Thursday, January 29, 2009

A Portrait of a Date

**Editors' Note: Today's guest post came in from she who wishes to remain anonymous. Fine by us, just keep 'em coming.**

It was a funny date. Not funny "ha ha," but funny "mildly awkward." Just not a really good match, but still a decent time. And the making out was good, so that's sort of how I ended up at my suitor's house. Then he made gin and tonics, and then he was obviously too drunk to drive, and it was late, and I didn't want to deal with waiting for a cab in his far-flung borough, so I decided to sleep at his house. Now, I could have slept in the guest room, or made him sleep in the guest room, but please. That's ridiculous. So I let him know that there would be no pants-off partying, and that I would figure out an exit if that was a problem.

"No, no, stay, I'll be good," he slurrily promised. And this guy was basically a frigging boy scout, so I trusted him. As well I should have. He didn't try a thing … until the next morning. And what he tried was very convincing, as it didn't involve the removal of clothing on his part. So I accepted his offer, but I still had no interest in what he was packing.

When he got out of bed, he was sad, mopey, even a bit mooney faced. I, of course, felt wonderfully sleepy, glowy, etc. He moped into bathroom to take a (presumably cold) shower. I rolled over and nuzzled deeper into the blankets. He turned on the radio. Over the water I heard the whiny warble of Morrisey cry out, which seemed entirely, hilariously appropriate to me.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

On exes

From Shannon Wheeler, Portland-based creator of Too Much Coffee Man (please buy his book):

"My ex was over the other day and we were chatting about our cats.

My cat was being her usual friendly self. She noticed how grey my cat had become and she said 'at least she's friendly'. She went on to tell me how her cat is psycho. It goes from friendly to psycho-killer without warning. She said it just isn't worth the risk petting her. It surprised me that that she could tell me all this seemingly without irony."

Me, I'm just relieved that I finally deleted the little "People you may know!" box on myspace enough times that my ex no longer pops up, trying to be my "friend." Also, can't his new girlfriend take a new profile picture of him?

Sunday, January 25, 2009

i'm so blue...

recently my girlfriend and i had a series of brief grope, kiss, and grind sessions. due to time and place, none of them culminated in anything other than a heightened sense of arousal. while the encounters were warm, tender and very enjoyable, the lack of a climactic finish left me with a serious case of blue balls. now, the girl fancies herself a bit of an authority on human anatomy and physiology and she immediately dismissed my uncomfortable situation by discrediting the entire existence of the blue balls phenomenon. while i respect her knowledge of all things biological, i know for a fact that blue balls happen and i assured her that should she poll other guys, they would undoubtedly confirm my belief. come on fellas, help me out. weigh in on this one.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Friends Forever?

**Editors' Note: This guest post comes in from a gal who wishes to remain nameless. Fine by us, just keep 'em coming!**

I need to stop fucking all of my single, male friends. Pretty soon I'm not going to have any left.

I don't know why it happens or how it happens. Well, actually I have a pretty good idea of why – they know me and I know them and it's comfortable. And, thinking about it, the how too – alcohol is usually involved. Is there some kind of underlying sexual tension with some of those single, male friends that just sometimes, on the right night and the right conditions (or wrong ones), just erupt?

A history:

1. A really good friend who I worked with and got close to over cigarette breaks. He was leaving town to move back to his homeland and his last night on earth…well, yeah. Since then we haven't been able to keep the friendship. I still really want to be friends, but it doesn't seem to be working.

2. Another friend about this time last year, not as close but still designated as a pal. This one hit me sideways, I wasn't expecting it to happen and it happened again and again quite a few times, on those certain nights. He left town too.

3. And just recently, a good friend that I have known for years and hang out with on occasion. I am currently in the process of trying to figure out how to approach this one – should I be honest and tell him the truth? I think he wants to get to know me better and he is a great guy, but I'm not sure if I want to start anything serious. How can I keep the friendship? Does it have to change our relationship?

Maybe I just need to start going out to bars more.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

How Not To Pick Up A Snowbunny

**Editors' Note: This guest post came in today from a Marine who prefers to remain nameless. We don't blame him.**

Years ago I was a marine stationed in Southern California. We did lots of things in our time off, most of them centered on finding girls and then trying to fuck them. Sexist and rude yes, but we were marines after all.

One weekend some buddies and I planned a snowboarding trip to a nearby ski resort. True to form, the intent was not really to snowboard (none of us were all that good anyway) but to lure sexy snowbunnies back to our cheap hotel room and yes, try to fuck them.

At any rate, we got up to the resort, rented our gear and donned our makeshift ski wear. My buddies wore U.S. issued fatigues and laughed at me as I stepped into my insulated one-piece Carhartt suit. Franky, I thought it had a certain honest, everyman appeal. The morning progressed and sure enough, we did locate and team up with a crew of attractive gals. We shared lift rides, chatted a bit as we cruised easy runs, and overall, things were looking good for our ultimate intentions.

At some point mid-day I ducked into the trees at the side of a run to answer natures call, i.e. take a big shit. I felt a bit rushed as I saw my buddies disappearing down the hill with the girls and knew that they had absolutely no reservations about ditching me for the rest of the day in the hopes of improving the odds with the ladies. I finished up, stepped back into my board and bombed the hill, getting to the gondola line just in time to cut my way up to our party as they crammed their way into the crowed gondola car.

The door shut and up we went. The first thing I noticed was that I was located directly under the heat vent and hot air was blasting me. The second thing was the distinct smell of human shit. Very soon it became evident that other people noticed it too.

Comments began circulating: Dude! Smell that shit? Bro! Who Shit themselves?! Clearly, I was the culprit. I checked my boots - all clear. My gloves - all clear. Snowboard - clear. Pants cuffs - clear. A glimmer of hope emerged. Maybe I wasn't the offender.

The ladies were obviously grossed out and embarrassed by the whole thing and by this point the warm air and intense reek had them breathing into their elbows. I knew we just had to get to the top and get out of this damn gondola into some fresh mountain air where I could do a more thorough check of my gear. Ah! the lift shack at the top of the line was in sight, just a few moments more and I was home free!

Suddenly, from just over my shoulder, my buddy, my buddy, the fucker that was supposed to look out for me, put his life on the line for me in battle, yells, no bellows at the top of his lungs -Dude! Dude! YOU SHIT IN YOUR HOOD!!!! HE SHIT IN HIS HOOD!!! and proceeds to begin laughing his ass off. He is very quickly joined by most of the other people in the gondola. Except of course, the snowbunnies.

The look on their faces was textbook disgust and embarrassment. A few moments later, the gondola docks, the doors open and the crowd stampedes out amidst laughter and nasty comments about the hygiene of the US marine corp. My friends are literally rolling on the ground, not even observing, or caring about for that matter, the rapid disappearance of our quarry. I admit, at this point I found the humor in the whole situation as well and joined in with belly laughs of my own. We spent the rest of the day reliving the gondola ride and pounding beers in the lodge, of course, only after I had ditched my trusty Carhartt suit.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Hitting On A Married Woman

**Editors' Note: This guest post came in late last night. I happened to be around for this one (funny how often that happens) and was one of the unfortuante fools suffering the Nikki-Six wannabe. After reading this, I'm glad I got him and not the ass hitting on the married chick.**


Dating may be weird, but believe it or not … marriage can be pretty damn bizarre, as well. But those are stories for a whole 'nuther blog. I've been out of the dating scene for years, and while I do visit the bars (ok, one bar) from time to time I am not usually privy to an insider's look at the dating/pick-up scene in the 21st century. My fortunes changed one evening not long ago.

I met some friends at "the" bar for drinks and conversation. The four of us—three of us female and one male—sat at the bar for a spell, making small talk over our beers and whiskeys. When the linear arrangement of seating made conversation difficult we picked up our drinks and moved down to a table. Things were busy that night, with a table down the way quickly filling with people and growing in size as more tables were dragged over to accommodate the blossoming number of drunks gathering there. They were young, for the most part … and granted I'm older than everyone in this story so a bunch of early-20-somethings made it look like frat-boy night at the bar to me. Though, NONE of these people looked like ever they'd seen a college, let alone a frat house.

The four of us minded our own business, drinking and talking, laughing and drinking more. Eventually the youngsters outgrew their accommodations and went looking for more seats. They found them at our table, and instead of picking the chairs up and dragging them over to their soiree, three of the guys plopped their asses in chairs around our table. At first I was sure one of my companions knew these guys, despite the fact that one of them—the ringleader, it seemed—looked like a Nikki Sixx-wannabe, and the other two looked like they were Nikki Sixx-wannabe wannabes. Aim high, young men … aim high. Needless to say, my companions did not know these boys.

Wannabe One placed himself at the end of the table, between me and my male friend. Wannabe One looked at me and said, "You're married, aren't you?" To which I replied, with a sarcastic flash of my ring finger in front of my face, "Wow, what ever gave you that idea?" Give the young man props for his astuteness. His answer? "Because you're so sexy." Wow again. And thus began Wannabe One's heavy-handed charm … from his sharing of his pay stub with me (he had a job!) to his drunken slurring of my name whenever he could fit it in a sentence. Boy was all of 24 chronologically, but not a day over 16 emotionally. At the end of the table, one of my girlfriends was getting the suave treatment by Nikki Sixx-wannabe and Wannabe Two. At one point Nikki Sixx-wannabe looked at me, trying for his best deep and smoky look, and asked, "Where are you from?"

So I'm from California … I don't always share it up front because I get some ribbing for it, but with this guy I was more than willing to do some verbal sparing. "California," I said. "Ah, me too," said Nikki, sealing our common bond, "I'm from Huntington Beach." "Oh," I replied, "Huh. I'm from Northern California … we don't typically like the SoCal bunch."

And what do you do when a woman makes a point to show she has no interest in who you are or where you're from? You try to impress her with your rock-star credentials, of course. "I'm just up here with my band," says Nikki. "Oh?," I say, "What's the name of your band?" To which he replies:

"Slut."

Honest to god. (No, this is not the same band as the German band Slut … in case you music lovers were wondering.) "You must get a lot of girls with that," says my girlfriend who's been stuck with these two hacks hovering over her. But they still don't get the hint. Obviously our acid is not acidic enough. Finally, after disturbing our peace for a good 20 minutes, Nikki Sixx-wannabe asks, "So, what are you guys doing tonight?" To which my friend and I look at each other and reply dryly and in unison: "This."

They didn't run away immediately, but they apparently heard chastity belts locking because they pulled back on their assault, slowly filtering back into their own crowd of hairspray, black leather and ear piercings. We continued with our night.

I told my husband the story when I got home, and he just laughed. Which, on one hand, was nice … he wasn't going to blow a gasket over me being at a bar with random losers hitting on me. On the other hand, he could have shown a little concern. I mean, really? Your wife is at a dive bar and you have zero territorial instincts when you hear she's been hit upon? That's just one way in which marriage is weird. But again, that's a story for another blog.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Henry Rollins Hates Dating



I love you Henry. And I promise I hate Nickleback too.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Dating in the Social Networking Era

My new beau recently changed his Facebook status to "In a Relationship." The gesture, while very cute and much appreciated, was a bit weird for me for several reasons:

1. Multiple women commented on the change with notes like "lucky girl!" or "and hearts break around the nation" and "I second lucky girl!" among other flirty, innocuous compliments. I know he's a good looking dude and women hit on him wherever he goes, I just didn't realize he had fans around the nation waiting in line..

2. My status is and will remain "Whatever I can get" as that option no longer exists for new Facebookers. Having joined this little social networking phenomenon when it was open only to college students, I was given that option in my relationship status choices and me being me, will now and forever be looking for whatever I can get. (Note: it's actually one of the few things in my life that even remotely resembles a trophy case...unless you were around in the beginning, you can never have that status. I was, therefore I do, in your face! Yes, stupid and immature and awesome. Whatever.)

But this is the first time that I've ever been in an actual relationship while on Facebook, and so is there some sort of dating rule about updating your social networking relationship status? Am I inadvertently sending a message about my feelings by NOT updating? The whole thing weirds me out a little.

3. His sister, who is NOT on Facebook, texted him a few days later to tell him she heard about his relationship status update. What? Really?


I talked to him about it, mostly to let him know that while I'm very much into him, I won't be changing my relationship status. Thankfully, he was alright with that.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

You get ONE

How I ended up in a bedroom making out with two guys is not the part of the evening I remember. It doesn't matter. These fellows were friends (of mine and with each other). Hot friends. I had a crush on one, and really wanted to be dating him.
I do remember that we got into the room and started fooling around. I tell you, it's not everyday that you've got one guy working the boobs and another making out with you. It's not the worst way to be, either.

I knew the one I didn't have a crush on had a girlfriend. Since we hung out together often, I had to deal with his certifiably crazy girlfriend on a regular basis. I did not consider her a friend. I was nice to her, though, because life is easier that way.
I also knew that she was in the other room sleeping. In my experience, if you don't want to deal with a crazy girlfriend, you let her continue to sleep. You don't wake her up to ask if you can have a threesome with her boyfriend and his frat bro.
(Yes, they were frat boys. More stereotypical beef-head football players, but whatever. They were very nice, very cute boys.)

We didn't get to the really fun stuff because we got interrupted. Apparently crazy girls sleep lightly.
She screamed crazy-girl nonsense. We listened to her scream. I put my shirt back on and we all went to leave so I could go home and the boys could get on with their evening. She slapped me once. I kind of smiled (I'd been having a good night until she came in so I was in a good mood). She earned that slap, but she only got one. If she would have tried it again I would have punched her in the face. But I was making out with her boyfriend so she got so slap me.

As I was walking out the door she said something like, "We're not friends anymore."
I was irritated at being interrupted and did not give a shit about her. I turned to her and said in a voice oozing with sarcasm, "Dang it," and walked out the door.

I remained good friends with both the boys. Crazy-girl's relationship ended... eventually.

Dang it.

Friday, January 9, 2009

12 steps

You know you have a problem when you're tidying up your house before a fellow comes over and you spend five minutes carefully shaking out your blankets and sheets, then checking around your nightstand for condom wrappers.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Dating Married Men : Part Deux

As promised, the second installation of why it's a really bad idea to date married men:

I didn't realize it was a date until he saw a female friend who looked first at me in confusion then at him questioningly then back at me in disgust and then turned to him and said, "How is (wife's name)?"

It wasn't that I didn't know he was married. I've met her. And their two kids. It was that he asked me out to drinks to discuss "work." Or so I thought.

"I'd like to run some ideas by you about my book business," he wrote in an email. "And it'd be nice to catch up over some whiskey."

Now if you've followed this blog even a little bit, you're aware I love whiskey and hate bad pick up lines. I'm also a bit of a geek so a book discussion over whiskey invite is heaven. It's also a brilliant cover.

We met at a swanky bar downtown and ordered top-shelf scotch-bourbon with a tasty appetizer. The conversation meandered through the usual catching up then veered towards discussion of building crushes. Evidently the men in his office had crushes on the various young women in the building (I used to work there). I feigned ignorance and ordered another.

He kept asking me about my personal life - what I was up to these days, what did I like to do on the weekends, etc. - and was reticent when asked about his wife and children, whom I asked about frequently. Truth be told though, I was alright with having a few drinks on a married man's tab until his female acquaintance walked up and gave me the stank eye like I was the one in the wrong.

Tangent: women, instead of blaming each other when a man's being a dog, blame him. This seems obvious to me, but for whatever reason, the majority of women will go after the other woman like she's the one cheating. I have a few stories about this as well, mostly about being physically threatened and harassed by crazy girlfriends who think their boyfriends are cheating on them with me, but I'll save that for another post.

At one point I asked if he had to go given that it was getting late and a school night and he said that he had told his family he would be working late. Sketch.

As the third round of drinks were finished, I thanked him for a pleasant discussion, pointed out we hadn't even once mentioned books and wished him well. No mention of the possibility of meeting again, nothing about the awkward tension introduced by female friend, just a nice and formal "thank you."

"I'm sorry we didn't even talk about books! We'll have to go out again soon," he said.

"Thanks again. Tell (wife's name) I said hello," I replied.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

DATEBLOGGING is weird

Did our loyal readers notice that we seem to have a blogwar on our hands?!

Thank, you cvance.

Thank you, baby jeebus.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Dating Resolutions

New year, new leaf, new dating resolutions...

Here's mine:

Don't fuck up the really good relationship I started a few months ago. Given my history, the fact that he still likes me three months later is a good sign. I don't think he believes me when I tell him that I sometimes maybe a teensy tiny bit sabotage things by being a big fat jerk face. Example: get shit faced wasted and not come home or call or call the next day until the hangover is semi-manageable. I pulled that one already and he called me out on it but then actually let it go after we'd discussed it. Well, let it go after we'd discussed it a few times, but fair. I'll give him that it was disconcerting enough to necessitate the WTF? Was That conversation more than once.

So what are your resolutions DIW readers and writers?

Friday, January 2, 2009

Say It Don't Spray It

"I think... I'm in love with you," I mumbled into my phone, my champagne-warm face pressed against the cool back seat window of my friend's Land Rover.

Then she said something. It was muffled. She said something else. I blacked it out. And then it was morning. And I had no idea how she felt.

AWK.