I've dated them all. And I'm famous for it. I've dated the emotionally unavailable guy with anger issues, the married man, the unemployed artistic type, the recovering alcoholic, and the guy fourteen years younger than me (as well as the guy twenty years older). I've dated the pothead, the shoplifter, the closet case, the guy obsessed with comic books, the Jesus freak, and the guy who stole my Xanax. I have spent the past fourteen years of my life playing Mad Libs with my relationships.
Pick a verb: kick.
Pick a noun: puppy.
Now, form the sentence "Tony has dated the guy who BLANKS BLANKS." And, as it turns out, I have dated a guy who kicks puppies.
No stone has been left unturned in my dating repertoire. I have seen, heard, and (let's be honest here) done it all. When you've been around the block as many times as I have, it takes a lot to rattle you up. And the more I keep going, the less and less shocked by people I am.
But occasionally I come across someone that manages to say or do something that is somewhat pioneering. Recently, that honor of actually stumping me was bestowed upon a guy that I met out a few weeks ago. We met in a bar, clearly hit it off, and had a few laughs. I gave him my number and never heard from him again. Well, I ran into him for a second time a few weeks later and again, we had a lot of fun. Except this time he actually called afterwards. The conversation was easy. We seemed to have an effortless connection. So as the phone call wrapped up after an hour, I naturally asked him to dinner.
"Oh," he said, "I'm not really in a dating place right now."
Somehow, coming from him, that kind of honesty was surprisingly refreshing. I knew enough about his most recent relationship to respect his pause on dating. But naturally, I had a question.
"Well, why did you call me then?"
I wasn't expecting the "three little words" from him right then and there, but I got them. He began to explain to me that although he wasn't ready to date immediately, he felt that it wouldn't be long before he turned that corner and he hoped that when he got there that I would still be interested. And that's when he said those three earth-stopping, life-altering words. "I think you're really cool and funny and I'm really attracted to you, FOR SOME REASON."
My immediate reaction was to throw a million questions his way in hopes of clarifying just what the hell that meant. But, rather uncharacteristically, I chose to play it cool. Instead, we left it with the good old "I'll see you around" and we hung up. I laid in bed that night with that conversation knocking around in my head. Just what was that supposed to mean? Was he claiming to see my inner beauty or some other type of bullsh*t? Well, I for one do not want to be known for my inner beauty. I am not the ugly girl who plays tuba in the marching band who somehow while tutoring the hot quarterback in Spanish makes him fall in love with her. I don't want to identify with the lead in a crappy Freddie Prinze Jr. movie from the 90's. I don't want my value as a person riding solely on my wit and intelligence. While people with inner beauty are best known for their understanding, their passion for things, and their goodness, they are mostly known for their being grotesque and unattractive.
I came into vanity very late in life. I hated the way I looked up until I was about 29 years old. So I spent the better part of three decades cringing when I looked in a mirror, despising having to take my shirt off in public, and having s*x in complete and absolute darkness. It wasn't until I took realistic stock of my body as I approached 30 that I began to slowly start appreciating it. Sure, I has losing hair where I needed it and growing hair where I shouldn't be, but the rest of me wasn't all that bad. I was tight in pretty much all the right places. I have decent skin. My genes have assured me that I'll absolutely never be overweight. Judging myself against most of the world, I could've been much worse off in the looks department. I am by no means Zac Efron or a 1950s era Liz Taylor, but I can still turn a head or two on occassion. People are fairly consistently attracted to me way before they catch a whiff of any inner beauty. Even recently I had to fake having a boyfriend to fend off the aggressive advances of a guy in a bar. That's not something someone with inner beauty would do!
Well, FOR SOME REASON, this guy has texted me fairly consistently since this conversation. And, as I sat last night having several martinis with my friends Hector and Elias, the texting continued. As my phone blew up in my pocket and the vodka lubricated my thoughts, I took a swig of my fourth cherry cola-tini and asked my friends for advice. Once the laughter subsided, we got down to business.
"It's the Je-ne-sais-quoi!" my friend Hector exclaimed. "There's just something about you that he can't put his finger on that is attracting him to you."
"Not good enough," I responded. "I'd rather him put his finger on my hot body and then figure out later that I'm smart and interesting."
"Well," Hector continued, "I've been talking to this guy online for awhile. I can kinda tell by his pictures that maybe he's not the cutest guy in the world, but I think I'm gonna meet him anway. Because he just seems so nice and smart!"
"We've all been attracted to someone for reasons that we can't explain," Elias added. "I once slept with this guy who was kinda fat. But I thought he had the je-ne-sais-quoi so I slept with him. But it turns out that I was just kinda drunk. And then he ended up losing all of that weight and looked really good!"
The waiter dropped off our fifth martinis. "You two are not helping," I said.
The je-ne-sais-quoi. That part of someone that you just can't describe, yet you can't walk away from. As the fog from last night's martini-thon clears, I've remembered that I too have been attracted to people that wouldn't necessarily fit my normal bill. In all of the chaos I'd forgotten that the only person I feel as if I've ever loved was a broke out-of-shape Republican. He had je-ne-sais-quoi for days! Or maybe it was the fact that he had really good weed that kept me around for three years...
But whatever. Instead of approaching this situation with the attitude that this guy basically thinks I'm hideous, I'm going to take the enlightened road. He thinks I'm generally a nice and interesting person. And there's nothing wrong with that! Beauty's only skin deep after all. And no matter how hot someone is that hotness gets old really fast if they're a jerk or a moron. I find a bit of solace in that. But mostly I find solace in knowing that he would've never started talking to me in the first place if he didn't think I was hot. Come on! We're gay guys! We're shallow as f*ck!
Thursday, November 6, 2008
We are family!
(Originally published 6/23/2008)
I flew home a few weeks ago to attend what my family had dubbed my grandmother’s "Fake Wake." 2007 was a rough year for her. My freshly widowed grandma faced quite a few health scares last year, one which left her with an oxygen tank permanently in tow. She has always said that she wanted her funeral to consist of us throwing her ashes from a riverboat into the Mississippi River while a jazz band played. So, when she organized a family reunion where the main event involved a jazz band floating down the Mississippi, we all knew what she was doing.
Families have to be the most complex, yet somehow primitive, structures in society. How archaic, and borderline Neanderthal, is it that by the mere happenstance of sharing a gene pool that families are locked together for life? Family is your first lifeline. They feed you. They shelter and clothe you. They keep you from killing yourself as a toddler (or in my case, well into your early thirties). So it’s no wonder that you develop a need for them. It’s as basic as needing food and water. You simply need your family.
But it’s really not that simple. In a way families are an experiment doomed to failure. As people get older they change. And their values change. It’s inevitable that the people you started this journey of life with will not be the same people you remember them to be when you look at them through adult eyes. With each individual experience we all go through, from schools to jobs to marriages, wedges are placed between you and the ones you call family. Suddenly, you look up and twenty-five years have gone by, and the kid you remember playing GI Joe with wants to dog cuss you for voting Democrat.
I saw so many members of my family on this trip that I have not seen in a very long time. I saw some that I will sadly never lay eyes on again. People are getting older. Time’s marching on. And scattered about this big country we are each living our own lives and forming separate identities and experiencing different aspects of life that can push people further apart. Most of their Saturdays consist of shuttling children to various activities. Most of my Saturdays consist of violent hangovers and swearing off alcohol (again). But the one thing that not even the longest period of absence can shake is that sense of need I feel from those people.
I have 14 cousins total on both sides of my family. There are only 3 of us left without any kids. I’m the only one without kids in my thirties and I’m the only gay one. I think a lot of people feel the need to pity me because of that. I think because that parenthood path has defined them and molded them all in such a positive way that they don’t realize that there are many different paths to happiness. Happiness, in my opinion, is simply replicating the concept of family that you knew as a child. You can replicate it through procreation. But, as in my case, if that’s not an option, you can replicate it through the people you choose to associate yourself with outside of your bloodline.
I spent the remainder of that week with friends from back home, friends from grade school, high school, college and beyond. These are people I’ve known for as long as I can remember, people that have stood by me and without question will always stand by me. Then I flew back to Chicago and jumped right back into the circle of amazing friends that I have here. These are all people that I can fight with, people that I can cry with, people that will carry me when I need to be carried, and people that know that I’m always there to carry them. I remember while on the plane heading back thinking of having seen my family, particularly my sister and my cousins and the way they interact with their kids, that I saw that in their lives they had replicated that basic need of family. And I fully realized that even though I had not replicated that need in the same way, by having children and being married and living that type of life, there was still as much love and comfort in my life as theirs. I get all the laughter and tears, all the anger and worry, all the loyalty and acceptance, from what Bridget Jones would consider to be my "urban family," the family that you make outside of your original one.
As a single person living in a city like Chicago, a city that moves so fast that if you’re not strapped in you could fall to your death, I need family. There’s never been a question that I have an unnatural fondness for trouble, and like my cousins needing to know that their children are healthy and happy, I need my friends. And with that need comes the blessing of feeling needed in return. I have friends who have recently lost parents, friends who are going through wretched break-ups, friends who struggle daily with heartbreaking things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But all the friends that I have are family. And just like my "real" family taking me in despite all the differences, I love all of these people unconditionally.
Everyone knows that old saying that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Family is something so powerful that you can never walk away from it. It’s so much a part of you that you’ll never shake it and no matter how far you go or what kind of deals you make it’s there until the end. It didn’t take a cheesy Oprah-esque gratitude journal for me to realize that even though my path was definitively atypical, I have also replicated family in my own life.
So when the time comes to spread my ashes, I know that most of those in attendance will be of no blood relation to me. The children that I’ll never have obviously won’t be there, much less their children or my great-grandchildren. But hopefully whoever’s left can look around and feel the warmth and the history and the love, knowing that because my life started off with an amazing family, that I was able to replicate a family of my own.
I flew home a few weeks ago to attend what my family had dubbed my grandmother’s "Fake Wake." 2007 was a rough year for her. My freshly widowed grandma faced quite a few health scares last year, one which left her with an oxygen tank permanently in tow. She has always said that she wanted her funeral to consist of us throwing her ashes from a riverboat into the Mississippi River while a jazz band played. So, when she organized a family reunion where the main event involved a jazz band floating down the Mississippi, we all knew what she was doing.
Families have to be the most complex, yet somehow primitive, structures in society. How archaic, and borderline Neanderthal, is it that by the mere happenstance of sharing a gene pool that families are locked together for life? Family is your first lifeline. They feed you. They shelter and clothe you. They keep you from killing yourself as a toddler (or in my case, well into your early thirties). So it’s no wonder that you develop a need for them. It’s as basic as needing food and water. You simply need your family.
But it’s really not that simple. In a way families are an experiment doomed to failure. As people get older they change. And their values change. It’s inevitable that the people you started this journey of life with will not be the same people you remember them to be when you look at them through adult eyes. With each individual experience we all go through, from schools to jobs to marriages, wedges are placed between you and the ones you call family. Suddenly, you look up and twenty-five years have gone by, and the kid you remember playing GI Joe with wants to dog cuss you for voting Democrat.
I saw so many members of my family on this trip that I have not seen in a very long time. I saw some that I will sadly never lay eyes on again. People are getting older. Time’s marching on. And scattered about this big country we are each living our own lives and forming separate identities and experiencing different aspects of life that can push people further apart. Most of their Saturdays consist of shuttling children to various activities. Most of my Saturdays consist of violent hangovers and swearing off alcohol (again). But the one thing that not even the longest period of absence can shake is that sense of need I feel from those people.
I have 14 cousins total on both sides of my family. There are only 3 of us left without any kids. I’m the only one without kids in my thirties and I’m the only gay one. I think a lot of people feel the need to pity me because of that. I think because that parenthood path has defined them and molded them all in such a positive way that they don’t realize that there are many different paths to happiness. Happiness, in my opinion, is simply replicating the concept of family that you knew as a child. You can replicate it through procreation. But, as in my case, if that’s not an option, you can replicate it through the people you choose to associate yourself with outside of your bloodline.
I spent the remainder of that week with friends from back home, friends from grade school, high school, college and beyond. These are people I’ve known for as long as I can remember, people that have stood by me and without question will always stand by me. Then I flew back to Chicago and jumped right back into the circle of amazing friends that I have here. These are all people that I can fight with, people that I can cry with, people that will carry me when I need to be carried, and people that know that I’m always there to carry them. I remember while on the plane heading back thinking of having seen my family, particularly my sister and my cousins and the way they interact with their kids, that I saw that in their lives they had replicated that basic need of family. And I fully realized that even though I had not replicated that need in the same way, by having children and being married and living that type of life, there was still as much love and comfort in my life as theirs. I get all the laughter and tears, all the anger and worry, all the loyalty and acceptance, from what Bridget Jones would consider to be my "urban family," the family that you make outside of your original one.
As a single person living in a city like Chicago, a city that moves so fast that if you’re not strapped in you could fall to your death, I need family. There’s never been a question that I have an unnatural fondness for trouble, and like my cousins needing to know that their children are healthy and happy, I need my friends. And with that need comes the blessing of feeling needed in return. I have friends who have recently lost parents, friends who are going through wretched break-ups, friends who struggle daily with heartbreaking things that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But all the friends that I have are family. And just like my "real" family taking me in despite all the differences, I love all of these people unconditionally.
Everyone knows that old saying that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Family is something so powerful that you can never walk away from it. It’s so much a part of you that you’ll never shake it and no matter how far you go or what kind of deals you make it’s there until the end. It didn’t take a cheesy Oprah-esque gratitude journal for me to realize that even though my path was definitively atypical, I have also replicated family in my own life.
So when the time comes to spread my ashes, I know that most of those in attendance will be of no blood relation to me. The children that I’ll never have obviously won’t be there, much less their children or my great-grandchildren. But hopefully whoever’s left can look around and feel the warmth and the history and the love, knowing that because my life started off with an amazing family, that I was able to replicate a family of my own.
Dead dreams today. Bigger dreams tomorrow.
(Originally published 6/4/2008)
When I was ten years old my sister snuck into my room while I was singing "On My Own" by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald (of course I was singing the Patti parts). I had never seen my sister laugh that hard and, honestly, to this day, have not seen her laugh that hard since. The dream of my becoming a famous singer died right then and there. When I was in the 8th grade and passed out from nervousness while standing up at the front of the room of my Drafting class, I realized upon waking that I didn’t have the nerves to be a public speaker. So my dreams of being either a politician or an actor died on the spot.
Recently, I finally struck up the courage to speak with a guy whom I’ve had a severe crush on since moving to Chicago. After spending years asking around about him and building up in my mind everything from where we’d live upon getting married to the kind of parties we’d attend, I let several Vodka Tonics be my guide and walked right up to him at a bar. The conversation was awkward at best. How do you strike up a casual conversation with someone who in a parallel fantasy world is your soulmate? Our brief chat did not end with us exchanging phone numbers, much less taking the Red Eye to California for a hurried wedding. I walked away, my tail between my legs, and kicked the corpse of that dead dream under the closest bar stool.
It’s important to know when a dream has died, whether it’s one you’ve chased with blind ambition your entire life or one you’ve entertained privately while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. When those realizations occur, when you solidly know that you’ll never win the lottery, or play in the Super Bowl, or brush Cher’s hair, you have to step back and take a deep breath. A dream is a dream because a part of you believed in it. It’s important that you acknowledge when a dream comes and goes.
That being said, I am quietly closing the door on a dream I’ve harbored since January 2007, a dream that sent electricty through my bones, one that made me feel safe and secure and proud. It was a dream about hope and optimism and opportunity. It was my dream that someday Hillary Clinton would be my president. She told me via an internet video back on that cold winter day that she was "in it to win it." I danced around my apartment to the disgust of my roommate at the time, a devout Republican. Hillary was coming. Hillary would save us all!
In my short life as an American voter (I’ve only been eligable to vote since 1994), I’ve always gravitated towards candidates that I felt represented not only my views, but also myself. By that I mean candidates who, between the soundbites and opinions of pundits, were able to relay the message to me that they were like me, and in return would represent me and the ones that I love. Hillary Clinton’s biography seemed to better mirror mine and it spoke to me. She’s from a middle class family, raised in the suburbs, went to church most Sundays and played football and baseball with the neighbor kids. Like me, as she got older she began to question the world around her, asking the authority figures in her life why things like segregation and sexism existed. Hillary had the subtle sense of rebellion growing up that I had. Not to mention she spent the better part of her young adulthood in the state next door to the one I grew up in, that she was born in a hospital not far from where I currently reside, and she was rasied in the Chicago suburb just a few miles west of the one I work in now.
But unlike me, Hillary had a burning ambition that lit a fire underneath her, an ambition that led her far beyond the good fortune of simply marrying well. Hillary was the first student to ever give the graduation address at Wellsley college. She was twice named one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under the Age of 40 while First Lady of Arkansas. She was the first First Lady to hold a graduate degree. She was the first former First Lady to run for office. She was the first woman every elected statewide in New York. She has gotten closer to a major political party’s nomination for the presidency than any other woman in American history. More people have cast a vote for Hillary Clinton than for any other candidate in the history of American Presidential Primaries. More federal money and time were spent investigating Hillary Clinton over the years than was spent on investigating 9/11. Love her or hate her, the history books will never let you take those things away from her. A person that came from a background that I felt reflected mine and my values, someone who spent her whole life busting down doors that pulled people outside the status quo closer towards equality was within reach of the Presidency!
But alas, for lack of a better term (and I apologize, Senator Clinton), she was so close but no cigar.
And I don’t think all the Hillary-praising in the world can save her now. This dream is dead. It’s in my dead dream box wedged between being Courtney Love’s best friend and being able to sh*t money.
Symbolically, her candidacy made in itself an undeniable point. Because of her, my sister and my cousins and all of my friends can nudge their daughters and say, "See. Don’t let being a girl stop you from doing ANYTHING. See. You can be smart and strong and no matter how many people tell you that you’re not those things, that you’re only who you are because you saddled up to a good man, that you can keep walking proud and let that fire in your belly push you through ANYTHING. See. You can chose to speak your mind over giving in to your critics. You can face half the world calling you a hag, a shrew, a menopausal opportunistic talentless power-hungry b*tch, but, if you know that you’re not those things, you can stand tall and you can do ANYTHING."
Let’s face it. Little girls in this world have just about the roughest road. As soon as their eyes open every image in the world is telling them they’re not good enough. They’re fat. Their clothes aren’t as nice as everyone else’s. They’re worthless until the cutest boy in school or the more popular girls give them worth. There’s predators on every corner and on every website trying to kill them. Madonna said it best. "Strong inside, but you don’t know it. Good little girls, they never show it. When you’re trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less? Do you know what it feels like for a girl?"
Growing up gay in the south was no treat either, especially back in the days where the AIDS crisis made the evening news every night, way before "Will and Grace" or the LOGO channel, way before openly gay people could run for and win office. Feeling confused and lost and not knowing exactly what the hell you’re gravitating towards is a fate I wouldn’t wish on any kid. So remembering a bit about what that’s like, being a child and looking under every rock for a hero, I think about my niece. I think about her standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, Britney flashing her panties on one magazine, Lindsey doing drugs on another, Jessica Simpson showing off her new boobs on the next. I think about her listening to the radio or watching videos, where girls show them no other ways to get a boy’s attention than to be cheap and easy. And I pray to God that it’s not these messages her little forming heart latches on to.
I hope it’s the cover of Newsweek with Hillary Clinton on the cover that settles in her mind. I hope that it’s hearing the male pundits on television degrating someone that obviously scares the hell out of them, and that someone just so happens to be a woman. I want her to know that her mind and her courage, not just her body or her husband, can lift her to a similar place where men respect her enough to fear her. I hope that somewhere between Miley Cyrus posing with her shirt off and Jamie Lynn Spears giving birth at 16 that my niece noticed that for the first time (and hopefully not the last time) that a woman almost ruled the world.
So my dream of President Hillary is dead and gone. But the dreams I have for my niece are stronger and clearer now. And I proudly thank Hillary Clinton for that.
RIP Hillary Clinton for President 2008.
When I was ten years old my sister snuck into my room while I was singing "On My Own" by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald (of course I was singing the Patti parts). I had never seen my sister laugh that hard and, honestly, to this day, have not seen her laugh that hard since. The dream of my becoming a famous singer died right then and there. When I was in the 8th grade and passed out from nervousness while standing up at the front of the room of my Drafting class, I realized upon waking that I didn’t have the nerves to be a public speaker. So my dreams of being either a politician or an actor died on the spot.
Recently, I finally struck up the courage to speak with a guy whom I’ve had a severe crush on since moving to Chicago. After spending years asking around about him and building up in my mind everything from where we’d live upon getting married to the kind of parties we’d attend, I let several Vodka Tonics be my guide and walked right up to him at a bar. The conversation was awkward at best. How do you strike up a casual conversation with someone who in a parallel fantasy world is your soulmate? Our brief chat did not end with us exchanging phone numbers, much less taking the Red Eye to California for a hurried wedding. I walked away, my tail between my legs, and kicked the corpse of that dead dream under the closest bar stool.
It’s important to know when a dream has died, whether it’s one you’ve chased with blind ambition your entire life or one you’ve entertained privately while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. When those realizations occur, when you solidly know that you’ll never win the lottery, or play in the Super Bowl, or brush Cher’s hair, you have to step back and take a deep breath. A dream is a dream because a part of you believed in it. It’s important that you acknowledge when a dream comes and goes.
That being said, I am quietly closing the door on a dream I’ve harbored since January 2007, a dream that sent electricty through my bones, one that made me feel safe and secure and proud. It was a dream about hope and optimism and opportunity. It was my dream that someday Hillary Clinton would be my president. She told me via an internet video back on that cold winter day that she was "in it to win it." I danced around my apartment to the disgust of my roommate at the time, a devout Republican. Hillary was coming. Hillary would save us all!
In my short life as an American voter (I’ve only been eligable to vote since 1994), I’ve always gravitated towards candidates that I felt represented not only my views, but also myself. By that I mean candidates who, between the soundbites and opinions of pundits, were able to relay the message to me that they were like me, and in return would represent me and the ones that I love. Hillary Clinton’s biography seemed to better mirror mine and it spoke to me. She’s from a middle class family, raised in the suburbs, went to church most Sundays and played football and baseball with the neighbor kids. Like me, as she got older she began to question the world around her, asking the authority figures in her life why things like segregation and sexism existed. Hillary had the subtle sense of rebellion growing up that I had. Not to mention she spent the better part of her young adulthood in the state next door to the one I grew up in, that she was born in a hospital not far from where I currently reside, and she was rasied in the Chicago suburb just a few miles west of the one I work in now.
But unlike me, Hillary had a burning ambition that lit a fire underneath her, an ambition that led her far beyond the good fortune of simply marrying well. Hillary was the first student to ever give the graduation address at Wellsley college. She was twice named one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under the Age of 40 while First Lady of Arkansas. She was the first First Lady to hold a graduate degree. She was the first former First Lady to run for office. She was the first woman every elected statewide in New York. She has gotten closer to a major political party’s nomination for the presidency than any other woman in American history. More people have cast a vote for Hillary Clinton than for any other candidate in the history of American Presidential Primaries. More federal money and time were spent investigating Hillary Clinton over the years than was spent on investigating 9/11. Love her or hate her, the history books will never let you take those things away from her. A person that came from a background that I felt reflected mine and my values, someone who spent her whole life busting down doors that pulled people outside the status quo closer towards equality was within reach of the Presidency!
But alas, for lack of a better term (and I apologize, Senator Clinton), she was so close but no cigar.
And I don’t think all the Hillary-praising in the world can save her now. This dream is dead. It’s in my dead dream box wedged between being Courtney Love’s best friend and being able to sh*t money.
Symbolically, her candidacy made in itself an undeniable point. Because of her, my sister and my cousins and all of my friends can nudge their daughters and say, "See. Don’t let being a girl stop you from doing ANYTHING. See. You can be smart and strong and no matter how many people tell you that you’re not those things, that you’re only who you are because you saddled up to a good man, that you can keep walking proud and let that fire in your belly push you through ANYTHING. See. You can chose to speak your mind over giving in to your critics. You can face half the world calling you a hag, a shrew, a menopausal opportunistic talentless power-hungry b*tch, but, if you know that you’re not those things, you can stand tall and you can do ANYTHING."
Let’s face it. Little girls in this world have just about the roughest road. As soon as their eyes open every image in the world is telling them they’re not good enough. They’re fat. Their clothes aren’t as nice as everyone else’s. They’re worthless until the cutest boy in school or the more popular girls give them worth. There’s predators on every corner and on every website trying to kill them. Madonna said it best. "Strong inside, but you don’t know it. Good little girls, they never show it. When you’re trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less? Do you know what it feels like for a girl?"
Growing up gay in the south was no treat either, especially back in the days where the AIDS crisis made the evening news every night, way before "Will and Grace" or the LOGO channel, way before openly gay people could run for and win office. Feeling confused and lost and not knowing exactly what the hell you’re gravitating towards is a fate I wouldn’t wish on any kid. So remembering a bit about what that’s like, being a child and looking under every rock for a hero, I think about my niece. I think about her standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, Britney flashing her panties on one magazine, Lindsey doing drugs on another, Jessica Simpson showing off her new boobs on the next. I think about her listening to the radio or watching videos, where girls show them no other ways to get a boy’s attention than to be cheap and easy. And I pray to God that it’s not these messages her little forming heart latches on to.
I hope it’s the cover of Newsweek with Hillary Clinton on the cover that settles in her mind. I hope that it’s hearing the male pundits on television degrating someone that obviously scares the hell out of them, and that someone just so happens to be a woman. I want her to know that her mind and her courage, not just her body or her husband, can lift her to a similar place where men respect her enough to fear her. I hope that somewhere between Miley Cyrus posing with her shirt off and Jamie Lynn Spears giving birth at 16 that my niece noticed that for the first time (and hopefully not the last time) that a woman almost ruled the world.
So my dream of President Hillary is dead and gone. But the dreams I have for my niece are stronger and clearer now. And I proudly thank Hillary Clinton for that.
RIP Hillary Clinton for President 2008.
Who am I?
(Originally published 1/31/2008)
A boy I had just begun seeing decided to join me back home in Memphis for New Year’s Eve. My mother, of course, wanted to meet the latest in my long line of husbands, so she cooked dinner and invited other relatives over to visit. The dinner was rather uneventful, thankfully, and at some point afterwards Kevin and I decided that we were going to sneak away to meet up with some old friends of mine for a few drinks.
As I left the room to refresh myself before heading out, I announced that I was going to get ready, to which Kevin quipped, "See you in a few hours." To my utter confusion, his response got a huge laugh out of the room full of my relatives. I turned from the bottom stair, asking no one in particular just what that was supposed to mean. "I don’t take long to get ready," I said defensively, to which they all laughed even harder. "Whatever," I huffed, leaving the room. A few hours later, we left the house.
This hadn’t sat well with me. And I brought it up later that night over cocktails with friends of mine whom I’ve known for at least fifteen years, to which they all agreed that, yes, I take forever to get ready. My frustration didn’t lie in the fact that I may or may not need more time prepping myself than an Oscar nominee on an award night. I couldn’t care less that it has taken me upwards of an hour and a half before to prepare myself for the grocery store. What bothered me was the subtle realization that came along with having others point this out to me.
Something that was openly flawed about me had never even occurred to me. And how many other terrible things about myself that I’d never dreamt to consider were out there? Besides the laundry list of things wrong with myself that typically mull over and dissect like a scientist, what else was there?
The next morning I was discussing with my mother how I believed that Kevin and I were a good match, trying to relate his low-key, no-frills demeanor to my own personality. "We’re both just very laid back and low maintenance," I said. My mother stared alarmingly into my eyes and asked me to repeat myself. When I did, she reached out for my hand and, staring with elevated concern into my eyes, told me, "No, son, you are not. There is nothing low key or low maintenance about you. Whatsoever. At all!"
And with that, I was in crisis mode. How could someone as so self-identified as myself, so certain of their own lot in life and the things that they can and cannot do, be so blatantly wrong about any aspect of their own personality? There are things that I cannot do, things of which I’ve been comfortably aware all of my adult life. I cannot tolerate Gloria Estefan. I cannot save money. I cannot say no to a cute boy. Such things are core to who I am as a person. And the things that I can do I’ve always been certain of as well, like make people laugh, or find traces of reason within confusion, or drink eight pitchers of beer and still know where I parked the car. Being self-aware had always been my thing. I knew myself inside and out. I was never the one to apologize for who I was, what I believed in, or what I wanted. I was a woman coming of age in a Lifetime movie even as a teenager.
And with that self-awareness had always been the assumption that I was as cool as a cucumber, as chill and relaxed as the guy I bought my weed from in college. Am I not the guy that just tosses on a ball cap and heads to Starbucks? Aren’t I the dude that lounges in the background, never causing a fuss? I’m the guy who’s cool leaving the house without a belt, the guy who doesn’t floss his teeth everyday, the guy who wears tee-shirts he got for free at the car wash. Aren’t I?
I was reminded of my friend Katie who, all through high school and college, described herself as an "outdoorsy" girl. Despite having never been in any tent but a beer tent at a music festival, Katie truly believed that at her core, she was Jane Goodall. This attracted all sorts of men to her, such as athletes, granola boys, and the rocker-types, all of which were turned on by her ability to "rough it," to lay back and be "one of the guys." It was bound to eventually happen. And one day one of Katie’s suitors took her up on one such camping trip, outdoors. They slept under the stars and went mountain biking. Katie even urinated in the bushes. But when the weekend came to a sweaty, non-tooth-brushed end, Katie booked five days at the spa and now won’t even agree to attend an outdoor barbeque.
So, just as Katie was forced to reevaluate who she thought she was, that day staring into a mirror at the image of her unshowered self, her hair matted to the side of her greasy face, I too needed to come to terms with who I actually was versus who I had always claimed to be. And after a dozen or so last-minute opinions from other friends, all of whom agreed with my mother that I was anything but low-key and low-maintenance, I began to adjust to my changing self-image. Big deal if I’d let slip past me aspects of my personality that were less than appealing. Weren’t there enough parts I adored about myself to more than make up for these newly discovered personal flaws. I thought so.
And since I had to be somewhere in four hours and needed to get ready, I quickly adapted to the new high-strung impossibly spoiled brat that I’d always been and went about my aware, self-examined day.
A boy I had just begun seeing decided to join me back home in Memphis for New Year’s Eve. My mother, of course, wanted to meet the latest in my long line of husbands, so she cooked dinner and invited other relatives over to visit. The dinner was rather uneventful, thankfully, and at some point afterwards Kevin and I decided that we were going to sneak away to meet up with some old friends of mine for a few drinks.
As I left the room to refresh myself before heading out, I announced that I was going to get ready, to which Kevin quipped, "See you in a few hours." To my utter confusion, his response got a huge laugh out of the room full of my relatives. I turned from the bottom stair, asking no one in particular just what that was supposed to mean. "I don’t take long to get ready," I said defensively, to which they all laughed even harder. "Whatever," I huffed, leaving the room. A few hours later, we left the house.
This hadn’t sat well with me. And I brought it up later that night over cocktails with friends of mine whom I’ve known for at least fifteen years, to which they all agreed that, yes, I take forever to get ready. My frustration didn’t lie in the fact that I may or may not need more time prepping myself than an Oscar nominee on an award night. I couldn’t care less that it has taken me upwards of an hour and a half before to prepare myself for the grocery store. What bothered me was the subtle realization that came along with having others point this out to me.
Something that was openly flawed about me had never even occurred to me. And how many other terrible things about myself that I’d never dreamt to consider were out there? Besides the laundry list of things wrong with myself that typically mull over and dissect like a scientist, what else was there?
The next morning I was discussing with my mother how I believed that Kevin and I were a good match, trying to relate his low-key, no-frills demeanor to my own personality. "We’re both just very laid back and low maintenance," I said. My mother stared alarmingly into my eyes and asked me to repeat myself. When I did, she reached out for my hand and, staring with elevated concern into my eyes, told me, "No, son, you are not. There is nothing low key or low maintenance about you. Whatsoever. At all!"
And with that, I was in crisis mode. How could someone as so self-identified as myself, so certain of their own lot in life and the things that they can and cannot do, be so blatantly wrong about any aspect of their own personality? There are things that I cannot do, things of which I’ve been comfortably aware all of my adult life. I cannot tolerate Gloria Estefan. I cannot save money. I cannot say no to a cute boy. Such things are core to who I am as a person. And the things that I can do I’ve always been certain of as well, like make people laugh, or find traces of reason within confusion, or drink eight pitchers of beer and still know where I parked the car. Being self-aware had always been my thing. I knew myself inside and out. I was never the one to apologize for who I was, what I believed in, or what I wanted. I was a woman coming of age in a Lifetime movie even as a teenager.
And with that self-awareness had always been the assumption that I was as cool as a cucumber, as chill and relaxed as the guy I bought my weed from in college. Am I not the guy that just tosses on a ball cap and heads to Starbucks? Aren’t I the dude that lounges in the background, never causing a fuss? I’m the guy who’s cool leaving the house without a belt, the guy who doesn’t floss his teeth everyday, the guy who wears tee-shirts he got for free at the car wash. Aren’t I?
I was reminded of my friend Katie who, all through high school and college, described herself as an "outdoorsy" girl. Despite having never been in any tent but a beer tent at a music festival, Katie truly believed that at her core, she was Jane Goodall. This attracted all sorts of men to her, such as athletes, granola boys, and the rocker-types, all of which were turned on by her ability to "rough it," to lay back and be "one of the guys." It was bound to eventually happen. And one day one of Katie’s suitors took her up on one such camping trip, outdoors. They slept under the stars and went mountain biking. Katie even urinated in the bushes. But when the weekend came to a sweaty, non-tooth-brushed end, Katie booked five days at the spa and now won’t even agree to attend an outdoor barbeque.
So, just as Katie was forced to reevaluate who she thought she was, that day staring into a mirror at the image of her unshowered self, her hair matted to the side of her greasy face, I too needed to come to terms with who I actually was versus who I had always claimed to be. And after a dozen or so last-minute opinions from other friends, all of whom agreed with my mother that I was anything but low-key and low-maintenance, I began to adjust to my changing self-image. Big deal if I’d let slip past me aspects of my personality that were less than appealing. Weren’t there enough parts I adored about myself to more than make up for these newly discovered personal flaws. I thought so.
And since I had to be somewhere in four hours and needed to get ready, I quickly adapted to the new high-strung impossibly spoiled brat that I’d always been and went about my aware, self-examined day.
Shop and compare!
(Originally published 8/30/2007)
I had a long and lustrous career as a food server before stumbling into Recruitment. I waited tables off and on for almost 10 years before settling into this profession. Waiting tables was something I was good at due to my bizarre talent of remembering tedious information. My brain nurtures facts that most of society would deem meaningless, like knowing the name of every Real World cast member, and rejects things that might someday come in useful, like my mother’s birthday or where I parked my car.
I worked for most of the major restaurant chains during this period in my life. I’ve served hot wings at Applebee’s to starving hillbillies in sweat-stained wife-beaters. I’ve delivered Chili’s Top Shelf Margaritas to countless tables of feisty mean-spirited ghetto princesses. Due to my god-given nature of not really giving a f*ck about anything, in dangerous combination with a temper that at times can make Bobby Knight look like he’s on Valium, I was fired from most of these places, managers citing various incidences of my having thrown money or swore at people. Once I even put a cigarette out in someone’s desert. But I digress. C’est la vie.
Once while working at a Spaghetti Warehouse in Memphis, I was summonsed to the manager’s office to discuss my behavior towards a "Secret Shopper" table. A Secret Shopper, apparently, was someone planted in the restaurant by management to critique my every move and decide based on my performance as to whether or not they would return to the restaurant or suggest us to their friends. Needless to say, I let my employers down. But what struck me as odd was this whole concept of secretly shopping, this idea of physically coming in to the restaurant to eat only to sit there and form commentary as opposed to enjoying yourself. What an intriguing yet deceitful maneuver! As the waiter, they had me convinced that they had already made up their minds about where they wanted to eat, yet in their heads swam doubt and judgment about everything from the drink order to dropping off the check. Would I have performed better had I known all along that they were fully distracted by the other choices of restaurants that they had? You bet! That whole experience left me feeling as if someone had been spying on me. Being measured against someone else is absolutely no fun when you have no idea that there is even a competition going on.
I revisited this subtle feeling of betrayal recently when talking to my friend Hector about a guy who took an entire 5 days to respond to an email I had sent. Already having written the guy off, Hector sympathized with him, telling me that maybe he was busy or simply playing by the "rules" that you never respond with any efficiency in the beginning stages of a potential relationship. Bullsh*t, I decided. Skeptical and still a bit angry over my very recent dating history, seemingly ill-fated to saddle up only with guys that like to keep their options open (unbeknownst to me), I decided that Mr. 5 Day Email Response was a Secret Shopper!
Now, the concept of the Secret Shopper is like the agenda of the Republican party. It’s subtle, basically invisible, and doesn’t make its presence known until it’s absolutely impossible to right that wrong. Just because someone has bellied up to the bar beside you, or invited you to dinner, or even having done something as simple as picked up the phone to call you, this doesn’t mean that this person’s mind is made up. They are constantly keeping score on mental ratings cards. They are placing values between 1 and 5 (1 being absolutely disgusting and 5 being above exception) on everything you do. In what you say, what you wear, who you know, where you live, tallies are being kept. Values are being placed on everything about you so that that person can go home and stack your performance against those of your competitors.
What makes this such an outrage to me is the simple fact that I, based on someone merely agreeing to hang out with me, forget that the whole world of dating is a capitalistic, competitive fight to the death. I forget that there are MANY people out there who do actually eat at the Spaghetti Warehouse for the roundabout assurance that they would definitely rather be eating at Applebee’s. I don’t quite understand this. When I want something, I go get it. If I’m craving Starbucks I don’t go to Jamba Juice just to prove to myself how much I did actually want Starbucks. And I certainly wouldn’t waste the good people at Jamba Juice’s time because of my retarded logic behind ever making up my mind.
I realize that the paranoia surrounding everyone out there in the dating world being Secret Shoppers is the last stop on the train to being a card-carrying spinster, but I don’t care. I rather like the idea of being guarded, of planning every new relationship to last only until the guy hops back on Myspace. Because I know what I’m worth. And they’re not going to get anything like this anywhere else in town. So happy shopping, jerks.
I had a long and lustrous career as a food server before stumbling into Recruitment. I waited tables off and on for almost 10 years before settling into this profession. Waiting tables was something I was good at due to my bizarre talent of remembering tedious information. My brain nurtures facts that most of society would deem meaningless, like knowing the name of every Real World cast member, and rejects things that might someday come in useful, like my mother’s birthday or where I parked my car.
I worked for most of the major restaurant chains during this period in my life. I’ve served hot wings at Applebee’s to starving hillbillies in sweat-stained wife-beaters. I’ve delivered Chili’s Top Shelf Margaritas to countless tables of feisty mean-spirited ghetto princesses. Due to my god-given nature of not really giving a f*ck about anything, in dangerous combination with a temper that at times can make Bobby Knight look like he’s on Valium, I was fired from most of these places, managers citing various incidences of my having thrown money or swore at people. Once I even put a cigarette out in someone’s desert. But I digress. C’est la vie.
Once while working at a Spaghetti Warehouse in Memphis, I was summonsed to the manager’s office to discuss my behavior towards a "Secret Shopper" table. A Secret Shopper, apparently, was someone planted in the restaurant by management to critique my every move and decide based on my performance as to whether or not they would return to the restaurant or suggest us to their friends. Needless to say, I let my employers down. But what struck me as odd was this whole concept of secretly shopping, this idea of physically coming in to the restaurant to eat only to sit there and form commentary as opposed to enjoying yourself. What an intriguing yet deceitful maneuver! As the waiter, they had me convinced that they had already made up their minds about where they wanted to eat, yet in their heads swam doubt and judgment about everything from the drink order to dropping off the check. Would I have performed better had I known all along that they were fully distracted by the other choices of restaurants that they had? You bet! That whole experience left me feeling as if someone had been spying on me. Being measured against someone else is absolutely no fun when you have no idea that there is even a competition going on.
I revisited this subtle feeling of betrayal recently when talking to my friend Hector about a guy who took an entire 5 days to respond to an email I had sent. Already having written the guy off, Hector sympathized with him, telling me that maybe he was busy or simply playing by the "rules" that you never respond with any efficiency in the beginning stages of a potential relationship. Bullsh*t, I decided. Skeptical and still a bit angry over my very recent dating history, seemingly ill-fated to saddle up only with guys that like to keep their options open (unbeknownst to me), I decided that Mr. 5 Day Email Response was a Secret Shopper!
Now, the concept of the Secret Shopper is like the agenda of the Republican party. It’s subtle, basically invisible, and doesn’t make its presence known until it’s absolutely impossible to right that wrong. Just because someone has bellied up to the bar beside you, or invited you to dinner, or even having done something as simple as picked up the phone to call you, this doesn’t mean that this person’s mind is made up. They are constantly keeping score on mental ratings cards. They are placing values between 1 and 5 (1 being absolutely disgusting and 5 being above exception) on everything you do. In what you say, what you wear, who you know, where you live, tallies are being kept. Values are being placed on everything about you so that that person can go home and stack your performance against those of your competitors.
What makes this such an outrage to me is the simple fact that I, based on someone merely agreeing to hang out with me, forget that the whole world of dating is a capitalistic, competitive fight to the death. I forget that there are MANY people out there who do actually eat at the Spaghetti Warehouse for the roundabout assurance that they would definitely rather be eating at Applebee’s. I don’t quite understand this. When I want something, I go get it. If I’m craving Starbucks I don’t go to Jamba Juice just to prove to myself how much I did actually want Starbucks. And I certainly wouldn’t waste the good people at Jamba Juice’s time because of my retarded logic behind ever making up my mind.
I realize that the paranoia surrounding everyone out there in the dating world being Secret Shoppers is the last stop on the train to being a card-carrying spinster, but I don’t care. I rather like the idea of being guarded, of planning every new relationship to last only until the guy hops back on Myspace. Because I know what I’m worth. And they’re not going to get anything like this anywhere else in town. So happy shopping, jerks.
You don't know me!
(Originally published 3/3/2007)
Recently I received an email from a friend of mine inviting me over to play board games. Being single, I immediately scrolled through the addresses of the other recipients scrounging for either the names of other single people or the names of people that I don’t know (who may very well turn out to be single). However, I was the only person listed without a significant other. I wasn’t sure what I was expected to do if any of the games involved teams. Was I supposed to take them all on like Bruce Lee would a pack of wild ninjas? Perhaps he had only invited me to make sure the salsa stayed fresh or in case someone needed to go out for more ice.
When I asked him about it, why he would invite only a slew of couples and me, pouring You’ll-Never-Get-Married brand salt in my wounds of eternal bachelorhood, he laughed. "You have a different boyfriend every week," he said, "I knew you’d have a date."
What on earth could that have meant? I was dumbfounded. Was he referring to me, the guy who thinks that every lonely country song was written just for him? The guy who wants to take his own life in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when he sees married people bickering over how many boxies of Wheaties to buy? How could such a reputation have been bestowed upon me when no one has bought me anything for Valentine’s Day since Bill Clinton was in office?
"Think about it," he asked of me, "how many guys have you dated just this year?"
Well, this would be easy, I thought. We were barely into the third month of 2007. There was the diabetic, the 22 year old, the flight attendant, the architect, the older guy who lived two blocks over from me… Now even I was confused.
Then my friend Rebecca repeated his sentiment the next day in a phone conversation, telling me that I had dated more people in the past few months than some of her single straight friends had in ten years. Just because you’re going to Tiffany’s everyday, I told her, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re buying anything.
But I wondered how this could’ve happened, how one version of myself could exist so solidly in my own mind but another completely opposite version of myself was bumping around Chicago mixing and mingling with every cute boy in a pair of Diesels. Obviously a case of volume over quality, but at what point had I taken on the gambler’s philosophy, that all I had to do was keep playing, no matter how deep in the hole I had become, and eventually I was bound to strike it rich? Statistically I was bound to meet someone with which I shared a mutual, healthy connection. And this could happen with the very next roll of the dice! Right?
I remembered a pact I had made with myself when I turned 30. I did what most people do when they reach a milestone, I took stock. What exactly, I had asked myself, do I want out of life? I had admitted to myself then and there that one of the things I seriously wanted was to someday be married and the best way to achieve such a goal without too drastically altering my behavior was to be more assertive when it came to finding dates, meaning that if I’m in a bar, which I often am, and someone looks at me long enough to catch my attention, I will talk to them. If we talk long enough, I will call them. If I call them and they call me back, I will go out on a date with them. If they don’t have a collection of severed heads in their refrigerator and they think I’m funny, I will go out with them twice.
And apparently twice is the magic number that defines "dating," and so my friends’ observations of me began to make sense. I honestly never felt as if I was dating anyone. I was just putting myself out there, feeling like a circle that ran from square to square hoping that we’d fit. Keeping your dance card full is no easy task for a guy like me. I am not your typical gay man. I am not graceful or mysterious or exotic. I am not wealthy or charming or well-connected. I wouldn’t know a work of art if it fell out of the sky and landed on my bald head, but I can tell you where in a Wal-Mart store you would find the Drano. So the idea of me being the type of guy that has every cute boy within earshot wanting to date me is both flattering and offensive. Flattering to me, offensive to them.
There’s a feeling of solitude that comes over you when people in your life reveal to you an alternate version of yourself. It’s like having a conversation with a Republican about September 11th in relationship to The War in Iraq. Although both sides have seen the exact same things, two completely different versions of the truth exist. Despite the facts, despite this having been an overactive year for me, despite me having at least a hundred names programmed into my cell phone who I can no longer identify, I don’t feel like what the kids would call a "player." I still feel like the lead in some single female empowering television series along the lines of "Sex and the City" or "Ally McBeal." Aren’t I the smart and quiet and lonely person who goes home to a quiet house and watches old black and white movies in my pajamas? Or am I what my friends all see me as, the wild non-committal sex maniac who has issues being by himself?
Am I Mary Tyler Moore or Susan Lucci?
It could be possible that I’m both. And I suppose that would be OK. A lesson I was fortunate enough to learn at an early age is that it doesn’t really matter how contradictory your opinion of yourself is versus the opinions of others, as long as you like yourself. And either way, whether I’m at home reading a book alone in bed or trying to make the moves on some smoking hot dude in a bar, I’m just fine with myself, whatever version of myself is out there. It’s a win - win situation. Because I like me.
And so does the hairdresser, and the attorney, and the cartoonist, and the guy in Accounting…
Recently I received an email from a friend of mine inviting me over to play board games. Being single, I immediately scrolled through the addresses of the other recipients scrounging for either the names of other single people or the names of people that I don’t know (who may very well turn out to be single). However, I was the only person listed without a significant other. I wasn’t sure what I was expected to do if any of the games involved teams. Was I supposed to take them all on like Bruce Lee would a pack of wild ninjas? Perhaps he had only invited me to make sure the salsa stayed fresh or in case someone needed to go out for more ice.
When I asked him about it, why he would invite only a slew of couples and me, pouring You’ll-Never-Get-Married brand salt in my wounds of eternal bachelorhood, he laughed. "You have a different boyfriend every week," he said, "I knew you’d have a date."
What on earth could that have meant? I was dumbfounded. Was he referring to me, the guy who thinks that every lonely country song was written just for him? The guy who wants to take his own life in the cereal aisle at the grocery store when he sees married people bickering over how many boxies of Wheaties to buy? How could such a reputation have been bestowed upon me when no one has bought me anything for Valentine’s Day since Bill Clinton was in office?
"Think about it," he asked of me, "how many guys have you dated just this year?"
Well, this would be easy, I thought. We were barely into the third month of 2007. There was the diabetic, the 22 year old, the flight attendant, the architect, the older guy who lived two blocks over from me… Now even I was confused.
Then my friend Rebecca repeated his sentiment the next day in a phone conversation, telling me that I had dated more people in the past few months than some of her single straight friends had in ten years. Just because you’re going to Tiffany’s everyday, I told her, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re buying anything.
But I wondered how this could’ve happened, how one version of myself could exist so solidly in my own mind but another completely opposite version of myself was bumping around Chicago mixing and mingling with every cute boy in a pair of Diesels. Obviously a case of volume over quality, but at what point had I taken on the gambler’s philosophy, that all I had to do was keep playing, no matter how deep in the hole I had become, and eventually I was bound to strike it rich? Statistically I was bound to meet someone with which I shared a mutual, healthy connection. And this could happen with the very next roll of the dice! Right?
I remembered a pact I had made with myself when I turned 30. I did what most people do when they reach a milestone, I took stock. What exactly, I had asked myself, do I want out of life? I had admitted to myself then and there that one of the things I seriously wanted was to someday be married and the best way to achieve such a goal without too drastically altering my behavior was to be more assertive when it came to finding dates, meaning that if I’m in a bar, which I often am, and someone looks at me long enough to catch my attention, I will talk to them. If we talk long enough, I will call them. If I call them and they call me back, I will go out on a date with them. If they don’t have a collection of severed heads in their refrigerator and they think I’m funny, I will go out with them twice.
And apparently twice is the magic number that defines "dating," and so my friends’ observations of me began to make sense. I honestly never felt as if I was dating anyone. I was just putting myself out there, feeling like a circle that ran from square to square hoping that we’d fit. Keeping your dance card full is no easy task for a guy like me. I am not your typical gay man. I am not graceful or mysterious or exotic. I am not wealthy or charming or well-connected. I wouldn’t know a work of art if it fell out of the sky and landed on my bald head, but I can tell you where in a Wal-Mart store you would find the Drano. So the idea of me being the type of guy that has every cute boy within earshot wanting to date me is both flattering and offensive. Flattering to me, offensive to them.
There’s a feeling of solitude that comes over you when people in your life reveal to you an alternate version of yourself. It’s like having a conversation with a Republican about September 11th in relationship to The War in Iraq. Although both sides have seen the exact same things, two completely different versions of the truth exist. Despite the facts, despite this having been an overactive year for me, despite me having at least a hundred names programmed into my cell phone who I can no longer identify, I don’t feel like what the kids would call a "player." I still feel like the lead in some single female empowering television series along the lines of "Sex and the City" or "Ally McBeal." Aren’t I the smart and quiet and lonely person who goes home to a quiet house and watches old black and white movies in my pajamas? Or am I what my friends all see me as, the wild non-committal sex maniac who has issues being by himself?
Am I Mary Tyler Moore or Susan Lucci?
It could be possible that I’m both. And I suppose that would be OK. A lesson I was fortunate enough to learn at an early age is that it doesn’t really matter how contradictory your opinion of yourself is versus the opinions of others, as long as you like yourself. And either way, whether I’m at home reading a book alone in bed or trying to make the moves on some smoking hot dude in a bar, I’m just fine with myself, whatever version of myself is out there. It’s a win - win situation. Because I like me.
And so does the hairdresser, and the attorney, and the cartoonist, and the guy in Accounting…
Birds do it. Bees do it.
(Originally published 1/16/2007)
When I was growing up my uncle had a big bird dog named Bo. I’m not sure how Bo came to live with my uncle’s family, Bo having been raised and trained as a bird dog, and my uncle, who didn’t even hunt, living on half an acre in the suburbs. Needless to say, Bo was wild and not meant for a life confined in a tiny backyard. Bo was not the type of dog any of us kids wanted to play with. He was strong, hyper, dominating, constantly in motion. A visit into the backyard would certainly end with Bo tackling you to the ground. He escaped from their fenced-in backyard on many occassions, having seen a bird or a squirl on the other side, and was strong enough to barrel through the wooden fence like the Kool-Aid man. Bo was a force of nature not to be reckoned with.
Until one day my uncle came home with an electronic shock device that he placed around Bo’s neck. The thing on Bo’s neck would send shocks through him everytime he got too close to the fence. I had the misfortune of seeeing how Bo adapted to that shock collar. He stood still long enough for my uncle to strap it on his neck, then made his usual dash towards the fence. With a yelp that was heard all through the neighborhood, Bo’s life as a hunter ended. He spent the remainder of his days calm, subdued, one solid lesson learned and adapted to. Bo never got near that fence again.
Despite animals being of a lesser intellect, despite the fact that most animal species have been known to eat their own sh*t, they are something to be admired for their instant understanding of danger and harm. If a bird sees another bird eat a berry and then that bird drops dead, the other bird makes a mental note to itself, "don’t ever eat those berries." If a mouse knows that there is a certain area of the woods where being eaten up by an owl is a real threat, the mouse avoids that area. You don’t have to tell an animal twice. This may kill you. This may hurt like hell.
But not human beings. I’ve woken up almost every Sunday morning for the past fifteen years with a vicious hangover. Yet every Saturday night I’m right back on that track towards harm, ordering round after round of drinks with about a dozen cigarettes sprinkled in between. I know that I’m going to feel like I was run over by a tractor the next morning, but I don’t stop. And we all do that to some degree. We eat food that we know will make us fat or sick. We buy things that we probably can’t afford. And the biggest thing we do that no self-respecting animal would ever do, we walk willingly into situations where we know our hearts will break.
My mind wondered towards that bird dog Bo recently as I laid on the couch in my underwear, recently dumped, mulling over in my mind every blatant indication that I was not going to walk away from that situation as whole as I’d been walking in. I was told repeatedly by not only my friends that I was teetering on the edge of a massive disappointment, but by the main suspect himself. I thought about Bo, how no one ever had to tell him twice, and saw myself in comparison, running towards the proverbial electric fence that is my life. While Bo gave up, tucked his tail between his legs and resigned himself to a life of unfamiliar calm and solitude, I just keep getting back up, ignoring what I know to be true, and shocking the hell out of myself over and over again.
Friends are always quick to tell you after you’re dumped that you’ll do better, that there will be a next time, that eventually it’s all going to fall into place. I wonder if Bo would’ve believed anyone had they said to him that he should keep trying, that eventually he’d bust through that fence like he used to do, that maybe if he tried just one more time then he’d be on the other side tearing a juicy black bird to shreds. But animals seem to know better. They’re not the gambling kind. Why would Bo risk the possible shock when he could just avoid the fence altogether? Certain of only one thing, that trying again will hurt like the devil, Bo knew that nothing beyond that fence was even slightly worth the risk.
Twenty years after watching that dog lose his spirit to that fence, I admire him. As Bo grew older, whatever fascination he’d had with what lay beyond the fence floated away. My uncle awoke one morning years later, a violent thunderstorm having passed the night before. The fence had been blown down by the wind. And despite all that freedom presenting itself to him in a flash of lightning, there was Bo curled up on his blanket on the back porch.
A life spent sleeping on the back porch versus taking my chances at the edge of the yard seems more and more attractive to me as I get older. Knowing that whatever move I make towards a relationship is going to inevitably hurt, leave me burned, possibly embarassed and less than someone else better that came along, the fact that I’d ever even considered such a risk seems backwards, animalistic.
I’m going to start watching more of the Animal Planet and less Dr. Phil.
When I was growing up my uncle had a big bird dog named Bo. I’m not sure how Bo came to live with my uncle’s family, Bo having been raised and trained as a bird dog, and my uncle, who didn’t even hunt, living on half an acre in the suburbs. Needless to say, Bo was wild and not meant for a life confined in a tiny backyard. Bo was not the type of dog any of us kids wanted to play with. He was strong, hyper, dominating, constantly in motion. A visit into the backyard would certainly end with Bo tackling you to the ground. He escaped from their fenced-in backyard on many occassions, having seen a bird or a squirl on the other side, and was strong enough to barrel through the wooden fence like the Kool-Aid man. Bo was a force of nature not to be reckoned with.
Until one day my uncle came home with an electronic shock device that he placed around Bo’s neck. The thing on Bo’s neck would send shocks through him everytime he got too close to the fence. I had the misfortune of seeeing how Bo adapted to that shock collar. He stood still long enough for my uncle to strap it on his neck, then made his usual dash towards the fence. With a yelp that was heard all through the neighborhood, Bo’s life as a hunter ended. He spent the remainder of his days calm, subdued, one solid lesson learned and adapted to. Bo never got near that fence again.
Despite animals being of a lesser intellect, despite the fact that most animal species have been known to eat their own sh*t, they are something to be admired for their instant understanding of danger and harm. If a bird sees another bird eat a berry and then that bird drops dead, the other bird makes a mental note to itself, "don’t ever eat those berries." If a mouse knows that there is a certain area of the woods where being eaten up by an owl is a real threat, the mouse avoids that area. You don’t have to tell an animal twice. This may kill you. This may hurt like hell.
But not human beings. I’ve woken up almost every Sunday morning for the past fifteen years with a vicious hangover. Yet every Saturday night I’m right back on that track towards harm, ordering round after round of drinks with about a dozen cigarettes sprinkled in between. I know that I’m going to feel like I was run over by a tractor the next morning, but I don’t stop. And we all do that to some degree. We eat food that we know will make us fat or sick. We buy things that we probably can’t afford. And the biggest thing we do that no self-respecting animal would ever do, we walk willingly into situations where we know our hearts will break.
My mind wondered towards that bird dog Bo recently as I laid on the couch in my underwear, recently dumped, mulling over in my mind every blatant indication that I was not going to walk away from that situation as whole as I’d been walking in. I was told repeatedly by not only my friends that I was teetering on the edge of a massive disappointment, but by the main suspect himself. I thought about Bo, how no one ever had to tell him twice, and saw myself in comparison, running towards the proverbial electric fence that is my life. While Bo gave up, tucked his tail between his legs and resigned himself to a life of unfamiliar calm and solitude, I just keep getting back up, ignoring what I know to be true, and shocking the hell out of myself over and over again.
Friends are always quick to tell you after you’re dumped that you’ll do better, that there will be a next time, that eventually it’s all going to fall into place. I wonder if Bo would’ve believed anyone had they said to him that he should keep trying, that eventually he’d bust through that fence like he used to do, that maybe if he tried just one more time then he’d be on the other side tearing a juicy black bird to shreds. But animals seem to know better. They’re not the gambling kind. Why would Bo risk the possible shock when he could just avoid the fence altogether? Certain of only one thing, that trying again will hurt like the devil, Bo knew that nothing beyond that fence was even slightly worth the risk.
Twenty years after watching that dog lose his spirit to that fence, I admire him. As Bo grew older, whatever fascination he’d had with what lay beyond the fence floated away. My uncle awoke one morning years later, a violent thunderstorm having passed the night before. The fence had been blown down by the wind. And despite all that freedom presenting itself to him in a flash of lightning, there was Bo curled up on his blanket on the back porch.
A life spent sleeping on the back porch versus taking my chances at the edge of the yard seems more and more attractive to me as I get older. Knowing that whatever move I make towards a relationship is going to inevitably hurt, leave me burned, possibly embarassed and less than someone else better that came along, the fact that I’d ever even considered such a risk seems backwards, animalistic.
I’m going to start watching more of the Animal Planet and less Dr. Phil.
Non-committal or just a ho-ho-ho?
(Originally published 12/6/2006)
It’s Christmas time, a time for miracles they used to say. These days you can break your neck looking high and low for a miracle, a little something unexplainable to justify the brief feeling you have once a year that God exists. Although I can’t point to peace in Iraq, a cure for AIDS, or George Bush’s head on a plate to make you believe, I can let you in on a quiet little miracle going on this very instant: I’m dating someone!
We’re well into our 6th week, this guy and I, and although I’m still up to my old ways, hammering away at my insecurities and psychosis that keep popping up like a Whack-a-Mole, he still seems 100% interested and undistracted. Now famous for wanting a boyfriend, getting said boyfriend, then running for my life, I am trying my hardest to focus on only the good in this one. That he’s attractive, nice, hung, has a decent job, and thinks I’m hot. Sure, he’s doing those little things that have in the past irritated me enough to change my phone number and wear disguises (doesn’t watch television, puts too much product in his hair, calls me while walking down a loud, windy Chicago city street), but I’m hanging in there. I’m 30 years old now. It’s time to concentrate on a person’s devotion, their passion, their honesty, and not that you find it annoying how they use the word "lover" when describing an ex. Or that they despise both "The Simpsons" and "South Park." Or that they don’t vote…
OK. So, I’m having a hard time with this. Instead of looking deep within myself for the reasons that I tend to focus only on the boys who have little to no interest in me, then build walls between myself and the boys who actually are interested, rather than examining myself, seeking treatment, exposing my complicated neurosis and, God forbid, actually fixing this problem, I decided rather to simply ask my friends what was wrong with me.
I mentioned to my friend Elias that, in this particular situation, I need to either sh*t or get off the pot. Men tend to lose their patience around me. It’s not that I’m waiting on "the next best thing." At least I don’t feel like the type of *sshole that does that. It’s just that seemingly every time I give in and go for it, those tiny things I was able to look past in the beginning (the beginning not coincidentally being the time when the sex is always the best) seem to amplify themselves and take over my life. Suddenly, for example, their being "chatty" at first becomes a constant barrage of words and noise, an unbearable distraction forever interrupting my television time.
"Sweetie," he told me, "even Hermes only lets you wear the scarf in the store so long before they pull that sh*t off of your neck! The worst thing you could do is wait too long that he moves on and then you’ll regret it!"
Why, I then asked him, does it never feel like it’s enough?
He said, "I think it comes down to the natural male instinct: TO HUNT. Since we gays don’t typically do the hunting of wildlife, we replace it with our own form of wildlife: MEN. What fun is it in catching the deer licking himself next to the stream, not running at all from anything? NONE AT ALL."
Such profound words from a man who carries his dog around in a Coach bag.
I found these words encouraging, whereas they took the blame right off of me. It’s not that I’m sleazy or indecisive or afraid of commitment. I possibly am genetically prone to this type of behavior. Had I been born 1000 years ago and was only allowed to eat what I killed myself, my need to hunt would be well catered to and I’d never look beyond my hairy caveman husband for love and affection. Unless he grunted too much. Or his loin cloth didn’t match his club.
But, in our time, my hunting is restricted to Saturday nights in the gay bars. But even the cavemen, who HAD to hunt out of the necessity to survive, grew tired of the constant chase and began to farm and herd livestock instead. In a word, they evolved.
So, in celebration of the season of the birth of Jesus Christ, perhaps I’ll take a page from Charles Darwin. Maybe it’s time I evolved. I’m thinking of that fish in the evolutionary chain, the one who over time grew legs and learned to breathe outside of the water so that he could eat whatever was just beyond the shoreline. That fish wasn’t as stupid as I tend to be. He evolved to get what he wanted and never thought twice about going back into the ocean. Why would he? What he’d wanted so badly and strived so hard to get was right there in front of him. And even though he might’ve missed life in the ocean or the anticipation of getting his fins on whatever it was he’d been eyeballing for 16 billion years, he moved forward.
He eventually became a dog-loooking thing, then a monkey, I think maybe a bird for a time, then finally a human. But apparently not a gay human, otherwise he would’ve jumped right back in the water to start over.
It’s Christmas time, a time for miracles they used to say. These days you can break your neck looking high and low for a miracle, a little something unexplainable to justify the brief feeling you have once a year that God exists. Although I can’t point to peace in Iraq, a cure for AIDS, or George Bush’s head on a plate to make you believe, I can let you in on a quiet little miracle going on this very instant: I’m dating someone!
We’re well into our 6th week, this guy and I, and although I’m still up to my old ways, hammering away at my insecurities and psychosis that keep popping up like a Whack-a-Mole, he still seems 100% interested and undistracted. Now famous for wanting a boyfriend, getting said boyfriend, then running for my life, I am trying my hardest to focus on only the good in this one. That he’s attractive, nice, hung, has a decent job, and thinks I’m hot. Sure, he’s doing those little things that have in the past irritated me enough to change my phone number and wear disguises (doesn’t watch television, puts too much product in his hair, calls me while walking down a loud, windy Chicago city street), but I’m hanging in there. I’m 30 years old now. It’s time to concentrate on a person’s devotion, their passion, their honesty, and not that you find it annoying how they use the word "lover" when describing an ex. Or that they despise both "The Simpsons" and "South Park." Or that they don’t vote…
OK. So, I’m having a hard time with this. Instead of looking deep within myself for the reasons that I tend to focus only on the boys who have little to no interest in me, then build walls between myself and the boys who actually are interested, rather than examining myself, seeking treatment, exposing my complicated neurosis and, God forbid, actually fixing this problem, I decided rather to simply ask my friends what was wrong with me.
I mentioned to my friend Elias that, in this particular situation, I need to either sh*t or get off the pot. Men tend to lose their patience around me. It’s not that I’m waiting on "the next best thing." At least I don’t feel like the type of *sshole that does that. It’s just that seemingly every time I give in and go for it, those tiny things I was able to look past in the beginning (the beginning not coincidentally being the time when the sex is always the best) seem to amplify themselves and take over my life. Suddenly, for example, their being "chatty" at first becomes a constant barrage of words and noise, an unbearable distraction forever interrupting my television time.
"Sweetie," he told me, "even Hermes only lets you wear the scarf in the store so long before they pull that sh*t off of your neck! The worst thing you could do is wait too long that he moves on and then you’ll regret it!"
Why, I then asked him, does it never feel like it’s enough?
He said, "I think it comes down to the natural male instinct: TO HUNT. Since we gays don’t typically do the hunting of wildlife, we replace it with our own form of wildlife: MEN. What fun is it in catching the deer licking himself next to the stream, not running at all from anything? NONE AT ALL."
Such profound words from a man who carries his dog around in a Coach bag.
I found these words encouraging, whereas they took the blame right off of me. It’s not that I’m sleazy or indecisive or afraid of commitment. I possibly am genetically prone to this type of behavior. Had I been born 1000 years ago and was only allowed to eat what I killed myself, my need to hunt would be well catered to and I’d never look beyond my hairy caveman husband for love and affection. Unless he grunted too much. Or his loin cloth didn’t match his club.
But, in our time, my hunting is restricted to Saturday nights in the gay bars. But even the cavemen, who HAD to hunt out of the necessity to survive, grew tired of the constant chase and began to farm and herd livestock instead. In a word, they evolved.
So, in celebration of the season of the birth of Jesus Christ, perhaps I’ll take a page from Charles Darwin. Maybe it’s time I evolved. I’m thinking of that fish in the evolutionary chain, the one who over time grew legs and learned to breathe outside of the water so that he could eat whatever was just beyond the shoreline. That fish wasn’t as stupid as I tend to be. He evolved to get what he wanted and never thought twice about going back into the ocean. Why would he? What he’d wanted so badly and strived so hard to get was right there in front of him. And even though he might’ve missed life in the ocean or the anticipation of getting his fins on whatever it was he’d been eyeballing for 16 billion years, he moved forward.
He eventually became a dog-loooking thing, then a monkey, I think maybe a bird for a time, then finally a human. But apparently not a gay human, otherwise he would’ve jumped right back in the water to start over.
I'm not as thirsty as I'd thought.
(Originally published 8/22/2006)
Water, water everywhere. Not a drop to drink.
This is my current philosophy concerning the state of my singlehood. I used to fear what I thought were the odds, as if statistically I was running out of "at-bats." The older I got, the more boys I met, the more dinner dates I crawled out of restaurant bathroom windows to escape, I worried that the well would run dry. I worried that the next big break I got at a relationship, the next chance that strolled over towards me at the gay bar, would be my last. That I would wake up one morning, the barrel of my gun empty. That was my last shot.
But I realize now that by no means are the odds against me. There are boyfriends everywhere! There’s a boyfriend for you at the grocery store! There’s a boyfriend right there next to you on the bus! Heck, there’s even a boyfriend for you at work! All you have to do to make him yours is do what so many of our friends and family members do everyday in regards to relationships. No, I’m not talking about sharing, committing, or devoting yourself to someone else whole-heartedly. That stuff’s way too hard. Put down your self-help relationship books. You don’t have to read to learn how to settle!
I think once some people hit a certain age and they still don’t have steady companionship to accompany them to office Christmas parties and family weddings, that they fear being alone more than they fear a life chained to someone with irreversible psychopathic social traits. The idea of not having someone help them take out the trash takes priority over the fact that your mate doesn’t have a job, talks too much, or is a self-hating, masochistic, gay Republican.
I’ve observed in recent months a series of random couplings, seeing single people I know, single people whom I can recall breaking up with someone because they read "The Bridges of Madison County" or because they thought Condoleezza Rice was something you found next to the Little Ben’s at the grocery store. But now, they’ve pushed aside such traits as irrelevance. I’m focused on the person’s heart, they say. Yes, indeed. I stare right past that uni-brow into their soul. And when they begin explaining to my mother their conspiracy theory that Elvis and Richard Nixon were responsible for the Pet Rock, I only hear trace whispers of comfort floating from their pierced, tattooed lips.
So, at 30, I have had to re-evaluate my place in this world. I stopped looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with me?" I’ve started looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with them?" Truth be told we could all get married tomorrow. I could stroll right up to the guy that stands outside of the train station, the guy who screams enraged proclamations of Jesus’ love to everyone coming in and out, and tell him that I find his words moving, beautiful, and then ask him out on a date. I could tell the guy in Accounting with pictures of Leonard Nimoy in his cubicle that I like his toupee, then see if he’d like to grab some lunch.
Sure, some couples I am still jealous of, the ones with no visible scars, where both partners speak clear English and know how to work their ATM cards. But as Father Time pushes me forward, a couple whom I honestly admire is getting harder to find than food in Nicole Richie’s refrigerator. When the majority of couples you interact with consists of one partner so undesirable that his ex-wife left him in the middle of the night, a mail order bride from Afghanistan with only 4 teeth, it’s hard to be jealous.
Settling is no longer something you only read about in history books about the Old West. It is a real and sneaky phenomenon creeping up on single folks everywhere. It’s a great thing for that guy I work with who always smells like fish, or that woman with the mullet hair cut I saw yesterday on the street. It guarantees them a shot at true love. But for me, it’s not such a good thing. My single friends are dying off, choosing a quiet night at home with their mutant boyfriends over a night out on the town chasing tail with me.
So the grass isn’t always greener. I’d rather be frustrated with the single life than frustrated because my boyfriend’s telling my boss about his scat fetish. Again. Even after I’d begged him never to share that with anyone after the way Grandma reacted.
Water, water everywhere. Not a drop to drink.
This is my current philosophy concerning the state of my singlehood. I used to fear what I thought were the odds, as if statistically I was running out of "at-bats." The older I got, the more boys I met, the more dinner dates I crawled out of restaurant bathroom windows to escape, I worried that the well would run dry. I worried that the next big break I got at a relationship, the next chance that strolled over towards me at the gay bar, would be my last. That I would wake up one morning, the barrel of my gun empty. That was my last shot.
But I realize now that by no means are the odds against me. There are boyfriends everywhere! There’s a boyfriend for you at the grocery store! There’s a boyfriend right there next to you on the bus! Heck, there’s even a boyfriend for you at work! All you have to do to make him yours is do what so many of our friends and family members do everyday in regards to relationships. No, I’m not talking about sharing, committing, or devoting yourself to someone else whole-heartedly. That stuff’s way too hard. Put down your self-help relationship books. You don’t have to read to learn how to settle!
I think once some people hit a certain age and they still don’t have steady companionship to accompany them to office Christmas parties and family weddings, that they fear being alone more than they fear a life chained to someone with irreversible psychopathic social traits. The idea of not having someone help them take out the trash takes priority over the fact that your mate doesn’t have a job, talks too much, or is a self-hating, masochistic, gay Republican.
I’ve observed in recent months a series of random couplings, seeing single people I know, single people whom I can recall breaking up with someone because they read "The Bridges of Madison County" or because they thought Condoleezza Rice was something you found next to the Little Ben’s at the grocery store. But now, they’ve pushed aside such traits as irrelevance. I’m focused on the person’s heart, they say. Yes, indeed. I stare right past that uni-brow into their soul. And when they begin explaining to my mother their conspiracy theory that Elvis and Richard Nixon were responsible for the Pet Rock, I only hear trace whispers of comfort floating from their pierced, tattooed lips.
So, at 30, I have had to re-evaluate my place in this world. I stopped looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with me?" I’ve started looking at couples and thinking, "What’s wrong with them?" Truth be told we could all get married tomorrow. I could stroll right up to the guy that stands outside of the train station, the guy who screams enraged proclamations of Jesus’ love to everyone coming in and out, and tell him that I find his words moving, beautiful, and then ask him out on a date. I could tell the guy in Accounting with pictures of Leonard Nimoy in his cubicle that I like his toupee, then see if he’d like to grab some lunch.
Sure, some couples I am still jealous of, the ones with no visible scars, where both partners speak clear English and know how to work their ATM cards. But as Father Time pushes me forward, a couple whom I honestly admire is getting harder to find than food in Nicole Richie’s refrigerator. When the majority of couples you interact with consists of one partner so undesirable that his ex-wife left him in the middle of the night, a mail order bride from Afghanistan with only 4 teeth, it’s hard to be jealous.
Settling is no longer something you only read about in history books about the Old West. It is a real and sneaky phenomenon creeping up on single folks everywhere. It’s a great thing for that guy I work with who always smells like fish, or that woman with the mullet hair cut I saw yesterday on the street. It guarantees them a shot at true love. But for me, it’s not such a good thing. My single friends are dying off, choosing a quiet night at home with their mutant boyfriends over a night out on the town chasing tail with me.
So the grass isn’t always greener. I’d rather be frustrated with the single life than frustrated because my boyfriend’s telling my boss about his scat fetish. Again. Even after I’d begged him never to share that with anyone after the way Grandma reacted.
Who?
(Originally published 4/10/2006)
I was sitting at home alone recently having quality nose-picking-in-front of-the-television-time when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but muted "The Simpsons" and took the call anyway.
"Hi, Tony," the voice on the other end says, "This is Tom."
My brain is suddenly jerked awake, staggering about in my skull like a drunk person ripped from sleep by a fire alarm. Tom. Tom. Tom? Let’s see. Who the h*ll is Tom? Is Tom that dude who showed me an apartment last weekend? Is this that Tom guy from work? Is Tom that boy from Champaign I mugged down with over the Christmas holidays? Then it hits me. Tom is a guy I met almost three weeks ago. We exchanged numbers. I left a message for him a few days later and never heard back from him.
"Tom from a few weeks ago?" I ask.
He confirmed that he indeed was that Tom. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why someone would wait so long before the initial pre-first-date phone call. Maybe he was calling to tell me that he was recently diagnosed with Syphillis and that I should schedule a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. Oh, wait. I didn’t sleep with him.
"Sorry I’m just getting around to calling you back," he says, "I’ve been busy."
I’ll say. Just how busy do you have to be to wait three weeks to return someone’s phone call? My imagination runs wild. Perhaps he was camping and suffered from a poisonous snakebite. Or what if he was kidnapped at gunpoint and has been held hostage in the back of a black van by sexy, Russian bank robbers? Or the lottery. Yes, he won the lottery and has spent the last couple of weeks trying to decipher what to do with his newfound millions. And now he’s calling to invite me to Paris for the weekend!
His story couldn’t be further from my exciting "Knots Landing" type story lines. He blames work. Hmph.
This has become a recent trend in my life; meeting a guy, spending a week or so feeling sorry for myself because they never called, spending another week looking over my shoulder for them when I’m out with my friends, then a week forgetting that I’d ever met them in the first place, only to have them then call me out of the blue. I’m left holding the phone, scratching my head in outright confusion. Was this guy the teacher? Was he that Republican who bought me a beer and a shot? Or was this the guy that shagged my friend Eric? Maybe this is the guy who was the FBI agent. Have I ever met an FBI agent? No. That was a porn I rented last weekend.
I’ve been told that I have the attention span of a gerbil with ADD. It is not helpful that these guys follow up with me so long after first meeting me. It is especially difficult when these guys ask me to dinner "sometime next week," as Tom did. Now am I not only expected to remember Tom, but by the time I pull the chair out from under the table and join him for dinner it will have been almost a month since I laid eyes on him. And given the fact that I met him in a bar, the eyes that I laid on him were probably blurred and fuzzy through a haze of Miller Lite and cheap fruity shots.
This level of "busy" astounds me. I doubt that even the Pope or Oprah are so busy that they can’t squeeze in a four-minute conversation with someone. I don’t know anyone who makes plans with someone weeks in advance. He couldn’t have called me while he was waiting at the dry cleaners last Saturday? Couldn’t he have put down that eleven-year-old People magazine and given me a call while waiting at the dentist’s office two weeks ago? Who do these types think they are anyway?
"I’ll be at the Starbucks on Broadway Thursday, March 27th from 11:15 to 11:19 in the morning. Come by. We’ll chat for a bit while I wait on my latte."
There has to be a better excuse than work. My theory when you don’t hear back from someone within a week is that you are not the only person they met that night. The other person got the phone call 2 days later and the dinner date the following weekend. They were instantly drawn to this other person and half way through dinner they were daydreaming about what their best friend would say during their toast at the reception. Unfortunately, the other person turned out to be married with six Mormon children and a mortgage out in the suburbs. And suddenly they’re not too busy to call you back.
But I’m a sucker for a free meal, so I accepted anyway. I’m aware that I’m getting Ishmael’s sloppy seconds, but after the second bottle of wine I doubt I’ll give a sh*t.
I was sitting at home alone recently having quality nose-picking-in-front of-the-television-time when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number but muted "The Simpsons" and took the call anyway.
"Hi, Tony," the voice on the other end says, "This is Tom."
My brain is suddenly jerked awake, staggering about in my skull like a drunk person ripped from sleep by a fire alarm. Tom. Tom. Tom? Let’s see. Who the h*ll is Tom? Is Tom that dude who showed me an apartment last weekend? Is this that Tom guy from work? Is Tom that boy from Champaign I mugged down with over the Christmas holidays? Then it hits me. Tom is a guy I met almost three weeks ago. We exchanged numbers. I left a message for him a few days later and never heard back from him.
"Tom from a few weeks ago?" I ask.
He confirmed that he indeed was that Tom. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why someone would wait so long before the initial pre-first-date phone call. Maybe he was calling to tell me that he was recently diagnosed with Syphillis and that I should schedule a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. Oh, wait. I didn’t sleep with him.
"Sorry I’m just getting around to calling you back," he says, "I’ve been busy."
I’ll say. Just how busy do you have to be to wait three weeks to return someone’s phone call? My imagination runs wild. Perhaps he was camping and suffered from a poisonous snakebite. Or what if he was kidnapped at gunpoint and has been held hostage in the back of a black van by sexy, Russian bank robbers? Or the lottery. Yes, he won the lottery and has spent the last couple of weeks trying to decipher what to do with his newfound millions. And now he’s calling to invite me to Paris for the weekend!
His story couldn’t be further from my exciting "Knots Landing" type story lines. He blames work. Hmph.
This has become a recent trend in my life; meeting a guy, spending a week or so feeling sorry for myself because they never called, spending another week looking over my shoulder for them when I’m out with my friends, then a week forgetting that I’d ever met them in the first place, only to have them then call me out of the blue. I’m left holding the phone, scratching my head in outright confusion. Was this guy the teacher? Was he that Republican who bought me a beer and a shot? Or was this the guy that shagged my friend Eric? Maybe this is the guy who was the FBI agent. Have I ever met an FBI agent? No. That was a porn I rented last weekend.
I’ve been told that I have the attention span of a gerbil with ADD. It is not helpful that these guys follow up with me so long after first meeting me. It is especially difficult when these guys ask me to dinner "sometime next week," as Tom did. Now am I not only expected to remember Tom, but by the time I pull the chair out from under the table and join him for dinner it will have been almost a month since I laid eyes on him. And given the fact that I met him in a bar, the eyes that I laid on him were probably blurred and fuzzy through a haze of Miller Lite and cheap fruity shots.
This level of "busy" astounds me. I doubt that even the Pope or Oprah are so busy that they can’t squeeze in a four-minute conversation with someone. I don’t know anyone who makes plans with someone weeks in advance. He couldn’t have called me while he was waiting at the dry cleaners last Saturday? Couldn’t he have put down that eleven-year-old People magazine and given me a call while waiting at the dentist’s office two weeks ago? Who do these types think they are anyway?
"I’ll be at the Starbucks on Broadway Thursday, March 27th from 11:15 to 11:19 in the morning. Come by. We’ll chat for a bit while I wait on my latte."
There has to be a better excuse than work. My theory when you don’t hear back from someone within a week is that you are not the only person they met that night. The other person got the phone call 2 days later and the dinner date the following weekend. They were instantly drawn to this other person and half way through dinner they were daydreaming about what their best friend would say during their toast at the reception. Unfortunately, the other person turned out to be married with six Mormon children and a mortgage out in the suburbs. And suddenly they’re not too busy to call you back.
But I’m a sucker for a free meal, so I accepted anyway. I’m aware that I’m getting Ishmael’s sloppy seconds, but after the second bottle of wine I doubt I’ll give a sh*t.
Excuse me.
(Originally published 3/22/2006)
People make excuses for everything. As a collective body, we are resourceful and endlessly creative in the things we can conjure up when we fall short on a task or a commitment. Especially in America, where we love the blame game more than baseball. Our leaders blame one another for wars, terrorism, hurricanes, and blow jobs. Our reality television shows are houses full of wanna-be actors lobbing blame back and forth like hot potatoes. Kelly Clarkson said it best: "Because of You."
As children we adapt quickly to blame. It comes as naturally to us as digesting solid food or being afraid of what’s under the bed. We blame dogs for eating our homework. We blame our older sisters for taking money out of our fathers’ wallets. We blame a society that refuses to accept individual expression and free will when our mothers catch us walking around the living room in her favorite pair of red pumps (Wait. Is that one just me?). This failure to own our responsibilities and actions follows us into adulthood, where it tampers with our every relationship, from how we relate to colleagues, to our friends, to the neighbor next door whose paper we steal, and to the neighbor across the hall who we blame it on.
I’m the king of lame excuses. I have made excuses in an array of circumstances, from dodging work to cancelling dinner plans because I forgot "Will and Grace" was coming on. From avoiding helping someone move to not being able to pay for my own drinks, some of my better excuses are as follows:
"My iron is broken."
"I need to get online and look for sweaters."
"It rained yesterday."
"I have to look for the remote control."
"I’m studying for the MCAT."
Although quite well known for making excuses and delegating blame, I am not a big fan of hearing excuses (or taking blame for that matter). I work in Human Resources and hear excuses and blame on a daily basis.
"My boss hates me."
"I can’t come to work because my hamster ate four of its babies last night."
"I was kindly asked to leave my last job after an elaborate map of the building and a copy of ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ were found in my desk. I was doing research for my screenplay."
I’m no fan of being handed a turd of an excuse within a social setting either. Recently, someone handed me the King Kong of all excuses, the poke in the eye for all of us single people out there trying to keep our heads above water: The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse.
This excuse, when standing alone, could be considered legitimate and respectable, understandable, purely honest. However, 99% of the time a single person hears this from someone they have any interest in, it takes on a whole new meaning. Translation: "I don’t wanna date YOU right now (or ever, truth be told)."
In hearing about this particular person who said this to me and his many dates since, I began to contemplate the complexity of that excuse. I decided to ask a good friend of mine famous for handing out this excuse to boys like they were trick-or-treaters at his door on Halloween night. This conversation occurred in a bar, of course.
"Why do you tell people that?" I asked.
"Because I don’t wanna date anyone right now," he replied.
"But you’re lying. You date people all the time."
"Yes," he agreed, "but I don’t wanna boyfriend."
"OK," I concurred, the urge to be defensive rising up from my gut, "but do you think it’s necessarily fair to the people that you go out with that might actually want to date someone?"
"Well, I’m very up front about it."
"So you tell them that before you initially ask them out, that you’d like to spend time getting to know them but under no circumstances will this ever go beyond one or two weeks, even if you fall head over heels in love with them?"
He began to squirm, as if I was one of the boys he’d tried to feed this excuse to.
"Well, no. I don’t say it like that. And I usually say it around the third date."
I considered this. "So, basically it’s just a crappy excuse. When you tell someone this, what you actually mean is that you are looking for a boyfriend, just like the rest of us, and you gave this boy three chances to make you like him and he couldn’t do it. It’s a defense mechanism. You think that by saying this to someone that you have some sort of control over the fact that you haven’t met anyone either. Is that it?"
"I need another drink."
The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse is nonsensical and I believe it to be true about as much as I believe in OJ’s innocense or Paris Hilton’s IQ. Dating is painful, excrutiatingly so, and nobody in there right mind would bother doing it if they didn’t want the end result to be a relationship. It would be like voluntarily choosing the agony of a root canal when all you really wanted was a haircut. So, to all those out there fond of this excuse, your own little WMD case to launch chaos and havoc on unsuspecting innocents, go f*ck yourselves. You’re all just as confused and frustrated and defensive (and yet still just a little bit hopeful that there’s someone out there) as the rest of us.
"I don’t wanna date anybody right now." Yea? Well, you should’ve told me that before I bothered having my shoulders waxed AND wasted a Saturday night making mindless small talk when I could’ve been hanging out with my friends. You’re paying for dinner, *sshole.
People make excuses for everything. As a collective body, we are resourceful and endlessly creative in the things we can conjure up when we fall short on a task or a commitment. Especially in America, where we love the blame game more than baseball. Our leaders blame one another for wars, terrorism, hurricanes, and blow jobs. Our reality television shows are houses full of wanna-be actors lobbing blame back and forth like hot potatoes. Kelly Clarkson said it best: "Because of You."
As children we adapt quickly to blame. It comes as naturally to us as digesting solid food or being afraid of what’s under the bed. We blame dogs for eating our homework. We blame our older sisters for taking money out of our fathers’ wallets. We blame a society that refuses to accept individual expression and free will when our mothers catch us walking around the living room in her favorite pair of red pumps (Wait. Is that one just me?). This failure to own our responsibilities and actions follows us into adulthood, where it tampers with our every relationship, from how we relate to colleagues, to our friends, to the neighbor next door whose paper we steal, and to the neighbor across the hall who we blame it on.
I’m the king of lame excuses. I have made excuses in an array of circumstances, from dodging work to cancelling dinner plans because I forgot "Will and Grace" was coming on. From avoiding helping someone move to not being able to pay for my own drinks, some of my better excuses are as follows:
"My iron is broken."
"I need to get online and look for sweaters."
"It rained yesterday."
"I have to look for the remote control."
"I’m studying for the MCAT."
Although quite well known for making excuses and delegating blame, I am not a big fan of hearing excuses (or taking blame for that matter). I work in Human Resources and hear excuses and blame on a daily basis.
"My boss hates me."
"I can’t come to work because my hamster ate four of its babies last night."
"I was kindly asked to leave my last job after an elaborate map of the building and a copy of ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’ were found in my desk. I was doing research for my screenplay."
I’m no fan of being handed a turd of an excuse within a social setting either. Recently, someone handed me the King Kong of all excuses, the poke in the eye for all of us single people out there trying to keep our heads above water: The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse.
This excuse, when standing alone, could be considered legitimate and respectable, understandable, purely honest. However, 99% of the time a single person hears this from someone they have any interest in, it takes on a whole new meaning. Translation: "I don’t wanna date YOU right now (or ever, truth be told)."
In hearing about this particular person who said this to me and his many dates since, I began to contemplate the complexity of that excuse. I decided to ask a good friend of mine famous for handing out this excuse to boys like they were trick-or-treaters at his door on Halloween night. This conversation occurred in a bar, of course.
"Why do you tell people that?" I asked.
"Because I don’t wanna date anyone right now," he replied.
"But you’re lying. You date people all the time."
"Yes," he agreed, "but I don’t wanna boyfriend."
"OK," I concurred, the urge to be defensive rising up from my gut, "but do you think it’s necessarily fair to the people that you go out with that might actually want to date someone?"
"Well, I’m very up front about it."
"So you tell them that before you initially ask them out, that you’d like to spend time getting to know them but under no circumstances will this ever go beyond one or two weeks, even if you fall head over heels in love with them?"
He began to squirm, as if I was one of the boys he’d tried to feed this excuse to.
"Well, no. I don’t say it like that. And I usually say it around the third date."
I considered this. "So, basically it’s just a crappy excuse. When you tell someone this, what you actually mean is that you are looking for a boyfriend, just like the rest of us, and you gave this boy three chances to make you like him and he couldn’t do it. It’s a defense mechanism. You think that by saying this to someone that you have some sort of control over the fact that you haven’t met anyone either. Is that it?"
"I need another drink."
The "I don’t wanna date anybody right now" excuse is nonsensical and I believe it to be true about as much as I believe in OJ’s innocense or Paris Hilton’s IQ. Dating is painful, excrutiatingly so, and nobody in there right mind would bother doing it if they didn’t want the end result to be a relationship. It would be like voluntarily choosing the agony of a root canal when all you really wanted was a haircut. So, to all those out there fond of this excuse, your own little WMD case to launch chaos and havoc on unsuspecting innocents, go f*ck yourselves. You’re all just as confused and frustrated and defensive (and yet still just a little bit hopeful that there’s someone out there) as the rest of us.
"I don’t wanna date anybody right now." Yea? Well, you should’ve told me that before I bothered having my shoulders waxed AND wasted a Saturday night making mindless small talk when I could’ve been hanging out with my friends. You’re paying for dinner, *sshole.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
A whore's remorse.
(Originally published 3/16/2006)
Recently I was celebrating a friend’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant when the birthday boy’s new boyfriend, whom I thought that I’d never met, showed up. Sitting two people down from me, he said, "I think I know you. You slept with a friend of mine."
"Really?" I said. "Could you pass the salsa?"
"His name is Michael," the new boyfriend continued, although unencouraged.
"You’ll need to be more specific," I said between gulps of my margarita.
"It was about a year ago. We all met out and he went home with you."
"That really narrows it down," I thought, then asked, "Where were we?"
He told me the name of the bar, a bar I’m known to frequent with a fairly steady success rate for meeting people. He continued on, describing the way the fellow looked, what he did for a living, how old he was, etc… All I could really determine from the conversation was the guy sounded somewhat hot and interesting and I briefly entertained the thought of being set up on a "blind" date. But given the unique situation I refrained from asking the guy’s current marital status.
"Look," I finally said, the topic exhausted, "We could do this all night. But truth be told your buddy was not the only guy I’ve met out at a bar, took home, then completely forgot existed. I may own more shoes than Ivana Trump, but, the bottom line is, I’m a dude."
My level of disinterest frightened me the next day (at the time my brain was absorbed in tequila and nothing whatsoever really seemed to matter). Have years and years of one-night stands beaten me down to a level where sex no longer matters? How did this happen? And when did this happen?
I remember sitting in a Geology class my sophomore year of college and instead of listening to the teacher drone on and on about how fascinating rocks are, I decided to make a list of the men I’d been with up to that point. Much debate surrounds defining what actually "being with" consists of, but at that time in my life I subscribed to the school of of thought that if by any means someone has an orgasm around someone else, it counted as sex. Since then, for the sake of avoiding astronomical figures and staggering calculations, I have modified my thinking. I don’t even count oral anymore.
But even at that time, at the ripe age of 19, I’d made an impressive dent in my own purity and the number startled me. I vowed to be more chaste.
At 21, I revisited the list and amended my definition of sex. At 22, I modified what sex was yet again in order to avoid the list becoming a weekend project. At 23, I threw the list away. I chose to pretend that the list, as most of the boys whose names appeared on it, never existed.
So I pushed all those names on those sheets of paper right out of my life. What was the point anyway? The list served no other purpose but to validate someone else’s definitions of right and wrong. I think I was born without the guilt gene anyway, so I often leave it up to others to tell me when I should or shouldn’t "feel" guilty. With the list literally and figuratively in the trash, I stopped counting. It must’ve been then that sex became some standard function, a "no big whoop" type of event, like playing cards or doing the laundry. As long as it was safe and we were consenting adults (or a consenting 16 year old who plowed the field behind my mother’s house), then it wasn’t an issue.
But I spent most of the Sunday that followed that party wondering just how many Michaels were out there. My recollection of the ones that I remembered was already enough to make a porn star blush. I’d never even considered having forgotten any of them. I decided, seven years having past, to revisit the list. So I ran downstairs, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a coffee, and braced myself for the world’s most perverse and dirty research project ever. I decided that I would use the definition of sex that I’d used at 19, just to make it more interesting.
Starting out was a breeze and somewhat encouraging. This wasn’t going to be so hard. I’m not that bad! I ran through numbers one through eight with eeze. I even remembered all of their names! And number eight was in my 20th year, which was also encouraging. But by the time I got around to age 22 the list had started to read like the actors’ credits in a film.
- Guy at park
- Guy with red Toyota
- Guy with dog
- Guy from Boston (oh wait, there’s gonna eventually be at least four more from Boston, so I’ll just make this one Guy from Boston 1)
- Guy from Australia 1
- Guy in New Orleans
- Guy in New Orlean’s friend
- Guy in New Orlean’s father
The number seemed to double between ages 22 and 24, which I found odd considering that I had a boyfriend at the time. They peaked dramatically at 27, when I moved to Chicago. Upon completion, I decided that I’d use a margin of error like they do in newspaper polls to factor in any Michaels I may have forgotten.
And with that, it was all laid out before me. I couldn’t ignore it and pretend that it never existed. There they were. Every penis, every dirty towel, every mom or boyfriend that walked in, every back seat, every dog that seemed to like watching, every time I was too drunk to finish, every time I really didn’t want to but I was just being nice because he paid for dinner, every fake phone number, every photo of Grandma on the nightstand, every pick-up line, every song that might’ve been playing in the background.
There was some that stuck out though, the ones that might’ve been or could’ve turned into love. And there were a few of them. Ones who moved or met someone else or who I was mean to or who simply stopped calling. The entire list could’ve stretched from my tiny apartment on the north side of Chicago all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico (and, believe you me, it was close), and those few, the ones that I allowed myself to pause and think fondly of, were the only ones on there that really even mattered. How could I group "Guy who lived next door to Uncle Scotty" with the last person I ever said "I love you" to?
I couldn’t. And that’s when it made sense. The flip side of casual sex (besides STDs, pregnancies, stained clothing, etc…) is that if you are in love, then sex is no longer something special because you’ve already had it six times this week (and it’s only Tuesday). This, I realized, is why some people see sex as something more than a simple bodily function. It turns out that it’s not just like blowing your nose after all. Sex, I learned from my little experiment, has very little relation to brushing one’s teeth or burping.
I decided that the list, although useful, was better in memory alone. I didn’t need all those ghosts looking up at me from a piece of paper (OK, it was a stack of paper). So I ceremoniously burned it.
I felt enlightened and moral for about an hour. Then I decided to go drink beer and try to pick up guys.
Recently I was celebrating a friend’s birthday at a Mexican restaurant when the birthday boy’s new boyfriend, whom I thought that I’d never met, showed up. Sitting two people down from me, he said, "I think I know you. You slept with a friend of mine."
"Really?" I said. "Could you pass the salsa?"
"His name is Michael," the new boyfriend continued, although unencouraged.
"You’ll need to be more specific," I said between gulps of my margarita.
"It was about a year ago. We all met out and he went home with you."
"That really narrows it down," I thought, then asked, "Where were we?"
He told me the name of the bar, a bar I’m known to frequent with a fairly steady success rate for meeting people. He continued on, describing the way the fellow looked, what he did for a living, how old he was, etc… All I could really determine from the conversation was the guy sounded somewhat hot and interesting and I briefly entertained the thought of being set up on a "blind" date. But given the unique situation I refrained from asking the guy’s current marital status.
"Look," I finally said, the topic exhausted, "We could do this all night. But truth be told your buddy was not the only guy I’ve met out at a bar, took home, then completely forgot existed. I may own more shoes than Ivana Trump, but, the bottom line is, I’m a dude."
My level of disinterest frightened me the next day (at the time my brain was absorbed in tequila and nothing whatsoever really seemed to matter). Have years and years of one-night stands beaten me down to a level where sex no longer matters? How did this happen? And when did this happen?
I remember sitting in a Geology class my sophomore year of college and instead of listening to the teacher drone on and on about how fascinating rocks are, I decided to make a list of the men I’d been with up to that point. Much debate surrounds defining what actually "being with" consists of, but at that time in my life I subscribed to the school of of thought that if by any means someone has an orgasm around someone else, it counted as sex. Since then, for the sake of avoiding astronomical figures and staggering calculations, I have modified my thinking. I don’t even count oral anymore.
But even at that time, at the ripe age of 19, I’d made an impressive dent in my own purity and the number startled me. I vowed to be more chaste.
At 21, I revisited the list and amended my definition of sex. At 22, I modified what sex was yet again in order to avoid the list becoming a weekend project. At 23, I threw the list away. I chose to pretend that the list, as most of the boys whose names appeared on it, never existed.
So I pushed all those names on those sheets of paper right out of my life. What was the point anyway? The list served no other purpose but to validate someone else’s definitions of right and wrong. I think I was born without the guilt gene anyway, so I often leave it up to others to tell me when I should or shouldn’t "feel" guilty. With the list literally and figuratively in the trash, I stopped counting. It must’ve been then that sex became some standard function, a "no big whoop" type of event, like playing cards or doing the laundry. As long as it was safe and we were consenting adults (or a consenting 16 year old who plowed the field behind my mother’s house), then it wasn’t an issue.
But I spent most of the Sunday that followed that party wondering just how many Michaels were out there. My recollection of the ones that I remembered was already enough to make a porn star blush. I’d never even considered having forgotten any of them. I decided, seven years having past, to revisit the list. So I ran downstairs, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a coffee, and braced myself for the world’s most perverse and dirty research project ever. I decided that I would use the definition of sex that I’d used at 19, just to make it more interesting.
Starting out was a breeze and somewhat encouraging. This wasn’t going to be so hard. I’m not that bad! I ran through numbers one through eight with eeze. I even remembered all of their names! And number eight was in my 20th year, which was also encouraging. But by the time I got around to age 22 the list had started to read like the actors’ credits in a film.
- Guy at park
- Guy with red Toyota
- Guy with dog
- Guy from Boston (oh wait, there’s gonna eventually be at least four more from Boston, so I’ll just make this one Guy from Boston 1)
- Guy from Australia 1
- Guy in New Orleans
- Guy in New Orlean’s friend
- Guy in New Orlean’s father
The number seemed to double between ages 22 and 24, which I found odd considering that I had a boyfriend at the time. They peaked dramatically at 27, when I moved to Chicago. Upon completion, I decided that I’d use a margin of error like they do in newspaper polls to factor in any Michaels I may have forgotten.
And with that, it was all laid out before me. I couldn’t ignore it and pretend that it never existed. There they were. Every penis, every dirty towel, every mom or boyfriend that walked in, every back seat, every dog that seemed to like watching, every time I was too drunk to finish, every time I really didn’t want to but I was just being nice because he paid for dinner, every fake phone number, every photo of Grandma on the nightstand, every pick-up line, every song that might’ve been playing in the background.
There was some that stuck out though, the ones that might’ve been or could’ve turned into love. And there were a few of them. Ones who moved or met someone else or who I was mean to or who simply stopped calling. The entire list could’ve stretched from my tiny apartment on the north side of Chicago all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico (and, believe you me, it was close), and those few, the ones that I allowed myself to pause and think fondly of, were the only ones on there that really even mattered. How could I group "Guy who lived next door to Uncle Scotty" with the last person I ever said "I love you" to?
I couldn’t. And that’s when it made sense. The flip side of casual sex (besides STDs, pregnancies, stained clothing, etc…) is that if you are in love, then sex is no longer something special because you’ve already had it six times this week (and it’s only Tuesday). This, I realized, is why some people see sex as something more than a simple bodily function. It turns out that it’s not just like blowing your nose after all. Sex, I learned from my little experiment, has very little relation to brushing one’s teeth or burping.
I decided that the list, although useful, was better in memory alone. I didn’t need all those ghosts looking up at me from a piece of paper (OK, it was a stack of paper). So I ceremoniously burned it.
I felt enlightened and moral for about an hour. Then I decided to go drink beer and try to pick up guys.
Little table: The next generation.
(Originally published 3/13/2006)
I was tall for my age. I remember being able to see over everyone’s heads in middle school and I have towered over my mother since the fifth grade. But despite my height and my evident maturity (I was already weary of the Reagan Administration and "St. Elsewhere" was my favorite show), I was still forced to sit at the Kiddie Table during family dinners. I waited years to sit with the adults and pass the cranberry sauce to crazy Great Aunt Margaret. One by one, my older cousins (all of whom I was taller and smarter than) who preceded me to the adult table were slowly bumped out, some due to pregnancy and marriage (usually in that order), prison, or God-willing college.
Surprisingly enough, all those years of eyeballing my older sister’s and cousins’ spots at the table proved futile. What ended up getting me an empty spot was one of my family’s trademarked traditions, the redneck divorce. Aunt Vicky called it quits with Uncle Jerry when he burned her boyfriend’s trailer to the ground. A woman can only take so much.
By the time I got up there the adult table was about as fabulous as Barbara Bush couture. By then my female relatives’ ovaries had taken the call to populate Mississippi. Babies ran amok. No one could sit still long enough to see me passing the cranberry sauce to anyone, much less to Great Aunt Margaret, who’d been dead for years. There suddenly was endless butt-wiping to be done, cooing, picture-taking, and the removal of cat crap from the baby’s mouth. I had waited my whole life for nothing. I felt cheated, having spent years giving my sister and my older cousins a hearty laugh each and every time they’d look over and see all six feet of me sitting at a tiny plastic table with my knees in my armpits.
I never recovered from that, that odd display of myself in a role reserved for the second class. In high school once I volunteered to stand outside of a Wal-Mart and collect money for the Salvation Army. It occurred to me the second I was left alone there with my little red bucket that perhaps some of the customers would mistake me as being the needy recipient of their pocket change. I felt with each clanging of that bell that I was demanding that they look at me, "see what your capitalist society has done to me!" The way their eyes fell on me as they tossed pennies and chewed gum at me was the very stare I’d endured at that cursed Kiddie Table.
Whenever I find myself in a not-so-flattering situation I am instantly taken to that place in time where I sat in the shadow of my sister and older cousins, in a shamed and awkward silence eating my grandmother’s fried chicken.
And here I am, being drug by my ears towards thirty, and low and behold the Kiddie Table has presented itself to me in a sneaky new form: The Singles’ Table.
The Singles’ Table is the denouement in the series of events that make up a couples’ oppression of their fabulous, fashionable, in-shape single friends. The oppression starts with the invitation to whatever event in which you’ll find yourself parked between someone’s crazy neighbor who sobs uncontrollably and the creepy guy with no eyebrows who works with one of your hosts. It could be a wedding, a birthday party, a bar mitzvah, a housewarming, whatever. At some point in my life, and I’m not sure exactly when (perhaps I was out shopping or sleeping off a hangover), I stopped receiving invitations that said, "Tony Thompson and Guest." My couple friends suddenly became aware of a fact to which I’d been blind, that I’d never meet anyone. Thanks for letting me in on this! I’ve spent thousands of dollars on moisturizer and expensive shoes for nothing!
I learned years ago not to call my host and ask, "Well, would it be OK if I brought someone?" A pause for silence arises as my host works through their embarrassment for me, similar to the moment between the time my dad will ask me about his comb-over and the time that I tell him, "Great!" "Of course you can!" they finally blurt out, and I’m picturing them on the other end of the line with their faces twisted up in nervous discomfort.
A baby step towards the Singles’ Table is the dinner party. This is a chance for your couple friends to test your reserve and will, to see if you both deserve and/or could handle the Singles’ Table. At another point in my life in which I wasn’t paying attention (I might’ve been watching "That’s So Raven" or studying the ads in an "InStyle" magazine) my friends stopped trying to set me up at dinner parties. When I was younger, a dinner party was a chance for my couple friends to humiliate me by trying to set me up with the most revolting and backwards homosexual they could dig out of the dirt. I remember the first dinner party where I showed up for, well, just dinner. I kept looking under the table and over my shoulder all night for the set up. "OK, seriously, where is he? Did you hide him out back? Look, I’m about to make my ninth Vodka Tonic and the Valium’s about to kick in. If you want me to meet him and remember that I was even here in the first place you’d better drag him out now."
After successful humiliation at both types of dinner parties, the type where you meet someone horrible and the type where you don’t meet anyone at all, wherer you just sit there listening to people talk about daycare and tax preparations while in the back of your mind you wonder who’s gonna be on Letterman, then your hosts will deem you ready for the Singles’ Table. Basically, the Singles’ Table is the couple’s way of saying to you, "I trust that you can be miserable and feel awkward all on your own, without our supervision. Go forth, single freak, and be with your people."
If you’re lucky, as I was recently at a fabulous birthday party for a friend of mine, the Singles’ Table is actually the place to be. At this particular event we Singles made up about a quarter of the population. After exiting the buffet line and stopping by the bar to top of my wine, I glanced around the room at all the couples. There were couples of all kinds. Older couples, newlyweds, couples that recently had their first child, and even a few gay couples. And then there was the Singles’ Table. Except it wasn’t a doomed wasteland of a Singles’ Table as I’ve experienced before. There was no strange woman there eager to show me pictures of her cats or a man holding a cactus who looks like he came in off the street uninvited, only my partners in status, people strong enough to face this big scary world on their own, we of the "I’d rather pay my credit card bills alone than stumble across someone else’s turd in the toilet" type mentality. So we drank too much, talked about one-night stands and celebrities that we wanna bang. Instead of sitting there on display, a "This could’ve been you" example for all the couples to gawk at, we had the time of our lives. And I like to think that maybe some of the couples were jealous of us, for once. Because for the first time since I was a kid, I didn’t mind being at the Little Table. In fact, that was the only place I wanted to be.
I was tall for my age. I remember being able to see over everyone’s heads in middle school and I have towered over my mother since the fifth grade. But despite my height and my evident maturity (I was already weary of the Reagan Administration and "St. Elsewhere" was my favorite show), I was still forced to sit at the Kiddie Table during family dinners. I waited years to sit with the adults and pass the cranberry sauce to crazy Great Aunt Margaret. One by one, my older cousins (all of whom I was taller and smarter than) who preceded me to the adult table were slowly bumped out, some due to pregnancy and marriage (usually in that order), prison, or God-willing college.
Surprisingly enough, all those years of eyeballing my older sister’s and cousins’ spots at the table proved futile. What ended up getting me an empty spot was one of my family’s trademarked traditions, the redneck divorce. Aunt Vicky called it quits with Uncle Jerry when he burned her boyfriend’s trailer to the ground. A woman can only take so much.
By the time I got up there the adult table was about as fabulous as Barbara Bush couture. By then my female relatives’ ovaries had taken the call to populate Mississippi. Babies ran amok. No one could sit still long enough to see me passing the cranberry sauce to anyone, much less to Great Aunt Margaret, who’d been dead for years. There suddenly was endless butt-wiping to be done, cooing, picture-taking, and the removal of cat crap from the baby’s mouth. I had waited my whole life for nothing. I felt cheated, having spent years giving my sister and my older cousins a hearty laugh each and every time they’d look over and see all six feet of me sitting at a tiny plastic table with my knees in my armpits.
I never recovered from that, that odd display of myself in a role reserved for the second class. In high school once I volunteered to stand outside of a Wal-Mart and collect money for the Salvation Army. It occurred to me the second I was left alone there with my little red bucket that perhaps some of the customers would mistake me as being the needy recipient of their pocket change. I felt with each clanging of that bell that I was demanding that they look at me, "see what your capitalist society has done to me!" The way their eyes fell on me as they tossed pennies and chewed gum at me was the very stare I’d endured at that cursed Kiddie Table.
Whenever I find myself in a not-so-flattering situation I am instantly taken to that place in time where I sat in the shadow of my sister and older cousins, in a shamed and awkward silence eating my grandmother’s fried chicken.
And here I am, being drug by my ears towards thirty, and low and behold the Kiddie Table has presented itself to me in a sneaky new form: The Singles’ Table.
The Singles’ Table is the denouement in the series of events that make up a couples’ oppression of their fabulous, fashionable, in-shape single friends. The oppression starts with the invitation to whatever event in which you’ll find yourself parked between someone’s crazy neighbor who sobs uncontrollably and the creepy guy with no eyebrows who works with one of your hosts. It could be a wedding, a birthday party, a bar mitzvah, a housewarming, whatever. At some point in my life, and I’m not sure exactly when (perhaps I was out shopping or sleeping off a hangover), I stopped receiving invitations that said, "Tony Thompson and Guest." My couple friends suddenly became aware of a fact to which I’d been blind, that I’d never meet anyone. Thanks for letting me in on this! I’ve spent thousands of dollars on moisturizer and expensive shoes for nothing!
I learned years ago not to call my host and ask, "Well, would it be OK if I brought someone?" A pause for silence arises as my host works through their embarrassment for me, similar to the moment between the time my dad will ask me about his comb-over and the time that I tell him, "Great!" "Of course you can!" they finally blurt out, and I’m picturing them on the other end of the line with their faces twisted up in nervous discomfort.
A baby step towards the Singles’ Table is the dinner party. This is a chance for your couple friends to test your reserve and will, to see if you both deserve and/or could handle the Singles’ Table. At another point in my life in which I wasn’t paying attention (I might’ve been watching "That’s So Raven" or studying the ads in an "InStyle" magazine) my friends stopped trying to set me up at dinner parties. When I was younger, a dinner party was a chance for my couple friends to humiliate me by trying to set me up with the most revolting and backwards homosexual they could dig out of the dirt. I remember the first dinner party where I showed up for, well, just dinner. I kept looking under the table and over my shoulder all night for the set up. "OK, seriously, where is he? Did you hide him out back? Look, I’m about to make my ninth Vodka Tonic and the Valium’s about to kick in. If you want me to meet him and remember that I was even here in the first place you’d better drag him out now."
After successful humiliation at both types of dinner parties, the type where you meet someone horrible and the type where you don’t meet anyone at all, wherer you just sit there listening to people talk about daycare and tax preparations while in the back of your mind you wonder who’s gonna be on Letterman, then your hosts will deem you ready for the Singles’ Table. Basically, the Singles’ Table is the couple’s way of saying to you, "I trust that you can be miserable and feel awkward all on your own, without our supervision. Go forth, single freak, and be with your people."
If you’re lucky, as I was recently at a fabulous birthday party for a friend of mine, the Singles’ Table is actually the place to be. At this particular event we Singles made up about a quarter of the population. After exiting the buffet line and stopping by the bar to top of my wine, I glanced around the room at all the couples. There were couples of all kinds. Older couples, newlyweds, couples that recently had their first child, and even a few gay couples. And then there was the Singles’ Table. Except it wasn’t a doomed wasteland of a Singles’ Table as I’ve experienced before. There was no strange woman there eager to show me pictures of her cats or a man holding a cactus who looks like he came in off the street uninvited, only my partners in status, people strong enough to face this big scary world on their own, we of the "I’d rather pay my credit card bills alone than stumble across someone else’s turd in the toilet" type mentality. So we drank too much, talked about one-night stands and celebrities that we wanna bang. Instead of sitting there on display, a "This could’ve been you" example for all the couples to gawk at, we had the time of our lives. And I like to think that maybe some of the couples were jealous of us, for once. Because for the first time since I was a kid, I didn’t mind being at the Little Table. In fact, that was the only place I wanted to be.
Be nice, f*cker.
(Originally published 3/9/2006)
I am from the south. And although the south is eat up with belligerent hillbillies who can’t differentiate between Jesus and Dubya, I am grateful for the heritage. I was brought up to understand the fine line between unnecessary honesty and simple politeness, something sadly absent from most other societies in the world. Once, at a Halloween party in Yankee Chicago, I got into an argument with someone who dared to call me Two-faced. I couldn’t make him understand that just because I may smile and tell someone, "What a pleasure to see you!" then turn and say to the nearest listener what a filthy slut that particular someone is doesn’t make me Two-faced. It makes me polite. No good would have come from me saying to the previously mentioned slut, "If you double dip in the salsa we’re all gonna need penicillin." So, I just smile and beam with goodness, just like my parents brought me up to do.
Naturally, I gravitated towards professions where there is no room for honesty, where politeness is 90% of my workload. I waited tables for almost ten years and now I am in Human Resources. Honesty has no place in food service. Consider the following honest remarks flowing as freely as the daily specials:
"You really shouldn’t eat that. You’re huge. I’ll get you some ice cubes and a piece of lettuce. Then maybe your husband will wanna f*ck you again."
"How’s the fish? It is good? Are you sure? Well, I owe Larry five bucks. I told him that you’d gag on that piece of catfish that we found behind the Coke machine. I was gonna give it to my dog, but you know Larry! Always out to save a dollar!"
"Your Chicken Surprise will be out in just a minute, Sir. I’m having Jose the dishwasher sh*t in it because I don’t like the color of your sweater. Surprise!"
Or the following comments coming from the person who conducts your next job interview:
"It says here that you played Rugby in college and that you were the president of your fraternity. I’m not gonna lie to you, Buddy. I think that’s hot and I wanna see you naked."
"You smell like the south end of a northbound mule! Seriously, I don’t think a goat could even bare to sit here without its eyes watering! If that smell is from something you ate, Lord have mercy, you have gotta major lawsuit on your hands!"
"What we’re really looking for, Tammy, is someone to join our team who is in his early to mid-thirties, comfortably gay, attractive, but not so attractive that I have to worry whether or not he’s cheating on me all the time, masculine. Someone who thinks I’m hysterical and the smartest boy he’s ever met. Someone who’ll insist that I quit my job and take up shopping for shoes full time. Dimples are preferred but not mandatory. So basically, Tammy, that PhD must look fabulous on your wall but it’s not gonna get me a husband and therefore ain’t getting you this job."
Television has relentlessy endorsed the demise of being polite. Only the rude characters get the punchlines on most television shows. We would much rather watch someone call someone else a fat cow then punch them in the nose on "The Real World" than watch "The Thank You Note Writing Channel." I often see people on TV, on reality TV in particular, that boast of, "keeping it real!" Does this impress anyone to know that this particular individual would rather cross the street in an unjustified rage to verbally assault a stranger rather than smile and go about his or her own day?
I don’t like people who "keep it real." Their real-keeping usually ends up deflating people like me with fragile egos and soft exteriors. For example, a friend of mine’s mother said to me recently upon meeting me for the first time, "29? Are you kidding me? I would’ve guessed much older! Look at your hairline!" Hector’s Mom was keeping it real. B*tch.
However, sometimes being honest is the polite thing to do. Telling your friend that they have food in their teeth or that their boyfriend just gave you oral sex in the restroom, for example. Or steering someone clear of wearing something unflattering by suggesting that they try on something black, or with vertical stripes, or maybe a veil. I know that I’d rather have my friend Hector tell me to change my shirt before we go out than some stranger who keeps it real telling me how stupid I look later, someone like his mother. But I’m not bitter.
I think as societies swell in volume and shrink in distance from one another, politeness will become a causality of the entire world’s having meshed into one global community. And that behind the shield of "being honest," people will then even more freely spurt their hurtful truths to anyone who accidentally looks them square in the eye. Being polite is more than holding a door open for someone, or letting an old woman have the cab you both hailed down rather than shoving her out of the way (like you did to that old woman the day before). Politeness is a way of life. It’s a philosophy that stems from the Golden Rule. Be polite to me and I’ll be polite to you. Tell me that I look great despite my burn scars and I’ll tell you that your wife’s a lucky woman to have you (even though everybody knows that you’ve been impotent for twenty years).
I am from the south. And although the south is eat up with belligerent hillbillies who can’t differentiate between Jesus and Dubya, I am grateful for the heritage. I was brought up to understand the fine line between unnecessary honesty and simple politeness, something sadly absent from most other societies in the world. Once, at a Halloween party in Yankee Chicago, I got into an argument with someone who dared to call me Two-faced. I couldn’t make him understand that just because I may smile and tell someone, "What a pleasure to see you!" then turn and say to the nearest listener what a filthy slut that particular someone is doesn’t make me Two-faced. It makes me polite. No good would have come from me saying to the previously mentioned slut, "If you double dip in the salsa we’re all gonna need penicillin." So, I just smile and beam with goodness, just like my parents brought me up to do.
Naturally, I gravitated towards professions where there is no room for honesty, where politeness is 90% of my workload. I waited tables for almost ten years and now I am in Human Resources. Honesty has no place in food service. Consider the following honest remarks flowing as freely as the daily specials:
"You really shouldn’t eat that. You’re huge. I’ll get you some ice cubes and a piece of lettuce. Then maybe your husband will wanna f*ck you again."
"How’s the fish? It is good? Are you sure? Well, I owe Larry five bucks. I told him that you’d gag on that piece of catfish that we found behind the Coke machine. I was gonna give it to my dog, but you know Larry! Always out to save a dollar!"
"Your Chicken Surprise will be out in just a minute, Sir. I’m having Jose the dishwasher sh*t in it because I don’t like the color of your sweater. Surprise!"
Or the following comments coming from the person who conducts your next job interview:
"It says here that you played Rugby in college and that you were the president of your fraternity. I’m not gonna lie to you, Buddy. I think that’s hot and I wanna see you naked."
"You smell like the south end of a northbound mule! Seriously, I don’t think a goat could even bare to sit here without its eyes watering! If that smell is from something you ate, Lord have mercy, you have gotta major lawsuit on your hands!"
"What we’re really looking for, Tammy, is someone to join our team who is in his early to mid-thirties, comfortably gay, attractive, but not so attractive that I have to worry whether or not he’s cheating on me all the time, masculine. Someone who thinks I’m hysterical and the smartest boy he’s ever met. Someone who’ll insist that I quit my job and take up shopping for shoes full time. Dimples are preferred but not mandatory. So basically, Tammy, that PhD must look fabulous on your wall but it’s not gonna get me a husband and therefore ain’t getting you this job."
Television has relentlessy endorsed the demise of being polite. Only the rude characters get the punchlines on most television shows. We would much rather watch someone call someone else a fat cow then punch them in the nose on "The Real World" than watch "The Thank You Note Writing Channel." I often see people on TV, on reality TV in particular, that boast of, "keeping it real!" Does this impress anyone to know that this particular individual would rather cross the street in an unjustified rage to verbally assault a stranger rather than smile and go about his or her own day?
I don’t like people who "keep it real." Their real-keeping usually ends up deflating people like me with fragile egos and soft exteriors. For example, a friend of mine’s mother said to me recently upon meeting me for the first time, "29? Are you kidding me? I would’ve guessed much older! Look at your hairline!" Hector’s Mom was keeping it real. B*tch.
However, sometimes being honest is the polite thing to do. Telling your friend that they have food in their teeth or that their boyfriend just gave you oral sex in the restroom, for example. Or steering someone clear of wearing something unflattering by suggesting that they try on something black, or with vertical stripes, or maybe a veil. I know that I’d rather have my friend Hector tell me to change my shirt before we go out than some stranger who keeps it real telling me how stupid I look later, someone like his mother. But I’m not bitter.
I think as societies swell in volume and shrink in distance from one another, politeness will become a causality of the entire world’s having meshed into one global community. And that behind the shield of "being honest," people will then even more freely spurt their hurtful truths to anyone who accidentally looks them square in the eye. Being polite is more than holding a door open for someone, or letting an old woman have the cab you both hailed down rather than shoving her out of the way (like you did to that old woman the day before). Politeness is a way of life. It’s a philosophy that stems from the Golden Rule. Be polite to me and I’ll be polite to you. Tell me that I look great despite my burn scars and I’ll tell you that your wife’s a lucky woman to have you (even though everybody knows that you’ve been impotent for twenty years).
He texts me. He texts me not.
(Originally published 2/23/2006)
I recently became acquainted with someone whose main form of communication is the text message. Everyone knows the formalities behind writing a letter, talking on the phone, and even sending an email. H*ll, I even know the manors involved in sending a fax. But what sort of etiquette, if any, applies to text messaging? I couldn’t think of any. As far as being a form of communication, it is the most vague and potentially complicated method to reach out and touch someone, or text someone, as it would be.
Those fond of texting must first feel one another out. Unclear as to if their new acquaintance prefers to type into their cell phone rather than speaking into it, they must send the initial primary contact text, the "What’s up?" If one responds with a "Nothing. U?" then the texting relationship is immediately set in place. However, this is an unfair to the recipient, whereas it will pop up on their phone not identifying the caller, or texter as is the case. It simply has a phone number, which these days, thanks to caller ID, means nothing to anyone. One of my best friends Rebecca’s phone number could be 123-456-7890 for all I know. I just see Rebecca on the caller ID and take the call. So the recipient is somewhat trapped, unclear as to respond or not. What if it’s that really nice guy you met the other night? What if it’s that weird girl from work? What if it’s the free clinic with your Syphilis results? For the sake of my having something to continue rambling about, let’s just say the recipient texts back. And the cycle begins. I have reason to believe that this person I recently became friends with is completely comfortable with maintaining a relationship through this particular service offered by his cell phone provider. I think we’ve spoken on the phone maybe twice in a month.
Before I begin assaulting the act of text messaging, I will allow for some text messaging promotion. You can text your friends while in a class or at a boring seminar. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while on a bad date when your date slips off to the bathroom. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while waiting in line at the post office. "I wish I was dead." It’s a nice way to communicate without being that annoying *sshole screaming into their cell phone in the middle of Walgreen’s. It’s also an efficient way to keep track of your friends in a crowded bar. "I’ll be there in 10 minutes." "Where are you?" "I’m in line for the bathroom." Or, the ever popular, "I’ve already left and am about to have crazy monkey sex with a stranger." For each of its useful walky talky-like qualities (which I do enjoy), there are a dozen or so negative things about texting, one of which obviously is the physical stress it puts on one’s eyes and thumbs.
But because there are no set measures in regards to what types of behaviors are appropriate when texting, there is no way of telling if someone is being rude to you or not, which leads the door wide open for many emotional quandaries.
For example, perhaps you leave someone a voice message asking them if they’d like to go play darts, grab dinner, go to the bowling alley and steal shoes, etc… Five minutes later, your phone does not ring, yet it alerts you that you’ve received a text message. "Can’t tonight. Have plans. Thanks though." This may mean that the person you were trying to reach was incapacitated at the time of your call and only had time for a quick text message response. Perhaps he or she was cleaning the toilet or downloading pornography then suddenly rushed out the door because a grease fire broke out in their kitchen or office. It’s hard to imagine a circumstance that could prevent someone from neither taking your call nor calling you back, yet they somehow had time to check their voice mail, hear your invitation, then text you their regards.
Another beef I have with text messaging is the assumption that it’s a mini-email or some other means to express yourself through written electronic word. It is not. The display window on a cell phone was not designed for the purposes of reading "War and Peace." It is merely to alert you of who is on the other end of the line, not for you to settle down with a nice cup of tea and to read by a warm fire. My new friend recently confided in me some personal information, all through the text message inbox on my cell phone. Because his message was so long it was chopped up by US Cellular into about 10 separate text messages. A snipet:
"u r a really nice guy but i dont t"
"hink im ok to dati someone else reght n"
"ow. ij my ex callid me tokay id take he"
"m back. 48 96853 662 2e fair ."
I especially enjoyed the numerical scripting, having to correlate the numbers on my phone with their letters, then trying to figure out which letter the number represented. It felt like that scene in "Goonies" when they’re trying to solve that riddle in order to figure out what keys to play on the organ.
Another one of the many issues that can arise with text messaging is the enormous room for error. You could send someone a text message right now and it may not reach the recipient until after Hillary’s third State of the Union address. And this is a huge plus in the eyes of the shady texter, because they can say when they respond to your text message five days late that they got it "just now." An example: "Please come and help. car broke down. they took the baby." The response: "Just now getting this. Your funeral was lovely." This happens a lot to me with my friends who chronically text. I’ll text them an invitation that merits no response until whatever event I’d invited them to is long over. Either my friends are consistently blowing me off or they need new cellular providers.
There are no rules to text messaging, no etiquette, no standards of consideration and respect. Being from the South where my mother would murder me without regret if she’d ever heard me address my grandfather with anything but "Sir," this irritates the f*ck out of me. There is no history in it that you can refer back to and say, "That was tacky, rude, or tasteless." In addition, the technology is so blurred and unreliable, it is a virtual message in a bottle. Did they receive my text? Have they responded to my text and I never got it? Are they only texting me while the other guy they’re dating got up to let the dog out? Too many doubts, too much confusion.
That, and it’s murder on your thumbs. F*ck it.
I recently became acquainted with someone whose main form of communication is the text message. Everyone knows the formalities behind writing a letter, talking on the phone, and even sending an email. H*ll, I even know the manors involved in sending a fax. But what sort of etiquette, if any, applies to text messaging? I couldn’t think of any. As far as being a form of communication, it is the most vague and potentially complicated method to reach out and touch someone, or text someone, as it would be.
Those fond of texting must first feel one another out. Unclear as to if their new acquaintance prefers to type into their cell phone rather than speaking into it, they must send the initial primary contact text, the "What’s up?" If one responds with a "Nothing. U?" then the texting relationship is immediately set in place. However, this is an unfair to the recipient, whereas it will pop up on their phone not identifying the caller, or texter as is the case. It simply has a phone number, which these days, thanks to caller ID, means nothing to anyone. One of my best friends Rebecca’s phone number could be 123-456-7890 for all I know. I just see Rebecca on the caller ID and take the call. So the recipient is somewhat trapped, unclear as to respond or not. What if it’s that really nice guy you met the other night? What if it’s that weird girl from work? What if it’s the free clinic with your Syphilis results? For the sake of my having something to continue rambling about, let’s just say the recipient texts back. And the cycle begins. I have reason to believe that this person I recently became friends with is completely comfortable with maintaining a relationship through this particular service offered by his cell phone provider. I think we’ve spoken on the phone maybe twice in a month.
Before I begin assaulting the act of text messaging, I will allow for some text messaging promotion. You can text your friends while in a class or at a boring seminar. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while on a bad date when your date slips off to the bathroom. "I wish I was dead." You can text your friends while waiting in line at the post office. "I wish I was dead." It’s a nice way to communicate without being that annoying *sshole screaming into their cell phone in the middle of Walgreen’s. It’s also an efficient way to keep track of your friends in a crowded bar. "I’ll be there in 10 minutes." "Where are you?" "I’m in line for the bathroom." Or, the ever popular, "I’ve already left and am about to have crazy monkey sex with a stranger." For each of its useful walky talky-like qualities (which I do enjoy), there are a dozen or so negative things about texting, one of which obviously is the physical stress it puts on one’s eyes and thumbs.
But because there are no set measures in regards to what types of behaviors are appropriate when texting, there is no way of telling if someone is being rude to you or not, which leads the door wide open for many emotional quandaries.
For example, perhaps you leave someone a voice message asking them if they’d like to go play darts, grab dinner, go to the bowling alley and steal shoes, etc… Five minutes later, your phone does not ring, yet it alerts you that you’ve received a text message. "Can’t tonight. Have plans. Thanks though." This may mean that the person you were trying to reach was incapacitated at the time of your call and only had time for a quick text message response. Perhaps he or she was cleaning the toilet or downloading pornography then suddenly rushed out the door because a grease fire broke out in their kitchen or office. It’s hard to imagine a circumstance that could prevent someone from neither taking your call nor calling you back, yet they somehow had time to check their voice mail, hear your invitation, then text you their regards.
Another beef I have with text messaging is the assumption that it’s a mini-email or some other means to express yourself through written electronic word. It is not. The display window on a cell phone was not designed for the purposes of reading "War and Peace." It is merely to alert you of who is on the other end of the line, not for you to settle down with a nice cup of tea and to read by a warm fire. My new friend recently confided in me some personal information, all through the text message inbox on my cell phone. Because his message was so long it was chopped up by US Cellular into about 10 separate text messages. A snipet:
"u r a really nice guy but i dont t"
"hink im ok to dati someone else reght n"
"ow. ij my ex callid me tokay id take he"
"m back. 48 96853 662 2e fair ."
I especially enjoyed the numerical scripting, having to correlate the numbers on my phone with their letters, then trying to figure out which letter the number represented. It felt like that scene in "Goonies" when they’re trying to solve that riddle in order to figure out what keys to play on the organ.
Another one of the many issues that can arise with text messaging is the enormous room for error. You could send someone a text message right now and it may not reach the recipient until after Hillary’s third State of the Union address. And this is a huge plus in the eyes of the shady texter, because they can say when they respond to your text message five days late that they got it "just now." An example: "Please come and help. car broke down. they took the baby." The response: "Just now getting this. Your funeral was lovely." This happens a lot to me with my friends who chronically text. I’ll text them an invitation that merits no response until whatever event I’d invited them to is long over. Either my friends are consistently blowing me off or they need new cellular providers.
There are no rules to text messaging, no etiquette, no standards of consideration and respect. Being from the South where my mother would murder me without regret if she’d ever heard me address my grandfather with anything but "Sir," this irritates the f*ck out of me. There is no history in it that you can refer back to and say, "That was tacky, rude, or tasteless." In addition, the technology is so blurred and unreliable, it is a virtual message in a bottle. Did they receive my text? Have they responded to my text and I never got it? Are they only texting me while the other guy they’re dating got up to let the dog out? Too many doubts, too much confusion.
That, and it’s murder on your thumbs. F*ck it.
A crutch and a $10 co-pay.
(Originally published 2/19/2006)
I’ve been through many things in my life. My best friend blew his head off when I was fifteen. I had heart surgery when I was sixteen. I had to drop out of college when I was twenty in the midst of my parents’ bitter divorce. I was crushed when I parted ways with the only man I feel like I ever loved. I walked away carrying my heart in my hands. He walked away carrying nothing but a scotch. To date, I have lived through four Republican administrations and only two Democratic ones. I’ve been so poor that I had to sell all of my CDs in order to eat and I still wake up every day and wonder why they cancelled "My So-Called Life."
I look back on a turbulent first 30 years and I do not cry with regret and sorrow. I pat myself on the back. Many other people have made complete messes of their lives and blamed far less severe circumstances (child stars from the 80’s for example). I am not addicted to drugs or sleeping in the street. I am not in jail or living in a trailer in Missouri arguing with my roommate over whose turn it is to cook the crystal meth. I think, under the circumstances, that I have done quite alright with my life. But many within my circle dare to argue that I’m not leading a survivor’s life, that I have a distinct and disruptive crutch to help me cope with the pains of my past. What makes them think this? A little blessing, a miracle, a good friend of mine, a pill called Xanax.
When in crowded places like bars or on the subway or at Nordstrom Rack during a shoe sale I feel edgy, restricted, confined, and smothered. This happens to me often in Chicago. Places here can be so packed with people that your only shot at moving is to sprout wings and fly above the herd of people who have you pinned in the corner or up against the wall. These feelings first overwhelmed me about a month after I relocated here. I was on a crowded Brown Line train when suddenly I felt as if my heart had stopped beating. I couldn’t move not only from fear but from there being nowhere to move to. There were too many f*cking people in my way.
Obviously, I didn’t die and was not having a heart attack. I was symptomatic of what doctors have assured me to be an actual disorder: anxiety disorder.
Xanax is the pill that my licensed physician has prescribed for me. It is filled lawfuly in a state-accredited pharmacy by a trained and qualified pharmacist. It is used to treat anxiety disorder and is to be taken upon the initial onset of a panic attack to calm my nerves. It is arguably one of the best things that mankind has ever invented, second only to the internet or possibly over-the-counter teeth whitener. I take it as prescribed, "as needed."
So you can imagine my frustration when I’m having cocktails with friends on a Saturday night and the crowd gets so overgrown that I feel as if I might need "my medicine," only to have my friends cluck their tongues in disapproval and cast judging glances my way, as if I’m a pregnant Courtney Love doing heroine. The label clearly warns against the consumption of alcohol and taking Xanax. However, I never need one unless I’m in a crowded room. Bars, as most people know, tend to be crowded. So, as I often do when given directions that just don’t seem to suit me, I persevere and make up my own rules.
"What the h*ll are you doing?" my friend JC recently asked me, having seen me discreetly pull a Xanax from my pocket, place it beautifully on my tongue, and wash it down with a sip from my Vodka Tonic.
"It helps take the edge off," I said in defense, so used to this line of hardened and judgemental questioning from unforgiving friends, friends who refuse to acknowledge my medically diagnosed disorder.
"You’ve drank nearly a bottle of vodka!" he screamed. "Honestly, is there any edge left?"
Victimized, feeling as if no one will ever understand the pain I must endure as a forgotten, cast-aside victim of panic disorder, I look away from him in shame. But, being the survivor that I am, I endure. I move on.
Another friend of mine’s mother is also on Xanax. Notoriously off her rocker (seriously, the woman boasts that she’s "got papers" to prove her nuttiness), she gets her prescription refilled every month despite not needing the pill everyday of the month. She keeps them in a lockbox in her home, like a squirrel hoarding nuts in a tree. Although I am not a saver by nature (see checking account), I took to this concept and now do the same. I do not need the pill everyday, but since it only costs ten dollars a month and I do have a prescription for it, I might as well get it filled and stockpile them for a rainy day. What sort of horrid rainy day would call for a hundred or so Xanax I cannot even imagine. Possibly a nuclear attack or Jeb Bush winning the White House in 2008.
Another issue I have with people who judge me for my relationship with my beloved little pill is that every time I have the slightest lapse in good judgement, a battlcry goes out: Were you on Xanax? If I lose a coat check ticket or get lost in Target, the assumption is always that I was "hopped up" on my little pink friend. I would like to blame most of my stupidity on something beyond my genetic make-up, but I can’t. I’m just dumb sometimes. Well, most times.
If I were a diabetic and injected my insuline in front of others, no one would utter a sigh of disapproval. So leave me the f*ck alone. It’s a disorder, for God’s sake. Seriously, it’s in medical books. Go ahead. Look it up. Jerks.
I’ve been through many things in my life. My best friend blew his head off when I was fifteen. I had heart surgery when I was sixteen. I had to drop out of college when I was twenty in the midst of my parents’ bitter divorce. I was crushed when I parted ways with the only man I feel like I ever loved. I walked away carrying my heart in my hands. He walked away carrying nothing but a scotch. To date, I have lived through four Republican administrations and only two Democratic ones. I’ve been so poor that I had to sell all of my CDs in order to eat and I still wake up every day and wonder why they cancelled "My So-Called Life."
I look back on a turbulent first 30 years and I do not cry with regret and sorrow. I pat myself on the back. Many other people have made complete messes of their lives and blamed far less severe circumstances (child stars from the 80’s for example). I am not addicted to drugs or sleeping in the street. I am not in jail or living in a trailer in Missouri arguing with my roommate over whose turn it is to cook the crystal meth. I think, under the circumstances, that I have done quite alright with my life. But many within my circle dare to argue that I’m not leading a survivor’s life, that I have a distinct and disruptive crutch to help me cope with the pains of my past. What makes them think this? A little blessing, a miracle, a good friend of mine, a pill called Xanax.
When in crowded places like bars or on the subway or at Nordstrom Rack during a shoe sale I feel edgy, restricted, confined, and smothered. This happens to me often in Chicago. Places here can be so packed with people that your only shot at moving is to sprout wings and fly above the herd of people who have you pinned in the corner or up against the wall. These feelings first overwhelmed me about a month after I relocated here. I was on a crowded Brown Line train when suddenly I felt as if my heart had stopped beating. I couldn’t move not only from fear but from there being nowhere to move to. There were too many f*cking people in my way.
Obviously, I didn’t die and was not having a heart attack. I was symptomatic of what doctors have assured me to be an actual disorder: anxiety disorder.
Xanax is the pill that my licensed physician has prescribed for me. It is filled lawfuly in a state-accredited pharmacy by a trained and qualified pharmacist. It is used to treat anxiety disorder and is to be taken upon the initial onset of a panic attack to calm my nerves. It is arguably one of the best things that mankind has ever invented, second only to the internet or possibly over-the-counter teeth whitener. I take it as prescribed, "as needed."
So you can imagine my frustration when I’m having cocktails with friends on a Saturday night and the crowd gets so overgrown that I feel as if I might need "my medicine," only to have my friends cluck their tongues in disapproval and cast judging glances my way, as if I’m a pregnant Courtney Love doing heroine. The label clearly warns against the consumption of alcohol and taking Xanax. However, I never need one unless I’m in a crowded room. Bars, as most people know, tend to be crowded. So, as I often do when given directions that just don’t seem to suit me, I persevere and make up my own rules.
"What the h*ll are you doing?" my friend JC recently asked me, having seen me discreetly pull a Xanax from my pocket, place it beautifully on my tongue, and wash it down with a sip from my Vodka Tonic.
"It helps take the edge off," I said in defense, so used to this line of hardened and judgemental questioning from unforgiving friends, friends who refuse to acknowledge my medically diagnosed disorder.
"You’ve drank nearly a bottle of vodka!" he screamed. "Honestly, is there any edge left?"
Victimized, feeling as if no one will ever understand the pain I must endure as a forgotten, cast-aside victim of panic disorder, I look away from him in shame. But, being the survivor that I am, I endure. I move on.
Another friend of mine’s mother is also on Xanax. Notoriously off her rocker (seriously, the woman boasts that she’s "got papers" to prove her nuttiness), she gets her prescription refilled every month despite not needing the pill everyday of the month. She keeps them in a lockbox in her home, like a squirrel hoarding nuts in a tree. Although I am not a saver by nature (see checking account), I took to this concept and now do the same. I do not need the pill everyday, but since it only costs ten dollars a month and I do have a prescription for it, I might as well get it filled and stockpile them for a rainy day. What sort of horrid rainy day would call for a hundred or so Xanax I cannot even imagine. Possibly a nuclear attack or Jeb Bush winning the White House in 2008.
Another issue I have with people who judge me for my relationship with my beloved little pill is that every time I have the slightest lapse in good judgement, a battlcry goes out: Were you on Xanax? If I lose a coat check ticket or get lost in Target, the assumption is always that I was "hopped up" on my little pink friend. I would like to blame most of my stupidity on something beyond my genetic make-up, but I can’t. I’m just dumb sometimes. Well, most times.
If I were a diabetic and injected my insuline in front of others, no one would utter a sigh of disapproval. So leave me the f*ck alone. It’s a disorder, for God’s sake. Seriously, it’s in medical books. Go ahead. Look it up. Jerks.
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