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.

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.

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.

Resolutions you should have made.

Sorry for the lapse in posting, the holiday hustle-and-bustle has gotten to the contributors of LoserEx. We will return in the New Year with more bitching and moaning, but until then, here is a joint post of resolutions you should have made all those years ago. Who knows, maybe if you had made them then, we would have been kissing you tomorrow night (but this is highly unlikely).

1. Learn to drive. This applies to a couple of people. Actually, it should be a broader category of attain necessary accoutrements for driving (ie, a driver's license, insurance and a car).
2. Wipe your ass thoroughly after taking a crap. I shouldn't even have to say this one.
3. Learn to speak, read and write English. All of live here, most of you were actually born here. Become familiar with our native tongue.
4. Stop stealing silverware, etc from restaurants. It only drives up prices that our current boyfriends have to pay to take us out. Don't make them look cheap.
5. This is sort of a long the same lines but stop stealing scrubs from the damn emergency room. Ever wonder why there's a so-called healthcare crisis?
6. Stop trying to stick your tongue in every crevice of our bodies. Your tongue up my nose is not incredibly erotic. There's a good reason why I don't date my dog. (This also goes for putting our jewelry in your mouth. If you want to make sure my pearls are real, throw down your plastic for a new string.)
7. Learn to dress yourself. See previous post for a list of unacceptable items. Print it out and take it to the mall with you when you go spend those giftcards you got from Aunt Beverly.
8. Come up with a date that's classier than drinking gin and Sprite through a turkey baster. It's like giving my mouth an illegal abortion and it is not my right to kill my mouth babies.
9. Stop getting so drunk that you wake up to your dad hosing you down in a field when you're covered in chicken and have had your pubes shaved off. But if you think this is going to happen, please don't call us at 4AM to tell us how you got to your current state. We really don't care.
10. Finally learn that when we offer to pay we're not actually offering to pay. This is your cue to throw down your plastic.
11. Lose your religion. Especially if it is borderline cult-like.
12. There will be at least four (but hopefully more) gift-giving occasions this year: our birthday, our anniversary, Valentine's Day and Christmas (these are not in sequential order). Do not give us a crappy gift. When in doubt, the following is acceptable: expensive gourmet chocolates, expensive white gold jewelry, expensive perfume that is not endorsed by a pop tart, an expensive dog with a smushy face and an expensive vacation to someplace exotic. Notice that the words "Bargain", "Gift Card", "Homemade Art" and "Fredericks of Hollywood" do not appear in this list. That's not because we forgot them.
13. Acquire good taste in music. None of you are black, please set your programmed radio stations accordingly. If the song has to be drastically edited for the radio station, it is probably not good music so stop tuning to the station where every other lyric is bleeped out.
14. Get a job and move out of your parents' basement. At 26, this is just pitiful. If you can't support yourself with your current gig, maybe it's time to try a new career. Afterall, you did graduate from "John" Hopkins.
15. Don't call me skanky, fat, dumb, prudish, stuck-up, arrogant, heartless, selfish, difficult, etc. Especially not when you're blowing my cell phone up with drunk text messages at 3AM on a Tuesday. Who does that?
16. Don't google me. That's so sketchy.
17. Stop lying about the other women you're sleeping with, your brain cancer diagnosis, the size of your package, your age, your job, your whereabouts, your personal hygiene habits (look, I shouldn't even have to ask if you brushed your teeth, but I can sure as hell tell if you're lying to me), your plans for the future (including moving my shit to my apartment), or really anything else. Just don't lie. We will find out and when we do we will not be happy.
18. Don't call my dog ugly or misbehaved (don't say it about my sister either).
19. Make your room me-friendly. Take down the 500 paintings of me you created after we broke up, take down the posters of the Playboy Bunnies, get some furniture so I don't have to sit on the damn floor when I come over, quit turning the air conditioner on in February so that I get THOs when I come over, clean your bathroom and kitchen (this is big), stock your pantry with stuff other than beef jerky, doritos and beer, throw away petrified left-overs and buy at least one DVD that does not star Jackie Chan, Angelina Jolie, Jenna Jameson, Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, or The Governator. As much as we love Ah-nold, his movies leave much to be desired.
20. Don't blame me for your sub-par grades.
21. Try to avoid being thrown in the looney bin this year. Avoid prison too.

We'd love to say we'd rather be kissing you tomorrow night, but well, we wouldn't want to lie to you. We'd honestly rather spend tomorrow playing leapfrog with unicorns. But hey, given a little effort you are all capable of becoming mediocre dates for fat 30-somethings. Aim high, boys.

Happy New Year from us here at LoserEx!!

Your best friend won't tell you what not to wear, but I am not your best friend.

Let's face it: men have very little sense of style. While I can accept that men won't iron their clothes, or may wear t-shirts in the middle of winter, I cannot accept the fashion crimes of my exes.

Boris- I could go on forever about this one, so I am just going to list a few of the worst things which he wore:

• black jeans -about 10 years after they ceased to be in style
  
• white jeans -often with a white t-shirt
• jeans in any other obnoxious color you can think of- including, but not limited to: red, green, and funny blue
• sweat pants -the kind from k-mart with the elastic in the ankles (and in assorted colors)...and I mean he wore these out of the house, like to school or out to eat.
• a variety of shirts from k-mart -which, in his defense were plain, and therefore not too bad
• brown shoes with black slacks- there's really nothing to be said here.
• those stupid shirts boys wore in 1st grade with animals on them, and some sort of nature scene -the worst of which being this green one which had a huge eagle on it, and some trees in the background, then at the bottom in HUGE letters, said "Field Master" and he wore it with olive-colored jeans. I still cringe when I think about this one.

Fruit Fly- Was prissy about what he would wear. He wanted to maintain his gay-punk-does-this-color-look-good-on-me style. Oddly enough however, he dressed like a tool. Key pieces of his wardrobe are as follows:

• Those hanes white undershirts worn as outer shirts- he wore this almost every day.
• Those hanes white tank tops worn as outer shirts- this was so gross. It showed a lot of chest hair, and looked...well, skanky. Mellie called him "nudie boy" after he wore this to school once.
• a pair of baggy punk-esque khakis with holes covered in duct tape- he never wore shorts. For awhile, he only had one pair of these pants. This was not because his family was poor or anything, it was because he was too prissy about his pants to find another pair he liked. The finally pissed me off so much, I bought him a pair of $11 pants at old navy and told him to please discard the duct-taped pants.
• a pair of flip-flops held together by duct tape- he would never wear sneakers because, he didn't like the way they made his feet look. He eventually realized that he needed some closed-toe shoes for the winter, and spent all winter making me take him to various shoe stores, where no shoe was what he wanted. In the spring, he finally settled on a pair of slip-on brown leather shoes with sneaker-like rubber soles which look much like what one's grandfather would wear. When he showed me these, I didn't know what to say, until he wore them with black leather accesories, then I knew exactly what to say: "The fashion police are going to get you if you do not change something here." Seriously, these shoes were soooo ugly. I can't believe someone so prissy about shoes could ever find these to be the right shoes. I can't imagine anyone wanteing to wear these, unless they are really old and no longer have th motor skills needed to tie their own shoes.
• assorted bracelets and necklaces- most of which were either hemp, or those little metal ball necklaces which no punk can be without. He also had a this black, shiney vinyl wrist cuff that he wore...but he lost it one day.
• a buttload of hair products- including, but not limited to a collection of gels, sprays and pomades. He would never want to leave the house without having his hair done. Or without plucking his eyebrows. He plucked more than I do.
• a leather coat that felt like plastic and had a funny shape to it- it was, um, interesting. Once again, this was the only coat which he would wear, because he didn't like the way coats looked on him.
• my purse- I'd often ask him to hold my purse for a second, and he would not just hold it, but put it on his shoulder and strut with it.
• a few band t-shirts- although he would always swear he didn't like the band which the shirt was of...whatever.
• a navy blue hoodie- worn almost everyday. It was coming apart at the seams, and he even sang about his damn hoodie.
• Thrift store finds- including, but not limited to: a CCCP t-shirt, a pair of Burgundy corduroys (which "made him strut"), some goofy-ass hats, and a shirt that looked like clown vomit.

Shrek- was just so dirty. His clothing wouldn't have been too bad, had he just washed it once in awhile. When I sent some people over to get my stuff from his room a few months ago, they were so grossed out by how he was wearing dirty clothes, and obviously did not practice the most rigorous of hygiene- routines. Aside from everything being dirty, here are some of the bad things Shrek wore:

• Free shirts- which would not have been so bad, but this was all he wore. He only had like 3 shirts which were not free, and I did not buy him. He wore this one I got at CR which was really ugy. It had a herd of angry elephants at said "Stampede to Victory: Bush/Cheney 2004." Oddly enough, he is pretty apathetic towards politics, and would only pretend to be a strong supporter of the Republican party because, he wanted to dupe me into thinking we had similar values. What a tool. Look, I really don't care if people have beliefs different from my own, but at least have the balls to say what they are, and have a damn good reason behind them.
• Big Dog shirts- remember those? I bet you do. Know anyone who still wears them? I bet you don't. He told me that he wore them because they were meant to fit people who were big (he was really tall, and broad...ok, fat). To this day, I do not know if that is true or not. All I know is that they made him look like a Big Dumbass.
  
• skid-marked underwear- sorry I brought that up again. ew.
• shorts- and almost never pants. Even in the dead of winter, he would wear shorts and a t-shirt.
• sneakers- boy did not ever wear a pair of nice shoes, even when we went out to dinner with my parents on New Years, he wore black slacks with ugly-ass white sneakers. And his feet were size 16, so those damn sneakers were HUGE and always stood-out. I hated this. Well, I mean, it's ok to wear sneakers with jeans and stuff, but when we go out, and you wear slacks, wear some nice shoes too, dipsh*t.

This was all he ever wore. Ever. And remember, it was almost always dirty. He smelled really really bad. My friends told me his room was covered with half-eaten food which was decaying, and piles of clothes which are obviously dirty when I sent them to retrieve my belongings he had held captive. Charming.

Look, I don't want a guy who dresses better than me. I just want a guy who wears clothes which are clean, and not stupid. I am ok with guys who like to dress casually. A t-shirt (which was not a freebie), or a polo shirt with jeans is totally acceptable. Also, wear a sweater in the winter, or at least a long sleeve shirt with some pants. And when we go out, PLEASE wear some shoes which are not sneakers or flip-flops held together by duct tape. All I am saying is I put effort into the way I look, I just want you to do the same.