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...