The Art

It’s the art of living everywhere and living nowhere.

That’s what my mama said today when I told her that I don’t want to renew my license plates in any other state but Colorado because it’s too much trouble.

It’s the art of being numb enough to feel nothing.  And leave everyone so that you feel nothing.

That’s what I told myself when I left Aspen, the first place that I ever did anything for myself, to go out into the Great Unknown, to find God knows what.

It’s the art of taking a deep breath and moving on.

That’s what my best friend told me the first time that my heart got broken.  And we sat together in the park.  And I looked at him.  And I felt a spark.  And I knew that’d we’d never be ok.  But that it’d be ok.  And that, by a simple twist of fate, it’d all be ok. 

It’s the art of knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. 

That’s what I told myself when I decided to turn my back on that little something real that I’d found.  Because I felt like it was a crime to feel too much at any one time.  And I told myself that we’d meet again with a simple twist of fate.  If not here, then on the other side.

It’s the art of telling a lie.

Just tell me a lie.  If it’s true. He woke up and she was gone.  He got up and put his clothes back on.  He got up and saw the note she’d left.  He got up and saw the simple twist of fate.

And I think about it every night when I’m wrapped up in his arms.  

Cliches on Pedestrian Love

“Hello baby welcome to the world.  I’ll me be your hideaway girl. Come on baby let your light shine down.  You’re the best I ever found.”  ~Jimmy LaFave

Clichés on taking a risk.

If you don’t take a chance, you don’t stand a chance.

The road less travelled has made all the difference.

All you need is love.

Everything happens for a reason.

If it’s meant to be, it will be.

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.

* * *

And all clichés aside.  Here I am.  Alone.  Finishing off a six-pack of Bud and a bottle of red and a tin of Cope.  So fuck that.

And here’s my own cliché on love and life.

Life is fucking hard.  Love is even harder.  You can’t control who enters your life or who you love.  But you can control whether or not you run away.  And all I’ve ever done, or wanted to do, it run.  Run far, and run fast.  And for the first time in my life the tables are turned.  And I decided to stay and fight the proverbial good fight.  And he decided to throw in the proverbial towel.  And I realized that I can throw in the towel and run.  But that it won’t make a damn bit of difference in how I feel.  Or in how I hurt. 

And fear is a fundamental and unavoidable roadblock in life.  We have so much fear as a human race that we forget what living is.  And what love really is.  And what the truth is.  And we succumb to those fears.  And we eat healthy.  And work hard.  And stay busy.  And eat good food.  And drink heavy.  And we forget.  At least for a moment.  Those great fears.  And those great loves.  But fuckin’-a at least we don’t hurt so bad it feels like our heart is being run through a shop vac. 

So yeah, I get it.  I know what it’s like to feel scared.  Scared that you won’t measure up.  To what others want for you.  To what you want for yourself.  Scared that you might have found someone worth the good fight.  And to be scared that you don’t have the good fight in you.  And to be scared you’ll get hurt.  And to be scared that you don’t know where it’s going.  And to be scared you’ll lose a part of yourself if you give into what your heart and soul are telling you.  And the piss-poor judgment of a knee-jerk reaction is to call it quits.  And say it’s been real.  So, in the nicest possible way, fuck off.  Because I’m too scared to deal with the reality of the situation.  And here’s where somehow each and every two-cent cliché makes sense.

But here’s where the unfortunate truth comes knocking on the door to crash the party.  And where those clichés come into play.  And as an expensively-educated, philosophically-minded Kantian-wanna-be I resent my submission to, hell my slavery to, pedestrian clichés.  But here I am.  Stuck.  Drinkin’ cheap beer. And chewin’ cheap tobacco.  By myself.   Wondering if it is more important to love or to live.  And wondering if, by some miracle of the simple-minded and eternally-hopeful, it’s possible to have both.  To love and to simultaneously live the life I’ve always dreamed of.  And I’m fucking, beyond-my-mind, crazy, out-of-control, terrified.  I’m terrified of what it might mean to admit to myself that I have feelings for something, for someone, outside of myself. 

And I choose to ignore it.  Or at least to rationalize it.  To not throw in the towel until I’d decided, by my incredible and expensively-acquired powers of deductive (or inductive) reasoning, that it was rational to pursue.  But the unfortunate part of this situation is that I can’t control what the other variables enter into my calculus of love.  And I suppose that’s where philosophers of the great, dead, white, Western tradition have failed time and time again.  Because there is no rational or reasonable explanation for putting yourself in a situation of certain and eminent peril and heartbreak.  No other animal willingly enters into a situation in which it is certain to fail.  To hurt. Hell, to die and painful and unreasonable death. 

Fuck yeah humans.

So I’ll toast once again to you.  To what might have been. And come on and pick me up because I just came to say goodbye love.  Good luck out there.  Hopefully I’ll see you again.  If not here, then on the other side.

Meditations With A Malbec

What do you do when you find the thing, at least a part of the thing; you’ve been looking for all your life?  If you’re me, you run.  You run far and you run fast.  You come to two proverbial roads diverging in a yellow wood and you take the one more traveled. It’s well worn and safe.  And you’ll never know if the other one, the one tangled with twisted branches and menacing shadows, would have made all the difference.

And me of the golden reputation.  The one who’s never home and never lonely.  The one for whom men supposedly fall so fast and so hard for that I’ve got nothing to worry about.  Ever.  Me of the golden reputation.  Me the breaker of hearts.  Me the taker of numbers.  Me.  The one who is alone.  And lonely.  Again.  With a fancy wine glass and bottle of Argentinean Malbec for company.  I toast to that.  The loneliness.  And drinking alone.  And nobody knowing all of theses emotions are dripping from each and every pore of my body.  It’s a good glass of wine.  Rich and complex.  Or so they say.

But I toast to the loneliness because the loneliness sneaks away, tail between its legs, with the first brush of morning.  The hurt does not.  And so I choose the well-travelled road.  The one most of us choose.  The one void of risk and thus, void of pain.  I could elect that road less travelled.  I could tell him how I feel.  For that matter I could tell my entire world how I feel.  But I digress.  I could tell him what I want and what I think about and what I dream about.  I could have the courage to show him this.  And they tell me that road less travelled would make all the difference.  And I raise my glass to that bullshit and say fuck that.  I’ll take the high road and avoid the hurt and pain that tears a body into so many confetti bits that a fraud artist couldn’t glue them together again to make a cohesive whole.  That kind of hurt means that one is never whole again.  And once again, I say fuck that.

And the one thing I want more than anything in the world is a connection.  To someone.  To something outside myself.  To something bigger than this.  And I have no one to call.  They’ve either told me they won’t speak to me.  They’ve cut me out completely.  Or they’re too busy.  Or they don’t understand.  Or they just don’t care to talk at this hour.  And why.  Because I’ve systematically eliminated everyone from my bubble of personal space in order to replace said bubble with an armored car of nothingness. 

But at least it’s safe. 

I’ll drink to that.

It’s a good bottle of Malbe.  Or so they say.

Life Lessons Learned In The Valley of the Sun

So here I am.  Sitting on my roof.  At midnight.  Watching a full moon set over the mountain.  Drinking a PBR.  And chewing Copenhagen.  Wearing $130 yoga pants.  Tying on a MacBook Pro.  The eternal walking contradiction.

And I’m thinking that I’ve learned a few things in the Valley of the Sun.  And that I’m going to miss this place. 

I’ve learned what I want in a place.  And a person.  And life.  I went on a hike today (go figure) and sitting in a glaciated valley, on the shore of a Forest Service Jeep turquoise alpine lake, with pristine pines and grumpy rock outcroppings surrounding me, I felt home.  Finally.  I never thought I’d be able to get out of small-town Ohio and do this.  I didn’t think I had it in me to say fuck you to the path that had been preordained for me from birth.  But I did.  And here I am.  I have learned, this summer in particular, that I want authenticity, and honesty, and happiness, and love.  And that I no idea what those words mean.  Nor do I put much trust in words.  As one who deals in words, I know how shifty they can be.  But At least I know that I want a clear blue sky, and a cold beer, and someone to hold me at night, and a friend’s shoulder to cry on, and a buddy to laugh with.  And to make a difference to someone. 

I learned that no one can be trusted.  But that everyone should be loved.  My mom raised me to believe in the good within everyone.  And I took that to heart.  I have this pernicious tendency to fall madly in love with everyone I meet.  A lot like Maverick.  Maybe that’s why he and I get along so well.  But I digress.  And through several dead ends.  And a couple of ugly situations.  And one new chance.  I’ve learned that while everyone should be loved, not everyone should be immediately and inextricably fallen in love with.  Jumping head first off a cliff is a lot of fun.  Jumping head first off the cliff of in-love is also a lot of fun.  And really dangerous.  I’ve learned to take it slow.  Give it a chance.  And ride the ride for all its worth.

I learned who the good people are.  They are the one who rescue you in the middle of the street, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a fight.  They are the one who listen to you sob about issues that have nothing to do with them but that you just needed to tell to someone.  And keep it a secret.  They are the ones who don’t judge you through each new “I-swear-this-is-the-One” guy you meet.  They are the ones who teach you to fish while drinking red wine.  They are the ones who drink beer on the roof with you.  They are the ones who cry with you in 101.  They are the ones who jump naked into an alpine lake with you just because.  They are the ones who don’t take bullshit.  And give you lots of bullshit.  And call you out on your bullshit.  And love you anyway.  They are the ones turn out not to be snakes. 

I learned that I can’t settle down.  And there’s always the naysayers who say that you have to.  Or that you will someday.  Or that you’ll grow out of it.  Or that it’s just a phase. Or that back when they were my age (whether that was two years ago or fifty years ago) they did the same thing.  And I’d like to know when this magical time is that I’m expected to settle down with a husband, 2.5 children, a Golden Retriever and a respectable house.  When I settle down it’s going to be on my terms, like everything else I do.  It’ll be with a man who has the wanderlust as much as me.  And wants rippin’ skier, mountain babies.  And with a cabin in the mountains, a house on the beach and an apartment in Johannesburg.  And somehow I’ll get there.  By taking the roundabout, crazy-winding, tangential, long-way-around path that I always take.  Sorry Dad, I know that kills you.  But I promise I’ll be alright.

But as usual in my life, it’s time to get going.  And time to move on.  Because there’s a too vast world out there.  Vaulting us on to the next great venture beneath the skies.  And that’s why my car is always stuffed full of shit in the trunk.  I’ve always got hiking shoes.  And a yoga mat.  A wine key.  And high heels.  A sleeping bag and a backpack.  Sweat pants.  And shorts.  And a map.  And I’m always ready to pick up a leave when things get too heavy, or too boring, or too dull.  Or when the wanderlust bites me and tells me it’s time to go and see what’s over the next rise and around the next bend.  And I’ll miss the old places and the old people like hell.  And they’ll always have a place in my heart.  But what I’ve really learned is that I will find those people and those places everywhere.  Because everyone has a little bit of everything in them.  And everyone is worth knowing.  And worth loving.  And I’ve got lots of places to see.  And beers to drink.  And strange foods to eat.  And people to love.  And leave.  And meet again at the end of this crazy journey we call life.

I love you all.  Good luck out there.

Red Headed Sluts

I’ve always said, you gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

One of my best friends decided to fold ‘em today.  He gave it his best shot though.  And lesser men would have walked away from the trouble of it all a long time ago.  Speaking of shots, ours used to be the Red Headed Slut.  Red Headed Sluts put the poor guy in the hospital one night.  It was our silent little side joke of a toast to me.  The sweet-at-first, burns-on-the-way-down, makes-you-act-insane, one ounce glass of trouble that I am.  Funny how one little glass of Jaeger, Peach Schnapps and cranberry can embody me so well.  Sweet as a peach when I want to be.  Sour as an unripe cranberry at times.  And crazy as a bottle of Jaeger.

Problem was, he was crazy too.  And if you’ve ever played with the like-charged sides of a magnet you know that the poles never come together.  They just dance around on the table in this crazy dance with no rhyme or reason. 

And so we fell to bits and pieces. 

And then all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men put us back together again.  As friends.  And despite the reigning idea that a person with a penis and a person with a vagina cannot ever, under any circumstances, be just friends, we did it.  We defied the laws of the universe.  And somehow neither of us – and no one is going to believe me on this one – ever wanted to have sex with the other.   Never.  Nada.  Nope.  Nothing.  We truly had found a cure for sexual tension between men and women, and were on our way to creating the best friendship known on Earth.  How great is it to have a member of the opposite sex to consult on relationship issues who really, truly doesn’t want to get you naked?  No ulterior motives. 

But then Life road in on her Wicked Witch of the West broomstick and got in the way again.  Life has a way of being a bitch like that.  Just when the party’s gettin’ good and the bar is hoppin’ life turns on the lights and it’s last call closing time.  Every time you think you’ve got it all figured out, she changes everything.  And that’s why you have to learn to roll with the punches.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.  Because in twenty-five seconds it could all change.  Like it said, know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. 

And for various and sundried reasons he left.  He folded on the friendship.

So tonight at the bar I’m drinking Red Headed Sluts.  And toasting to us.  Because we defied all logic and stereotype and proved that men and women (hell even ex-lovers, ex-husbands and wives, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends) can, if they get over themselves and their petty issues, actually be friends.  And can do it without wanting to do dirty things to each other.  And more than one person has told me that we gave them hope and that we gave them something to believe in. 

And you didn’t really fold on us.  Real friends are always there.  When you really need it most and when you expect it least.  If you ever need picked up at the hospital, bailed out of jail, swooped from the drunk tank, saved from a bar fight, or scarped off the floor when your whole world comes crashing down around you, a real friend will always be there.  And I’ll always be there.  And he’ll always be there. And he got me through the tough stuff.  And now I’m ok.  And that’s what friends do.  They make it ok again when you think it can’t be.

So I’ll say it again. If, at the end of this long and twisting road of sex, drugs and rock and roll, we meet again, I’ll be there waiting for you with a six-pack of Bud and a bag of stories.  And we’ll toast to the good times, and the bad times, and the tears, and the laughs.  And just remember that I’m never too far away.  And I’m always here if you need a shoulder or a shot to get rid of your tears.  Just remember; always know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.  

Metaphysical Musings on Love, Loss and Life (In the Valley of the Sun)

On an airplane to Cleveland an old man, a laid-off Ford autoworker started talking to me.  He smelled like Skoal and his voice was itchy, like Velcro.  I didn’t ask for advice, but he felt compelled to give it.  And it has stuck with me ever since.  He said, “Find someone to love.  And live everyday as if it was your last.”

So here’s my half-assed effort at honesty.  If you’re reading this, that means I got the courage up to send it.  So congratulations to me.  I don’t really know how to start.  So I’ll just say it.  I met someone.  I wasn’t looking for it.  I wasn’t expecting it.  It just hit me.  He said one thing and I said another and the next thing I know, I wanted to spend forever in the middle of that conversation.  He’s slightly crazy, and highly neurotic.

And he’s you.  And he’s nothing like you.

And I don’t know what’s going on with us and I don’t know how to be with you.  And I know that you sure as hell don’t know how to be with me.  And that scares the shit out of me.  Because it’s a big, bad world out there, with lots of twists and turns and hurt.  And people have a tendency to blink and miss the moment.  The moment that could have changed everything.  And I guess that’s the leap of faith we all have to take at some time.  Into that great unknown that could make all the difference. 

And that scares the shit out of me too.  Because I can’t be with you but I’m scared that if I’m not we’ll get lost out there. 

So big deal.  I fell in love.  You touched a place deeper than I thought anyone was capable of reaching.  And I thought you were my soul mate.  And you probably were.  But the problem is that people think that your soul mate is your perfect fit, and that it’s forever.  But a true soul mate is nothing more than a mirror.  The person who shows you everything that’s holding you back.  The person who smacks you hard across the face so that you finally realize who the fuck you really are.  They are the person who wakes you up so that you can change your life.  A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. 

But to live with a soul mate forever.  No way.  Too painful.  Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another later of yourself and then they leave.  And thank God for that.  Because your purpose was to shake me up a bit, drive me out of a relationship that wasn’t good for me, tear apart my ego a little bit, show me my obstacles and addictions, break my heart open so new light could get in, make me so desperate and out of control that I had to transform my life. 

And thank God for this wonderful asshole of a soul mate.  He taught me that I’m stronger.  Stronger than shit.  I learned that I have the strength to defy my own expectations.  I have the strength pick my carcass of a self back up after the biggest blow of my life.  I learned that I can go places.  And it’s because I had nothing left to lose.  And that’s freedom.  And since it couldn’t get much worse, I might as well sack up  and jump of that huge old cliff of terrifying into the abyss of unknown.  And holy shit guess what?  I came out on top.  And I learned that everyone hurts.  And everyone has been fucked over.  And everyone has baggage.  And bull shit.  And I’m not alone.

That was your job.  To show me who I really was.  And to force me to stop being this asshole that I wasn’t.  And you rocked the shit out of it.  And now it’s over.  And at times it might seem like a cruel and sinister world.  But really, what might appear to me a series of unfortunate events is really the beginning of something grand and extraordinary. 

So good luck out there.  If I see you at the end of it all, I hope you come bearing a six-pack and a bag of good stories.  If not, I guess it just wasn’t in this deck of cards.   Just remember, always know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

Booze and Babes In The Valley of The Sun

I’m in the middle of a three-week bender that would make Hunter S. Thompson proud.

I left Cleveland.  Arrived in Idaho.  Took a shot to welcome myself to town.  And then I took a few more shots.  And that’s how I got here.

Being the new girl in a small town, especially a booze and adrenaline-fueled mountain, is a lot like being the new kid in high school.  Except with more booze and more boys.  The one to ten ratio of bangable girls to truck-driving, tobacco-chewing, gun-shooting mountain further contributes to the new-girl-in-high-school sense of standing out like a sore thumb.  And since they all know each other, and they all know every other girl in town, and they all know which combinations of their friends and their girl friends have slept together, the heralded arrival of a new girl who hasn’t slept with some combination of best friends and roommates is usually trumpeted with glad tidings of great joy, much rejoicing, boisterous fanfare and endless rounds of shots.  Lots and lots of cheap whiskey, tequila and Red Bull. 

You walk into the bar and the music stops, the conversation ceases, the heads turn and one solitary bottle clangs to the floor.  Who’s the new kid in school?  The generally consensus is, “Hey there’s a new girl.  Let’s buy shots.”  And then, once you get to know each other it’s, “Hey there’s our new friend.  Let’s buy shots.”  And after that it’s, “Hey it was sunny today. Let’s buy shots.”  You get the picture. Which is how I’ve managed to work myself into a nasty little pattern of staying up too late drinking more tequila than I care to drink, waking up early, nursing my hangover with huevos rancheros, taking a three-hour nap, working, having “just one” post-work beer, deciding that it would be ok if I went our for “just one” drink at the bar, finding myself taking “just one more” shot at the Cellar, stopping by Whiskeys for “just one minute,” crawling into bed around 3 AM smelling like a booze and barroom and then repeating it all over again the next day.  Tomorrow I’ll take the night off.  Really.  I swear.

If its one thing mountain towns do well, it’s suck you in.  They’re like that crazy friend everyone has who can get you to dance on the stage at the Sapphire strip club in Vegas, jump off cliffs at Lake Cumberland, dance on tables in Cancun, huck the 30-footer, dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly (I’m seeing a pattern here) and take body shots on a lazy Tuesday night.  You always play by their insane rules because they’re so damn convincing, and handsome and fun.

And that’s how people end up on thirty-year mountain town benders.  They wake up one bluebird morning, rub their eyes and wonder how the fuck they got here.  It’s like Rip Van Winkle, mountain bender edition.  Confused, they say, “Last thing I remember, I was here for one summer (or one winter – take your pick).  And then we took a bunch of shots.  And now I’m here.  Whoa.  What a trip.”  And  when you’re a local in a mountain town your life really is others vacation.  Which gets dangerous when you’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of loud Texans, sexy Miamians or snobby new Yorkers all drinking it down.  You forget that they’re on vacation.  And your not.  And can’t help but join them.  Somehow you get sucked in.  And before you know it, everyone’s buying you shots.  And you’re buying everyone else shots.  And before you know it you end up blacked out and passed out in a boat somewhere. 

And it always seems to be worse when you’re they new kid.  One friend, upon arriving back in town, just gave up and just kept a running tab going at the bar for several days.  Rumor has it they were going to set up a cot in the kitchen for her to sleep on so she didn’t have to waste precious drinking time and drinking money going home each night. 

After awhile you forget that in the so-called “real world” outside your mountain town, people don’t drink every night of the week (really?), don’t spend their days skiing mountains tourists pay $98 to ski (suckers) and don’t believe that a daily 3 PM beer is as important as three square meals, eight hours of sleep and eight glasses of water (but isn’t beer the top triangle on the food pyramid?). 

So go ahead and point and laugh.  Call it frivolous.  Call it immature.  Call it not the real world.  Call it a snow globe.  I’m going to keep on doing it while I can.  I work hard, pull strings, hustle, or some combination thereof, to make it all work.  So if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to go now.  I’ve got a cold beer and a shot waiting for me.  I’ve got a lot of work to do to keep this bender rolling.

Author's Note:  Special thanks to Sarah for this title.

Single In Sun Valley

I have been single in Sun Valley (See also: Single In Sun Valley) for thirty-six hours and have already had a complete stranger kiss (or rather lick) my face, been wordlessly hit on by a recently single man on the bounce-back who spoke a cumulative total of fifteen words to me and scored a date with a tall, dark and handsome man whose name I don’t know, who will be in town for one whole week and who may or may not have a girlfriend.  The latter being an apt microcosm of mountain town life at it’s debaucherous finest.  Welcome to single life in Sun Valley.  Or any mountain at that. 

Contrary to what Jim Carey might have said, Aspen, and its mountain town brethren, are not places where the women flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  And while the beer does flow like wine, the women are few and far between.  Sausage fest is the name of the game.  And, as I was so aptly informed today, if a woman is looking to “get fucked” (direct quote) she should cruise on into a mountain town where, the reality is, the men flock like the salmon of Capistrano.  Or bucks in rut.  Or like bugs to a light at night.  And this is how I ended up with two guys, who may or may not have girlfriends and only one definitive name that I know.

I guess this is what being single in Sun Valley means (Sun Valley serving as a convenient microcosm for any mountain hamlet populated by rich, upper middle class white kids with too much money, lots of time to kill and an overabundance of whiskey).  I’ve been here for forty-eight hours and I already know who’s sleeping with whom, who was sleeping with whom, who wants to be sleeping with whom, who I can’t sleep with because they were sleeping with whom, who will be pissed at me if I sleep with whom and who I want to sleep with.  This is a recipe for chaos if I’ve ever heard one.  As a Whiskey Jacques bartender so appropriately put it, “This town’s a boiling pot.”

He also pontificated the two rules of Sun Valley, “Don’t get jealous and don’t talk.”  In other words, whomever you are sleeping with has probably slept with your best friend.  Or will. As my best friend's boyfriend delicately informed me upon my arrival, "You don't lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn."   So don’t get your panties in a bunch about it.  And unless you want to become the town whore and simultaneously piss of said best friend whom your current lover was (or will be) sleeping with, keep your fucking mouth shut for God’s sake.  Again we see Exhibit A of mountain town singledome, everyone ultimately sleeps with everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.  Because, when you put a bunch of never-say-no adrenaline junkies in a small town and give them a limited amount of time to eat, drink and be merry before entering the real world, chaos is sure to ensue.  Plato himself, bastion of Western masculinity that he is, once noted that no town can live peacefully, no matter what its laws, when its inhabitants do nothing but feast, drink and tire themselves out in the pursuit of love. Or sex.  

And so we return to me at the bar.  With one man attempting seduction sans words because he is too afraid to grow a pair and actually engage in a conversation with me, and another growing too big of a pair and asking me on a date to the burger joint even though I don’t know his name.  And here we learn what it means to be single in Sun Valley.  From a girl’s perspective.  It means that a plethora of men will engage you in semi-meaningless conversation in an attempt to meet you at The Cellar, buy you a shot of Crown and, if all goes according to plan, take you home.  And because I believe in the brevity of human existence, and the subsequent need to take life by the balls, I find this alright.  Why not give it a shot.  Who knows.  Maybe that moment will make all the difference. This is not necessarily the escapist hedonism that it seems.  For many it is a necessary, even lifesaving, escape from their harsh reality.  It is a means of holding onto the only thing that feel real when everything else is flaking into rhetoric or falling down in shambles around you.  So let’s do this – welcome to being single in Sun Valley.

Hiking, Fellatio and My Mom. Oh Yeah...

Have you ever walked in on a guy getting head? 

How about while you were out hiking with your mom? 

How about twice in one day?

Yeah, I know, awkward.

And there we were, ambling, rambling, absolutely jambling, along a very well-traveled path along a very well-traveled stretch of highway leading out of a very well-traveled town.  The Grottos and Devil’s Punchbowl, just several hundred yards from Highway 82 leading up the tourist trap that is Independence Pass outside of Aspen. 

Trying to show dear old mom a pleasant afternoon I opted for this simple trail.  And as we are chatting what do we almost trip over a gray head of hair in the lap of another gray head of hair.  Head number one is bobbing up and down with total enthusiasm and remains entirely oblivious to the peanut gallery that has stumbled upon them.  Heads cocked (pun very much intended) to the side, my mother and I took in the scene, turned awkwardly on our heals and left.  Regressed.  Digressed. 

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, I just witnessed a full-blown (again, pun intended) fellatio-tastic experience, on a well-travelled trail, with my 57 year-old mother.  So much for trying to convince her that Aspen is nothing more than a quaint, mountain town, rather than the swelling, writhing sauna of sin and depravity that she hoped it wasn’t.  And it’s really not.  I swear.

And it gets better.  Oh yes it does. 

I almost read-ended the Range Rover in front of me as I curled around Aspen’s S-curve.  I was distracted you see.  When we passed the airport the Subaru behind me contained two passengers.  A young woman and a young man.  And then there was one.  Head that is.  And her head did not reappear until we got to the S-curve.  I would know.  I kept checking while trying to maintain a conversation that resembled normal with my mother.  We talked about hiking Highlands bowl.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about working at Pitkin County Dry Goods.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about climbing Pyramid.  I checked the rearview mirror.  We talked about, something, I don’t remember what.  I checked the rearview mirror.  I almost rear-ended the Range Rover.  My mother did a reverse Mom-arm that all mothers seem pre-programmed to do to prevent their progeny from flying through the windshield upon breaking hard at an unexpected red light.  She screamed something along the lines of, “What the hell!  Watch where you are going.”

And then I was forced to explain the second incident of head that was headed our way.  And then I explained to my mom that, well, seven minutes ago there were two heads, and then there was one, and now there are two again.  And I couldn’t stop wondering what was going on in that little red, Subaru behind me.  Welcome to Aspen, Mom.

And that is the story of how I witnessed two incidents of fellatio, with my Mom, in very populated areas.  I feel like there should be a moral to this story.  I can’t think of one.  If you can think of one let me know.  

An Open Letter To The Male Race

Dear Sir,

Dear Liar,

Dear Peter Pan,

Dear Mama’s Boy,

Dear Popped Collar Frat Boy,

To Whom It May Concern,

I have a bone to pick with everyone who deemed me unimportant enough to warrant a return to my phone call, text message, email, letter, carrier pigeon message or smoke signal.  With everyone who decided that I was unworthy of friendship, dinner companionship, phone callership or beer drinking comradeship because I felt no compulsion to be within a five-foot radius of their penis. With everyone who ever fed me a line of bullshit.  With everyone who brought my feelings into play and then threw them in the trash like a used up copy of Us Weekly.  You’re rude.  Fuck you. 

To the Peter Pan’s, so easily identified by their Ohio State Buckeyes T-shirt, two-day stubble and shot glass of tequila raised in salute to eternal adolescence.   Grow up and learn some manners.  Please realize that not returning a phone call, a text message, an email, a dinner invitation or a request to get together is rude. If I call you, call me back.  It’s very simple.  If you don’t want to see me just say so.  Or lie.  Lying is excusable.  Rudeness is not.  And while you’re at it try a real relationship on for size.  By no means am I encouraging, or even condoning, the social propaganda known fondly as the institution of marriage, but that doesn’t mean that your closet relationship should be with your bottle on Don Julio or that your longest relationship should be fail to weather all four seasons.

To the liar’s and the insensitive ones.  Please realize that when you involve emotions you are fucking with someone’s life.   If I tell you that we can just keep in casual, I mean that.  There is no need to add my soul to your conquest roster.  My ass will do thank you very much.  So don’t tell me you love me, and will be there fore me.  Don’t beg me to let my guard down and don’t wonder, with big, honest, scared eyes, if I will pull the rug out from under you.  If you want to have meaningless sex, at least have the decency to tell me that, and only that.  Don’t promise me the world just to leave me with nothing.

To the rich boys.  Stop with the wine and the jewelry, the exotic vacations and the fancy clothes.  Those who don’t want to be friends first and lovers second (or never) need not apply.  Your black Amex, fancy Porsche and ability to mispronounce the fancy bottle of champagne you are ordering, does not impress me.  It makes me want to vomit.

To God’s gift to all women.  Please realize that just because I show interest, or even kiss you, does not mean that I will fuck you.  Contrary to what you may think of the twenty-something, free spirit, who abhors children, shutters at the thought of marriage, is vehemently independent and is more likely to run away to climb the Andes with an Ecuadorian named Diego than settle in the burbs with a Clevelander named Stan, I have morals.  I even (gasp of horror and disbelief) call myself a Christian and possess a shiny set of good, wholesome as wheat bread, Midwestern, Christian values.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve worked very hard at having a one-night.  Just one.  I’ve tried.  And to this day I’ve never successfully had a one-night stand.   I just can’t do it in good conscience.  And the dozens upon dozens of men who have promptly ceased all contact with me as soon as they learned that I wouldn’t sleep with them is staggering.  And depressing.  And extremely lonely.   It not-so-blatantly, or blatantly perhaps, says that I have no worth as a person outside of my ability serve as a life-sized, talking sex toy.

Will you all stop trying to marry me, fuck me, make me your girlfriend, take my clothes off or some combination thereof?  I just want a friend.  So badly I can almost taste it (what does a friend taste like anyway?).  And I’m a really good friend.  I’m kind of crazy, a little eccentric and highly neurotic.  But rock as a wingwoman.  I get guys laid all the time.  Just not by me.  Give it some thought.  Ad while you’re at it go ahead and grow up.  Stop behaving like a two-year old who is either throwing a tantrum, impulsively (or perhaps compulsively) sticking his finger in the light socket, hitting the girl he likes on the playground or playing with his junk just because it’s hanging between his legs. 

Yours sincerely,

K

Author's Note:  I didn't want to publish another letter so quickly but after my conversation with Judy, Elyssa and Angela the other night, I had to.  Cheers ladies!

My Home On The River That Caught Fire

I started foaming at the mouth and chasing my own tail today.  I recognized this as an early warning sign of resuming wanderlust.  Shit, I really thought I’d make it longer.  You see I have a history of poor impulse control and a tendency towards erratic behavior.  But the doctors assure me that I’m not bipolar.  I just possess sundried and assorted forms of craziness and restlessness.

I am from Cleveland.  A place where the checkout lady at CVS calls me ‘honey’ and was there when I had to purchase tampons for the first time, underage beer for the first time and Plan B for the first time.  A place the humidity makes my cleavage sweat even at midnight and is about as welcome as a the middle seat on an airplane between two bulbous, perspiring 300-pounders whose beads of sweat are inching closer and closer to my elbows on the quarter-inch of armrest that is allowed me by their bratwursts of arms.  A place where people invite you in to sit down at their dinner table because, “Don’t you just know, this young lady was so nice to me today at the grocery store.  She helped me with my buggy.” (and yes we say ‘buggy.’ And sweeper, and clicker.  And if you don’t know what those words mean then you’re just not cool enough).

Cleveland.  Land of surprising ethnic diversity left over from Rockefeller’s days.  Not like Aspen, where you see a person who isn’t white walking down the street and find yourself wondering how they got so tan in the middle of winter.  Cleveland’s got the Czechs, the Croatians, the Poles, the Russians, the other assorted eastern Europeans, the Slovenians, the Irish, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans, the West Africans and of course the Italians.  Oh, the Italians.  I dated one once.  They make excellent lovers but terrible husbands or boyfriends.  Remember that.  It might serve you well someday.  They are the race of hair gel and tempers, rigatoni and knee-bending sex.  I will never stop missing inappropriate ass grabs from old men with gold crosses or the sort of overstuffed feeling that only copious canollis, everlasting slices of pepperoni and Grandma Marie’s urgings of, “Come on Katie, you’re too skinny, just one more slice of lasagna,” can wage upon one’s stomach.

Cleveland. A place where this hot mess of a world that we live in right now stares you right in the eye.  It’s my family friend’s face when they find out that they have a bun in the oven and no way to support the ones they already have.  It’s my sister’s eyes when she knows that she might lose the restaurant that is their income, their home and their lifeblood.  It’s the brittle little tear that drops down her cheek that’s already seen too many sorrows when she owns up to the fact that cancer is eating her husband alive and leaving her with two babies.  Alone.  It’s my brother-in-laws head in his hands to hide the tears on his lean, 200-pound high school football star frame when he hears that his house might enter foreclosure.  It’s a place where unemployment is 13%.  It’s a place where the pain of the Great Recession and the Economic Crisis are more than a trite buzzwords garnered from CNN.  It’s a place where these phrases spell a nasty reality.  That life’s hard.  Life’s a bitch.

And unfortunately for me fluttering free spirits with tendencies towards eccentricity and penchants for musing philosophically about the meaning of life, don’t get along so well in the school of hard knocks.  No time for that nonsense when the bank man’s coming to take your house. I got tired of this weight.  The weight of the Cleveland humidity sticking to my skin, even at midnight.  The weight of the problems in my loved ones faces wearing me down.   The weight of my memories dragging at the edges of my psyche. 

And so I’m headed West again.  It will be the tenth time my 2005 Subaru has crossed the country.  And I’ll rejoin comrades in our bubble.  Where this sadness is far, far away in a land called Cleveland.  The place where I’m from.  So don’t fuck with me because I’ve got a whole city behind me ready to kick your ass because us Clevelanders stick together.

Who Killed Prince Charming? I Liked Him

Prince Charming, the Knight in Shining Armor, Cinderella’s Prince, Barbie’s Ken, hell, even Jerry McGuire really screwed it up.  They were our childhood heroes, around whom we crafted our brittle and often misguided hopes and dreams.  They played with us through thick and thin, until, one day, they didn’t.  And there we were, cold and alone, probably standing in the rain in the middle of a street lit dimly by one hanging streetlamp as the “Grey’s Anatomy sad breakup music” swelled in the background and we listened as the love of our life told us he didn’t love us.  And it feels like the time we got the wind knocked out of us in third grade gym class because we couldn’t catch the kickball – equal parts pain, embarrassment and a panicky inability to breathe.  And we have reached it.  The death of hope.  That poignant coming-of-age moment in which we realize that happily ever after doesn’t exist, fairy tales aren’t real and life is sometimes hard.  Actually, it’s usually hard.

Happily Never After.  The End.

Or so you think.

But if you are among the enlightened few that have the presence of heart and mind to move beyond this really crappy moment, then you come to realize that the death of hope isn’t so bad.  The sooner you stop waiting for Prince Charming to whisk you away to Happily Ever After Land, the sooner you are able to realize that real relationships take work, not fairy dust magic.  

I knew a man once who couldn’t stay content in a relationship for longer than two weeks, a month, maybe three if he was lucky.  His demons grew restless when that first-two-week honeymoon faded into the reality of the everyday.  So he’d leave woman after woman in search of an eternity of just-met-you giddiness.  His own Happily Ever After, if you will.  The problem is that the just-met-a-new girl jitters is not love, or even being in love, it’s being in lust.  And it’s very real, but not at all realistic.  Unfortunately, people are mean, people are annoying and people let you down.  It’s what you do after those letdowns that make love.  Hopefully, he finds it someday.

I also know my parents.  And I know that sometimes they want to scratch each other’s eyes out, or rip each other’s throats out, and then tear each other limb from limb and feed those body parts to a pit of flesh eating vipers (do flesh eating vipers actually exist?).  Or all of the above.  And I also know that they are still together after 27 (ish) years of marriage and that for some unknown reason my parental-type figures appear to love each other. 

And that’s what love’s really all about.  It’s the desire to tear someone limb from limb, but the ability to love and respect them at the end of the day for who they are, not who you wish they would be.  Perhaps if people stopped believing in this fairy tale propaganda, stopped watching so much Grey’s Anatomy and stopped waiting for a Happily Ever After that never comes, they would find Happily Ever After where they least expected it.  Or at least some form of it.  Maybe if people waited for their soul mate in the form of shared intellect, mutual trust and big belly laughs they would stop following the ghost of passionate romance down an endless road.  Maybe then families wouldn’t break, dreams wouldn’t shatter and hearts wouldn’t rupture.

So ride in on your own white horse and be your own knight in shining armor.  Fairy tales aren’t real.  Love isn’t that tingle in the pit of your stomach when you meet a pretty girl for the first time.  Love is what is still there after the fires of passion have cooled.  After you’ve succeeded in really hurting, annoying, despising and destroying someone, and then the dust settles, and they’re still there.  Just like you wished your childhood fairy heroes would have been.  And that’s when you find out that Happily Ever After is real.  Just not at all in the way we thought it was.  And in the end all we’ve got is hope in love.

Author’s Note:  Inspired by a wonderful aunt who I’ve always thought rocked the free world because of her ability to do her own thing and find a tremendous amount of joy and happiness in doing so.  Big ups.

My own death of hope moment.  Doesn't look so bad, huh?

I Have The Bartender's Clothes But No Bartender

Stuck in Denver with no place to go (Please See Exhibit A and Exhibit B for further explanation) and out of luck for the moment I opt for comfort food.  I come from Aspen, the love child that was born when Sodom and Gomorra went out drinking with the Land of Milk and Honey and just happened to have an unprotected good time.  In other words, because I spend my life in a  hedonistic winter playground for adults, my comfort food is anything that is not celebrated by Bon Appetite or Food and Wine, is not frequented by Paris Hilton or Kate Hudson and is decidedly not creative or progressive.  Comfort food is mainstream America at its finest.  I can order $2.95 tasters and cheap wine in Cherry Creek (an upscale enclave in Denver populated by hipster yuppies, desperate housewives and grey flannel suite wearing execs – all with crunchy-hippie yearnings), just as easily as I can in Cleveland.

I belly up to the bar and order a satisfyingly cheap glass of Zig Zag Zin and a basil, tomato and goat cheese pizza.  And then it commences.  My obsessive compulsive, psychoanalysis of my fellow Brio patrons.  There are the requisite business travelers.  A 30-something woman in a power suit who looks like she over-compensates for being a woman in Corporate America by being a raging bitch.  There’s a member of the grey flannel mafia hunched over a scotch on the rocks and studying the melting ice cubes in his highball glass.  There’s the brassy-haired blond behind the bar who probably escaped from St. Louis as soon as she got the chance.  And then there’s the bar clown.  Every bar has one.  He was the loveable funny guy in high school and has never really grown up.  His apartment likely has Chili Peppers posters and remote control cars strewn around despite the fact that he’s old enough to have a big-boy job and an apartment that is more Pottery Barn than Kappa Sig; or at least responsibilities greater than showing up to the bar in time for his 4 PM shift.  I’m intrigued by him though and throw him a wry smile.

He and the brassy blond and debating who gets to leave early on account of the snow.  They decide to Rock Paper Scissors for it.

“I can beat anyone in this bar in Rock Paper Scissors,” the clown puffs out his chest.

“That’s a bold statement.”   This seems to offend him.

“Well then let’s go kiddo.”

I throw paper.  I always throw paper first.  It’s easy.  Just a flat hand stretched out in front.  My paper covers his rock.

“All right it was just luck.  Let’s go best two out of three.”

My scissors beat his paper.  Sweet victory.

Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Rock-Paper-Scissor’s clothes would be in my car.  Alone.  Without their rightful owner.  How did he get away with no clothes you might ask?  Well the night didn’t end up like that.   What kind of girl do you take me for?  So how did I end up with three brand new shirts from Brooks Brother, a Nordstrom bag full of socks and two news ties of unknown designer origin?  Some things in life are just a mystery.

I returned said bag to the hostess stand with a polite note reading, “So sorry I had to leave quickly last night.  Thanks for a great evening!  Good luck in all future endeavors.  (970) 319-4810.  Kate.”   Four hours later I was almost back to Aspen and my phone rang.  Little did I know I had recruited a stage five clinger.  He would proceed to call me daily for the next three weeks.  He didn't stop until i threatened a restraining order.  Well actually that's not true.  But it would have been funny if it was, huh?

Cleveland's 11 O'Clock News: Sex, Boobies and Sleazy Politicians

There’s nothing like a good dose local news to compound my complete loss of faith in the human race.  You’ve got the 80s-called-and-want-their-shoulder-pads-back outfits, the sordid tales of rape and murder delivered without so much as a batted false eyelash and the sex and money laundering scandals of local politics – priceless.  All at once it makes me laugh out load, cry and ponder the existential nothingness of humanity as it spirals downward into a vortex sleazy local politicians, gangs of unrepentant thugs and average singles seeking commitment-free sex.  And Fox 19 Action News at 11, broadcast in living color from a studio in sunny Cleveland, Ohio, has it all.

And here’s what they are serving up tonight. 

First off we’ve got a Clockwork Orage-esque gang of hooligans kicking the crap out of a 70 year-old grandpa.  This is all caught on tape (but of course), which makes you wonder about the morality of the cameraman even more than that of the East 55^th Street Hooligans.  The old man survived and the police want your helping identifying the gang of thugs.

Next we’ve got Jimmy Dimora.  My personal hero.  There will never be a dull moment in Cleveland politics as long as we’ve got Jimmy Dimora.  Cuyahoga County Commissioner by day, scumbag by night.  Well actually he’s a scumbag by day too.  But let’s not split hairs here.  Accused, among other indiscretions and white-collar crimes, of unscrupulously accepting bribes of all kinds, Jimmy D awaits trial and endures almost daily ridicule in various Cleveland news outlets.  Fox News’ latest highlight of his indiscretions is billed as, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.  Unless you’re Jimmy Dimora.  Stay tuned for more details after this word from your local sponsor.”  This time our hero Jimbo spent at least $2000 on hookers, ahem, I mean on a “private massage” at The Mirage in Vegas.  He attended a nude pool party at Bare Pool which does not disclose its pricing on the web site.  If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.  After Fox makes several failed attempts to wring a comment from JD, they conclude with a clip of the hero himself calling them, “full of bleep,” and “ridiculous.”  Now Mr. Dimora, I respect your intelligence, but that seems a little bit like the pot calling the proverbial kettle black. 

Also on tap tonight we’ve got Miss Ohio (and a handful of other Miss Universe contestants) getting naked.  There is nothing the local news loves more than a PG version of Girls Gone Wild.  Donald Trump, the executive producer of the Miss Universe Pageant, placates his PR department by saying that, “this might have been a little over the top.”  But his true class and grace really shines when he follows up with, “we are, after all, in the business of beauty.”  Right.  By the way, those are gross paraphrases.  Fact checking is not my thing.

Which brings us to the grand finale of Fox 19 Action News at 11.  This titillating tidbit was advertised not only throughout CSI Miami, but also throughout 24.  Anything that shares billing with Jack Bauer has my vote.  It is entitled “Friends With Benefits.”  The voiceover man ominously asks, “When does this disturbing new phenomena jeopardize a friendship?  Tonight at 11.”  (Again that’s grossly paraphrased and negligently incorrect.  I told you, I’m not a researcher.  I’m a writer.)

This statement begs further examination.  One, since when did casual sex with a close friend become a “new phenomena?”  Pretty sure we’ve been fucking just for the fun of it, with no strings attached, since the human race started to walk upright.  And maybe even when we didn’t.  Second, why is this newsworthy?  Third, why am I actually staying tuned until 11 to watch it? 

Like any good one-night stand, the story is all build up and anticipation with not climax.  I am left with a nasty case of news story blue balls.  The only “fact” I learned was that 1/3 of all relationships lack exclusivity.  How they ascertained this fact was unclear.  But then again, who am I to judge a distaste of fact checking?  So after a morally corrupt gang of degenerates, a scumbag used car salesman of a politician and a naked beauty queen with Playboy aspirations, what advice does the newscaster give me – “Always avoid sex with the ex.  That is always a bad idea.”  Thanks for the advice friend.

My Roommate Is A 400-Pound Fat Bitch...And She's Hungry

Bears suck as roommates.  They eat all the food.  Especially the really yummy junk food.  They leave the refrigerator door open.  And they never pay rent. 

The first time it happened I blamed it on the dog.  I thought Maverick had gotten into the trash. Hamburger buns were awry.  Peaches were akimbo.  Sugar was askew. 

“I think there was a bear in the house last night.”  Trent is from Texas.  And nothing against Texans, but they tend to exaggerate.  Everything’s bigger in Texas.  Including the stories.  I decided leave the mess for Maverick’s mom Sarah.

The next night I woke up to Sarah pounding on our connecting wall.  Rolling over to check my phone – it was just past 3 AM - I did the I’m-drunk-from-sleep stumble over to her room. 

“Are you crazy?  Shut the door.  The bear is upstairs.”

Maverick, guard dog that he is, seemed oblivious to the fact that a 400-pound bear was making short work of our food upstairs in the kitchen.

“I called the police.  They are sending a game warden.”

Shotgun-toting Kevin the game warden showed up. He was everything I’d ever hoped a game warden would be.  He looked like the Brawny man before he got old and started wearing flannel.  He was all broad shoulders, rippling pecs and mountain man swagger. Bear season was probably the most exciting part of working for the Aspen Police Department.  Unless Charlie Sheen shows up for a good, old-fashioned domestic dispute, things are pretty quiet. Kevin seemed stoked to be dealing with something besides drunk Argentineans at Eric’s stealing bottles of vodka from behind the bar.

“Damn bear got away.”  He seemed genuinely disappointed not to have gotten a round of rubber bullets off.  “It was a mom and two cubs though.”  Bear 1.  Kevin 0.

This is bad shit.  Never fuck with a mother bear and her cubs.  The world knows no fury like a pissed of mom.  Kevin gave us his card and told us to lock our doors.  This would be great advice if our doors had locks. Unfortunately, our pad was a refurbed meth house that was built by a bunch of stoned out ski patrollers from Aspen Mountain.  It was straight out of How To Be A Ski Bum 101.  Step 1: procure ramshackle house of questionable structural stability with no locks.  If the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed our house would be toast.   Besides, no in Aspen locks their doors.

And so the next night rolled around.  I heard some shuffling upstairs and decided that the cooking of drunk food had commenced.  And then there was the crash.  Knives this time I think.  Bolt upright and very alert now I started shaking the boyfriend in the bed next to me.

“Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  There’s a bear in the house.”

I had explained the previous night already but I’m not sure he really believed me.  He believed me now.  We set off the car alarms, set the dog to barking and started shouting at the bear to go away.  Get the fuck out. 

We stacked the porch furniture, living room furniture, old furniture we found in the storage space and the terracotta planters in the front of the door is discourage further bear entry.  Or at least, we hoped, the crashing of said furniture would alert us to the bear’s impending entry and allow us ample time to remove the bear from the kitchen before she and her greedy, fat-kid cubs ate the rest of our Ben and Jerrys Cherry Garcia. 

It didn’t work.  How a 400-pound, hungry, fat bitch had the patience or dexterity to maneuver around the furniture maze without knocking down a single item continues to baffle me to this day. 

The casualties continued to mount in this war against Hungry Fat Bitch.  She and her snot-faced cubs visited twice a night for four nights. That’s eight times, five hundred dollars worth of food, one destroyed dog door, and a gnarly scratch on the wall. It was cute for awhile.  Then it stopped being cute.  To this day we find souvenirs.  While icing an ACL injury with a bag of frozen corn, my roommate picked bear drool and black hairs off of the bag six months later.  There is a muddy bear print that hangs out on the back of our sofa.  Grocery store exchanges for the next four months went something like this.

“Do we have hamburger buns?”

“Well we did.  But I think the bear ate ‘em.”  

Next summer Trent is bringing his big guns back from Texas.  Loaded down with rubber bullets to, “Fuck some bear’s shit up.”  Watch out bear.  The world knows no fury like a pissed off Texan with big guns.

Words of wisdom living on our refrigerator...

She's Just Not That Into You

Between three men I have been in a relationship for almost eight years.  This is most of my adult life.  I suppose this makes me a relatively uninformed and unreliable source of dating world observation.  Furthermore, most of these observations have already been made ten million times, by ten million women, over the past ten million years.  But here are a few new (or at least recycled) words from someone who is new to these phenomena and new to this brave new world called dating.

You have to admire the persistence of the male species in his attempts to sequester female attention.  I can only ascertain that they see it as a grandiose romantic gesture rather than begging, whining or stalking.  Guys listen up.  Despite what the movies tell you, his isn’t romantic.  I digress here for a moment to argue that movies know no gender lines.  Conventional wisdom holds that only women, in their overly emotional states full of budding neuroses and easy tears, succumb to the fairy tale fodder of Hollywood.  The penis is just as susceptible.  The testosterone slinking around the local bar (or library, or grocery store, or cubicle, or classroom, or gym, or pool, or yoga studio, or chairlift, or gas station, or drugstore, or restaurant, or bachelorette party, or class reunion, or grandmother’s 80^th birthday party, or church, or temple, or synagogue, or country club, or mall, or boutique store, or Christmas party, or New Year’s Ever bash, or office party, or Tupperware party, or sex toy party, or gay pride parade, or night club, or beach, or amusement park, or need I continue) has gone all soft and romantic.  They have forgotten how to properly demean and sexually harass women.  Where is a good old-fashioned ass slap when you need it?  Now don’t get me wrong the meat market at the local watering hole is certainly alive and kicking.  All I argue is that men are trying too hard to woo women.  There is a certain point – reached much faster than most males seem to understand – when persistence ceases to be romantic and progress to annoying and then to restraining-order-grade stalking.  Which brings me to my first point of advice.

1. Take a hint.  Don’t make us resort to being rude.  If she just doesn’t seem that into you please take the hint.  If she checks her watch, Blackberry or iPhone more than once every three minutes during dinner, she’s just not that into you.  If she answers, “Mmm hmm,” to a question that required at least some sort or articulated opinion, she’s just not that into you.  If you’ve received variations of texts, phone calls, emails or BBMs that read, “Rain check on dinner?  Soooo sorry.  My Mom/best friend/ex-boyfriend/grandmother/dog needs my help! Emergency!  Xoxo!”  Guess what?  She’s just not that into you.  And the kicker is - this really happened, I shit you not - if you lie down in/pass out in her bed in an I’ve-been-drinking-in-the-sun-all-day stupor and ask to have sex with her and she politely declines, she’s just not that into you.  If you wrap your arms seductively around her waist (most women view this sloppy drunk move as vaguely pathetic and akin to a two-year old grabbing his mother’s leg) and she less-politely removes them, she’s just not that into you. If you try slobbering on her face in an attempt to relive the earlier make-out session and relight her supposed passion and she much less politely pushes your face away, she’s just not that into you.  If you suggest that the two of you might, “Just fuck.  Have some hot rowdy sex.  Have some fun,” and give the seductive waist grab another try and she pulls away while making that I-just-threw-up-in-my-mouth-and-swallowed-it-back-down face, she’s just not that into you.  If she informs you that she just wants to shower and go to bed and you suggest that it become a group activity and she walks out, she’s just not that into you.  If you ask for a goodnight kiss and she says, “Only when you’re standing outside my front door,” she’s just not that into you.  And then she must resort to being rude.  “Look I am not going to have sex with you.  I have not going to hook up with you at all.  I don’t even really want to be within ten feet of your penis right now.  I don’t want to shower with you and I don’t want you in my bed.”  Point taken, you must now slink out, tail between legs.  This embarrassing situation could have been easily avoided had you taken the fucking hint. 

2.  Pathetically fake compliments don’t work.  The compliments have all been used and abused.  Yes I know my eyelashes are really long.  No they are not fake.  Yes I know I have large lips.  No that doesn’t mean I look like Angelina Jolie.  And no likening me to her when we look so blatantly unalike does not flatter me.  Yes I know that my ass is nice.  So are a lot of other booties.  Yes I know I have a nice smile.  How many other women did you tell that to tonight?  As one of my favorite Silver Screen good girls once spat at one of my favorite Silver Screen bad boys, “Listing my qualities on your fingers is not going to get you anywhere with me.”  (Don’t judge me.  I know it didn’t win an Oscar but my best friend Elyssa and I can quote every line).

3.  Fancy dinners are a waste of money.  If you want to pay for sex I hear some very nice women are working the corner tonight.  They are a lot cheaper and more efficient than a five star dining extravaganza.  Taking me out to a grotesquely expensive dinner that could pay my rent for the month (I’d rather just have the rent check without the small talk) and feed a family of four will not guarantee my naked body in you bed.  It is even less likely to guarantee your naked body in my bed.  The hip quotient of the restaurant will not help your cause.  I am more impressed by seedy, hole-in-the-wall dive bars on Colfax Ave (please see future post for further discussion on dive bars) than the hottest, hippest, newest mastication establishment.  You have a brain. Use it to come up with something more creative. 

Three simple rules.  Please heed them.  Please don’t make me resort to rude behavior.  It’s unflattering and not very post-feminist.  I don’t want to have to stop returning your phone calls.  I don’t want to ignore the 19^th text message you send me at 1:27 AM on a Tuesday.  I don’t want to tell you to “get the fuck out of my bed.”  But you leave me no choice.