Mardi Gross

My alumni association hosts an annual party for Mardi Gras. It's one of the major events we have each year. Also, it is a formal thing. OK, well not formal-formal, but women wear cocktail dresses, and men wear suits (except for the hand full who always show up in tuxedos). I feel like I have to express this because people hear "Mardi Gras" and think "Show your tits!" It's not by any means a boobie-flashing kegger.

Fred and I went to the same college, so sometimes he shows up at alumni events. He showed up to the Mardi Gras party a couple of years ago (we were broken up at the time) and hilarity ensued. I've mentioned before that Fred cannot behave himself in public and often finds a way to make even the most mundane public events excruciatingly humiliating. Well, this time he really outdid himself.

Sure, there were moments where I felt embarrassed for him that night. His loud, brutish behavior, his date's wardrobe malfunction. But the crown jewel of the night was something I did not find out about until much later.

The venue at which the party takes place is a beautiful townhouse/gallery with a lot of history. The decorations have an early-American feel in line with the history of the place (so Washington!). It has several heavy wooden tables, bookcases and desks. Well, Fred decided that the furniture was too pretty to just look at. So he rummaged one of the desks and discovered a digital camera in one of the drawers. He decided to have some fun.

First he (or someone else) took pictures of him smiling and giving the camera the middle finger. How nice. Then, he decided that was not enough and took the camera to the bathroom and proceeded to take pictures of his junk. Seriously. He found a strange camera and decided to take pictures of his penis. Nothing I can say here will add to this.

He returned the camera to its location, leaving the elderly groundskeeper (to whom the camera belonged) to discover it later. And I'm sure he thought he would get away with it too. But, since he was smart enough to take face pictures first, it was really easy to identify him. The hand in the penis picture had a sleeve that matched his jacket in the face picture. Dumbass.

I hope he gave up self-portraiture for Lent.

Skid Row Bums

Fred had a relative whom his family ridiculed for a vareity of reasons. One of the most ridiculous was the fact that, despite being well past potty-training age (able-bodied and of normal intelligence), she still would not wipe her own rear.

Fred, on the other hand, was in his mid-twenties and did wipe his own rear, however the responsibility proved to be too much for him. Despite years of practice, he still had not mastered the art of properly cleaning himself. I don't mean to single out Fred. Shrek was just as bad about this. This is more of a general rant.

Dating Shrek was terrible because every single pair of boxers he owned had...evidence of wear. And Fred was so bad that every single surface in his apartment that he had ever sat on smelled like what comes out of one's bottom. It was absolutely foul. I couldn't sit on his sofa without smelling poo.

It just completely blows my mind that the men I used to date would wear roomy boxers and still manage to get their butt juice on them, while I wear thongs -- underwear designed to go up my ass -- and they still are stain-free.

Both of these men tried to defend their wiping skills, claiming that men just have leaky butts. Um, no, not all men do. In fact, in my experience I have found that most do not.

Just to make sure I am not dating the exceptions, I asked some girlfriends about their experience with men having this problem. Then, I asked some men if they personally had this problem. My conclusion is that this is not a normal condition. If your butt is leaking, you really need to go to the doctor and have that problem addressed. Your underwear should not be covered in stains. Your furniture should not smell.

Seriously, boys, you are disgusting. Go to a doctor.

Fred Exposes Himself to Many Things

Fred had a penchant for exposing himself. It was ridiculous.

I know guys seem to think exposing themselves is hilarious. It's not. It's especially not funny when it happens all the freaking time. If I were truly petty, I would tell you how embarrassingly small his junk is and that he was most likely just doing it to try to feel some sort of acceptance for his not-so-well-endowed member. But, I'm not petty. So, I will not tell everyone that he was lacking in his pants.

Fred constantly would be the guy at parties, social gatherings, dinners or study sessions who felt the need to pull his junk out of his pants and wait for someone to notice. It was completely childish. It was completely disgusting. And it completely alienated people. The worst part is, this behavior was not limited to the privacy of his own house parties. He did it everywhere.

I recall one particular incident in the parking garage in which he realized his jorts were slipping down his waist, so he decided just to push them all the way down and shuffle with them around his ankles. And, yes, he was going commando that day.

I recall another (post-college) incident in which he decided to return from the bathroom at a party my friend was throwing sans pants. In a room full of people he had just met. If he hadn't ruined his chance of making friends that night earlier, he certainly had after exposing himself. Not to mention, it was completely humiliating for me to have my boyfriend expose himself to the first people I had met after moving to a new city.

Of course, there are other stories I have heard about Fred exposing himself, but I did not experience them first hand. Since I am not here to spread rumors, I will not bring them up. But, trust me, Fred's privates have been seen by more people than Jenna Jameson's.

I could go on forever about stories of Fred's junk. But, really, they're pretty much all the same, just different places, different people. I honestly do not understand the fascination men have with their own genitals. Look guys, they're really not all that interesting. And we really don't want to see it. Women are not turned on by you showing yourself at formal events.

Fred, keep it in your pants.

You Make Me Sick

Social norms across countries are randomly different (nothing new there), occasionally surprising (which can be fun), and far-too-often down-right disgusting. There are just some things that I've experienced in other countries that were beyond my normal acceptance of social differences, and crossed the line into - you're still disgusting in my book.

Madrid, Spain.

On a trip to Spain last year, my family and I stopped in Madrid. As I was also in the midst of the leasing process on a new apartment, I made frequent trips to a local computer cafe to take care of my business at home.


I've accepted that there are men and women out there who get their jollies from exploring illicit sites on the internet. I'd even partly prepared myself to experience such a thing while I was abroad. However, I was utterly floored to find that, even in Spain, this was considered "ok" enough to be used as a flirtation method.


I went into the cafe, ready to send another nasty email to the landlords who were being a$$s about the whole moving ordeal, when I noticed the 30ish year old man next to me was looking at porn. I quickly averted my eyes and continued working. But the man kept smiling at me! When he said something in Spanish, I could only grasp but a few words - enough to know he was calling me pretty and something about pictures. Maybe you'll come to the same conclusion as me, but all I could think of was... disgusting.

I mean really. Who sees a girl in a random cafe and thinks to themselves... well I'm looking at porn maybe she's into it. I don't care where you live or what language you speak, there's a line there! We weren't in the red light district, I was not dressed provacatively, and I certainly wasn't trying to get his attention.

Perhaps this guy isn't quite a "loser-ex" by our standard definiton, but it only appears that way since I refused to pose and/or go with him anywhere anyway. Had I done so, I have no doubt that he would have ended up on this blog. Fortunately, I have class.

Ladies, don't lower yourself to date a man who would ask you to pose for porn. Especially if he doesn't speak your language and is doing so in a public cafe, proudly "showing" why he wants you to do so.

Drink it up

Soda molds. I didn't realize this right away. I suppose it ought to be intuitively obvious – it is wet and sugary. But, I think I had always kept urban legends in the back of my mind about how Coke's acidity makes it a great car battery/highway/toilet/grease cleaner. I realize that none of these are true, but the idea still must have stuck on some level.

Also, there was the fact that prior to dating Shrek, I had never seen, or heard of, a soda molding. Like 99% of the population, after opening a soda, I reseal it, consume it, or dispose of it within an hour. Aside from not wanting to attract flies, there is the issue of a half-empty can of soda being a spilling hazard. Being clumsy, I make a point to not leave anything around that could potentially be knocked-over and create a mess. Shrek did not share my diligence in soda management.

Shrek drank more soda than anyone I have ever met (a combination of this and poor oral hygiene contributed to his nasty-ass teeth, but that is another story). He went through 3 cases of it a week. And this is not counting the sodas he bought from the machines in the dorms, the food court on campus or at Burger King. Shrek was also not known for his cleanliness. His dorm was always messy and dirty.

One day, he had gotten stuck working at the front desk of the building for a lot longer than expected (the person with the shift after him decided to leave town without bothering to tell anyone). I felt a little bad for him and decided to do his laundry since I knew he had planned to when he was done with work. I gathered up about 8 loads worth of dirty clothes (it had been a while) and took over the entire laundry room.

When I went back to his room to put his detergent away, I noticed that his room was really gross. Not wanting to bring clean clothes into a dirty room, I decided to throw away some of the trash lying around. I put all the paper plates and candy bar wrappers sitting around in a trash bag. I then went to round up the 20-some soda cans sitting throughout his room and realized that many of them still had soda inside.

So, I took as many as I could carry (4 – I have small hands) across the hall to the bathroom so I could empty them out in the sink. I poured out the first one. Out came some flat Cherry Coke…and a small white mass.

I assumed it must have been something other than mold. I mean really, who leaves soda cans sitting out long enough to mold?

I poured out the next can and even more white stuff came out. At this point I realized what was going on. I was totally grossed-out by the idea of dumping moldy soda in the sink. But, I was even more grossed out by the thought of Shrek just ignoring them for the rest of the year. So, I opted to continue with my plan of emptying all the soda cans and disposing of them.
Out of all the cans in his room, there were three that had no visible traces of mold inside. Three. I have no idea how long it takes a soda to mold to the degree that some of these had, but I am guessing it is a few months.

The worst part was, even after having a talk about the moldy soda, he did not get any better about cleaning up. The next time I was over (a few days later), there were 6 new open cans sitting on his desk.

Follow Your Nose

Sometimes when you need to blow your nose, a box of tissues is just not close by. I understand this. In college, I would only buy tissues if I had gotten sick enough to go through them in a few hours. The rest of the time, I used toilet paper. Sometimes even napkins. I am not ashamed to admit my gross habits (for the record though, I have gotten past this and currently have three boxes of tissues on my desk ... but that is only because work pays for them since they are office supplies).

When tissues are unavailable, there are alternatives, some better than others. If I had to rank the alternatives, I would put toilet paper at the top of that list, followed by cheap napkins (softer than the nice ones), then nice napkins, then paper towels, and then...creative options. Thankfully, I have never gotten to the creative options. Fred, on the other hand, has.

One night I was at his apartment making enchiladas and he decided that he absolutely had to blow his nose immediately. Sure, there were napkins and paper towels in the kitchen. And there was toilet paper in the bathroom. If he were truly a purist, I am sure his anal-retentive roommate had some tissues to spare (Actual real tissues! What a concept!). But Fred opted for the creative option. His choice? A corn tortilla. I'm sure his inner monolouge was something like "I'm such a rebel, I am blowing my nose with food!"

I can't even begin to describe how nauseating it is to see someone blow their nose into the food you are cooking, but trust me, it was not a good time.

I was completely appalled that he decided to use a corn tortilla to blow his nose out of some sick interest rather than out of necessity. Furthermore, an unfried corn tortilla is actually kind of crumbly and not really a good material for this, ergo, it did not exactly work out the way he had hoped. Not to mention, they were much more expensive than any other option and they were what I was fucking cooking for dinner.

I don't know if he thought he was being innovative, funny or both. I found his display to be none of the above. And he was making his own dinner for a very long time after that.

Why The Dud Cannot be Left Unattended, Part III

Once again, the Dud had spent a weekday night over and was getting in the way of me getting ready for work. I decided to lock him out of my bathroom so I could straighten my hair in peace.

That didn’t last long. Within seconds of turning the lock, I heard him opening my dresser then announcing that he was rummaging my underwear drawer. I calmly asked him to stop. He was quiet, so I assumed he had.

A minute later, he asked “If you came out here and I was masturbating with this blue and white lacy thong, would you be pissed?”

No, I am not making this up. I explained to him that I would be pissed and that when I came out, he better not have said undergarment.

A minute later, when I came out of the bathroom, he was in my bed, being intimate with my blue and white lacy thong. Gross. I immediately took it away from him and threw it in my hamper. I have washed it several times since, yet still feel too disgusted by it to ever wear it.

I'm sure there are people out there who would not find this offensive. I am sure there are even people who would be turned on by this. I am not one of those people. I find this incredibly offensive. Perhaps this makes me prude (and trust me, I've been called this many times before).

However, nasty or not, he did something that he knew I would find offensive and disgusting. In fact, he did it primarily for the purpose of ticking me off. While I am incredibly bothered by the nastiness of the situation, I am more bothered by the fact he had the audacity to come to my house and purposely try to do things that would be offensive to me after I specifically requested he not do those things. He honestly found it amusing to do things that were upsetting and offensive to me and expected me to just let it slide.

The way I see it, this is on par with me going to his house, taking a crap in his living room, then thinking it's funny that he is upset by that and expecting him to get over it. It just doesn't seem reasonable, does it?

It's Peanut Butter and Jelly Time!

Drunk dialing is not necessarily the greatest idea... ever. While you certainly can get things off your chest that in other circumstances you may not be able to properly put into words (even though you could avoid slurring if you did so without drinking beforehand), phoning exes, currents, or aquaintances is about as immature as you can get. There is simply nothing that can't wait till you're sober that you need to get done. Unless of course, it's for a midnight rendezvous of somesort - then you better not be so drunk it's... how do I put this delicately?... not worth it.

Drunk dialing you may remember in the morning. But there's something worse, and though most people still categorize it as drunk dialing, I think there's such thing as wasted dialing. If you're competely wasted, there's a high probability that you should not be using your phone, period, as you will not recognize how drunk you are when you make the call.

I got a call from an ex - who will now be referred to as "PBJ" after this story - late on a saturday night after he and I had gone out with different sets of friends. He wanted to meet up. Not thinking much of this phone call, and under the impression it was a drunk dial not a wasted call.

I arrived at his place after only having two drinks over the night myself since I had my car. I walked in to a darkened apartment. I saw PBJ sitting on his couch, in the dark, with his poor dog looking quizzically at him for not petting her. He stood to greet me... or perhaps more wobbled to greet me.

He leaned in. "Heeey therrrrrre. Howzit goeeeeen." Yowza - beer breath. But there was some other smell I couldn't quite put my finger on before I stepped back.

"Hey. Wow you must have drank a lot tonight."

"Yeeeeaaaah. But that'z ook."

Then he leans in for a kiss. Now I figure out what that other smell is. Peanut Butter.

"Did you have any peanut butter before I came over?"

Instead of answering like a human being, he lunges in and kisses me. When he steps back again, there is a smearing of peanut butter across my face. The sticky substance is all over my face. Gross.

His next statement: "Owwwwwwwwwww." Turns out he had a cut on his tongue. First he blamed me, but considering he hadn't gotten that far, I knew it had nothing to do with me.

I go into the kitchen in search of a paper towel or something to wipe the mess off of me and to grab some ice for his tongue to help stop the bleeding.

On the counter sits the jar of peanut butter with the knife still sticking out of it. Because I'm civil and a nice person, I decide to try to clean up his drunken snack. Removing the knife from the peanut butter jar, I discover that it's the sharpest knife he had, serated, and HUGE. And there are obviously tounge streaks still on the knife. PBJ had licked the knife during his binge.

Meanwhile, PBJ starts snoring in the living room. I had been there for ten minutes.

Ridiculous.

It wasn't so much that he passed out, nor was it the peanut butter alone. If he had just been ready to pass out, that's fine. No biggie. And some might argue that peanut butter can be... interesting... in certain situations. Perhaps. But if you invite me to come over before you pass out, proceed to make a pass at me, and then still fall asleep... we have a problem. In this situation, it is niether cuddly nor kinky.

And it's definitely not cute.

Lesson to other boys - be very careful when you make midnight treats after a night of drinking. If it is a snack over which you have very little control that may end up all over your face or with which you can somehow manage to hurt yourself - do not invite a girl over. She will leave. And she will be mad you made her smell like peanut butter and gave her nothing in return.

Da Da Dadadadada Da Da Dadadadada (The Chicken Dance)

The thing I hated most about Fred was the fact that he was completely incapable of not making a total ass of himself. I truly dreaded introducing him to anyone I knew, and hated going anywhere in public with him.

He had a way of embarrassing the hell out of me anywhere we went. I truly mean anywhere. The sorority formal where he decided to loudly announce that another girl looked like a man; the brunch where he was too stupid to figure out a prix fixe menu; my coworker's party where he decided it was appropriate walk around with his pants around his ankles because he was proud of his Nintendo boxers; the release party of a documentary where he decided to pick a fight with some reporters from a national news magazine and the infamous jorts incident are just a few of the times I found myself thoroughly humiliated because of him.

One of the more embarrassing incidents was the first time I introduced Fred to CCG and Dum Dum. Now, Dum Dum was a little special himself, so I figured that nothing Fred could do would be any worse than whatever tricks Dum Dum had up his sleeve that day. I really expected Dum Dum's shenanigans to outshine Fred's. But, I was in for a surprise.

The first time I took Fred to meet CCG and Dum Dum, we went to a local bar for happy hour. In addition to a few beers, we ordered some hummus, potato skins and buffalo wings. As soon as the snacks arrived, Fred wasted no time diving into the buffalo wings. He quickly devoured a couple of them and then...put his chewed-on chicken bones back on the plate with the rest of the wings. Disgusting!

Now, before I say anything else about this, I would like to mention that Fred insists there were no extra plates to put food on. All other people involved remember there being plates (perhaps Fred was too busy stuffing his face to notice). Even if this had been the case, Fred could have either asked for a plate (the bar was not busy), or put the bones on his napkin.

Plates or no plates, it was disgusting. CCG and Dum Dum were both totally grossed-out by this display. Yes, Dum Dum, the loser who had been traipsing around the city all day in high top black sneakers, shorts and no socks was disgusted by something my boyfriend did. That's damning. I was absolutely mortified by this experience.

But, the worst part was the fact that Fred was oblivious to their reactions just as he was oblivious to the fact that no one else touched the buffalo wings.

Since this was early on in the relationship and I hadn’t given up hope that I could mold him into someone who didn’t humiliate me, I mentioned the incident to him a few weeks later. Rather than consider my comment, he immediately got defensive and insisted that there were no plates and that CCG and Dum Dum had no grounds to think he behavior was inappropriate. I told him in the future to just use a plate and let the issue go.

Fred did not, however, let it go. It apparently bothered him enough that he brought this story up to all of his friends until he finally got some girl* to agree with him that he behaved appropriately in this situation. This really pisses me off.

I know this girl knew better than that. I don’t even know this girl, but hell, Dum Dum knew better! Look, I know that people often choose being nice over being honest, but seriously, there is a point where being nice does more harm than good. Fred did something inappropriate and by telling him it was acceptable, this chick is contributing to his behavior. Women like her are the reason there are so many men so set in their inappropriate ways.

* My note to this girl: I sincerely hope that your future husband gets belligerently drunk at your wedding and decides it is appropriate (because some girl told him so) to start stripping while you’re dancing with your father.

Merry Christmas!

Now that I’ve gotten the annual “bad gift” post out of the way, I can put up my 2007 holiday post. This year, I got together with BJA and decided to make this years’ entry about family...more specifically, uncomfortable holiday experiences with our exes’ families (or our own, whatever). If you have any good stories to add, post in the comments section, or email me.

So, I will kick things off:


RGB

I had just met Fred (we weren’t really even dating at this point) when a hurricane was heading toward the city I went to college in. Class was going to be canceled for several days, giving us plenty of time to leave campus and go wherever for a while. This was about a week after things ended with Shrek, so I was feeling particularly awful and just wanted to go home (I should mention home was 1200 miles away. Clearly this wasn’t one of my most rational decisions). I had planned to take a flight back home, but Fred told me that he was going to drive out of town and was willing to take a 1200 mile detour and he would drive up to his house (another 500 miles) after that.

Somehow during the 18 hour car ride, Fred managed to convince me to spend a day at my house, then ride up to his with him.

By the time we had made it to Fred's house, I was completely drained from my recent break up, a long road trip, and the stress of having to leave school so suddenly. When we got to Fred’s neighborhood, he called his parents to tell them we were close. They were over at Fred’s uncle’s house and told him to just come over there.

When we got to the uncle’s house, there was a full family party going on. Parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, EVERYONE was there. So, not only did I have the stress of meeting parents, I had the stress of meeting the whole extended family. Seriously.

Luckily, everyone was really nice, but there were a few VERY awkward moments. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is when Fred’s uncle, after having talked with me for 3 minutes, gave me a very sincere look and asked if I had considered marrying into the family. I was completely caught off guard, and frankly, a little frightened by the question. I responded that it was not something that I had considered. I was then invited to marry into the family. Definitely the most intense meeting of an ex’s family I’ve ever had.

BJA

Holidays are just the time for family, friends, fun, and festivities. Unless you're dating a loser. Then you can toss in a little mortification.

I was dating Neanderthal for... well in hindsight a lot longer than some of the others. He wasn't as bad as many of the guys featured in this blog. In fact, on a whole he was a good boyfriend. But his manners were deplorable. And after his behavior in front of my parents during the holidays... well it didn't last much longer.

Guys, may I stress that you must learn how to hold a fork before you dine outside of your home? You hold it as you would a pencil, or at least that's the closest approximation I can come up with. You do NOT hold it, as Neanderthal did, in a full fisted grip that enables you to shovel food in your mouth. It is gross. And it's ineffective. I can tell because the food is falling off of your fork in different directions. I remember my Granny, who was an impeccably mannered woman, trained by Mrs. Manners, nearly dropped her jaw. Please do NOT mortify me in front of my grandmother.

Food shoveler. Gross.

Every Step You Take

I am creepy. If you’ve ever gone on even one date with me, you can be sure I’ve googled you, looked you up on every social networking site and probably asked several of my friends if they know you. I am horrible about this. But, I can justify my stalking. I don’t want to end up alone with some creep who is going to kill me then throw my body in the Potomac. It may be a stretch to say that I stalk potential dates as a safety measure, but at least (at some very small level) I can say that my stalking is justified and not just creepy.

One of my exes, on the other hand, can not justify his stalking. I have elected not to use even the pseudonym of my ex this time because, this is really screwed-up. This ex openly admitted to checking his ex’s (we’ll call her Bertha) Internet browser history and her email. Furthermore, he didn’t see a problem with this. Granted, he did make some great finds, such as the fact Bertha has quite the fondness of lesbian porn, but I still find this to be a little over the line.

What was even worse was the fact that he continued to check Bertha’s email after they had broken up. Again, he did make some juicy finds, like her correspondence regarding a one night stand with the grossest guy on campus (side note: the one night stand guy totally had the worse acne known to mankind…and an uncanny resemblance to Quasimodo), but really, who does this? The fact that he admitted to finding this email the ‘one time’ he checked makes me think that he was probably really checking her email on a daily basis.

If I hadn’t made a point to change all my passwords, he’d probably be reading my email right now.

They saw him rollin', they hatin'

Shrek drove the ugliest car. Bright teal circa 1990 station wagon. Yuck! To make matters worse, he never cleaned his car. It was filled to the brim with fast food bags and half-eaten food. There were soda spills all over the seats and every surface was sticky, squishy, slimy, or otherwise sickening. The worst part of all was the foul stench that hit me like a brick wall every time I opened the car door. I can’t even begin to describe what it smelled like – it is unlike anything I have ever encountered.

I loathed riding in the nasty-wagon. It was repulsive on the inside, and humiliating on the outside. At a school where everyone drove a nice car, the teal nasty-wagon stuck-out like a sore thumb. I would never want Shrek to drive me and my friends anywhere in the nasty thing (side note: it was his mother’s old car, and she gave it to him because she bought a newer model of the same station wagon in the same color – how tasteful). I would suck it up and call a cab before I would ask him for a ride.

After we broke up, I would start to feel nauseous every time I saw the nasty-wagon. Partly because I remembered how sickeningly filthy it was and partly because the thought of Shrek made me sick to my stomach (really gross psychosomatic problem I had for a bit).

Given my situation, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I got word that Shrek was leaving school. I could walk to class and not worry about running into him and having to awkwardly avert my eyes and hope he didn’t try to talk to me. I could eat in the dining hall and not look up to see that he was sitting at the next table. I didn’t avoid bars that I thought he would go to, I didn’t get nervous every time I walked past his frat house.

Three weeks after his departure, I was the happiest I had been in years. To celebrate, I had a me party with some girlfriends at the usual bar. On the way back home, I looked out the window of the cab as we came around the corner of fraternity row. From a few blocks away, I could see the nasty-wagon parked out in front of his frat house under a street light. I started to feel dizzy and short of breath. Then, as we were right in front of it, I noticed that it appeared to have been in a pretty bad accident.

As soon as I got back, I made everyone go back over to look at it some more. Sure enough, the front end of it was smashed. I assume that he could not afford to get it fixed to go home, so he left it at school. Or maybe it was totaled and he just didn’t have time to go through the whole insurance thing (how could he not have time? It’s not like he had a job or class or anything…).

Over the next few weeks, I made a point to walk a little slower when I passed by the nasty-wagon and laugh.

Apparently, others (I later found out, others = his own fraternity brothers, but that is another loser-ex worthy story that I won’t go in to right now) shared my contempt for Shrek.* During the rest of my time in college, I saw the gradual evidence that his car was the target of someone’s on-going vandalism project.

Each window had been smashed out, tires: slashed, headlights: busted, several vulgarities scratched and/or painted over the bright teal body, insides: destroyed. The grand finale was the morning I walked by his car and saw that the hood and the area around the car was black like someone had finally decided to blow it up. Who knew his own frat brothers would go all Carrie Underwood on his ass?

As much as I disapprove of such acts, I have to admit seeing his car in this shape made me feel a little better every time I walked by.

I would imagine that it is no longer there.

* His fraternity brothers couldn’t stand him anymore by the time he left and made this no secret to the rest of campus. The best part about this is the pledge class he wasn’t there to meet (rush was during the time he was leaving) all know him as “Shrek: the asshole.” It makes me almost not hate his fraternity anymore. Almost.

Cleanliness is Godliness

I will admit that I hate art. Not “the arts”—I enjoy music and dance and theater and have actually participated heavily in all of the above. I hate visual art. I have some hanging in the apartment because I hate bare walls more but I am physically unable to appreciate sculptures or paintings or galleries or displays or anything else.

However, if I hate modern art more than I hate the general category of art. By modern art, I am referring to ambiguous images spattered on canvas or created out of clay or cans or dead bodies or whatever “artists” are calling “medium” today.

Keep that in mind…

The first time Officer/Gentleman was living in Savannah (before OIF III), we weren’t very serious. There was an intimacy to our relationship that came from knowing each other for so long, and having dated seriously in college and when we were together it was like we had never broken up, but by virtue of living 1,362 miles from each other (before he went to Iraq), it couldn’t be that serious. I visited O/G in Savannah three times before he got deployed.

The first time I visited Savannah, it was June. His apartment was both messy and dirty. You could see the dirt on the floor of his shower. There were crumbs permanently affixed to his counters. Worst of all, there was a pile of plastic blue Super Wal-Mart bags that covered a 3-square foot area in the corner of his living room. It was about two feet high. I cringed when I thought about what sort of critters were living underneath that pile. But being young, foolish, in love and desperate to get our relationship back on track, I chose not to comment on them or the general condition of the apartment.

Then I visited in July. His apartment was filthy, as I expected (O/G was never a tidy person), the shower floor was black, so was the kitchen floor, there were chunks of pizza crust, dust, and dirt stuck in the carpets, there were six empty shampoo bottles in the shower. The pile of plastic blue Super Wal-Mart bags had now spilled out to encompass a five-square foot area of the room. Still about two feet high. This time, I decided to ask about the bags.

It’s just handy to have some plastic bags around for stuff.

Granted, but you clearly go to Wal-mart often, so the supply looks to be renewable.

The last time I visited was right before I went to work on the campaign in late August. The living conditions were deplorable. As in, if I had called his chain of command, he’d probably still be pulling staff duty. Luckily I wasn't staying there--we had planned a getaway to the beach and were just swinging by to pick up his stuff. The pile of plastic bags had overtaken a third of his living room. But it was no longer justified by the necessity of plastic bags.

It’s modern art.

He was so very proud.

We talked about getting together after the election but we could never seem to make plans. I think it was my subconscious telling me to stay the hell away.

The Paper Trail

For reasons which are about to become apparent, I am going to go into as little detail as possible about this situation.

When Fred was in college, he lived in an apartment with three other guys. None of these young men were particularly responsible and often neglected to buy items for the apartment such as paper towels, dishwasher detergent, hand soap and, worst of all, toilet paper.

In fact, they would never buy toilet paper. They would sometimes steal it from the dorms across the street when there was a box of it sitting out in the lobby. However, this box was often either guarded or not present (side note: this was still unacceptable because the rolls of TP from the dorm were the ones that are about a foot in diameter and do not fit in standard toilet paper holders like the one in their bathroom, ergo it had to sit on the floor which was disgusting).

At one point, it had been about 2 weeks since the toilet paper had run out and no one was making any effort to replenish the supply. I would just walk back to my apartment any time I had to go.

Fred, on the other hand, came up with his own method of handling this problem. It involved using either notebook paper or magazines. He had a special art to it, but I am not talking about that.

After awhile, it became tedious to keep walking back to my place, so I started carrying my own TP in my handbag. This was also a good idea since a lot of the bars I went to would run out in the middle of the night.

One morning I was over at Fred’s place when he got up and announced that he was going to the bathroom. I wasn’t paying much attention (I was hung-over) until I heard him rummaging through my handbag. I immediately sat up and asked him what the hell he was doing. He explained that he was getting TP. I was pissed. I told him there was no way in hell I was letting him use it and that he needed to march his fat ass to the store and buy his own roll. I was sick of having to even carry it around. He shrugged and went to the bathroom and presumably used a magazine. He continued to do this for a few more weeks until I finally told his mother and she flipped out at him.

To this day, I am still absolutely disgusted that he would continue to not buy toilet paper for months because the fact that he could just use alternate methods for free. This is the epitome of cheapness. I have never, in my life, seen anything as stingy as this.

Yummy yummy yummy

Ex 4 (who from here on out shall be referred to as “Fred Flintstone” due to the fact they had the same physique) had the absolute filthiest apartment I have ever seen. Let me back-up a little.

While we were in college, Fred lived next door to me with three other guys. They were all filthy and took pride in their filth. At one point, there was a red mold growing on the wall in their bathroom, but it was killed a few weeks later by a yellow mold which overtook it. The apartment did not once, in an entire year, see a cleaning product. The bathroom permanently smelled like vomit, crap and beer. There were ripped-up magazines (from when they decided not to waste money on TP) covering the floor and empty bottles of beer in the shower (one of his roommates was a raging alcoholic).

His roommates would sit around and brag about how messy it was. Gross. He finally did some “deep cleaning” at the end of the year. The apartment was a million times cleaner than I had ever seen it and it was still foul. His mother came to move him out after said deep cleaning and cried when she saw the place. She was really quite distraught that her son had been living in squalor.

But little Fred grew up and graduated from college. He moved away, got a job and an apartment. I assumed that he would really take pride in having his own place and keep it clean. I convinced myself that the only reason the other apartment was messy is because he had 3 other roommates who encouraged it. Not only that, but it’s easier to pass off responsibility for a dirty place when there are 3 other people to blame.

As is the case about the overly optimistic assumptions I make about men, I was wrong.

It was only a matter of weeks before the apartment was even worse than the old one. The bathroom was never cleaned, the kitchen had dirty dishes lining all free counter space and half-eaten food was sitting throughout the apartment. The combination of these things resulted in his apartment smelling like rotting ass. I even gave him cleaning supplies for Christmas (along with other things – this was really more of a gag gift) to encourage him to clean his nasty-ass apartment. Didn’t work.

Several times I suggested he get a maid service to come every two weeks. He would flip out and insist that he was capable of keeping his own living space clean. Bullshit.

I will be the first to admit that I am a messy person. I am not, however, a dirty person. Half-eaten food is something that really grosses the hell out of me. I am insane about dirty dishes too (don’t even ask how many times in college I was the one to crack and wash everyone else’s dishes). So, naturally, I would never want to cook in his kitchen. At first, I would help him clean-up the kitchen so it was clean enough for me to make dinner. After awhile, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never wanted to eat anything that had been in that hell hole.

This resulted in us eating out a lot more, which led to Fred bitching about how much money he was spending on going out.

Well, dumbass, if you could have taken 30 minutes out of your busy week to do some dishes and wipe down the counters, you could have had all the cheap home-cooked meals you could stomach.

Locked Out

I think that it's about time for me to make another Loser-Ex post. I don’t have too many stories to tell about my recent ex's because they have either been nice guys that I don’t really have any bad stories to tell or I didn’t date them long enough to have any stories other than just a description of their general douchey-ness. So I am going to share a story about a friend’s loser-ex.

Ok, now this friend is a sorority sister of mine and she is absolutely beautiful and deserves the very best. Well, I was dating a guy, let’s call him Fratty Ex, and I decided it would be really cute to set my friend up with his best friend so we could go on double dates. Well, I thought this guy was really nice and that he and my friend would be perfect together. He dressed really well, was from the best part of Houston, went to one of the best private schools in Houston, and was in the best fraternity on campus--all this was important to me at the time, I've since become less elitist. What I didn’t know was his habit of getting ridiculously, outrageously, insanely drunk.

Well, he and my friend had been out a few times and things seemed to be going well. So, she and I went with a group of friends out to a bar to meet up with him and his friends (this was a few days after Fratty Ex and I broke up, but he was back in Houston getting a root canal, so I wasn’t worried about running into him). Well, when we got there, he was already passed out on the bar. After a little while, my friend decided that he needed to go home. I was the driver that night, so I drove my friend and the loser-ex back to his house where she was going to put him in bed and then call me to come pick her up when she finished getting him calmed down. So far so good. I dropped them off and then went back to the bar. After about a half an hour, I checked my phone and saw that I had about ten missed calls from her. I went outside to call her back. When I got a hold of her, she told me that was hiding from the police behind a truck in a big pile of gravel. I went back inside the bar and collected a fraternity brother of his to come help me with whatever was going on. So, the fraternity brother and I drove over to the drunkard’s house (which was also Fratty ex’s house) and I called my friend again. By now, they were in the parking lot of the CVS nearby. I drove there and parked across the street and the fraternity brother and I walked over to the parking lot. When we got there, the guy was laying on the pavement covered in blood and my friend was standing over him crying. I started freaking out, thinking he was dead, but then he started moving. So I calmed down a bit. My friend then told me what had happened.

Well, after I had dropped them off, they were trying to get in the house, but the guy, in his drunkenness thought he didn’t have his keys (which it later turned out had been in his pocket the whole time). So, he decided to break a window instead, by punching his arm through it. Unfortunately, the house is a duplex and the landlord lives in the other half of the house, and he had gotten mixed up and broken the landlord’s window instead of his own. The landlord’s alarm went off and so the guy decided to run and my friend had to run after him. That’s how they ended up hiding in a pile of gravel. My friend told me later that while they were laying in the gravel, he kept trying to cuddle with her, while soaked in blood. And then they went over to the CVS parking lot, which is about when I showed up.

Well, my friend, the fraternity brother, and I were trying to get him up off the ground, but he kept yelling that he would only listen to Fratty Ex. As I said, Fratty Ex and I had just broken up and I really didn’t want to call him. I eventually gave up and called him at like 2 in the morning when he had had a root canal not twelve hours before. Fratty Ex (thankfully) told his friend to listen to me. After that it got a little easier. The three of us got him up off the ground and into my car. We drove over to their house, where there were about three police cars. The moment we pulled up at the house, the drunk friend sprang out of my car and ran into the backyard where he tripped and passed out. The fraternity brother ran after him and so my friend and I were left to deal with the cops by ourselves. My friend was crying and freaking out too much to talk, so basically I was the only one able to talk to the cops. The landlord was actually really cool about it, he was just happy that it hadn’t been somebody trying to break in. Well, the landlord wanted me to take the drunk guy to the hospital to get stitches. So, my friend, the fraternity brother, and I got the guy back into the car where he proceeded to bleed all over everything (to this day, I still have a six inch blood stain on the back seat of my car) and went to the emergency room. But once there, we could not get him out of the car. He simply latched onto the edge of my car seats and refused to move. After about 45 minutes we gave up and just drove him home.

The next day, he woke up and called my friend to ask why he was covered in blood.

Every rose has its thorn

The summer before I started college, I dated a "nice guy". He was nice--he had a job, he had a car and he could score beer from his older friends. What else does a girl need at 18? He wasn't exactly ambitious or particularly attractive but he probably had the best personality of any man I have dated--he was happy and funny and completely worshipped me. It was great.

To sweeten the deal, his parents had a time-share condo at the beach and he invited me on vacation with him. When you are 18, there is nothing better than a week at the beach. It wasn't a big condo so we would have to sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room, but other than going to dinner with the family a few times, we were free to do as we pleased. Everything was set for it to be the best summer ever.

That is, until we got to the beach and I realized that sleeping on the pull-out couch meant my suitcase stayed in the living room. And since the TV and VCR (this was when DVDs were still prohibitively expensive) were in the living room, as well as the door to the condo, people would be around my things all the time. This was before I was as meticulous (OCD) as I am now, but I made a real effort to repack my things every morning so I didn't make a mess in the common area.

One day, we returned from a morning of outlet shopping to find his mom and stepdad sitting on the couch watching TV. His dad was holding my round brush.

I should note that I had really short hair that summer. The day before graduation, I chopped my long hair to an earlobe-length messy/choppy style (this was about the same time Michelle Williams did it on Dawson's Creek). My stylist sold me a round brush for short hair that was more spherical than cylindrical--it sort of looked like a microphone with bristles.

I'll admit this brush was definitely interesting looking, but it had been packed in a closed suitcase! Meaning, someone had to open my suitcase and look through it to get my roundbrush. Someone being my boyfriend's stepfather.

I was so shocked I didn't know what to say. It was probably the creepiest thing I had experienced in my 18 years of living. It's not that I had anything scandalous in there--just some swimsuits and shorts and tshirts--I was much more low maintenance at this point in my life--but it still felt incredibly invasive. In fact, I think it was creepier because I had nothing scandalous in there so he was getting his jollies off some lip gloss, khaki shorts, pastel tshirts and just plain cotton underwear (like I said--I was much more low maintenance back then).

The worst thing about it though, is that the stepfather was completely unapologetic, as if it was completely normal to go through your son's girlfriend's things. He just looked at me and said "what's this?". My hairbrush, I told him. Oh. And then nothing, but not an awkward nothing that would suggest my boyfriend or his mom thought the stepdad was creepy, just an everyday occurrence nothing.

I told the boyfriend that I was hungry and wanted to go down to the boardwalk for lunch RIGHT NOW. After that, I started locking my suitcase in the car when we left the condo. I'm sure it looked weird as hell, but not nearly as weird as his perv stepdad sniffing my underwear. Besides, it was almost the end of the week anyways so I only had to do this two or three times.

Old MacDonald had a farm...

There is a Mexican restaurant on the Hill that I frequent, not because it is particularly good but because it is cheap (when I was an intern they had 10 cent wings and 25 cent beers on Wednesdays), centrally-located and known by everyone in Washington, including cabbies (this is important because I never know addresses of places I want to go, just names and general locations).

No longer an intern, I usually visit this place during the week for lunch between meetings but Saturdays are all-you-can-eat chicken fajitas for $9 day and so in the past year I have been twice on a Saturday when I was craving fajitas. Both times I went with my boyfriend at the time (two different men). Both times I was horrendously embarrassed.

The first time I visited this restaurant, my date was going through this weird phase where he liked to eat everything Mongolian barbecue style: everything mixed together in a bowl. He would do this with everything: bacon and eggs, filet and mashed potatoes, the insides of a turkey sandwich--it was a weird phase for him. Anyways, I figured this behavior was reserved to our at-home dining and assumed he'd be fine in a restaurant.

Then he ordered.

"I'll have the fajitas. No tortillas though and can you bring me a really big bowl?"

My recount of this story does not do it justice, but he took all of the meat and vegetables on his skillet and dumped them in the bowl and then dumbed the pico and guacamole on top and then drowned everything in queso dip. And he ordered three more orders of fajitas. It was one of the grossest displays I have ever seen.

The waitress looked at us like we had been raised in a barn.

The next time I went to fajita night things went great until my date noticed I had eaten my last tortilla and interrupted the waitress while she was talking to another table to tell her I needed more tortillas. Chivalrous? Perhaps. Except for the fact that I had finished the rest of my food and really had no use for three more tortillas.

This fact was not lost on the waitress. She gave me my tortillas, which of course I could not eat, and spent the rest of our visit pointedly looking at them whenever she walked past. I almost wanted to put the tortillas in my purse so that I was no longer subject to her wrath.

Of course, the date was oblivious the dirty looks because she wasn't directing them at him. She had assumed (like a rational person) that he wasn't a complete caveman and that I had directed him to order me more tortillas as if it were entertaining for me to watch both of them dance. So he was fine sitting there for the next 30 minutes nursing his beer.

I have stopped eating at this restaurant until their staff changes or they take the poster with my picture and a big red x through it off the wall. Whichever comes first.

String me along

When I was younger, I absolutely loved pepperoni pizza lunchables. I don’t eat them anymore. There is something juvenile about the whole process of spreading sauce on the crackers, then putting the cheese and pepperoni-flavored sausage on top. I just can’t get past this.

Shrek had a similar problem with string cheese. I found this out one very tragic day. We were at the grocery store, and I was getting some snacks and sodas. When we walked past the yogurt aisle, he nearly wet his pants at the site of the string cheese. “Oh my gosh! I love string cheese!” he gushed. Being the nice person that I was, I offered to get him a package of it. It seemed like an odd food for him to jizz his pants over, but, hey, everyone likes at least one really strange food.

Well, when I got home, I found out that he was grossed out by the idea of pulling pieces of cheese off the main chunks in strings. Rather than resolve to eat a snack which disgusted him less, he just ate string cheese by eating it in two huge bites. And, he didn’t stop with one. In the time it took me to eat one string cheese, he had eaten the rest of the package. This ranks as one of the top 20 grossest things I have ever seen. Come to think of it, the other 19 grossest things I have ever seen also involved Shrek.

It blew my mind that he could eat a snack of 7 string cheeses, and then have the audacity to make a huge deal out of me eating too much. For the record, I was 5’8” and 110lbs (soaking wet) at the time, and he was 6’4” and 250lbs (and it sure as hell wasn’t muscle). I never made a big deal about this. I am only bringing it up now to point out that if one of us should have been concerned about the other overeating, it should have been me. I have never in my life had a weight problem (I am currently the biggest I have ever been, and that is a whopping size 4). He had always had a weight problem. He was the fat kid who was always the first one out in dodge ball. Granted, he was not morbidly obese, but he had a good deal of chub. I would never comment on his love handles though, because I felt it was not my place to criticize him for that. I honestly don’t know how much smaller he thought I should have been. I don't know how much smaller he thought I physically could have been. Unless he goes to a third world country and finds some emaciated woman on the brink of death, he will not find someone to date who was smaller than I was when I dated him.

I haven’t seen Shrek in nearly 2 years now. Where ever he is, I hope he is dating some fat chick.

I'm your vehicle baby

It's overly cliched and stereotyped but men love their cars more than they love their women. That's all well and good and I'm perfectly okay with playing a second fiddle to the Mustang (mostly because I probably love that Mustang more than I love my boyfriend--I got to pick the color), since usually it means I get to look positively adorable riding shotgun in such a sweet-ass car.

But what I don't understand is why men can't keep their sweet-ass cars clean.

Mr. Toad is not the fanciest car on the street but he's always relatively clean. He needs to go to the car spa right now but at least when people get in him, they are not overwhelmed by the stench of garbage. If the person in the front seat wants to move the seat back, he or she does not first need to clean out all of the empty water bottles from the space behind the seat. People can sit in the backseat with minimal rearranging (usually it means moving my gym bag to the trunk). I mean, how fucking difficult is it to take the trash out of your car with you when you get out? Chances are good you're going by someplace with a trash can--use it!

Contrary to what these men believe, there's nothing sexy about a sweet car that is completely trashed on the inside.

The worst part is, all of these guys MUST know this because when we first started dating, they were all very diligent about detailing their cars before they came to get me and take me out. But unfortunately it seems with the comfort of sweatpants, morning sex, and Saturday nights on the couch watching UFC (guilty pleasure--what can I say?) comes a messy car. And that sucks.