Latent Effects of Singledom and When a Fellow Stops Getting Ass

If you are a resident reader of this blog, you'll no doubt know that it was born from a series of atrocious experiences I had with online dating (Match.com, Salon.com) in an epically drunk 2008. Around October 2008, I had decided to turn it down a notch and stop having so much unwarranted sex. I entered what I called "The Age of Celibacy and Boredom." It lived up to its name and was excrutiatingly dull. Also, it turned out to be several months of intense personal psychological evaluation and healing in which I wrote a memoir (yes, I've tried to obtain representation for said memoir, to no avail, fuck it). I also deleted any and all online dating accounts and abandoned the effort all together, having proven my hypothesis that it is completely and utter tosh. No good can come from a relationship generated digitally and they had best be developed through the old fashioned "mutual friend" technique.

I opened myself up to this seemingly remote possibility that I might actually have a friend of a friend in the same cohort and psychographic similarity as I. Maybe they stayed home and weren't as much of a libation obsessed socially anxious twat as I. Maybe they had the clap and that's why they never came out to meet members of the opposite sex. If that were the case, clearly I wouldn't want to meet them on account of 1) having the clap and 2) being too simple to realize that the apothecary has pills for such VD.

A friend of a friend (twice removed) of mine heeded my calls for assistance and introduced me to a fellow via Facebook. It was quite easy:

Friend: Hey there, email my friend Max. He lives in Silver Lake. You might get along well.

So I emailed Max. He responded several days later and informed me that he didn't use Facebook as a regular means of communication and thusly I should call him instead. He provided his phone number and I reciprocated by providing my own.

At this juncture I yielded to standard gender roles. I don't much believe in them, but in this case I felt quite lazy and unsure of how to approach the situation. Electively obeying gender roles in a fancy subversive trick us ladies can pull on occasion. I know, it sucks, but we do it. That's the truth.

I did not hear from him. I wrote him off. I was far too into myself at the time anyway. Eating at Bandera's, drinking anywhere, wishing I was in England, obsessing about Russell Brand, and working on my memoir was really all I was interested in at the time anyway.

Yes, I was every man's dream come true.

Then one odd day, about three months later, I was typing my little fingers to nubs at one of my company's satellite offices and I received a call from an unknown phone number. I never answer these. I've done too many regretful things and spread my phone number around Los Angeles like malaria in Jakarta. I never know which phone call I receive will unlock my shame bunker.

I happened to be talking to Jab on our good social anxiety enabling friend, AOL Instant Messenger, at the time. I was taking my car into the shop that day, he believed that my car needed a little affection was due to my trying to teach him to drive a stick earlier that week (not the case, and he never learned). Like the sweet lad he is he was offering to take me to his family's auto tech, too late, though I appreciated the thought.

Later in the day I got the ovaries to listen to the voicemail left by the unknown number, and as you guessed it, it was this fellow Max. His exact words were that he "expects a call back this week". Ooooh la la, are you fucking Nicolas Sarkozy? Do you own my wishfully socialist ass? No, you don't, you should not expect a thing from me.

This significant lag in "time from email to phone call" prompted the question: Whom was he fucking in the mean time? Clearly, I wasn't that important three months ago, but how that he needs a box for his tool, I became worthy of a phone call.

Put off and belligerent about this, I ignored it and never called back.

Approximately two months after this, Max called again, as I sit here on my couch with Jab. I let it ring, unsure of what to say to this individual who had never met me but probably had no platonic interest in me. He was interested in my mythical vagina.

I listened to the voicemail. It confirmed my suspicions. He stated that he'd like to get to know me, etc. It was sort of flirty and sing-songy. Something I just sound like a douche when doing. If you don't sound like a douche doing this, it means you do it with great frequency and have a lot of practice. Oh you, I've learnt my lesson about your smooth flirtatiousness.

Despite the fact that I was pretty certain I had this cat's number, I decided to email our mutual friend and ask for advice. Not wanting to upset who was possibly a good person, I asked what the appropriate steps were to letting him down easy. As she knows Max, she should be willing and able to let me know what the considerate script to concoct is, right?

No. Instead I received a ranting raving email exclaiming that I am a "teenager" and "too smart of a girl to be acting like this". Also, she is too old to be involved in interactions like this.

I was upset. My giant ego was wrongly wounded. My ego is enormous. The bigger it gets, the harder it falls. These days it's pretty huge but is leaning like the Tower of Pisa. Occasionally, a little aftershock knocks it into a more acute lean.

I complained to Jab. He quickly replied, "She's a prick. Don't worry about it."

So I let it go. Never to deal with again, until this here blog.

I still don't know if this has completely blown over. I can assume that since mutual friend had responded with rash upset and belligerence directed at me, that my non-response to it was probably the best course of action. You can never add fuel to the fire of something irrational. Only belligerence of greater significance and consequence will ensue.

Even if I was not in a relationship at the time I received that second phone call, I still would have never replied. It felt as though it was sexually contrived and frankly, I've smelled that shit and stepped in it far too many times. It took me over twenty times of shit-steppage, but I did figure it out.

The Nervousness

I remember being scared shitless to speak to other children when I was small. Especially boys. I was like Joe Bauer's character in Mike Judge's Idiocracy. I sounded smart, I had a large vocabulary for a grade schooler, "bitch" wasn't a name I commonly called my friends as I imagined it would get me kicked in the crotch. Thusly, I was deemed "faggy", "lame", any number of other non-descript offensive names a fourth grader might throw at another fourth grader.

I still am, only I figured out how to make it funny, so people like me now. Now it's my special trick. Use a word such as "solipsistic" in a group of new people and it's a mystical intellectual conversation starter. No matter how nervous I may be, "solipsistic" covered me like a broad vocabulary-brella.

There are three types of nervous. I tend to feel only one kind: social anxiety. But that's not really what I want to discuss. I'm more interested type 2 nervousness, or rather, pre-coital nervousness. The kind that sinks your stomach into your fallopian tubes, as you hope biologically, you'll get to use your vagina for something other than the butt of a joke for once.

The final, less interesting, type of nervous is the "this is going to hurt really badly, isn't it?" nervouness. We all know and hate that one.

But I digress: type 2, pre-coital nervousness.

I can't decide what the biological benefit of being on the edge of heaving one's guts out in front of a prospective mate is, but we have all been prone to it at one time or another.

We feel it frequently in middle school and high school. We sweat in our little aldolescent Teen Spirit arm pits and get caught up on our own tongues. We do stupid shit like spew freudian slips like, "would you like to go down on me?" Pause for the silent freak out. "I mean um, shit, would you like to go down to the park with me?" As much as we desire that person, we then fear them because we've made fools of ourselves. At that age, being a fool is an unredeemable party foul. No amount of flattery or booze on prom night can fix it.

As we exit high school, we so fucking into ourselves that we forget how to feel this kind of innocent and luxurious appreciate and lust for another human being. We (ok me, maybe others have, but no one is as retardedly optimistic and I) avoid it, because it hurts. We forget that there might be some benefit from it.

I was dry from this lovely innocent lust nervousness for years before I started dating Jab and it was fabulously appalling because it's stellar in the first place, and I'd though I would never feel it again. I thought maybe I was the only twat out there that was so out of her skull for somebody that she was feeling like she was 12 years old jumping on a trampoline throwing water balloons at her pop. Nope, it wasn't just me. B.R. got the bug too.

She's currently in a rough limbo in oggling a fellow at her office. Tricky, those work relationships. So she's been sneaking around, at the cafe, in other parts of the office, attempting to make eye contact with him. He first caught her staring at his crotch at an office party. Ok, that's bound to make one get the nervousness. But B.R. is even tongue-tied. Insane what the nervouness can do to you!

What function does it really serve? It's there to remind you that you're not the greatest thing in your world and just maybe there is a counter part that can make you better. Oh, and hopefully it'll keep you and your better half fucking hard for a good long time.

Places One Will Urinate When Hammered

Now this is just a hypothetical. I'm not saying I've done this, but it's certainly in the cards. Location of Urination is probably the best gauge of intoxication. It is a primary social skill developed at a very young age: I piss on myself, my friends go away. This must be bad. I go wee not in the toilet, my friends go away and my mom is angry at me. This must be bad. When this lesson learned somehow escapes us, only then are we truly "intoxicated".


moar funny pictures

Meet the Parents

Tomorrow Jab and I are off to my homeland to see my parents, grandparents, and BR. This will be Jab's first time meeting my family and my father has already developed a brewery tour for him. Dad, you're the best. I love visiting home.

Of course this means a blogging hiatus. Thumbs down.

David's Bridal is Responsible for the Plight of Single Women Everywhere

For every great woman that's out there, there's also one that is a complete wreck. You probably don't know which one you are either. Chances are if you're great, you believe yourself to be a cesspool of drama and insecurities. Because of this, you're likely great simply because you're aware of your bullshit and can monitor it accordingly. Just like your blood alcohol level (not coincidentally, these two correlate)!

Let's call this split a nice solid 50 / 50.

For those of you that fall in the 50% of women that are smart, independent, thinkers, decision makers, general penile threats...oooh David's Bridal just screwed another 50% you out of any hope of ever getting hitched.

David's Bridal is the hell of matrimony.

I had always been a tad curious of what this apparent Walmart of Matrimony may be. I had never had a reason to go in one. Never have I been a bridesmaid nor a bride, but this October, I am to be a bridesmaid. One of three I shall be.

I received my instructions from my friend (the bride) Jessie's bridal HQ in Colorado:

"You need to go to David's Bridal, select a floor length dress in the color 'clover'. Any one you want, I just want it to be floor length and clover".

I'm 5'2". I will look like a clover colored dildo in a floor length dress (and yes, my dildo figure will have testicles).

Easy enough. Her choice to use David's Bridal was logistically a very wise one as none of her bridesmaids are actually located in Colorado. It's simple enough to go to any location of the Matrimonious Home Depot and select a dress that can be found in any other location across the United States.

I perused the website to narrow down my selections. I selected three dresses meeting Jessie's critera. I didn't want to spend a tremendous amount of time on this task as I'd have to go on the evening on a weeknight. I sure as shit am not going to intern myself in a bridezilla fashion laboratory on a weekend.

I talked Jab into going with me on a Monday night to the Burbank location. In order to make this fun, we decided to each consume a generous helping of Bacardi.

Thusly, the ride over was a bit of a blur. As we arrived we were the only car in the parking lot. We blasted in like a liquor infused arctic wind. I am a busy woman dammit. I haven't time for shenanigans such as "waiting for a sales person" or "bridal consultant" as they call them.

I was struck in my path by a point of purchase display by the register. It contained t-shirts with verbiage such as, "Don't talk to me, I'm the groom" as well as "Bride to be". They appeared airbrushed, as though they should be a prize at a carnival in San Bernardino. As soon as I'd recovered from this mental obstacle, I continued on to where I saw some "clover" colored floor length dresses. Jab was still awestruck by the many articles of bullshittery this place contained.

"May I help you?" A "bridal consultant" asked Jab.

"Um...yes. I'm looking for a dress..."

Pause.

Hmm, a longer pause.

I continued searching for my three bridesmaid dress lotto numbers in the labrynth of taffeta and other weird fabrics I can't begin to identify.

I pictured a horrified bridal consultant, who hadn't often, come in contact with a man who was looking for a dress.

"...for my girlfriend." Jab waited his crossdressy joke out very well. The proper amount of discomfort was delivered upon the bridal consultant.

I laughed a jolly drunken laugh from three aisles of rayon away. Jab came and found me deciding between the $120 dress or $150. The economy made the decision for me, as well as my quick decision making skills due to being intoxicated. Alcohol, I owe you so much, let this be yet another one of your gifts you've bestowed upon me.

I tried it on. It looked like a shiny green bag. A shiny green bag that would be altered when, presumably, I don't become too fat prior to the wedding in October.

"I'll take it." I announced proudly as though I was Wayne Campell in Wayne's World preparing to purchase his Stratocaster.

"Wow that was really easy." The bridal consultant that had been hovering around us like a commission based helicopter said.

"Yup, I'm pretty easy." I said. Giggle to your heart's content with your own "tossing a hot dog down a hallway" joke now.

I lined up at the register / showcase of crap at the front of the store to purchase the frock. Inside the showcase I noticed a large amount of emasculating merchandise:

- Giant (I mean fucking enormous, must have weighed five pounds) faux diamond rings intertwined with wedding bands. Why? I don't know.
- Pink stuffed hearts (I believe the retail term is "plush")
- Picture frames with hearts around them.

Hearts are fucking emasculating because they look like upturned testicles. Ugh. That must be frightening to consider as a male.

If marriage is to remain a sacred institution, it should not be commercialized as a commodity like Ikea furniture. The commercialization of a relationship that is financially and emotionally binding dooms it to failure. It allows members of a society to place less value on it as it is superficially exemplified. The value of a marriage appears to no longer exist in the two individuals bound by it, but the stereotypical showmanship of "love". Love isn't a pissing contest. Unless you're into golden showers, that's your deal.

So strong, single, brilliant, goodhearted, sane women, blame your plight of singledom (assuming this is a discomfort for you) not on men, but on David's Bridal.*

*Okay, blame some of it on men and all individuals in society and the nonsense we're all allowed to get away with in terms of communication styles and the cop-outs therein.

Brain to Tequila: You're my Frenemy.

Ah, Cinco de Mayo. The holiday that only the west coast of the United States seems to celebrate. In Los Angeles, the fervor for the ancient political event is even hotter. This of course being due to the fact that California was at one point part of what is today Mexico (it was controlled by Spain at the time that it was part of California, but whatevs). Of course with all the glory of many things American, those of us that were in no way connected or native to Mexico celebrate the fuck out of Cinco de Mayo. Why? Because we all have one thing in common, no matter our creed, sexuality, race or preference for Splenda or Aspartame: we love booze.

Jab and I set forth on our Cinco de Mayo experience eastward to Park La Brea. Those of you from Los Angeles will know that Park La Brea is full of polished genetically-capitalized assholes (read: rich people). In fact, I believe that The Hills was filmed there. Now you all know what I am talking about.

We snuck in and made our way to the apartment at which we were to meet Jab's producer. Upon finding a semi-empty apartment occupied by a quaint physical mockery of Sarah Silverman and several off the producer, Kyle's, cronies. They were already drunk which meant we had to catch up.


Despite the lack of furniture, there was a surprising abundance of random weed brownies scattered in styrene containers about the apartment. While beer is not of interest to me, I helped myself to a large bite of a brownie while it's possible owner's back was turned. I'm so sneaky.

We took off on foot to the bar, El Coyote in Beverly Hills. As expected, the bar was packed with whiteness. So white it nearly blinded me. We were handed Cuervo branded shot glasses on lanyards and flashing Cuervo medallions on Mardi Gras beads. That puts the "ass" in "I need to assassinate someone".

Kyle began buying drinks. I eagerly put a shot of Patron in my already potent Margarita. Getting drunk fast in this situation was an absolute necessity. It was hot, crowded, and smelled like the New Orleans Superdome.

Just as I had worked my way through my first drink (with double the power), the table next to us was one half of a whole lot of ruckus. The other half was a member of our party: some personal trainer named Joe.

I sat in a chair in between both of them, standing over me yelling.

"What the fuck's the problem?" I yelled at them. I have no tolerance for such shenanigans. And if they occur, I'd love to involve myself in them as the bringer'o'rationality.

"This guy fingered my asshole!" Joe yelled and pointed at the innocent (no matter what actually happened, that's so funny that I'm simply impressed.)

"I did not! What the fuck?"

Jab giggled and ducked below them and whispered in my ear, "it was me." We laughed. Even if he had done it, that would have been remarkable.

"Who fucking cares? It's a crowded bar, everybody's fingering everybody else. Get over it." I said. I'd like to say that that wrapped it all up nicely, but it didn't. They yelled a bit more, I ignored it, and eventually someone talked Joe into the fact that even if it happened, it was an accident.

Why are men so sensitive about their assholes? I'd bet these are the same chaps who fancy a rim job from a lady. You betcha. They aren't trying to fuck them. It just may be some slippage, perhaps a result of some drunkenness and being the exact same average height of a lot of other men. Women accidentally bump tits all the time. It's just reality.

Eventually we were seated and served by a lovely waitress who was remarkably patient with our drunken crew. I ordered two more Cadillac Margaritas. Jab and Kyle ordered more shots.

I had been observering these two girls with us for the entire evening. One was the Sarah Silverman rip-off from Park La Brea. She wasn't funny at all, just kind of delightfully jew-y. She and the one I'll call "The Blonde One" began this banter:

"Bitch!"
"Bitch!"
"No...you're the bitch!"

This was done in a flamboyant Bobby Trendy (remember the Anna Nicole Smith Show? I hope so) manner so richly associated with gay dudes and silk shirts. It's okay if you're flamboyant. It's not okay if you're just a girl that seems to smoke a lot of Marlboro Reds.

"I've got to ask, why do you guys call each other bitch back and forth? It doesn't seem terribly rewarding." The tequila was starting to hit me. I was secretly hoping for a match of the minds.

"Oh we just do it to make fun of our friends."

Uh huh.

So we've got 1) Calling each other "bitch" and sounding like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and 2) making fun of their own friends.

Lovely.

I promptly went back to being friends with my tequila.

I suppose I had ordered a chicken quesodilla because it appeared in font of me at right about this time.

This was when my brain and my tequila decided to have a conversation. It went like this:

Brain says to tequila, "so I notice that you've been taking quite a bit of my capacity away, eh?"

Wry little tequila replies, "yes! Surely I have. And I will commondere more very shortly."

Brain to tequila, "so should we just make a truce and I'll agree to not remember anything after this point? I'd rather not fight, I want to still be friends."

Tequila is exalted. "Yes! Fabulous decision my good friend. I'll see you next time!"

Then tequila rode off into the sunset on a silver steed, shooting pistols in the air.

At least that's how it felt.

So clearly, things got very blurry at this point. I do recall, however.

1) Kyle said to me, "you're so awesome, really, you're the most awesome girl ever." In an effort to prove him wrong, I think, I slapped him. Then I immediately regretted my decision and took off my glasses and begged him to slap me. He wouldn't do it.

2) Shortly afterward, I asked Kyle if I could go to Japan with the lot of them in September.* He holds the purse-strings. He said yes. I don't know why the fuck he said yes. I had just slapped him.

The next thing I remember is being led out of the restaurant by Jab. Some time passed, it was dark and hot out. Drunken white people were running amok in Los Angeles. The people that were legitimately celebrating Cinco de Mayo were probably drunk on PBR elsewhere.

All of a sudden, like a nasty email from a frenemy, I realized my foot hurt very badly. I looked down at my swampy feeling open-toed shoe to realize that I was bleeding profusely.

Yes, this had happened once before. Election night. Damn my adorable feet looking so peachy in open-toed shoes. Though on election night and now on Cinco de Mayo, they'd gone from looking peachy to resembling shredded shabu shabu beef.

I kept walking though Jab asked me repeatedly to stop.

"Noooooo...I am just fine. Let's keep going." I'd forgotten that the car was a solid mile away. In Los Angeles terms, this is a death march.

At some point, on some random street with a fine grassy spot to plop my drunk ass down on, I guess I agreed to Jab's request that I stop continuing to tear my foot apart and let him come get me.

So there I sat on a street that I didn't know. Alone. With a bloody foot. In between a Land Rover and a Mercedes. I was kind of hidden, a bit concerned that Jab couldn't see me when he came back with the car.

So I called B.R. We have a saying: When you're on the phone, you're not alone.

According to her recount of the conversation I was repeating this phrase an inordinate number of times, "I'm sitting between a Land Rover and a Mercedes."

She said, "well at least it sounds like it's a nice neighborhood." That's true, but I was drunk and alone. I could be at fucking Buckingham Palace and it would still be frightening.

B.R. also told me she was on the phone with me for a solid half hour. Actually she said, "an extremely long time." Apparently she also tried to get me to call a cab and I rejected her idea. This is when she became concerned and decided she wouldn't get off the phone with me until Jab got me, which he eventually did.

"Where the hell were you?!" I was acting upset because I was drunk. Truly, I could never be upset at him. I'm lucky to have anybody driving my drunk and unrepentant ass around.

"Um well, I had to climb over a fence and some trees. I got lost." I don't know where he got lost on the way to Park La Brea and was forced by his direction to climb trees and fences, but it's no matter, that's kind of manly and awesome. Kind of like our own drunken Beverly Hills version of Lost.

When we got home I realized what a carved up state my foot was in. I split open the front of my big toe. It took until Saturday to even be able to walk normally. I know what you're thinking, no, it wasn't due to the sex. You cheeky assumptive little devils.

I'm not going to wait for a third time to learn my lesson about being drunk and wearing exceedingly adorable peep-toed footwear. Converse while drinking, from now on, forever.



*I feel like a dick for asking this. I will probably not go.

Ugh, Twitter.com/AstaCharles

I made a decision which I immediately regretted. I joined Twitter.

Now, make no mistake, I have done this because I need to experience it. I cannot rightly judge that which I have not experienced. Right?

So now, follow me if you wish:

Twitter.com/AstaCharles

Ciao!

I'm Saving my Anus for Marriage

A few weeks ago I was having drinks with a good friend of mine. We share a significant age gap of approximately forty years. Nevertheless, he keeps up, he's still a visionary. He said to me, "you know, there's a notable difference between your generation and mine."

Of all the things he could possibly mean: iPods, Pokemon, Twitter, hybrid cars, Morningstar products...he chose not a one.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The butt." He said. "Your generation is obsessed with the butt. When I was your age, we wouldn't consider putting it in the ass."

"Oh, my friend, you're sorely mistaken. Not all of us are obsessed with the butt. In fact, I value it more highly than my own baby-maker. I'm saving my anus for marriage."

It sounds like a prolific statement of massive implications to human sexuality and today's strata of sexual pre-marital "hand outs". The blow job! Oh yes, that's a gimme. The hand job? Of course. The rim job? Well, maybe. Vaginal dick-travel? Yes! Though one realm remains controversial: the anus.

Why such a sensitive topic, the anal sex?

Oh right, because it fucking hurts.

To endure such pain for a man, it must truly be worth something. More than the breaking of a hymen, more than the refusal to create throat babies (read: swallowing). A woman's anus is a narrow sanctuary for the penis that must be salvaged at all costs. For thou shalt be smote upon by the anus gods if this tight temple is stretched beyond it's capacity for defecation (by a dong) prior to marriage! A wife's anus would be worthless to her husband!

Your dowry will not be paid. Your family will be shamed!

Additionally, I don't want my man to potentially give me an enema prior to legally locking him down. Pooping all over him in the heat of excruciating passion is grounds for him to bail. I'd best have factored in his financial risks prior to allowing him to enter my ripe pink ruby star fruit of an asshole.

Girls, protect your anuses carefully. There is no such thing as anal ben-wah-balls for as far as I am aware. There may be re-virginization surgery, but there is no such procedure for the anus.

It still remains controversial and thusly, considered by some to be sacred.

Quote of the Week

My chum and I were discussing the increasingly difficult nature of finding quality people with both kind hearts and intellectually robust brain testes. To which he added, eloquently:

I'll let you know when I meet someone who offers more than a reason to wash my sheets.

When offering this statement to Grant, for some laughs, he replied:

I would love for some girl to wash my sheets. I usually just go buy new ones. I hate doing laundry.

I think the overarching point here is this:

If you copulate with a man who has clean sheets, that does not mean that you are important.

If you copulated on sheets that are clean, folded properly, and smell like rose linen water, then you might be important, but he might also be trying to talk himself out of being gay.

The Last Stand: Part Two

About one week after I’d been back on American soil, Steven actually did ask me to “hang out”. It wasn’t given the façade or positioning of a date. Just a “hang out”. That’s was bros-dudes-guys do. In some ways, I can appreciate this elimination of any presupposition about what would occur in our relationship. But I had been conditioned at this point, by the usage of a dating site, to believe that online meet ups were either a) romantic or b) not romantic. “Gray areas” in life are extremely troublesome to me. This was one instance in which it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be a gray area at all.

I met up with Steven at the Cock’n’Bull pub in Santa Monica, near Venice. I like this bar and thought it was an appropriate environment, as I’d be regaling my tales of travels in England. I hadn’t yet grown tired of pub food and was actually craving bangers’n’mash.

It turned out to be trivia night at the Cock’n’Bull, which I wasn’t aware of. It ended up being quite fun. Trivia night consists of a group of drunks pooling together to answer rather challenging trivia questions about the following: geography, science, music, history, and some various category of miscellany. It affords those of us with bizarre senses of humor the opportunity to create funny names for our individual teams. Ours was “t’ain’t misbehavin’.”

I gave Steven his scarf. He was very happy with it. For some reason I was afraid that he would be offended that it wasn’t actually woolen and was made from synthetic fibers. I’m neurotic.

We parted ways in a very platonic manner. We hugged good-bye in that awkward “ass out” hug that is given to someone we don’t know very well or have absolutely no sexual interest in. We also agreed that we simply must do this trivia night thing again. He texted me the next day with a photo of a girl in a bus bench ad and said, “I think she looks like you.” That was nice. She was far prettier than I. Hell, she was pretty enough to be paid thousands of dollars to be in a fucking ad campaign. She’s compelling enough with her luscious brown hair and voluptuous lips to encourage individuals in her target demo to purchase soup or cell phones or whatever it was.
Steven continued to text me and instant messaging me. Utilizing whatever communication he could so as to contact me but not actually speak to me. So when I did see him next, it felt extremely awkward.

We went to trivia again. This time he invited his friend, Y. Y was fun. We played trivia, very unsuccessfully, ate bangers’n’mash, and then went to another bar. We got high. I forgot a lot of what went on. I just remember standing on Wilshire with a one-hitter in my hot little hand wondering what in the hell I was doing. I was there, all inebriated, with these two people I barely knew. One that I had just met and he’d provided me with marijuana. I don’t know much about weed. It’s not really my forte and not my passion of any sort. I was just drifting into one of my “well I don’t really care about myself or anything around me, so I may as well make a lark of it” kind of moods. So I inhaled, exhaled, and we drifted into the Gas Light for karaoke.
We scuttled into a little booth in the back of the bar. The Gas Light is Santa Monica’s only real karaoke experience. It’s a jock experience. Frat boys and business majors with hot girlfriends from UCLA wander down from Q’s and Cabo Cantina with the illusion that singing Journey songs is going to be a hilarious juxtaposition to who they really are – empty skulled, vapid surfboard cowboys. It doesn’t come across as funny. Just as irritating as if I had excema on my eyeball.

So I sat there in this booth with little pricklings of imaginary fingers running up my spine all the while mongoloids sang Toby Keith or something up on the stage at the end of the room. I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, especially with the distant reality that I had to go to work the next day. I was as high as the fucking Hindenberg. Higher and more incoherent than I’d ever been in all my mischievous moments, I absolutely had to get out of there. I couldn’t even hold a conversation, let alone get to know these people that I didn’t know at all. So I went home.
I declined the next several trivia night opportunities. I was working on this here manuscript and was trying to lay off the alcohol intake. I had started getting the shakes after nights of drinking. I have a vast and acute history of alcoholism in my family. Plus I was getting quite pudgy in my pear shaped little body. This, of course, would lessen my level of attractiveness to real life prospects. Hence, it was quite important to me to put down the fork and the drink and pick up the dumb bells. That I did. Sacrificing triva night. Then, B.R. came to town.

B.R. is my best friend. I do not use the term loosely. She is my ultimate partner. If only she had a penis and other masculine features to accompany it. Sight, only in dreams. Two of B.R.’s most infamous abilities that are extremely useful to me, because I don’t possess them, is 1) remembering all faces and names of our past acquaintances and 2) observing personality traits that are “weird”. Additionally, we always have a bang up time when we are together. Nothing can get us down. The worst part about my interment here in Los Angeles is that I don’t have B.R. here to live my life with me. Often I feel like a shit friend for leaving Portland, but she’s done alright, and she has a place to escape to now when the weather is in a perpetual torrential downpour of liquid sadness upon Portland. I’ve done okay with out her I guess, though I probably would have avoided many a bad situation with bad individuals if she was in my life, for the day to day bullshit that I and my retarded optimism pull myself into.

I was happy with the notion that Steven was now my friend. He had even offered to “annex” me into his group of friends. This was at a time when I was my most lonely in Los Angeles. I felt low, I felt worthless and thought that no one even wanted me in their life. I was an outsider that would never fit in. So I thought that this olive branch extended by Steven was very nice. I wanted B.R. to meet him.

B.R. and I had a wallop of fun at the Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood one evening, which is conveniently located across from one of my favorite bars – Bar Lubitsch. We wandered over there after spending gobs of cash on an array of “pleasing” products. I had invited Steven to meet us there after he got off work.

Steven showed up around midnight or so and B.R. and I were getting close to being partied out. B.R. was bumping and grinding with some large black man on the dance floor. I did my little two step move with Steven. He looked bored. I was tired. This didn’t last long. We left.

When we got into my car I asked B.R. what she thought of my new friend, “I dunno,” she said, “he kinda has the crazy eye.”

The crazy eye? I had not noticed this. Retarded optimism had blinded me. I needed B.R. to tell me more.

“I don’t know, he just like, doesn’t seem totally right, he’s kind of weird.” She said. I heeded this warning and staved off communication with Steven. As if B.R. was some sort of delectable little prophet, approximately four days later the unimaginable occurred and Steven became “kind of weird”.

He texted me about trivia night four days later and I opted out, as I was trying to not further fuel my apparent alcoholism and trying to research and write. I was much more at peace doing that than I ever had been going out to bars and focusing on turning my blood into gin. After my initial decline of the invitation, my phone lay dormant. A few texts from Celeste and Andrea rolled in, but for several hours my phone was as quiet as the dead James Brown. Then came a text from Steven begging me to come to trivia. The following ensued:

Steven: Come on! Come down here!
Me: No, I’m very tired, I’m staying in tonight. Have fun!
(Silence for several minutes.)
Steven: Are you sure you’re not going to come?
Me: Yes
Steven: What if I told you I wanted to kiss you?

Now, picture a flashback of B.R. saying to me, “he’s got the crazy eye.” Now the moment echoes in my head and I reply to it, “My GOD, she was right.” I think it is absurd to propose such an intimate thing as a first kiss via text message. I’ve had two great first kisses in my life. Both were filled with the tingling in the loins that, I think, by definition preexists to a first kiss. The proposal was also lacking many necessary facets that would facilitate execution that wasn’t totally bizarre feeling: sexual interest, body language suggesting sexual interest, flirting, you know, the normal kind of mating dance kind of stuff. I was taken aback.

Me: Um, you should come up with a better way to present such a thing.

Steven: What do you mean?

Me: Saying it via text message is weird. It’s not direct.

Steven: Ok. So next time I’ll be direct, I’ll be 100% man. You better look out because you’re gonna get it.

My stomach sank with the idea that I might have to be frightened for myself. That was fucking creepy. Had I created a stalker? Was he always a stalker and I had just unveiled the stalker-ish tendencies?

Me: I don’t understand.

Steven: Oh great, now I sound like a creep. So what’s your answer?
Me: Well yeah, you kinda do. And um, no. I don’t think so.

At this point, I think it was entirely appropriate to state my declination of the text message proposed kiss. I would have felt odd about it anyway, had it taken place in a normal setting, since it had already been set up to me that Steven was nothing more than a friend. He had never hinted at anything other than that type of relationship moving forward.

Steven: Oh god, I’ve made such a fool of myself. This is so embarrassing.

I thought he would be wise enough to stop there, but he didn’t. He kept going into a waterfall of increasingly embarrassing statements.

Steven: I am so drunk, I am just really shy.

Me: Being shy is okay, but you have to find out other ways to express yourself.

I was being vague on purpose. By telling him now that texting is a horrible way to express oneself would impose judgment upon all of his prior communication with me. Perhaps I should have done it. I was doing that stupid thing that women do in trying to get men to see what their fault was without giving them the exact terminology to describe said fault. Women: don’t ever do this. Be blunt. If he’s a good man, he’ll take it in stride and appreciate you for it later on. Another part of me was dying to see how this sordid dialogue Steven seemed to be having with himself, with me as a witness, would turn out. And so I continued to let it go, running drunkenly wild like some crazed boar in the china shop that was my intimacy. He was breaking every potential bit.

Steven: I always wanted to kiss you from the very beginning, but I get nervous.

That was cute. I wanted to break down right there and tell him I would. And I really would have except for the nonsense about Steven acknowledging and dispelling his romantic desires via text. I didn’t feel like it was real or at all like something that I had to treat as a true human emotion. So I responded with the following, that so many men have said to me in my time of need.

Me: I think you are too drunk. I don’t want to hear anymore.

That has been my emotional interaction with men, save for one, “I don’t want to hear anymore.” So I spit it right back at someone that didn’t necessarily deserve it, but at the moment I felt needed to be “taught a lesson”. This is a common theme amongst women, always trying to “teach lessons”. When we treat men like our children, you can be damned sure they’ll behave just like children.

Steven: Oh great. Fine. I’m such an idiot.

There is no sense in consoling someone when they’re really gone and done something that is in fact, idiotic. It will only make you, yourself, an idiot.

Me: I think you should just stop and read all this in the morning and think about it.

Steven: Great I can relive this night in the morning.

Me: Yes.

I thought it was done. He would re-read everything he’d said to me and realize that texting probably isn’t the best way to go about it. But he wouldn’t, because he didn’t see texting as a blockade to my heart or my pants, he saw it as an enabler. Texting was a tool to help him overcome his shyness.

When Steven got home, he just got right onto Facebook and let loose on my “wall” with:
“I’m dead to you, right?”

Really? All my coworkers and all of my friends can read that. Thank you. Not only are they going to wonder what kind of freak I am to keep such company, but what I have done to you.

I simply wrote back, “no, you are not dead to me.”

In the morning, I received a message on Facebook from Steven simply describing that he was now fine. Ever since he has persevered with every type of online communication available to him to reach me. Though not once a phone call. If he did call me, I would answer. His attempts to contact me have included the following:

1. Picture message
2. Facebook “poke”
3. Facebook “superpoke”
4. Salon.com “wave” (Salon.com shows how long it has been since a user last logged on. Mine would have shown that I last logged on and looked at my profile over three weeks prior to this “wave”.)

Of all the utter rubbish I’ve gone through with men on the internet, there was a brief shining moment where this was all a relief to me. I finally knew that not all men on dating sites were after sex and nothing more. Though it did show me that even the most earnest use digital communication as a crutch for their true expressions, wants, and desires. Though, mostly, fornication.

The Last Stand: Part One

This is part one of a two part post of an excerpt from my manuscript. This took place last fall. The events described were a damned skippy exemplification of why electronic communication is a poor, awkward, and very confusion way to try to start dating someone. Especially a girl that has the idea that "talking" is kind of a human thing that we do (most girls feel this way).

The Age of Celibacy and Boredom is concept you must be familiar with in order to not be perplexed by this piece. Basis of concept: If a man wouldn’t call me on the phone, he wasn’t getting a date out of me. Also, just because he got a date out of me, didn’t mean I would fuck him (this part was extremely difficult for me to commit to.)

Steven started out as a very frustrating online interaction. His emails were short and hardly contained anything worth reading. Things like, “I’m working, then going to soccer…” He had originally contacted me, via an electronic emoticon “wink” on Salon.com. I reciprocated with said emoticon “wink” because his profile lent me to believe he could be quite cute in person and he appeared to have a stout sense of humor. At around the third or fourth short and boring email, I asked him, “so what are you hoping to find on here?” Generally this is a question reserved for first date face-to-face interactions, if in fact there is no phone call to precede a face-to-face interaction. But I was getting antsy as hell, with no resolution or determination of exactly what the fuck this communication was supposed to generate for either Steve, or myself. He replied, after about a two day hiatus, “Oh I don’t know, just friends I guess.”

He was being all hipster and wearing funny and ironic, or just straight up funny, shirts in all his photos. His profile contained movie quotes, as did mine. It was also very clear from his profile that he spent a lot of time in the gym or otherwise perfecting his physique. This was reassuring and a welcome change of pace from my past relationship.

I hate to let anything go without a fight. Though I fight smart and with my wits, not hard and with brute force or demands. I was clearly sensing a major disconnect via Salon.com email. I could not discern why Steven didn’t want to give out much, or any, information of any conversational or trivial use to me via email. After all, that’s kind of the strategic idea. You get all the small talk out of the way so that you can get to larger ideologies and issues and feeling out each other’s personalities (I later realized that this is total shit.) So I went for a last ditch suggestion to salvage this online interaction: “Would you like to entertain me whilst at work and talk on instant messenger?”

By George, for some reason that was just the ticket. Steven’s volume of communication seemed to flourish like blackberry plants in pig shit. All of a sudden we were instant messaging all day, nearly every day, at work. His online disposition didn’t enamor me, as I had experienced with a few individuals in the past. Though this was mostly in the days of MakeOutClub.com, when there wasn’t such an intense presumption of a romantic relationship. People, with strong communication skills and a sense of self, do have the ability to express their personality online. This is a very small subset of the American populous, which by and large is practically unable to read with deep comprehension (at an eight grade level) let alone write with deep comprehension and analytical ability. Additionally, we aren’t acutely aware of ourselves, ever. We miss certain nuances that the neurons in the brains of those around us to discern and compute into an ending description and compartmentalization of who we each are. Even if personality can be expressed, a great deal if who we each are is still missed: appearance, body language, facial expressions, touch and eye contact.

So I continued talking to Steven on a regular basis. A basic tenet of the Age of Celibacy and Boredom is that I would not ask a boy out. He was required to ask me out, or there wouldn’t be any outing at all, whatsoever. This had so far panned out with Andy and Chris, producing disappointing results. Nevertheless, I didn’t believe that I had yet garnered enough participants in this experiment, so I persevered with Steve. Not asking a snippet about going out anywhere or speaking with any other communication device other than instant messenger and the occasional text.

This was around the time that I was to depart for beloved literary motherland, England. Steven was aware of this trip and he had also visited many of the sites that I was to visit approximately three years earlier. He had loads of advice for me, which I appreciated. I also appreciated the fact that the trip to England was such a convenient and intriguing conversation starter.

One day whilst eating lunch with my boss, Renee, we were discussing this book concept. I happened to be speaking of the utter discontent I was feeling with the online dating process, but primarily the method of communication that seemed to ensue by default. She encouraged me to start writing about it, as it would obviously be therapeutic, and she always was aware of how socially analytical I am. Social analysis, being our jobs as marketers, was one of our chief conversation points at most events and meetings. Renee said to me, “you know, the real irony of your whole situation is that you’re never going to find a man you want by the way you’re going about it. You’ll only find one you want as a result of writing this book.” She was, and will continue to be, entirely correct. She’s my Nostradamus.

While devouring my BBQ chicken salad in a Manhattan Beach chain restaurant, I received a text from Steve. He enquired:

“Would you get an Chelsea FC scarf for me while you are in England? I’ll pay you back.”

I got all animated with my hand motions, as I often do when I am frustrated or otherwise intrigued and ready to jump into a fit of sarcasm and ranting and said, “You are not gonna believe this! That guy just texted me to ask me to buy him a scarf in England.”

Renee replied, “you should tell him he can buy his own on this thing called the internet.”

I did. Renee’s always right. Plus her jab at the fact that this guy is too damned familiar at the internet was fucking hilarious.

Steven replied to my quip with, “I know, but I’d rather get it from someone awesome.”
I relayed this to Renee. Ending the quotation with, “He doesn’t know that I am awesome. How can he know that? He’s never met me.”

Renee said, “Well, he gets a few points I guess.”

I see his point, it was kind of adorable in a way too shy and completely not assertive kind of way. Renee and I were both pretty lukewarm on the whole thing, solely because it was via text. To ask a favor such as that, a phone call would have been appropriate and appreciated. Especially since I had never spoken to the fellow on the phone before.

I bought Steven the damn scarf under the Westminster Bridge in London. I went on a Thames River boat tour that day. It was colder than a witch’s tit. I wore the scarf all day. I needed it in the brisk London hurricane force winds. Though once in the Tube, I probably perspired all over it. It gets quite balmy down there.

When I returned to Los Angeles from England, I was still enduring this purgatory of instant messenger conversations with Steven, as well as allowing a few other email conversations generated from “winks” on Salon.com to percolate. No conversations of much substance ever occurred on instant messenger with Steven. I already had it in my brain that he was just going to be one of those names without a real face that would just exist in my instant messenger buddy list. I’d never meet the person, they’d just exist for periodic entertainment and distraction from whatever I was doing. Be it work, being drunk, being generally morose, whatever. He would just be a name, because the stage was set for absolutely no expectations and a platonic relationship. I wondered how many times men regarded me as “just a name”.

My Literary Too-Much-Information Bonanza

I've decided to start writing another book.

I know, the first one hasn't gotten picked up, but I only finished in it January so fuck it.

There are many things on which I'd like to write, but I think I'm best at writing about fucking. But not in a porno type of way.

I've decided what the first line will be:

This is the story of how I met the man of my dreams. Oddly, it involves fucking a lot of other men that weren't.

Welcome to the Cuntry Club

I've been called a cunt twice this week, which means I must be doing something right in life.

There was a golden age when "bitch" was the biggest "stick" or "stone" that could be verbally thrown to break a woman's bones. Now we've broken on through to the big "c-u-next Tuesday"...cunt!

How awful it sounds, really. It reminds me of men that refer to women's vaginas as "axe wounds". It sounds like "punt". A sharp kick to the groin.

Some people can't stand it. People that will loosely throw around the word "fag", which is far more demeaning, find "cunt" to be the verbal equivalent of waterboarding.

Open discussion:
How many years do you think it will take before "cunt" is no longer as feared? And as commonplace as the word "bitch"?


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