The Manimal

Somehow I always knew this one would end up as a blog post... So I started dating this guy, the manimal. The manimal was a term he came up with to poke fun at himself for being so hairy. He was hairy from head to toe, but he had the worst back hair I have ever seen on a human being. It was like head hair, but on his back. Remember Austin Powers? Now double it. He called it a full-body sweater. I know that sounds exaggerated, but just suspend your disbelief and go with it. It was true. Sadly, ironically, the poor guy was going bald. That has got to be frustrating when you have full, luscious locks everywhere but where you want them. I empathized with him and imagined it must be like when you gain weight and none of it goes to your boobs...

So anyway, the back hair was not really a problem for me because I like my men manly. We even went swimming in a city pool and I allowed myself to be seen in public with him without his shirt on. And although I'm not sure any of it actually penetrated through that forest and made contact with his skin, I put sunblock on his back. Plus, he had an awesome beard and I figured it was a trade-off for the back.

The problem was that the manimal was a child. A 33-year-old child. And I think he might have been dumb. Either that or all the years of drug/alcohol use had whittled his functioning brain cells down to four.

The first indication that he may not have exactly been on my (or anyone over the age of 10) intellectual playing field was when he started complaining that a salty salad at lunch had hurt the roof of his mouth. As a person who puts salt on everything, including salads, and probably eats three days worth of their recommended daily allowance of sodium in one sitting, and NEVER had it cut up the roof of their mouth, this statement was beyond ridiculous. I told him to think real hard and try to remember if perhaps he had had a toasty baguette or Cap'n Crunch cereal in the past few days...

Then he made some comment about how colds are not airborne. You don't say! So you mean we don't need to cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze after all? Hooray! And all that fear of getting sick on airplanes? No need to worry about your Typhoid Mary neighbor breathing on you anymore. You won't get sick, unless you make out with them, of course. Um... I'm pretty sure there is actually a cold remedy called "Airborne."

Anyway, the manimal was starting to annoy me. He didn't get my jokes, pop-culture or current event references or movie quotes. He wasn't real quick on the uptake. If things I said were over his head, what else wasn't he getting?

I began to worry about how I was going to end things. (I'm a bad breaker-upper, I won't deny it). So when things began to fizzle, I didn't try too hard to rekindle them. Then, apropos of nothing, he said he wasn't ready to be my boyfriend. I smiled on the inside and thought to myself, maybe this problem will just take care of itself. I told him (and meant it) that I didn't want him to be my boyfriend either, but if he wanted to continue our twice-weekly sex sessions, that was cool with me and in the mean time I was going to look for a boyfriend. He asked me if I was using him for sex. I said no. Oddly, I never heard from him again...

Wedding Season or A Small Pony

It's almost Memorial Day. Summer is upon us. And you know what that means? Wedding season. And I love a good wedding. The dressing up, the drinking, the dancing, the groping randoms on the gold course... love is in the air. I can only hope that this wedding season is as fun as last year's.

I was in a good friend from childhood's wedding last year and found myself the only single girl in the wedding party. Actually, that's not true. There was another single girl, a cousin of the bride, and when I tried to do a little female bonding and jokingly commiserate about our relationship statuses, she told me her boyfriend had recently died of cancer. She wins. I'm an asshole.

Regardless, single is not a good place to be at a wedding, especially when the male half of the wedding party are in relationships/unfuckable. First, I tried hitting on the photographers. I spotted a wedding ring on one. He was out. So I asked the other one what he was into. He said, "Jesus." I said, haha, no, really. He said, "Jesus." Ok, strike two.

So imagine how fortunate I felt when I saw one of our mutual friends, a super cute and sweet guy I knew that I used to work with, E. I hadn't known he was coming to the wedding. The last I knew he had a girlfriend, but I quietly asked around and they apparently broke up. He was flying solo that night and in need of a rebound. That was all I needed to hear.

Several drinks and some dancing later, we are making out behind a tree on the golf course adjacent to the pavilion where the reception was. At the time, I thought we were being really stealthy, but he told me later that there were hoots and applause from some of the guests as we ran out.

After making out against a tree for somewhere between five minutes and an hour, (vodka tends to make you lose all sense of time) I became paranoid that our absence would be noted. I insist we go back inside and act nonchalant.

So I'm busy acting nonchalant when the groom comes over to me (our absence was most definitely noted) and says something to the effect of "You should tap that. E is hung like a small pony." Now I'm just confused. Is that good or bad? Because I thought the expression was "hung like a horse." Can you elaborate? I ask. "E has a really big dick," the groom tells me, winking and nudging like we are in cahoots. The seed has been planted. I HAVE to see for myself.

So I find E, suggest another make-out session and creep not-so-stealthily away again. (It's hard to be sneaky when you're wearing heels and stumbling.) So we are making out and I move my hand a little further south... Wow. Holy crap. The groom wasn't kidding. This thing is huge. This guy won the anatomical lottery. He belongs in Ripley's Believe It or Not. Or at least pornos. Feeling isn't enough, especially through the clothes. This, I have got to SEE with my own EYES.

So I start unzipping his pants. I'm so focused on getting the confounding layers of clothing, zippers, buttons and belts to cooperate with my super dexterous drunk hands so I can get a glimpse of this thing, just to see if it's real, that I don't realize what HIS hands have been up to. The top half of my strapless dress is now down around my waist, yet the bottom is also hiked up to my waist, so the dress effectively covers NOTHING but my waist. It's basically a cummerbund at this point.

It's at this exact, very opportune moment that a fellow guest decides now would be an appropriate time to pull a golf cart around to pick up grandma from the reception and drive her to the parking lot. For a brief second we were illuminated, squinting and frozen in the headlights. Guess we should have picked a bigger (or further) tree. Almost busted. That was a close call. We convince ourselves that they probably didn't see anything, but I'm still freaked out. I decide these antics have gone a bit too far. (I like to keep it classy at weddings.) So we pull ourselves together and go back inside.

Unfortunately, I never did get to find out if that thing was the real deal. You see, there were no hotels to stay at, as the wedding was in the middle of nowhere. He couldn't come to my house because I was staying with my parents and I had a painfully early flight out the next morning. He lived 30 minutes away so I couldn't go to his house. My parents are old. I was being considerate. The embarrassment of me stumbling in at 6 a.m. still in my bridesmaid dress could very well have done us all in. So we parted ways. Sigh.

A few weeks later, my friend the bride asked if E and I had had sex on the golf course the night of the wedding because a cousin or friend or aunt or grandma or someone, I don't remember who, had told her they had seen two naked people. I said, no of course not. We just made out. Which was (mostly) the truth.

So, no, cousin/aunt/friend/grandma/whoever sabotaged the imminent verification that I had indeed just discovered God's gift to women with those perfectly ill-timed golf cart headlights, I WISH we had been having sex. The fact that we DIDN'T have sex may turn out to be the biggest regret of my life. You have quite the imagination, but no, nothing quite that cool happened on the golf course. And I have you to thank.

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...

The pickins, they are slim, and it's 50 percent our fault

Ok girls, listen up. I have figured out how we are going to get guys to grow up and start acting like responsible adults worthy of dating us. But first, you must read this article from Slate that explains it all quite nicely. If me telling you to read it isn't enough, this is the title: "Sex is cheap: Why young men have the upper hand in bed, even when they're failing in life." Got your attention now? Read it. I'll wait.*

So, for those of you who still didn't read the Slate article despite my first footnote not making any sense, let me sum it up for you. Men like sex more than women like sex. (I'm inclined to disagree, but then when you've been involuntarily celibate for close to a year, your memories of sex are so distant they are probably skewed... so who knows.) In a society where women are plentiful, (and have lots of autonomy and authority) men don't have to be successful or commit because if their girlfriend dumps them, there's always another girl who will have sex with them. In a society (like engineering colleges) where the women are few and are in high demand, they can be choosy so the men compete for them, and so have to be more successful and driven and willing to commit or the women will not have sex with them.

So did most of my ex's friends at the aforementioned engineering college get married to their college girlfriends soon after graduating because they were in love? Of course not! It's because after four years in a girl desert they had no clue that in the real world women actually comprise 50 percent of the general population and thought that if they didn't marry the one they have now, they might not get to have sex ever again. Suckers.

Here's the kicker: While young men's failures in life are not penalizing them in the bedroom, their sexual success is hindering their drive to achieve in life. It's kind of like why buy the cow (stop playing video games/trying to "find" yourself and get a real job already) when they can get the milk (attractive women will still have sex with them despite the video game playing habit/lack of employment) for free.

Here's the take-away: Women, if we want to date men who are successful, driven and don't live in their minivans or parent's basements, WE NEED TO STOP REWARDING THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR. Like Jacqui says, the pickins, they are slim and it's 50 percent our fault.

I've never liked the Lysistrata approach to solving anything, because, well, I like sex, too. However, desperate times call for desperate measures. So from now on, women of the world, let's band together on this. It's called raising the bar. We need to NOT have sex with losers who exhibit ANY of the following red flags:

He lives in a vehicle and thinks it's cool. Living in vehicles is for homeless people.

He lives in the basement of his parents' house/Craigslist stranger's house

He is unemployed**

He calls you "chief"

He smells bad and/or has greasy hair. If these things alone are not enough of a deal breaker, they could also be indications he lives in a vehicle/his parents' basement.

He has four children with three different women, none of whom he was married to. (This is not (only) because children are monsters and what new girlfriend wants to deal with four of them, it's because he exhibits poor decision making skills/a troubling inability to wrap it the the fuck up.)

When you ask him what he does, he says he makes candy. (He does not make candy. In fact, it's his father's company in another state that makes the candy and ships it to him, which he then sells at farmers markets. Except that he doesn't really sell it at farmers markets. It just piles up in his house because he did not submit the proper paperwork on time to legally sell it at farmers markets. He is afraid to tell his dad about this situation so he makes his living waiting tables and selling weed. When his friends come over to smoke the weed, they eat the candy.) The not-having-sex goes double for this person.

He has aspirations of being a ski bum/river raft guide.

He has a fake wall to pretend he isn't living in a studio with a roommate***

He sleeps on a futon/couch/sleeping bag on the floor. Grown-ups sleep in beds. Fact.

This is not an exhaustive list, so feel free to add to it. The most important thing to remember, girls, is that if you have sex with any of these guys, you are fucking everything up for the rest of us. And you won't be doing them any favors either. How are they ever going to learn how to be productive members of society if you are having sex with them? So don't. Thanks in advance.

*Who are these women that say no when an attractive, young stranger approaches them while walking down the street and proposes casual sex?! This is basically my dream come true. And I would probably cry when they said "just kidding!" and I found out we were not, in fact, about to hoof it to their apartment for some afternoon delight, but that I was just a statistic in their stupid little graduate student psychology research project. That is just plain cruel.

**Since this is a recession and I'm not totally heartless, if the guy was recently let go, seems upset and a little worried that he was recently let go and is actively trying to find a new job, you may have sex with him. Especially if he has a job interview this week. But proceed with caution.

***This doesn't apply in Manhattan

The 25-year-old Virgin

So I met this guy at a mutual friend, M's, party and he asked for my number. He actually called me the very next week. He was super hot. Looked like Ethan Embry, you know, Mark from Empire Records? He lived in a town an hour away and volunteered to come take me out to dinner. He was really nice and sweet, brought me a present and everything. So four hours and a lot of drinks later he's back at my apartment and I have tricked him into staying the night instead of driving all the way back home. He used my spare toothbrush and everything.

All the signs are pointing in one direction. The universe is aligning and it looks like things are going to go my way for once. When the realization strikes me, I'm practically giddy and I can't wipe the shit-eating grin off my face: I am going to get laid. I'm sure of it. After a six-month-long dry spell, I've convinced myself this is basically going to be the most awesome sex of my life.

So when, after 20 minutes of naked making out this guy isn't inquiring where I keep the condoms or whipping out one of his own, I start wondering... What's a girl to do in this situation? Do I take charge and just proceed to fuck him? That's not really my style. Do I ask if he wants to do it? What if he says no? Awkward. This is so confusing. This has never happened to me before.

I did none of the above. What I did instead was obsess over why he wasn't trying to have sex with me and wonder what I did to turn him off. I decide maybe we are too drunk for this anyway and propose we go to sleep.

A few days later I asked our mutual friend what the guy's deal was and why he wasn't more aggressive in the bedroom. She replied with a bombshell so horrifying I refused to believe it.

"I think he might be a virgin."

There was no way this kid was a virgin. He's 25. And he lived with his last girlfriend. For like four years. Impossible. Twenty-five-year-old virgins, especially ones with live-in girlfriends, simply don't exist. They are mythical creatures, like unicorms. To still be a virgin at 25 would mean deciding to actively refuse to have sex and that just does not compute.

So to settle the argument, my friend texted her husband, D, who just happened to be with the guy in Las Vegas at a bachelor party. D must have just shouted across the bar to the guy, asking if he was a virgin, because immediately came the reply: "Not a virgin."

Awesome. So the next time I see him, I figure it's all systems go. And by the way, he happened to be going to Asia for the next three months as part of his graduate program, meaning his next date with me could possibly be the last time in the foreseeable future he's getting any action. It's a sure thing.

So we go out again and same deal: dinner, drinks, my house, naked making out. And the same thing happens. He's not making any move to go further. Let me recap that for you: He's naked in bed with a naked girl who is MORE than willing to have sex with him AND he's leaving in three days for Asia, which means the pressure is on as this is probably his last opportunity for some booty (at least on American soil) for the next three months. And still... nothing. So we spoon and go to sleep.

And by go to sleep I mean lay awake for hours, sexually frustrated, contemplating dying my hair, losing 10 lbs and thinking about what I can sell to get enough money to pay for a boob job because I'm clearly unattractive and unfuckable to the opposite sex. This is confounding.

I replay snippets of conversations in my head. Did I offend him somehow? What did I say? Could I actually be hideous and I'm just unaware of my hideousness? Should I have done more giggling and lip biting? If I had a glaring personality flaw, my friends would tell me, right? What's wrong with me?! I wore a short dress for fucksake! Could he be a Jesus freak?

So the next morning he says, "Oh, by the way, so you and M were talking about me the other day," meaning the text question while he was in Vegas asking if he was a virgin. "What were you guys saying about me?"

Uh oh. Busted. I have to downplay that I kissed and told and that we were talking about him behind his back. Its rude. I start backpedaling. And sweating. And blaming my friend. And talking really quickly: "Oh, that silly M, for some reason she said you were a virgin. But don't worry, I didn't believe her. Isn't she so silly? I don't know why she would think that. I told her you definitely were not a virgin but she insisted on asking D anyway..."

Me: Nervous laugher

Him: Silence

Turns out he was a 25-year-old virgin. Huh. Guess they do exist. And I'm an asshole.

I guess I should have suspected something when D said we shouldn't date because I would eat him alive. At the time I was insulted by that comment, but now I think it was more like a warning I didn't heed.

Anyway, I'm not knocking virgins. I'm not saying don't date them. But if you don't know for sure the guy you are dating is a virgin (and what 25-year-old is going to admit to that shit? When you are in the middle of a bachelor party in Las Vegas and your friend asks if you are a virgin, there is only one correct answer. Although if he had said yes, maybe his friends would have pitched in for a hooker and voila! problem solved...) it wreaks havoc with your self-esteem wondering why they aren't trying to have sex with you. And after you find out they are indeed a virgin, it wreaks havoc with your self-esteem wondering why they aren't trying to have sex with you.

So I guess what I'm saying is: Don't date a virgin. It's a deal breaker.