The Winner Parade: Entry 3

One of the most important experiences in a young girl’s transition from mopey tortured adolescent to cynical world weary young adult is the international hook up. For my own lesson in boys will be boys the world round I choose a rough around the edges Aussie chap who had impressive biceps, a knickers wetting accent and a girlfriend far away in Michigan. A note on the girlfriend: I suppose it could be claimed that I am a naughty naughty whore for hooking up with a boy who was already spoken for but I generally believe that a) significant others who live over 50 miles away only count if there has been some sort of formal legal commitment; and b) it is not my job to stop some randy young boy from cheating on his girlfriend, especially if he’s hot; also, c) I was 20.

This “physical acquaintance experience” (to call it a relationship would be a huge stretch) was so brief and un-Brianna-like that I was hesitant to include it in the parade. Unlike previous Winner Parade entries International Hook Up (IHU) didn’t do anything horrible like cheat on me or leave the country without tell me so it seems slightly unfair to force him to follow such class acts. But IHU did tow a glorious stupidity float through about 20mins of the parade and I really need blog fodder so here he is, in all his hunky dopey Aussie glory.

International Hook Up is probably the only gentleman in my past that I “dated” with no intention of forming a relationship. Living temporarily in a foreign country is great for flights of whimsy such as this – I would be gone in 5 months and so it seemed perfectly ok, for perhaps the first and last time in my life, to hook up with a boy only because he was cute and (relatively) available. While in Perth I lived in international student housing which made up of 35% Pacific Islanders and Africans studying hard for a better life, 20% Aussies from out in the bush hoping to escape the fate of marrying a sheep and 45% Americans and Europeans looking for the best place to score booze and some Aussie ass. This atmosphere allowed me to shrug off the trappings of serious, conservative sweet young thing and temporarily don the slutty slutty frills of a girl totally willing KISS BOYS SHE HARDLY KNOWS! (when I go slutty I go… only slightly of less conservative than Mother Teresa).

I met International Hook Up on my second or third day in the land down under and thought him cute but honestly his looks were seriously over shadowed by his South African roommate who was a model and, predictably, gay. I didn’t “get to know” (*nudgenudgewinkwink*) IHU until about a month into my stay when we shared a cab home from a night club. We went to his apartment under the guise of watching some high quality late night/early morning Aussie TV (meaning European music videos) but, of course, quickly got to the making out (nothing sets the mood like ABBA). I’ve blocked out much of my embarrassing hook up history so I do not honestly remember how many time I “hung out” with IHU but sometime a week or so before our friendship began I heard rumors of his having spent some quality time prior to my arrival in Perth with a very unappealing girl named Fiona and it could not have been more than 2 or 3 weeks after we hooked up that he met another girl, who had it much worse than I in the falling hard for a silly boy department. IHU was a bit of a slut.

One evening while perched on the edge of his bed trying to hold my legs up just enough so that my thighs looked as thin as possible beneath the hem of my dress (Aside: probably the best thigh exercise in the world, this move requires one to hold her thighs suspended just slightly in midair so that the extra fat hangs down thus creating the illusion of thighs at least 15% smaller than the reality – it’s good for your abs too. Fake it til you make it in action.) I smiled and flipped my hair as International Hook Up showed me picture after picture of girls he’d dated or thought hot, many of these were featured in a swim suit calendar which he removed from the wall. This was, of course, slightly concerning, as I had apparently chosen to hook up with a complete idiot. A tip for my male readers: The personal tour of your gallery of masturbatory fantasies is ill-advised until at least date 5. Even more troubling, all of the girls -- high school girlfriend, Miss Michigan, Bikini clad model #4 -- looked strangely similar (though it goes without saying that Mrs. Bikini probably didn’t need to pull the thigh slimming illusion): cute, short, white, blue eyes, shoulder length curly blonde hair. He went on to explain how much he loved blond curly hair which made me feel weirdly fetishized – this was much less fun than I had hoped, so much for my fulfilling career as a sex symbol. It became even weirder when I got to thinking about how IHU looked – Mr. Blond Curly himself….

Sadly, International Hook Up leaves no internet trail – I have to assume that he remains as computer illiterate as the day I met him, which is sad as the internet offers an easy way to find millions of pictures of bikini-clad girls with blond curly hair – he’s really missing out. I heard a rumor that he had wed Miss Michigan through my Australian Grapevine but as my only gossip source on this vine (Hi Courtney!) has since moved to the UK so I can’t really call the information reliable. Since IHU did nothing to wrong me, and since I had very low expectation for him anyway I wish him all the best. I hope that he is a pearl farmer (he was majoring in aquaculture) somewhere in AU happily not married to some girl he spent at least a year cheating on. I hope he has expanded his girl buffet to include women that do not look vaguely related to him. And of course, as always, I hope that on nights when he switches on the Telly and is greeted by the cast of Scrubs or Judge Judy or some other American accent he thinks fondly of this curly blond haired girl and pines away for hours.