Kissing a Smoker is like Licking an Ashtray

Colossus (my ex who lives in Arkansas,who in my last post eons ago, I had just left) is a big guy. Really big--6 ft 8.

He is also a good guy. A good enough guy that I was totally prepared to marry him and may well have had circumstances been different. He has an ex-wife and a (truly adorable) young son, so he is pretty much tied to Little Rock. After a while of living there, I realized I would simply never be happy if I too were tied there. So, I left. It was the single hardest thing I've ever done and sometimes I wonder about what might have happened. This was truly the relationship that taught me that, contrary to what the Beatles may claim, love is not all you need.

This is a little story about an incident in which he irritated the hell out of me. It's certainly not a candidate for "why my ex should rot in hell" status, but annoying nonetheless.

I am a pack a day smoker. (Sidenote: this is something RGB's Fred and I bonded over--this and Billy Joel. (Additional sidenote: the first time I typed "bonded," I accidentally wrote "boned." Not a Freudian slip, I promise RGB.)) I know, I know--gross, you're killing yourself, trashy, etc. I've heard them all and I'll quit when I finally decide for myself that I want to. I've tried to quit for other people in the past and now realize that its just too hard to do unless you want to quit for yourself.

Well, Colossus HATED that I smoke. Really, truly despised it. I'm sure he could write his own loser-ex post about my smoking. He would harp on me all the time about my smoking--and, in my defense, I did try very hard several times to quit, but just couldn't do it. He said it was nasty (true), unhealthy (true), and made me smell bad (true). It got to the point that in the last few months of our relationship, he refused to kiss me not matter how many times I brushed my teeth, used mouthwash, and showered. Now, I know I'm a smoker, so I'm mostly immune to the smell and rarely ever smell it on me (though I know its there), but can you really still smell it after all that? This is an honest question. I'm not going to be offended if you say yes. Colossus said that it came through my pores even if I showered, etc. (My God, that's really gross, now that its typed out.)

But the fact remained, I am a smoker. So, Colossus decided to switch to more devious tactics.

I always left my cigarettes in the car and never smoked at home if he was there (and never in the house, obviously), because I knew how much it upset him. After a big fight about my smoking, during which I agreed to try to quit again (I lied and made no attempt to quit, just to hide it better), he began stealing my packs of cigarettes out of my car. Because I was supposed to be trying to quit, I did not want to confront him about it and tell him to stop. So, in response, I started hiding them in different places inside the car. Under the seat, inside the piles of ever-present crap in my car, even in the compartment in the trunk for my car jack. But he always found them. I kept buying more and refusing to say anything about it, even though I knew that he obviously knew that I wasn't quitting. I have a massive stubborn streak (I am also stubborn in the fact that I insist upon thinking that my stubbornness is endearing), so confronting him would entail me acknowledging that I was lying--and I wasn't about to do that.

This went on for about two weeks. I was spending an absurd amount of money on cigarettes, since I rarely got more than about five from a pack. But apparently the way to my heart--or in this case, away from it--is through my checking account. After he found a pack hidden under my spare tire, properly screwed to the floor of my trunk and all, my cheapness overtook my stubbornness and I exploded at him. I was definitely overly confrontational about it--but, hey, I had to minimize the fact that I had been lying and try to shift as much blame as possible. He stopped stealing them, but in retrospect, he totally won. I was forced to admit that I wasn't quitting and hadn't even really tried. Of course, we both already knew that, but he made me say it out loud.

As I said before, Colossus is a good man, so most of my bad stories about him have a decent amount of bad behavior on my part. Sure, he was stealing (and being so insanely thorough in his stealing), but I was lying. Feel free to judge me. I've already come to terms with it.

Why The Dud Cannot be Left Unattended, Part IV

I have some minor health issues that are not particularly life threatening, but are particularly painful. As a result, I have some very needed prescription painkillers.

The first time the Dud was over at my apartment, he was snooping through my stuff and came across my prescriptions. I explained to him why I have them and that they are very much needed. However, my explanation apparently went in one ear and out the other.

Over the next few weeks, I noticed that my pills started to disappear-- several at once. And usually after the Dud had spent the night. Seeing that he was stealing my medication, I started hiding them in my dresser, thinking that he would be less inclined to take them if they were not in plain sight.

That didn't stop him. I came out of the shower one morning to see him digging through my drawers. When I asked him what he was doing, he nonchalantly asked "Hey, where are your drugs?" as if this were a perfectly acceptable and legitimate thing for him to be doing.

While I do not condone taking a medication prescribed to another person, I would at least be able to understand where he was coming from had he been suffering from a kidney stone or something. But, no. He was in no pain whatsoever and was taking my painkillers recreationally.

I was livid that he honestly felt no shame in taking medication from a sick person. That's like stealing food from starving children in a third world country (I mean in concept, not in severity). Who the hell does that?

Why The Dud Cannot be Left Unattended, Part III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why The Dud Cannot be Left Unattended, Part II

The way I explain The Dud to my friends is that he is the type of guy I'd want to go to bed with, but not the type of guy I'd want to wake up with. In fact, waking up with him was quite an ordeal.

Aside from the usual 5 more minutes game, trying to convince me to call out of work and taking too long in the bathroom (therefore limiting my hair and make up time), I had to worry about him staying the hell out of my things.

One of the many items that he seemed to have a particularly strong interest in was my sorority t-shirts. For those of you who do not know me, I am not a particularly large girl. Most of my t-shirts from sorority date parties are youth sizes. The Dud wore a men's large in shirts. This means, that in order to find a t-shirt in my closet large enough for him, he would have to take several out and go through them.

He would try on several, stretching them all out in the process, until he finally would find a random hand-me-down shirt that was an adult small or medium that he was able to stretch enough to fit over his shoulders.

By the time I got out of the shower, there would be a big pile of t-shirts all over my bed, and The Dud would be proudly wearing a shirt that was entirely too small for him and asking if he could wear it home.

I know there is a bit of a double standard here. I love wearing clothes of the men I date. In fact, one of my dirty secrets is that I still keep (and wear) clothes of several of my exes. But the difference is this: I wear my exes' over-sized t-shirts and boxers in the comfort of my own home. The Dud wore my t-shirts out to run errands. I can't even imagine the looks he must have gotten from people. There was something truly disturbing about seeing a pink bid day shirt stretched across man-sized shoulders.

Why The Dud Cannot be Left Unattended, Part I

I absolutely hate babysitting. I used to watch two of the most unruly children imaginable. If I turned my back for one second to put in a movie, by the time I turned back around, they would have broken something. In addition, one had bladder control issues and once peed every single pair of pants he owned. Basically, I was scared out of ever wanting to have or be around kids at a very early age.

But as much as I hated babysitting two children under the age of 8, it was nowhere near as bad as having to babysit a 25 year old. In a lot of ways, the Dud was worse than the unruly children.

Once, his fumbling around in my kitchen woke me up around 4 in the morning (on a Tuesday), so I went to go see what he was up to. He was standing by the refrigerator with a large drink in his hand and some of it spilled on the floor. With a stupid grin on his face, he told me he just wanted an orange juice. I knew better. I took a sip of his drink and found that it was mostly vodka. Not only was I annoyed that he seemed to think it was acceptable to drink a ton of my vodka (I do not drink cheap alcohol), it was fricking 4 in the morning and I was sleeping. Why on Earth did he need a stiff drink at 4 in the fricking morning?

Not to mention, his late night shenanigans made him not want to get up when I was getting ready for work. I sure as hell wasn't going to let him stay in my apartment unattended after the fiasco from the night before, so i ended up practically dragging him to my porch and calling a cab to come get him.

Sadly, this is only one of several stories about why The Dud cannot be left unattended.

Kleptomaniac

I think everyone went through a phase when they were younger where they stole things or didn't tell on a close companion who stole something. I'm not talking clothing or anything of that nature, MOST people realize that's just stupid. (Although to be honest, String Bean was guilty of that, too. I never saw him do it, but I saw his accounts and his new clothes - he didn't have the money.)

Moving on. String Bean must have been a kleptomaniac. What most bugged me about String Bean's stealing habbits is that there was really no use for whatever he managed to yoink. Some examples:

1) The fake metal plates from Qdoba Mexican Grill. - They're actually plastic, but they painted them silver to make them look more classy I guess. There is absolutely no reason to have a pile of these. They sat in his closet for months collecting dust.

2) The ketchup bottle from Dennys. - Newflash, ketchup is not expensive. There is no need to steal this from a cheapo restaurant establishment whose selling point is that they are always open for the drunk and hungry masses who spend more on booze than food.

3) The saltshaker from Denny's. - Seriously. Why in the world would anyone need a random saltshaker? And while we're thinking about it, why not just grab the pepper shaker, too, to round out the pair.

4) A fork from an upscale Denver restaurant. - Just when String Bean gets something right, a nice dinner for two downtown with a carriage ride beforehand... he steals something. No less, a fork. It's a nice restaurant! Why does he feel compelled to steal the fork? Does it make him feel better about the beaucoup bucks he just dropped on dinner? Is it revenge for ostentatiously high prices for minimal food?

This one made me mad. WORSE, String Bean tells me about it afterwards and proceeds to try to break the fork. He bended the thing till it snapped. Why steal something, then break it for good measure?

5) Office supplies from wherever he saw them - String Bean couldn't write, spell, or even add so I don't know why he wanted office supplies. Like an office would ever hire his ass.

6) My magazines - Perhaps there was more trouble in this relationship than I was aware of.

7) Coins from the "extra change" jars at cash registers- Aren't these supposed to be rounding out the purchase? But noooo.

8) Food off my plate - Granted, he was paying for it sometimes (maybe slightly LESS than half the time) but come on. I felt like Joey in friends when he wouldn't share the french fries with his date. "BJA doesn't share food!!"

9) Pennies from fountains - Much like the coins from the checkout, these aren't meant for you, String Bean. Leave them be.

10) CDs. - Ok, some use for these. BUT, though I never saw him do it, he used to go to places like Radio Shack and Best Buy, open the bottom of CDs so as not to break the plastic seal on top. Just sorta popped off the end that holds the CD case together by lifting it out. Made the CD open like a briefcase rather than the book if that helps for the visual. Then he'd simply take the CD. Leave the case. And the poor person going off to buy the case probably ran into the - I bought this CD and there's no CD in it -problem. THAT is just plain stealing. No way around it.

Oh, he'd also take them from his friends. His justification was that they took them from him.

I know I said he always stole pointless things and the CD's don't count, but the idea behind my rant is that String Bean was a raging klepto.

The Paper Trail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resolutions you should have made.

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

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

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

Happy New Year from us here at LoserEx!!

You do not warrant long goodbyes.

New day = new complaints to share

Boris- Seemed to have this misconception that I only listen to modern rock music (to this day, I still don't know why) and one day thought he would "expand" my musical tastes. He put in some tape of this god-awful foreign music that sounded like the European equivilant of Michael Bolton. Then, he asked me if I liked it. Not wanting to be impolite (yeah, I used to be polite), I told him "yeah, it's good" to which he responded "See? It doesn't have to be rock music to be good." He seemed to think he was teaching me a life lesson. As I recall, a week prior to this incident, he had taken my CD of Handel's Messiah out of his player because he thought it was obnoxious. On another occasion, he had done the same to my Jimmy Buffett CD, and a random mix CD with a variety of musical genres. Um, ok, who has limited tastes in music?

Fruit Fly- Always has these "brilliant" ideas for some sort of modern art project. This would have been ok, except it awlays involved some sort of preparation which was completely unacceptable. For example, he spent a few months stealing silverware from restaurants every single time we went out to eat. He just couldn't resist slipping a few utensils into his pocket. It was horribly embarassing. I've never stolen anything in my life, and it was very uncomfortable for me to have to sit there while he did. Buddy- kleptomania is not an art project.

Shrek- I only own one halter top, which I bought for New Years' Eve last year. It is not in anyway revealing, or trashy, rather, it is cute and fun. I bought it at the mall with my mother (for those of you who do not know me well, I have a very conservative southern mother who would never let me dress like a skank). Well, lardass came to visit me for the holidays, and didn't want to take me out for New Years. Jerk. So, we went out to dinner with my parents, and I wore the shirt with a cardigan and a skirt (which was knee-length). He told me it was "slutty" and it was embarassing for him to be seen with me. Ass. I should also mention here that his female friends (all of whom he swears are not sluts and will defend to the death) wear nothing but the skankiest of tank tops and skirts (which come up to thier C U Next Tuesdays. No sweaters over the tank tops either). Furthermore, his female friends do not have, ahem, the most virtuous of reputations. Since that, I have wondered if this shirt is, in fact, skanky. I have asked several people, all of whom laugh at me, and tell me I'm being ridiculous for thinking that. Well, buddy, you may think one of my shirts is skanky, but I know all of your clothes are dirty.

...and it looks like I have once again reached my daily limit.