Honest Conversation Is Overrated
Actual Human Interactions Witnessed Or Overheard
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century America
On my way to lunch, a guy stops and says, “You look really familiar.”
I say “We went on a date once.” He says “And you didn’t call me back. jerk.” but he’s smiling. I say “You asked me to take you to Friendly’s on our date. You then put a hair in your ice cream, demanded to speak to the manager, spent fifteen minutes flirting with the manager while trying to get our meal comped, got our meal comped, spent an additional ten minutes talking to the bewildered manager about porn, borrowed five dollars from me to buy some pastries on the walk to our separate houses, and when I saw you a week later, you made eye contact, smiled, and walked quickly away. No, I did not call you back.” He says “To be fair…” I say “I have no fairness in me today. Bye.” Then I bought a cupcake and watched some TV. This has been a strange day.
0 Comments
"Yum! Luv the pic on ur profile! Tres masc! Hit me up! Soon!"
Sent by someone who lists their interests as House Music, Scat, and Insane Clown Posse. Pass. Any date scheduled to start at a place called Pinkberry, is liable to end up in a very specific way.
Potential Date: “Boredom is the bane of my existence.”
Me: “It shattered your spine and made you give the cowl to Azrael for a year?” PD: “You are soooooo getting laid tomorrow night.” From a nearly non-awkward first date:
Me: “I mixed up two of the digits in your phone number, and now some stranger wants to now why I need to meet them at Castlebar.” Him: “You think that’s bad? I dated a guy named Moe for a year. You haven’t been embarrassed until you’ve accidentally texted ‘It’s been a while, maybe you should pick up lube for tonight.’ to your mom.” Date: “You’re nerdier than I expected you to be.”
Me: “You met me while I was working in a comic book store. We spent an hour on the phone talking about poetry slam. I don’t feel like I misled you in anyway.” "You have a date? Take him to The Aquarium to look at the seal penises. I’m not allowed. I got kicked out for harassing them."
When my first boyfriend killed himself, I dated a series of men who were no good for me, with no intention of ever seeing them again. I didn't tell them absolutely anything about me, especially the whole My First Ever Boyfriend Just Killed Himself thing.
When Sora and I broke up, it felt like a death. Three years. Boo hoo hoo. Mellow melo drama. The clear solution was to once again date a series of men. But this time, maybe, just maybe, make them good for me. Maybe try and establish some sort of connection. Maybe actually talk to them about who I was, and why I felt the need to date several people at once. I wanted to be Open. But without hopping the line from Open to That Fucken Guy Who Won't Stop Talking About His Ex. #1 and I had hooked up a couple of times, always at his apartment. We'd spent some time watching Top Chef together, we'd discussed exes, and he even introduced me to his Drag Persona. #2 was a stripper. A gorgeous, finely tuned stripper. His name was Loleye, he was a show...no. Like most of the numbers I would meet, I first encountered #2 on a dating website that was roughly half a step above Craigslist, and about twelve steps above ManHunt. He lived roughly down the street from me, and we intended to meet at a coffeehouse to hang out the first time, but had somehow missed each other. This is how I ended up sitting on his bed on our first "date", listening to him talk about his roommate. His bed is in what, in most apartments, would be the living room. You open the door and BOOM! Bed. #2's roommate barged into the room, yelling into his cellphone in what I, at first, thought was a foreign language, but turned out just to be ScreamingFagese. "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" he missled at me. "Excuse me." #2 said, and he and his roommate went into the only other room in the apartment to talk. When they emerged from the bunker, the roommate said "I'm really sorry. I'm having...a day." And he giggled. He was all smiles and giggles and polite conversation, and "What do you do for work?" "Oh." I said. "I work in a comic book store." "Really? I love comics. Are you familiar with" and here he mentioned a name I'd never heard before. "Uh, no." "Really, he's very well known, and super influential. I have some of his books in my room, hold on." It's a good general rule that if you don't know someone very well, if, in fact, you have known someone for less than ten minutes, and your conversation has been purely platonic in nature, that it's probably considered gauche to break out your hentai collection and start showing your favorite tentacle rape scenes. Probably. But I smiled and nodded, and mentioned that, in fact, we didn't sell very much hentai at my store, that we were more of a family friendly comic book store, which means all the gore and violence you can imagine, but very little sex. So, I guess American Family Friendly. "Your roommate is a little..." "I don't want to talk about him." #2 said. "How about I make us some tea?" I don't enjoy hot liquids, but a quick scan of his refrigerator revealed 1: mine was not the messiest, emptiest refrigerator in Boston; and 2: any liquid he was going to offer to me should definitely be boiled before I put it in my mouth. I drank the tea very slowly, as #2 regaled me with terrible stories about his terrible roommate. When I was finished, I walked the tea over to the sink. "Wait!" #2 said. "I haven't read the leaves yet." "You read tea leaves?" "Why else would anyone drink tea?" He had me there. #2 took in a deep breath, covered the cup with a saucer, and flipped it upside down. "What does that look like to you?" Somewhere in my childhood, a psychologist was picking up a notepad and a pen. In Florida, my mother was craning her neck north. And dozens of midwestern American housewives who spent the last five years reading my Livejournal rubbed their hands together in glee. The bottom of my cup was the most bizarrely clear inkblot I'd ever seen. It was a cat. In an airplane. And it was waving. The airplane had a crack in the center of it. "What the fuck does that even mean?" Jackie asked, when I relayed the story. "How the fuck do I know?" "He didn't explain it?" "Of course he did. It has something to do with deceit and a terrible journey." I said. "Unshocking!" Jackie said. "Your entire life is a terrible journey filled with liars." "He didn't know that." I said, attempting to...wait, why was I defending him? Right, I wanted this to work. I wanted to date a series of guys with different attributes, and find either The Mythical One, or at least figure out what horrible thing they all had in common that I didn't like, so I could avoid that in the future. I didn't want to do anything to damage anyone of these possibly blossoming relationships. With strippers. And Drag Queens. "Why not just round out the drama with a theater major?" Jackie asked. I bit my lip. The theater major was meeting me for Vegan Chinese food the following day. "Right, you were adopted. I keep forgetting that white people abandon their babies, too."
I’m still consistently dating winners. The first time my parents came to visit me at Torpor Heights boarding school, my dorm adviser told my parents that I had the sort of personality that adjusted well to change. "Everything that happen. It is like nothing to him. Is just. Day." And, broken English aside, she wasn't wrong.
Wherever I wake up is where I am, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Oh, I can make sure I'm somewhere else in a few minutes, an hour, a day or so. But that's the future. The present is completely beyond your control. It's like the past, but harder to ignore. In my current present, I'm sitting in front of a fan in the living room of The Yoda Louise Vader Memorial Cafegymtorium, which is the name I've given to the house I've been living in for the last year and a half. Tomorrow,.I work in both the comic book store, and at the bar. Thursday, I interview potential new roommates: a pair of friends from Mission Hill, a poetry reviewer (no shit) who already lives in this neighborhood, a "free-spirited artist", and a 21 year old gay kid on disability for psychological problems. The last one is just like Sora, but with an income. Any potential roommate has a lot to live up to. My most recently previoused roommates: Don, and Ms. Gibbons were roommates you're just going to have to read about to believe. Not only were all our bills paid on time but we never had any epic battles over dishes or thermostats, and Ms. Gibbons didn't even steal my TV on the way out like that awful Thai tranny drug addict, Divine, that I lived with on Mission Hill. "Frankly," Bacchus said, as he sprawled across my chest, "I don't know how you can trust trannies anymore." I wrinkled my eyebrows at him. "It wasn't the trannie part of him that stole my TV. It was the drug addict. Or possibly the Asian part." It was Bacchus's turn to shoot a funny look. Unfortunately, he was not gifted with the proper genetics for facial grammar. "Then I guess you'd better keep an eye on me when I go home tomorrow." Bacchus was the man of the moment. It was the summer of 2008. I was living in Somerville, and had spent the winter dating and then not dating and then dating and not dating Sora, among other people. Spring had much the same feel to it. And I spent July preparing for August, where I drove to Madison with Mazarine and did some poetry things, and some insafemodey things. And when I came home, I found an e-mail reply to a hardly used personal ad that sounded promising. Like all solid relationships, ours began when Bacchus pulled his car into my driveway at 2:30 in the morning. We talked, made out, and tried, unsuccessfully to reproduce. But we had enough fun that we tried it again a couple of times for good measure. This ritual went on for a couple of weeks. And while we confined our recreational activities to my bedroom, we often cuddled on the couch in the living room, watching American Gladiators with my roommates or just hanging out by ourselves watching the shadows charcoal the wall. "I like him." The least combative of my roommates, Byrne, said. "He's a refreshing change of pace from Sora." "How so?" I asked. "I dunno. I guess it's just nice that you're dating the God Of Wine now, as opposed to the God of Whine." "I...ok." The following night was the premiere of The Comedy Central Roast Of Bob Saget. The entire household: me, Mike, Byrne, and the other roommate were all going to watch it together. I invited Bacchus to join us, and about ten minutes before the show was about to start, I saw his car pull into the driveway. I tried to hide my goofy grin when the front doorbell rang. "The back door is open." I said. "I don't know why--" and I opened the door to see a Chinese man holding a paper bag. I had been hoping to see a Vietnamese man holding a bottle of vodka. "Huh." I said. "Wrong Asian." Bacchus was in the kitchen, and he was trying his damnedest to give me a dirty look but his face was refusing to cooperate. Byrne paid the Chinese guy n the front porch for his bag of fried food, and we all sat down for the comedy stylings of Jeff Ross, Greg Giraldo, John Stamos, Gilbert Gottfreid, and Norm Macdonald. During one of the commercial breaks, Byrne excused himself to go to the bathroom when a series of explosions went off in front of our front door. "HEEEEEEEEEEY!!!! HEY YOU FUCKEN FUCKERS!!! OPEN THE FUCKEN DOOR!!!!" Then the crash of fists being drunk driven into our front door. "OPEN UP!!!" The room froze. Bacchus sat up with a face that nearly expressed concern. Byrne appeared in the hallway, staring at the door. Mike let out a "What the fuck?" And I, because the moment was now, and there really wasn't anything else for me to do but be present for it, stood up, and walked over to the door. |
Categories
All
Archives
December 2023
|