My Camp Boyfriend

I loved summer camp. A lot. I was totally into the singing and campfires and banana boats.

Sidenote: If you’ve never had a banana boat, you are really missing out. They are the best things in the whole world. And they are really easy to make too. All you do is cut a banana down the center to form a long groove and then you stuff marshmallows and chocolate into the groove. Then you wrap the banana in tin foil and put it in the fire (I guess the oven would suffice for those of us who aren’t living in Africa, the 19^th century, or at camp). Then after about fifteen minutes, you take the banana out and eat it. It’s amazing.

Anyway, I loved camp. But my favorite part of camp was the camp dance which was held on the basketball court every Thursday night after dinner. The fact that it was on Thursday is very important, because that gave us enough time to find a camp boyfriend—that special someone to help you with archery, plot (but never carry out) elaborate schemes to sneak out after lights out, and most importantly to hold you at arms length and rock back and forth on the basketball court to the gentle strains of whatever totally PC music happened to be popular that summer.

Well, I was honestly never all that good at the camp relationship thing. I wasn’t like those camp sluts that rolled their wind shorts up to their asses and had to wear t-shirts when they went swimming because their swimsuits were too skimpy. I wasn’t about to throw away my kissing virginity on some pimply twelve-year old. (Also, I was insanely shy and socially inept as a kid.) But then came the year that I met Wholly Boy (I’m calling him that because these days he’s apparently decided to turn himself into a human colander through body piercing). Now Wholly Boy wasn’t wholly at the time. He seemed like a nice (maybe slightly overweight) boy. And, he was an intellectual.

My camp relationship with Wholly Boy began innocently enough with flirtation at the picnic tables and long-lingering glances across the dining hall at meals. We’d have long intellectual conversations that mostly consisted of him pontificating about things that he knew absolutely nothing about. I look back on it now and realize that he was full of shit, but at the time I was really impressed. I distinctly remember a conversation where he was explaining to me why I didn’t like to swim or canoe, but did like to ride horses which are much more dangerous. He told me that it was because I can’t control water, but I can control the horse. “Water has an untamed essence. No one can control water. It simply is and cannot be changed or controlled by anyone.” He actually said that. Later, he sent me a note via another boy in his cabin, asking me to the dance. Of course I said yes.

Well, Thursday rolled around and the all hell broke loose in the cabin as girls ran around fixing their hair and throwing clothes around looking for the perfect outfit for the night which could well be the most important night of their lives. I, of course, did the same thing. And after having tried on every item of clothing that I had packed, I finally decided on my denim skirt and a pink polo shirt. (OK, I have suddenly realized that my sense of style has not changed since childhood).

My cabin walked to the basketball court and we all scattered to find our dates. Well, the music started and people started to dance. I looked at Wholly Boy expectantly. And then he started to dance. Oh God, did he start to dance. I still look back on this moment with incredulity. I have never seen someone fail at dancing so badly. He wiggled and jiggled and his belly fat bounced to the music. And his pants crept ever so slowly down his hips until every deep-knee bend (Yes, there were deep knee bends. Many of them.) exposed his rather large plumber’s crack. In the space of a song, he had lost my respect. That intellectual façade he had created crumbled and I realized that he was just a fourteen year old boy with an amazingly large ego.

We broke up during the dance, because after having seen his performance, I suddenly lost my desire to dance and tried to get him to sit with me on the benches around the basketball court. He apparently thought that I was being controlling, so he broke up with me with the line “I’m not ready for a serious relationship.” Needless to say, I wasn’t upset.

He was a skater boy

I like to think of dating as making successive approximations toward my ideal partner. With each guy I date, I am able to find new qualities which I will seek or avoid in future partners. Each time I date a new person, I am closer to having found the right one. I have a better idea each time around of what characteristics I want, and of those, which are the most important. Ergo, my last boyfriend was closer to what I want than the one before him, who was closer than the one before him, and so on down the chain. Following this logic, boyfriend zero would be the one who is least like the person I would like to end up with.

It was spring of 1996, the year when the grunge era was coming to a close and the skater trend was in full swing. This was before the time when skaters had blue hair and were outcasts in high school. Before Avril Lavigne-ish girls wearing tank tops with ties. Before skaters became a elitist clique of the least elite people imaginable. No, this was the time when it was actually cool to wear over-sized elephant-esque clothing from Pacific Sunwear (yes, this was even before it became Pac-Sun).

I, however, was not cool. I did not wear baggy clothes from PS, or have hemp jewelry, a skateboard or a wallet on a chain. I was 12 years old, and had a mother who did not let me dress like a derelict. I wore clothes that were not especially trendy, and fit me well. This didn't bother me much though because, I was in all GT classes, and none of the other nerds in my classes were particularly cool either.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when the cool new skater kid who was the object of desire of every girl in the school started passing notes to me in home economics (this is totally like 2nd base or something). Boyfriend Zero was too cool for school. He was in remedial classes, yet thought he was smarter than everyone around him (which I guess may have been the case with the crowd he hung with), he had an entire wardrobe from PS, and he used new slang words which I to this day, can not figure out. His friends would skateboard to Taco Bell and buy a small soda, then get like 20 refills (what rebels), and he was allowed to watch MTV. He was unlike the nerds that I had been around before. He put his own coolness above having any sort of real goals. He didn't participate in sports or other after school activities like I did. His after school activities consisted of skateboarding, Taco Bell, and hanging out. He was totally righteous, dude!

Things progressed in the typical middle school fashion, and pretty soon, we were dating. This meant that we went to the mall with four other friends (who were dating each other too), held hands a few times, passed notes to each other, bragged about dating each other to everyone in school, and he gave me daffodils which he picked out of his neighbor's yard on the way to the bus stop (I still am not sure if I find this to be endearing enough to over-look the fact that he destroyed someone's meticulously groomed garden). We were the most enviable middle school couple of the time.

Of course, these things don't last forever, and we had our falling out a few weeks later when I did not want to kiss him. I wasn't one of those middle school sluts who ran around kissing people. I had morals, dammit! Things ended. So, I went back to my schoolwork, ballet and equestrian lessons. He moved on to the class whore, because, she was willing to make out with him (I heard that she ended up getting pregnant in high school) also, she had a brother who was two years older and a skater. Who wouldn't want an in with such an awesome dude? Unfortunately, my older sister was about as cool as I was, so I guess I never had that advantage. We didn't really have any mutual friends, as our collective group of friends broke up over our break-up (it was middle school). I saw him around school a little bit, but we didn't talk much. He moved away the next year and went to a different middle school. After that, I lost track of him entirely.

That is, until the miracle of the internet let me take one last look at him. I stumbled across (ok, I searched his name on Stalkerati and found) his MySpace page. First of all, who my age has a MySpace page? Totally righteous dudes, duh! The information on there was surprising to read because, well, it is not surprising at all. It was as if he had written it 10 years ago (perhaps his new school did not offer English classes). His picture showed him in all his skater glory. He is still in his Pac Sun clothes, hemp necklace, and Vans. He has no real hobbies worth mentioning, other than skateboarding and hanging out with his friends. He still has no drive to do the things which are important to people like me (like getting a job).

I guess the point of all this is that I wouldn't kiss Boyfriend Zero ten years ago, and I sure as hell wouldn't kiss him now.

Saturday night's alright for fighting

Once upon a time on Saturday night I was in a big fight with my boyfriend because he went to North Carolina to see his friend instead of spending time with me. But why get mad when you can even without him knowing about it? And the best way to get even is to have a drunken bacchanalia with your girlfriends.

We started at 4PM at a local bar. Got drunk, went back to our place and realized that we were tired from the beer so we had some Irish coffee. Then we grabbed to-go beers for our walk to another friend’s house where she was having a party.

The party was pretty good, in that there was a lot of beer and the male-to-female ration was about 6:1. I’m talking to this guy, and another guy and some other guy and I decide that I’m going to take one home. He walks me back to my place and once I get him there, I decide that I really don't want hook up with him, even if I am mad at my boyfriend, I just wanted someone to walk me home. I tell him that I don’t really want to have sex but we can still talk. He couldn’t have gotten out of there faster if I had told him I had the hiv. Seriously.

And I found the whole thing wickedly amusing. I am going play this game more often as it provides hours of entertainment retelling the story to my friends the next day.

And when the boyfriend got home on Sunday night and asked what I did over the weekend, I gave him the non-committal, “nothing really—hung out with my friends”. Something tells me he would not find this episode nearly as amusing as I did.

On her first blind date...

Okay, I'm done with being reflective. Time for more stories:

Once in college I was set up on a blind date. This was particularly rare because practically everyone at my small college knew practically everyone else but my friend managed to find the one guy I didn't know and set us up. The date was very casual: the date and I, along with my friend and another friend (all girls except the date) were all going to go to see a college theater production and then have drinks at the local bar later that night. It was a Tuesday, which wasn't a big drinking night at my college so rowdiness was not on the menu.

So we all meet up and introductions were made and we went to the theater. Walking there, I discovered the date was a complete dud and he was ugly AND he was wearing sneakers at a school where no one wears sneakers* and so I thanked God that there would be entertainment and then alcohol later.

So we sit through the play (it was pretty good) and then walk to the bar, where we grab a booth in the restaurant portion of the bar. The other friend and I had already eaten--we had grabbed snack bar food before we all met up--so we just had the cheap draft beer on special ($2 pints). The date and my friend who had set us up had not eaten so they ordered from the menu. And not just buffalo wings--they ordered meals. And they ordered expensive import bottled beer. Which is fine--that's their perogative.

The date was completely boring. I think the only vaguely interesting thing he said was that he had never had whatever beer he was drinking before, as if this was supposed to make him adventurous or something...I don't know. Wednesdays were always super-busy for me in college so I was looking to cut the evening short anyways (I would have made an exception if he had been interesting--my first real date with my current was on a Tuesday night and we stayed up until 5 in the morning--well, he stayed up that late, around 3AM I demanded to watch Spiderman on DVD and then passed out within the first ten minutes).

The check comes and it's for like $60, once you add in tip. If we were going to divide it four ways, which we shouldn't have done because two people ate real meals and the other two drank two-dollar drafts, we'd each pay $15. So you would think he should AT LEAST toss in $15 for his quarter (which was less than what he actually ate and if he was expecting to leave with me he should have picked up my beer as well). He tossed in half of that. The friend who set us up tossed in $15, the other friend tossed in $15 and somehow I got the honor of paying nearly $30 for two dollars' worth of Bud Light.

I was left completely aghast by his lack of good manners. I understand the concept of going dutch--I think it's awful, but I get it--but to make your date pay for your meal as well??? That's just awful!

So we're all standing outside and he was like "should we go someplace else and have another drink?". He was clearly clueless about the major faux pas he had just committed and somehow still thought he had a snowball's chance in hell with me. I muttered something about having to get up early and spun around and practically ran away.

The next day, my friend IMs me and asks what I thought about him. "He's boring, ugly and cheap, no wonder he's the one guy on campus I don't know." She got the hint and kept him away from me for the rest of the semester (which obviously wasn't hard because I had already gone 3 years and never seen him).

*I have this thing about sneakers--if you wear sneakers inappropriately I will not date you. It's just one of those quirks of mine.

Summer Lovin'

So, this summer, I've been working at a camp that I used to work at a few years ago. This place is actually really special to me. I went there when I was a kid. Its the site of my first real kiss, the first time I got to second base, and the first time I ever got drunk. There are a lot of people who worked there back when I worked there the first time around. We all kind of grew up together because we all went to the camp as kids and then eventually became counselors. Well, its interesting to see the way that they've changed...or haven't. The "haven't" part of the preceding sentence is really only directed at one person--and this person unfortunately has the dubious honor of being the first on a long list of frogs that I have kissed.

First kiss guy has not changed one iota. He's still exactly the same person he was at 15 except with more piercings and tattoos. Yes, my first kiss went to a guy who has more holes in his body than a cheese grater. He's still the pretentious, pseudo-intellectual that he always was. Anyway, there is really no point to this story, except to say that (a) my first kiss went to an "alternative" guy and (b) its funny to see what kind of people old flings turn into.

Also, I wanted to say that I am considering a summer camp fling with another cowboy. He's about a year and a half younger than me and didn't graduate from high school, but he looks like he's great in bed.

There's no way to deny she's lovely

There are a lot of derogatory comments that one could make about my appearance. Since high school, my weight has fluctuated between a healthy size 8 (where I am now--my "normal" weight) and a pushing-obese size 12. Most recently, my weight tipped the scales after the Bush campaign when I completely blew my ordinarily-regimented lifestyle to help the President win an election. Priorities. So 18 months ago, it would have been pretty accurate to call me fat. Even today you could remind me that I'm not exactly slim--I was blessed with my Mom's curves. But I don't look bad--seriously, I don't.

You could also point out that I'm breaking out pretty badly right now from a nice cocktail of chemotherapy drugs and stress (induced by my professional and personal lives simultaneously going nuts) and that would be pretty accurate. But I'm hooked on Philosophy Crisis Intervention products and some retinols from the dermatologist and that's keeping everything in check.

I've had bad haircuts (the really short job freshman year of college), bad color (chocolate brown in the winter of 2005), probably bad makeup and once upon a time (early in high school when I was still using my mother's cast-offs) made bad clothing choices (in my defense, this was at the tail end of the grunge era and so if I wasn't in my cheerleading uniform--which we had to wear to school like three times a week, I was a strange mix of as much grunge as my Ralph Lauren-wearing mother would let me get away with, resulting in an ugly preppy-grunge experience). You could have called me out on any of those: I've had bad hair and bad outfits. Haven't we all?

The one thing I have never been called is "plain". I am not plain. In the interest of not sounding narcissistic, I am going to try to tone this down a lot but I am naturally very attractive. According to Cosmo, I am "cute-sexy": big blue-grey eyes, dark blonde hair (which I highlight so it's lighter blonde), classically pretty facial features, full lips (more Scar-Jo than Angelina), a killer smile (thanks to thousands of dollars spend on orthodontic work when I was in middle school and Crest Whitestrips). I used to be a dancer and now I run five days a week so I am in decent shape and my skin gets enviably golden in the summer. I'm pretty and I know it, and so does everyone else.

I am also very conscientious of my wardrobe. I know my body and what sort of clothes flatter it. I know what colors I look best in. It's the result of a subscription to Cosmo, a decent eye for style, a family that loves to shop, and a lot of trial and error (reference the previous comment about preppy-grunge). Furthermore, I take pride in being the kind of girl who is almost always appropriately dressed for any event. Cocktail reception on the Hill/Army Ball/tailgate picnic at a steeplechase in Potomac--check, check, check--I look good. I am not the kind of girl who is going to wear jeans a and t-shirt to a nice restaurant (at least not without a blazer, pearls and heels--did I mention I have the ability to make a t-shirt look like a million bucks?) but I'm also not going to get all slutted up to go to the gun club and watch my boyfriend shoot through 20 boxes of ammo.

So imagine my surprise when my boyfriend told me last week that he wasn't confident our relationship would last because he didn't see me being someone he was attracted to in ten years because I was too plain.

What he was trying to articulate (and failing miserably) was that he wished I would dress up more often and bring some sexy underwear to bed. And if he had said it like that, it would have been fine. Of course I would have countered that if he wanted me to dress up, he should take me places where I wouldn't be out of place wearing a nice dress, and that place is NOT the sports bar that we always end up going to on Saturday night (and even then, I wear jeans, a cute top and heels). And if he wants cute underwear, we need to get down to business as soon as we get back from dinner and I'm still slightly buzzed from the wine. You can't keep me up until 2AM watching stupid action movies that star the Rock (is that really his name?) and then expect me to be ready to change lingerie (since the lingerie that looks good under clothes is different than the lingerie that looks good on its own) and jump in bed with him. Here's a hint--if I'm curled up in your lap, sleeping off the bottle of pinot we shared at dinner, sex is NO LONGER on my mind.
But to tell me I am plain?!?! That's not even close to being the truth. My chin almost hit the floor in shock. Before I could point out that I had a bar full of men downstairs who would line up at the CHANCE of buying me a drink (I was in a hotel room on a business trip), he threw out "you save your A-game for work and I get the practice team."

Work gets A-game because my livelihood depends on A-game, but you want A-game? Game on, asshole.

Friday night came around and I put on a black dress, heels and eyeliner, pulled my hair up (in a real up-do that involved pins and hairspray--not a hair shark) and demanded to be taken to wine tasting and dinner at a tapas bar. And then I demanded that we stay to listen to the jazz band at said tapas bar (knowing damn well that he hates jazz). And then I demanded to dance (knowing damn well that he can't run in cadence and clap his hands at the same time). Because those are the activities that one does when she is dressed up.

Saturday night, I played even dirtier. I put on a strapless red number that I bought to wear to a girlfriend's wedding next month, spent 75 minutes straightening my hair and doing makeup and announced that I wanted to eat halibut while sitting on the river, knowing damn well that there were only two places where I can do that, and neither one of them was inexpensive.

Two dirty martinis, a shrimp cocktail, halibut, asparagus and the "special" ring-ding dessert at Chart House Savannah, the bill came. One hundred fifty dollars and I was actually a little disappointed that I didn't drive it up higher.

Sunday morning, I repeated the whole ordeal in a white sundress at champagne brunch. Only after "discovering" religion and forcing him to sit through mass with me. And then when we were done, we went antiquing instead of to the gun range because I wasn't dressed to sit around the nasty-ass gun range and watch him play with his toys.

If he wants A-game, I can play the A-game. But he should be careful what he wishes for. Several times he told me I was being "combative" or "pretentious" and unfortch, that goes with the territory--if I'm feeling physically high maintenance, I am also feeling emotionally high maintenance. If he wants the girl that I was this weekend, I am more than happy to oblige, but he can't complain when I start to play the part, so to speak.

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.

Dum dum dum dum dum

I am going to break one of the cardinal unwritten rules of LoserEx by writing about another contributor’s ex. MEL dated ‘Craig’ a little while back, and found him to be a bit whiney and a bit clueless. I was fortunate enough to witness one of his moments.

We were all over at someone’s house one night drinking beer when Craig graced us with his vast knowledge of nutrition. Someone went to the kitchen to get some chips, and upon bringing them back, offered some to Craig. Craig declined, and remarked that he would not eat any chips because, beer has empty calories, and if he ate chips, they would become full calories, and he would gain weight. Dumbass honestly thought that he could drink himself silly every night, but if he did not eat during the time in which he was drunk, he would never gain weight from excess calorie consumption. We were all too dumbfounded by this to even bother correcting his logic. Needless to say, he went on to gain a bit of weight, which MEL can tell you all about.

You say it's your birthday.

My birthday is on Monday. When my friend Lauren asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, I told her I wanted to have a one-night stand. This was funny because I am so NOT the type to actually have a one-night stand, but it made me think about my past few birthdays and how the men in my life have chosen to commemorate them.

2003: My boyfriend at the time (who, coincidentally is my boyfriend now...long story) decided to break up with me five days before my birthday (over something stupid), then decided we should get back together the night before my birthday (which was a great birthday present), then took me to Pittsburgh to celebrate (not romantic, but halfway between Washington--where I lived--and Northern Ohio--where he lived), and then dropped off the face of the earth for a year immediately following that weekend.

2004: The man responsible for my having a good birthday had to work so my friends took me to the racetrack where I got shitty on dollar dogs and drafts and lost some money on dollar bets. Then I went to Minneapolis and got even shittier at the clubs downtown. But at least he took me shopping the next day and bought me every little obscure thing on my list, so I was happy.

2005: My birthday was on a Sunday and Dumdum had to work on Saturday. So Friday (which was our only night to take me out and get me shitty), he and one of his friends get positively shitcanned while I'm at work, forcing me to drive his drunk ass home. Then on my actual birthday we had to go hang out with his parents because there was some stupid horse race and Dumdum couldn't function if he wasn't up his father's ass. So I got shitty on Bloody Marys and acted like a complete heinous bitch to everyone and made my own fun. Hey--at least I got some David Yurman earrings out of the deal though.

2006: My boyfriend decides the Brigade Ball with the dudes (I did not get an invite) is way more important than my 25th birthday and tells me "we'll celebrate your birthday sometime, babe". And yes, he knows what a big deal my birthday is to me--I've only been sending out countdowns for the past 90 days.

Maybe I'll have that one-night stand after all...and if I don't get at least two dozen long-stems AND some expensive jewelry, he's history. (I'm serious about the roses.)

What I don't understand is I make it pretty clear to everyone when my birthday is, what I want to do for it, and what I want to get FAR in advance. I don't understand why the men in my life always seem to fuck it up. IT'S ONE DAY AND I GIVE YOU EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS! It's not that complicated.

It all adds up to nothing.

Shrek had a friend. A female friend. Who was like a sister to him (which is funny because he loathed every one of his female relatives). Anyway, little whiney sister needed a math credit. Actually, big fat asshole did as well, but I'll get to that. Ok, so little whiney sister needed a math credit, and she was too scared to take a big hard math class all by her little self, so she talked Shrek into taking a stats class with her. I never heard the end of what a good friend he was to take this class with her, because he was so good at math. Afterall, he was the captain of his Quiz Bowl team, which placed second to last in the state. He went on and on about how easy this class was for him, but how he was taking it to help out his darling little sister. This annoyed the hell out of me, because I knew that he needed the math credit anyway, and that he was not as damn smart as he kept trying to convince me.

Two years later, me and Shrek have had our drawn-out, dramatic parting. He calls to say he has some of my stuff at his place still, and asks if he can bring it over. I tell him "hell no," and that I will send some people to collect my belongings. My friends return from the darkside with boxes that he has haphazardly thrown items in, and include both my stuff and his. I am annoyed as hell that he is trying to dump his stuff on me. But, since he gave it to me, I figure it is my right -- no -- responsibility to go through it all.

One box has a few notebooks at the bottom, some are mine, and one is his. I go through his notes to see what the ogre even writes down in class, and stumble across an old test tucked between the pages. It is a stats test. From that really easy stats class that he took with whiney little sister. More importantly, it is a stats test which he failed.

Ok, when I said he failed the test, that was a gross understatement. I'm not sure if there is a word for failing epically, but if there is, that is the word I want to use to describe this test. I read through the test, and the answers he gives are out-of-this-world bad! For example, there is a fill-in-the-blank section in the beginning in which a few definitions are given, and the test-taker is to fill-in the word which is being defined. Every single one (there were 8 of them) had the word "statistics" filled in. This was not the correct answer to any of the questions. It only went downhill from there. There was nothing right on this test. It looked like someone had filled it out poorly as a joke. I would have suspected this had it not been graded.

For awhile (during the time we were dating), I wondered how he was failing out of school, since he seemed to think all his classes were too easy for him. He apparently didn't have to try, and got A's on everything. I never saw how this was possible, seeing as one does not fail out of college for getting a 4.0. After seeing this test, it all became clear that he was lying about yet another thing. More importantly though, it all became clear that, contrary to his claims, I am much smarter than he will ever be. I am willing to bet that whiney little sister who can't figure out basic math did better in this class than he did.

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.

I see London, I see France...

I believe I've mentioned this before, but Shrek's underwear of choice was unwashed, freshly-skid-marked boxers. One week, he decided that he was more of a briefs guy (to be honest I think the reason was something about how his little boy parts hurt). Anyway, he had only one pair of briefs, and they were green, blue and grey combined in a rather feminine pattern. Like you'd expect from him, the elastic was stretched, and there were several small holes adorning these hotpants. But above all, they had the most un-masculine pattern I have ever seen. I think he may have accidentally picked them out from the women's section of the store.

No, this is not about how I think he wears women's underwear, that is another Ex. And yes, I am pretty sure he only wore the one pair for the entire week (because I do not think another pair of undies like these could possibly exist...the world would implode). Let me just say here, that I understand that guys wear briefs to the gym for reasons which I do not wish to discuss. But, I assure you, that he did not set foot in the gym once during this week...or anytime while we were dating for that matter. Furthermore, I am all right with neutral, masculine and above all, clean briefs. These were none of the above (well, except they were briefs).

Anyway, during the week of the briefs, the fraternity which he was pledging had some sort of ritual, and in this ritual, the guys had to strip down to their undies (and do a goat!) for some sort of ceremony. Anyway, I find myself laughing hysterically whenever I think about all his brothers in their boxers, and Shrek with his fat-ass crammed into a pair of (what were probably women's) dirty, mutli-colored, hole-covered, busted-ass underpants. His brothers made fun of him for that for months (maybe longer, but I am not sure because, we broke up). So much so, that I am pretty sure he threw those things out.

They Don't Really Deserve It

So, after reading RGB's comment on my last post, I got to thinking. Why is it that I am infinitely harsher and crueler to the ex's that didn't hurt me? I mean, the cowboy--essentially a nice guy. Not for me, but a nice guy nonetheless. We broke up. It wasn't a painful breakup. Neither of us were particularly affected by it. Well, at least I wasn't. I can't be quite sure about him. But for some reason, I feel the need to ridicule him on a blog, point out his flaws, and generally try to portray him as a fool (which he really kinda was), safe behind the anonymity of the internet.

The breakup with Drunk Ex on the other hand destroyed me. I cried for days, drank heavily, and refused to go to classes. I was a mess. I would freak out every time I heard his name and to this day I allow very little discussion of him even though he is still good friends with a good number of my friends. Last New Years, I found out that he had had an enormous crush on one of my best friends while we were dating. He even made a move, but, thankfully, she was a good friend and shot him down. But she didn't tell me about it. So when I did find out, it hurt me all over again. It prompted questions like "Why wasn't I good enough?" and "What does *good friend* have that I don't?"

The point is that this boy hurt me over and over again, but for some reason I only make one, not really very critical post about him. I mean, sure the post is sorta mean, but when you compare it to posts I make about the Ex's that I never really cared about, there is definitely a difference. You can see the same pattern with the other Ex's that hurt me really badly: the high school ex who wouldn't touch food with his hands, the college ex that didn't know how to order wine. What I write about them just isn't as mean as what I write about others.

If you will notice, RGB is the most critical of Ex#3, the Ex who hurt her the most. Why am I different? Why am I the least critical of the ones who hurt me the most? Is it because maybe I blame myself for the failure of the relationship?

RGB has her beer goggles on as well.

The events of this night were, at best, hazy. I am really unsure of what happened. What I can say for sure is this: It was the second week of my freshman year of college, and I took my first trip to one of the college bars right off campus with some friends from my floor. Other than that, no information from this night is certain, it is simply what I have pieced together from my friends' accounts of the evening.

Like I said before, this was very early my freshman year of college. One of the local bars had quarter pitcher night on Thursday. Of course, being a cute girl, I didn't even have to pay a quarter. So, this was my first time in a bar, and it was all very exciting. Also, I did not drink much in high school, so I was a bit of a one-beer-wonder. Well, about a few too many drinks later, I remember coming home with my friends.

One of the girls I am with gets a call. It is a guy she had met a few days earlier, and he says that he saw her at the bar with her friends. In particular, he comments that he noticed her friend with the nice ass (this was me...I know, right?). She is so school-girl giddy that she might get to play match-maker, that she gives him my number, and takes his number, and puts it in my phone. No harm done, right? Wrong.

My phone rings the next day, and my call ID says "Honeysuckle" (I can't make this stuff up!). I look at this and think "who the hell is named 'Honeysuckle?" I answer, and it ends up being a guy from the bar, who basically tells me the story which I just told. Curious, I agree to meet this guy (this is before the days of facebook, where I can just see what he looks like beforehand). He is more than just a little sketch. He was chubby, had a mole, and sweated. Constantly. Gross. I wish I had just assumed he was not someone I would want to encounter sober. The name should have given that away.

A word of advice: never agree to meet someone named "Honeysuckle" who somehow gets your phone number while you are in an altered state of consciousness.

There are some things that even alcohol can't fix

So, during my first half of my freshman year of college, I dated this guy, lets call him Drunk Ex. (Interesting side note: I met him the same day that I first met RGB.) It was one of the weirdest relationships that I've ever been in. We never really defined what we were and so we were never official. This fact made the relationship a little odd. Basically, he cheated on me and I cheated on him. It was a big mess and we both resented the hell out of each other by the end of it.

Anyway, Drunk Ex is a raging alcoholic. No doubt in my mind. RGB will probably say something about how I am hardly the one to accuse someone else of being an alcoholic, but whatever, I am totally not as bad as he is. He once spent an entire week drunk. I don't know how he did it without dying, but he did. And its not like it was something that he didn't mean to do and just kinda happened. No, he set out on a mission to stay drunk for a week. How that boy has not died yet, I don't know. Another time he called me at 4 in the morning to tell me that he was drunk and lost in the ghetto and was sitting in a Laundromat/bar. Yes, you read correctly. He was in a Laundromat that doubled as a bar (because apparently laundry is too strenuous a task to be accomplished with a little liquid assistance).

However, his alcoholism is not the point of this post. I'm going to try to get to it.

Drunk Ex and I broke up, not surprisingly and I was perfectly willing to write it off as a bad relationship and leave it at that. I mean, I've had worse relationships and I honestly felt that I had been a very bad girlfriend and therefore did not have much of a right to complain about how he was a very bad boyfriend. But then about three weeks ago, I get a phone call from a friend of mine to tell me that Drunk Ex was in town and was looking for me. So, he calls me later on and says that he wants to talk to me. I meet him outside and he presents me with this stuffed frog (because he remembered that he had really never bought me anything the whole time we were dating) and says that he wants to apologize for everything that happened between us. Now, I would have been fine with this and even thought that it was sweet had Drunk Ex not been shitfaced at the time of the apology. He kept trying to launch into an obviously rehearsed speech, but he would get a few sentences in and then forget where he was and start over again. I think I heard the sentence "I know I was a bad boyfriend" about fifteen times. And he kept apologizing for being drunk. Anyway, the whole ordeal was awkward and embarrassing.

And then he tried to kiss me. Um, no. Been there, done that.

But then I got high...

The summer before my senior year of high school I dated this guy who was totally not my type but I was 17 and wasn't looking for Mr. Right. The sort of guy who eventually failed out of Catonsville Community College. The sort of guy who probably is either dead or retarded by now. This is the sort of guy who would wake and bake every morning and would cry if he missed a 4:20. I mean, I'm all for a little recreational pot use on the weekends or whatever (okay, fine, not really but I can pretend), but this guy took it to the extreme. He had done more drugs than I could name, and I was like the valedictorian of DARE in fifth grade (no shit).

But he was a little older and had a fake ID so I could have alcohol whenever I wanted to. I was drunk off my ass 75 percent of that summer. To make things ever better, his parents went away all summer so he had the house to himself and we threw incredible parties all the frickin' time.

This guy, BS (fitting, huh?), was my first "boyfriend" after the high school sweetheart (the Mormon) and I broke up and I think the fact that he was the antithesis of Mormonness probably drew me to him (okay, fine, that and the beer).

At first the drug thing was rebellious and that was dangerous and that was a turn on. But when you're trying to talk on the phone and you hear the distinct gargling of bong water (we've all heard it), it's a little distracting. Our conversations would go like this:

Me: "So I think we should go get sushi at that new place by Riverside for lunch--what's that noise?"
Him: [coughs] "Umm, nothing."
Me: "Seriously, you're getting high at 11:23 on a Wednesday morning?"
Him: "It's wake and bake, and I helped."

This got real old real fast.

So anyways, I knew this relationship had no long-term potential (I couldn't bring him to Homecoming or anything--I'd probably get suspended!), but I figured I'd be the one to dump him. So imagine my surprise when, labor day weekend, he comes over to take me to lunch and a movie (I had to work that night) and says we need to have a serious talk after the movie (um, because that's not a red flag). I make him tell me what we're going to talk about right then and there. So he dumps me and I cry a little (because I don't know, I wanted to be the one doing the dumping) and I'm about to go in my house when he says "do you still want to go to the movies"? Meaning, "Do you still want to fool around in the movie theater?".

Yeah, let's do that jackass. Go smoke some more pot there.

Too Sexy for Shrek...

I am really pretty. I just want to put that out there. I am not going to beat around the bush and infer that people find me attractive in an attempt to not sound arrogant. After all, I am arrogant. And pretty. Really pretty. I don't mean "pretty" in the way that is exotic or unconventional or subjective. I just am pretty.

With that said, now let me talk about Shrek. The truth is, he wasn't unattractive. CMS will probably comment on how fugly he was, but I think he was slightly above average on the attractiveness scale, but nothing extraordinary. The truth is, I don't even like guys who are amazingly gorgeous. I am not really someone who goes for looks. Anyway, Shrek was not bad-looking, but he was in no way as attractive as I am. His coworkers jokingly discussed how I am too cute for him one night and he found out about it. Then, the sh*t hit the fan.

I thought it was kind of funny, but he was absolutely livid that people would say I was too attractive for him. From that day forward, I never heard the end of stories about how every single time when he goes to the mall back home, at least 6 girls come up to him and give out their numbers without having even spoken with him. I nod, smile and go "is that so? Wow!" Not enough. Next, he comes over and tells me that every sorority on campus invited him to their crush parties (my own excluded) and when invited said that they "want really hot guys to come." Again, nod, smile "how about that." Then, he tells me that a girl in his class asked him out. "How nice. Was she cute?" Next, it's that he believes that he should get a job at the gay club as a shot boy, and he would make a ton of money, because he is so hot. Ok, I nodded and smiled at the time, but I've got to say here that he was very out of shape, and no one would pay to see him without a shirt. Unless they liked fat porn or something. This went on for months when finally, he dropped the bomb. He informed me that he could very easily date someone more attractive than me. Wrong. He went on later to say that he couldn't really.

The point is, I never cared about how attractive he was. If he hadn't wasted so much time with his head up his ass, being jealous of something so superficial, he would seen that. Everyone else could see that. I was willing to let him believe that he was better-looking, smarter and whatever else. Rather than see this, he was so concerned with trying to win a competition against me that I was never participating in.

I have since dated people who are more attractive, smarter, more well-mannered, more cultured and overall better people. He will never date anyone who can even hold a light to me in any way.

It's nothing personal...

I briefly dated this guy while I was living in Minnesota. Not surprisingly, we both worked in politics. To make a long story short, the relationship was more about convenience than anything else and he was very immature and when it wasn't convenient to date anymore, we ended it. But it didn't exactly end on the best of terms and he completely bad-mouthed me to the political circles in Minnesota, which effectively limited my career-growth options.

But that's okay because I moved back to Washington and onto bigger and (much) better things and from here I blackball him from DC-political jobs on a regular basis.

The thing is, I don't really harbor any resentment towards him anymore, and it's not like I wouldn't be able to work with him in Washington, but at this point it's just entertaining to see how many jobs I can keep him from getting, just for my own entertainment--it's like a game.

Maybe one day, I'll decide to give up and actually give him a good recommendation because he'd be a competent employee. He's not leadership material but he's good with logisitical stuff and could easily fit in somewhere in the political scene in Washington, but for now it's more fun this way.

Well, someone has never seen a circus!

Out of everyone I have ever met, no one had ever been as consistently wrong as Shrek. Out of everyone I've ever met, no one has ever been as consistently certain he was right as Shrek. See where I'm going with this?

If you had asked me two years ago to name an example which illustrated both of these two qualities, I could have rattled off about a million in a heartbeat. It seems that, over time, these instances have faded into the back of my mind, and I am now left only remembering a numbered few situations. My favorite of these situations would have to be this one:

I was riding in the ogre's car, talking on the phone with my sister about nothing and everything. When I got off the phone, Shrek demanded to know what we were talking about (I should point out here, that he demanded to know about every conversation I had with anyone, as he was incredibly paranoid that I might be *gasp* talking about him...but for the record, I totally wasn't).

I shrugged it off, and just told him that she had called to say that a calliope (pronounced Ka-lye-Oh-Pee) from the town which she was living in at the time was being sent to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and that people for reason (unbeknownst to either of us) everyone was making a huge deal out of the damn calliope. After having said this, Shrek rolls his eyes, and lets our the most contempt-filled laugh you can imagine.

The conversation which followed was something to this effect:

Me: What?
Shrek: Calliope (ka-lye-oh-pee)?
Me: yeah...
Shrek: that's not how the word is pronounced
Me: The instrument with the pipes? Are we talking about the same thing?
Shrek: yes, and it is Kaul-i-oop-A.
Me: No.
Shrek: It is a French word. It is kaul-i-oop-A.
Me: First of all, I am pretty sure it is derived from Greek, the word "Kalli" as in "kalliopolis" like Plato's Republic.
Shrek: It's French.
Me: Does it even matter where it came from? The point is, in English we say "Ka-lye-Oh-Pee."
Shrek: Have you ever heard it pronounced before.
Me Yes, have you? Why don't we look it up when we get home?

We got home, looked it up, and Shrek still insisted that it was Kaul-i-oop-A. Wtf? I guess not only can he not pronounce "calliope," he also can't read phonetic spellings of words. He even claimed that the recording of the word being said on the dictionary website was inocrrect.

There are a few other examples of him being proven wrong, and still insisting that he is right, but why bother listing them?

CMS has her beer goggles on...

Ok, so this is a story about a guy who was never my boyfriend (and therefore not a loserex), though he definitely wanted to be. But, it deserves to be told anyway.

Around Valentine's Day of this year, I got the following facebook message:

You will very likely find this message "outof the blue". I'm pretty sure you have no recollection of me whatsoever, and understandably so. We met very briefly close to a year and a half ago at the Medical fraternity's Luau. I was the medical student that bummed the next to last cigarette from you and shared your last cigarette at that party. The fact that I remember such detail may give you a hint about the impression you made on me... I thought you were VERY cute and... HOT! Anyway, I never had the chance to get your number or get to know you more... We parted on a dangling conversation. Anyway, granted that I had had quite a few beers that night, the impression was strong enough that I tracked you down and am sending this message now. I wanted to do this last year but for many reasons I did not. Besides, all I knew about you was your first name and that you were in International development economics. You're probably thinking at this point that this is a warped, frustrated, foreigner and nerd of a med student trying to score or just lonely around Valentine's. I swear that's not the case, especially since I'm in Texas now. The reason I'm sending this message is because I may regret if I never do... You see I've lived a fairly "prophylactic" life, although, I'm a total looser. But I couldn't help trying to contact you somehow,and I figured around valentine's would be an appropriate time since I've found you on facebook. Well, I don't expect to have swept you off your feet, but I'd really like to get to know you maybe have a few drinks again...If nothing else, I hope this message lets you know you are being admired, or maybe put a smile on your face, or at the very least amuse you! Happy Valentine's! Your not so secret admirer, XXXX

I have not changed anything in the message (except eliminating the name, of course), so all the spelling errors, etc are his--so yes, he used the word "prophylactic" and then misspelled "loser" in the same sentence.

The funny thing is that I actually do remember this guy. I remember him bumming cigarettes off of me and me actually being into him (he was a med student and I was drunk). I also remember my friend pulling me away from him while shrieking "Beer goggles, beer goggles" in my ear.

I do have the worst beer goggles in the history of the world. Ask anyone.