Thursday, May 31, 2007
They saw him rollin', they hatin'
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.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Tiki God(father)*
Shrek was not a fan of costume parties and would often bail out of going to mine at the last minute. Several times, he would listen to me all week carry on about how excited I was for the party, nod and smile, then wait until an hour before the buses left the night of the event to tell me he was too tired/busy/sick/whatever to accompany me. This would piss the hell out of me and I would go to the parties anyway and spend the night macking on his friends (you’ve got to appreciate the mature, healthy relationship we had).
Then the day I never expected arrived: the day of a party rolled around and Shrek had not bailed on me yet. The theme: Mafia Madness. Shrek and I spent the afternoon at the costume store to find accessories and such to wear to the party. I was stoked when I found some cute mid-sized squirt guns that I would later fill with a bottle of vodka. I also found a hobby horse for pretty cheap that I could cut the head off of and carry around.
Shrek was not impressed with my awesome finds. He told me the squirt guns were a dumb idea and wouldn’t work. Apparently no one would get the horse head either (because, you know, Godfather movies are obscure). In addition to not liking the items I had picked for myself, he did not like the ones I picked for him—a gangster hat, suspenders, a water gun. He spent a very long time milling around the store, ignoring any suggestions I made.
At last, he found something that caught his interests: a bamboo walking cane. No, really. I explained that this really didn’t fit in with the theme. And he insisted it was a good idea. He proceeded to buy an entire luau get-up. The explanation he offered was that he was a retired mafia boss living in Florida. Huh?
I consider myself an expert in costume parties and as such, I feel that my advice is superior to anyone else's on the matter. One thing that I always think about when I put together a costume is “Will people look at this and instantly know what it is?” A costume should not need a story to go with it. It should be obvious what the wearer is trying to be. If someone asks you what your costume is, that means you failed at dressing yourself.
When we arrived at the party, everyone loved my horse head and totally coveted my vodka guns, especially when the lame-ass bar decided to crack-down on the underage drinking at the party (which is unheard of in New Orleans).
People at the party looked at him like he was retarded. I drank myself into oblivion via my vodka guns (which I refused to share with Shrek because he told me it was a dumb idea). Very few people even bothered to ask about his costume. The ones who did asked if he was told the wrong theme.
By the end of the night, Shrek was running around telling people that the reason he was in a Hawaiian get-up was because I am a bitch and thought it would be funny to get him to come to the party in an inappropriate costume, so I told him it was a luau-themed party. Right. Because I totally wanted people to think I am dating a retard.
Someone went home very sober and very alone that night.
* We had some fun naming this entry. CCG was the creator of the title used, but a close second was one I came up with: "Say 'Hello' to my (retarded) little friend." Clearly, this is the inferior of the two titles, but it merits a mention anyway.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Cleanliness is Godliness
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.
How to Never Get in My Pants, Ever
1) Make sure you are only attractive when I am drunk, in a dark bar, and missing one contact. Once we got somewhere with lighting, I realized this bargoyle had an uncanny resemblance to Napoleon Dynamite.
2) Have a lame-ass job. IT guy is not a sexy profession.
3) Spill your vodka tonic down my white shirt. Classy.
4) Tell me that since you’re separated from you friends and live far away you’ll have to come home with me. Um, no you won’t.
5) When I go across the street with my sister and company to eat a drunk meal, leave the table before we order, then yell at me when you get back for not ordering for you. How the hell am I supposed to know what you like?
6) Do not offer to pay for your drunk meal. Look, ideally, you would have offered to split the check with the other gentleman at the table. Second best would be you at least offered to pay for my food. Acceptable would be if you paid for your own. You did none of the above.
7) Ask again if you can come home with me. No. This resulted in my running in a cab and slamming the door.
8) Facebook me. Now I can see that you lied about your age. Nice.
9) Ask me if I want to go out to eat lunch in the park this week. Lunch in the park = cheap = no. If you want to redeem yourself at this point, you should take me somewhere nice. Or not. You’d probably make me pay anyway. Cheapskate.
10) When I turn you down, ask me if I want to meet up with you this weekend. Again, that would be a big fat NO. Furthermore, if I wouldn’t give you a lunch hour during the week, what makes you think you can have a Saturday night? I don’t give those away to just anyone.
So there you have it. At this point, there is absolutely nothing Napoleon could do that would get him in my pants. If you want similar results then, by all means, please follow these steps.
The Paper Trail
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
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.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Say my name
All it takes is paying attention to my outgoing voicemail message, calling me at work, looking at my e-mail address, reading my business card or JUST ASKING! Not that hard.
Even worse than someone not knowing how to spell my name is someone not knowing how to spell his own. I briefly dated a guy (same one who lied about where he went to school) whose middle name was Michael. He was born with this name, so the argument that it was new cannot be made. He was also in his 20s and not (to the best of my knowledge) retarded.
One day, he saw the name "Michael" written out somewhere and asked "oh, is that really how you spell it?" Um, yeah Dude.
I asked what other way he thought it was spelled. Apparently he got the "e" and the "a" mixed-up. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe his parents are bad spellers and named him "***** Micheal", so I had him check his license. Sure enough, "***** Michael."
I honestly don’t know how he had gotten through life that long without knowing how to spell his own name. I mean, isn’t this something everyone knows how to do by kindergarten? Furthermore, you'd think he would have seen it SOMEWHERE before he reached his twenties.
It still blows my mind that he managed to not know how to spell "Michael" despite it being on his driver’s license, birth certificate, high school diploma, tax forms, voter registration, bank account and basically EVERYWHERE else. Dumbass.
Jailbird
A few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend who was stuck in Bumfuck, Tennessee with Clueless Ex--because Clueless Ex was in jail! Apparently, while he was living in California (for about a year), he managed to get seven speeding tickets, none of which he paid. So, they suspended his license. I don't know if Clueless Ex didn't know this, or just didn't care, but whatever the reason, he was driving around with a suspended license. Well, he and some friends had gone up to Tennessee for a friend's bachelor party. Apparently, Ex acted like a dick the whole time they were there, but that's nothing out of the ordinary. On the way back home, he got pulled over and was arrested for driving with a suspended license. The thought of him in handcuffs makes me giggle like a little girl. The only thing that could have made it better was if they had kept him overnight.
While the whole idea of Clueless Ex being in jail fills me with glee, I think the more interesting part is the fact that he managed to forget to pay seven speeding tickets. I mean, who does that? How is it possible to forget to pay that many tickets? Or maybe he didn't pay them on purpose...did he think there wouldn't be any consequences? And also who gets seven speeding tickets in a year? I think that's a record. You would think that after about three tickets you would get the message that you need to slow your ass down. Tickets aren't cheap and neither is the inevitable increase in insurance (alliteration?) prices.
God, Clueless Ex is a dumbass.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
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
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
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.
Every rose has its thorn
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.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The War on Tourism
There is only one thing I like about tourists and that is their willingness to buy me a ton of drinks. I found out very quickly in college that I can get a group of three men in town for a business conference to buy my entire sorority drinks all night if I just flirt a little.
Stupid men always try to tag a local on their business trips. Haven't they figured out that we're on to them? I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have gotten tanked on top-shelf alcohol on some out-of-towner's tab, only to sneak out of the bar while he was in the bathroom.
It's a game (and a fun one at that). But, one thing that really pisses me off is when married men think that a business trip is their time to go cheat on their wives. In my last entry, I bitched about Beefcake's infidelity, but at least Beefcake wasn't married and pulling crap like this.
Last week I was at a bar with my sister and we had multiple married tourists hit on us. A few of them at least had the foresight to take off their wedding bands before coming to the bar (although when they kept touching their ring fingers, and had a tan line from where their rings were, it was kind of a giveaway), but one didn't even bother to do that.
With his damn wedding band on, he had the audacity to ask me "where are we going after this?" Of course, I told him "seeing as you're married, we're not going anywhere together." To which he responded something crass about a two-state rule. I looked him dead in the eye and told him he disgusted me.
I hope these wives wise-up to their husbands and divorce their asses and take all their money.
This is why I plan to have a fidelity clause in my pre-nup.
Somebody told me
I've said this a thousand times before, but it bears repeating: Washington men are douche bags. Let's call this week's offender "Beefcake."
I met Beefcake through some mutual friends at a bar one night. We ended up exchanging cards and he called me within two days to ask me on a date. We went out to dinner and then to a bar and things went pretty well. I even ignored my easy-out call (Confession: every time I go on a date I am unsure about, I have a friend of mine call me an hour in. If things aren't going well, I pretend that I need to leave immediately to attend to an emergency. If things are going well, I either let the call roll to voicemail, or answer and tell the caller that everything is OK.).
We went on a second date, and that's when I started to get annoyed. I felt like he was completely insincere and that everything he said to me was a line he had delivered to many dates before me. I was slightly skeezed-out by the whole situation. A few days later, I said something in passing about Beefcake to one of his friends.
The friend then mentioned something about Beefcake's girlfriend. My jaw hit the floor. I asked if he was absolutely sure that Beefcake had a girlfriend. He was. They had been dating for 8 months and the friend had seen them together the night before. I explained that I had gone out with him twice and definitly not as friends.
I couldn't believe what a fricking skeeze-ball Beefcake was.The next day, Beefcake called and asked if I wanted to go to dinner later in the week. I told him I would call him back, but never did. I didn't even want to ask about his girlfriend because I was so put-off by the whole situation. I refuse to be a part of Beefcake's harem. I just wonder how many other women he is dating on the side.
I hope they all meet and kick his ass.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Wash that man right out of my hair
PS I hated Sanjaya. His hair annoyed me.
CCG
I am pretty particular about hair. All hair, but since I don't date women, this post will only be about men's hair. I decided last night, while flipping through Cosmo and watching TV, that I only like men with low-maintenance hair. I don't like "chickenhead", I don't like men with long hair, I don't like men who use excessive products in their hair.
I pay $75 for a haircut. I use $25 shampoo and conditioner and designer straightening cream with my $150 flat iron. Let's not even talk about my highlights. But this is okay because my hair is gorgeous and I am a girl. I don't like girly men. A man should pay no more than $15 for a haircut. He should spend no more than 30 seconds doing his hair in the morning.
My preferred male hair look might just be bald. On the right body, a bald head is really hot (see also: Bruce Willis). It is also manly and I go for really masculine men. But if a man isn't going to go all the way, I like it as short and low-maintenance as possible (officer/gentleman has the best hair possible--he buzzes it at Ranger Joe's and then doesn't mess with it).
There hair sins of my exes are numerous: ponytails, bad coloring, excessive product use, waiting too long for a haircut. But generally speaking:
- No, your ponytail was not hot. Chicks did not dig you with long hair. I never knew you when you had a ponytail but judging from the fact that your hair is now sort greasy and corse, I seriously doubt the "I got out of the shower, put my wet hair in a ponytail that trailed down my back and got on my motorcycle" was a good look for you. Your hair probably had nasty trailer park split ends and was greasy-looking and made you look like you work at the sleazy motorcycle repair shop. You are a frickin' attorney and a very impressive one at that. You have a great job and make great money and look incredible in your Brooks Brothers suits. I thank God you realized that and cut your hair. I also thank God there are no pictures of the offending ponytail that I have to look at.
- No, I do not have any hair gel you may use. If we go on vacation, you are obligated to bring your own grooming products. I don't ask you for a tampon. Also, I don't even use hair gel! Look at my hair--is it sticky and tacky like yours? Then chances are good I do not use your nasty Xtreme Sport hair gel.
- No, your hair does not look good "highlighted" with a bottle of peroxide. It looks brassy, damaged, splotchy and orange. You are very attractive with dark hair--that is why I am dating you. Please don't change that without consulting me first. And NEVER take hair tips from your friend Joe.
- You need a hair cut. Don't even take the time to ask me, just go to supercuts. Chances are if you noticed today, I noticed around this time last week.
- You need to shave. See how red my face and cheeks are? I am not flushed with passion.
- And a final note on body hair. I go through great discomfort and expense to remove mine. You are a big fan of when I do this. The absolute least you can do is take your clippers to the three Bs. Or I know my spa does mens waxing too--I can make two appointments at once. Also, hair coming out of your nose and ears may be a fact of life but for heaven's sake TRIM IT! There is no way in hell I am going to make out with you when I am afraid the monster coming out of your nose is going to bite me in the face.
RGB
I have been fortunate in that no one I have dated actually had bleached hair while we were dating. I did however have a very close call. Shrek was from an area that was rather, um, what's the tactful way of saying "trashy," again? Oh, yeah, rural. Shrek was from a very rural area.
His senior year of high school (before I knew him -- we didn't meet until college), he decided, for some reason completely unknown to me, that he should bleach his hair. Shrek had naturally dark brown hair, so bleached-white was not exactly the best color on him. But nevertheless, he let his 9 year-old cousin do the honor of combing bleach through his hair over the bathtub.
She missed a few spots, but they "weren't noticeable." I really don't know if they were or not because, I did not know him at the time. However, I would imagine that dark brown spots in a white-blond head of hair are, in fact, rather noticeable. But, that's neither here nor there.
I guess the "ladies" of the area in which he grew-up have different taste in men than I do because, Shrek insisted that they totally threw themselves at him even more than usual for the time that his hair was bleached (I think this is a load of crap. Shrek was pretty delusional about his own attractiveness). He therefore rationalized that bleached hair looked good on him. I am grateful I did not know him at the time.
- Oh, and Ex 2 (Fruit Fly) had blue hair before I met him. He wanted to dye it again while we were dating. That got a big "hell no" from me.
- A note on the nose hair issue: please, for the love of all that is good, get some nose hair clippers. I hate when guys decide to take care of their nose hair with a full size pair of scissors -- that's some scary stuff!
- Don't use my shampoo. It was expensive.
- If your hairstyle requires gel, you have a women's haircut.
CMS
Now, I want to preface this by saying that I am pretty open to all kinds of hairstyles in guys, with the obvious exception of super-gelled oh-my-god-are-you-in-the-mafia type hair. I even have a certain affinity for kind of longish, shaggy hair—but not the emo look-at-me-I’m-so-alternative shaggy hair with the side-swept bangs and (probably) streaks of some color not normally found in nature. (Seriously, emo kids make me want to either rip my own eyes out or kidnap them and lock them in a room with puppies and kittens and butterflies while playing nothing but Jimmy Buffet until they suddenly develop the urge to join the cheerleading squad.) But anyway, the point of this is that it’s pretty difficult to have hair so bad that it makes me mad.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. One of my ex’s (the one who didn’t know how to order wine, if you remember him) had bad hair when we were actually dating. He always gelled it so it stood straight up a la Ryan Cabrera. He also had a weird hairline—it was really uneven and sort of squiggled across his forehead. I guess that wasn’t really his fault, but he managed to emphasize it with his stupid gelled hair. Anyway, his hair was bad back then, but not bad enough as to be a deal breaker.
However, I saw him a few months ago, and his hair has taken a turn for the worst. Apparently, he thought it was a good idea to dye his hair the same color as his skin. So now when he gels his hair straight up, you can’t tell where his forehead ends and his hair begins. His hair looks like an extension of his forehead—like the Elephant Man or something. Just trust me, its bad. To add to this, he has decided to try to grow a full beard, but his facial hair is really patchy so he has weird bald spots all through his beard. It looks like the beard a malnourished hobo would grow.
-As a final note, I’d like to say that I don’t have a problem with facial hair per se. On some people, it looks really good. But please, please, for the love of God and all that is holy, if your facial hair grows unevenly or not at all in some places, shave. Seriously, it’s a sign from God that you are not supposed to have facial hair. Just embrace your babyface and move on.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Why I didn't lose my virginity on prom night
The only thing truly memorable about my senior prom was my horrible date, Ex 2 (Fruit Fly). About a month or so before the event, we butted heads about his tux. He wanted to get something like the Dumb and Dumber get-up. I told him I didn't want to explain to my children 30 years from then that my date was, in fact, not actually retarded. After I had told him exactly what to get, I felt like maybe I was being a little bitchy, so I agreed to let him and the other guys control one aspect of the evening: the limo.
I figured there is no way someone can screw-up ordering a limo. I mean, it involves picking up the phone and giving an address. Boy was I wrong.
Fruit Fly was excited about his task, and wasted no time getting all the other guys in our group involved on it. I didn't really bother to ask questions about it because, I figured a limo is a limo. I was a little concerned when I realized it was getting close to prom and he had not actually made any phone calls. But , I figured I shouldn't nag about it. Even with two and half weeks to spare, I was sure he could find something decent. Finally, he told me that he had booked a limo and that he was really excited about it. I was really excited too, I thought for once he had managed to handle a menial task without disappointing me. It was a little late, but I figured a limo is a limo. It couldn't be too bad.
Then I saw it. I can't even begin to describe the shock and disgust I felt as the "hot-rod limo" came rolling around the corner to pick everyone up. "Hot-rod limo" is a huge overstatement. Had this name actually been an accurate description, I would have found it hilarious. This limo was a busted-ass dirty POS from the early 80s. It was gray with flames painted on the side and the driver was scruffy and drunk looking. His tux was totally wrinkled and he likely had not showered in a month. The interior of the car was dirty and ripped and none of the buttons in it worked. It was stinky inside and I thought I was going to get an STD just from sitting on the seat.
Fruit Fly had even gone up to the rental office and apparently looked at the car two weeks earlier. I couldn't imagine why he thought that this wasn't a POS. He even made a comment at one point that the car was pretty crappy. Well, duh! If you had just managed to do your fricking part and actually look at the stupid car while you were up at the office, this would not have been an issue.
The other girls in the group all glared at me wondering why in the hell I left this up to my boyfriend. I was thoroughly ashamed, but decided to make the most of the situation.
"Well, at least we'll be able to pick-out our limo in the parking lot. Right, guys? Right?"
Still, they were pissed at me.
We hopped in and about 5 minutes down the road, the driver stopped to go to the gas station. Weird. He stood outside and smoked 3 cigarettes and filled the car with gas. His smoke break made us 10 minutes late for our dinner reservations.
At the restaurant, we gave him the time to pick us up, and took his cell phone number so we could call if that changed. When we called him at the pre-arranged time, he said he'd be right there. A whole 15 minutes later, he finally came to pick us up. Loser.
When we arrived at the prom, he didn't feel like waiting in the line of cars to drop us off at the front door (probably a good thing anyway, I didn't exactly want to be seen in this POS) so he drove us around to the garage and we went in the back stairwell. Nice.
And as if the limo weren't enough, Fruit Fly was a turd all night, making me incredibly grouchy for having to deal with him. I don't think I talked to him from the time we had our pictures taken until it was time to leave.
In high school, people always made such a big fuss over prom. They would carry on about how they would remember it for the rest of their lives, so it had to be perfect. I couldn't even tell you what our prom song was, or who took whom as a date or who was on the prom court. The only thing that comes to mind when I think of my senior prom is how much Fruit Fly sucks at life.
I guess I should thank him for making an otherwise forgettable night memorable.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The first time
As soon as he sits-down and sees my wallpaper, he freaks.
Him: "What the hell is this?"
Me: "No idea. Hey, are my pink Michael Kors shoes over there?"
Him: "No, what is this on your computer?"
Me: "No idea, what does it look like?"
Him: "Naked men."
Me: "Are you talking about my wallpaper? They're not naked, they're wearing swimsuits"
It was a black and white photo I had gotten off of the Cosmopolitan website that had three men standing in the water at a beach and in pink letters it said "Have a Cosmo summer!" Totally harmless. I would have shown it to my grandmother and not felt embarrassed.
Him: "They're naked."
Me: "It's not like you can see anything."
Him: "I don't like that you're looking at other men."
Me: "Ok, change it."
Note: Shrek had a poster of Carmen Electra in his dorm in which she is wearing what appears to be a bikini bottom and a chain mail tank top. Her nipples were airbrushed out to make it not completely pornographic. I never said anything about it.
While I was none too pleased with the fact he had a scandalous picture of some skank on his wall, I figured that it really was not a huge deal. I mean, it could have been a whole lot worse. It's not like he had piles of dirty magazines with sticky pages under his bed or anything.
I was pretty irked that he would make such a big deal about a goofy picture on my computer, but decided I didn't want to get in a fight over it, so I just kept getting dressed and let him change the wallpaper to a picture of my dog.
A few minutes pass and I am just about ready to go.
Him: "Who is *reads screen name of a male friend from back home*?"
Me: "Oh, that's Mike. Tell him I'm heading out right now"
Him: "Why does he talk to you like this?"
I come over and read the message. It says "Hi RGB. I miss you. When are you coming back home?"
Me: "He's one of my best friends."
Him: "This is bullshit that your guy friends are so friendly with you!"
He went on to accuse me of sleeping with all my guy friends. This did not elicit the most polite response from me. He stormed out. I waited a few minutes and called him. He broke up with me.
I changed my wallpaper back to the Cosmo guys.
We ended-up getting back together two weeks later.
But not before I made-out with one of his friends against Shrek's car.
It was awesome.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Mr. Gigantic One-Eyed Wonder Weasel
But he did have an eye for younger women, which was odd, considering I am 18 months older than he is (a fact he lied about when we first met but this was minor compared to the other lies he told so I'm not going to make a big deal about it). By younger though, I don't mean a year or two or even five (which at the time would have still been jail bait). Nope, we're talking a good eight to ten years younger than he was. Teenagers, and not the "barely legal" kind.
He also never actually acted on his looking(to the best of my knowledge)--he is not a pedophile--he just liked to allude the the fact he was in an effort to score "cool points" around "the dudes".
Roger dude, you have your dirty little secret. Please do not share it with my sister's boyfriend. You know it is going to get back to my sister and then her mother and the next thing you know, my entire family knows you're slightly sketchy.
Oh, but he did.
We had driven to southern Virginia to visit my grandparents. My sister and her boyfriend met us there and we went to a popular nearby amusement park. As we were walking from one ride to the next, my ex-fiance nudged my sister's boyfriend, pointed to a girl and said "check her out". He did this several times in fact. My sister's boyfriend, who is far from classy but evidently classier than my ex, looked at girl and was like "dude, she's 14".
My ex-fiance's response?
"If there's grass in the field, play ball."
Yeah, and if you play ball with a girl who is younger than jailbait, don't be shocked when you get shot by her daddy or thrown in jail by the cops.
What's cooking?
Ok, so, the restaurant. Love it. Didn't go there much while I was dating Shrek. He was a jerk.
When I started dating Fred, I suggested that we go there for dinner one night. Not being a crappy person, he agreed to try it out. He even managed to find something on the menu that he was willing to eat (have I mentioned he's a really picky eater?). Since Fred insisted on getting an appetizer, I was full before I finished my enchiladas, so I got the remainder of them boxed-up.
We ended up going home after dinner and spent the night drinking and playing video games. Around 3am, I was still up and starving. Knowing that I still had my leftovers in the fridge, I asked Fredto go to the kitchen and heat them up for me.
Now, I knew that Fred couldn't cook, but I figured it doesn't take a rocket scientist (ha!) put an enchilada in the oven. I told him just to set the oven to warm, and put the enchilada on a pan and leave it in there for a few minutes. He disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then came back and we played some more video games.
A few minutes later, I told him it was probably time to take it out, so we went back to the kitchen. As soon as we stepped into the hall, I smelled something completely foul coming from the kitchen. It only got worse as we approached.
I opened the oven and saw sitting inside a half-melted Styrofoam box on a cookie sheet with my enchilada peeking out through a hole that was burned through. Disgusting.
The melted box was all over my food and I couldn't eat it. Not to mention, it was probably toxic. I should probably say at this point, Fred was 21 years old. TWENTY-ONE FRICKIN' YEARS OLD AND HE DIDN'T KNOW STYROFOAM MELTS IN THE OVEN! Furthermore, it wasn't like he was an English or Phys Ed major--he majored in a science so there is no excuse.
To make matters worse, he was a typical man so all he had to eat in his house was beer, generic slim jims and a three-month-old petrified piece of teriyaki chicken that he called "Sparky." So I was sitting there in the middle of the night, starving and suffocated by the stench of Styrofoam enchiladas.
Needless to say, his inability to heat an enchilada made for a bad night for all parties involved.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
And I wonder...
Usually after a first date, I have some sort of burning question that I am too embarrassed to ask. However, the wrong answer to this question will immediately make me not want to date the guy. So, I will resolve to bring it up as a joke on the second date. Everyone does this; if anyone tells you otherwise, it is a lie! But the catch is you only get one joke question. Just one. It would be totally lame to play the ask-personal-questions-jokingly-all-night game. So, every time I am about to go on a second date, I think long and hard about what I am going to ask.
I went on a second date last week, and knew that the one thing I wanted to know was whether my date had been married before (he is a bit older than I am). Luckily, he mentioned his buddy getting back together with his ex-wife, so I was able to deliver my joke question relatively smoothly (ok, as smoothly as one can honestly hope to deliver it -- it's always a little awkward). I got the right answer and was rather pleased with my efforts.
Later than evening, he asked his joke question. Out of all the questions in the world he could have asked, he picked one of the dumbest and least appropriate ones I can think of.
Have you had any work done?
Really, do I look like I've had work done? Granted, I am pretty attractive, but seriously, I am 23. Not many people are honestly in need of work when they are my age. What exactly was he saying? Does something on me look fake? Are my boobs too big? Are my cheekbones too high? I don't get it.
I gave him some sarcastic response to the effect of "I had a nose-job. I used to have a really cute button nose, but decided that I wanted to get a big German nose instead. I thought it would give me more character."
I still can't get over this. Do people actually think I've had work done? Enough so that this is the most burning question people have about me?
I don't even know what to say about this one.
Monday, April 09, 2007
You knew this was coming
But Fred was none too bright in the way of behaving appropriately.This was evident through his lack of manners, his lack of style, his lack of consideration for others and his inability to not constantly look like a douche. Social graces? He had none.
Fred graduated from college a year before I did, so we had a long distance relationship for a year (which is probably the only reason we dated so long -- if I had to put up with his fat-ass humiliating me on a day-to-day basis, I would have told him to kick rocks a long time ago).
Anyway, I had come home for a short time during our long distance thing. My parents live about 45 minutes away from his apartment, so going out with him was a bit of an ordeal.We had made plans for him to come pick me up (my car was at school) at my parents' house at 7:30, then we would go to dinner, then go to a bar in Annapolis.
I spent the next hour getting ready to go out. I hadn't seen him in several weeks, so I was expecting this to be a big deal. I put on my Rock & Republic jeans, a cute top and stilettos. I did my make-up (and not just the half-assed going-to-work make-up I normally wear) and straightened my hair. I give myself an A+.
Well, 7:45 rolled around and I heard Fred'sbusted-ass car drive up and him get out and ring my doorbell. I was excited about seeing him, and ran down the steps, eager to go on our date.
However, my excitement turned to shock, then rage, then disappointment the second I opened the door. Standing there was my fat-ass boyfriend wearing a too-tight, tucked-in, pit-stained Hanes undershirt under a wrinkled unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt which was most likely purchased at Wal-mart and a pair of crusty-ass Birkenstocks which revealed his monster toenails. The worst part of all, however, was the pair of ripped-up jorts he was wearing.
I am not kidding.
Honest to God, jorts.
I was absolutely livid. I had just spent the last hour making myself look cute and he looked like he had rolled out of bed. I told him I was pissed by what he was wearing. He carried on in his annoying-ass-ignorant-as-hell-sounding-not-fully-capable-of-speaking-English way about how he wasn't sure where we were going.
If he had been listening, this would not have been an issue. But more importantly,why would he think this was acceptable for anywhere? I asked him where the hell this outfit was appropriate for. Clearly not going out to dinner. Clearly not going out to the type of bar I had planned to go to. In fact, I can only think of three places where this get-up would have been appropriate: 1) to wash a car; 2) to wear to Wal-mart; 3)Applebees. Our plans involved none of these.
I went up stairs and put on my casual jeans with a t-shirt and flip-flops. We went to Fudruckers. I had a nasty-ass hamburger. Fred wanted to go to a bar afterward, but I was too embarrassed to even take him to Notties. I mean, there could have been people I knew from high school there. And if I showed up with that piece of trailer trash...well, a lot of people know me, and they would have talked.
So, after Fudruckers, I went home and sent Fred back to his place. I have never had a more horrible date than I did that night.
Fred- I was always so out of your league. The least you could have done was try to dress-up a little. I hope you get the woman you deserve one day.
That woman has buck teeth, a tattoo, a perm, a spaghetti-strap tank top, shorts to her see-you-next-Tuesday and platform sandals. Go get her, Tiger!
Old MacDonald had a farm...
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.