Two Stories About Boys: One Salty, One Sweet. And One Plea for Help

I really don’t want this to become a boy blog, but it is a blog about my life, and that’s the topic right now. I’m sure we’ll shift into something more stimulating like politics or travel soon.

Oh, but speaking of travel, I am backdating this blog and finishing out the Guatemala entries (and then the Asia entries). You can find the first Guatemala stories here. The most recent one is here. Now, onward (to sexy).

Chapter One: Salty

(Some) Men Will Lie Over Anything

This story is from Vegas circa 2007? 2008? Whenever I was thigh-deep in that whole SMOS initiative. I never posted this story because a)those SMOS blog stories were getting out of control and b)that boy did (and may still, who knows?) read this blog. In fact, I’m probably about to receive an injunction because this entry is just too personally identifiable. Bite me.

You may remember that SMOS was supposed to stand for “Six Months of Single” (which rapidly is accelerating towards six years, depending on what you count as a boyfriend). What it also ended up standing for, if we’re keeping it real, was “Seriously Maximizing Opportunities (for) Sex.” See how I did that? And yes, I did that.

It was during my SMOS era that I briefly dated Newsman Joe. As you may have figured out from my clever identity-concealing pseudonym, he worked as a news paper reporter. Joe was divorced with a young kid, had unfulfilled dreams of writing the next Great American Novel, drove a very practical car, preferred beer to vodka, and was kind of all over the place really. Basically nothing at all like what I’m looking for. But we would have these great dates. Like, awesome dates in smoky, dive, local Vegas bars where we would have conversations like this:

Me

And then, blah blah blah blah, and then he shot himself. And then, blah, blah, blah, blah, when we broke up I totally found a bunch of fat chick porn hidden under the bed.

Newsman Joe

So, by this age, you really just assume that something must be fucked up and totally defective about any guy who’s even into you a little bit, right?

I mean, WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO GO OUT ON THESE DATES? And no, if you know me at all, you know that I am not joking when I say that.

Also, according to shamus, Newsman Joe was hot. I don’t know. I guess. I was into him. In fairness, shamus made that statement after a yard-long frozen margarita in one-hundred-and-fifteen degree heat.

But the “into each other” is where the problem formed. Because Newsman Joe hated condoms. But I loved condoms, because I was in the middle of SMOS. We would have these discussions.

Me

Go put a condom on. Seriously.

Him

Jooooooocelyn.

Me

I’m sleeping with other people. Not just you.

Him

But I’M NOT.

Me

I don’t care. And I don’t’ care if you do, by the way. We are not exclusive. And that means that you can sleep with whomever you like. And also that you need to wear a condom, always, with me.

And then I would pout and refuse to put out without a condom. This argument happened every date.

Every.Date.

So, then I went out of town for three weeks to go on an African safari with Lisa. And that was awesome. Right before I left, Newsman Joe’s laptop broke. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but newspaper reporters aren’t known for their robust stores of extra cash, especially when they’re divorced parents. Since I was going to be out of town for three weeks and only taking my primary laptop with me, I said, “Do you want to just use my back-up Mac while I’m gone? That will buy you three weeks before you have to buy a new computer.”

Because I am nice. And generous. Until the moment when I am not.  

So I go out of town. He uses my laptop. Time passes. I return. I stop by to get the laptop. We argue yet again about the condom. Things are normal. I go home.

Stop me if you can see this coming.

I don’t know if you know this or not, either, but old-school newspaper reporters are also not known for their computer savvy nature, and Newsman Joe has left himself logged into his gmail account. I KNOW, right? The right thing to do is to log him out immediately and not read it. Seriously though, would you? And of course I read it. And of course HE IS SLEEPING WITH HALF OF VEGAS.

Let’s review this. I am already sleeping with you. You are getting the milk for free, and not only are you not being asked to buy the cow, but it has been made clear that the cow is at best a rental. And possibly like a Netflix rental that you can’t ever get your hands on again once you return it. And not only am I not asking anything from you, I have FLAT OUT SAID TO YOU that I DO NOT CARE how many people you are sleeping with. I am the PERFECT DATE in this scenario.

AND YOU STILL NEED TO LIE TO ME OVER SOMETHING AS STUPID AS A CONDOM?

Are you speechless yet? Because, trust me, I was not speechless. I went batshit. It was ugly. Like, scary ugly.  Like “I will drive to your house and you should not be there when I arrive” ugly. And then … listen to the balls that Newsman Joe has.

Apparently while he had my laptop, he did some intense personal writing about his father that he hoped to translate into his Great American Novel. And he forgot to save it and remove it from my laptop or email it to himself. So a week later he has the balls to call me with the results of the STD test he’s now taken (!) and also ask me if I’ll email him his writing, because it’s very important to him.

No, I am not emailing your Great American Novel to you. Jesus. But I appreciate the complete lack of awareness of personal etiquette that you had in order to ask me this.

For the next year or so, Newsman Joe would text me every month or so. Basically this continued until I moved to Canada and changed my number. He’d text sweet things, like:

“I hope you are well.”

“Wish you would let me back into your life.”

Or, my personal favorite…

“Thinking of you.”

Ah, yes, Newsman Joe. I think of you often, too. Most frequently when beginning a discussion with a sentence that sounds like this, “I mean, there are great guys out there. But don’t underestimate what a guy will do to make his penis happy. Let me tell you about this guy in Vegas…”

Chapter Two: Sweet

But Then There Are Boys Like This…

This story is from my Junior year of college at IU (NUMBER 12 IN THE NATION, BABY). It happened in linguistics class with Professor Hunstman (whom I loved). I sat in the middle of the room. My friend Leslie sat catty corner in front of me, and this cute boy who lived in Reed who I think was named Tony sat behind me. He was so sweet. He had Hipster glasses before Hipster glasses were cool or okay to have. He brought me vending machine treats to class.

Tony and I had a game that we would play before class started where we would quote impossibly Indie lyrics and see if we could guess the band. This was during my brief period of wanting to be cooler than you by knowing bands that you didn’t know. Later, I would realize that I didn’t really even like any of those bands. But that’s not the point. The point is that we had this game we would play every day before class where we’d try to match bands with lyrics.

Also, do the math, that Gin Blossoms “Whole New Miserable Experience” album was HUGE about this time.

So I roll into class one day, and I turn to Tony, and he says, “We could drive around all night. Let the cops chase us around.”

And I say, “Oh. Too easy, loser. That’s the Gin Blossoms.”

And he says, “No, listen to what I’m saying, ‘We could drive around all night. Let the cops chase us around.’”

And I say, “No. I know. It’s the Gin Blossoms. I own the album.”

And he, to his credit, gives it one more try. “I’m saying that we could drive around all night. Let the cops chase us around.”

And then class starts. And I turn around while giving him a confused, “DUDE. It’s the GIN BLOSSOMS look.” I do remember his sad, crushed, little face.

But I’ll be honest with you, I can be beyond retarded about knowing if a guy is into me or not unless they are professing it in the most dickish way possible. So I literally did not get it at all until, on the way out of class, Leslie was like, “Hey, Jocelyn, super dork, he was totally trying to be cute and romantic and ask you out. He knows you listen to that album all the time. You’re such a dork.”

And I said, wait for it…

“Oh my god. I would never date him. He’s SO totally not my type.”

You can see where we’re headed with Chapter Three, I’m guessing.

Chapter Three: A Plea

Wanna Fix Me?

Let me preface this by saying that every instance that I am about to talk about is non-inclusive of Slap. Slap is not broken (I mean, mostly J ), and the reason that relationship lasted as long as it did is because he is wonderfully not broken. We just made some bad decisions that later came back to haunt us (like, uh, working together). The following applies to everything before and pretty much everything after.

Here is what we know about me. I only can be attracted to you if you are hopelessly broken. If you put me in a room of 100 men, I will magnet in on the one who is emotionally and mentally unavailable and completely broken so fast it’s like a super power (without the tights and/or unitard – but with some shiny wristbands or face paint). You may not even be presenting yourself as broken. You may look like you are smart, put together, successful, and ready to commit. But I’ll know. I’ll sense it. I’m intuitive and gypsy-like in that way. Are you significantly damaged goods from being fat as a child? DATE ME. A bad relationship with an ex (or many exes)? I WANT TO BE YOUR REBOUND. Mildly abusive and overly demanding parents? LET’S GET IT ON.*

I may fool you, me, and my friends for a while by saying things like, “He’s so NORMAL by my standards, with his job, and his responsibilities, and his mild manner, and his ability to communicate.” I’ll say that. You may even present that outwardly. But trust me, I’ve already picked up on something small that you’ve said or something that didn’t add up that let’s me know that you.are.broken.

There are lots of totally broken men out there, and I will habitually pass up the sweet boys like Tony from Reed in favor of the broken boys who need to lie even when they’re already getting what they want like Newsman Joe.

Broken men of Pittsburgh, be warned. I am here, and I am looking for you and your deficiencies. I will date you just long enough to get emotionally invested in the parts of you that are amazing, and then I will come crashing down when the broken, messed up part of you (that, honestly, at our age you have no excuse for having because you’ve had more than enough time to acquire the tools to deal with it) suddenly ruins everything. Come to me! Find me! You are my people.

The following got said this week.

Me to Ferris

I’m thinking of going out with this guy (pulls up OKC profile).

Ferris

Can I have veto power on that one, please?

And then there was this exchange on Facebook.

Glen

There's an idea, though. You can post a "boyfriend" job and let your most trusted adviser hire the most qualified candidate, or at least hand over the top 5 resumes for your approval.

A-Train

I will handle Glen's idea. Fun for all! ("All" meaning me, naturally)

And while that’s all “Ha, ha, funny,” is it really such a bad idea? I mean, we know this: I will find you if you are broken. You can try to fool me, but I only want you if I can sense that you’re broken. And I don’t want to necessarily joke about how we should handle dating like HR, but would it really be so wrong for me to have a recruitment and screening team? I mean, people hire matchmakers, right? Would it be so wrong for me to hire my friends to find a partner for me? One who is not epically damaged and unable to cope with the world? Or emotionally unavailable? Or a pathological liar?

And then, no matter how not attracted I am to them, require that I stick it out for performance review purposes?

I’m saying this is a good idea. Because I don’t think “Stop dating broken douchebags” is appropriate door poster fodder. But I do think that my friends are awesome and want the best for me.

Too much?

Perhaps.

Read about Guatemala. It’s much more functional.

*What you are saying right now is this, “Jocelyn, perhaps you’re manifesting this yourself. I mean, you just pretty much devoted an entire blog entry to the idea that you can only be attracted to broken men. Maybe you’re putting that out there and saying ‘This is who I am’ and as a result that’s what you’re getting back.” And maybe you’re right, but can I just tell you how HARD I’ve been working not to do that. Can I tell you how many men I DID NOT go out with while searching for somebody who seemed to be at least 84% together? Maybe I am manifesting, but let’s at least agree that I’m really trying not to. Fair?

I wanna be on your boyfriend/HR committee!