Murray Hill adventures, Goldsomething, and just general guy idiocy, I have been feeling pretty disgusted with men, which has probably been the reason I've been extra hostile as of late.

I am infamous in my circle for being rude to guys that hit on my friends and me in bars. I don't like when guys are aggressive in any way and can't take a hint to back off. This has led to a few mild confrontations in the past, usually being called a "bitch," which I've become accustomed to. But lately, I've decided I'm not longer tolerating that and I'm fighting back.

A few weeks ago I was out with my girlfriend S and these annoying guys at the bar offered us shots. I turned them down, but they wouldn't back down, and one of them started to yell out insults and jibes. At this point, I was just fed up, so I turned away but as soon as they had forgotten my presence and were sipping on their drinks, I leaned over and slapped the offender as hard as I could in his crotch.

Side Note: For those of you who are not as violent and/or experienced in the area of ball-attacking as I apparently am, there was a rhyme and reason to my actions. After years of unsuccessful attempts to kick boys in the nuts (yes, I was a feisty teenager, and wow do guys have quick reflexes when they see a girl lifting her knee!) I had all but given up.

However, one fateful day in college I was hanging out at a fraternity with some guy friends when they started playing the "Ball Slap Game," which consisted of them attempting to lightly tap each other on the nuts. Apart from this being absurdly baffling behavior (Seriously. Girls never sit around playing the "Slap Each Other In the Breasts Game." No wonder we're considered the more mature gender), I was amazed by how often they succeeded in their endeavors.

You see, when you go for the slap instead of the kick, you get a great deal more extension with your arm than you do with your knee, so you can place yourself at a further distance from your opponent, giving him much less time to react and defend himself. The key is to wait for someone to let his guard down and then swiftly reach over and smack his genitalia with the palm of your hand.

Just a little lesson for the kids out there!

Anyways, back to my story. After I slapped him in his man area, he yelped out, "That girl just hit me in my balls!" while his friends looked on stunned. He iced his nuts with his cold beer for the remainder of the night while they gaped at me in amazement and I'm sure called me some names to each other, but they didn't dare say anything else to me directly for the remainder of our stay.

For some reason, maybe because I am thoroughly exhausted with men, I found my behavior to be completely acceptable, even warranted, and felt like I had been doing a favor to all females by teaching these idiots a lesson.

However, the rest of the world seems to view it differently. Much to my surprise, when I repeated my tale of bravery, my friends just laughed and asked me with confusion what the hell had come over me and why my gut reaction was to go around slapping guys in the nuts.

The criticism, of course, didn't deter me from my newfound ball-slap reflexes. This past weekend, out with S again (why does trouble seem to follow us?), we met up with our friend C and some of his friends we had never met before. I overheard one of them ask C who sang the song that was playing at the moment and when I leaned over to tell him, he responded with, "I didn't fucking ask you, did I? I was talking to C."

Immediately C apologized to me and the offender's girlfriend reprimanded him with, "You can't talk to her like that, she doesn't know you!" After I got over my initial shock, since I'm not used to people speaking to me like that for no reason whatsoever, I decided I shouldn't react since he was friends with one of my friends.

However, I pulled C aside and informed him that out of respect to him, I had refrained from hitting his friend for being rude to me. At which point C laughed and said, "You have my absolute permission to slap him. He's being a complete asshole."

So with C's blessing, I bided my time, waited until the jackass was in the right position turned towards me with his genitals unguarded, and I leaned over and smacked him with all my might on his balls. What I didn't anticipate was his reaction, which was to instantaneously lean over and smack C in his balls. Both of them doubled over in pain, clutching their respective scrotums. Then the bouncer came over and told them if they wanted to fight, they would have to leave. I received no such reprimand.

I stand by my actions and want this to be a warning to any guy that just thinks about saying something inappropriate in the future. That's right, buddy. You're going to end up with some sore balls for the rest of the night. And that's just the best case scenario. Better think twice.

So needless to say, my bristly exterior has not been making the boys come a-runnin as of late (what's that they say about catching more bees with honey? pah, clearly ridiculous).

But I gotta say, hopefully without jinxing it, by now I'd have expected to be ready to jump the first virile male that crosses my path, and instead I remain completely indifferent to sexual encounters with the opposite sex (and relations with the same sex, I had a fun trip to Lesbian-A-Go-Go a few weekends ago and wasn't particularly interested in testing those waters out either).

For the time being, I don't see any reason to alter my behavior, but that may likely change once I meet a hot guy with or without glaring red flags, or when I am arrested for assaulting some dude's gonads, whichever comes first. And really at this point, I think it's a toss up.

Murray Hill Madness

2009-08-25T01:46:00.002-04:00

New York, just like any other city, has areas that have certain stereotypes attached to them. Everyone knows that the hippies hang out in the Village and that the investment banker yuppies go out to the Meatpacking district and spend an exorbitant amount of money for bottle service and the freedom to fist pump their worries away (and oh boy, do they!).

But perhaps, my favorite land of stereotypes is that of Murray Hill, the East side of Manhattan in the thirties. On the weekdays, it's pretty mellow, and people who work in midtown wander over there for happy hours and dive bar food and beer. But then on the weekends it transforms into a veritable haven for the bridge and tunnel crowd. Hoards of people from New Jersey and Long Island literally pour into the bars and commence their energetic muscled poundings to Bon Jovi, Journey, and Billy Joel.

I swear, I have been in a bar that was by all accounts mellow at 9PM and suddenly at 11PM, Livin' On a Prayer comes on the jukebox and suddenly everyone's fists are in the air, emphatically singing along to every word about Tommy and Gina.

For this reason, I have tried my best to avoid Murray Hill on the weekends as much as is humanly possible.

Then, a few weekends ago, my friend R convinced me to go to a party at her friend's apartment in Murray Hill. Ok, in truth, there wasn't much convincing to do once she told me there would be free booze. I'm a sucker for free beer (and hey, you can stop your judging right there - I am not a freshman girl getting lured into the fraternity parties with the promise of free beer - the cost of alcohol really adds up in the city so a girl's gotta take all the free beer she can get!)

The party turned out to be not so much of a party as a gathering of about ten people, but there was a lot of free beer, so I had no problems sticking around and meeting R's friends from college.

So at some point, we were all sitting around the coffee table and talking when one of the guys pulled out an empty beer bottle and announced, "Everyone ready? Let's play Spin the Bottle!"

R and I glanced at each other, laughing, but he wasn't kidding. Once he put the bottle on the table and made his first spin, I started looking around incredulously a) to see if everyone else there was going along with it and b) to see if I had suddenly entered a time warp into the seventh grade.

But apparently, this Classy Murray Hill crowd (Classy with a capital C, obviously), was used to this, because they were all into it. So I'm going to attribute it to the free beer I'd been drinking and my latent seventh grade desires to fit in that I actually went along with it and played the game.

Later, R and I would wonder if it was worse that someone had actually proposed that we played Spin the Bottle, or that her and I had silently opted to play the game after all.

Funnier still, the game turned out to be very PG-rated. When the bottle landed on me, I literally gave the guy a very quick closed-mouth peck. I think I've gone further with our pet dog than I did with him. However, not all the guys turned out to be such gentleman. When it was my turn to spin and it landed on a stranger, he went all out and literally attacked me with his tongue, to which I made a strangled yelp and leaped back to the couch, much to the amusement of all the witnesses.

Two weeks later I randomly ran into the guy at a bar in Murray Hill and he didn't remember me. I actually had to say to him, "Remember, you tried to make out with me during a game of Spin the Bottle? You had your tongue in my mouth!" I'm still not sure that clarified things for him since the Spin the Bottle is apparently a regular occurrence.

The whole night in general was reminiscent of my prepubescent years, sitting around drinking beer in someone's living room at a time when hanging out with the immature, armpit farting boys and playing Spin the Bottle with them still seemed like a good idea. I had previously held the lofty delusion that I had matured a lot since those days since I am now all of twenty and six, but it turns out, nope, not so much.

The whole excursion has not done much to improve my opinion of Murray Hill, and if anything, I'm more judgemental than I was before of the inhabitants and visitors of this area of the city.

And inevitably, of myself.

The Heart of the Matter

2009-08-18T00:02:00.001-04:00

Today, I was pondering forgiveness. If you love someone, or what is much likelier the case if the act of forgiving is involved, loved someone, is it necessary to forgive them for the sins they have committed against you? Or is it ok, healthy per se, to move on with life harboring the resentment and anger?

I haven't had the greatest breakups in history. Ok, ok, I've had some of the worst breakups ever.

This is no exaggeration. On New Year's Eve in 2003, I got into a fight with my then boyfriend in San Francisco, where I had flown out to spend the holiday with him, and he was so angry at me he kicked me out of the city. As in, no joke, I was puking into his toilet and he threw open the door, tossed my suitcase in, and said, "Pack your shit. I called you a cab and it'll be here in 20 minutes." With no return flight booked I had to sleep in the JetBlue terminal until 6AM when the next flight departed to JFK.

At the time, my friend who I had managed to get on the phone in the middle of New Year's festivities told me to buck up because in another year we'd be able to laugh about it and at parties I would have the uncontested best breakup story. She was right. I am a hit at parties.

(Side Note: The last time I had indirect contact with this ex was this past Superbowl. My friend R and I had decided since we didn't really care about the Steelers or the Cardinals, we would root for "Team Booze and Buffalo Wings." Therefore, as a joke, I was wearing my Hooters tank top when much to my dismay, I ran into the ex's little sister in line at the bathroom. I hadn't even known she'd moved to New York. She proceeded to tell me her brother had just gotten engaged and asked me politely if I enjoy working at the Hooters in the city. Absolutely mortifying. I haven't worn the shirt since.)

The point of this digression is that I have had a good many situations in which forgiveness seems implausible. As I've mentioned before, I'm pretty terrible at staying friends with my exes, because after the explosive breakups, it's difficult to revert to small talk.

But today, I was wondering if I am wasting precious energy on bad feelings. After all, if someone was worth loving in the first place, shouldn't they be worth forgiving now for whatever ugliness passed between us?

For the past month or so, I have found myself actively mad at my most recent serious ex-boyfriend, Goldsomething. We had managed to stay friends for a while, mostly because we parted mutually when he moved away about a year ago. The reasons behind the anger are complicated and entirely uninteresting to anyone except my diary, but in short he lied to me about something insignificant, which made me realize that our friendship was based on a very unstable foundation and wasn't healthy for me to partake in any longer.

Despite my efforts not to dwell on it since, I found myself having bursts of anger at random moments, and refused to allow myself to miss him or ponder if I had made the right decision in cutting him out of my life.

I don't really have the energy to be angry with him anymore, though. I think at his core he is a good person, which is validated by the fact that I loved him not too long ago. And thus it logically follows that I should be able to forgive him and move on, with or without him in my life (for the foreseeable future, it will be without).

On the other hand, I'm not sure some people deserve forgiveness. For example, I can laugh about getting kicked out of the West Coast six years later, but I'm not sure I will ever fully forgive the guy for doing so. If I ran into him on the street today, I would have a hard time not inflicting physical pain. Once again, I am not sure this is the healthiest attitude to have, but that would be my honest gut reaction.

All in all, forgiveness sounds like a lovely idea in theory, but practicing it seems to be the difficulty. I would love to be zen like the Dalai Lama and some of my other friends who are undeniably better people than I am, and much more open to forgiving those who have wronged them. But I'm not sure I'm completely capable of that.

Mommy Issues

2009-05-10T01:06:00.003-04:00

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm giving a shoutout to all the guys I have ever known who never successfully untied themselves from their mothers' apron strings.

I have a general rule: if a guy talks to me about his mom within the first hour of meeting me, I'm outta there.

Why?

Oh, because nothing scares me more than a guy who has mommy issues.

These guys are all over the place, blending in with all the other normal folk, pretending that their mothers don't still run their lives.

They're the ones that are usually the firstborn or the only son in a family, and therefore their mothers coddle them from birth and never really stop. Therefore, no girl they bring home is ever good enough, and they never get over being their mother's son.

I was once in a car with a boyfriend at the time, and his mother actually asked him if his bowel movements were regular, because she was worried he wasn't getting enough fiber in his diet. Even more worrisome was the fact that he answered her like it was a normal conversation topic. Yes, mom, I've been pooping on schedule.

She also still did all his laundry, despite the fact that he was in his mid-twenties. She would wash his underwear and fold it into perfect little squares. He had no idea how to do his own laundry; he once looked at my fabric softener like it was an magical.

In college, I dated a guy who was so incapable of feeding himself that his mother had to make him meals for a week, and put them in his freezer, so that he would only have to pop them in a microwave to have a full, nutritious meal.

Terrifying, I know.

I've known a handful of other guys, Dry Cleaner Guy included, who told me upfront that their moms tell them how special and smart they are. I don't even want to drag poor old Oedipus into this, but the psychological ramifications seem to be that these guys are overly arrogant and simultaneously needy.

Which is one of the reasons that as soon as my friend P started talking about his mother's menopause, R and I knew that she was in for trouble. And why I'm pretty terrified of guys that still live at home with their parents.

I have nothing against people who are close to their families. I am the first one to admit that my father still sees me as a four year-old and spoils me rotten. He called me a week ago to remind me to wash my hands before I eat because of the swine flu outbreak. Because normally, I'm so dirty and unsanitary that I don't wash my hands before I eat. Thanks Dad. Appreciate that.

And no, I don't find this hypocritical, because my father is the second person to point out my faults (my mother would be the first), so I have no problem letting him get away with playing the overprotective father role once in a while.

Plus, I've been doing my own laundry for over ten years now, so go me.

Now, if I could only remember to wash my hands before I eat...

True Romance

2009-05-07T23:11:00.001-04:00

There was a time when my definition of romance was flowers and over-the-top gestures. I literally demanded jewelry and chocolate from boyfriends on every significant occasion, from anniversaries to Valentine's Day to my half birthday.

And let me just say it upfront, guys love it when you request that they shower you with gifts. They like it even more when you withhold sex until said gifts are given.

So basically I was every guy's worst nightmare and could have been seen as, oh I don't know, a manipulative gold-digging bitch.

I don't know if it's being older, actual maturity, lowered expectations, that being a material girl living in a material world has gone out of style, or just not being able to get away with acting like a spoiled brat anymore, but my idea of romance these days is completely different.

It's also possibly because I finally came to the realization that flowers die, chocolate gets eaten, and jewelry gets pawned post-breakup.

(But the cocktails I bought with the money I made from selling the jewelry? Priceless.)

The things I actually kept are the ones that really matter. The note that said, “I fixed your heater so you wouldn’t be cold all weekend." The stuffed animal that he drove twenty miles out of his way to surprise me with. That time he gave me his favorite t-shirt because he knew I liked to sleep in it.

Nowadays, all I require to be swept off my feet is a small act of consideration that shows you care and were thinking about me. I think we've been so conditioned to think that romance requires showering a girl in dozens of roses, or closing down Tiffany's for the night and telling Reese Witherspoon to pick a ring, that the tiny things are overshadowed and underappreciated.

One of my friends recently told me that she makes a list of demands from a guy when he wants to prove himself to her, which consists of fancy dinners and presents she wants. And most of these guys actually comply with these stringent demands.

And I remember thinking to myself that even though that is awesome and I give her mad props, that my list would consist of things like always being honest to me, giving me your jacket when I'm cold, buying my favorite snacks at the movie theater, being respectful and kind to my friends and family, etc, etc.

They're not quite as glamorous as dinners at Per Se or a Gucci handbag, but hey, that's just how I roll.

That's not too much to ask, is it?

Let's Be Friends

2009-05-06T00:05:00.004-04:00

So as I've previously stated on multiple occasions, I am really bad at being friends with my ex-boyfriends.

First of all, a giant percentage of them are assholes and/or douchebags (shocker, I know), which means we had ugly breakups, which aren't very conducive to any sort of communication or friendship afterwards.

Secondly, I keep a pretty tight circle around me of people that I trust and enjoy spending time with, so I usually write off anyone that I used to date. Obviously, if you couldn't keep me as a girlfriend I see little reason to keep you as a friend.

On the few occasions that I have been able to be friends with an ex, it usually took many years for us to get past any weirdness and just be pals.

But I am now wondering about this policy because I saw an ex this past weekend that I still care for deeply, and it was a relief that we could be together again without awkwardness (for the most part), and fall back into the rhythm we had before we started dating.

And it was really nice to know that I can still keep him in my life, that he's still there for me. After all, he was a major part of my life for a period of time, he knows me better than a lot of people out there, he gets me, and he accepts me for who I am. I've found that people like that, outside of relatives who have no choice but to love you, are few and far between.

But on the other hand, things aren't quite the same as they were between us when we were friends before our relationship. Back then, I would talk to him about the guys I was dating and ask him for guy advice. And we had no problem joking to each other about every topic under the sun, including inappropriate ones like sex.

Now, there could not be a topic more off-limits than sex and other people. Even seemingly innocuous jokes told by third-party friends made me blush with embarrassment. Which is entirely out of character for me. Totes bizarre.

Worse, whenever I found myself about to tell him a funny story about something that happened, but I realized I was about to talk about someone I had dated since him, I found myself stumbling over my words as if I had something to hide.

From the people I know who do manage to remain friends with their exes, the key is being able to talk about these things and be honest with one another. But for some reason, I can't wrap my head around this. I worry that it's too hurtful and uncomfortable, but maybe in this case it's just too soon.

Or perhaps, it's because given the circumstances under which we ended our relationship, it's not entirely out of the question that someday we get back together. And if this were to happen, I'm sure he wouldn't want to know about my escapades during the time we were apart.

Nor would it be very fair not to disclose to him important details about what I've been up to. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary, but I'll worry about that when the time comes; there's little point in stressing about it now.

In the meantime, I am collecting tips from people who have managed to maintain positive, healthy friendships with their exes after a breakup. Because I have a newfound respect for those who manage to pull that off. Props!

Jaded

2009-04-30T00:31:00.004-04:00

Just like every other single (and non-single) girl in the free world, my Sunday nights used to revolve around Sex and the City. I used to idolize the ladies, and when I moved here, emulated them in every way that I could.

It took me a while to separate the reality of living in Manhattan from what I had envisioned, but I eventually found my own way to be, and learned to just enjoy the show for what it is: a fantasy of what life would be like if there were endless amounts of shoes, bags, food, cocktails, and men.

But the one thing I now find most enviable is not the free-flow of Cosmopolitans and beautiful designer clothing, but that they managed to maintain their sanity and hope after living in this city for many, many years.

Now, let me say, I love this city more than anything. I have loved (almost) every minute of living here. There is always something to do, always a new spot to discover, always someone new to meet.

Lately, however, I haven't been able to escape the feeling that with every passing day, I am getting more jaded and cynical. With every jackass that enters and disappears from my life, I find myself growing more distrustful of people, men especially.

This disturbs me because some of my favorite people are the ones that are the most open, most trusting, most soft. And I am turning into the opposite of that. I am growing harder, more cautious, less hopeful as time goes on.

So if I were to stay here another ten years, I can only imagine what I would become: a reptilian shell of someone who mistrusts everyone she comes across.

I'm not quite sure how to counter this transformation, other than to surround myself with positive people and emulate them, instead of fictional characters from SATC. And surrounding myself with people I do trust and care about can only be beneficial, right?

I still can't help but wonder how long a single girl can survive in this city, plow through the assholes here, and still maintain a semblance of optimism.

It leads me to wonder if my mother was right all along and I should relocate to Alaska, where I can find some rugged, handsome man to keep my cabin heated, if you get my drift.

And hey, I bet I would be a real hit in the middle of Anchorage. There's probably not THAT much going on. Which also means it's going to be hard for me to find a place to get a gyro at 3AM on a Tuesday.

Not like that'll be my primary concern when I'm on my sixtieth day of complete darkness and I have my rugged boyfriend keeping me company.

And just like that, there's some hope in me after all.

Ugly Dudes

2009-04-28T23:15:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I'm doing my regular Tuesday night ritual of watching The Real Housewives of New York and texting my friends snarky comments about the women that we don't like on the show (that would be you Kelly Bensimon - your owl jewelry is hideous!).

Then, my favorite, Bethany, announced her theory on dating ugly versus hot dudes, which is something that I have been pondering ever since my sister E suggested that I start dating uglier guys because there's less of a chance that they will be assholes in the long run.

E's Theory:

Ugly guys are so desperate and excited to get a girl that they will treat you well, instead of being players and assholes like the hot guys, who take getting a girl for granted. Yes, there is a chance of social awkwardness and nerdiness, but that's the trade-off in the long run for not having someone treat you like shit.

I have been rebuking her theory because, really, I just don't see the point of hitting on someone I find unattractive to begin with. That, and I'm scared of guys that live in their parents' basements with their giant collections of porn and Star Trek action figures.

Bethany's Theory:

Uglier guys are more problematic to date because they never get over their ugly duckling syndrome of not being able to get girls in high school, so years later their insecurities still surface. Therefore, even though they might be successful and good catches on paper, they have a high likelihood of having issues and cheating in an attempt to make up for all their personal self doubts.

The more attractive guys, on the other hand, are confident in themselves and when they finally commit to someone, they don't feel the need to stray. And all of those issues of feeling the need to prove oneself and be a cool player don't exist.

This is the first time I've ever heard this line of reasoning, especially since E has practically been beating me over the head to hit on the uglies at bars instead of, oh, the ones that I think are good looking.

Obviously, it's a very fine line to walk. Sometimes the uber-gorgeous guys tend to be the biggest players because they can get all the girls and they know it all too well.

But the more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that some of the biggest assholes I have ever known slash dated have been the ones that had issues of insecurity. Our problems always stemmed from the fact that they needed me to constantly reassure them, or that I felt they were trying to prove something to themselves, which I wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

The fact is I am an incredibly strong-willed and strong-minded girl and sometimes that comes off as arrogance or over-confidence. But that means that it takes a guy with a backbone to put me in my place when need be, and be totally secure on his own before he walks into a room with me.

Anyone that couldn't handle that is just going to look for validation elsewhere and that would inevitably lead to cheating, be it physically and/or emotionally. And needless to say, I'd never wish that on myself or someone that I'm dating.

So now, I am just validated in my conviction to continue to date attractive guys and snub the ugly dudes. And I have Bethany to back me up on that one. True fact.

Rebuke, E?

Decisions, Decisions...

2009-04-27T01:36:00.001-04:00

This is going to come as a surprise to some, but I make shockingly good decisions. My problem isn't knowing what the best thing to do is; it's actually sticking to my guns when I decide something.

I tend to have these epitomes in a flash of genius, am proud for a few hours, and then promptly revert to being too lazy to go buy thank you notes so that I can actually send thank you notes, eating so much junk food that I feel sick, or kissing that guy because he has pretty eyes, etc, etc.

So I made a monumental decision recently to be honest to a fault, to not let anyone pull a fast one on me, to call people on their bullshit. And surprisingly that one has yet to fall by the wayside, though most people would claim my acts of honesty are really just because I'm innately mean.

I also recently decided to have a zero-tolerance policy for lying, and therefore to write off anyone that I didn't feel had my best interests at heart, and then stay as far away from those people as I could. That is the exact reason that I have repeatedly ignored Dry Cleaner Guy's attempts to get in touch with me.

But what has been hard about this one, is trying to call the moment that I am absolutely sure I am done with someone, and need to axe them from my life. It's not like a sitcom or a movie where there is blatant proof of lying and you're yelling at the protagonist to get out of the room. Unfortunately, most things in real life don't seem to be that clear cut.

Thanks to the wonder of modern technology and the Blackberry, though, I was fortunate enough to find out that someone I formerly trusted had blatantly lied to me in an outrageous manner.

And my first instinct was to blame myself, for not knowing any better than to believe him, and feeling stupid for having been that gullible.

I am fortunate enough, though, to have some absolutely fabulous friends who are wise beyond their years and I have summarized their collective wisdom in the advice they gave me:

Look you do the best with the information you’re given and that’s what you did. He lied to you and you can’t blame yourself for believing what he told you. There’s nothing you could have done to make him tell you the truth; some people just don’t know how or aren’t willing to do that. The worst thing you did was to take him at his word and that is nothing compared to the sins he committed against you.

At the end of the day, the only thing left to do is forgive myself and remain true to my decision to never speak to him again.

And buy thank you notes, because I think my friends deserve them, and really they would be quite handy to just have around for those thank-you-note-appropriate occasions that pop up out of nowhere.

So Awkward

2009-04-24T16:22:00.007-04:00

The alternative title to this post was: Things Not To Say To a Girl You Are Trying To Impress. I thought that ran a little long, so this will have to do, but trust me the other title was certainly apropos.

I have this very cute single male friend P who for some reason has trouble getting girls. He's attractive, nice, gainfully employed, doesn't live with his parents, and is really very sweet. So really I had no idea why girls are allergic to him until last night when I decided to introduce him to my best gal pal R over a few pitchers of Sangria.

They seemed to be getting along, and I noticed some positive body language (turning towards each other, hand on the knee, holding hands) so I decided to leave them alone and do their thing.

At the end of the night they exchanged numbers and he insisted on walking her out to a cab, which meant they did a little kissing on the street. I was excited that they seemed to have hit it off and all was going well.

P confirmed this, by telling me that he really liked R and that he's going to call her next week to ask her out on a date. He asked me for advice on how long he should wait to call and where I thought she'd like to go out with him.

At this point, I was practically patting myself on the back for being two for two in setting my friends up.

That is, until R called to update me today.

Apparently the reason P has trouble with the ladies is he is majorly socially awkward. At some point she told him she was alternating between hot and cold in the bar and he said to her, "Why, do you have menopause? I lived at home with my mom when she had menopause, and I wouldn't recommend it. She had crazy mood swings and it was very difficult."

She was speechless, obviously.

It gets better.

After he put her in a cab, he literally texted her within the next five minutes and they proceeded to have the following conversation via text:

P: Hey, it was so great to meet you!

P: I had fun tonight. We have to do it again. Get home safe.

R: Yeah it was! Actually, I'm going to meet my roommate at a bar.

P: Oh, ok. Have fun!

Half an hour later:

P: Home or at the bar?

R: I just got home.

P: I'm home now too.

P: Lying in bed, but would rather be hanging out with you.

R: Why?

P: Because we were having fun and the kiss was nice.

P: Didn't you think so?

No response from R on this one...

P: Haha, have a good night. I'll speak to you soon.

P: We'll hang out when I get back to NY, but don't worry, I won't take you to that sushi place you hate.

Now, I think P is a great guy, but this definitely explains why he may be struggling in the female department. I thought most people knew that you don't really discuss menopause or text incessantly after meeting someone, but clearly P never got those important life lessons.

My new plan is to give him a list of things not to say or do to a girl that he can keep in his wallet and refer to whenever he speaks to someone of the opposite sex.

Because really, even after hearing the story and writing about it, I am still laughing over his text messages. He obviously means well, but has utterly no idea what he's doing.

Speechless, utterly speechles.

The Philadelphia Story

2009-04-21T17:18:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I headed very slightly south to visit the little sister at her current stomping grounds in Philly. It was a beautiful spring weekend, which involved a great deal of ambling around outdoors.

I'm not sure if it was my bright white jeans, or my new haircut, or my sister in a short skirt, but at some point I noticed that everywhere we went guys were blatantly staring at us. At first, I just assumed that's par for the course on a college campus and the co-eds were mistaking me for a college student, or even better, a high schooler attending Admissions weekend.

But then when we were walking on the street to our hotel, it didn't cease. At some point, we actually got honked at. So now, I had to chalk it up to the fact that we were both looking particuarly fly that day, or way more likely, that guys in Philadelphia are not as smooth at checking girls out as the guys I'm used to in New York City.

I mean it, the men in this city have checking out down to an art form. Their eyes seemingly never stray from their blackberries, and yet they can report minute details about the women they pass on the street, down to a hot girl's bra size if so needed.

I have no idea how they do it, because when I check guys out it's the most obvious thing in the world. I haven't exactly mastered the art of being subtle, in any part of my life, so scoping out men is no exception. My friends burst out laughing in the middle of streets and bars because they see me pause, do the once over, and then assess whether he's hot or not.

Which leads me to wonder where all the men here picked up this skill. I mean if I stop paying attention for one second when I walk down the street, that's the moment that I trip over a fire hydrant or almost get hit by a bus. So, how do all these guys manage to multi-task to the point where they're replying to work e-mails and looking up the Yankees score WHILE checking out women? It's unbelievable!

Maybe I just have really bad peripheral vision and this is a sign that I'm getting old and need my eyes checked. Or I'm just not as observant as the average male on the street. Or I get distracted easily. (Oh, is that guy hot? I can't tell. Let me get a closer look. Oooh, a Mister Softee truck forget it! I want a vanilla shake!)

In any case, I am going to get to the bottom of this mystery, because if I can learn the secret to surreptitiously ogling people without them noticing, well, I think I am well on my way to a life of a secret agent.

Or at the very least, I can check out guys without the hassle of falling on my face in the process. Which is really nothing to take for granted once you've walked into as many garbage cans as I have.

The Laws of Attraction

2009-04-20T22:16:00.006-04:00

I've been thinking about what it is exactly that attracts me to a person. Clearly if he's not-so-secretly psychotic or just a completely blatant scumbag then I'm totally taken in. Oh, and if you throw in a little unemployment, living with your parents, and/or sexual disfunction, then say no more, I am YOURS.

After years and years of dating assholes, I thought I had finally figured out why girls have an asshole attraction complex. It's this fantasy of being the one that finally reforms him, and the one person in the world with whom he's actually nice and caring and vulnerable.

Plus there's something ridiculously sexy about a bad boy who just acts like he doesn't care about anything, yourself included. Who needs a nice guy to treat you like a princess when you can get some hot guy to treat you like shit all the time?

Since I can't seem to get over my affinity for assholes, despite having figured out the psychology behind it, my sister has suggested that I start pursuing ugly guys, because then they will be so excited to get any girl at all that they'll definitely be nice.

I pointed out that these guys might not be used to talking to an actual girl in person, since they're only used to talking to their Princess Leia action figures at home, and she pointed out that a little social awkwardness is better than being a player.

I couldn't really argue with that point. It stuck in my head so much that last week when I was at a bar with a few friends, I saw a few uglier guys walk in, and I thought to myself, "Oh, they're not so attractive. I wonder if I should go hit on them. I bet they're nice."

And then I came to my senses. Because really, there is absolutely no logic in going to hit on the ugly dudes just because you think they might be nicer in the long run. At the end of the day, physical attraction is the starting point for any relationship.

Just so I don't come off completely shallow, there are other things that attract me to a person. I'm a sucker for anyone who is ridiculously talented at something that they have a passion for, be it music or science or art.

When I was in high school, I was madly in love with this guy who was not stereotypically attractive by any means - slightly overweight, curly hair, teenage acne. But he was the star of the basketball team and he had this beautiful tenor voice that literally made me weak in the knees whenever he sang.

I'm not sure if it's because of that, or just because girls like musicians in general, but I still cannot resist a guy who can sing. Which explains why I keep hitting on the stars of Broadway plays despite the fact that the odds are really against me there.

I guess at the end of the day, I can't explain the laws of attraction any more than I could prove the existence of perfect cuboids. But I think as long as I am aware of the traits that make me less rational than I already am, then I'm off to a good start.

And sorry little E and ugly men in general, but, I maintain my stance on my refusal to pursue ugly dudes. There are some lows that even I will not stoop to.

It's a Man Date!

2009-04-17T21:09:00.002-04:00

So I don't know why, but one day my girlfriend R and I got it into our pretty little heads that my male bestie L needed more guy friends, and in the interest of helping him out, we should set him up on a man date. So we found a suitable candidate, D, thoroughly vetted him, and started plotting.

The original plan, aka "Operation: Bromance" was to invite both of them to dinner and then both have "emergencies" so we couldn't show up. However, because we are good people (fine, not-terrible people), we would leave them a list of topics at the restaurant that they have in common, including their jobs, sports teams, and a shared heterosexual love of showtunes.

But then last night R and I were out and texted D to see what he was up to and he agreed to come meet us for a drink. So we moved the plan onto the fast track and called L to come meet us as well.

L and D showed up to the bar and literally after half an hour, I left because I had an early morning. Ten minutes letter, R announced she had to go home, leaving L and D alone on their man date at the bar.

And yes, we are already aware that we are complete and utter assholes.

I wasn't too worried about L because he knows me well enough to know that I usually have something up my sleeve.

But D, on the other hand, totally oblivious, probably thought he was getting attention from two girls, meaning one of us was interested in him. And then he shows up at the bar to have both R and I be like, "Sorry we gotta go, but here meet heterosexual guy pal L. You two have a lot in common. Showtunes. Discuss!"

Within an hour of leaving the bar, I got quite the angry text from L about my deception, which was totally warranted under the circumstances.

So, today, when recapping with R, we reluctantly agreed that Operation: Bromance had been a total fail and we wouldn't be winning any prizes for good deeds in the near future.

But then I got a text from L that he had invited D to a party tonight. Which means they exchanged numbers and are going out again together. Which means that Operation: Bromance might have been a total success!!!!!

I'm expecting my thank you card in the mail any day now, although I'm not sure Hallmark makes a card that says, "Thanks for bailing on me and setting me up on a totally blatant man date. You're a great friend for caring so much."

Of course, the unforeseen consequence of this little experiment is now none of my guy friends will trust me whatsoever (as they probably shouldn't) and any time I ask them to hang out, they will probably make sure that I am not about to make up an excuse to take off and leave them alone with some dude that I have deemed suitable for platonic male companionship.

Nevertheless, I'm thinking I might have a career in this and I can set up my own matchmaking service for guys who want bromances. If you have a friend or brother or weird cousin or stalker or misfit coworker in need of my services, please feel free to send them in my direction.