​Sex Therapist, teaching a college class, after showing a video of The Incident: "Where do you think this interaction went wrong?"

Student #1: "Well, like, I assume that when A said 'At least I didn't sneeze on your back this time.' he was referring to a previous time where sex was ruined because he sneezed on B's back."

ST: "We don't know that, though. There might not have been anything happening, sexually, when A sneezed on B's back. But maybe don't bring sneezing on your partner up while you're trying to be sexy unless they've mentioned that it's a turn on for them."

The class nods. S1 takes furious notes.

ST: "Anyone else?"

Student #2: "Was it when A elbowed B in the face?"

Many of the students make positive mmmmmm sounds, and there is more nodding.

ST: "While being elbowed in the face is an uncommon fetish, it seems to have happened accidentally in this case, and B was not hurt or injured, just surprised to see an elbow that close up. So I think, in this case, while I wouldn't Reccomend elbowing someone in the face, that it's not, Necessarily where the interaction went wrong."

Student #3 raises hand.

ST: "Yes?"

S3: "Was it when B said 'I'll take an elbow in the face over an Elmo in the face, any day?"

ST: "That was a little odd, yes. And while I would say it was a contributing factor, it probably could been overlooked if ..."

Student #2 oooh oooh ooohs and raises their hand.

ST: "Yes?"

S2: "It was when A said, in a creepily accurate Elmo voice 'Elmo's gonna stick his huge hairy erection in the eye socket of your rotting corpse.' and then laughed until he cried."

ST nods. "That's it. Yes. There is no recovering from that. Using Muppet voices to deliver threatening sexual lines is ALWAYS a turn off, and you must wait at least forty-five minutes before you even think of saying anything mildly flirtatious again."

S3: "Did A & B ever recover from The Incident?"

ST: "Those two weirdos? They were making out before either of them had stopped cry-laughing."

​"We can do it right here. No one can hear us." I heard her say before I shut my window.

Today's uhhhhhhoverheard at Problematic Pizza:

"Yea. No. It came and shit. Yea. No, it was in packed real subtle like. I don't know. Subtle. Like anonymous or something. Yea. Yea. Anyway, I took it out of the package already. Well, get this. The instructions were in fucken Japanese or some shit. I don't know. No. Definitely Japanese. No, it's ok, though. It's ok. It's o. k. See, there's pictures. Seriously, James? How are Pictures going to be 'in Japanese'. They're pictures. Yea. Yea. Well, I know how to use it now. I can read pictures Real Good. No I Haven't Tried It, I'm eating pizza at the....yea. Oh, trust me, as soon as I get home, it's going directly up your ass."

​I don't think I've smiled that broadly at a stranger in a long time.

​A couple who were on a dayte (intentional portmanteau) were having a fairly typical "What do you like? Oh, me, too." conversation when the woman started talking about Gertrude Stein, and the guy didn't know who she was.

Female Identified Person: "You don't know Gertrude Stein? You need to take a woman's studies class."

Male Identified Person: "I'm in High School."

FIP: "No."

MIP: "Yea, I didn't tell you that?"

Ooof. It was like 2006 hitting me in the gut all over again. Run, lady. Run for your sanity.

Overheard by a very bearded guy in a porkpie hat at the Au Bon Pain:

"I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t want to spend Valentine’s Day with you.  I barely know you.  We went out once.  And you gave me herpes."

2009 was a terrible year for my phone.  And, frankly, 2010 doesn't look to be much better.  I had three phones die, one of which I lost twice before it committed hare-kiri.  It was difficult for people to get a hold of me, and difficult for me to return phone calls, as, when I don't have a phone, I don't think to call people.  I'm also not terribly good at being in touch with people when I do have my phone.  It's not that I'm self-absorbed, I'm environmentally-absorbed.  If I'm at work, I'm thinking of comics.  If I'm on the bus, I'm thinking about where I'm going.  If I'm bed, I'm thinking of Sora.  Rarely am I thinking, I should be on the phone with someone!

None of these reasons are why I didn't call The Slut Across The Street back, even though he'd given me his number several times.

The first time I got his number was New Year's Eve 2009.  Since 1999, there has been only one New Year's Eve that I haven't been in Boston doing the family friendly Poetry Slam as part of First Night.  This year was not the exception.  When we were done, I was invited to a White Haus party with a bunch of poets.  And Ben and I decided to split a cab and some champagne on the way there.

The party was uneventful for me, so just after midnight, I hopped in another cab, and went home alone.  There were a dozen people left at my home from an epic party that I know very little about.  I know the kitchen table was covered in a beer pong table.  I know there were pants all over the kitchen floor.  Both of my roommates were shirtless, and the guy that was leaving the party when I came in did not appear to know that he had a penis sharpied on to his face or that his pants were inside out.

My recently rescued cats, Selina Ribcage, and Yoda Louise Vader, were in my room, cringing in terror.  So I picked up Yoda, and brought her out into the remains of the party.  There are only two things you need to know about Yoda, she was adorable, and she was clearly not going to live very long.  I named her Yoda because her head and ears were monstrously large compared to the rest of her body, and I called her Louise Vader because she had terrible respiratory problems, and wheezed uncontrollably at all times.  I had only agreed to rescue her because I had already decided to rescue her mother, Selina, as very few people adopt cats when there are kittens around, and I didn't want her mother to be alone all the time while I was at work.

As I stepped out of my room, with the very tiny Yoda curled in my arm, a very intense guy walked up and started talking about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  While I'm willing to accept that not every guy with spikey hair and an intense knowledge of the work of Joss Whedon spends their Friday nights on Craigslist looking to sit on a dick, I would put the probability around 97%.

Somewhere around the middle of his "Ohmygod, I totally loved evil Willow when her eyes got all black and swimmy and her hair..." blah blah blah "and the time when Xander lost his eye and", that I realized this was the guy who had offered to help Zuzu and I carry a few boxes into the apartment when I moved in.  I had noticed his crazy eyes, and his Natty Ice breath.  Zuzu had noticed him noticing me.

And he was clearly noticing me now.

While we talked, the room cleared.  And I went and sat in the living room.  Yoda Vader sat in my lap.  The Slut Across The Street was remarking how cute she was, and he started petting her, and looking at me.  And petting her.  And looking at me.  And petting me.  And looking at me.  And petting me.  And...wait, really?  This dude just totally used my cat to feel me up.  And then he just looks at me and says, "Do you wanna?"

Not really.  "Sure."

I was a bit too champagned to remember that night.  And he was too Natty Iced to remember his name.  I just remember that it was so unspectacular that, when he briefly fell asleep next to me, I was trying to come up with the politest way to tell him to get the hell out.  Not in a mean "You son of a bitch" way, but in a "OH, this was a huge mistake" way.

I took his phone number out of politeness.  I didn't use it.  Something he pointed out a couple of weeks later when he stopped in, twice as Natty Iced.  This time, I was unchampagned, and uninterested in his "So," flirtatious smile, "you never" hiccup "called me."

"I know."

And then he invited me and my roommates (who were actual friends of his) over to his house for drinks.  And, it's late.  And I don't have work the next day, so why not?

"We're" hiccup  (really, this can't be happening) "gonna have to" hiccup (ugh) "be quiet because" hiccup (Jesus) "my shitty roommate is a" hiccup *CRASH*
 
With one wsipe of his sweaty, drunken paw, he'd managed to knock his coat rack not only off the wall, but halfway down the stairs into the lobby.

"Oh" hiccup (God) "God"  "I'll" hiccup (why am I still here? "fix that" and he waved his hands to insinuate, I assume, later.

While I went back down the stairs to collect the fallen coat rack, my roommates disappeared into some alternate dimension.  I didn't see either of them again for days.

Instead, I walked into the now empty kitchen, and heard, "I'm" hiccup (I should really go home) " in my room."

And he was in his room.  And his clothes were in his room.  But his clothes were not so very much on him.

"So," hiccup (ok, naked hiccups are kind of funny) "do you have any friends?"

As come-on lines go, this was lacking something.  "Yes.  Quite a few."

"Do they like to" hiccup (did I feed Selina before I left the house?) "cum on people?"

Ugh.  "It's never come up."

"Have you" hiccup (it gets less funny every time) "come up yet?"  And he, of course, reached for my crotch.

Apart from the stairs, I had not.  Despite naked hiccups.

He fumbled in the general direction for my belt.  But instead of focusing on that, I had noticed one of my Buffy trades sitting precariously on a pile of filthy laundry.  Had I let this mostly stranger borrow my

""I'll be right" hiccup (why would I have lent him my Buffy trades?) "back"

He did not come right back.  I'd begun to suspect that he'd been swallowed by whatever dimension had taken my roommates.  Apparently, the Drunken hiccup Dimension. 

After ten minutes or so of waiting, I wandered out to the kitchen, and notices an ass and a pair of legs sticking out of the bathroom.  There was a definite smell of vomit.  At no point in my life has the smell of vomit appealed to me.  And having had now two lackluster experiences, I deleted his number from my phone, and walked across the street.  Comfortable with the knowledge that The Slut Across The Street and I would never again have any sort of relationship aside from neighbor.

This was when my phone rang.

Sora was calling.