Kinsey speak

So, J.A and I were talking to our guy friend, M, the other night. M is an interesting bird. He's super sweet, but you have this feeling he is just looking for a girl-any nice girl-to be his girlfriend. While talking about how wrong the Rooftop Pizzeria went with their font choice, we started talking about Kinsey's gay scale. I haven't read much about it, but apparently every guy registers somewhere on the gay scale. And, according to M, every man has had gay fantasies at one point or another. He says, "sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just went down on a guy." If I had been drinking milk, it definitely would've come out of my nose. J.A. and I concluded after M left that M was definitely gay.
But we were left very confused. We then asked several men if they have gay fantasies. Of course, all the gemini men we asked agreed with M, who is also a gemini. However, my brother not only did not agree, but got a very disgusted look on his fact, like he was pulling something out of the back of his refrigerator.
I don't know. Maybe Kinsey was right about the gay scale. May M just registers a 6 on the gay scale (7 being Barbara Streisand-loving gay).
Then I was reading that the Kinsey gay scale is totally skewed because he used a majority of prison inmates and sex offenders in his study. Also, if you are wondering whether or not you are gay, I'd say you register a "yes" on the gay scale, but that's just me.

online dating boys: pay attention

Ok boys, for those of you who are truly trying to meet girls on match.com, yahoo singles, or one of those other sites that makes you display yourself like you are selling real estate, here are some pointers. Seriously consider these constructive critcism, as K and I spent an entire hour, one day, laughing at some of the match.com guys, and what some of them choose to put on their page. Here are some of the top absolute no nos, if you actually want girls to respond favorably to your page, without breaking into laughter and rolling our eyes:

Numero uno: NO pictures with your shirts off. If you don't understand why, I can't explain it to you. Just believe me.
2) no bow ties or pictures of you from the 80s where you look like you are in the band opening for Cheap Trick.
3)No pictures of your Beamer or other status car, please. It hurts to even look at. Let's have at least some semblance of subtlety.
4)NO sexist joking. Even if it's all in good fun and you say "just kidding" after, you are basically pissing on your $20 a month you spend on that damn dating site.
5)As for the titles you all put on your profile, these are the absolute no nos:
no star trek or battlestar gallactica references;
no "hotswede" or "hot 'insert ancenstry here'" titles;
No "teachytom" or puny professionaly references;
No "Mr. Serious" or "Mr. silly adjective titles;
No "fritoboy" or "sportslover";
No "lonely369" or anything with "lonely" or anything that screams "desperate"; No "just4fun" or "sixpackpony" or other porn site names;
and no "crumbledvelvet" or other titles that make us think you are totally bazaar and stuck in the 80s.
Please, boys, if anything else, stop doing this so we don't have to feel sorry for your ass and cringe.

So, more on the single's party

So, I'm still at the singles party, after viewing the 8 minute dating (that had been reduced to three minutes). And, might I add, that they stuck the 3 minute dating in this very bad feng shui back corner of the museum? Ok, the whole metaphor of 3 minute dating in a corner of a museum is so horrible and such a turn off that I boycotted the whole affair.
Ok, so then I run into those thirty something group of professional girls I was telling you about. They start talking about online dating. One of them says, "so, I have a date with a match.com guy tomorrow!" Another one says,"Oh, yeah, I have a date with a match.com guy next week!" Yet another one says, "you are going on a date with a match.com guy? Wow! You're brave." "I only date eharmony guys." Then she proceeds to talk about the pros of eharmony.com versus match.com and how perfectmatch.com is ok, but not as great as eharmony.
Is this my thirties future, girls? Please, please, please no! I wanted to have ruby slippers and click my ass back to the Cowgirl for an Irish carbomb.
Ok, so I've looked at match.com and there are a couple cute guys on there every now and then, when you weed out the serial killer and crazy people. But how do these women actually take that next step and set up a date? It just seems so weird and silly: sitting through a whole dinner with someone you've never met and don't even know if you have that "want to jump his bones" chemistry with him.
That seems like a huge potential waste of a couple of hours. But then, I'm thinking, it might be good blog material. It's probably the only way to get a date with a guy in this day and age where he actually asks you out to dinner. The only thing guys ask you to do with them in Santa Fe is "get some tea" or "come pick vegetable in my garden with me." And I don't want to hear any "oh, how cute!" comments from you, girls about the vegetable picking! Picking vegetables in heels is not cute. It's silly. Do I look like I pick vegetables? I'm lucky if my plants last a year!
And it seems like everyone is doing the online dating thing-without embarassment! How did I get so out of the loop after 6 years of being in a relationship? I missed the boat on the online dating revolution, and while everyone seems to be on the boat and acting like they are having fun, I just can't quite force myself to buy a ticket, eat from the buffet and dance the lambada.
But in any respect, consensus would probably say that we have been reduced to disconnected, sterilized, statistical, box-checking relationships. No wonder we are all so fucked up. No wonder we can't find or keep anything, be it keys, men, food in the fridge...

They're called single's parties for a reason

So,went to this Santa Fe annual singles party. I was very reluctant to do this, but I thought it would, at the very least, be amusing. There was supposed to be 8 minute dating at the event as well, which I had never actually witnessed. (By the way, in San FranSo we get to the museum, which was the venue for the party and it's mostly a bunch of early to mid-thirties women standing around talking to each other. There are men there but they are all talking to women already. So, I guess the lesson to learn is the same lesson you apply to garage sales: get there early. Anyway, so K and I find the 8 minute dating corner. By the time we got there, the 8 minute dating had been reduced to 3 minute dating. Quite a jump! Apparently, no one needed that extra five minutes. Can't you see it now? Just dead silence for that last 5 minutes with those facial expressions that scream, "get me the fuck out of here!"
Also, I ran into some mid-thirties women whom I do some professional, volunteer events with. Some of them are nice and actually like other women. One of them is this horribly arrogant woman who rolls her eyes at me everytime I start talking to her. Apparently, she does this to anyone that is cuter, more beautiful or younger than she. (I'm sure I just fall into the younger category. I am also probably considered "bubbly").
I don't understand women like that. The ones that are not only bitches to other woman but the ones that say "I've never really hung out with women." "I am much more comfortable having male friends." You know what that really means? It means, "I am completely insecure,I can only compete with other women, and must be the center of the universe when I am around men." Men, beware of a woman who has no, or very little, female friends. I'm totally serious. Also, beware of women who only have female friends who are less attractive then they. Just trust me. If you find a woman who has a lot of female friends; they all love the hell out of her; some of them are more beautiful than she is; she is not intimidated by their beauty or any other woman's beauty, presence, or intelligence-then you've found a warm-hearted, secure, loving, sane, happy woman. Just believe me.

Damned if you Do, Damned if you Don't

So, I have enough experience with the whole thing to be able to postulate that it doesn't matter anymore if you sleep with a guy on the first outting/too early or if you don't. It is officially, I believe, the same result. No more rules, no more whatever. I have girlfriends who sleep with men they like too quickly and never hear from the guy again-or hear from them weeks later with a "hey, like, what's up?" However, I haven't slept with a boy in a very long time. I have, however, kissed some boys lately. And I've learned something: the ones that were not going to call you because you slept with them too soon-yeah, they were never going to call you anyway. They aren't going to call you if you wait, either. Because then it's too much effort, or then it means something. One or the other. I haven't figured this part out yet. I'm more liable to go with the too much effort box.
I've hung out with these guys who were interested in me, called me a bit, we went out, made out and then...POOF! Like the freakin' fairy godmother. Gone.

I would love to know what's going on inside their heads and how they come to these decisions. But, I have this feeling that we'd all be super disappointed if we knew. Like, that they wouldn't be thinkng anything. They'd just be like, "don't like her enough. Too much effort." Or even worse, they don't call again because you did something utterly human, like laughed funny or too much, or your toes weren't done that particular week or something. I mean, I've dropped guys for less, I must say. If mrn are bad spellers, I'm totally out of there. Which is the only upside of meeting men online. They have to immediately spell for you.

commitment issues

It's interesting, the male/female dynamic. Men don't have to commit or take a girl seriously because there are so many women out there who act like this is ok. So many of my women friends have acted like it's ok and like it doesn't bother them. But it's a bunch of b.s. Women are just made of different stuff. If we want to spend time with a guy and have sex with him, it's only a matter of time before we become attached. We act like this is a bad thing, because it's still a man's world out there, and we are still defining ourselves by these standards.
It IS kind of forced on us for the fact that if we do say that we don't like it that way, some guys-most guys-will just say, "see ya!" and find some other girl who is ok with their bullshit. Probably one of those girls who doesn't have a lot of girlfriends.
But part of me thinks, if a guy really likes a girl, then the reluctance to say, "she's my girlfriend" won't be there. And if it is, then hence that book, "maybe he's just not that into you."
I have such a skewed vision of this because I was with a guy for 6 years that was one of those serial monogomists who liked being with only one woman, didn't stray and liked to spend all of his time with me. I know this is unusual.
I know, some people don't even believe he was really like this-it's like telling someone the lock ness monster exists. They just look at you like, "you totally have no idea what's going on, you crazy girl." Men straying, cheating, lying and not committing is so prevalent that when it doesn't happen, we don't really believe our eyes. It's called collectively allowing this to happen. It's like global warming. If one of us stops using so much oil, it's not gonna do shit, but if we all did, then it would have an effect. But that's never gonna happen. It's the same with letting men trample our daisy boxes.
Some women say, that they really feel like the men feel about committment-that they can play the "it means nothing" game and be fine with that. But I don't buy it. Not for longer than a couple of months. Either they are not that into the guy or they have developed a titanium-clad defense mechanism in order to be able to play ball with the big boys. Or they are totally damaged. In any respect, the end question is, isn't this somehow tied in to the fact that fewer and fewer people are able to find lasting relationships? Hell fuckin' yeah.

what men don't know

The best thing about my ex was his sense of humor. He was a total dork, and very cute, and this is such a great combo. I wish guys knew that if they took themselves less seriously and didn't give a shit about what others thought and acted more silly, we'd totally fall for it. They just have no idea how endearing it really is. And how hard it is to find.
So, my friend J.A. has finally met a guy who makes her nervous. We share this issue-it's very difficult to find a guy who makes us nervous, who makes us tongue-tied and clumsy. I haven't met one since last year-that cute, adorable one whose heart was broken by his ex fiance.
What is it with guys that get their hearts broken, never to be fixed or able to love again? I don't get it. I've talked to women about this issue and we are all in agreement: you just don't find that many women whose hearts are broken beyond repair. We love just as much, but we are so much more willing to jump back on the horse and try again, even if it freaks us out. We are just more resilient. We really are like emotional supermen. We might be emotional-but then we act all crazy, boo hoo for a while, and then we are fine. Men, on the other hand, can walk through life searching for that ephemeral, nonexistent girl they lost those many years ago. Personally, I think it's a totaly copout.
And why is one girl the absolute embodiment of everything a guy could ever look for-and why do they believe that once they've found it in a girl (and that girl ends up breaking their heart) they can never find such love again? So then these men revert to eternal bachelorhood and non attachment, leaving confused and bitter women in their wake. Is one girl really worth your self denial of happiness for the rest of your life or several years, for some disneyland romantic notion about "the one and only?"

The other thing that men don't know (when they are first trying to get a girl to be interested) is that they don't ask us enough questions. This doesn't mean go crazy with the personal questions, but there is such a difference between a guy who is so obviously not interested in our lives because all he does is talk about himself at dinner, at the bar, etc., and a guy who asks us questions and remembers the answers later-because he was listening-or has a really good tape recorder in his pocket.
There is also something unnerving about a guy like this and he gets under our skin SO much quicker. If only men knew that the path of least resistance is simply the path of interested inquiry.
Oh well, I know none of you will ever learn.
The thing is that there are so many more cute, available girls in the world than there are guys, that you think you are doing just fine. Some women will even lie and tell you how fabulous you are, just to keep you coming back for more. When really, all of us girls are saying to each other, "there are no freakin' quality men in the world any more." Actually, I think the term we use for most of you is "losers." We are putting up with you as you are because there are no other choices at the supermarket. But it doesn't make you gourmet and it doesn't make you fabulous. Sometimes it makes you even tasteless and bland. Doesn't that bother some of you even a little? Maybe one of you even?
You know, this is the thing about a limited comodity market society. We will buy the crappy ass, fat-ridden bacon at the grocery store if there's nowhere else to go. But it doesn't mean we aren't dreaming abou that fabulous, organic, crunchy bacon to go with our egg-and we know exists somewhere out there!
Men don't have to commit or take a girl seriously because there are so many women out there who act like this is ok. It IS kind of forced on us for the fact that if we do say that we don't like it that way, some guys-most guys-will just say, "see ya!" and find some other girl who is ok with their bullshit.
But part of me thinks, if a guy really likes a girl, then the reluctance to say, "she's my girlfriend" won't be there. And if it is, then hence that book, "maybe he's just not that into you." I have such a skewed vision of this because I was with a guy for 6 years that was one of those serial monogomists who liked being with only one woman, didn't stray and liked to spend all of his time with me. I know this is unusual. It's so unusual that you probably don't believe me.

myspace afterthoughts

So, about a month ago, I entered the myspace.com world. It's like crack or something. Really unecessary but interesting and addictive. I've already had a myspace story; you know, the psychotic kind. Maybe I'll go into it at some later time.It's all too raw right now. However, I met this guy, D, who I have become friends with on myspace. He's come out with the posse a couple of times. (The "posse" is me and a few of my loosly knit girlfriends who party together on Friday nights). At first he was interested in and started kissing my one girlfriend, K, but she was a little weirded out about his "intensity." He touched her hair a lot. However, my other friend, J, niw thinks he's amazing. He is. He's outdoors-ey and smart, hippie-ish, but motivated. He's one of those rare and for real purists, not poser hippies, that walks the talk. In Santa Fe, you only run into the poser hippies. You know, the ones that preach spirituality but really just smoke dope all day, don't shower enough and wait tables. The ones that say they are "buddhist" on my space, and vaguely know that that has something to do with reincarnation and karma and not believing in Jesus-just to throw a little "rebelion against establishment" ingredient in to what it takes to "be a hippie."
Anyway, so the myspace phenomenon. Isn't it strange? Everyone having all these "Friends" on their personal pages? Having strange men ask you to "add them as a friend" and you look at the their friends page and there's nothing but 60 blond women on his friends' space. Yuck.
I thought Santa Fe was small, but even the myspace world is small. I was talking to this guy, F, on myspace, who is a nurse in town. My thoughts immediately shot to "Meet the Fockers" but that is another point entirely. So, I talk to F on myspace. F seems nice. He wants to have tea. However, in one of F's pictures, he has a wedding ring on. Now, I am sure that F is now divorced and this is an older picture. But still. Don't you have any pictures of yourself without your old wedding ring on, budster? I mean, if your caption says that you are on myspace for "friends, relationships and dating," don't you think the wedding ring picture is gonna hurt your game? So, that immediately made me think he wasn't that bright. THen, my friend, D, who I also met on myspace, tells me that he knows F. That they work together and F is "a bit odd."

What does "a bit odd" mean in manland? It makes me so curious I almost want to "have tea" with F so I know what the hell it means when one man says that another man is "a bit odd."
Anyway, he was another Gemini-total minus points. I swear, they are the only ones left to date in Santa Fe.
D and I were thinking of doing some dating gonzo journalism. This was his idea: HE can only go on dates with women using the traditional methods of attempting to find women to date-like the old-fashioned going up and asking her out method. And I can only do online dating. At the end of it, we note our expieriences and see who is more successful. I told him there were too many holes and no control group. I mean, being a woman dating is totally going to be different than a man dating. The desired end result is totally different, too. D would probably find a date successful if it ended in sex, even if nothing else ever came of it. I, on the other had, would find a date like that disaster. That would so be one of my "it happened for a reason" stories I would have to chalk up to one of my hundered "learning experiences." No, no. It would have to entail something completely different to measure the success of online dating versus traditional methods. If I come up with something brilliant, I'll keep you posted.

bloody good old times?

So, my ex, whom I dated for 6 years (he says 51/2-what's up with that?), is starting to date again. Well, according to me he's started to date for the first time since we broke up. According to him, not so much. Hence, my other entry about what constitutes "dating" someone. We still talk to each other a lot. I know, it's excessive, but when neither of you have really moved on, but you enjoy talking to each other greatly, it's almost like, why not?
Anyway, he lives in Birmingham now. It was a fabulous relationship, except for the fighting-which sounds pretty manic. It was the kind of fighting that makes you know, deep down, that it's a matter of time before you break up. One of those relationships where you know all your girlfriends are thinking the same thing. I personally think we all know when and if the train is gonna wreck, you know?
So, I ended it the only way I could and left D.C. for Santa Fe. But it's still hard. I guess, once you get to that point where the idea of living without someone forever is better than living with the bad parts of the relationship, then you have your answer.
We decided to remain friends after we broke up. We reunited in DC for a couple of days in March. Of course, we hooked up. Hey, if not for that, it would've been way too long for a girl to go without the "ooh la la."
So, for the first time since the break up, he kisses another girl, sleeps and snuggles with her, and tells me this all in a very nonchalant kind of way. I tried to be cool with it, but you know that feeling you get when you can feel the inside of your stomach burning-kind of like full-body heartburn? Yeah. Totally got that. And it then killed me even more how "whatever" he was about it.
Like as if it had changed nothing between us. He spends a lot of time with her, but she is "not his girlfriend." I swear, this is such a theme with guys in the world now. He says there can't be anything between them because "she is crazy." Well, from my experience, the fact that a girl is "crazy" has never stopped a guy from moving right along with her. Also, from my experience, "crazy" can be very generously applied to the female race by the men of the world. What is that?
HE says that he spoke of this new girl in his life nonchalantly to me because he didn't want to make a big deal out of it, because "it's not a big deal." He didn't see it in terms of the fact that kissing another girl for the first time since me had the defining effect of altering our relationship forever. He said that maybe he was trying to hurt me by speaking of it in such nonchalant terms. I think he's right. Why do we do that to each other? But, that's a woman's question. Men don't think, they just do.

The saddest part about a relationship ending is that all those things that were important, all those people that were a part of his life, so they were then a part of mine, all those memories of all the places we lived together and travelled together...poof. Ended. Past. Although, the plus side is that the family goes "poof," too. It got really quiet when I had to try to figure out who I was without the "we" that defined my life. That's when you realize how ephemeral it all is. J.A. was talking about this, too. She said she ran into her ex's sister the other day-she thought of her like her own sister-and his sister says, "J.A., I almost didn't recognize you!" It almost broke J's heart. And it's gone, just like that. As fast as that piece of Trader Joe's mud pie I just had.

Conversations about men

So,
I was telling my friend, K, that there are a few things (ha!) that I don't understand about men-like air guitar. The fact that a man will air guitar to a song on the radio, even if he doesn't play guitar at all. K says, "actually, I've experimented with air guitar and I found I'm kind of on the borderline of liking it and hating it." Am I the only one that doesn't air guitar?
I, of course, have been thinking about love, sex, and relationships a lot lately, since I have not gotten any "ooh la la" in months. "Ooh la la" is what my friend, J, calls sex. Ever since she ended her 6 month stint of no sex by hooking up with this adorable frenchman-who stays home all the time and smokes a lot of dope. But they watch sunsets together. It's all very French. But, then Frenchmn doesn't call J for two weeks. He says, "thees ees just the way I em, non?" He says that he just doesn't think about calling. He said in his last relationship a couple weeks would go by and he'd suddenly realize that he hadn't called his girlfriend in a while. What the hell do guys thing about all day then? You know what? They just don't! They just sit there and think about sports or sex and scratch their balls. I know this is generalization at its best, but it's also true for the most part.
I know that this is how men are, because my brother is like that. He'll be sitting there (watching sports) and get a phone call, look at his phone, roll his eyes, sometimes let out an "oh shit." I just don't ask anymore, because when I do, it's always about this girl who calls too much, that he likes to get "ooh la la" with, but he's forgotten to call her for the tenth time. It makes you never want to try to date again, you know?

I love him like hell but i can't believe my brother ended up being a strip club guy. He and his friend Chris love strip clubs. Not only do they love them but they hook up with the strippers. One day Chris is all pissed at my brother for taking this one stripper out to a really nice Italian restaurant in town. Chris is like, "what is he thinking spending all that money on a stripper?" Mickie D's is right around the corner!"
Another time we are at Bagelmania and Chris is checking out one of the Mexican waitresses. Chris is Hispanic. Chris says, "that's what i need! I need to find a Mexican girl because they cook, they clean, and they know when to shut the hell up." Yes, this is my brother's friend. I love him to death, but it makes me never want to date again.
Now, Chris is spending all his time with this new girl. She's really cute and sweet, 21 years old. They spend all their time together, but Chris still says that she is not his girlfriend. I guess I just don't undertand what the definition of "girlfriend" entails anymore. Isn't it just a title at that point? I mean, is being one's girlfriend a mental shift one must make, or are there certain charactersitics of being in a relationship: where if you check off 5 or 6 of them on the list, you are officially in a relationship whether you like it or not?
For example, if you check off 5 of the boxes below, shouldn't you be estopped from saying your not in a relationship? Things like:
1)spending all of your weekends with someone
2) assuming you are going to
3)paying for their meals.
4)fighting about flirting with other people
5)your parents know who she is and ask about her
6)your guy friends call her to "see what's up?"
7)If your guy friends can't get ahold of you, they call her.
8)when people see you out without her, they ask, where is she?
9)You say, "I'm in trouble. She told me the other day she loved me."
10) You ask your friends to help cover up the fact that you have been out with another girl.

I think that it's called a relationship at this point don't you? Maybe men just don't want to call it a relationship because that would mean that they were acting like dogs and mistreating her, and actually "cheating." Then it would actually be a real-ationship. Whereas, if they don't call it a relationship, they're just acting like their other bachelor friends.

Peter the Apostle

So, my girlfriend, K, is still going to College. As this is Santa Fe (meaning hippie, alternative, queer, odd, rebelious), she has some interesting people in her classes. The usual obvious hippie types, of course. But there is this one guy called Peter. We call him Peter the apostle because he is very religious, wants to be a priest, but still very obviously likes girls. He especially likes one of K's friends, Ir. (the one mentioned previously who becomes a lesbian when she drinks) who was also in their religion class. Peter would always ask Ir. out to tea in his dorm room. After weeks of refusing to tea with Peter the Apostle, Ir. finally said yes just to see what Peter the Apostle's room was like. She gets there and he has a Jesus wall-an entire wall dedicated to our Savior-replete with pictures, writings and prayers. I told K that that is probably the most interesting thing to see on campus and that they should make it part of the campus tour. Then Peter pours her some tea and tried to kiss her. She says she has to leave. Then before their next class he brings her flowers. I told her that she should have told him that he should save those flowers for God.
Is Peter confused? Yes. Should Peter be a priest? I don't know. He sounds like priest material to me. I guess he's just trying to get some in before the big vow swearing dealio. Did I mention he also crosses himself in front of the television when something heathenous comes on-like Harry Potter?