Exclusively Dating Other People Steadily

At some point in my early childhood, and we're talking diapers-and-an-enlarged-head-with-a-soft-spot early childhood here, I was deemed an old soul by someone very close to me. It was either my mother or a close friend of the family or maybe my aunt.

Anyway, it was a woman.

I guess this whole story would carry far more poeticism if it was my mother instead of some crackpot standing behind my mom in-line at the grocery store, so we'll go with my mother.

It was my mother who made this statement about me being an "old soul".

So what does it mean to be a twentysomething walking around with an old soul?

Beats me. My soul may be aged like fine wine, but I doubt it's ancient enough to have belonged to Confuscious, so your guess is as good as mine. I will say that I believe my soul has something to do with the characteristics of prudishness I find myself displaying from time-to-time.

Prudishness. Ugh. Even the word itself is ugly. The root of the word is ugly anyway. I guess I don't really have any problem with the "-ishness" so much as the "prude". At any rate, it's a word that I truly wish could not be in anyway attached to me.

I'd love to have the thought of coke lines being sniffed off a rattlesnake's back come to mind when someone bespeaks my name.
Midget clown sex.
Whitewater-innertube-hatchet-juggling.
Eating an entire bag of pretzels without the safety net of a nearby glass of water.

These are things I want people to think about when they hear my name. Instead, all's I get is the occasional moniker of "prude romantic" or perhaps "Laguna Beach viewer".

Either way, the desired effect is not forthwith.

I got dumped recently.
Yep. Dumped.
Recently.

I'm not good with exact dates, but rest assured my dumpage occured somewhere between last week and last April. And so what's the importance of me being dumped to any of you? Well, it isn't. Being dumped is rarely important to anyone but the dumpee. As someone who has ended more than his fair share of relationships, it sometimes doesn't even matter to the person doing the dumping.

But...

* * *

I imagine there is a moment, right after some unsuspecting insect slams into the windshield of a speeding car, that the insect thinks, "damn, I didn't think it'd get me. I'd heard of this thing happening to other bugs, but not to me. I'm shocked. Shocked, but enlightened. And now since my guts have fanned outwardly and I can see them, I guess I'll go ahead and die."

I'd like to think that bugs die in a very self-aware manner.

It's not the getting dumped that has solicited this particular entry, but my inability to comprehend why. Like a woman in labor giving birth to twins, our breakup was an arduous task that lasted for hours. There was no crying or yelling, it was like two little kids trading baseball cards:

"I'll give you two Don Mattingly's for your Kirby Puckett."
"I can't do that. I just can't do that, Mattingly plays for the Yankees, there are twice as many cards for him. Kirby is rare and I have those Mattingly cards already anyway."

"Look, I'll hang out with your friends more, but you've got to make more of an effort to stay at my place upon occasion."
"I can't do that. I just can't do that, my car is on it's last legs and you live a half-hour away. You said you like driving and you like my friends anyway."

I'm not sure if I'm trying to say the relationship with my ex was particularly juvenile or that our breakup was surprisingly diplomatic. Maybe I'm trying to say that baseball cards are a forgotten hobby.

At any rate, our breakup wasn't emotional. Which is good, because I pictured some sort of uber-angry blowout in which all my records ended up getting tossed three stories down onto the street. And because my records kick ass, passerbys would immediately start looting the heavenly gifts raining down upon them and I'd never again find those Lou Reed bootlegs anywhere else.

So we broke up. That's that. Other fish in the sea and so-on, blah-blah-blah. My problem is not my current relationship status. My problem is with the parting shots I received before the two of us were officially over. The conversation went something like this:

HER: "So we're not exclusive. Y'know, we can still go on dates though. Nothing really has to change."
ME: "Weren't we dating last week?"
HER: "No. Last week we were exclusive. Now, we're just dating."
Alright. Honestly, raise your hand if you thought these were one in the same. Tell me I'm not the only one!
ME: "So what's the difference? Do we still kiss an' stuff?"
It's a shame that no matter how many adventures I go on with a girl, no matter how many tumbles she and I take together, it really comes down to the rules of touching.
HER: "Maybe. I mean, we can."
ME: "Well if we're still 'dating', why wouldn't we?"
HER: "Because I might wanna kiss someone else."
ME: "So hypothetically you could kiss someone else, come back, tell me about it and I would have no call to get angry?"
HER: "In a perfect world, I guess. I don't know. I just wanna have fun. That's why I can't be exclusive."

I just went from "Girlfriend" to "Slut" in, like half a conversation! "I just wanna have fun?" Fun with me and others. Fun with men's body parts that aren't mine. This is fun? I'm supposed to be cool with this? I went from the sounds of settling to backstage at a Skid Row concert in less than two minutes.

And so let's think about this, let's break this down a bit.

Who is my ex is not dating.

If dating is: 1) kissing someone or 2) not kissing someone, 3) there is no real attachment, and 4) each individual is, in no way, responsible to answer to any other person; then how does the relationship end? Or start for that matter.
I mean, going by these parameters, I'm dating you.

Yup. Right now you're reading my blog and we are dating.

HaHA. Gotcha sucker.

You think that's messed up, imagine when you find someone that you like better than me. God forbid they want an exclusive relationship, you'll never be able to give it to them because, again - according to the parameters of my ex-girlfriend's new dating desires - we will forever be dating, whether you like it or not. We don't have to be kissin', we don't even have to talk anymore. If we've met, we're dating.

This is really messing with my head. I already admitted to being a prude, I already admitted that my ex is not the least slutty girl I've been with (to put it nicely), but is this mentality too progressive?

Who knew there was a difference between "dating" and "exclusive". Is that like having a girlfriend and a "premium girlfriend". This sounds a little too much like the wife/ gumar dynamic found in 'The Sopranos'.

Sorry, "new girlfriend", I'd like to be exclusive, but under the rules and regulations of this 21st century ideal of "dating freedom" not only will I continue to date my ex, but I think you've been dating her for several months as well.
Which, I guess would make my ex a lesbian slut, and I'm really not ready to dive into that mosh pit just now.
My old soul is about to have a heart attack.

So what's the problem here? Wouldn't most guys love to hear from a girlfriend that going off and exploring the great wide open is not only okay, but hoped for? Shouldn't my mind be blown apart and oozing out the holes in my ears from flabbergasted excitment? Shouldn't I have bolted out the door before she put the period on her final sentence?

Most twenty-somethings wish for this more than most else in this world (with the exception of maybe unlimited free hotdogs at a Cubs game*); a girlfriend who is okay with hanging out casually, making out casually, doing everything casually; without thought.
Without consequence.
Isn't that the definition of "living the dream"?
Isn't this a boon?
A miracle?
The silver lining on a golden cloud?
A beautiful butterfly emerging from a sparkling cocoon?
I've gone too far, I'll refocus.

The answer, for me, is no. This bites, blows, sucks, stinks, and strikes me as too pat. Old souls don't work this way. Old souls know that real emotions aren't carefree. They're quite the opposite actually.

So what we're left with is a big pink dancing elephant in the middle of the room. And no matter how desperately I try to ignore it, it seems more than possible that somewhere along the line, my ex decided that the grass was greener somewhere else, and that she's just not that into me.

I know, I know. It's impossible for me to believe as well.

But to be honest, my ex growing bored in our relationship and wanting to remove herself from it without much ill-will or confrontation is a more hopeful answer than the one she tried to pass off on me. This dating-other-people-while-still-messing-around-with-me-thing was wierd.

It's more confusing than the definition of "hooking up". **

I hope my ex just wants to hook up with someone else and didn't want to make me cry (I cry easy, I cried at the end of 'Coyote Ugly'). I hope she made up her slutty desires in a misguided attempt to make things more comfortable for the both of us. Because if she didn't, then I've got to reassess things about my future in the dating world. I don't need to marry the next girl I see, but I don't really want to run the risk of touching some guy's butt because we're both kissing the same girl, either.

Old souls don't roll like that.

=========================

* maybe that's just me.

** What exactly is hooking up anyway? Depending on who you're talking to, it can mean anything from meeting for dinner to handcuffs 'n' whips. Ask your friends, I promise none of you will have the same definition.
For the record, I define "hooking up" as kissing. That being said, I also define "sex" as kissing too, so my definition shouldn't carry much weight.

The Lock and the Key

The following editorial was submitted for approval in both the Boston Globe as well as the Wellesley Times. It was written in various intervals between March and April, 2006.

This blog is, in no way, intended to be humorous.

* * *

For the last fifteen months, I have been employed as an after school mentor to a 20-year-old male whom, for the purposes of this editorial, I will call Paddy. Paddy has a rare disability found within the autism spectrum called Fragile X. Fragile X can run the gamut of both symptomatic manifestations and the severity of such symptoms. Paddy is considered a moderate-functioning autistic, with characteristics ranging from an inability to control fine motor skills, an inability to focus his eyes on any one fixed subject for more than a few seconds, to occasional and tremendous social anxiety.

This social anxiety manifests itself in any number of ways. Sometimes it is simple shyness, reluctance to speak or be noticed. Other times, this social anxiety causes Paddy to nervously fiddle with small objects in his hands. These objects are often comforting to him, things like paper or compact discs. His anxiety is known to gradually grow in immediacy the longer it is ignored. So much so that instead of fiddling, he will feel the need to shred the paper or shatter the compact discs. The physical manifestations of Fragile X are minimal, secluded only to slightly bulbous extremities (fingers, toes, etc.), enlarged gums causing smaller exposed tooth space, a shrill effeminate voice and loose, weakened joints in the wrists, ankles and knees causing a disjointed loping stride and comportment.
This is Paddy.

According to friends, family and educators who have known Paddy his entire life, this is how he has always been. This is the person whom I would spend upwards of thirteen hours a day with for over a year.

* * *

I interviewed for a position in a special education program based in the wealthy Western suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. The program specialized in college-age students with varying forms of disabilities. Although the students within the program were high functioning, they were certainly not college-bound. The parents of these students wished for them to grow in independence and sought out our program for teaching both professional and life-skills. The program itself spends more time finding and overseeing jobs for our students than teaching the major school subjects inside the classroom. I had several years of teaching experience with various grades and ability ranges, but nothing in special education. Upon receiving the position in this program, and proving to my superiors that I was more than capable of doing the job adequately, I was determinded to expand my responsibilities to after school care. Instead of teaching job skills, I would now be asked to teach home and social skills to the student. I was extremely interested in doing so and interviewed with Paddy's mother for the position.

Upon first meeting Paddy's mother in her luxurious suburban home, two things struck me immediately about the family dynamic. The first being that there was no father in the immediate picture. This was notable at the time because Paddy carried within him, very few masculine qualities and exhibited several almost satirically feminine mannerisms. The second striking observation made upon my arrival into Paddy's home was the lack of evidence that he even lived there. The house was large and lovely, without a spot of clutter or mess. From seeing him in the classroom, Paddy colored on everything, marker marks everywhere, waves of crumpled papers and ripped magazines piled around his school desk. Nowhere in the house was it clear that Paddy's mother wasn't alone.

Having spent the better portion of two hours interviewing for the position, I was confident that I was to get the job. Paddy's mother Jamie appreciated both the consistency of a teacher continuing to teach even past 3 o'clock as well as having a male presence in his life, as Paddy's only real influences up until this point had been herself and various elderly females.

My job, it would seem, would be simple: I was to teach Paddy how to take care of himself; to cook, to do laundry, to shop for groceries and talk to members of society. I was to prepare him for the inevitable outcome of moving away from mother. It was understood that there are certain things Paddy cannot do and will never do. He will never go to college, nor will he ever be completely able to sustain an independent existence. The hope however, with Paddy, as with all of the students connected to our program, is that they will form a modicum of independence and socialization. And so it went for months, Paddy and I would spend our weekday afternoons traveling throughout portions of Massachusetts doing various daily tasks. Paddys mother, a kind well-to-do educator in her own right, confessed that she was too much of a pushover with her own son and scarcely demanded he do anything for himself. In surprising moments of darkness, Jamie admitted that this tendency to baby him was born both from guilt and from ignorance. She felt it her fault Paddy was born disabled and he being her only son, she admitted to not knowing how to treat him once he was diagnosed. On more than one occasion she asked that I be the bad-guy in his life. She was all too aware that she, for whatever reason, did not have it in her to enforce that which she wanted so much for her son to have, upon him.
She simply could not be tough with him.

And although maintaining the esteem of a teacher even after the final school bell rang for the day proved extraordinarily difficult, it was expected of me. What manifested in that time was a seemingly bullying relationship with Paddy. I allowed myself to become familiar and friendly with Paddy without ever becoming friends. I always maintained a teacher-student relationship with Paddy, which was far from easy, as I would occasionally be in his home seeing him off to bed, if his mother had a particularly late night at the office. This distance was what allowed me to do my job.

Spending all this time with my autistic student illustrated an often unnoticed microcosm of our society; the kind non-cynical portion of it. Our nation will go to war over oil, we will berate our own government, we will find differences between cultures living within our very borders and hate one another for those differences, but most people will treat those with disabilities with kindness. At their very worst, strangers will passively ignore those with emotional or mental disabilities, which is more than we can say about many other aspects of our society. None of this struck me as exceptional until I began talking more and more with Paddy. To put it mildly, Paddy is not a conversationalist. He has various speech impediments and trouble focusing his thoughts, added to which, Fragile X lends itself greatly to repetition of things overheard (a characteristic found similarly in certain species of parrots). So persons with Fragile X often slip into a more comfortable (as they see it: acceptable) habit of repeating things they've overheard. Therefore, to carry on a conversation with Paddy takes both patience and insistence. What I've learned from him is that this kindness shown by the general population surrounding Paddy, although well-intentioned, seems to have done more damage to Paddy than one could imagine.

Kindness from strangers usually manifests in able-bodied people doing things for our students so as not to burden our students with having to carry the tasks out themselves. The bulk of society sees a person with Down Syndrome or Aspergers as incapable and pity them for it.

What anyone working in the field of high or moderate-functioning disabilities will tell you is that they are far more clever and self-sufficient than they are given credit for. In talking with Paddy, it became clear that he greatly detested my having him expend any energy after school. If left to his own devices, he would (like any normal young adult) seclude himself in the basement of his mammoth home watching television until his mother calls him up for dinner. He would not, at the age of twenty, offer to help his mother cook the meal she prepared for him nor offer to help her clean up after him. To judge Paddy by normal 20-year-old standards, one would label him selfish, lazy and uncaring. Clearly, it isn't fair to compare Paddy to the average 20-year-old male, but I've also found it not to be completely foolhardy to do so either. In spending time with Paddy it became clear that he ceased cleaning his own dirty dishes, washing his own laundry and helping with daily chores and errands not because he was incapable, as the bulk of society believes, but because he was never challenged to do so.

His mother claimed he was unable to unlock doors with a key because of his underachieving fine motor skills, which I took to be true. Who would know better than his own mother what his capabilities are? Over time, I noticed, while in the classroom with Paddy, that he was carrying out several fine motor skilled tasks without anyone noticing. He could button his own jacket, play checkers, and file books in between one another on a bookshelf. It made me curious; I had taken the word of his mother, a self-labeled pushover, someone who had admitted a certain inability to challenge her own son. What was Paddy truly incapable of and what was he simply never challenged to do? Soon after I made it a point to have Paddy open the back door to his house using the key his mother had given me. His reaction was telling, he complained that he was not a maid and that he didn't have to do that. I had heard this reaction plenty of times before. Maids, according to Paddy, do the laundry for him, cook his dinners for him, pump gasoline into cars for him, buy his groceries for him, vacuum for him, pick up his medicine at the local drug store for him, clean his room for him; according to Paddy a maid does just about everything except watch television and listen to music for him.
A locked door was no different. It was maid's work.

Arriving at his backdoor, witnessing what was quickly becoming an abnormal temper-tantrum, several realizations were surfacing. The most prevalent being that his view of his own role in society is as much at fault for his social retardation as his autism is. The second thought was that, in a way, Paddy was correct. So far, in his first twenty years of gathered experiences, it was the maid's job to do everything for him. In his mind, he was being wronged. No one had ever challenged this person. For two decades, Paddy has lived amongst those who assume he cannot take care of himself and therefore do not bother to ask him to try. I suppose it was karma that Jamie hired a male who was not too far removed from being 20-years-old and therefore maintained tinges of lazy adolescence himself. Paddy's mother and his elderly caretakers before me, may not have a problem relegating themselves to hand servitude, but I was not about to do so for myself. Paddy could unlock that door and we would stand outside all afternoon until he proved it.

* * *

It is now the middle of spring and the doldrums of the harsh New England winter have receded. Winter in Massachusetts is for hiding and training. Our schools and houses and cars; cocoons of betterment shed only after the earth once again warms us.

Paddy has bettered himself. I've seen to this. I've seen the good people around us pity him and help him. I've watched soccer moms with handfuls of books hold the door open for Paddy despite him having nothing in his hands. I've taught him not only to say thank-you for such kindness but in the future, to reverse it by holding the door open himself for those same soccer moms. I've watched his employers pat him on the shoulder for a job well done only to redo his sloppy workmanship once he turns his back. I've taught those same employers to show Paddy the respect of being treated as an equal, to demand that he do the job they pay him to do, to do the job he is absolutely capable of doing. I've taught Paddy that he doesn't get a free pass at work anymore. I've become his parent, not by blood, but by responsibility. I've become the bad cop. The enforcer. And what very few people seem to grasp is that because of this, I have become his greatest ally.

I cannot imagine what pain and anguish Jamie must go through from day-to-day, what guilt she must feel or what frustration she has relegated to normalcy. I am not so smug as to berate her for the job she has done with her son, nor would I ever presume to be a better parent or a better influence than anyone else. People become lazy however. They flee toward their comfort zones and rarely deviate from them. They make mistakes born from fear and from hesitancy, not from dispassion. My only claim is that, in this instance, I have no comfort zones. There is nothing about Paddy that is comfortable to me. Added to which, I am being paid to be both fearless and non-hesitant. I am being paid to watch Paddy prepare his own dinner. I am being paid to teach Paddy to shop for his own groceries, clean his own room, open his own doors, and complete his own tasks.

I write to you now, not because we live in a world of heartlessness, but because we live in a world of wrongheaded thoughtfulness. The Paddys of the world can do infinitely more than you assume they can. If nothing else, the Paddys of the world are clever enough to know if they hesitate long enough, some kind soul will do their bidding for them. I ask that you give the Paddys of this world your care, your patience, your understanding, but not your elbow grease, not your sweat and not your muscle. I ask that if you assist the Paddys of the world at some point in your daily routine that you teach them how to fish instead of handing them something from your own catch basket.

And when you arrive at your own doorstep, wait for the Paddys of the world to unlock the door themselves, as I assure you, they will.



2006. All Rights Reserved.

Sweatpants and Irish Catholics

When you are a high school freshman and the rest of the school feel like seniors, your best friend Ben, shows up to the first class on the first day wearing brand new blue jeans. Not a day has gone by where you can remember Ben ever wearing anything but sweatpants.

Ben is to sweatpants what the Yankees are to pinstripes.

What Milton Berle was to cigars.

The problem isn't that he's wearing jeans, or that everyone else in school also seems to be clad in denim, but that you are not wearing them and everyone notices. How did Ben get this important memo and you didn't? And why was there no mention of him switching his new clothing line for the fall semester?

You wonder if Ben even had anything to do with the decision. Maybe his parents knew what fashionable highschoolers expected of the incoming class and so they went to the Gap for him, laid the pants on his bed and told him they were for his own good.

Where were your parents you wonder? Had they dropped the ball? Were they social outcasts as freshman too? Never before had you imagined the social standing of your parents during their tenure at high school so pertinent to your immediate present. If your parents were dorks, then they will be helpless to defend you from the same fate, as thusly proven by your bright red sweatpants, tapered elastically around your lower calves.

This pants conundrum will prove to be the starting thread in the unraveling sweater that is your friendship with Ben for the following months to come.

* * *

It is the very first morning of high school. You are no less sure where your algebra classroom is as to where the nearest bathroom to your locker might be. You know nothing, but already you know that you've started all wrong.

Your first impression is going to take months to recover from.

This morning, all the underclassmen gather in the mammoth high school auditorium for freshman orientation. You are one of the first freshman there.

Where is everyone?

You assume everyone else is doing something much cooler. They're already mating under the bleachers. Or maybe they're still asleep high school doesn't scare them as it scares you. You wonder if Ben has a girlfriend already. You imagine he does and he's with her right now instead of taking his seat at the mandatory orientation, You imagine getting up and finding all the cool kids paired off one-by-one.

Tens go with tens.
Geeks with geeks.
Football captains with cheerleader heads.

You imagine that you've already been cut from the baseball team even though tryouts arent for another six months and the only available girls left are the ones wearing headgear and memorizing the periodic table of elements.

This is your fate. If it weren't your fate, you'd have worn blue jeans today.

* * *

Eventually your fellow high schoolers file into the auditorium. They arrive in bunches.
Scads.
Posses.
Revues.
They pile, not into seats, but into seating arrangements. Rows of six or seven. Columns of four or five. You sit there alone and wonder how all these kids in t-shirts of bands youve never heard of know so many people already. You wish you had planned better. You should have gathered every friend you had from junior high, set a meeting time and arrived in the auditorium together.

That woulda been cool.

Is entrance-planning cool? It is probably a good thing that you didn't entrance plan; that may have been a bigger faux pas than wearing red sweatpants.*

You look at all the other boys surrounding you and wonder where you went wrong. Where did they get their hair mousse? And where did they get those cool jogging shoes with pockets and pumps and multiple colored laces? Those are cool. So cool in fact, that you've never even noticed they existed until this precise moment.

Then there are the girls.

Where did all the brown-haired girls go? You cannot recall ever seeing so many golden-haired blonde girls before in your life. This is Illinois, not Malibu. Before, it was 45% brunette, 45% blonde plus that one freckled redhead who drew on her arms in pen all the time. Now it's almost entirely made up of shiny, shimmer-haired blonde girls.

Your entire class has seemingly turned into button-nosed blonde girls who haven't yet noticed you share this earth with them, opting instead, to notice some other boy five aisles away (wearing blue jeans) giggling the entire time.

So much giggling.

Why do high school people giggle so much? Sometimes they giggle even when no one has said anything. You imagine all your classmates taking some giggle drug (do they make giggle drugs? You haven't a clue. Just another thing everyone else is ten steps ahead of you on).

Anyway, you imagine your classmates taking their giggle drugs underneath the bleachers when everyone was finding first-day mates and kissing and complimenting one another on their awesome new blue jeans.

They did all this while being blotto on giggle drugs.

* * *

Your suburban town has a high Irish-Catholic contingency. And not that there's anything wrong with Irish-Catholics, but they tend to name their offspring after Saints and there are only a handful of saints to choose from. This is important to note only because everyone filing into the seats around you in the auditorium seems to be named either Pat or Katie.

You are sure you've never been amongst as many Patricks and Katherines as you are right now. There are hundreds of
them. And if they're not Patrick they are Pat, Paddy, P-Train, or just Ps. And if they are not Katherine or Kathleen, they are Kates, Kate, Katie, Kat, Kit-Kat, Katty, Kitty, K-tizzle, or just K.

This name thing is gonna wear on you before the end of the year.

You watch as Katie fixes her ponytail around her sun-kissed blonde hair.
You watch as Pat fiddles with his puca-shelled necklace.
You realize your mother would think this garb entirely inappropriate for the first day of school.
They look like they slept in their clothes.
This is what you're thinking as you undo the zipper on the red sweater vest you are wearing.

Katie and Pat eventually part ways, take their auditorium seats and nonsensically giggle amongst one another. You imagine they will be dating by weeks end (if they are not already). You imagine that their love is true and beautiful and they will go to the same college and become beautiful model-slash-lawyers and get married and all three of their perfect children will be Gerber Babies and happiness will follow them everywhere. And they will have a dog and name it Happiness, which will literally follow them everywhere! They will live the perfect life because they are wearing blue jeans and their mother named them after Irish Saints.

High school is going to ruin you.

Your only saving grace is if you can manage to make friends through another manner outside of dress and social standing.

Soon after you are struck with the crippling fear that dress and social standing are the only avenues of any importance in high school.

You continue to think this throughout the length of the boring freshman orientation, during which you learn nothing except for the names of the eight peers sitting in your immediate area. You only learn this because the principal of the school ordered everyone to introduce themselves to those immediately surrounding one another; like at Christmas Mass. One of the students in your immediate vacinity is not named Pat, but Steve. He is chubby and has, what appears to be, baked beans stained on the front of his Over 40 and Feelin' Foxy t-shirt.

Although it is difficult to tell, you think he might be balding which is really bad luck for a fourteen-year-old boy.

It guilts you to think it, but if there is anyone in worse shape than you, its Steve.
Steve says, "Dude, thats an awesome vest. Where did you get your vintage stuff?"
Steve is distracted and you never answer his question.

If Pats go with Katies, it appears you go with Steve. And youre in deep, deep trouble.

As Steve exits the auditorium ahead of you, when the orientation is over, three girls named Katie join him.
They seem to be old friends. He kisses one of the Katies on the cheek.

At this point, you have no idea how anything works anymore.

======================

* The more you look at your own sweatpants, the more you realize how faded they've become since you bought them. Faded red. Thats basically pink.

You're wearing pink sweatpants on the first day of high school and you want to shrink. Shrink and die.

Yoo Pai Now

There's no way to imagine my current life as anything but nonsensical.

I don't understand it myself nor can I justify asking anyone else to make any sense of it. You will be motivated to inquire as to how I got myself into the following situation. I would suggest you simply roll with it, as the backstory is far too complicated.

I was with my disabled student Neddy* sitting in a dingy Chinese restaurant. It was mid-afternoon and neither of us were hungry. This is inexplicable, I know. This is my life.

So there we sat, waiting for pork fried rice and chicken fingers.** The food came up speedily, so speedily in fact, that I excused myself from the table to take a pee, left Neddy alone at the table, our food arrived, Neddy ate the bulk of his chicken fingers and had begun eyeballing my pork fried rice - all in time it took me to zip, unzip, flush, wash and re-enter the dining area of the restaurant.

This kid eats like he's on a timed game show. Like we're takin' a hundred bucks off the Big Board for every second that he's not done eating. And when he is done, there can be no mistaking it, because you will find him sitting there, with a gaping smile wide enough to fit a banana, sideways into it. Crusts of food and shmutz all over his chin and lips.

With hands still damper than I'd like from the bathroom faucet and lack of towels, I came back to see this ghastly creature having annihalated his chicken fingers in Guinness World time.

It is at this moment that I am having trouble recalling why we didn't just go to the Wendy's drive-thru.

I say, "That's some mighty fine eatin' you did there, kiddo."
He says, "Mm-hmm. I know it. I know it." ***
I say, "I haven't even started my meal; what're you gonna do 'til I'm done?"
He says, "Mm. I dunno. Sing and dance. Sing and dance."
He knows this will embarrass me. This is the only reason he might possibly want to sing and dance in this ramshackle Chinese restaurant.
I say, "If you start singing and dancing, I'm leaving you here and your mom can come and get you."
He says nothing. His disability makes it difficult for me to always decipher whether he's understood me or not.
I continue, "You still hungry? You can have some of my fried rice."
He says with a slight stutter, "T-that w-w-would be good."
I shovel a third of my rice onto his plate. It's gone before I can resume eating my own meal.
The rice is on the floor.
It's on his chair.
Chin.
I've worked with him for six months on using a fork with rice. He won't do it.
Hands are easier. He'll use his hands.

* * *

I quickly finish my fried rice, which was by no means an easy task, because while attempting to finish, Neddy sat patiently picking at the scabs on his hands. Scabs that were formed from Neddy's nervous habits at picking at his hands.
These scabs will never heal.
These wounds have been fresh for years.
Gloves don't work.
It's a nervous sensory development.
His mother makes him nervous.
His scabs make me not want to finish my rice. So I ask for the check. A short, squat man wearing very busy tie happily gives us the check (I'd be happy too at the possibility of getting this human tornado the hell out of my eating establishment).
I go for my wallet. Not there. It's in the car.

It's important for you to know three things about my current situation:

3 Things About My Current Situation

1. I never forget my wallet. Never. Before right now, I cannot recall another instance in which I didn't have my wallet and needed it. Because of this impossible lapse in character, and my already beset annoyance with Neddy, my anger was boiling up.

2. The location of my wallet (my car) was about 20 feet away from my current location (restaurant table), seperated only by a wide pane of glass. I could see my car from my table.

3. We eat at this restaurant about once a week. We're known. With someone like Neddy, I find it impossible to believe that week-after-week they don't remember us. Nevermind that I'm impossibly gorgeous, Neddy is also quite unforgettable.

So there you go. Now that you've been preemptively warned as to what I'm dealing with here, let us continue.

In a situation like this, any normal human being would calmly explain himself to the waiter, quickly excuse himself (leaving his accompaniment sitting tableside as an unspoken collateral), retrieve any due monies, return, pay, exeunt.
And seeing as how I consider myself a fairly normal human being, this is what I purported to do. I explained myself to the grinning waiter who has seen us in this place no less than twelve times since the start of 2006.

He says, "No, no. You pay now."
I blink.
I stammer.
I repeat, "I can't pay now. My wallet... my money is in my car..."
The waiter grins wider.
He says, "Oh okay..."
Sigh of relief. His English isn't that great and my Chinese is even worse and I worried we'd have a problem.
He continues, "...So you pay now."
Anger growing.
I say, "Sir, I'd like to pay now. I'd love to pay now. But I can't because I accidentally left my money in my car. But I'll leave my friend here, get my money from the car and pay you. It will take a few seconds."^
The grin disappears from the waiter. He suddenly looked alarmingly mean.
Visions of Mr. Miyagi.
Visions of tiny Asian men surprising a cocky white populace with their fatal karate blows.
Visions of me getting my ass beat by an old man in front of my student.

The waiter says, "No, no. You pay now. You pay now or I call the police. You pay now."
He kept saying this - 'you pay now' - over and over and over, like a mantra.
I said, "Sir, I can't. What do you want me to do? I've got money in the car but not here. He's got no money at all."

This last bit was true, Neddy didn't have any money (he never does) but his parents have millions and I was suddenly enraged at the thought that this millionaire kid couldn't somehow help me. I eat friggin' macaroni and cheese for breakfast... why do I have to be the hero here?

The waiter stands firm, "You pay now or I call cops."
Then the waiter did something I doubt I will ever forget. He grabs Neddy's empty water glass, lifts it four or five inches off the table and slams it back on the table.

That's it.

He wasn't trying to break it. It was like the waiter, at that point, wished he had a judge's gavel, didn't, and opted to settle for Neddy's glass.
How weird is that? Why did he do that, I wonder.
The waiter repeats, "You pay now or I call cops."
The waiter turns around and disappears into the kitchen.
Oh shit. He's calling the cops. Shit. Shit.
I think, fuckit. Let the cops come. They'll think this is as dumb as I do.
I tell Neddy, "Neddy get your jacket on."
Neddy, dried rice chipping off his chin, puts his coat on. He says, "A-a-are you g-g-going to pay?"
"Yes, Neddy. Of course I'm going to pay. But I've got to leave to pay. So we're going to leave. But yeah, I'm coming back."
Neddy takes anywhere from 13 to 45 minutes to properly put on a jacket. I didn't have that kind of time. I didn't want to deal with police. I had no reason to. I leave Neddy to fiddle with his jacket and I rush to my car. Like a scene out of a James Bond movie, I'm in the car, I'm grabbing my wallet, I'm looking through the window to see if the happy waiter is hitting Neddy with a baseball bat.
I'm oddly nervous.
Our meal was $11 something. I only have twenties.
I'm not asking for change.
Apparently, I'm giving this asshole an 85% tip.
Sonuvabitch.

I'm back in the restaurant, no one is there. No other customers. No waiter, no other workstaff. Nothing. I drop the twenty on the table and realize that this would be an awesome time to shout out a clever remark to punctuate my rebellion (or their ridiculousness).
I pause, standing over my table. Rice all over.

I think about saying, "Keep the change, fuckface!"
Nah. Too Bruce Willis.
I think about saying, "I want my change. You pay now! You pay now!"
Nah. That's no good either 'cause then I'd have to wait there and follow through with my comment. And also, I worried that mimicking his accent would border on a racial slur.
I say nothing. I leave. Neddy's got 75 percent of his jacket on. He's making good time.

I should help him, but he's got to learn that the whole world isn't here to serve him.

I'm his teacher, I'm here to teach him lessons about life.

Today's lesson: Neither he nor I will ever be back in that Chinese restaurant ever again.

====================

* for more information on Neddy, please see my previous blog entitled The Grift.

** I could take this kid to the middle of a water-scarce Ethiopian village and he'd miraculously find someone able to supply him with chicken fingers. He can't spell his own name, but he can insure that he never ever again samples any food that isn't a chicken finger.

*** It should be noted that Neddy speaks in a ultrasonic shrill voice that sounds, uh... very homosexual to put it mildly. After months of being around this student o'mine, I have deduced that he is not actually homosexual though. Far from heterosexual as well, Neddy is, most accurately, asexual. Unfortunately, his mother, Barbara Streisand and Ellen Degeneres are his three biggest influences (followed in a distant fourth, by me) and very few "manly" affectations permeate his garbled mind.

More unfortunate still, is that everyone finds this affectation "adorable" about Neddy, (who secretly hates everyone on Earth) and they dress him up in shirts that say, "I Ellen" or "Streisand Fever", which serve only to make him hate himself more.

Worst of all, I am the one who must be seen with him in a Chinese restaurant; all gunked up from dust-bustin' food into his mouth and draped in effitte t-shirts.

Sometimes I have the urge to punch things.

^ Oh God, did I just refer to Neddy as "my friend"? In all likelihood, Neddy hates me. I make him mind his manners and engage in physical activity more exhausting than searching for the television remote control. In his funhouse mirror of an existence, my actions consist of someone who is his enemy.

Me calling him a friend, is the emotional equivalent of calling the captain of my high school's cheerleading squad, my wife, despite the fact she didn't know my name.

This one's gonna cost me.

The Dress, part 3

[...continued from Thursday April 06, 2006 ]


I arrived at the party with both Kelly and Lindsay, which either means I arrived at the party stag or with two girls..
...I think you know how I chose to perceive it.

It was a swank little yacht club out in Wilmette, two levels boating pictures everywhere, a piano, ice covered lagoon, a bar, tables with bowls of grapes and strawberries and so-on you get the picture.
Its nice.
We arrived through the back entrance (the kitchen), which was cool in a Goodfellas kinda way. Almost immediately upon arrival, Lindsay's mom sends both Kelly and myself outside to direct the incoming party traffic. This may sound like a bum deal for a party guest, but not for me. Sure, it was chilly outside but I didn't really know too many people inside and I didn't want to stand around like a hump with too much grease in his hair.*
At least directing traffic gave me momentary direction.
So there we were, wondering why in the hell we were standing outside when no car was stopping long enough for either of us to direct them.

Eventually, Lindsay demanded that Kelly and I come inside and stop this nonsense of trafficking the area. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. Not only did I look awkward with my coiffure and dress shoes, but now the wind had chapped my lips raw. By the end of the night, I looked like a child who had just finished a glass of cherry Kool-Aid. The bright pink ring around my mouth not only caused several people to ask if I was wearing lipstick but then, even after I answered that I was not wearing lipstick, nevertheless caused me the unfortunate side-effect of feeling quite effeminate, or at best hideous.

Fantastic.

This dress-shopping thing has really, really blown up in my face.

Don't get me wrong; I was having a ball. Early in the evening the DJ played Springsteen's Hungry Heart and followed later in the night with Pink Cadillac. It was during this song that I realized whatever cool points I had accumulated over the first half of the party (not many I'm sure) would soon evaporate and I'd be right back in the red.
I was right.
Not in a long time had I seen so many people give themselves over to joy and fun so effortlessly. Everyone, young and old (especially old), seemed to want to party and no one cared how silly they looked doing it. Everyone danced, many of the ladies, I would like to point out, danced shoeless.
See? I told you.
Eighty bucks. Wasted.
While picking up after the party, I ended up having to match fifteen pairs of shoes together! At one point I had six or seven heels in my possession and all I could think was, if I gather these up and sell them, I've just made, like $450!

It'd serve you girls right.

But if bad karma hits women, it must hit men too, because something odd happened to me out on the dance floor. In the privacy of my bedroom I enjoy dancing. I dance at work too. I dance to almost everything I do. My bosses makes fun of me for dancing everywhere. And up to this point I assumed I could dance pretty well. But here there I was in the middle of the dance floor making my body move in ways that I never intended and wouldn't wish on even my bitterest enemies and all I can think is, what the hell happened to my moves? In my room with the door closed I'm a hairy version of Shakira.
A taller Timberlake.
A pale Usher.
Now, all of a sudden, I'm on the dance floor like a wet ferret! I didn't know what the hell I was doing and it really threw me off.

In between fits of fanciful dancing, Kelly and I relieved Lindsay's sister Jamie and her boyfriend from bartending duties. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am the last person that should be behind a bar. I don't drink, or at least not much compared to many of my friends and therefore I know nothing of mixing drinks or pouring them for other people.
I'm not kidding.
A guy came up to me early into my bartending venture, and asked if he could have a G&T ("gin and tonic", I quickly learned). I looked this man directly in the eyes and asked him what was in a gin and tonic. Can you believe that you know someone that damned dumb?!

God, I still can't believe I asked that guy what was in a gin and tonic.

But the worst part was when he blinked at me for a second, realized I wasn't joking and then slowly pointed...
...first to the gin...
...then to the tonic water.
Ugh.
I felt two inches tall. From that point on I pretty much let Kelly handle the liquor while I refilled water glasses, sodas and ran to get more ice. Eventually I pulled myself together and we developed a rhythm. We rocked the teamwork angle and danced up a storm behind the bar. Had we set out a tip jar I'm sure we would've been up five hunny (a hip way of saying five hundred dollars) by the end of the night.
I was like Tom Cruise in Cocktail with less bottle flipping and absolutely no knowledge about alcoholic beverages.

All my running into and out of the kitchen refilling ice buckets and fetching clean cocktail glasses did allow me to make friends with one of the dedicated ladies working for the kitchen staff. Her name was Gina and she had a daughter. I remarked to her that she and the entire kitchen staff were doing a wonderful job and she thanked me. I also explained to her that my hair didn't usually look so bad, to which she replied that it looked perfectly fine. I thanked her for her charitable opinion and grabbed three more wine glasses. It was a special give-and-take between someone who probably didn't belong at this party and another whose job it was to remain invisible at it.
I felt that I didn't belong; not uncomfortable per say, just out of place because this whole event seemed like a big deal. There were friends and family that, I didn't get the impression, saw each other very often and that I was fairly certain I would never see again. By the end of the night, I felt constantly desperate to withdraw myself from the picture so that the tears of having to say goodbye could be dealt with in private, amongst people who earned the right to shed them. I had fun, but I was much more comfortable directing traffic, organizing stray pairs of high heels, talking with the kitchen staff and tending bar. I was made to feel very welcome by Lindsay's family, but I nevertheless wondered if I shouldn't have come at all.

* * *

Being at that party and then reliving it again here, I've finally figured out what made me feel both extremely happy and simultaneously very out-of-place. The last time I was surrounded by such love and camaraderie was back in my old days as a kid with my own family. Not for a very long time have I been a part of something this palpable with affection and warmth. More than once I caught myself staring out of a wide window overlooking a frozen lagoon. I wondered: do people notice the warmth of family when they are a part of it or only when they are not? The warmth of the hootenanny rubbed off on me so completely that I felt more like a part of the party than I was. I was an outsider and immediately felt guilty because of it, as if I had sneaked into the clubhouse of a gang that hadn't accepted me. It was a wonderful evening, but one that transcended my simple expectations. What happened to me was bigger than necklines and neckties, bigger than purses and shoes and the differences between men and women.

I wanted a piece of the party's warmth to belong to me.

As the night drew to a close, Kelly and I hung around to help clean up the yacht club long after most everyone else left. It was a relatively painless cleanup and one that garnered me more thanks and apologies than I have ever been lavished with before. Everyone associated with Lindsay's family felt bad for making me clean up. Had they only known how little I minded, they'd probably have demanded that I do more!

On the way home, I was instructed to drive. Lindsay slowly slipped into a funk at having not only to get up at the crack of dawn for her flight back to Boston, but for the fear that she could very well be doing so in less-than-perfect health. Meanwhile Kelly thought it a tad safer if I drove instead of her. Ironically enough, it was I, the sober one, chosen to drive that snapped back Kelly's driver side mirror after hitting a few low-slung tree branches. This, I thought, was a bad omen. Luckily the mirror was a breakaway and no damage was done.
On the trip home I did learn that women, at their bachelorette parties, want facials and pedicures. Essentially, they want to get a jump-start on their wedding day. Men however, want sports and booze and maybe even a stripper: a man's way of subsequently halting the impending doomsday as long as possible. I also stuck my foot in my mouth while discussing why short guys are not attractive to women. It was an interesting conversation that kept all of us from falling asleep.
Unfortunately, it is not appropriate for this particular story and you'll just hafta use your imaginations.

I bid adieu to Kelly and loped up the stairs to my house. As the clock chimed twice, I entered my living room, then my bedroom (which was still in shambles from my Affleck hair debacle), stripped off my suit and my shoes (oddly enough, in that order) and fell into bed.

The next thing I knew, it was 9:17 A.M. The sun was shining brightly and all I wanted was to start it over again.

The End.

=========================

* It was at this point in my life that I began to suspect that I had some sort of mild social anxiety disorder. Since this event, I've come to be positive of such a hypothesis.

The Dress, part 2

[continued from Monday 4.3.06]

One day when you are all dead, I plan to release my lifetime study on the female psyche as recited through the male perspective. Itll win me a Nobel Prize and I will be able to pinpoint my genius as having been hatched sometime shortly after college.

Im going to die a lonely, lonely bachelor but Ill have my opinions to spoon with at night.

This is what goes through my mind sometime after buying Kellys dress and in-between buying shoes and a proper bra (eesh, dont get me started). I must now confess my unwillingness to dole out advice on the footwear department. I dont understand womens shoes. They confuse me. Frankly, they make me question reality. Remember the Reebok Pumps? Now those were shoes. They had air pockets and a complicated adjustable cushioning system that worked around each specific foot. Do you hear what Im saying? These shoes had an air system. For a sophisticated system of air pockets and wires, I can understand paying eighty bucks on shoes. Instead, Kelly and I are standing in the ladies department of Nordys (thats what I overheard a mall debutante call Nordstroms) looking at similarly priced shoes utilizing only a fraction of the materials of the oldskool Reeboks. Every shoe I looked at were variations on roughly the same theme: three straps of leather conveniently architectured to hold the foot to a skinny piece of molded cardboard all miraculously balanced atop a matchstick-sized heel.
So... let us recap.

1 matchstick
3 leather pieces stitched together
1 cardboard sole.


Eighty bucks.


Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Now ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you; what happens at every wedding and every regal event youve ever been to? Halfway through the party, the DJ plays YMCA, the girls all kick off their shoes and make like its a damned sock hop for the rest of the night.
Amazing.
I will never understand how you ladies let these shoes cut into your heels, dig into your toes, and rip up your ankles only so you can kick them off immediately upon arrival - leaving them shamed and disgraced off to the side - only to go out a month or two later and buy a similar pair for some other dance-a-thon.
If men are a bunch of boneheads, where does this whole high heel situation fall?

I am not attacking women; I am simply declaring my inability to comprehend. I ask only that you enlighten me. But if no one can successfully illuminate this conundrum, allow me to offer up some advice:
Ladies, you look great in heels.
Great.
No man will deny this, but we think you are wasting your money. Wear sneakers, get us drunk quickly, and dance with us no one will notice.
Save your money.

And while Im complaining about female-stuff-that-makes-no-sense-to-me, let me bring up my problem with purses. You women own like, ten, twenty, thirty purses that match your dress,
match your shoes,
match your nails,
match your eyes,
your cell phones,
your itty-bitty-poodles,

You have a million purses for a million possible situations, but somehow - miraculously - you make the nearest guy carry everything. How does this work? Explain it to me. Cause guys get the reputation for doing stupid things that make no sense all the time and I just cannot understand why girls buy purse after purse after purse and yet make me carry everything. By the end of the night, I had Kellys necklace in one pocket (which she bought five hours previously), I had Lindsays hair ties in the other pocket, plus all my stuff. And when I asked why theyre handing this stuff to me, all the girls look at me like I was blowing bubbles with my own saliva and replied simply;
"This dress doesnt have pockets."
Like, duh.

Isnt that what a purse is? Isnt a purse just a huge pocket!? Why even bother with a purse, then!? Cmon girls, you have to admit, this whole purse fiasco is silly. Fess up; centuries ago you ladies didnt think the whole purse thing through, and now its too late to admit your folly. Am I right?
I'm right, aren't I?
I feel for you I do.

At this point, I can just imagine my dad distancing himself from me and my opinions. Hes a smart man and always has been. Me, I enjoy sticking my entire foot into my mouth. I dont just stick my foot into my mouth though, I tend to keep it there and gnaw until I hit bone.


* * *


With the dress and shoes taken care of, it was (I guess) time for accessories.
Kelly and I went into a store called New York & Company. Their whole big advertising angle is that people all over the country want to be a part of the most hustling bustling, hippest city in the world (New York, in case youre having trouble paying attention). Their angle is that if you shop at New York & Company, you too can be as chic as anyone on Broadway.
Excuse me?
If I wanted to be a part of New York Id buy a plane ticket not a t-shirt. I'm from Chicago and anyone from Chicago knows that we want nothing less than to be like "Yawkers". Weve spent 300 years trying to get as far from New Yorks shadow as possible shame on New York & Company for trying to set us back. What are the odds that people from New York actually shop at New York & Company anyway? I imagine real cosmopolitan girls giggle furiously as they pass by a New York & Company on their way to Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue.

That being said, Katie did pick up a way cool belt and the same stunning necklace that ended up in my suit pocket for most of the night.


But this day was all about observation. I knew I would understand little and hoped to learn lots. When a guy shops for clothing, its a momentary annoyance something one does at halftime.
Anything longer and it can wait,
34 waist - 36 inseam.
I never even need to try the pants on.

A girl on the other hand, uh-uh. We were in the mall for three hours, T-H-R-E-E hours and bought one outfit.
ONE.
Three hours one outfit.
Im still trying to make that math work in my head. On the way home, Kelly calls Lindsay to brag about how swiftly shed shopped for her outfit.
Swiftly? Are you serious?!*
But the amazement that befell my afternoon was nothing like what was to follow for the rest of the evening. Only after Kelly and I were returning from the mall was I invited to Lindsay's shindig myself, needless to say I was far from prepared. I needed a haircut. I needed a suit. I needed a set of social graces and I needed to find a cute pair of shoes for the party.
Why should only the girls get to look their best?


Had I not answered the phone that morning Kelly would have gone to the mall alone (if at all). If Kelly went to the mall alone, I wouldnt have gotten brow-beaten by the overprotective mothers in the Marshall Fields dress department, nor would I have loped alongside an eighty-year-old lingerie saleswoman assisting Kelly in finding that perfect bra. And if I hadnt done all that, I wouldnt be sitting in Lindsay's house watching her, Kelly, and several of Lindsay's sisters switching, rearranging, matching, preparing, applying, reapplying (and in Lindsays case giving up on applying) their nail polish. It was Lindsay's mother's retirement party being held later in the night that brought the current activities to a head. It was madness at least compared to what I am used to in my own home. For all I know any house filled with women carries with it an exceptional amount of chaos. For me however, girls switching from outfit to outfit, wet hair wrapped in towels, makeup being plunked around like tiddlywinks and every once in a while having my opinion being called upon, was a horse of quite another color.

Lindsay had two outfits in contention to be worn at the party. She modeled them both and asked my opinion. I told her honestly that I preferred Dress A, knowing full well that she would then automatically choose Dress B. She hesitated on a decision, but several hours later, you can bet that she wore Dress B.
Again, Im just sayin.


Most of my time at Lindsay's house was spent in their den watching the Louisville-Cincinnati game, ever so happy to have something to train my eyes on. And despite removing myself as far from the action as possible, everyone was still in and out, shouting, yelling, frantic, excited giddy, nervous, and unsure (this is Lindsay's house, this is how it goes).

"Ma, take a look at this shirt with these pants!"
Then somewhere on the first floor another voice can be heard, "Linds', lemme see the dress!"
"I was just in that dress, you missed it! Megs, wheres the nail polish you were using?"
"It's in Jamie's room, I think. I dunno."
"Lindsay, are you wearing the dress 'er no?"
"I don't know ma, jeez! I think Jamie is wearing it!

Megan. Jamie. Lindsay's two sisters. Also attending tonight's party. Suddenly, Kelly walks into the room, wearing the dress that I helped her pick out. A lump forms in my throat, it looks fine to me, but what do I know?
I'm a guy. As it stands I am worried that my novice opinion has swayed her to buy the damned thing in the first place and that sometime later in the night she's going to realize that she hates the dress and subsequently hates me for making her wear it. I don't know that she feels this way, but I worry.
The true test will be the other girls in the household. Most girls will lie and tell a girlfriend how wonderful they look no matter what. But with Lindsay's family, my guess is, theyll be more honest with Kelly than most. And God help me if they don't like her dress, because if word gets around that I helped pick this damn out and I'd be trapped like a pig on a spit.
Lindsay joins Kelly in front of the television showing the Cincinatti/ Louisville game.

"Kelly! It's a cute dress!"
"Yeah?"
"Kells it's cute. It's totally cute. No seriously, that looks cute. Seriously."
"Are you sure?"
"No seriously, its cute."
At this point Lindsay turns to me, laughing. She senses my acute desperation not to offend anyone but pushes me anyway and says,
"Ace, doesn't Kelly look cute?"
I hesitate.
I open my mouth slowly.
I want no part of this.
I look for sanctuary on the television screen.
I want Louisville to win.
I want Cincinnati to stop getting so many foul calls.
I want Rick Patino to stop yelling.
I want to go home and cry.

God help me. The answer is "yes." Yes, the dress looks totally cute. Completely cute.
Totally, fucking completely cute.
But what if I say "yes" and they keep asking my opinions on things? Dear Lord, what do I do then?


To my surprise neither Lindsay nor Kelly wait for my answer. They've both turned away and headed somewhere down the hallway. I am once again alone with college basketball and thankful as Hell.
Pangs of fury rise in my belly. Why didn't they want my opinion? What the heck is wrong with my opinion? The gall on these girls. I totally had an opinion, and they didn't even care.


Eventually, Kelly and I leave Lindsay's house. I have officially accepted the invitation to attend this shindig myself; a prospect that is both exciting and horrifying. It is Saturday. I look my worst on Saturdays. I need a haircut bad. I'm dirty, I've gotta do laundry, etc.


So now, like an episode of Mission: Impossible I've got two hours to go from zero to hero.
My first worry is my hair. I've got ragamuffin hair, messy; windblown but not windblown in the cute way that you see in the Polo ads, windblown like a homeless person. I'm desperate and ill-prepared. I'd get a trim but it is Saturday evening and no barber is still open. No, on this night, I was gonna need hair gel and lots of it. But what I was going to do with that hair gel was a Sphinxian riddle if ever there was one. I don't use hair gel, I had to no idea what I wanted to do once the gel was in my hair. I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to gel my hair up and comb it back like a cast member from The Sopranos. I was overmatched and in need of an opinionated assistant. Being too proud to call either of my parents into action, there was only one other option:


Emily, my fourteen-year-old sister.
She had to help me and she had to bring fashion magazines to assist in the process. Upon arriving at my place, my sister immediately harasses me like a terrier to a chicken wing.

"So what does the dress look like?" She asks, "How long is it? What is the cut like? Is it pretty? Is it sleeveless? Backless? Colorless? Priceless?"

She goes on like this for at least twenty minutes, never pausing long enough for me to answer. I make a sandwich and clip my fingernails in the time it takes Emily to spit out all the minor details about Kelly's dress that she wants to know. I tell her that it was black, had ruffles around the neck and went past the knees. To a guy this is more than enough description. To a girl I have yet to begin describing it. What can I say ladies? If you want full details, wait till the pictures develop!


"Well what do you want it to look like?"

This was her first question to me and it was exactly what I needed. I needed to focus directly on the problem and I needed someone who would force me to combat that problem head-on. I was enjoying her assistance so far.
I think my mumbled reply was something like, "I dunno. What do hot guys look like these days?"
I remembered seeing a picture of Ben Affleck recently and thinking his hair looked pretty good (and simple).
So there we were, on the hard wooden floor of my bedroom flipping through my sister's issues of Seventeen Magazine, YM Magazine, Cosmo Girl Magazine and J-14 Magazine looking for a picture of Ben Affleck and all I could think of were those scowling mothers in the dress department of Marshall Fields silently condemning my proximity to their daughters. What would they say if they saw me flipping through SmashHits Magazine past pictures of Hillary Duff and the Olson Twins?! Can you imagine if any of my friends saw this?
I'd be done for.
I'd never hear the end of it.
I'd never be able to make fun of anybody ever again because this would always be thrown back into my face. It's amazing. If anyone had told me that over my weekend I'd find myself frantically flipping through a copy of Tiger Beat desperate to find a picture of B.Fleck with his "good hair", I'd have shot the person that told it to me and then shot myself next for fear of it coming true!

After failing to find a decent picture of Ben, I thought, "Fuckit. Let's run with what weve got." So I hole my sister and myself in the bathroom and have her help me style my hair (thats what people in-the-know call combing hair with gunk in it. They call it "styling"). So we're styling, combing, rearranging and fixing and all the while I'm wondering how I got myself into this mess. I just went to go help a friend pick out a damn dress and here I am having my sister "style" my hair! I come out of the bathroom looking like a funhouse mirror version of Cary Grant**
I sucked in a deep breath of air while staring at my reflection in the mirror, trying not to dwell on this sad state of affairs any further. My reflection told me that I was as ready as I was ever going to be. I shrugged it off by thinking, "who cares anyway? I'm not bringing a date; I've got no one to answer to. Who am I trying to impress?"


Then it hits me:


"Shit! Im not bringing a date! I don't have anyone to answer to! Sweet Lord, I'm trying to impress everyone! Isn't that right? Oh God, what have I done?!"


And thus ends a longstanding male myth; that guys never fret over formal events. Oh, we may hide it well. We may even deny outright that we care, but we suffer just as much mental strain as you girls do.
Believe it.
I'm letting out team secrets here.


Consider them a gift.

[to be concluded on Saturday 4.08.06.]

=======================

* Later in the evening I double-checked with my mom about the time the average formal party outfit takes to buy; apparently 3 hours to buy one outfit is not only industry standard, but record setting as well! Now see, that's fascinating. That is why I came on this trip in the first place. In two hours, I could have bought a tux, painted the roof of my house, chosen a mail-order bride, and gambled away my entire life savings! Amazing.

** Meaning no sex-appeal, no charm and an amplified bi-sexual vibe.

The Dress, part 1

I woke up at exactly 9:17 A.M. the morning after the party.

I know I woke up at this time because my face was pressed up against my alarm clock and 9:17 was the first thing I saw. I remember this because it never really felt like I went to sleep. First, I was hugging my poor sickened friend Lindsay (not her real name) goodbye, then I was handing Kelly (you guessed it: also not her real name) back the necklace she had me hold most of the night, then I was trying to comb all the hair gunk off of my scalp before crawling into bed and then

then I was awake. At exactly 9:17 A.M.

"Dang," I thought to myself at exactly 9:17 A.M. "I was just getting
started. Now it's over."

==============

But before Saturday could end, it had to begin and it began with an early hour wakeup call from Kelly at eleven in the morning.
"Ace? It's Kelly?"
Kelly's statements always sound like questions.
"Did I wake you? I'm sorry if I woke you?"
Now there's two ways that I usually play this. Either I try to fake like I've been productive and ready to rock for hours, or I can gurgle my way through the conversation like the lazy, oompa-loompa I truly am. I roll the dice and fake like I had already run the mile, milked the cow, fed the chickens and plowed the field. All-in-all, I think I fooled her.
Kelly wanted to buy a new dress for a retirement party that our mutual friend's (Lindsay's) mother was having later in the evening. Kelly wanted a strong, masculine, open-minded gentleman to escort her to a chic mall in the suburbs to shop for this new dress.

Unfortunately that kind of guy wasn't available, so she woke my goofy ass up and off we went to the mall.

My assumption was that going dress shopping might be a lovely prep for when I am married and am expected to sit in the chair on the outskirts of the fitting room praying to sweet Jesus for a sign as to the proper place to land my eyes! I don't get rattled easily, I feel comfortable in my own skin and usually fool myself into thinking I belong, even in places I don't. But the fact is, there is very little for a guy to do in the dress department of a major retail store.
I'm flipping through the clearance rack.
I'm flipping through several dresses against the wall.
I wander into the pink and yellow prom dress portion of the store and then it suddenly hits me:

What the Hell am I looking for? Why am I sifting through blue prom dresses? What's the best case situation here? I mean, if someone were to see me sifting through chiffon dresses while humming a tune from 'Cabaret' well that's a clear cut case of "reputation roulette," isn't it?

So I hang the cute mid-length flower print dress back on the rack and quickly make my way to the nearest fitting room chair, hoping not to make a jackass outta myself further.

There I sat.
First with my legs crossed at the ankle...
then both feet flat on the ground...
then stretched all the way out...
It soon became clear that I was trying too hard to look relaxed in an environment where half-naked high school girls were stomping out of their dressing rooms asking mommy if their bra could be seen through the dress!

And herein lies the basic problem with this situation: I was an intruder. I did not belong here, nor was I wanted. I know I was unwanted because for every half-naked high school girl shopping for a dress, there was a mother keeping me in the corner of her eye. While Kelly was trying on dress after dress (only occasionally popping out to ask my completely amateur opinion) I was alone and trying to find a safe place to bury my stare. I couldn't look at the nearby dresses too long, because then it looked like I was fetishizing them. And I couldn't people-watch (a fun activity for me to do in most cases) because the people I would be watching just happened to be
1) hot, hot naked teenage girls.
2) their pissed off protective mothers.

Another problem arrived once Kelly exits the dressing rooms. The same protective mothers who were worrying about their precious daughter's safety and innocence (pffft) around me, now see that I was with a girl (who they obviously assumed to be my girlfriend) which only served to makes me look so much more awful and skuzzy in their minds.

Now, I'm not only a pedophile, but an adulterous one at that. Great.

The mall is so much fun, kids.



[ to be continued on Thursday, 4.06.06 ]

My Parents Laugh At Sex

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