From the category archives:

Dating

The internet is a graveyard for all of the worst things possible. Like feelings.

2
December 16, 2009

The other day, I googled myself. Yeah I do that.

Since someone like me only really has a chance of being indexed through high school accomplishments, I usually come up with nothing. Mostly because my high school was the kind that felt it was acceptable to appropriate the Anheuser-Busch logo and somehow make it about ‘meeting new challenges every day’ instead of…beer. Which, oddly enough, the only challenge my high school faced was teenage alcoholism so I guess in retrospect, they were pulling off one fucking poignant piece of performance art.

Failed public education aside, my query is usually fruitless. But yesterday, when I searched for myself hoping to ensure that I can’t be contacted in any way by family members who should’ve been committed years ago, I found a public profile claiming I live in Nigeria. After confirming that my credit cards hadn’t been used to buy twelve XBox 360s, I noticed a link on the page, relevant of course because it was one of the few that included my name. I cringed when I saw it, but was sadistically delighted to know that it still existed. It was something my boyfriend at the time had written about me – proof that someone, somewhere loved me long enough to manufacture a few thoughts into functioning sentences:

I am with a woman so smart that she makes Annie Dillard seem like a fruit tart, so beautiful she grounds Poe’s Helen into dust, and so wonderful she makes grown men weep in her presence and women take their own lives in a fit of pure jealousy. I’m talking about CHEETOS*, the one who has single handedly has made my life more meaningful than the past 20 years combined. She’s trilingual, has amazing taste in music, and seems to be able to make me laugh no matter what. Even in an emergency room for 9 hours where we had fun playing “I Spy” and laughing at a guy with a c-cup. She’s wonderful and I just want to let you know that.

*name has been changed

A few things come to mind here – most glaring of which is that I can’t believe my pussy has put me in so much peril as to require a nine-hour emergency room visit for a urinary tract infection. Also, yes I’m an asshole for making fun of the guy with moobs. Sorry. I’m (kind of) different now. Oh, and the trilingual thing? My German and French language skills would land me in an assisted living facility for the developmentally disabled because my vocabulary boils down to, ‘Bathroom please and then we’ll see about ham.’ But, if I may brag for a moment, my grasp of English could definitely land me a position cleaning bed pans. While I’m at it, I’ll debunk the music thing too because well, come on.

I can’t vouch for the rest because it was based solely on an opinion that wasn’t mine and has since expired. But, for the sake of the authenticity of the twelve minutes taken to write it, I’ll assume that these feelings weren’t devised under false pretenses. Years ago, I would’ve tried to find a way to salt the earth and bury the page in order to dispel the idea that I am incompetent because I demolished the relationship in which these feelings existed. Because, after all, it is better to be loved without dilution than admit to everyone that you fucked it all up by not realizing that you were even loved in the first place.

Now I celebrate it. Not because the message has changed – the subtext of failure is still very present. But now, the failure is no longer the swelling tide that buries me beneath a carpet of sand and is instead the 7-11 from which I can safely eat my Funyuns while I carefully map out every ripple and finally realize what went wrong. I misdiagnosed the failure. My inability to adequately love this person was merely a symptom of the reality that I knew there was no good reason to, other than the fact that we both escaped from Budweiser High.

I still fail, and have no doubt that I always will. But I am learning how to be better at it – starting with skipping the Funyuns because they’re…just really gross.

I Will Be Your Father Figure

4
May 14, 2009

I started birth control because my really abrasive Eastern European doctor, knowing I was sexually active, asked me what form of birth control I used at the time, and when I said, “condoms”, she replied with, “…and you think that’s wise?” Without giving me time for a rebuttal (which probably would’ve been something like, “your mom”), she had already written me a prescription for Alesse. I was on that for about one year and I remember none of it. I know I had a lot of sex and was thrilled that I didn’t have to mess with latex condoms anymore, but adverse side effects are hard to pin down because any irritability could’ve been attributed to the fact that I was living in Washington D.C. and hated the fact that the nearest Target was at least 30 minutes away in a car I didn’t have.

After my prescription for Alesse ran out, I wanted to try something different. Luckily, I had a new doctor who didn’t have a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev staring back at me as I spread my lips for someone who, if given the chance, would’ve probably used a scythe instead of a speculum, so I was able to explore my options. My impulse was to try a new method with one of those trendy commercials of professional women dancing to contemporary music with their friends, staying out late and drinking appletinis because they can. However, that same impulse sometimes urges me to buy The Lizzie McGuire Movie on DVD and watch until the Cheetos run out, so I squashed it immediately and just stuck with a prescription for Yasmin. I was initially impressed with the purple velour packaging, and its defense against PMDD, but the honeymoon soon wore off once I realized that I hate velour and PMDD is complete and utter bullshit. I was on Yasmin for about 6 months, and stopped the day I vowed to never beg my then boyfriend to fuck me again.

I refilled what was left of my prescription nearly one year later, once I started a new relationship. At first, we were both thrilled at the idea of being able to fuck anywhere with little to no preparation. However, as tension grew between us, it became apparent that the birth control was altering my mood and causing us to have more conflict than what would be normal for two people, one of which was still living with an ex, the other who was out of the dating game for years and therefore having a hard time figuring out how to make room for someone else in their life. If this sounds off to you, you’re onto something because it’s more laughable than David Hasselhoff’s music career. Our problems eclipsed the Hindenburg in explosiveness, because I needed constant support and reassurance while he was used to a solitary life of Corn Flakes and The West Wing.

hasselhoff_with_puppies

We both bickered back and forth about the fate of my uterus, he cited some of its negative side effects and I resisted, knowing that it was of no consequence for me to go off birth control, but a good feminist didn’t listen to any man (this, I’ve learned, is more popularly known as shortsightedness). While I didn’t believe that birth control was entirely to blame, it was the only bargaining chip I had and the only way I could conceivably excuse myself for being a major cunt, so I quit taking my pills. I didn’t feel optimistic about anything at that point, knowing that it was very possible that we just weren’t compatible and were going through a trial of heartbreaking hopelessness, resting our expectations on the elimination of a dose of hormones.

Of course now I realize that our respective emotional IQs didn’t even add up to cover bus fare, but at the time, we needed something to control and choosing whether or not to take a pill was the easiest option. We were simply avoiding the inevitability of actually having to talk to one another and in the process, putting our concerns and insecurities out on the table. One of the hardest things I’ve had to do is share with someone who could identify my pubic hair in a lineup that I was irrationally afraid of being cheated on or worried that our relationship would morph into a sexless and tepid platonic bond. For me though, I knew I had to do it to explain my derisive outbursts, because ultimately it would’ve been even more difficult to watch a relationship that I truly cared about unravel due to my own inability to be an adult and claim my own, sometimes grotesque, humanity.

I’ve recently gone back on birth control, this time with Ortho Tri-Cyclin Lo, which is a low dose pill that should produce fewer side effects. It’s understandably a sensitive subject in my relationship, but it was openly discussed and for the first time in my reproductive history, I’ve been able to make a command decision to do what’s best for me and my individual circumstances. I don’t necessarily relish the thought of putting synthetic hormones into my body, but I feel it’s the right choice to make as someone who will soon be voluntarily and indefinitely unemployed. I know that being pregnant and broke in movies means that you can have a baby in Wal-Mart and somehow meet the love of your life, or at the very least Seth Rogen will show up to smoke pot and rent a shitty apartment for you to live in, but something tells me I won’t be so lucky.

You're Not a Nerd If You Saw the Star Trek Movie, Just Normal

4
May 11, 2009

The only person who asked me out in high school was my AP Lit teacher, Mrs. Mullins. In order to avoid any pedo bear accusations, I will clarify that she didn’t technically ask me out, but was simply an emissary for one of her former students, Danny, who for some reason still showed up at school after hours. So fine, the pedo bear references are apt.

He graduated a year before me, and would come to Book Club meetings that Mrs. Mullins sponsored. I was usually in attendance since I never caught on to the whole teen mom trend, and along with a few others, would pass the time by watching Danny solve a Rubix Cube in under one minute. In addition to having an unnatural relationship with a plastic toy, Danny rode his bike everywhere (Mormon), wore a fly decal on the right lens of his glasses at all times, and was fluent in Klingon.

I took a playful interest in him, because he was different and, as someone who still carried a Big Bird lunch box around, I felt I could relate in some way. There was nothing even remotely romantic there, just a recognition of our shared unabomber potential. I think I made my first (and last) mistake when I asked him to teach me Klingon and like a dumb ass, followed it up by flashing my Vulcan salute, which I’m sure impressed no one but myself.

Weeks later on my birthday, he presented me with my very own Klingon Dictionary. To this day I don’t know how he even knew it was my birthday, considering that we only saw each other for 20 minutes after school in a group setting and I certainly didn’t make a spectacle out of myself on that day, knowing that the general response would be, “And?”. He made sure that I was aware of the fact that he rode his bike to four different book stores just to acquire a copy and I thanked him, wondering how long it would be until he killed me and started wearing my skin as a coat. He even expected me to learn phrases so we could talk to one another and at future meetings, he would quiz me to the point where I wished someone had brought a gun to school just to get me out of my obligation to unintentionally give him a raging hard-on.

george

So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when days later, my teacher pulled me out of class to ask me out on a date. Of course, under normal circumstances, this would be cause for alarm, but this involved an adult male voluntarily coming back to high school while devoting himself simultaneously to Joseph Smith and Spock, so it was par for the course. Since she was my teacher, I thought that she needed to talk to me about an assignment, but when she asked, “What do you think of Danny?”, I wanted to punch her in the cunt and run away. Instead, I said something vague like, “He’s nice”, and apparently, that was her cue to continue to ask me if I would be interested in going out with him sometime. I paused, and all of the reasons why I had to say no flashed before me. First of all, I was graduating soon and would be leaving town, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to bring guys home, especially if they rolled up on a Huffy, and oh yeah, odds are he was building a spaceship out of soda cans, foam noodles, and masking tape so he could take me to his Talarian Homeworld. In one of the most bizarre moments of my life, I almost said yes because I didn’t want to hurt my teacher’s feelings, but instead settled on, “I don’t date.”

Technically, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t refuse because I held myself to some backwards standard of high school normalcy, but because the timing was all kinds of wrong for me and at 17, I couldn’t see myself dating someone who wore pressed Dockers on a daily basis. I regret to say that I never saw Danny again after that, and while I used to feel bad thinking that he assumed I rejected him based on his…unconventional lifestyle, I now realize that to him, he was simply living within his self-defined borders of normal.

This is why the recent barrage of self proclaimed nerdiness from those who, like 7 million other people saw Star Trek over the weekend, is so ridiculous. It’s like calling yourself a foodie because you chase pretzels with a handful of chocolate chips or believing that you can be a model because you look good in low light. I think, yeah, Star Trek fandom was originally the quintessential guarantee that you would spend the rest of your life fucking your Real Doll, but after 40 years, it’s finally mainstream. All it took were a few men hot enough to soak some panties and/or boxer briefs, explosions, and the quirky antics of Simon Pegg.

I’m happy to see that Star Trek is finally universally acceptable and dare I say cool, not only because the series is fairly progressive in its portrayal of women and men, but because it is my firm hope that somewhere out there, a lifelong Star Trek fan can now feel secure enough to ask someone out without making them want to shit their pants.

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