When The Boyfriend™'s Away...

A couple weeks back, The Boyfriend™ went out of town for his annual Guys Weekend. It’s just what it sounds like: all his buddies get together for a couple days and escape the castration usually imposed on them by, well, civilization. That means no women around to tell them what to do like, “You can’t cook steak every night because a) it’ll make me fat, and b) your cholesterol is sky high.” Or “Stop drinking because I don’t want you rolling over and vomiting on me in the middle of the night.” You know, the sensible things.

That left me with a free, quiet weekend where I didn’t have to put out for two days. So what did I do? NOT PLAY VIDEO GAMES BECAUSE SOMEONE TOOK THE X-BOX WITH HIM TO PALM SPRINGS. That's what.

Instead, I got together with my gal pal, Laura, whose boyfriend was also attending Guys Weekend, and we decided to hit a new bar that opened up a couple miles away. Where I could play darts. I’d heard it was a very interactive game. Right up there with Red Dead Redemption. Yup. Just as thrilling…put a dart in something other than the board, I swear to god…like my own carotid artery…

But before Laura arrived, I needed to ease the pain of my loneliness (The Faxman, we WILL finish that game of Borderlands, I promise). It’s always a good idea to start drinking alone, so I sorted through this crate of wine The Boyfriend™ and I had brought back from a vacation last year. Then I texted him: “Laura’s coming over. Mind if I open the Oregon rosé? I’ll send video if we get it on.”

If you hadn’t noticed, I’m pretty tongue-in-cheek. Or sarcastic. Or a bitch. Whatever you want to call the attribute I possess that makes me say outrageous things I never really mean. You know this. I know this. The Boyfriend™ knows this.

Except possibly when he’s drunk.

His reply: YES!!!!!!! Drink anything u want but the jinny walker blue!

I am Scottish, which means I’m a raucous drunk––but a raucous drunk with standards. I would never drink Johnny Walker Blue in the first place, so he had nothing to fear (oh Macallan, how I love thee). What I had to fear, however, was that The Boyfriend™ was drunk and possibly thought I was serious about, well, you know…videotaping myself with another girl.

Wait, videotaping? Who uses video anymore? Recording? OK but that’s not very specific. Maybe digitally recording?

OK there we go.

What I had to fear was that The Boyfriend™––at that very moment––might actually expect me to produce a digital recording of me participating in girl-on-girl action with one of his best friends’ girlfriend. Because, dude, boyfriend’s a lightweight. In one hour, he’d had “Two tequila shots. One mi tai and one margahrita.”

Blink.

Moving on...

Laura arrived. We had a glass each of the rosé and headed out to dinner. My iPhone chimed: “Naked pictures kiss.”

Uh did he mean me or him? Because one was not going to happen, and I prayed the other would never happen. After all, when you considered the circumstances, I doubted it would just be him in the pictures. Even as I write this, I’m still shivering in horror.

Drunken texts continued. “Boobs. And with Laura. Double boobs.”

And: “Giddity giddity.”

Finally I reply (with some snarkiness from Laura): “We’re gonna have a pillow fight.”

I'm thinking Doris Day. He's thinking Jenna Jameson.

“Naked?”

Laura feeds me another line: “Does liquid latex count?”

“Yes!!!! Double boobs.”

The next morning, there was no mention of anything. He’d still been sober enough to understand that I was purely in jest. I mean, my god, could you imagine the shit storm that would cause? The boys go away for a weekend so the girls hook up? Yes, it’s many a-man’s fantasy, but in reality, wouldn’t you come back horrified to find out that either your girlfriend had cheated on you with another girl, or you had actually––stupidly––chosen bros before hos and missed out on what could’ve been a ménage? But no matter what, I saw it as cheating, through and through. And worse yet, not with some random girl picked up at a bar, but with a friend’s girlfriend. You’d think a man would question himself after something like that: Didn’t I love her enough? Didn’t I give her everything she wanted and needed? Can a strap on really replace my dick? I mean, I’d be a wreck if The Boyfriend™ ran off with another man––but at least then I could stop getting waxed.

When he returned Sunday, we went to dinner. “So no naked pillow fights?” he asked.

“Naw, you know me,” I laughed.

He looked a bit sad. “I’m disappointed.”

“Honey, I’d never cheat on you!”

The Boyfriend™ looked at me incredulously. “That’s not cheating as long as you have video. Or pictures. Or at least really, really specific details.”

I’m quite skeptical. “So I can go pick up a girl at a bar and do her and you’re cool with it.”

“No! I'm not!” he gasps. “I meant Laura. Laura’s not cheating.”

Johnny, Don't Lead Me On!

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I don't look the poster girl for gay culture. If I’m going to be really honest about this, let me start here: I often look like an East Coast Republican (except with blond hair because I live in California). In fact, I resemble the villainous Harvard girls in Legally Blonde with my J. Crew and Ann Taylor suiting.

So based merely on appearances, we could say the following: you’d expect me to be one of the folks funneling money to the Mormons last election, while wearing a headband and a Jackie O coat. Then I probably went home and watched “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or “Alley McBeal” with plans to enjoy “quality time” with my vibrator named Mitt Romney before falling into a sleep full of very conservative dreams.

That means I’d be one of the last people you’d ever expect to be shrieking with joy when U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir hit the ice for his short program last night. And you’d be completely wrong, because nothing gets my heart pumping like Drama On The Ice™ (trademarked because I’ve totally got a screenplay in the works). Hot pink! Black vinyl! Tassels! Stylized male corset! I once dated a guy who dressed like that (you know who you are, and I still hope your lack of an ability to “salute” properly still haunts you to this day).

I held my breath as my sweet Johnny Angel (thank you, Miss Shelley Fabares) posed, waiting for the music to start. Would it be My Chemical Romance? Oh god, please let it be MCR, because this would be the most perfect moment in all of the Olympics, to hear some crazy mash-up between “Teenagers” and Lady Gaga’s “Boys Boys Boys.” At this gloriously elaborate thought, I also imagined myself twirling through the streets of West Hollywood, throwing streamers while covered in rubber glow bracelets and passing out Pucker-based shots, all with muscular men in thin, tight shirts following me, dancing in unison and performed complex, Cirque du Soleil acrobatics. Tears blurred my eyes as I held my breath in anticipation.

Well, that vision evaporated faster than spilled Everclear when the classical music kicked in.

At least my darling Johnny Angel showed some sass with his hand movements. Sadly though, the costume promised so much, while his routine and music delivered so little. Don’t get me wrong: he was a graceful, technical wonder, a beautiful addition to the sport. But where was the gayness???? Johnny, you wore an Emo Suit! You’re coy! You’re sassy! Bring that special gay artistry to the ice––and melt it, turning that stadium into a searing, sweaty sauna of Canadian rave-ery! Be daring and don't be afraid to gay up the Olympics! Be the one that shows men all over the world that it's OK to wear hot pink-laced black vinyl corsets! Bring that equality like you did in Japan, skating to "Poker Face!"

And to get The Boyfriend™ to sit on the couch and actually watch men’s figure skating with me, it required the following:

• Lots o’ manly, chest-hair-growing beer
• Manly drunkenness
• Constantly saying, “No. No. Just––no. That dude’s not straight, I don’t care what you say. You will never, ever convince me, no matter how much you try and don’t even start, because I don’t want to hear it where’s my beer I need more beer I should Facebook this.”
• Constant reaffirming that he will get a blow job when it’s over (from a girl)

So you can see my disappointment, when this very gay man, in this outrageously awesome skating outfit that is straight out of a West Hollywood gay club, did not follow through and bring about complete gay domination of the sport.

The only thing that saved me from a massive bout of depression was, after the short program finished, the Sundance Channel ran an ad for the reality show, “Be Good, Johnny Weir” (you can see it below). This prompted me to plead to the screen "Be bad, Johnny, be ever so bad, you luscious creature!"

Then The Boyfriend™ said, “I’ve already set up a TiVo season pass for you. It’s cool. My TiVo already thinks I’m gay. Now get your mouth down here.”

Oh, appearances. You are deceiving, aren’t you?

The Ballad of the UTIs

I suppose it’s time to discuss my internal organs and how they relate to being a supportive girlfriend. Let it be known that I’m thankful for having the internal organs, and that I’m not an amoeba and that I have more than a single cell to define me. I’m quite happy that my body functions almost perfectly and all I must worry about on a constant basis is my stomach: no cheese, no MSG, no excessively oily foods or I’m spending the evening face down in a toilet, sobbing for my mommy.

Only when I met The Boyfriend™ did I start having to worry about another internal organ. Well, OK like 3 internal organs, but it first started with one. No, wait. I’m going to have to get very technical here because it actually involves a fourth, and I’m sure if I were some sort of biology or anatomy major it would include more. Hell, I’m probably even using terms wrong, but whatever.

The first week of May The Boyfriend™ and I were out of town, helping me kill two girlfriend duties with one trip: spend time with his family and support him as he plays in a water polo tournament (side note: have you seen that sport? Eyes and nut sacks were gouged.). Things were going well, everything was pleasant, joy overflowed––until 3am Sunday morning when I woke up and bolted to the bathroom to pee, triggering the pain of a bladder infection to end all bladder infections. I literally crawl on my hands and knees back to the bedroom, forcing myself upright so The Boyfriend™ didn’t see what a wuss I was. I stumbled into bed and shoved my face in the pillow (this time to hide cries of pain rather than that other type of cries from a few hours prior).

The Boyfriend™ insisted on rushing me to the ER, where they wanted to hook me up to an IV full of antibiotics because my bladder is so fucked up that they’re afraid it’s in my kidneys. NO. FUCKING. WAY. Never will you bastard vampire nurses get an IV in me, do you hear? Do you? Apparently not, because you keep trying to convince me of it. Instead, they give me some industrial strength antibiotics that I’m sure if I fell into a vat of them, I’d gain mutant powers. But those three organs of suffering, the triad of grief, would be fine with pills, not IVs. The Boyfriend™ cackled maniacally, holding up his iPhone to take a picture of me. Luckily I got my middle finger up so my true feelings about the situation were documented forever.

Then he Facebook’d it.

Hate.

The last day of June, a day or two before we left for the Fourth of July to Monterey and Santa Cruz, The Boyfriend™ hosted a board game night. Just as we’re wrapping up, I got up to pee and returned from the bathroom trying to covertly clutch my abdomen. When everyone left, one long, pathetic cringe to The Boyfriend™ as I doubled over in pain had him grabbing his keys and shoving me into the car. More antibiotics were prescribed. For the next twelve days, food tasted like there were metal shavings cooked into it.

More importantly, this UTI went into my kidneys, which were swollen like rising bread with overly aggressive yeast in it. Eew. Yeast. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t walk upright––and we were leaving in two days.

After limping around the central NorCal coast for four days––not to mention having to sleep next to The Boyfriend™ and not getting any action––I returned to a week of peace (despite the metal taste in all my food). Nothing went wrong.

So the third week of July, when we were going to Lake Tahoe, the fourth organ went afoul: my brain stopped working normally and I was nothing but anxious. Twice now I’d gotten sick and made a mess of our vacations together, and we’d only been dating four months. And this was an important trip. The Boyfriend™ was swimming a relay across Lake Tahoe with all his high school buddies. I was nervous to meet them, he was nervous for me to meet them. He wanted me to like them and them to like me, and I really just wanted to not ruin the trip. I drank tons of water, I took cranberry tablets, I watched what I ate, I went to Bar religiously, I swore off any form of booze (so sad). Healthy. I was going to be excessively healthy.

Friday night in Tahoe The Boyfriend™ and I cooked dinner. He made this crazy gourmet macaroni and cheese, so of course I had to try some. An hour later I was throwing up and sobbing on the bathroom floor because it felt like my stomach was trying to digest a boulder. Humiliation.

I passed out only to wake up the next morning with that familiar sting in my abdomen. Off we went to the Tahoe ER in Truckee. The triage nurse asked me where it hurt and how much (“The bladder and about a six on the scale.”), and if I were allergic to anything (“Tylenol.”) and if I was on any medication (“Birth control and Flonase.”). I pissed in a cup and they took me back to a room a few minutes later. The Boyfriend™ was really happy to have a rocking chair to sit in. He kept rocking back and forth while I scowled at the white walls.

“This is much nicer than the other ERs we’ve been in,” he said, continuing to rock in the chair. Really, it was like a tour at this point. We should have developed a rating system. “How many hospitals put something this comforting in their ER rooms?”

Eyes narrowed. If I could have gotten my hands on a scalpel, my first action would be to cut my bladder out of me. My second, before I died of blood loss, would be to just randomly stab somewhere on the rocking chair for no reason whatsoever. And then randomly stab the IV machine because, holy fuck, did I hate that thing. I felt myself tremble at the mere sight of the long steel pole that held bags full of creepy liquid, like something out of Frankenstein’s lab. And that hose, that line that ran from the bag all the way down into a needle that every time they tried to poke into me, I’d throw up and faint. Yeah, I fucking hated those things, more than any rocking chair, PT Cruiser or Miley Cyrus song. If I took one out before I died, or even with me as my heart beat it’s last, my mission in life would be fulfilled. Christie, IV Assassin.

The nurse came in and said he would get me something for the pain. Hurray for Advil, because I really needed it. I couldn’t even sit down. For the twenty-minute drive to Truckee, I’d slouched in my seat to prevent bending at my waist, probably in a position that would have broken my neck had there been a car accident. And, honestly, I’d wanted to die during that drive because here we went again, having to tell yet another house full of people who were just meeting me, that I was trying to make a good impression on, that I was going to the ER for the third time in the mayfly span of our relationship.

I swallowed the two pills gladly when the nurse returned, thinking, “Please, antibiotics, please work fast.”

The Boyfriend™ asked, “What painkiller did you give her?”

“Percocet,” the nurse replied and left us alone.

I kept pacing while the boyfriend suddenly stopped rocking and looked uncomfortable. “This rocking chair is meant only for this room.”

“Yes, we’re in the ob/gyn room, darling.”

Possibly to feel extra manly because he was with me, obliviously sitting a rocking chair meant for people with babies, The Boyfriend™ pulled out his iPhone. “Percocet. Seriously, I think I should look that up for some reason, see what’s in it.”

I continued pacing back and forth, holding my abdomen as his phone made clicking noises. Mental note: randomly stab the iPhone after the rocking chair and the IV contraption.

“Stupid reception, I only got part of the site download––uh, sweetie?”

I groaned in response while leaning against the hospital bed. I felt weird, like all woozy, as if my limbs weren’t working, or even responding to what I wanted them to do.

“I think there’s Tylenol in Percocet.”

Then The Boyfriend™ bolted from the room, leaving me alone to panic. I forced myself to breathe. Surely they wouldn’t give me something with Tylenol in it. I saw the nurse write it down under “Allergies.”

The door swung open and The Boyfriend™ grabbed me, hugging me tight. “OK there’s Tylenol in it.”

I started crying (OK, and nearly hyperventilating).

“It’s OK, it’s OK. It’s going to be fine.” He hugged me tighter. “They have to give you an IV of Benadryl.”

Then I started shrieking because not only was I going to die from ingesting Tylenol, I would throw up and faint first. Images of nurses calling my death time but not removing the needle from my arm, leaving that bag attached to my cold corpse. I would raise from the dead and fucking yank it out of me, you motherfucking incompetent bastards who killed me!

The ER doctor came in with the nurse. “Really? You go into anaphylactic shock from Tylenol?”

“It’s not like I just get sleepy when I take it, what the fuck?! My throat closes up!” I muttering as the room started to spin.

The only thing good was that the Percocet made me too woozy to really resist. They put me down on the hospital bed while The Boyfriend™ made me keep looking at him while they shoved a needle into the top of my hand. Like a total pussy, I just kept sobbing. Not “I’m going to die, I’m going to die” but “I don’t want an IV, I don’t want an IV.” Yeah. Total pussy.

By the time they had the IV in me, I’m pretty sure I was floating off the bed. I mean, that’s a side effect of the Percocet, right? Where was this when we needed it, twenty years ago at slumber parties, because Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board never worked? That thought disappeared quickly when my throat started getting tight and I had to gasp for air. That’s when I started thinking, “I love IVs, I love IVs, oh my fucking god, please give me another one!”

When all was cool, and my head kept wobbling one way, and then the other like I was some bobble head toy, The Boyfriend™ disappeared for what might have been a blink, or it might have been hours. I’m really not sure, but it was for however long it took him to eat a Snickers bar and return from the gift shop with a stuffed toy dog to cheer me up.

Then he exploited my woozy state: “OK, smile. We have to add this to our ER scrap book.” And somewhere, out there, is a picture of me looking higher than a member of a 70s rock band, lying on a hospital bed hugging a stuffed dog with this creepy smile on my face. As if the humiliation could get any worse.

Oh, but it did. Because I tried to go to the bathroom. The Boyfriend™ found me passed out on the floor, next to the toilet. I’m pretty sure I peed into the toilet because there was no puddle beneath me, but he had to drag me back to the bed.

We ended up spending most of the day at the ER, and The Boyfriend™ missed practicing with the team the day before the race. He swam Lake Tahoe with no warm up, while I waited on the beach with the rest of the girlfriends and wives. At the end of the day, we returned to the cabin where I found my skin resembled bricks: so dry it was almost crunchy and that lovely shade of red. I waddled around for about two weeks after that, unable to wear a bra.

No, I hadn’t forgotten to put on sunscreen throughout the day. I just hadn’t looked at the insanely powerful antibiotics’ side effects before venturing out in support of my wonderful man. They made me extra-sensitive to the sun, and in such a high altitude, I burned to a crisp. Crispy Christie. Yummy.

But nothing bad happened at Comic Con. And we’re going to Ashland, Oregon, for the Shakespeare festival this weekend. So far I’m peeing normally and with no pain (because you totally wanted to know that). There’s no Tylenol anywhere near me. But if I do end up sick or wounded somehow, I’m just going to fucking die because I am so tired of sitting around in ERs while on vacation.

I'm also tired of not being able to have sex while on vacation.

How Not to Meet The Boyfriend(tm), Part 2

I left off with the fever, but let me set two things straight before I continue: 1) I dated a lot before I met The Boyfriend(tm), thus requiring me to come up with clever nicknames to help my friends keep them all straight. The Boyfriend(tm)'s nickname was Top Gun Guy, and I use it in here because, frankly, I'd forgotten it when I wrote Part 1. 2) This portion of the story requires a bit of reader participation. I don’t think it’s that difficult unless you have an exceptionally low score on the Purity Test, or, like me, you lived an incredibly sheltered early life that you’ve tried hard to remedy, but shamefully embarrassing things continue to crop up, as exemplified in this second half of this story. So here’s what I require of you, dear reader: be naïve. Whenever “Oh freaking duh, Christie,” pops into your head, think, “La la la, happy little reader, frolicking through the orchards!” Got it? Awesome. So let’s carry on.

Tuesday night I went on this date. I don’t even recall this guy’s name but he scored music for movies. He didn’t say, “I’m working on a script.” He said something like, “I’m working on a score for a script,” so I let it slide and met him for…drinks.

At that time I either didn’t fully understand that “drinks” was code for “dress slutty,” or I wore something akin to a pinafore and ribbon in my hair, because he proceeded to spend two hours talking to me as if I were a little girl. I half expected him to ask me what time my mom was picking me up and if I'd babysit for him (yeah, we know what that's code for––perv). It only got worse when he said, as the date came to a close, “You really seemed intelligent on your profile.”

Apparently my love for icanhascheezburger.com offended his East Coast sensibilities. Prick.

That’s when I asked him, “Will I hear from you again?” hoping he’d be honest and say, “Dear God, no way, no how. I’m only walking you to your car so I don’t feel guilty tomorrow, when I read latimes.com and see that you got raped and murdered, and then raped and murdered again.”

Instead, he lied through his revolting industry smile: “Of course.”

Part of me wishes he’d called again, just so I could fuck with him: “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re okay! My insane ex-boyfriend ignored the restraining order and said he followed you home. I begged him not to take a tire iron to you!” The other part’s glad I never heard from him again. In total, though, he made me sick––or so I thought as I drove home, sweating and shaking. I really felt like crap by the time I stumbled in the door, and, at that point, I really thought men were crap too. Where did that jackass get off talking to me like I was twelve? If he liked chicks that young, you could totally tell in my pictures that I did not look like a tween––the hourglass figure being a dead giveaway, dude, not to mention the complete lack of Hannah Montana listed in my Favorites. Hence, I named him The Pedo.

All men were on my “Hope You Choke on Broken Glass” list as I crawled, shivering, beneath my covers and went to bed. I was so bad off the next morning that I cancelled class. But it got worse (cue the naïveté). My lips felt weird, so I went to the bathroom. And I’m going to be very clear about this description: I looked in the mirror at my face and saw two bulging, scarlet cold sores, one on my upper lip and one on my lower lip.

“What. The. Fuck.” I pursed my lips in anger and the two cold sores came together, forming Super Mega Cold Sore. It was a lot like Voltron, except without the giant metal robot.

I hadn’t had cold sores in years. Like six years. Where the hell had they come from? Oh man, stupid, stupid cold. Next thing I knew, I’d have a bulbous red and runny nose. I’d probably start sneezing. And I had another date, this one with that damn Top Gun guy who would take one look at me and say, “Yeah, I’ll lose you forever,” and bolt.

GAAAAH!!!! Why was I dating? So what if I was single at thirty-one? Plenty of women didn’t marry nowadays. It didn’t mean I was a spinster. Except most of them did it by choice, not because they were sick and had lips that looked like a Jessica Simpson collagen injection gone horribly, horribly wrong. I was already on my way to being a spinster. I even had the J. Crew teacher wardrobe down. Next year, I’d simply go do my Ph.D. and never deal with men again, unless they were colleagues or students (looking back now, that was a dangerous plan because I’d probably go the way of Mrs. Robinson rather than fucking another professor).

I don’t know why but I still got ready for my date with Top Gun Guy. I swore I wouldn’t get close to him because no matter how much of a dick The Pedo had been, I wouldn’t give this new guy my cold. And I’d look lovely. And I’d be charming. And then I’d go home and I’d cry because this was it. No more dating.

From the closet I pulled out my sexiest––yet politest and most appropriate––skirt and sweater (basically my teaching uniform because I was dragging my ass at this point and I lacked “fashion imagination”). I made sure my hair and makeup were perfect. Then I spent the next hour smearing on Abreva and hemorrhoid cream to bring down the swelling. When that didn’t work, I tried about fifteen different lipstick shades, finding one that best covered those volcanoes of lip puss that I knew would erupt all over my date, sending him screaming in horror and disgust, possibly scarring him forever. When that wasn’t enough, I actually put on eye shadow and made my eyes look all Brigitte Bardo-y. Still, nothing drew my attention from those two horrible red blobs that made my lips swell like I’d sucked on a cactus.

Ooh I hated this! My eyes started to water as I recalled the first time I ever got a cold sore. I was five and drawing in kindergarten. I picked at it until I started crying and bleeding onto my pink construction paper. Mrs. Sarota called my grandparents and they picked me up, keeping me home from school for a few days, because they were afraid my cold would get worse.

And now I was going on a date, a date I really didn’t want to go on because I was so fucking tired of hanging myself up on a meat hook for display at the market, not to mention I never measured up to all these Internet guys' expectations. So here I was, setting myself up to only to get knocked down yet again, and handicapped even more by the Plague boils on my mouth. But I put on the politely sexy heels and drove to the restaurant. I didn’t even have an appetite, the Advil hadn’t kicked in, and I swore that I was sweating and would reek by the time this guy arrived. Wow, how many other ways could I drive him away? I was really racking them up. Lisa got an ear full the entire way as I tried to talk carefully, afraid my sores would crack and unknowingly bleed down my chin, drying in crusty brown streams. I’d probably introduce myself while looking like I’d just feasted on the neck of a stray cat and tossed it into the dumpster not a minute before he arrived.

The worse part was, I was waiting outside, still on the phone, when Top Gun Guy was walking up.

“Lisa, he’s here. Gotta go.”

“Ask him if he makes Greek food because I want Greek food––”

“Yeah gotta go.”

“Does he look hot?”

“Bloody fucking gorgeous.” Click. Oh god, he’s going to see the cold sores and run. These are not the DSLs you’re looking for. “Hi! I’m Christie."

We sat down to dinner. I still remember his black velvet jacket. He dressed (and still does) very nicely. Just like his pictures, he didn’t misrepresent himself in any way. Unlike me. I had a complete hair transformation a couple days prior. My own mother hadn’t recognized me at first, as I’d gone from blond curls to sleek chocolate brown Russian spy hair.

But there was one thing I hadn’t thought of with this fancy dinner thing: my retainer. I had to take out that damned retainer. The obvious answer was to excuse myself and go to the restroom, remove it and come back to the table. I actually did consider this. Then I looked at him and thought, What the fuck? If he can’t deal with a retainer, he’s a pussy. Pussy. God, I wonder if he likes eating pu––

“I have a retainer,” I quickly said.

“Okay,” laughed Top Gun Guy.

“I’m going to take it out so I can eat. Pardon me.”

“Sure, no problem.”

I popped it out rather skillfully so no chains of drool showed, and we had a lovely dinner. By the end of two hours, I think I’d made him laugh. He’d kept me captivated. We did discuss World of WarCraft, but I wasn’t thinking about raid strats or specs, I was thinking of how fun it would be to distract him from video games, and exactly what he looked like without that velvet jacket on. Or that dress shirt. Or those pants. I admit this freely: it was complete and utter objectification on my part, and it was glorious.

He walked me outside, we started to say goodbye, and I realized that I really liked Top Gun Guy. I could keep talking for hours, which would probably be bad, because at some point I'd explain precisely how limber I was and further embarrass myself. It was good that we parted now. He told me later that I shot him “Kiss Me Eyes," and that’s why he leaned down to me. I instinctually leaned up––then screamed in his face.

“GAH NO!!”

Top Gun Guy jumped back like I was going to accuse him of date rape (more like he’d press charges against me). “Sorry, sorry, I thought, I mean I’m really sorry––”

“No, no!” I flapped my hands, like they’d carry me away from this humiliating situation. “It’s not that. I have cold sores. They hurt.”

He stopped apologizing and stared at me. Then squinted at my lips. I probably winced because I felt like I was a slide under a microscope, and I knew I’d be discarded for this. No guy wanted to date some girl with volcanic puss-filled lips.

“Oh, no worries. I didn’t even notice until you told me.” Top Gun Guy gave me this goofy, embarrassed smile. “So, can I call you to go out again? Maybe this weekend?”

What?

“Yeah. Yes. Please. Yes.” Oh, god. Do I sound desperate? I sound desperate. Girls with cold sores and retainers are desperate.

And that was Wednesday because Thursday I had my annual female exam.

“Full battery of STD tests, please,” I told my OB/Gyn as I sat there shivering. Stupid Advil. Even stupider speculum. It made me not want to ever have sex again, but I had to remind myself that I'd never slept with a man who's penis resembled cold metal that stretched the hell out of my girlie parts. But I did wonder if I was jumping the gun. It wasn't like I was going to sleep with him on the *cough*third*cough* date or anything. He probably wouldn't even call because, after getting some distance, he realized that my lips looked like something out of Outbreak.

“Well, you look fine down there, but we’ll call you if anything comes back positive (insecurity forces me to say that nothing came back positive). You are running a fever though,” he told me.

I hugged my sweater more tightly. “Yeah, I’ve had a cold since Tuesday. Somehow, I managed to have a good date last night though.” Why the hell did I say this? Like my vagina doctor gives a shit. He’s got like eight other vaginas to stretch before he goes home and has to deal with yet another vagina.

“Good for you, young lady.” (He’s this old crotchety old man––get it? Crotchety? Haaa…ha. Fine, not so funny. Fuck off.)

“Yeah, I spent the whole day stressing and he didn’t even notice the cold sores until I had to tell him,” I laughed.

The doctor stopped making notes on my chart and squinted, much like Top Gun Guy had, at my lips. “No wonder you’ve got a cold. You’ve got herpes.”

Her…her–what? “No, I don’t,” I snapped indignantly.

“Miss Cleveland, cold sores are symptoms of the herpes simplex virus.” He said this as if it were common knowledge. And I sure felt like a common idiot. “Probably had ‘em since you were a kid, huh?”

I…had…herpes…

“Eighty percent of the population has cold sores. Let me write you a prescription for Valtrex. Make them go away faster. Keep it around for when you feel the tingling.”

Thirty-one-years-old and I hadn’t known that a cold sore was the herpes virus. I’d gone on an amazing first date with an amazing guy with herpes littering my lips. Pucker up, baby, I’ve got herpes! Oh, god, and everyone except me knew this! All my friends were like, “What, you didn’t know?”

NO! I didn’t friggin’ know! And if you all know, then Top Gun Guy knows, and he was probably just being nice and saying he’d ask me out again, just like that douche from the night before! No one wants to go out with a girl whose lips are pouting an STD! It’s always more fun to assume her lips have been in a dirty place rather than inheriting it from some adult when she was only five-years-old!

Thursday: he didn’t call or e-mail. Why should he? Herpes simplex might be more than an STD. One day, it might “turn on” and suddenly make all us infected folks turn into brain-consuming zombies. Who wants to take that chance, let alone possibly catching herpes?

Friday: I would close up shop at Match.com and Chemistry.com. Done. Ending. Fin. I took out my disappointment on my students. I made them read Althusser. I’m sure somehow they deserved it. It made me feel better, anyway.

Then, my phone rang. You can guess who it was. And he shocked me again. He wanted to know about my plans for Saturday night. Saturday night? Prime weekend real estate time? The second date was for a weekend day, or sometime during the week. You never risk the best night out on someone you’ve only met once.

But apparently he did, even if she had a retainer and cold sores.

Smile: His Mother's in Town

I know it’s been a while. That’s why y’all get this loooong story.

However, before this really starts rolling, let me confess that my anxiety level was exceptionally low. I wasn’t worried much at all. I thoroughly enjoy The Boyfriend’s™ mother, and I was looking forward to getting to know his sister better. I had no issue with picking them up at the airport. It was just like picking my own sister and mom up, except I had to curse less. And I don’t have a sister. Nor irrational anger that crops up at the most awkward of times from my long-buried childhood issues toward his mother. So really, it just wasn’t a big deal. I was more honored that he’d asked me to pick them up, really that he trusted me to pick them up and not embarrass them and humiliate myself in the process.

So I made sure I didn’t wear anything that was inappropriate, such as that “I fucked your boyfriend” t-shirt that I sometimes forget offends people, and then I cleaned out my car. Two bags of empty Smart Water bottles later, I’m ready to roll down to LAX. I check traffic on my iPhone and it’s green all the way from Burbank.

But first, let’s have a flashback: so I’m in Burbank because that’s where my Bar Method class is and The Boyfriend™ lives in the city next door. I’d stayed at his place last night, killing zombies––we can’t have an infestation of zombies with his mom and sister coming into town. That would just look irresponsible on our part, not cleaning up rotting, animated corpses that are out for our brains. But other than playing video games, there’s the actual cleaning up of his 70s ski chalet condo (exposed wood beams and strange, levitating, pointy banisters make you want spiked hot coco year round). He went off to work, I went off to my torturous class (by the way, have I mentioned how freaking hot my legs look?). I come back from said class and start cleaning. I started in the living room, with his shoes and socks, then my shoes and socks. At the bottom of the stairs I found his shirt. And, using my better judgment, I picked up my shirt, bra and underwear from the stairs. I also didn’t think his mother and sister needed to see bedding in a very, um, personal state, so that went into the wash. My dog, Annie the Wünderdachshand, tried to help, but I didn’t think The Boyfriend’s™ mother would appreciate stepping on rawhide, probably with a bare foot. Frankly, I didn’t make the place look too perfect because they’d know it was a setup. I mean, they’ve known him for thirty-three years. But the condo was passable. I’d let my own mother see the place. I’m doing yoga-like breathing, I’m so at peace about this. It’s. All. Good.

Then Annie needs her walk. I take her around the block because this is her chance to use the grass before I leave for three hours. She eyes up a few spots, nothing too abnormal. She finds a spot. She squats…and a mailman walks by, interrupting Little Miss ADD Puppy. So we walk on, she squats, and workmen start hammering. Annie stops. We go down a bit farther, some kid on his bicycle distracts her. Then the mailman comes by again. Someone’s dog inside their house barks and slobbers frantically at her. I can’t remember all the interruptions, but the culmination is this: I’m about to be late and my dog hasn’t pissed in six hours. Annie hasn’t gone in the house for over a year, but I just know, today of all days, I’ll return with The Boyfriend’s™ mother and sister to a wet spot on the carpet and a condo reeking of dog urine. Oh, it will happen because that’s how my life works.

Toss her ass in the car then. She won’t pee in it. And they like dogs, she’s a good dog (except today). OH. MY. GOD. I still have to get gas. I am now running ten minutes late to pick up his mother and sister. Visions of them sitting at the LAX curb on their luggage, arms crossed, glaring at me as I drive up. And I start to shake. I haven’t eaten after an hour of impossible ballet leg lifting and contorting my body into nearly impossible shapes that have started working their way into my sex life. So I stop for gas and grab some pretzels while my car fills up. Then Annie and I are off. I’m racing down the 134 to the 5 to get to the 110 to get to the 105 to get to LAX. I slow down a bit on the 134, so I open the bag of pretzels while Annie tries to roll down the passenger window. No, no, no, no, not a dead stop, just please, not a dead stop, anything but a… I hit the brakes and my car comes to a complete stop on the 134. I look at my iPhone, which must be fueled by the soul of a boyfriend from my early 20s because it tells me traffic is clear and it is LYING to me. I am sitting here with an open bag of pretzels in my lap, staring at the license plate of the Saab in front, with Annie barking at a Mexican family in a minivan next to me. My dog is racist.

So I decide to eat my pretzels before I faint in my car, but I have to pop my retainer out first. Brief back story: I’m getting an implant because I lost a tooth when I got hit in the face with a softball, so my retainer fills in the gap on the far right side of my mouth. It’s not very noticeable, but I sure feel awkward when I don’t wear it, like everyone can see it. I set the retainer on the center console and shove a handful of those little Sour Dough Nibblers into my mouth, praying nothing gets stuck in the crevices of my teeth as I chow down.

Traffic starts moving. Annie’s now rolling around on the floor having a blast, and I don’t care what she’s doing as long as she’s no longer barking at anyone who isn’t white, because the last thing I need is the NAACP rolling up next to me with a megaphone, yelling at me to curb my KKK Dachshund.

I make it to the 5. The next freeway isn’t that far. So far no call from The Boyfriend’s™ mother. Their flight should be there by now, I’m still twenty minutes away, but they checked luggage. The car’s silent. Music? No. I’ll listen to my anxiety, let it fuel me as I race down the 5, toward the 110 interchange, where there is no line of cars waiting. Yes! A fucking miracle. And still no call.

In my benevolent state, I smile down at Annie, who’s chewing away on a toy on the passenger’s side floor. Dear God in Heaven that doesn’t exist, thank you. Thank you! This may just work out… Uh. Wait a second.

I…didn’t bring any dog toys. What is she chewing…?

My eyes bulge like I have a thyroid condition. I look down at the empty center console. I look to the dog. I’m in the middle of changing from the 5 to the 110 along this curvy, two-lane interchange that hugs the side of an enormous hill. I scream in rage and grab her leash and harness, yanking Annie up into the seat. I see my retainer fly out of her mouth, bounce off the car door and onto the floor of my car, rolling around in weeks––months––of dirt from passengers’ shoes.

For the entire drive down the 110, I can’t reach my retainer. Traffic is flying, I’m going 85 and my retainer’s as far as it could be from me, a diagonal line of torture because I can’t tell how badly she’s damaged it. Please, just a little traffic, please. I’m sorry I said You don’t exist, I’m so sorry. Annie sits on the seat looking very sad, but I know she’s not sad because she did something wrong. She keeps hanging her head over the seat, staring at my retainer, wanting her chew toy so badly that she whimpers a few times until my glare of doom quiets her.

I know once I exit the 105 for LAX there will be time for me to grab it. I’m on the 105 now but ten minutes away. Still no phone call, but I could care less at this point. How can I possibly meet The Boyfriend’s™ mother and sister as a toothless hag? I can’t smile the entire time. And one of them, probably his mother, will be sitting next to me. Any time I talk, you can see the black, gaping hole where my tooth used to be––and her son is dating this ghetto-ass bitch and “softball” is probably some new slang term for crack! My son is dating a crack whore!

No. No, no. Calm yourself, Cleveland. Just chill. That is an irrational line of thought. You don’t look like a crack whore, even though sometimes you may act like one. You are not a crack whore. Crack whores do not have master’s degrees, do not have retainers, and do not have dogs that chew on them repeatedly throughout car trips to pick up their boyfriend’s mother and sister at the airport.

…chew on them repeatedly…

“Annie! NOOOOOOOOO!!!” I scream as I yank her up again by her harness. I hit the steering wheel, screaming incoherently while the guy in the Mercedes next to me quickly moves into the far lane, the vehicular version of inching away from a crazy person on the bus.

Finally I exit the 105. I stop on the off ramp. I claw down for my retainer, frantically pawing for it under the seat. I can’t feel it, I can’t see it. It’s gone. Disappeared. Nowhere do I feel its rough curves and metal prongs. I look up over the dashboard and the light’s green. Cars are moving. Where is it? I look at Annie.

“Is it in your stomach? Because I will f-ing gut you, dog, I swear. A little taxidermy never hurt anyone. Mount you on the hood of my f-ing car, you slut.”

Then my fingers touch it. Just a little more of a reach and––my hand closes around it, I pop up and the Explorer before me is moving. I drive through the tunnel, wrists on the wheel, eyes switching between the road and the retainer. I have to drive. I can’t tell how badly it’s damaged but at least the fake tooth is still intact. I don’t know if it’ll still fit in my mouth, covering the most physically embarrassing thing about me.

I find the arrivals. I find the airline. I find the parking structure. I pull into a spot. My phone rings. I turn my car off. I answer it.

“Christie, we just got off the plane,” The Boyfriend’s™ mother says. “We were delayed a half an hour.”

Halle-fucking-lujah.

We all agree to meet in the baggage claim, but I leave the evil little dog in the car and hoof it to the terminal, hand still squeezing the retainer. Maybe I can make it to the bathroom before they make it to the baggage claim. Maybe I can duck around them. But I see where the bathroom is, I see where the baggage claim is, and I see The Boyfriend’s™ mother, who sees me. She smiles and waves. I cock my head to the left and smile back, wave back. I start walking toward her. I don’t see his sister anywhere.

What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do? I look perfect except for that gaping black hole where a tooth should be. Toothless hag! Crack whore! Not to mention my retainer that possess that horrible mouthpiece stench, which is now rubbed all over my hand, along with eau de dog breath and bits of shoe soles.

I keep walking slowly. There’s a pillar ahead that will block me from her view. That will be my only chance. I approach the pillar, she can’t see me. It’s a millisecond where my brain fires commands to my hand. I don’t even recall making the decision. It was more of a fight or flight reaction, purely instinctual to pop that retainer into my mouth, risking that it didn’t fit anymore, and all covered with dog drool and germs from the floor of my car. My shoulders relax as it pops into place with only a little strain from one of the wires, but good enough.

Around the pillar, and I’m giving his mother an enormous smile and a hug.

“Thanks for picking us up,” she says.

As I reply, I feel a hair stuck between my retainer and roof of my mouth, and I wonder if it’s mine, my dog’s or some random person’s hair that got tracked into my car at one point in the last two years. But fuck it. For now, my smile’s perfect.

Resistance is, Well, You Know

I just went to get a glass of water and saw my half-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol in the fridge. The hot pink bottle caught my eye and suddenly, it was a stare down. But I won. I slammed the fridge door and bolted back to my bedroom, skidding and sliding in my slippers down the dark hallway before making it safely under the covers.

As a kid, my mom took me to doctor after doctor after doctor. I always had a horrible stomachache. They’d gotten progressively worse. At first it was just a small one, often from milk, so Mom cut milk out of my diet. But the pain continued to increase, until finally I’d have to stay home from school and my brow was thick with sweat. These doctors had no idea what was wrong and all my mom could do was give me Pepto-Bismol to help with the hurt.

My grandma came to visit from Montana around this time, and what I didn’t know was that she had trouble sleeping. Well, Grandma busted me one night guzzling Pepto in the cold, hard light of the fridge. Initially, I’d faked the stomachaches to drink Pepto. That smooth, licorice taste was like the candy I was never allowed to have, so no wonder I started sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to drink more, which eventually caused my stomachaches. So yeah, mom wasn’t too thrilled with me after that.

Well, I still love the taste of Pepto, and I don’t keep it in the house because it’s hard for me to keep my hands off it. But here was a half-gone bottle waiting for me in the fridge, taunting me. My own liquid pink temptation. It probably won’t last the night. At some point, I’ll give in, put this blog down and go grab the bottle. I’ll return, taking shots from that little plastic cup they seal up with the bottle, making it as pleasurable to drink as Highland Park scotch. Then I’ll say “Screw the cup!” and take hits straight from the bottle.

Anyway, here’s the story why it’s waiting for me in the fridge:

It’s Memorial Day Weekend. Everyone’s barbequing and I’m on the rag. Seriously, how could my timing be worse? Three days off and I get stuck with bitchiness on Friday, fatigue on Saturday and cramps on Sunday. Propped up with pillows and a blanket on The Boyfriend™’s couch, I whimper away most of Sunday, whining about what Monday would hold for me: the return of acid rain? Female pattern baldness? M.C. Hammer pants?

Man, I was in a mood. I skulked beneath that blanket, barking out commands to The Boyfriend™: “No, go there. Yeah, on that shelf. Search through that box––no, you went through that one already, the one on the left. That one, yeah. Oh my god, behind you! Jesus, watch OUT! Reload. Good job, baby. Now loot that other corpse. You always forget to loot the corpses. It’s absolutely imperative you don’t forget, because where else are we going to get ammo between here and Rivet City?”

Oh. Guess forgot to mention that I made him play Fallout 3 to entertain me. But if he didn’t have me, the Queen of Bethesda RPGs, he’d have left so many caps on feral ghouls that we would’ve never gotten the Chinese assault rifle repaired and made it through the Capital Wastelands that day. But after ten hours of straight playing, I let him take a break and felt very awkward, yet relieved, that he was fine making dinner without me. My body ached in this strange way and I couldn’t imagine standing in the kitchen, or really even moving around.

Then it was back to entertaining me with the Bloody Mess Perk (“Watch this headshot, sweetie!”), but I started to fade, and even bodies exploding and limbs falling to the four corners of his 50-inch plasma couldn’t keep me interested. I’d been kicking the blanket off and pulling it back on for about an hour when I tumbled off the couch and hobbled to the bathroom, hunched over like Igor from cramping pains and a gut roiling with dinner and stomach acid.

Glad I had my hair in a ponytail because, at approximately 7pm, I lost half of my dinner in his downstairs bathroom. I coughed a bit just as the sound of gunfire ceased.

“Honey? Are you okay?” The Boyfriend™ asks with distracted concern.

“I’m fine! Go back to slaying!”

I rinse my mouth out and stagger back onto the couch. Moaning, I pull the blanket back up, cursing my reproductive organs for functioning properly. The Boyfriend™ asks if it’s the Perk making me sick, or if my incredibly dreaded motion sickness from first person games––strangely absent during Half Life 2 yesterday and now today––had returned. I reassure him that it’s from my period, that sometimes I throw up from the pain. The Boyfriend™ puts Fallout on pause, looks at me, and asks with sad, sad eyes if there’s anything I need or that he can do. No, there’s really nothing, I’ll be better tomorrow, as long as acid rain doesn’t fall.

Fifteen minutes later, the only comforts I have are two things: how cool the porcelain feels against my burning, clammy palms as I clutch the basin of his toilet, and that he has regular maids who do a great job of cleaning said toilet because it could have been oh so much worse each time I shove my head into it. I stay hunched on his cool, brick bathroom floor, drenched in sweat. I don’t know for how long but there’s a tap on the door at some point. He pushes the door open and now I’m thinking I look like a crazed, pinned feral ghoul from Fallout, crouched there on the bathroom floor.

“Honey?”

The words “I’m fine, I’m fine” start to come out but are quickly replaced with vomit rushing up my throat. I kick the door shut with my foot so he doesn’t see me spewing bits of carne asada with a color of liquid I don’t recognize as anything going into me at any point in the last year.

After that, I’m shaking and he’s put video games aside. But how the hell are we going to discuss the moral dilemma of the Tenpenny Tower quest if I can’t stop hurling? is what I’m thinking as I cling to the bowl shivering. This will stop, I reassure myself. I’m done, there’s nothing left in my stomach––ouch, fuck, ouch it’s sore––this is from motion sickness building uuuUUULLP

“Christie, what can I do?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

No, I really wasn’t. My sweat’s so hot and my body’s so cold that my t-shirt flash frozen to my skin. I was like one of those bags of chicken you get in the frozen foods section, a big old sack of icy poultry, slouching on The Boyfriend™’s bathroom floor. Vomiting in front of him. Oh, humiliation. I wanted to crawl into that toilet and pull the lid down after me, because anything was better than looking up at his worried face or hearing his concerned voice through the door. And all the while, my image withers: I was a dainty rose, grown to perfection, with perfect petals that never wilt. I do not have bodily functions, I do not make messes, because girls are lovely little things. But most of all: Girls. Don’t. Vomit.

You know what girls also don’t do? Shit the most god-awful smelling diarrhea that shreds paint off the wall like it was wallpaper. It was midnight. Monday. Acid rain. I wish The Boyfriend™ had wallpaper, because it would’ve caught fire, burning the bathroom and consuming me so I didn’t have to live with the humiliation of what happened next: I started throwing up and having diarrhea at the same time. This happened to me several years ago, and a vicious ER nurse stabbed me with an IV and I passed out on the gurney, followed by throwing up in my sleep for nine hours. So I clawed for water and dumped it down my throat only to throw it up and shit it out about thirty seconds later.

I don’t know how long this lasted, but I rebuffed attempts to take me to the hospital and somehow ended up in the master bathroom. The Boyfriend™ put me to bed (I just can’t believe that. I would never put something so loathsome as Myself With the Stomach Flu into a bed). I vaguely recall the clock reading 2am when I woke up feeling like my stomach had been scrubbed out with steel wool and my lower back whacked with a lead pipe. But my stomach quivered and my colon trembled, so I started crawling across the bedroom floor to the bathroom.

“Christie, where are you––?” The Boyfriend™ calls after me. “Wait, I’ll carry you.”

“No, no,” I moan. “Go to sleep. Don’t want to wake you.”

“Oh, my God!”

I think this is where he wanted to pick up the giant metal Calphalon pasta pot he’d put beside the bed and bash my head in with it. But he didn’t because The Boyfriend™ possesses tremendous patience. He waits outside the bathroom while I shiver, throw up bile into his upstairs trashcan and unload murky swamp water into the toilet, then faint and fall off the toilet.

Repeat this scene like three or four times and randomly add in me crying, “Mommy, I want my mommy before I die of swine flu,” and you know pretty much the rest of the story. He also moved a pillow and blankets into the bathroom, then lay down on the floor and slept next to me. For the next year, The Boyfriend™ can pull this out at any time and use this as a bargaining chip. He wants to play poker with the boys when I want to go shopping for Victorian antiques and lacey curtains? Go, with my sincerest blessing, and here’s a case of premium beer I bought just for y’all. Sainthood has been achieved. Saint The Boyfriend™.

I wake up Monday morning hardly able to stand. After trying to walk down the stairs, then scooch down one stair at a time on my aching ass, I let The Boyfriend™ help me. Then I actually ask him to go to the store and get me Saltines, Vitamin Water and, yes, Pepto-Bismol, which I salivated for the entire time he was away. And I hope you don’t believe for one moment that I wasn’t considering driving myself to the store, because I was. The only thing that stopped me was, well, I couldn’t actually walk, so I reasoned that I couldn’t actually work the pedals to my car. Or even get down the stairs outside The Boyfriend™’s condo.

So here’s the funny thing: helping myself to Pepto-Bismol made things worse for me as a kid, and resisting help for myself made things worse for me as an adult, leading me back to needing Pepto-Bismol (which I’ve resisted pulling from the fridge because my stomach––four days later––finally stopped aching). I learned once that I should only take things when I actually need them, and now I learned (sort of) to take help when I actually need it.

Fuck you, Pepto-Bismol. You aren’t supposed to be a life lesson; you’re supposed to be a guilty pleasure.

Transfer of Love

This is how serious my relationship is getting:

“Dinner?”

Yes, darling. We’re having dinner with Will and April tonight, then seeing Star Trek. I shoot off a few suggestions, and I’m so glad I have him around, as he points out important things like:

“Hungarian all-you-can-eat buffet? You hate buffets.”

I also hate Hungarians.

Okay, I don’t. I’m just saying that. But really, I love that The Boyfriend™ knows this bizarre little fact about me. I love that he cares to remember it. What I don’t love is the disappointment I feel when I realize that Vampire Barbeque is a buffet. You shouldn’t be allowed to go wrong with places that serve Vampire Barbeque because when it happens, people like me are left with this strange void in their life, a place where Vampire Barbeque should have resided, like in the left coronary artery.

So while he’s looking up a few other places to dine at, I distract myself by doing something very serious. It’s a decision I’ve procrastinated on since The Boyfriend™ and I became exclusive. I knew I’d have to do something about it, but I just didn’t want to. It’s a very serious financial and personal decision that will also have a tremendous impact on our relationship. I didn’t want to get it wrong. It’s just that I’m just not sure that The Boyfriend™ and I are at this certain stage in our relationship, though the buffet comment warms my heart. I mean, he knows my credit score. Isn’t that serious enough? How can my finger still tremble? How can I constantly close my web browser, unable to make a decision? Why am I not sure about committing with such entirety? But I can’t keep putting this off any longer. I must make a decision: one or three months? (I just can’t bear to look at the six months, because I know choosing that payment plan would jinx us, like, tonight).

“Darling.”

“Yes?” he asks.

“Do you have any plans to dump me in the next three months?”

“Uh…no?”

“If I choose three months, you cannot dump me until August 8.” He is locked in and committed to me, no matter how bad my PMS is, and even if I buy that hairless Sphinx cat in order to taunt him with it for the next 15 years. For the next three months, he is The Boyfriend™ even if he makes feeble attempts to say that he isn’t. I will get him drunk (two beers should do it) and have Kat von D tattoo it on his ass like a cattle brand.

“But since you’re moving I’ll be hanging out at your place more, and we could be spending more time together just chilling.” Okay, for that comment, it’ll be a henna’d cattle brand tattoo.

And though I know this is a super sweet comment, I don’t think he’s looking at the full scope of what he’s saying: I lack an Xbox, cable TV¬¬hell, even a TV. If I were to stop writing for a moment and turn around, I’d be looking at his TV, some plasma-filled thing that’s wider than I am tall, and with speakers that resemble a three-year-old dressed as Darth Vader (creepy shit when you wander downstairs at 2am to get a glass of water). Somehow I think he’s mistaking my new apartment as a fun place for a man to be, like “Romper Room” (well, actually, that’s a terrible analogy, because The Boyfriend™ would not think “Romper Room” is a fun place to be, but a child molester would, so what I really should compare it to is, like, Spearmint Rhino or some other strip club, but then you might think my new apartment has poles and there’ll be Victorian strippers there, and suddenly I’m living in a London brothel––wow, tangent). So really. I mean, I know my new place is all cool and Victorian, but…really? I think I have a couple Magic decks somewhere, but otherwise, you’ll be hanging out at a place that’s more than architecturally Victorian, baby.

But back to the WWF Relationship SmackDown! (available only on PlayStation). “You cannot dump me until it runs out. This is the law.”

“I think me buying you a plane ticket to Lake Tahoe in July is a bigger sign I can’t dump you. Then again, the last girl did.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been to Vegas and Oakland with you. And if Oakland didn’t do it, I’m sure Tahoe won’t. I mean it’s Oakland…”

“She went to Vegas and Oakland too.” Hm. Apparently The Boyfriend™ has an M.O. For my sanity, I’m not going to think about this. Instead, I blink. Then look back to the choices before me on my laptop screen:

$14.99 for 1 month reoccurring
$41.97 for 3 months reoccurring (save $3).

$41.97 for relationship security sounds like a great deal. I love American because you can’t pay for relationship security in socialist countries; instead everyone is equally miserable there. So I buy my happiness through renewing my World of WarCraft subscription while he continues talking: “I posted a pic of us on my guild website and said you’d be transferring soon.”

“It’s done. Three freaking months of me committing to you and to you committing to YOU DID WHAT!?”

“I’ll pay for your server transfer.” To compliment the pussy waxing, apparently.

“A pic of my character, right?”

“No...Of you and me. We have a forum for that kind of thing.”

Um, what exactly is “that kind of thing” because images of furry porn swim before my eyes––some with tentacle-laden octopus costumes and slave girl Leia outfits. Suddenly, I need to make the best of this situation, whether it deals with reality or not.

“Tell me it’s a picture of me dressed as my undead priest for Halloween.”

“You dressed as her for Halloween? You are a dork.”

No, no, I didn’t. I was just saying that as some bizarre form of comfort to myself, a complete and utter rejection of reality as a coping mechanism (which sounds strangely like a description for schizophrenia). But what would be wrong with dressing as my WarCraft character for Halloween anyway, Mr. I’ve-Got-A-First-Edition-D&D-Boxed-Set? After that comment, start dreading Halloween, motherfucker.

However, there are more important things afoot right now rather than how I’ll possibly make a perfect rendition of my Dark Shroud of the Scourge, let alone remove my entire jaw for the evening of October 31st (which, as I’m fully aware, is his sister’s wedding):

“Well, how good do I look in that picture?”

“It’s the one of us at XS.”

Ohhhh….At the Wynn nightclub, where my tits are popping out of a leopard print dress. So I’d say I look pretty good. Excellent.

“One of the ‘holy boobage’ shots?”

“Yup.”

“Holy boobage” should really be called “Holly boobage,” because she was kind enough to point out the obvious: your tits are out of proportion with the rest of your body, girlfriend (well, hers are too, so neyh!).

Anyway, I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, his entire guild now knows that I’m not an ugly cow, that I don’t sit around playing WarCraft all day while eating tubs of chocolate malted crunch ice cream with the anti-freeze ice cream scoop. On the other, I’m terrified that his guild’s off-tank will download that picture, Photoshop The Boyfriend™’s face out and beat off to it every time I’m healing him in a raid––then blame the healer when he dies (typical).

“Out of curiosity, which one?”

“The one I look the thinnest in.”

It’s good to know that we’re both equally as vain.

The Job Hunt

So I've been traveling (more blogging on that later), but here's some entertainment that might just cheer you up in this dire economy. Your job hunt couldn't possibly be as bad as mine, because I discovered that I'm not even qualified to work at McDonald's:

Selling myself is the most painful thing that I can possibly do, but I sell myself the only way I know how––which, despite the economy, is not on a street corner, you perverted assholes. It’s through writing fantastic paragraphs, with intricate sentences and very particular words. But it’s about me, the most horrible topic there is to write about in a formal fashion. If I could write a cover letter like a blog, things might be different. Or I’d still be unemployed. Who knows?

Physically, it’s worse than getting beaten with a sock full of oranges. Psychologically, it’s worse than The Boyfriend™ telling me, “The homeless girl begging at the freeway off ramp today was totally hot––I’d do her.” My guts twist and churn and I want to cry as I figure out ways to jam “detail oriented” and “team player” into sentences that somehow describe me. I cull the job description for verbs and adjectives that I can build upon and conjoin with specific and interesting things to say about myself. All this in, like, five sentences. It’s like brain surgery, except they’ll never pay me or respect me as much.

But it’s done. I’m proud of the vile piece of marketing that I’ve produced yet have no faith in. If it was about anything else, I wouldn’t cringe.

I ask The Boyfriend™, “Will you look at my cover letter for type-os?”

“Of course,” he answers, because he’s so amazingly wonderful.

Thirty seconds later: “Wow.”

You know that $10K my mom spent on braces for me? It’s worth it, because I’m beaming. My cheeks are positively aching from the smile. I’m a pro at cover letters. Warner Bros. will hire me for sure. The Boyfriend™ sees what a brilliant writer I am, thinks I’m so talented to be able to evoke meaning through subtle yet complex nuances, even in tedious cover letters. At this moment, if I had a cage full of delicate, cooing doves, I would release them into the world to share their beauty and my joy with all of humanity––not to mention some deeply brilliant and abstract comparison to Bladerunner is forming in the recesses of my mind.

“Please tell me you didn’t send this.”

Rot in hell, you treasonous son of a bitch. If I had those doves, I’d release them and let my dog Annie chase them around The Boyfriend’s™ condo while they shit all over his couch.

“No…I didn’t…”

“Good. Give me a sec. I need rewrite time.”

Re…write…? Rewrite my words? I type 110 words a minute, yet with this paragraph of pain I pecked each letter of each word out over the course of three agonizing hours. Every vowel was another knot forming in my shoulder. There were too many consonants that I almost became bulimic, wanting to throw up after each one appeared on the screen.

“You’re applying for a job, not a Ph.D.”

I pouted. My writing got into a Ph.D. program.

“Let alone an entry level job.”

Oh God, I am so not entry level. Anyone that’s spent two years bottle feeding 18-year-olds the tools to communicate effectively on paper can’t possibly be entry level. More importantly, this was an entry-level job that I was applying for? Did all entry-level jobs sound this good because, frankly, it came off as pretty posh. But did they mask indentured servitude as posh these days? It’s been so long since I’ve had a real job, in the real world. Now I wondered if I was shooting too low, if I’d end up trying to pay off student loans on a salary comparable to my master’s degree funding. And shouldn’t a master’s count for something? But these are all matters I’d like to discuss in detail in a blog about deconstructing the state of education in this country; or even write a critical analysis on it, possibly drawing on Richard Dreyfuss’ brilliant insights.

“Why is the word “choreography” in here? When were you a dance instructor?”

“THAT IS A GOOD WORD.”

“No, it’s not.”

“And “innate”? What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t you dare take that out. It’s a fantastic word.”

“If I have to look it up, then the idiot reading your resume isn’t going to understand what you’re saying.”

Wait, you mean the rest of the world doesn’t use “choreography” as an alternate and more colorful word variation on “coordination” and “orchestrating”? And “innate” isn’t part of the common vernacular? I use “innate” every day.

“Well, at least let me take “innate” out. But just know that 90% of the people who read it are going to think you’re a dance instructor.”

Oh. No. Realization dawns.

No wonder I was still unemployed. I’d been sending out slightly altered versions of this cover letter for weeks. I sounded like an academic snob. Who wants to work with someone like that? No one outside the Academy––oh shit, look at that. Who in the real world knows what the fuck the “Academy” is? Exactly just how pretentious have I been sounding? Apparently, I have been sending out cover letters where I present a theory of how to integrate my analytical abilities within a creative environment through a poststructuralist framework, particularly in parallel to Deleuzean metaphysics.

I have serious problems. I need to get off this theory train and into the real, functioning world. I need to stop debating form in my cover letters like I’m having a debate with T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land, motherfucker? Let me tell you something about a wasteland: it’s about to be my life if I don’t normal the fuck out.

Well, there’s one way to fix this, and that is by deconstructing this cover letter in an appropriate fashion:

To whom it may concern:

I am applying for the position of Creative Administrator for the Creative Affairs Department at Warner Bros. Animation, Inc., as listed on the Times-Warner website on April 29, 2009. My résumé has been uploaded to the Times-Warner employment site for your consideration.

I am both creative and organized, making me an ideal candidate for this job opening. These aspects, when combined with my innate choreographic abilities, form someone who is very capable of navigating the production, the coordination and the assembly of artwork. I am also a dedicated Brazilian waxer, and I put out on the third date.

I look forward to meeting with you to discuss the future possibilities of this position, and even positions that emulate scenes from the film “Secretary”.

Sincerely,
Christie L. Cleveland

Wait. Is “emulate” too academic?

Sacrifice to the Godlings

The Boyfriend’s™ Best Friend™ has a child. It was his child’s first birthday. Therefore, it required a celebration. A celebration that I must attend because The Boyfriend™ is obligated (and wanted) to go. So he returned from water polo practice just as I was getting dressed.

As I dry my hair, The Boyfriend™ touches his up. The scent of his hair gel turns me feral, I don’t know why. His hair’s looking fabulous. I’m looking fabulous with my long gorgeous tresses and all. Frankly, I’m feeling a bit like a lioness with an attractive mane (look, I know male lions have the manes, but just go with it, okay?), and all I can think about is pouncing on The Boyfriend™, who wanders out of the bathroom and settles down at his computer to wait for me. I pull out my makeup bag and start slapping the stuff on. He yells from his office:

“They assured me there won’t be a lot of kids there!”

Awesome mood killer, dude. I hate being reminded that half of how we spend our time is making babies, just with the safety on.

“Oh, good!” I apply some mascara.

“And you’ll know my friends that are there!”

Now this is A Story. And in A Story, there are plot twists. Things are often said that become very untrue, things where you, as the audience, get a sinking feeling and some sense of dramatic irony that the characters, which, in this case, are The Boyfriend™ and me, have no fucking clue about.

Well, I had every fucking clue about a plot twist going down as I paused and contemplated stabbing my eyes out with the mascara wand to avoid going. No child’s birthday party could be that easy. But I finished my makeup and put on this gorgeous silk sleeveless blouse and expensive jeans. There had been mention of a backyard, so I wore flats rather than my Michael Kors heels. I looked hot, okay? I’m not sure what I had to prove to The Boyfriend’s™ Best Friend’s™ one-year-old kid, but I really needed to have some confidence before descending into the hosting pit of my enemy.

The Boyfriend™ drove. He did a fine job of distracting me with the rules of poker and a deck of silvery Battlestar Galactica cards (you know, girls and shiny objects). We neared the House of Despair. He parked across from a school with delicate and happy pictures of seals in the window and other trappings of childhood. My legs quivered and I was grateful for the flats I’d chosen. An Elmo balloon attacked me as we went through the white picket fence gate.

I should have taken that as a omen because, in the next ten minutes, I discovered why I spent so long looking fabulous: I was spitting in the face of Fate, looking gorgeous before being shoved as an unknowing sacrifice into the pit of vipers.

And what a pit of vipers it was: crawling, waddling, running, some even carried by servants. Worse yet, there was prearranged torture before they descended upon my flesh and consumed me to fuel their lifeblood. They had dined on sugar: an Elmo cake with icing piled as high as my favorite stiletto’s heel. And it was…

Oh God, no.

My silk blouse was white…white…white…

Elmo is red…red…red…

And these vipers, with their wobbly, bendy bodies and lack of any sort of quality equilibrium were bounding and rebounding off each other––and parents––like a horde of balloons. But a demonic horde of balloons with blood red hands.

Everywhere…red stains…licking pink fingers, eying me up…eying the pure white of my blouse…Somehow assessing the price tag and importance of my jeans…

The fence was eight feet high. Even if I could escape the The Boyfriend™’s vice grip on my hand––I frantically looked for anything sharp, but the knives were plastic––I would never be able to climb it, even if I used the Kangaroo Climber slide as a ladder. They would just laugh and reach for my scrambling legs with their sticky sweet hands, pulling me down into the sunny backyard abyss.

I had no escape. Only eight weeks together but I never thought he’d make me a human sacrifice.

Oh, the betrayal. His hair gel suddenly reeked of it.

“Christie!”

Stiff hugs for the traumatized girlfriend from two friends of his I’d met prior. Then they passed around, like this was some G-rated Sesame Street orgy:

“So-and-So, this is Christie.”

Shake hands, exchange polite hellos. I’m sure my strained smile looked relatively plastic, further enticing these monsters to reach for me.

“And this is…”

I felt like the freshly unwrapped gift of a Barbie doll, being passed around from person to person. I wondered how much longer it would be before they saw through my fake smile, to the anxiety writhing beneath, and I was tossed to the old toys box, quickly becoming Ex-Girlfriend Barbie.

At one point, there was an enormous––and enormously expensive––digital camera going from guy to guy. It landed on my man, and I stared him, eyes wide not from shock but glazed over from some nameless horror presented before me: he too had fallen into the Bacchanalia. He spun the camera’s knobs, adjusted it’s buttons, all while licking red icing from his fingers. He too had abandoned me and become what women dread: the eight-year-old that lurks inside of every male.

Twenty minutes later I was semi-comatose, and I’m sure I’d met everyone who’d known The Boyfriend™ since that awkward summer when his voice cracked, but I still evaluated my situation: everywhere I looked I either saw someone I did not know, or diseased vermin with blood-like sugar smeared across their mouths and caked on their hands. I was sure that when the sun disappeared down behind the sea, they would fall upon me in a sugar-fueled reverie that resembled South Pacific cannibalistic rituals where children consume adults in order to facilitate some fucked up view on the circle of life.

Obviously, I made it out before sunset, because this is nonfiction. If it were fiction, well, I’d probably be done with my thesis by now instead of procrastinating and finishing it over the summer.

Anyway, this morning I tumbled off the wrong side of the bed, and I left The Boyfriend™ sleeping while I got ready to face the age group that I prefer: college freshmen. I was banging things around as consciousness quickly replaced the dreamy anxiety that clung to me. Those little creatures had plagued my mind as I slept, chasing me with their bloody hands and gaping sharp-toothed maws.

I rummaged through my overnight bag for my toothbrush, still seeing red over twelve hours later. And where the fuck was my toothbrush? I dumped all my toiletries out onto the bathroom counter. It wasn’t in there, and I know I’d used it the night before. That party had left me a wreck.

“Why the hell did I agree to go to that fucking party anyway?”

I looked up from the chaos of beauty products unleashed upon The Boyfriend™’s counter and saw my toothbrush.

He’d put it in his toothbrush holder.