The Winner Parade: Entry 1

Tuesday night I was out with some girlfriends (for all you can eat mussels and half price drinks at Essex which I highly recommend) where I was asked to tell a few of the boy disaster stories from my past. My friends might just be easily entertained but through the wall of giggles they all insisted that I should begin capturing some of these stories on my blog. I’m not entirely sure how to react to the knowledge that my love life has been so comically awful as to amuse and delight those around me. I’d like to think that I just spin a good yarn but I can’t deny that most of the boys I’ve loved before do constitute a long glorious winner’s parade. I made up the term “winner parade” and expect to see it added to the Oxford English any day now.

Winner Parade [win-er puh-reyd]
-- noun
a continual passing by of people all of whom show some outward sign of a mental and/or physical inability to behave in the normal socially acceptable fashion expected for their age and/or stature. In most cases the parade members possess a "Monet-like" quality as defined in the movie Clueless, "From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess."

Before I begin the process of using my past loves as fodder for this site I just want to reiterate two things:

1. I seriously really liked all of these guys. They were mostly well intentioned sweet boys who could perhaps use a slap with the glove of maturity.
2. Every one of these encounters seemed like a good idea at the time. When it comes to choosing boys to date I probably should no longer be trusted to pick the good ideas from the ticking manure bombs.

Ok, conscious clear! Let's go!

Shortly after graduating from college and moving to San Francisco I met a nice young man on the internet. Ironically I have now used this same tool to locate and spy on him (one stop shopping people.). I have no shame. Let’s call this boy Little Tortured Bunny (LTB). In LTB’s dating profile he claimed a love for Ani Difranco and yet didn’t seem gay so I was immediately sold. We did a decent amount of email fawning over one another before the big meet and greet which for some reason (as usual stupidity seems most likely) we invited multiple friends to tag along on. We went to an Asian restaurant of some sort where you had to sit on the floor. My only other memorable recollection from that evening was that his best friend was only willing to consume white or orange food items (the list of acceptable nourishment was actually restricted by much more than just color palette and essentially boiled down to white carbohydrates, bananas and cheddar cheese). Anyway, LTB seemed charming and effervescent, very in love with life and himself (yeah, I know, red flag) and was cute enough that I couldn’t see any reason not to fantasize about kissing him. And I did and then we did and thus began a couple of months of googly eyes and hand holding.

There were many slightly odd things about LTB but I managed to convince myself that most of these were simply charming quirks. He got so excited about his thoughts that he often interrupted other people. He was choosing to go by his slightly affected (and I suspect made up) middle name for no apparent reason. He had daddy issues that he made sound very grand but refused to actually discuss. He was less than over his ex girlfriend who he apparently had been engaged to – but in one of those pretend sounding “we’re 23 and we don’t need a ring!” affairs that apparently crashed and burned in one fireball of drama involving soap opera like plot devises. One night, only a month into our relationship he choose watching Toy Story over making out with me. The most interesting mystery was his job. It was 2000 and he worked at one of the larger internet companies making bank for all I could tell. I was a programmer at the time and perfectly capable of conversing on geeky subjects like java script, flash and D&D and yet every time I asked him about his job I got an evasive “you know I work for [big web company]” sort of answer. One day I got pushy and insisted on him revealing just what it was he did every day from 11-7:30.

Brianna: I’m interested in knowing more about you. I’m a programmer; I’m going to understand what your job is.

LTB: Ok... You know my friend [Weird but Freakily Smart Guy]?

Brianna: yes, sort of…

LTB: Ok well WFSG wrote this piece of software while we were in college

Brianna: uhhuh

LTB: And one day [big web company] called up WFSG and offered to buy the software and give him and “his people” jobs

Brianna: uh…huh...

LTB: So WFSG told [big web company] that I was one of his people and then they offered to move me to San Francisco and give me an insane amount of stock and a job

Brianna: ok…

LTB: So now I hang out at with WFSG!

Brianna: so you write code?

LTB: oh no… I’m just WFSG’s friend… sometimes I do a little QA…

And people wonder why the bubble burst. I could make fun of the guy but this is pretty much my dream – I wish one of my friends would get rich and invite me on a nice coattail ride. Aside: WFSG went out one day and bought a De Lorean (the car from Back to the Future) and he brought it by so we could see it which was awesome (now I’m trying to figure out why I didn’t throw myself at WFSG…). Anyway, turned out LTB had a lot of disposable income, which was nice.

So we dated, it was fun, whatever. I was going to a family reunion for a long weekend and he was having a friend visit while I was gone. Said friend was a girl who he used to hook up with. (See where this is going?). I am a trusting naïve idiot so I recommended tons of fun things that he could do with her in San Francisco and wished him an awesome weekend of catching up before boarding my flight to family fun time. Strangely they didn't seem to take me up on any of my activity recommendation having apparently made plans of their own. When I got back I only needed one look at him to confirm that he’d slept with this other girl. What an idiot. He did a lot of anguished drama filled apologizing and I rolled my eyes and sighed and thought about how disappointing people can be. So we mostly broke up except we had tickets to Rent and decided to go together as friends (as a trusting naïve idiot I was of course not angry about him cheating on me – let’s hear it for self esteem.). The boy was obviously feeling a bit guilty about being a huge dick so he offered to take me out to dinner at this fancy French place pre-show (obviously I had no objections). We got the 9 course tasting menu with wine pairing. The first 4 courses were amazing (one of which was this fresh pea soup with mint that my mouth still waters over) and if the restaurant had any smarts the last 5 courses were hamburger helper cause after 5 glasses of wine (we got one free starter glass when we arrived) I had no active taste buds left anyway. Half way through dinner this conversation ensued:

Brianna: Do you know where the ladies room is?

LTB: Yeah, down the hall behind you and turn right. But there’s a guy.

Brianna: In the ladies room? Like one of those guys that gives you towels?

LTB: No, behind you.

Brianna: Right now?

LTB: Yeah, he’s going to pull out your chair

Brianna: He’s standing there listening to this conversation right now?

LTB: yeah.

So I stifled my giggles and stood – voila! The chair just eased back without any effort from me. If you’re really lazy, this is the life. This guy stood by the table the entire time I was in the bathroom waiting for my return. How awkward must that have been for LTB? Sitting there, drunk, staring at the chair puller guy… I would have spent the entire time giggling.

I’m a big believer in going dutch but in my role as the wronged woman I made no attempt to reach for the check at the end of this meal – I did, however, take a peek – $400+ (Is this street price for cheating on a girl or was I ripped off?).

LTB all but disappeared from my life shortly thereafter – I’d like to say I threw him out but really he just sulked away and I beat myself up for not being good enough to inspire fidelity. But eventually I moved on…except… I really like spying on people. It’s not related to pining, and it’s not even malicious, I just like knowing what becomes of people who used to be important in my life. So recently I refound LTBs blog (actually blogS). I honestly had no intention of using information to boost my ego but man… he made it awfully easy. Turns out I am really awesome. Not only is the guy apparently in love with some girl who lives like 1000 miles away and who he met on a massively multiplayer game and who has a boyfriend but he doesn’t have the good sense not to whine about it for PAGES on a public blog. Perhaps this is just another post cheating gift to me – maybe in reality he’s happily married to some sexy scientist and working on his fifth novel. Maybe he just made up the blog stuff to make me feel good. Maybe he still feels so guilty that he went out and gained 30lbs just so one day when I stumbled on his flickr page I could think, “I cried for months over HIM? Silly girl.”