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...

Relish, Part I

The story with this guy is going to be a multi-parter. He had a funny name. For argument's sake, let's call him Relish, as in the condiment. You know, green, made from pickles?

So we met online and we hung out three times. I still wasn't really sure if I liked him or not, but you know what helps me determine whether I like someone or not? A good make-out session. They always help with judgement calls. So when he asked me to hang out the fourth time, I was really hoping he would ask me to "watch a movie at his place," which everybody knows is code for making out.

But alas, he didnt suggest that. He didn't have a plan at all. He invited me to his neck of the woods and didn't even have date IDEAS. We ended up walking around town and then we ate salads. And we split the check, he didn't offer to pay. All this is fine, but it's also an indication that this is NOT a date.

We go back to his house and I'm still thinking that I've put in my time and paid my dues by enduring four dates worth of obligatory getting-to-know-you small talk and when are we gonna make out already. In fact, four dates worth of small talk and not making out is overkill. I decide I'm gonna elbow my way into his house and see what happens...

So I'm all standing awkwardly in the driveway waiting to be invited inside, you know, like a vampire, and he gets the hint and is all faux-surprised that I'm lingering creepily, pretending like it never occurred to him I might want in and says, "Oh, do you want to come in or do you have to take off?" I think he felt obligated to invite me in because it was only like 8 p.m., but he didn't really want to. Never one to be so easily deterred by something as silly as the fact that a guy clearly wants me to leave, I say, "Well, I can come in for a few minutes."

So we walk past his downstairs bedroom, and he passes up this opportunity to invite me into it to view his childhood photos/matchbox car collection/Led Zeppelin CD box set/whatever other dumb excuse boys use to lure you into their bedrooms so they can get you into bed. So we go upstairs and drink water and stand around his kitchen in self-conscious silence, while his roommates wander in and out. I'm starting to wonder why he even asked me to hang out tonight.

Even though it's only like 8:30 p.m., he's yawning like crazy so I finally admit defeat, and say I gotta go. I realize that I'm getting neither a free salad nor laid tonight. He walks me to my car, kisses me like I'm his Goddamn grandmother (one kiss, way too polite, no tongue, no ass-grabbing) and he says, "I will call you Sunday."

Uh-huh, sure you will. (In today's dating world, "I will call you" has become a blow-off line. It's akin to letting someone down gently. If someone says they will call you, you can be sure they will NOT call you. It's not a lie. It's code. By telling you they will call you, they are letting you know, as nicely as possible, that they WILL NOT be calling you. Nice seeing you, but no thanks.) And keep in mind we had previously discussed hanging out Sunday night. He did not ask to see me Sunday night or try to make plans right then and there, even though he knew I was free, but instead said he would call me.

By the fourth date, shouldn't a guy be trying to get you into bed? That would be the respectable thing to do. So I leave annoyed that I showered for this and 100 percent certain this guy is NOT into me and that I will NOT be hearing from him Sunday, or any other day...

The Myth of the Psycho Girl

OK. So. I'm sick of how women are constantly characterized as controlling, ball-busting, angry, bitter bitches. And men are fun-loving, laid back free spirits. Wheee! Men are allowed to dick around during their 20s and 30s (that's like two decades!) abusing substances, living out of vans, hooking up but avoiding real relationships (or any kind of responsibility), "finding themselves" and having adventures (but not real jobs), in a state of perpetual adolescence. I read a really interesting article a few weeks ago in Salon about this perpetual adolescence thing. This is not only expected of them, it's encouraged and glorified in popular culture (Wedding Crashers, Knocked Up, The Hangover). And if women occasionally get fed up with their childish antics, it's us who are the psychos.

Well I have a hypothesis. It's called: There's No Such Thing as the Psycho (Ex)Girl(friend), There are Only Asshole Guys. And yes, I stick by my hypothesis title at the risk of sounding angry and bitter...

Example #1: So my ex's best friend, J, was in town this weekend. He called me to see if he could stay at my house and if I could bring him to the airport (this is the story he told me) because the couple (his friend M and his fiance) he was supposed to be staying with got into a huge fight and he had to leave their house. Here's what I found out really happened: J's flight got in at midnight and his couple friends dutifully went to pick him up. The next morning, itching to get snowboarding early, J grew impatient when the fiance had to be dropped off at work at 9 a.m., thereby delaying his departure to the mountains. So a fight and angry e-mail exchanges ensued between the fiance and J, at the end of which bridges were burned, J had nowhere to stay and was probably out (at least) one friendship.

He blamed the whole thing on M's fiance. He said M had a habit of going out with girls who were controlling, bitchy and the fun police.

But here's the thing: J is a freeloader. I know this because he lived on my and my ex's futon for weeks at a time. I like him a lot, but even I used to get annoyed with him. He's a really nice, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but you care less about that stuff when his snoring is keeping you awake at night and he's breaking your kitchen appliances.

The point is this: The fight was NOT all the fiance's fault and if J wanted to stay friends with M, he should have at least made an effort to be nice to the girl he's with. The real problem here is J's unwillingness to realize that M is one of the few men who has succeeded in graduating from his perpetual adolescence and is now a grown-up with a real job and is engaged to be married. But in this scenario, his fiance becomes the manipulative succubus who won't "let" M hang out with J. Controlling, psycho girlfriend is the story J will tell when people ask what the shit happened. I've never even met this girl, but I'm already on her side.

Example #2: A friend of mine (who is 30) asked this girl (who is 21) to be his date at a wedding because she's "really fun." (As an aside, not only is this girl 21, she also has a tiny tattoo of a mustache on the side of her index finger, or maybe it's her middle finger, I can't remember, which makes for A LOT of mustache ride jokes and photo ops, and makes her really popular with the guys. She sticks her finger under people's noses and everyone laughs. It's like her party trick. I can't decide if it's really cool or really fucking retarded.) But he didn't really like her. So they go to the wedding, have fun, don't have sex (I just made out with her! That's it, I swear!) and several days later my friend asks her for her (hotter) friend's phone number. And she gets pissed. And won't talk to him anymore. And he doesn't get why. She must be a psycho.

If you ask me, he did a poor job of managing her expectations.

I asked him why he 1. was hanging out with 21-year-olds in the first place, 2. would think it's ok to bring one to a wedding if he had no intention of dating her, even if he didn't have sex with her, (purposefully not fucking you is apparently asshole guy code for "I'm just not that into you, make no mistake, we are just friends, even though I invited you to be my date at a wedding and then kissed you").

He said younger girls are more fun because all the girls his own age are angry and bitter and jaded.

Well congratulations, asshole. You have just added another to our ranks. Welcome to our demographic, finger mustache tattoo girl. At this rate, we will achieve world domination earlier than I'd hoped.

Damning with faint praise and harsh punctuation

*Again, the amazing Jacqui:

Well, that happened.

So I went out with the brave Valentine's Day caller on Tuesday. I had a feeling he was going to be perfect, and I was correct in my assumption. He was smart, kind, polite, witty, and very cute. I say was, because to me he is dead. Turns out he just wasn't that into me.

My friends keep saying, "You don't know that for sure!" "Don't be negative!" "Keep the faith!" "Relax, He might call!" Yeah, see here's the thing: no he won't. Most intelligent people of a certain age can get a pretty clear read on whether or not there will be a second date by the end of the first date. Friends, I love you, but you also know he isn't going to call again, so please don't patronize me. It's my pathetic dating life, I get to be the one in denial if I so choose. You should be the realists telling me to cut bate and fish in someone else's pond. Does that make sense? Probably not. I don't care.

So here is what happened. We work in similar industries so we had a lot to talk about, blah blah blah, wine wine wine, at some point I fell deeply in love with him, then he didn't try to kiss me or ask to see me again. This is puzzling because the conversation was great, he kept ordering more drinks, acting all "interested" in what I had to say. Woof.

It's quite possible that he knew within three minutes of meeting me that he did not want to see me again, or in other words, that he didn't want to see me naked at any point in the future. On the topic of not wanting to see me naked, another thing people have begun saying to comfort me is: "At least he didn't just sleep with you and never call." Hmmm, how to put this delicately.... THAT'S EQUALLY IF NOT MORE OFFENSIVE....to me, at this fragile, umm, moment in my life.

It's also possible that I talk far too much on a first date (at some point the Duke lacrosse players sex scandal came up, I can't exactly say how, but rape is probably not a first date topic. Whoa. That may be the real take away here. Shiver). Anyway, since we have a mutual friend I decided to be an adult and text a quick "Thanks for last night, I had a lot of fun!" I didn't expect any reply, but I did get the following a couple hours later: "Yes. It was a good time."

Now, what I find most interesting/disturbing about this is his use of punctuation. There are only six words, but he used two periods. YIKES. I felt like replying, Jesus, buddy, was it THAT bad? ! Quit yelling at me. Yes PERIOD. That first period sounded like a piece of wet cotton hitting the ground. It actually made a sound when it hit my phone. It is the text equivalent of a handshake and pat on the head.

So, no, methinks I won't be hearing from Mr. Wonderful again. Next date I'm going with a low cut blouse and an excessive amount of lower lip biting.