The Winner Parade Entry 6: Behind the Scenes on My Crazy Blind Date

So remember back when I was famous for being perpetually single and so frustrated with the ridiculous system that we call courtship (and by "we" I mean old people like myself; I believe the kidz call it "Laying the Jezzy on Some Hos")? Good times. Oh wait, actually... BAD TIMES.

For those of you who were not here a year ago and who have not spent your weekends memorizing my archives: Firstly: FOR SHAME. Secondly: A refresher. So I discovered Crazy Blind Date back when I needed two things: 1. Some lovin' and 2. Some blog fodder. I went on one date that was, in the end, neither Blind (since he read my blog predate) nor Crazy (since he was a pretty normal dude) and then I wrote a brillant blog post about it. This post was soon found by the owners of the dating service which is how I became the one woman spokesperson for dating random dudes. Shortly thereafter I got an email from the site founder asking me to go on another date which would be filmed by The Mike and Juliet Morning Show. More chances at free loving and blogging: SWEET. This post is the public face of that little adventure and THIS POST (the one you're reading right now) is the behind the scenes sweet juicey meat of the same experience.

So for the sake of faux anonymity let's call my copilot in Crazy Blind Dating for TV Mr. Slick because even though I'm 98% sure he does not read this blog (and 53% sure that he cannot read at all) and 100% sure that you could go back to the first post about our date and get his name I'd like to keep pretending that I am not a horrible person willing to publically throw former paramores under the bus in exchange for a brief respite from my writter's block.

Ok, so I went on the filmed date with Mr. Slick and it was fine I guess. He was cute, much cuter than many of the guys I date BUT I don't even like cute. Or, not that kind of cute. I like floppy hair over lots of gel, I like ironic tshirts over starched collars, I like eye rolling over googly eyes. Slick was The Bachelor and I was looking for... someone who would not be considered muscle-y enough for reality TV. He was also very eager, so much so that he managed to insert himself into my post date plans by tagging along to the Roller Derby even though it meant posing as press to get around the sold out tickets situation. When I mentioned to a friend the possibility of getting together for a board game night he again tried to force his way in, even insisting that we should play games TOMORROW. On face value this seems like it should be flattering he must really like me to be trying so hard to hang out but really how could he like me so much after 2 hours of hanging out half of which was on camera and therefore totally not real? And even if he *did* like me that much shouldn't he know better than to be so obvious about it -- have some damn shame/pride. Anyway I managed to not see him again until we were both sequestered in the Green Room with Mike and Juliet (this was a feat, the boy texted me AND called me multiple times -- keep in mind that the time between date and TV appearance was about 36 hours.).

And now a brief pause for a moral lesson, listen up kiddies. I have often in dating made the "oh give him another chance" mistake. I mostly blame my friends (oh, and my self esteem issues). you see when you're single and not so thrilled with it and friends with a lot of married ladies who want nothing more then to live vicariously through your (theoretically) exciting single life it goes something like this:

Friend Who is Sick of My Whining: How was your date?
Me: ehhhh ok i guess.
FWiSoMW: Was he cute?
Me: Sure
FWiSoMW: Did he do anything weird?
Me: Well... I dunno, I guess not.
FWiSoMW: Give him another chance!
Me: But... not funny... and.... kind of boring....
FWiSoMW: He was nervous! And shy! ANOTHER CHANCE!

And so a second date, and sometimes a third and I never get any more into it and the dumping is even more painful than it might have been. I'm not usually one to argue for intuition over facts but dating is a unique little beastie and one should probably just go with her gut. Lesson over.

But back to Slick and our date #2 which I agreed to because "but you were on TV! That didn't count! He's cute!" We went to a wine bar which is how I ended up at his apartment at 3am. Well, that and the promise of meeting his dog -- I'm a sucker for dogs. The dog was nowhere near the coolest thing in his apartment. He lived in a small studio in the East Village which would have been ho hum if it weren't for the HANGING BED. He (or, I suspect, one of his smarter friends) had rigged up a pulley system for the bed that allowed you to push the entire thing up flush with the ceiling or pull it down to dangle in the middle of the living room for sleeping. He even had counter weight book shelves! Frankly, this changed everything. I mean, sure, he was kind of boring and weirdly eager and not too bright but when would I get another chance to experience the wonder of a hanging bed? And wasn't the existence of the hanging bed a sign that deep down under the sweater vest and all of that hair gel he was probably a totally cool guy? I managed to resist slutting it out for the bed that night but things got even worse when I started telling people about the bed. My Settlers of Catan buddies at work put it best, "Well, you pretty much have to go out with this guy like 12 more times cause after 5 dates you can probably bring your girl friends by his place but you'd have to be pretty serious to get away with inviting over a bunch of random nerdy dudes from your office and WE TOTALLY NEED TO SEE THIS BED."

And so... a third date. We met for coffee, mostly because I couldn't imagine spending more than an hour with this dude without falling asleep. Mid coffee drinking he started to tell me a story about his recent bar tending gig. Apparently one of his coworkers was kind of annoying and so one day during the time when the supposed jerk was in charge of the till Slick took a bunch of money out of the cash register and put it into his pocket. And then jerk guy got fired for losing/stealing the money! and Slick got to keep the cash! HILARIOUS, right? No. Who shares stories about that funny time when they stole some money? Crazy, boring, not so smart guys who looks ok on the outside but turn out to be not worthy of a date 4 no matter how cool their bed might be. And so me and the swinging bed were never to meet again because while I might sacrifice my virtue for the sake of playing Jane and Tarzan in a swinging boudoir I could not ignore the fact that Tarzan was a baboon.

Winner Parade Entry 5: Fight! Fight! Fight!

After some initial eye rolling I have come to love Facebook -- this is mostly due to the iphone application which allows me to while away the minutes I spend waiting for late trains stalking my friends. The great thing to hate about facebook is not how easy it makes for other to stalk me since I generally encourage all citizens of the internet to embrace the fascinating reality that is Brianna but how difficult it is to avoid people whose 5 times a day updates on their latest crush, sandwich topping or bowel movement has you threatening to swear off the internet all together. So I am coy when it comes to approving friend requests because I hate being left with a news feed full of minutia about people I didn't like in person, much less in digital. I am also coy when it comes to hitting "Ignore" because I am a huge wimp who hates to digitally offend people even when they're people I don't much care for. However there are some for whom ignoring is all too sweet.

I received a friend request this morning from someone I was hoping I did not know. In his profile picture he is wearing a prison uniform. I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt that this is a Halloween costume and not his mandated wardrobe. His chosen hair style seems a bit harder to explain away. His head is shaved and the part of it that is not disfigured with an unsightly mole (one imagines he was surprised to pull the razor away and find that little genetic gift) is covered with a huge (likely fake) tribal tattoo. I have to admit that were any of my friends to go the extra Halloween mile and pull out the Bic I would think they were awesome. But the difference between all of my friends and this guy is that my friends actually are awesome.

Sadly, I do know this boy -- much more intimately than I care to admit. Be glad I sometimes think of this blog as a confessional. This is a boy I once had the mental retardation to agree to making out with during my senior year of college. This is probably the single most embarrassing hook up in a somewhat lengthy 800 car pile-up of bad dating decisions. I met him at a Frat party (I know.). Obviously I was drunk-ish. Later that night, in a the most poorly executed attempt to get in my pants ever, he told me how he and his brothers were really into "fighting." Not boxing or even "ultimate fighting" which might even be a real sport but just, "fighting". This was listed as a sort of hobby like "ya, my bros and I like to get together on Sundays for a rowdy game of monopoly followed by baking bread and gossiping all night!" Except with fewer descriptive words, "I like to fight." At this point I knew two things 1. I would have to devote the rest of the year to avoiding eye contact in the lunch line and 2. We better do some more kissing before he starts jabbering again and makes things even worse. Luckily, this young man seemed to sense that we just weren't made for each other ("Yeah, I met this girl last night, she mentioned that she likes to eat ice cream. Like that's hobby! I told her to check out fighting. Anyway, total loser.") until one night at least 2 months later when he called me at 3am to see if I wanted to "hang out." I'm not sure why one would even bother with a euphemism for "get it on" during such an obvious booty call -- unless he was actually calling looking for some hard core fightin' action. Either way I giggled and hung up.

While its tempting to approve his friend request in hopes of receiving hilarious status updates about fighting ("Kick to the groin! I am HE MAN!!!") I cannot risk this dude tracking me down for kissing. Or fighting, "Ignore."

The Winner Parade: Entry 4

A few months after moving to the bay area when I was a bit lonely living on my own for the first time and spending all of my time either at my job programming graphics for slot machines in an office where no one turned on the lights or visiting the all women hippy dippy gym where I attended water aerobics at least three times a week. One of my few friends in the area was Monica, the evening receptionist at the gym who had occasionally invited me out with a few of her friends. It was on one of these outings (I believe at Halloween when I was dressed as Raggedy Anne and so, obviously looking super hot) that I met The Boy With Awful Taste. He seemed like a nice enough guy, not really my type but fun to hang out with. We hadn’t flirted or even talked much so I was surprised when a few days later Monica asked if I’d consider going out on a date with TBWAT. Having very few friends or plans I figured what the hell and told her to have him call me.

In my memory of the date that followed I do not recall knowing exactly what show I was being taken to see but I admit that this is likely due to some postdate self esteem survival instinct. I certainly knew the show’s venue and date and time and I knew how to use the internet so I must have known that at 22 on my first post-college date I was being taken to Disney on Ice. Now maybe lots of young girls are wooed by the dewy reflection beaming off of Micky’s skates, maybe the magic of fog machines and pirouettes has sparked many a romance but my feelings about ice dancing caricatures of cartoon characters were more gag-y than swoon-y. Selective amnesia aside it is obvious that my gag reflex has been so tamed that when faced with the decision between another Saturday night curled up with the internet and an actual date I was fully convinced that I could keep my lunch down through a 2 hour skating spectacular.

The date started its skydive into a ravine filled with barbed wire when we arrived at the San Jose HP Pavilion and TBWAT had to stop at the ticket booth, not to pick up our tickets to ice skating cartoonary, but to grab his tickets for a future event…. WWF wrestling. He was super excited about seeing some live action man on man sparring and I have to applaud anyone with a strong enough sense of self to resist backpedaling when his date is so clearly unable to hide her general disgust whiling thinking, “Who knew that there was a Disney/WWF combo demographic?”

The show finally began and the hordes of tots that surrounded me were lulled into silence by the jazz hands and figure eights of Woody and Buzz Light Year (note #1 to single guys: if you wanna get laid avoid date venues where the child to adult ratio is greater than 1:2). At intermission TBWAT offered to procure us some Disney themed snakage and beverages (note #2 to single guys: dates, like all things, are always better with booze so do not take your date to a place that refuses to serve cocktails). He returned with all he promised and more… while foraging for sustenance TBWAT had bought me a gift: a pink wand that when shaken lit up and played twinkling sound. Despite my now ample experience with Toy Story (is this a sign?) I cannot identify which character was likely to carry the wand. I also cannot provide a picture because I regifted the thing to an 8 year old neighbor girl within 1 month of receiving it, but for that night I had to put on my best 22 year old princess face and ohh and aww over this very generous gift, thank god for my secret BA in Theatre Arts. And so, wand in hand, I spent act two trying in vein to cast spell after spell, “Bippity! Toy Story On Ice, become a Ryan Adams concert!” “Boppity! Diet Coke become a margarita!”, “Boo! TBWAT, turn into Jack White!”

Post kiddie ice capades TBWAT proposed we grab some real food and, because it is impossible to say no to a guy who bought you a wand, I agreed. On our way to his second venue of choice (a diner with some sort of dimly lit lounge/strip club hiding behind a curtain near the bathrooms) his phone rang and at the end of his 10 minute conversation he invited the caller to join us for diner (note #3 for single guys: do not invite your friends to join you on your date). I was mostly ok with this plan (not that I was asked) since the addition of a third party seemed a sure sign that he was not planning on romancing up the evening. I figured the drive from the ice spectacular to the diner would serve as the necessary transition between “possible couple” and “just friends.” When we arrived at the diner I was doubly glad to be a single woman because our dinner companion was hot! That’s right folks – Winner Parade Four is a twofer!

Hot Friend(HF) and I spent most of dinner inappropriately making eyes at one another and (for my part at least) wondering if there was any way to finagle going home together without making both of us horrible people. Unable to reconcile that or come up with a way to surreptitiously jump his bones in the diner I was forced to get a ride home from TBWAT but not before HF asked for my number. I’ll admit to a small amount of shame at picking up a Guy #2 before my date with Guy #1 was officially over but I mostly figure that this is the kind of disaster #1 should expect when he invites another guy along on his date. I told TBWAT as much a couple of weeks later when he implied that my behavior made me a huge bitch.

HF called me a few days later and, since we worked within a few miles of one another he picked me up from the casino gaming empire for a quick lunch which lead to another date and another until we were sitting on the edge of relationshipdom staring into the abyss. Once I get past date three I’m usually a jumper and HF was no exception, he was cute, lived near by, worked at a tech company and… did I mention cute? Did I mention that I was 22? Unfortunately, HF was stuck on the edge of the cliff paralyzed with fear. He hemmed and hawed and sited being much much too busy for girlfriend but stopped short of actually breaking up with me until one day when he called to tell me that he had signed up to coach volleyball to high school girls. I am a lot of things: witty, cute, gifted with the internet, an expert on trashy tv, a great chef, a decent writer. None of these attributes can compete with 15 year old girls in short shorts jumping up and down and encouraging you to get behind them and show them exactly how to serve ("But I'm not very good and it might take a few tries! I Hope you’re patient!"). Needless to say I was broken up with over the phone just before the second night of practice.

While I’m sure many of my readers are dreaming of the chance to hook up with TBWAT or HF I cannot tell you the whereabouts of either. I honestly cannot remember the name of TBWAT so he is ungoogle-able but I suspect that he has yet to discover the internet anyway (and thus he is seriously missing out on the chance to relive our date but all of you lucky people can do so here – feel the ROMANCE.) . I do remember the name of HF (typical, right?) but unfortunately he shares a name with a famous race car driver so I can't properly stalk him -- it probably doesn’t matter, I don’t think they let pedophiles access the internet.

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.

The Winner Parade: Entry 2

Hello and welcome to the much overdue second installment of the Winner Parade series (first entry here)! In this installment fate once again tries to teach our heroine (That’s me!) that the thin line between sexy geek and unstable freak may not actually exist. Perhaps one of these days she’ll get the message (but probably not after many more beatings with the thorny club of reality) and settle for one of the mainstream beer swilling types that occasionally hit on her and she’ll live tolerably ever after. It is probably more likely that she will continue to seek out the socially stable geek which is good news for this blog but remains bad news for her personal goals.

I met He who Flees the Country (HwFtC) (sorry to give away the punch line so early but there is no better way of classifying this boy) via craigslist, back when craigslist housed actual personal ads not just ads for no strings kinky sex (I once read an ad offering to a pay a girl to eat potato chips naked in bed while the guy who wrote the ad watched (and presumably masturbated because, as we all know, potato chips are HOT)). Back before I had this blog my main creative writing outlet was personal ads, and I excelled at this little genre. Sadly, most of the replies were more, “Here’s a picture of my Johnson!” than “I am an awesome, witty, intelligent, Jared Leto look-a-like and I want to make out with you.” But HwFtC was different, he wrote back a silly reply suitable studded with fawning compliments and expressions of general awe over my mere existence.

We quickly progressed from moon-y emails to flirty instant messages to an in person meeting in a coffee shop followed by some face-to-very-close-face make out time on my couch. HwFtC was working on his PHD in population genetics, which appealed to my ironically religious love for science. Before starting down the path to scientist god HwFtC was a “dancer” in the San Francisco Ballet (apparently there is no male equivalent to the word ballerina) which appealed to my shallow love for shapely calves and muscular arms. He also had 2 lesbian moms which I took as a sign that he would not turn into an evil boy because (I assumed) his moms would find out and kick his ass. Because I do not want to edit my stereotypical view of lesbian moms I have chosen to believe that HwFtC never told his moms about how he behaved while dating that adorable geeky blond girl with the hot rack (Me again! And, yes, I assume that if he were to tell his moms about us that he would smartly avoid references to my rack). Or perhaps he did tell them and has since suffered some serious facial contusions and possibly no longer has a penis.

HwFtC and I had been making googly eyes at one another for about a month when the trouble began. This was at a time in my life were I typically went on 3 dates with a boy before he either announced that I’d make an awesome friend (especially if I would also sleep with him) or just stopped calling so I considered 4 weeks of continuous mutual liking a great boon. It was 2004 and, like many programmers in the San Francisco Bay area, I was living off of a combination of occasional contact work, unemployment and my parent’s generosity so my afternoons were often free to lounge around with my favorite soon to be geneticist. One such afternoon I got all dolled up, prepared what I’m sure was a gourmet lunch spread and spent a good 90 minutes staring at the clock before jumping to the conclusion that HwFtC had died in a fiery wreck on the 101. We had yet to reach the relationship stage of meeting each other's friends so I had nowhere obvious to turn to confirm his mortality short of internet searches for deadly car crashes (which, I assure you, I ran at least once ever 5 minutes). In the meantime I had no choice but to leave increasingly more panicked and pathetic messages on his voice mail.

This embarrassing behavior continued for 2 days at which point I received a reply to the following purposefully amusing email sent near the beginning of being stood up (as opposed to the equally hilarious but less dignified emails sent many hours or days later).

So, here's the deal. In a few days if I still haven’t heard from you I’m going to email people in your lab group and ask if you're still alive. So if you are still alive you're going to look like a bit of a jerk with a stalker. To avoid this situation, you should act like an adult and email me and say "nope, not dead, just not talking to you." If you are, however, actually dead you can just do nothing (rest in peace as it were.).

HwFtC was not dead but had instead fled to the woods to get a little one on one time with nature in an effort to clear his head and figure out how he felt about me. Apparently I am *MUCH* more interesting than population genetics (no surprise here) and this had resulted in an overturning of the poor boy's priorities and subsequently resulted in some freaking out. Where a normal boy would think, “Hmmmm study genetics or continue fooling around with Brianna?” and then laugh out loud while making a grab for my ass the kind of boys I typically date go into a free fall that involves a Thoreau-like need to get back to nature and focus on the awesomeness of cells in a Petri dish over cells making up a set of 34Ds (at the time) that the owner is TOTALLY WILLING TO LET YOU TOUCH.

To be fair all was not completely rosy in the land of dreamy gazes -- there was one stressful thing looming in the future, in roughly one month he would be off on an internship in Germany that would require us to be physically apart for 2.5 months. My general feeling on this was “eh, there’s always email” but he was much more concerned (this is understandable considering how awesome I am to hang out with, the entire country of Germany can hardly compete).

Anyway, post Into The Woods there was much apologizing and promising to, in the future, talk to me rather than commune with nature. We made plans to have lunch the next day and I was back on the road to the early relationship honeymoon period. I really should have known better. As should surprise no one, HwFtC didn’t show. Again. There was a repeat performance of the, “where the hell are you?” emails (this time with much more cursing) but I never heard another word from HwFtC. Eventually I made good on my promise and emailed one of his friends. I know this is pathetic, more pathetic than most of you hopefully think that I am capable of but a girl needs closer.

Hi,

I *think* that you sort of know me (though it's possible that i have the wrong Steve), I briefly dated your friend [HwFtC]. anyway, about 3 weeks ago he sort of dropped off the face of the planet and while normally I'd just write him off as a jerk he never seemed like much of a jerk and now I'm a bit worried that something happened to him. I know he was going to Germany soon but I would have expect some sort of note letting me know that he was leaving the country. So, I know this is incredibly weird but I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know if:

1)He's still alive (and not you know, in jail, or abducted by aliens or something)

2)If I can potentially expect to hear from him again (presumably not from the beyond -- though that might also be kind of cool.)

Hopefully with a little more information I can step back on to the good side of the "crazy stalker-chick" line.

His friend at least had the decency to respond (and was even witty! I wonder if he's single...), which is WAY more than I would have done in a similar situation. Of course I try not to befriend people who leave the country without sending at least a memo to everyone that they are currently making out with on a regular basis.

Um yes, crazy-stalker chick, this is kinda weird but I will say that I've heard from him once since he went to Germany and he was alive at that time. I did not hear any of the characteristic beeps and strange languages in the background that one would expect if he had been abducted by aliens (although who's to say that alien languages might not sound German). Nor did he mention needing bail money wired or a sex-starved cell mate named Heinz.

Obviously, that was (finally) the end of things. Even more obviously I should have chucked his ass into the dumpster weeks before – I’d like to assure all readers that my self esteem is infinitely higher today and all boyfriends who attempts to leave the country without telling me will received Lorena Bobbit-like lesbian mom treatment (*snip*).

A year or so later I did see the name of HwFtC appear in the “Who Viewed Me?” section of Friendster (God bless Friendster and it’s attempts to appeal to my humongous ego – myspace, time to cowboy up) so I was able to gather enough information to wonder what the hell I was thinking mooning over such a dork. (For those of you not in the know geeky is one thing, dorky is another thing all together and I think it’s pretty clear how these states of social status should fall in the dating hierarchy.) He’s apparently in a relationship, something I sort of suspect he’s been in since well before I knew him. One has to wonder just who this girl is and how she could possible be better than me – the only conclusion that seems realistic is that she’s imaginary. He includes 3 pictures in his profile, in one he has a handkerchief tied around his head all Little House on the Prarie-ish. 'Nuff said.

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.”