Four Dumb Things I Do When I Date - Taboo Tuesday #7

Before GONE GIRL was a movie, it was a flammable Kindle you could buy in a one of those old, dusty antique shops where hipsters write one man shows about their lives.

Before that, it was a manuscript that they sent out to development companies so that it would be made into a movie.

It was at that time that I, as a sweaty, smelly little intern, was assigned to read it. I remember half completing it and coming into the office the next day excitedly informing my boss that I totally related to the female protagonist.

"You know! Because I've 100% done all those same things when I start dating someone..."

She looked at me just like this. Except for instead of a White Russian, she was stirring free trade Kombucha into a dairy-free, sugar-free, mocha-free mocha latte made of organic orphan tears.

Then I read the rest of the book and had a minor breakdown (because who knows if I secretly freeze people's semen.)

But that's not important. What's important is the first part.

I have totally done all those things

So for this blog post, the jig is up.

You heard me, Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance! No more jigging!

I'm going to reveal all of my amazing dating secrets before I saned up and met a nice guy who told me that I was being crazy. Feel free to use them to get laid -- but be warned. These are military grade, extra badass dating secrets that only me and a very small minority, composed of most people, use.

Without further...

Four Dumb Things I Do When I Date

1) Pretend to be cooler than I am.

I am not "cool" by human standards.

But by plasma standards, I'm freezing!

My interests can be neatly confined to things found on Reddit and YouTube. Which makes job interviews awkward when they ask about my hobbies:

I masturbate for seven straight hours to Kim Possible pornography. Thanks for asking.

Overall, I've gotten very good at lying about things that I like/am good at, which usually isn't a problem. I can tell my friend that Depeche Mode does indeed sound like music instead of a vampire and a ghost fighting inside of a big soup pot, but that's because I only have to listen to one song.

Are you SERIOUSLY going to try and convince me that one of these pasties isn't a a vampire in disguise? Because God can shoot me in the face if that guy in bondage gear doesn't survive off the blood of the living.

It turns out that if you make similar lies to people you might date, you have to either eventually tell the truth or keep the lie up for the rest of your life.

"What are your dying words, Grandma?"
"I... think Bon Iver is a piece of shit, and also... "
"Yes Grandma??"
"... The Catcher in the Rye is poopy toilet paper."

I like to think I'm reasonable, so I, of course, just never tell the truth.

Great idea Honey, I also want to watch all of 2 BROKE GIRLS again.

I mean, you have to, right? Lies are essentially the foundation of a happy relationship. I started out every one of my relationships by finding out what shows, bands, and books the guy likes prior to the first date so that I can study them, and never have to admit my actual interests.

"My favorite album? Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. Next."

Of course, if you study poorly -- as I am apt to do -- you make mistakes, as I did with a middle school crush who asked me which of The Sex Pistols songs I liked best and I responded "the second album."

But you just have lie, right? I mean, at least I do. My actual taste is so bad -- SO bad, and I know it. 

I don't want to watch MAD MEN again. Come on, they drink scotch and talk about weird old people stuff. No, I want to watch Jackson Galaxy use his guitar case full of cat toys to lure an angry calico out from under an old lady's couch.

Ke$ha speaks to me, and I'm ashamed of that.

I never got all the way through 1984, but I've read the entire The Adventures of Captain Underpants series in the last year.

And I don't want to get stuck with an uncultured troglodyte like me. I am the worst. 

So I just have to always lie, is all. 

I can pretend to like sports and not just think they are humans performing their basest, most inane function.

Oh he's going to run all the way around the grass again? Good for him.

Yeah! Hit the bastard with your hockey bat!

So... when does Matt Stone shoot his booby milk like a laser?

Because if I pretend, people are all like "oh! you like sports, I like sports! I better put my mouth on yours." And that's the end goal, right?

In short, in my many fruitful dating years, I've learned it's incredibly important to change who you are. Otherwise people might judge you.

2) "What, what in the butt?"

It turns out that, according to extensive research, men only respect you if you do weird shit in bed.

I have analyzed the studies, and it appears that there are three main areas where this effect is condensed to, and I like to break it down into a fun acronym: GAG.

Girls.

Anal.

Group.

I don't know if it's been perpetuated by porn or what... but #YesAllMen will at some point ask you to do all of these things. It's a fact that I have learned from my own personal experiences (which are also fact).

Let's start with girls.

Now, I will preface this with -- girls having sex with other girls is definitely not the "weird sex" that I was referring to. That's just called being a lesbian. 

If you are under educated about this topic, you can watch the extensive documentary series about it on RedTube.

When it gets to be "weird" is when one or both of the women aren't actually attracted to each other, so mostly they just do a lot of gross, out-of-mouth tongue kissing.

This seems to be what men appreciate most about what I'll now refer to as "girl sex" (as opposed to real Lebanese).

Whether or not you're dating a boy -- you could just be a friend, or asking him to build your Subway sandwich -- he still wants to hear about that time you made out with a girl. 

Hell, you could just tell him you went to slumber party in the seventh grade and/or were in the same room as a girl. Regardless, in his imagination, your tongues will still be awkwardly flailing in the air in front of each other.

If you actually TELL him you LIKE girls. His mind is immediately blown.

Of course, I learned, when you start dating a guy, navigating this effect get a bit trickier. 

You can't say that you're a real thespian, because then he has to be jealous of men AND women -- then he starts liking you less.

Strike one! (See, I know sport.)

You can't say you never want to have sex with girls, because then he can't fantasize about you vaguely sort of rubbing your nakedness on another female nakedness the way that pornography thinks lesbian sex works.

And... you're pregnant.

So you basically have to come at it like: "I'd love to sex another woman, but only when you're there. Otherwise, totally just like the dick. And by the dick, I mean only your dick, because all other dicks are totally gross, but yours looks like an Academy Award and smells like Grandma's brownies."

And he will respond like this while you cry inside.

Of course, the flip side totally doesn't work. Men can't just want to have sex with other men because that immediately means they are gay and you are their beard.

Next up: Buttsecks.

I think this fascination can also be traced back to porn -- specifically when a large sweaty man with a blurry face treats Tori Black like a Slip n Slide.

His expression has the same unrestrained joy, and a touch of inexplicable rage.

The desire to shove an organ into a sewage system is otherwise unexplainable. It's more explainable if the other party has a prostate hiding up there, but mine is either absent or extremely tardy.

And when men do decide to explain it, they just sound like a fly kid from the '90s who loves slang.

When I first started dating, I was so excited to make someone THAT happy that I said I liked anal.

Then I had it.

"Oh you want to do Satan's deed again? Sure! I love reverse pooping. Reverse pooping is my favorite. I just love that feeling, you know, the one where you just poop out a shoe... and then it shoots right back up your butthole. If you could just bottle that reverse poop feeling -- you'd be a gajillionaire."

I learned that it's important to be dead inside when you date someone. Otherwise, you have to say--

"Honestly, I'm not a big fan of washing out my intestines so that you can treat them like a McSalad Shaker."

And then hear him ask you to do it anyway every other day for the rest of your life. 

You'd think the Holy Grail was up your ass.

Last up is group sex.

For some reason, many men want to have sex with you with other people. This one varies a little bit. Either he only wants to do a lady sandwich, or he wants to do that AND he wants to slander a French icon with one of his bros.

I'm not sure why. I think its' the equivalent of girls going to the bathroom together? Like... dudes plowing the same lady? This makes the least sense to me, but trust me, if you ask, there is a 50/50 chance that he will perk up like a dog whose was just asked if he wants a "walkies."

I haven't stooped to this one yet, or the Lebanese thing (because I don't really like falafel) but I have lied and said I would enjoy it. Which is almost just as good.

3) Mommy said I'm perfect.

When you first start dating someone, you can't let them know that underneath your bubbly, bright facade, you're actually a lizard person.

Instead, you have to be perfect.

"Oh, you need me to drive to Phoenix to pick you up because the drug dealers took your wallet and Ray Bans? Of course honey, I'll be there in a tick."

This is best exemplified by the measures I take to: keep my makeup on, my farts inside my body, and food out of my face.

The first one isn't so bad. You just have to take special care putting your makeup on before you leave for your date, carry a little touchup bag with you, and wake up three hours before your man friend so that you can furiously reapply all of your human face that rubbed off during sleep.

The second one, the whole fart thing, is a whole 'nother level of military training. After several weeks of sucking methane back up inside yourself, you just have to learn to live with the pain of your body as it tries to hold in the energy of the universe and not spontaneously combust.

You also have the option of sneaking away and letting rip, but you have to plan ahead. Know you just ate thirty too many dried apricots before having to meet for a relaxing walk on the beach?

Remember to leave your phone in the car so you can run back, tooting all the way.

If you're not careful, you risk farting the National Anthem in your sleep, which is not ideal, as we cannot let the men folk know that we fart.

Otherwise, they might also find out about our secret penises and the bulging man muscles we hide cleverly under soft woman fat.

And then, God forbid, they won't open doors for us anymore.

The last one is simple. You can't eat too much around dudes or else they feel inferior.

You must let him win, grasshopper, or he will never let you pull his beard hairs out with tweezers.

You have to order the salad instead of the delicious Bloomin' Onion (even though they are both technically vegetables) because you can't risk your breath smelling like armpit juice, having your face slick with grease, or having tiny strands of deep fried love stuck between your teeth.

Because ghost Mother informs me that's unladylike.

And trust me on this one. I know the bro folk will try to convince you that they like a woman who can scarf a pizza down like the rest of them, but they don't really mean it. The look they give you after you mow down a large, cheesy crust stuffed pizza with Doritos Locos Tacos crumbled on top would chill your loins.

What they actually want is for you to take them to McDonalds, but not order the deal they have on three quarter pounders and half a dozen cookies. Because the truth is that they don't really care about you.

4) I'm not like other girls.

This last item is something I can't even pretend to blame on the hairy ones. This is something that I have done in the past that I hate myself for because I know it is making Maya Angelou's spooky skeleton cry in her grave.

Please don't cry, Ms. Skeleton. I'll free all the birds I ever meet.

It's not like I mean to be a terrible feminist though, it's just that I want boys to like me more than I want equality.

The terrible thing I've done when I started wooing men, is that I'd imply that I'm not like "the other girls."

The implication being, of course, that I don't do those things other women do like whine, and cry, and care about stupid things, and listen to Ke$ha while dancing with my cat. That it's not good to be a woman, so I've pretended I'm different. I've pretended that I have all the good parts of being a girl, like a vagina, but none of the bad parts, like feelings.

And I've been rewarded for it sometimes. People have told me "you're one of the funniest/smartest/coolest girls I know!" I've had people tell me that they are surprised to like me, because I have some quality like the ones above that make them not like other women.

I'm not one of the funniest people these folks know. I'm one of the funniest women. 

I've precipitated this, I've encouraged it. I have said -- 

"Oh yeah, I've never really had friends who were girls. I just get along with boys better"

Because I don't want them to think I'm one of those girls who likes shopping and reality television. I don't want them to think I'm catty or whiney, or gossip, or pee at a mall with the help of a gaggle of gigglers, or whatever else people assume about women.

I wanted them to think I wasn't like the other girls. And it's messed up. In recent years I've realized I'm helping no one with this -- least of all myself and other ladies. (This goes for everything else on the list, but I'm so not willing to give up secret farting yet, so fuck that one. But the rest I try not to do now that I'm a fancy adult.)

So, in short, don't be like Gone Girl and suck all your farts in until you murder someone. Just be like true to yourself, or some shit.

---

Now friends, I end my excellent advice with this quote from our founding father, Abraham Lincoln.

Bitches be bitches.

And

2230 - 2015

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