Chronically Ironic

·”Wait, Let Me Take Off my Crucifix!”

That was exactly what a young Spanish lad (I can finally use “SPANIARD” in a sentence relative to my life in some way) once said to my friend Leigh, in high school, before the first time they had sex. Yeesh. Promptly after that, we proceeded to make a list of the strangest, dumbest, and sometimes hurtful things men say before, after, or during. Here is a very small sampling of that list:

“Get up. We have to wash the sheets. Now.”
“Mommy!”
“Will you pee on me?” (okay, not so weird now, but it was 1989 and we were in high school. There simply was no peeing at that time, at least not that we were aware of. And still, Ewwww.)

The list went on and on. I started thinking about men I used to date long ago as soon as I watched some media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. You would think those two things do not go hand in hand. While the VT guy was absolutely fucking nuts, I will say this: Some of the choices I made and some of my friends made in men were NOT SO GOOD.

Take for example Steve. I think I went out with this guy one time. We had an interesting evening, but it was not really interesting enough for me to consider doing it again. He was one of those weird Heavy Breather guys, and when he kissed me I swear he licked the side of my face. It was like something out of a Will Ferrell movie. So I didn’t call him back, because that’s WHAT YOU DO, ladies. He proceeded to drive by my apartment at every opportunity and then, since cell phones weren’t extremely prevalent yet, he would go down the street to the gas station and call. He would leave Stalker-Alert messages, like “I know you’re home. I can see your lights on. Why won’t you call me? I know you’re there…” blah blah blah. Look, gentlemen, I am usually not so heartless, but Holy Shit. If you really want me to call you, even if it is to tell you I really don’t want to see you again, do not FRIGHTEN me. You will definitely not get a call.

Then there was John. John was ok-looking and smart. I was in college now, and could do whatever I fucking wanted to. Including date a complete psycho. John was always interesting. He once lived in, and did not leave his room at his parents’ house for 30 straight days. Had a microwave in there, took a shit out the window. I am not kidding. He was also an artist. I know you’re thinking, well of COURSE he was. He was also on lithium. Look, he was very intelligent and always had something insightful to say, even if it made no sense or did not pertain at all to whatever was going on:

“Hey John, can you come over after you get done mowing the lawn?”

“I was reading in Tricycle about the impermanence of the soul. Do you have any hot water?”

He would drink a giant Evian bottle of hot water every time he came to my apartment. He could not get from point A to point B in a car. Seriously. We lived about a mile apart, and I would ask him to take me home. After we had gone about 5 miles out of the way (me stupidly thinking it was some sort of “surprise,”) I would say, “hey, where ya headed? My house is back there.” I distinctly remember going to a club in Dallas and deciding that it would be fun to have him along. We drove from Dallas back to East Texas late one weekend night, and I mistakenly fell asleep. I woke up and there was John, behind the wheel with NO PANTS ON and we were almost in Shreveport. Shreveport is in Louisiana. That was just John.

There were others. My first boyfriend in high school was actually committed for a whole summer. And I don’t mean Committed to ME. Great. AND he took Allie-The-Dog-Faced-Girl to U2 even after I camped out with him for tickets. Jackass. Then he found Jesus. There was the guy my friend Kim met on the internet who was about 20 years older than the picture he had posted, the guy that I cooked a huge dinner for and after dinner he said he had to go “check on his dog,” and the guy my friend Janet met that was a complete dork and insisted on wearing leopard bikini underwear. That’s just not attractive on anyone. Oh yeah, and the guy that Leslie dated that shot some hookers and went to prison. We love you guys, but damn. We can only take so much. Stop with the fucked-uppedness, ok?

All jokes aside, there are plenty of date-rape or near date-rape stories between my friends. I don’t know that young women today are any more aware than we were – I certainly hope so, but I also know that the equation of Long Island Iced Tea + Halfway-Decent Looking Guy has been the same formula throughout all of time. Just because a guy looks and sounds alright in the first couple of hours doesn’t mean he will be that same guy at the end of the evening. There’s really no way to know, but there are plenty of ways to be safer. I just know that we never really took that advice growing up.

With time, hopefully, judgment gets better. And if not, well…just don’t wind up in some dude’s freezer. That would suck. Try to avoid that at all costs.

Glories of the 80's, Why Girls Cry