Boys are gross

Ok so I know that the kiss of death for blogs is infrequent postings... so, sorry loyal followers. Maybe Jacqui has stories of her exciting dating life in NYC she can regale us with? Also, it's hard to post consistent stories of your dating life that are funny, yet tinged with bitterness when you are getting laid... Also, it's summer. You know how it is.

First, an update: So I Facebook friended that guy I was in love with last year who fled my apartment. He accepted my request and now I can cyber stalk him whenever I want. However, reminding him of my existence did not cause him to fall madly in love with me and come crawling back. Weird. Not at all what I expected...

On to the real post: This is actually more of a rant and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this phenomenon and offer theories on why it happens. It can be both a red flag and a deal breaker. I call it "Boys are disgusting and they have the squalorific living conditions to prove it."

So, I dated this guy once who was really gross.* The first clue was the first time I went over to his apartment and it was in a state of disarray. But I figured since he was in the process of moving, I would cut him some slack. The second clue was when I told a work friend who I was dating, and before she could censor herself, she involuntarily gasped and blurted out, "He's a slob!" The third clue was when I went to his house and the bathroom smelled like a port-a-potty. The fourth (and what should have been final) clue was the first night I stayed over at his house, his bed was dirty. Like sandy. Like there was beach sand in his bed. Like someone dumped a shoe full of beach sand in his bed. Truth. (I mean, if you know that a girl you are dating is likely to stay the night for the first time, and you are presumably going to be having sex in your bed, which you must be aware is full of sand since you sleep in it, and I think this would be a situation you could spot coming from at least a couple of hours away since you were probably the one who did the inviting her over, CHANGE YOUR FUCKING SHEETS in preparation for your night together.) Also, there was mold in his shower. Oh, and he had mice.**

So he moved into his boss's house because his boss was taking his whole family to Alaska for the winter and wanted someone to house sit. After a few months, this place was so trashed, it would have been unrecognizable to the boss. It's like a college frat house. The floors are sticky and there are flies and an unpleasant smell emanating from the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. There are glasses scattered about, half-full of an unidentifiable liquid. This is how you treat a place that's not even yours? And this wasn't a house full of boys living there. There was just one.

I figure if we are going to be hanging out at his house, (he did have a TV, after all) I'm going to need to give it a good once-over so I don't have to feel the need to shower immediately after I leave the place. So I go home and gather up all my cleaning supplies. Then I go to the drug store and buy one of those masks that people use for painting or working with toxic chemicals. Not kidding.

So I get to his house all ready to get down to business and clean the shit out of that place. I ask him where the vacuum is. He says he doesn't know. I'm sorry, what? He had been living there for three months at this point. And he had never seen the need to vacuum? And showing him where it was kept was apparently deemed unimportant in the instructions/grand tour from the homeowners.

Whatever. I move on to the bathroom. After scrubbing for 30 minutes, that bathroom is fucking spotless. I come out, and the boyfriend says, "Hey, did you notice the bathroom kinda smelled like urine?" I'm sorry, what? All this time I had assumed that he had some kind of nasal medical condition that prevented him from noticing that his bathroom smelled like urine, because why would a grown-up knowingly let his bathroom go on smelling like urine if they were aware of it, especially if their own inaccurate aim was probably the cause of said urine smell?

This was simply too much for me. It hurt my brain. I left. But I also left behind the cleaning supplies, as a gesture of goodwill.

So, with the guy I am dating now, I am having flashbacks to that first dirty boyfriend. He's 33 years old and doesn't own a vacuum. And half of his apartment is carpet so it's not like he can sweep. And he's lived there for a year and a half. He says he borrows one when he needs to vacuum, but I can pretty much guarantee that floor has not seen a vacuum in 18 months. Also, (boys take note! write this down!) when your toilet and sink start getting that bright pinkish, orangish mold around the edges, (you know what I'm talking about) it's time to bust out the fucking Soft Scrub.

*Let me just say that I have pretty low standards when it comes to housekeeping. There are often dog fur tumble weeds rolling around the hallways before I will pick up a vacuum. Former roommates can attest to my disregard for neatness. Sometimes my bedroom floor is not visible because of all the clothes in various stages of dirty on the floor. About a week after I moved in with the only boyfriend I have ever lived with, we had dinner with my parents. My dad turned to my boyfriend and said, "So, how do you like living with a slob?" The point is: My standards are so low that to not be able to meet them puts you on a whole 'nother level of disgusting.

**In his defense, everyone had mice. It was a really bad (or good?) year for mice in the ADKs.

Does it make me a bad person if...

During and after a break up, I think most adults try to move on with some (at least outward appearance of) maturity, grace and integrity. They try not to let things get too ugly, try to take the high road, be the bigger person, remain civil. Some even try to be friends. Not me.

When I feel like I've been wronged in a relationship and its aftermath, I get petty. And childish. I resort to name-calling. I actually say out loud everything mean and hurtful thing that I've been thinking. Every midnight confession, dirty little secret, insecurity, secret fear and weird quirk that the ex has allowed me to be privy to over the course of the relationship, I throw in their face. I twist the knife. I say I told you so. I go for the jugular. I burn bridges. I figure, what have I got to lose? I mean, besides my dignity, which by this point is probably long gone anyway...

There is a word, a most beautiful German word that has no English equivalent and that perfectly describes my feelings toward a few exes of mine. Schadenfreude.

So imagine my inner delight when my (very materialistic) ex recently posted on Facebook pictures of a tree that fell on his brand-spanking-new Subaru during a wind storm. Basically destroyed the roof. I smiled a little on the inside. Ok, I smiled a lot. The thought of missing out on the chance to revel in rare instances like this has basically kept me from unfriending him.

I do not think it makes me a bad person to secretly delight in the misfortune of someone who ripped my heart out and then stomped on it. Repeatedly. (This break-up was so bad, I moved across the country rather than deal with it and him in our tiny town.) However, kinda, (sorta) thinking (for a split second) that it was (maybe just) a little bit of a shame that he wasn't actually INSIDE the car when the tree fell? Jury is still out on that one...

Here's how I know God hates me

So I used to have this... let's call him a boyfriend for the sake of argument, who I dated at the end of college. We will call him college boyfriend. I was a senior, weeks away from graduating and he still had a few years left. We had already been friends for years. He was younger than me, shorter than me, smarter than me and I love, love, loved him. I could have been happy with him forever.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be. I moved home and so we lived 2,000 miles away. We still talked and emailed and visited each other here and there for about a year after I graduated, but we never really discussed any specifics, like whether we were actually together or not.* In the end, the distance got the best of us and whatever we had died. Fast forward five years and I have moved to the city where he lives. Unfortunately, he now has a girlfriend.**

So one day a few weeks ago, I notice on Facebook (Facebook: ever the crusher of dreams, the informer of exes loves lives.) that he and the gf are engaged. Engaged! The horror! I send off a few texts lamenting this fact to friends who knew us as a couple, looking for some consolation, or at least assurance and validation that despite not being engaged myself, I'm still a good person, (or at least cooler/better looking than the fiancee.) I was bummed, but it was nothing a little whiskey and a good cry couldn't fix. I go into work the next day feeling much better about the situation. I'm practically over it.

So I'm on my lunch break, reading a magazine on the outdoor 10th-floor balcony of my building when I hear a voice. HIS voice. And I don't mean Jesus. I turned and there he was. What was he doing in my building?! I started sweating. At first I didn't think it was a big deal because people tour my building all the time. I figured he was on one and would soon be leaving. But then I noticed he was sitting down to eat his lunch with a bunch of similarly aged and attired people. I think maybe I can wait him out. But I've got work to do and I'm beginning to get sunburned. I start to search for escape routes, but he's sitting right in front of the only door back inside. Convenient. There's no way I can slip past him without being spotted. There's no avoiding it. I'm going to have to say hi and make awkward small talk.

So I go over and try to act all surprised to see him and pretend like I haven't been fidgeting and panicking for the last 10 minutes. I'm literally shaking. The engagement is the elephant in the room and cannot be ignored. "Congratulations," I say, hoping he will want out of this awkward exchange as quickly as I do. No such luck. He starts gushing all about how he proposed on vacation and how he ordered the nice bottle of wine and then he compared the feeling to skydiving. I had had enough. If he didn't shut up soon, I was going to sky dive myself right off that 10th-floor balcony. I mumbled something about how we should catch up sometime and ran away.

Turns out he's an intern in my building all summer. It's a good thing I like eating lunch at my desk. All I'm saying is when the whole (main) reason it didn't work out for us was because of the distance, and now we spend eight hours a day separated by just two floors, that is not irony or a coincidence. That is the universe shitting on me.

*So the year after college graduation was a pretty bad one for me. I was underemployed, bored, depressed, lonely and living with my parents. I needed something and someone to do. So I kind of started dating this other guy, let's call him K, while the college bf and I were still-together-but-not-really-together. I didn't even like K. No one liked K. He was a douche. Like I said, I was bored. So when the college bf was coming to town, I stopped returning K's phone calls and started blowing him off. This, apparently, was suspect to him.

So one night while the college bf and I are canoodling on the couch at like midnight, the phone rings and it's K. He had apparently driven to my house, peeked in the windows, seen the canoodling, flipped his shit and was now screaming at me on the phone, calling me every name in the book and vowing revenge. (Now, keep in mind, we lived in a very rural area. Cars do not sketchily park on the sides of the roads and their occupants do not prowl around houses at midnight and play peeping tom without someone alerting the residents of the house, most of all the family dog. This was how I figured out our old dog was going deaf. That fucker. Thanks for nothing, fleabag. You've got like one job and you can't even do it right.) I ran to the door and locked it. The only thing that prevented K from busting down the door and getting his revenge was the fact that my 60-year-old parents were asleep upstairs. I had never been so happy to be living with my parents in my entire life.

This little incident more than likely contributed to the demise of both relationships. I was a jerk. Lesson learned: Get a new dog when yours starts going deaf.

**I met his gf a few times at parties and such. I wasn't impressed. At this one party last year, the college bf and his girlfriend were talking about how they had done this 10k race that morning. It's a very well-known and popular race and apparently you have to submit a previous 10k time for them to seed you correctly. You have to prove you have done a 10k in less than an hour and a half.

Well, as usual, I had had a few drinks and since I was pretty sure I, or any person in reasonable health could WALK a 10k in less than an hour and a half without breaking a sweat, (I have gone a 52-minute 10k in a triathlon for chrissakes and I'm no runner) I (loudly) proclaimed that it was insulting to have to prove it to the race directors and if they wanted proof, well here was my proof: I am not 300 pounds nor am I 80 years old. I sat back and waited for the laughs. Turns out the gf clocked in at 1:21 for a 10k.

Ok, I'm an asshole. And she probably wasn't impressed with me either. But, seriously, how do you marry someone who takes 1:21 to do a 10k? That's just embarrassing.

To friend or not to friend?

So I found this guy I had/have a major crush on on Facebook. Yeah, I searched for him. I'm an internet stalker. Last I knew he was all anti, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Facebook drew him in because, after all, it's taking over the world. The question is: do I friend him or not?

Friending someone seems innocuous enough. I mean some people have like 5,000 friends. Some people have "friends" they have never even met in real life. But I'm getting conflicting advice on this one. I mostly want to friend him because I want to scour his pictures and try and figure out if he's dating anyone. And also because I'm hoping reminding him of my existence will remind him of how cool I am and that he's madly in love with me. And then we will live happily ever after. Or I will just reveal that I'm a creepy internet stalker. Not that I'm above that. I don't mind being labeled.

So... here's the deal with this guy: I went to the bar with my two married friends (a couple, hetero) and there was this guy in a yellow shirt who was hot like whoa sitting behind me. You should talk to him, my friend says. And I was all, no, he's sitting alone at a two-top, clearly waiting for his date, I'm not talking to him. And then the weirdest thing happened: HE started talking to US. Turns out he vaguely knew my friends through other mutual friends and he recognized them. That was my in.

Just after I had downed the last of my second beer and was feeling way too confident and ready to get my flirt on, his friends arrived and he moved to a bigger table. So, buoyed by three I.P.A.s, I pulled about the ballsiest move I've ever tried. As we were leaving, I walked over to his table where he was sitting with about six of his friends, said something to the effect of I had enjoyed meeting him and wished we could have had the opportunity to talk more and slipped him my number.

And then I reverted to a giddy 13-year-old as I fought the urge to look over my shoulder as I ran away. We actually had to drive right by him sitting outside and we got stopped at a light right next to his table. I ducked down in the back seat and said to my friends, "Ishelooking?Ishelooking?Ishelooking?Ishelooking? And then I tried to will the light to turn green. Didn't work.

The whole fun of that stunt was pulling it off and feeling like a rock star. I never expected him to actually call me. But he did. We hung out four times. We mostly rode our bikes around the city and got drunk. He thought I was really funny and told me so. See, drunk me is a real interesting gal. Sober me, it's hit or miss. So I had to make sure alcohol was involved every time we hung out so I could keep playing comedian. This was a lot of pressure that lead to hungover days at work, mystery bruises and broken bike parts.

But we got along really well and he kept asking me to hang out/and/or returning my phone calls and agreeing to hang out with me again. We had great conversations. (At least I think we did, the parts that aren't hazy.) I was basically in lurve.

On the last "date" he left his bike in my apartment and we walked to the bar. You can see where this is going. Or at least I did. Or thought I did. He would have to come inside to retrieve his bike and I would convince him to just ride it home in the morning. We were totally going to make out. At least.

Except that when we got back to my place he grabbed his bike, hoisted it over his shoulder and fled my apartment like the building was on fire. He didn't even take the time to buckle his helmet. He gave me the cursory, one-armed, obligatory hug, with his bike BETWEEN us, (yes, he actually placed a physical barrier between us so he wouldn't have to touch me too much) as he mumbled something vague about hanging out again. He then jumped down six stairs and knocked over plants and lamps in his haste to get away from me. He made a him-shaped hole in the wall as he ran through it, you know, like on cartoons. He did NOT want to make out.

I discussed this scenario with my friends and we all came up with the same obvious, undeniable conclusion: he had explosive diarrhea and had to get home quick. It's called the Theory of Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

After that I didn't hear from him for a few days, and not known for my patience, I decided to force the issue. I texted and asked if he had a good time the other night because he left in kind of a hurry (understatement of the year). He replied something totally cryptic and said he was in a weird place right now and asked if I wanted to get together so he could explain it all. (Translation: (ex)girlfriend's got me by the balls.) Since I saw no reason to meet up so he could reject me in person (over text message will do just fine, thank you) and tell me whatever head-casey sob story (because he was a faux-sensitive, hipster guy) about why he couldn't date me, and since I do not play armchair psychologist to that bullshit (I have enough neuroses of my own to keep myself occupied, thanks) I politely declined, said I had had a lot of fun with him and if he ever wanted to hang out again, he had my number. Clearly, he must have fallen off the face of the earth because I never heard from him ever again.

Until nine months later when I Facebook stalked him. So the question remains: Do I friend him or not?

Relish, part II

Except that I did. Hear from him again. And before I knew it, we were dating. Well, having sex at least. And I still was not sure if I liked him or not. He was kind of boring and straight edge and a conformist. Suburban. Vanilla. Underwhelming. Yawn.

But turns out he had one redeeming quality: He was the best sex I've ever had in my life. Honestly, I had low expectations for him, but dude has got moves. It was like I didn't even have to tell him what to do, he just KNEW. It was like he read my mind. It was the kind of sex you have only with someone that you've been with for a long time and you know each other really well and know exactly what the other person likes.

I had suspected that this (the best sex) might be the case for a while. But I was skeptical. At first I thought it might be due to the fact that I had been celibate (not for lack of trying) for nearly a year and I had actually just forgotten what sex was like. So I thought perhaps my standards had been lowered and I withheld judgement for the moment. But after giving him several tries, they were all fantastic and I had to conclude that Relish was awesome in bed. I wanted to meet his ex just to shake her fucking hand.

But then the sex, it went to my head. Do you have any idea what a year-long dry spell does to a person? Especially when the last boy in your bed turned out to be (surprise!) a virgin? And then you accidentally stumble upon what is apparently God's gift to women cleverly disguised in a dorky exterior? That does some crazy shit to your head. I got greedy.

I began Facebook stalking him and wondering who every woman was that posted on his wall. Were they too getting to experience his magic penis? Were they in on his secret? One day he cancelled plans with me because he crashed his bike and was sore. He sent me a pic of his road rash. My mind raced. Obviously it wasn't really a picture of him. It was a photo of someone else's road rash and he was just trying to invent an excuse to blow me off. (In my defense, can't help being skeptical, I'm a journalist. I assume everyone is lying. You know the saying: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.) This was getting out of hand. I was getting paranoid. (I realize that revealing the inner workings of my brain does little to dispel the myth of the psycho girl. Noted.)

Now comes the real problem. Relish tagged along with me for Thanksgiving with my friends. All through the turkey, the mashed potatoes, the pumpkin pie, the Trivial Pursuit (will this game never end?!) my brain was consumed with thoughts of the awesome sex we were going to have later. After we (finally!) got back to my house, he declined to come inside, saying he had to work in the morning and drove home instead. This was also the only time in months that neither of my roommates were home and possibly the only time that this would happen for the foreseeable future. He left me sexually frustrated. Talk about a missed opportunity...

That weekend we went skiing and had sex and it was great. But then he did it again.

He came over on a weeknight to hang out. We watched a movie in my room. On my bed. And by watched a movie I mean I looked at my watch repeatedly and wondered when the damn movie would be over so we could get to the sex already. It was all I could think about it. But the second the credits rolled, he jumped up. And he left. It was only 9 p.m. No sex. Not even any making out. Played the ol' gotta get up early card. Again. And he was about to leave to go out of town for two weeks.

Does anyone see what was happening here?! HE WAS RATIONING THE SEX. When a guy says they gotta get up early, translation: I'm just not that into you. Everyone knows that one. But maybe he WAS having sex with other people and he was just spreading himself a little thin? In any case, he had flipped the traditional gender power dynamic and HE was denying ME.

This would not do...

Unfriending your ex

So apparently today, Feb. 13, the day before Valentine's Day, is Annual Break Up With Your Ex Day. The website YourTango.com encourages people to sever cyber ties with former lovers, partners and spouses by unfriending, unfollowing and deleting on this day.

I will admit that far more often than can possibly be healthy I have caved to the urge to check exes Facebook pages. The word "compulsively" comes to mind. And it would probably be better for my mental health if I didn't see what's on there: one ex is having twins with some new flame, another ex has a rapidly rotating series of flavors of the week that show up in pics and wall postings.

So why don't I unfriend them? Why don't just wipe the slate clean and cut these people that have hurt me out of my life? It's not because I enjoy torturing myself with the masochistic little guilty pleasure of cyber stalking, (even if that's true). And it's not because I want to maintain contact with them or harbor some secret hope of reuniting with them. I don't even talk to these people anymore and I certainly don't want to get back together with these shitheads. But I won't unfriend them because unfriending is petty.

This weekend one of my friends, a former (kind of) romantic interest admitted that he had unfriended me. And that stung. And it also made no sense. This guy and I had what can barely be described as a flirtation. He may have liked me at one time, at least that's what I heard from mutual friends. It was all very high school. But he never made a move and so I moved on. He actually stood me up and cancelled plans with me on more than one occasion, proving that he was not only not boyfriend material, he wasn't even friend material. But I had no hard feelings toward him. Just figured he was immature and I felt glad I didn't end up dating him.

So when I noticed I had been cut from his Facebook friends, I jokingly confronted him about it, expecting him to say there was some computer glitch or something. But he straight up said we had "gone through a rough patch" and thus, the unfriending. I asked him to explain, but he wouldn't. But the thing is, we see each other on a fairly regular basis. We have mutual friends and are in the same book club. He never made any attempt to talk to me about this supposed "rough patch" when it was happening, and I'm still not sure what he was referring to. Whatever happened between us happened only in his head. But he just passive aggressively cyber deleted me. And now who looks like the psycho? Not the girl who is still Facebook friends with her exes, even if she might check their profiles a little too frequently for her own good.

I won't unfriend my exes because it would make it seem like I care more than I do, that I'm actually still bothered by them. It would make me seem weak. And they would win. Being cyber friends with exes maintains the illusion that I am the bigger person because I'm mature enough to have a superficial relationship with someone I have every right to cut out of my life. It's about proving a point. It's about keeping up appearances. And it's all a facade. But it's an important one. I mean, when your hatred of someone outweighs your desire to save cyber face, that's when you know you have a problem.