You Realize Those Don't Wash Off...

First, let me just say that I am not anti-tattoo. I do not have any myself. This is partly due to the fact that I am a huge wuss about any sort of pain, but more due to the fact that I can’t think of anything significant enough to me that I would want it on my body for the rest of my life. Also, thinking about what it would look like when I am 60 is kind of gross. I don’t care if people get tattoos; it’s their right to do as they please with their own bodies.

But, there are a few instances in which they slightly irk me, and those are:

a) When one gets several very large, very visible tattoos (to the point where they cannot be covered-up), then complains that they were discriminated against at a job interview due to the fact they have tattoos.
b) When one gets a tattoo that is a word in a language that he or she does not speak (I don’t think it means what you think it means…).
c) When someone gets a tattoo which has no real significance to them (i.e. a tramp stamp).

With that said, here are two tattoo stories I have (that's right, it's a holiday double-post!):

1) I went on date a a few months ago with a young man who, while not a total loser, was not exactly my penguin. Our conversation somehow turned to the topic of tattoos and he asked if I had any. I told him that I did not and explained why. He agreed with my opinion of getting a tramp stamp, or the male equivalent (which is a tribal armband or Chinese character). He mentioned that he was planning on getting two tattoos. I asked him what he wanted to get and the answer blew my mind.

He wanted to get a picture of each of his parents – one on each arm.

I gave him a look of puzzlement and disgust. He was insistent that this was a good idea. He explained that he was really close with his parents and that he would (obviously) get pictures of them when they were younger. Fine.

I also have a good relationship with my parents, but I do not feel the need to have pictures of them on my body. Furthermore, I don’t know his mother, but something tells me that she probably does not want to be commemorated via his arm tattoo. Just a thought. Also, did it ever occur to him that girls might find it creepy to hook up with a guy and have to look at pictures of his parents the whole time? Creepy.

2) Fred did not have any tattoos, but told me he knew exactly what he would get if he ever got one. It seemed that he had really put a lot of thought into what tattoo he would get, so I asked him what his idea was.

He wanted to get a tattoo of Fred Flintstone with a lawnmower. He would get it close to his nether regions and shave a strip of hair next to it add to the overall effect. This way, he rationalized, if he ever got tired of looking at it, he could just stop shaving and it would be covered-up. Classy.

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.

In a boy's dream.

Never date a guy you meet at happy hour. Especially if that happy hour entails dollar drafts at Rock Bottom.

I made this mistake last summer--my sister and I met him, after several beers I gave him my card and he called a few days later and asked me out. Ordinarily I would have politely turned him down but he was really attractive and I wasn't exactly looking for a long-term thing at the time.

We were supposed to meet at a local Spanish tapas bar (I hate tapas--I think they are pretentious but he suggested it) at 6:30. At 6:15 he called and said he was going to be late because he decided to go running and still had to take a shower.

I'm sorry, if you have someplace to be at 6:30, you get your workout out of the way at lunch. But being nice (and having already cleared my calendar for the night), I agreed to wait for him at the bar. But I did run up a nice little tab on sangria and this awesome eggplant dish. (Hey--I'm not that innocent.)

He finally arrives at 7:15, closes out the bar tab (good thinking pal) and gets us a table. Then he asks if I've ever been to Spain and when I say no, he takes my menu and starts ordering stuff for us in Spanish. I didn't mind--a man who knows his way around a wine and tapas list AND can order in a different language is sort of attractive.

What I did mind was how he wanted to tell me, in painstaking detail, all about how he broke off his engagement with his fiancee. And how much adversity he faced growing up in the northern 'burbs of Chicago (riiiight). And how he used to be a male model. And how he was leaving in the morning to fly to Seattle to go backpacking with Dave Matthews (of Dave Matthews Band fame) and his father because they were all really close. In fact, I think Dave was sending his private plane to pick this guy up.

Come on...do I really look like I fell off the back of the turnip truck?

The highlight of the evening came at the end, when he was walking me to my car and said "I don't know what to do with you: you are so sweet and innocent and it just makes me want to bend you over and fuck you."

I put a very fast end to that date and never called him back.

I hope he had fun with Dave.

I kinda always knew I'd end up your exgirlfriend

So I'm sitting on the couch with laptop (courtesy of the new wireless internet I set up all by myself), attempting to do some work for my job, but I also have Love Actually in the DVD player, so I'm not really doing much work (as is probably evidenced by the fact I am posting to my little sister's blog about horrendous ex-boyfriends, of which I have plenty).
Before I launch into my dickhead/dickless/whiskeydick-affected menagerie of ex-boyfriends, I feel obligated to say that I am not a ball-busting-bull-dyke-man-hater. Nothing at all like that. I really am a hopeless romantic. I can find something to love in just about everyone (and most of the time I do). The men I discuss here obviously did something repulsive to appear here. Otherwise, we'd be happily married with like a billion children (well, maybe not).
Now for their transgressions: I don't want to list this in chronological order, mostly because many of my exes aren't all that interesting (at least at this point) and I don't have all night. So here are the highlights:

Door #1: "Mr. Minnesota"

The first thing that turned me off about Mr. Minnesota is that he is an idiot but he is completely ignorant of his ignorance. He is also an authority on everything. Case in point: I was going on a trip to visit my sister in New Orleans last Easter. Mr. Minnesota knew about this and sends me an e-mail telling me about the sights I should see in New Orleans. An excerpt from his e-mail: "you should go to this cafe in the French Quarter where they have coffee with chickory and world-famous powdered donuts." BEIGNETS, DUMBASS!
Despite this, I agreed to go on a date with Mr. Minnesota. The night before, I had been out drinking with my friends and I spent all day throwing up, but Mr. Minnesota wouldn't let me cancel because he had already bought tickets for a show. So he picks me up and brings me two bottles of wine and a dozen roses (can you say overkill). He proceeds to take me to one of the priciest restaurants in Minneapolis and then to the play (Romeo and Juliet, because that's not a cliche) where I sit in a cold, dark theater watching bad actors butcher Shakespeare, completely nauseated because he must have bathed in Polo Sport (gag--I love Ralph Lauren, I hate Polo Sport). He brings me home at the end of the night and asks if he can walk me upstairs. Until this point, I have never told a guy he couldn't walk me to my door (I usually just give them blueballs at the door). I look him in the eye and say "um, no."
He pulls out a piece of paper, on which he has written me a poem and tells me to "read it later". I can't make this stuff up. I sprung from the car and ran inside.
Congrats, Jackass, you took me on the worst date of my life.

Door #2: "AB"

Never ever date the guy you drunkenly suck face with at a Jimmy Buffett concert. Chances are good he only seems like a catch because you are faced.
AB and I dated very casually in the summer of 2003 while I was maintaining another blog. One night, we went out in College Park and I got completely wasted. AB tried to get me to fool around with him but I was really turned off by him.
A few days later, I wrote in blog about the incident (it was actually a lot more tactful than I'm making it sound). I concluded that even though there was nothing wrong with him, I was just not attracted to him at all and didn't want to date him. I also concluded that the best way to not date him was to two-week him. (Editor's note: "two-weeking" is the theory that if you don't communicate with someone for two weeks, you are no longer dating that person. It only works for people who are casually dating--obviously if you are serious you need to have a sit-down with your significant other when you want to dump his ass). I thought it would be a good idea to write all of this down in my blog and then I set about avoiding his calls.
Until he stopped calling my cell phone and stated calling my parents' house (how the hell did he get that number??). When I answered, he chewed my ass for a good hour. Apparently, he didn't think it was the least bit sketchy to GOOGLE SEARCH me and he came across the blog and read all about my evil little plot (I'm subsequently removed all references to myself from that site, making it damn near impossible to find it if you don't know what you're looking for).
How much sketchier can one get? But the sketchiest guy ever is behind

Door #3: "Bad Driving Man"

I was completely crazy about the bad driving man. Which is why I was heartbroken when he left for spring break, said "I'll call you when my plane lands, babe", and I never heard from him. Despite my calls and e-mails, I didn't hear a word from him until the last day of break when he called from the Columbus airport, wondering if I could pick his ass up and drive it back to college.
When I questioned his whereabouts, he told me he had gone to the ER for a headache and they found a spot on the MRI film and the doctors thought it was cancer so he and his (urologist) father flew from Chicagoland to LA to spend a week getting tested at the John Wayne Cancer Institute for brain cancer that turned out to be a speck of dust on the imaging equipment.
Now if you thought you had brain cancer, wouldn't you call your girlfriend of nine months and tell her? Furthermore, if lived in Chicago and thought you had brain cancer, wouldn't you stay in Chicago and go to one of their top hospitals? Or at least take a ONE HOUR plane ride to MAYO CLINIC (the best cancer hospital in the world) to have it looked at instead of flying all the way to a research facility?? But what do I know.
A few months later, after totalling my mother's convertible, he pulled the same stunt and I never heard from him again. No big loss there.