There were plenty of handsome boys working in the warehouse, but I figured it would be wise not to shit where I ate. Besides, the handsomest one—this guy with alluringly sensitive eyes—would barely speak to me, even though I tried desperately to impress him with my knowledge and expertise at the copy machine. I was a college graduate, after all. He had a warm smile and those incredible eyes that avoided all contact with mine, almost like I was a tick that was trying to suck out his soul with my womanly stare. I tried to break the ice one day when one of his copies jammed, so I immediately jumped up to perform surgery on the machine, successfully freeing the renegade sheet of paper. I showed him the culprit and closed up the innards, but his response was slightly less than the magnificent awe I was expecting. He looked at me for only a moment, grabbed the paper from my hand, and then fled back into the warehouse.
Kate laughed when I recounted the story later that day, and I was horrified when she pointed out a little tiny booger in my left nostril that poked its milky, wormy head out every time I exhaled. Then we met up for happy hour, and Kate bought me a drink after work, and we toasted the fact that mucus was a beautiful preventative measure to shitting where you were about to take a big bite.
Super Idiot Girl: The Sad Life and Lonely Times of Princess Enabler
Ben had fled the state like I was the Khmer Rouge. I had, however, been warned.
On our first date, he stood me up.
“I just couldn’t make it. I couldn’t get a ride” was Ben’s excuse, because, naturally, he didn’t have a car.
Our second date took place in a park because we were apparently hiding from his girlfriend, her existence of which, at this point, I was unaware; the third date took place behind the counter of the record store (more hiding) in which he worked, as we ate Whoppers with cheese we got on a two-for-one deal. We shared french fries and a drink, and also note that these were not supersized. You would think that I would be catching on by now, but I’m still blissfully unaware—I’m mesmerized by his goatee.
I am a stoopid girl, and the kind of stoopid you spell with two o’s.
The entire duration of our liaison lasted the lifetime of one hurricane season, and created enough damage to qualify as a state of emergency. In the span of a week, our status quickly jumped from a date in the park to my designation as his “own lovely lady.”
Never a good sign.
As it turns out, Ben had a pretty big character flaw.
We were on our way to a party one night when Ben mentioned his unstable girlfriend. I was getting ready to dive into my “The Injury I Incurred By Walking Into A Steel Light Pole During A Third-Grade Field Trip Simply Made Me More Sensitive As A Person, Which Is Quite Different From Unstable, I’ll Have You Know” speech until I realized he wasn’t talking about me.
Beware the Girlfriend: It’s always a weary tale, and usually pops up in Act Three of “It’s Not You, It’s Me,” so Ben’s ex-girlfriend made a cameo rather early. Preexisting girlfriends are always a rickety lot; they’re never biochemists, financial wizards, or English professors. They’re almost always on some sort of behavior-modifying medication, or probation. The ones I’ve had the misfortune to tangle with have usually not finished high school, let alone had careers. Ben’s girlfriend got the closest to having a career, due to her job as a trimmer at a dog grooming business.
“What do you mean, there’s a ‘girlfriend’?” I asked him as we arrived at our destination. “You’re not allowed more than one, because I know you’re not a Mormon and you’re not a sheikh. You don’t even have a car, let alone the funds to provide for a harem. You can’t get Whoppers on a three for one deal, you know!”
Ben stumbled into the explanation that they weren’t really together together; things had fizzled out, but they were still living in the same apartment because neither could afford to move.
Honestly, it didn’t sound all that weird to me, since my friend Jamie had lived uncomfortably under that arrangement for an entire six months until she came home one day and found that her ex-boyfriend, now roommate, had donated most of her possessions to charity when he found out she was dating again.
Ben then quickly offered proof that they were no longer together together.
“You can call me at the apartment anytime,” he said confidently as we knocked on the door. “It’s okay with her. I told her about you.”
That was good proof, I thought, pretty rock solid, even though I reasoned that if my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend called my house, I’d probably hang right up and call Goodwill, too.
Dog Girl must be very understanding, I thought, as I walked into the party, still unable to grasp the whole concept. But in about ten seconds, I was even further stunned when Ben broke into a rather mortifying interpretive dance to George Clinton and Parliament’s “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker” after taking a hit off what could be called a questionable cigarette. While I shrank into a corner, he pranced around the living room like a Budweiser Clydesdale, shimmied like Gypsy Rose Lee, and then ate an entire bowl of French onion dip with his index finger.
It was exactly one week later that I found Ben and Dog Girl packing up his stuff into her hippie van, and he told me it was all my fault. I could only think of one thing to say as I walked back to my car.
“Oh, yeah?” I yelled. “Well, you two TRASH EATERS deserve each other since I know HE couldn’t pick out a fork in a lineup!!!”
It’s better this way, I kept repeating inside my head as I got in the car and put the gear in drive, leaving them both on the curb, standing next to the van. It’s better this way.
What kind of man dates a Cornrow Girl? I ask myself.
What kind of woman gets dumped for a Cornrow Girl?
I picture my scalp partitioned, sectioned, and woven like a Shaker basket, and I shiver.
My boyfriend just ran away, I thought. To another state. With Medusa.
Maybe he just took some bad drugs.
Bad drugs will totally make a person do things like that; look what he did after one hit off a joint, he morphed into David Lee Roth! Besides, my cousin once killed a cat when he was on acid and burglarizing a house, because he thought it was a lion.
Bad drugs can cause a boyfriend to desert you.
Be realistic, I reminded myself. No amount of drugs, good or bad, could have made those cornrows into anything but cornrows. A cat can be a lion, but a cornrow is still bad hair.
It really is my fault, I tell myself. I need to learn to recognize and identify the danger signs when I see them, and not brush them off as “eccentricities,” “lovable oddities,” or “a sign that he is crying out for the help and the comforting of a codependent nurturer that only I, Princess Enabler, can provide.” Bad boyfriends don’t disguise themselves; their girlfriends do it for them. I was guilty of that. A bad boyfriend will stay as such, and rarely, rarely, will a good boyfriend wake up one day and defect to the evil forces. By the same token, a bad boyfriend will never, ever wake up one day and become a good one. You’ve got a better chance of finding a dead rat in a soda can and becoming a millionaire in the settlement afterward. A bad boyfriend will not change, because, simply, there’s no shame in it for him.
But there should be consequences, there should be penalties: he lies, and I get to witness the tattooing of the words “Warning: Severe Emotional Danger Ahead: Use of this product may cause temporary blindness, hysteria, irrationality, low self-esteem, and could require psychiatric care of a trained professional at the rate of $120 an hour plus a $15 copay,” preferably on his forehead.
I was the sucker.
I am the sucker.
So I did the only thing I could. Before the sun even had a chance to rise, I was on a plane to Portland, Oregon, where my runner-up boyfriend was waiting for me at the gate. Our newfound bliss lasted approximately thirty minutes, until we pulled into his driveway and he said simply, “Just so you know, my ex-girlfriend moved back in because cash was real tight, man. But don’t worry, don’t freak out, okay, ’ca
use it’s totally cool. I told her all about you.”
You Never Call Me
After discovering that my backup boyfriend’s roommate was not merely a former girlfriend but a size-six, raven-haired beauty with not one, single freckle and a flawless complexion, I decided to cut my stay short by a couple of days. When I realized that she was from FRANCE, pronounced my name “Loh-wee!” and got regularly manicured, I folded my hand and hopped on the next flight home. I had already lost out to a dog girl; there was no way I was going head-to-head with a skinny little Frenchie with perfect nails and healthy skin who could eat troughs of cheese without the ramifications.
Several weeks after my aborted runaway attempt, I was tearing apart my purse for the hint of a cigarette when I found the phone number. Caught in the clutches of a nicotine fit, I held the torn piece of paper with shaking hands and wondered aloud how I had gotten it.
“Thanks for fixing the paper jam, you never call me. 967-8564.”
I looked at the number for a while, and then suddenly, I gasped.
The guy from work, the warehouse guy, the guy who saw the wormy booger pop out of my nose! The sensitive eyes guy! Oh my God.
Wait—
Oh my God.
Slowly, pieces of a previous blackout start floating by, like I’m catching glimpses of a dream.
Oh, I hate it when this happens! Now I have to figure out if Sensitive Eyes guy saw me naked!
MEMORY: A week earlier, I’m at Long Wong’s, my favorite bar. There’s laughing, I remember laughing, that’s always good, laughing is good. Okay, I’m holding a drink in a lowball, it’s a full drink, Sensitive Eyes guy is laughing at something I said. Or maybe a particle of my brain just tumbled out of my nostril, I don’t know. He comes a little closer, and I think he said, “You’re so pretty”—that can’t be right—but I’m not so sure because then the full drink slips out of my hand and dives toward the floor, where it shatters into a million little diamonds.
Oh boy. Too drunk to hold on to a whiskey and Coke and the word “pretty.” That’s not a combination with a positive outcome. Not good at all. That’s the secret password that usually leaves me trying to find a ride home in the morning. If Sensitive Eyes Guy didn’t see me naked, it’s a strong bet that I at least flashed him a boob, and if I did, I certainly hope it was the bigger—and firmer—of the two.
That’s it. I’m going to have to quit my job. Or call him. If he saw me naked, I’ll have to quit anyway.
So I dialed the number on the mangled piece of paper, I called Sensitive Eyes Guy, and, lo and behold, a lady answered.
A LADY. Like a MOM lady. Or, with my luck, a wife.
I was so caught off guard that I actually left a message instead of my usual MO of hanging up. And the funny thing was that when the phone rang in an hour, I thought it was him calling back, most likely to tell me that after our conjugal visit he was experiencing some pronounced sensations that may require the care of a medical professional.
It wasn’t.
Instead, it was my good friend Troy, who I had worked with on the college newspaper. He said that some guy gave him three thousand dollars to start a magazine and did I want a job as a music editor? The pay was shitty, there were no benefits, but we could smoke in the office, which was upstairs from a guy who made pornos, and sell the promo CDs we got for drinking money. Did that sound cool?
“Cooler than Keith Richards when you could still understand what he was saying,” I said. “I can start immediately.”
I called a girl I knew who was looking for a job, and I was sure she’d be perfect for my old one at the music distributor. Since I also knew that the work-history portion of her application would list past employers such as Babe’s Cabaret, Sally’s Strutters, and Starlite Lounge and All-Nude Review, the issue of leaving her bra at home was entirely nonexistent.
And then I happily forgot about Sensitive Eyes Guy and the fact that he never called me back. Especially since he lived with his mom. Well, that’s a lie. I mean, it’s true, I dated the retarded guy from the Special Olympics, I dated the Horror of Todd, I dated a hippie, I dated a man who’s homosexuality I had vigorously awakened, but none of those guys was holed up with his mom. Okay, one guy I dated lived in a halfway house, which could kind of be considered the same thing, but honestly, I just thought he had a roommate with some aggression/control issues who preferred “lights out” at a certain time. Plus the fact that I’d much rather deal with a parole officer than a mom, I’d rather deal with a SWAT team than a mom. And he didn’t even have the guts to call me back!
And that’s exactly what I was planning on telling Mr. My-Eyes-Are-Not-Nearly-As-Sensitive-As-They-May-Appear-Guy the next time I saw him at Long Wong’s. I was planning on giving him a Hungry Man helping of “what for,” hopefully when I had a couple of drinks under my belt, which was staying ON this time. I had my chance several months later when I walked into the bar and there he was, drinking a beer with a friend of his.
I was just about to ask him what time his mother was going to pick him up or if she was already waiting in the parking lot with the engine of her station wagon running when he turned around and waved when he saw me.
“Hey,” he said cheerfully. “How have you been? I heard you got a new job.”
“Yeah,” I answered weakly, disarmed by his niceness and those horribly consistent sensitive eyes. “How is my replacement working out?”
“Great. She showed up for the interview three hours late wearing roller skates and a tube top,” he answered. “They hired her on the spot.”
“That’s fabulous,” I said, trying to get the bartender’s attention.
“You,” Mr. You-Cannot-Ignore-The-Hypnotizing-Power-Of-My-Sensitive-Eyes said, “never call me.”
“Okay,” I said, turning around sharply as I slapped my hand loudly on the bar. “Let’s put that line to bed, shall we? I mean, I don’t know how many girls you get to call your house and talk to your mom or wife or whatever she is with that ploy, but I’m not going to fall for it again. You know, most felons that I’ve dated are more straightforward than you. We had one night of drunken, most likely backseat gymnastics and I’m perfectly happy to leave it at that.”
He looked at me like I had an eel-size booger inching out of my nostril this time.
“Oh my God,” he said, shocked. “You’re Gloria!”
“You’re an asshole,” I nearly yelled. “But for the record, I’m LAURIE, although I’m hoping Gloria has a rack as firm as a Sealy Posturepedic Mattress.”
“No, I mean, you’re Gloria,” he said excitedly. “You’re the girl who called! My mom gave me a message that a ‘Gloria’ called me, but I don’t know anyone named Gloria and it’s been driving me crazy trying to figure it out. But I just did! Laurie! Gloria! You’re Gloria!”
Really, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I’ve bought much flimsier lines, for example, “I live with my EX-girlfriend.” But he seemed sincere, he seemed like he was telling the truth.
And after all, I was the sucker.
“Okay, fine,” I said, giving in. “You win, I believe you. Maybe. I think. I don’t know. And although I probably don’t want to know this, what happened that night I saw you here? How well do you know . . . Gloria? In the biblical sense?”
“What do you mean?” he said, looking puzzled.
I sighed. “What I mean is, did you just see the Sealy Posturepedic Mattress in the showroom,” I tried to explain, “or did you take it for a test lay, so to speak?”
“Oh,” he answered, nodding his head. “Oh. You mean coitus. Did we mate, that’s what you mean. You want to know if there was copulation.”
“Yes,” I answered. “It would be nice to know so I could make an informed decision if I should run out of here like I was on fire, suddenly blurt out, ‘Sometimes I wear underpants made out of fake black monkey fur,’ or if the one shred of dignity I now have left is stuck in my teeth like I just ate a chimichanga.”
He took a deep breath.
“No,” he said. “Your virtue was valiantly defended by a plummeting lowball full of JD and Coke that landed on my foot and fractured my pinky toe. Frankly, I was in far too much pain to think you were still cute or even vaguely attractive at that point. Agony will do that to any man.”
“Wow,” I said, “I’m really sorry. I had no idea I harmed you first.”
“Well, you know,” he replied with a smirk, “you were rather busy the moment after you shattered several of my bones. I mean, you kind of get distracted when two bouncers take it upon themselves to physically remove you from the premises.”
“That explains the marks around the wrists.” I tried to laugh. “See, I thought you told me I was smart, too.”
He smiled. “You are pretty and you are smart,” he mentioned. “And I would like to hang out with you. But please hold your drink at least two feet away from me. I’m just starting to get feeling back in my foot.”
“You keep talking like that and a foot isn’t the only thing that’s going to get broken around here,” I said, knowing full well that if I had even remotely learned from past lessons, that if I had picked up even one slim thread of knowledge as a result of my poor decision-making skills and a flagrantly out-of-control id, that if I didn’t run away as if he had just said, “Oh, those were monkey underpants? Whew! I thought it was just the Italian in you coming out to meet me,” then it was all in vain. All of it. Watching Ben, his Dog Girl, and my stereo squeal away in a van; witnessing the Horror of Todd bury his face in a burger basket and emerge with a curly fry wedged into his nostril; looking at My Left-Handed Love tear across a baseball field as if he had seen an incubated reptilian gargoyle burst out of my chest cavity when actually it was the Snoball inside me crying; finding out that to my runner-up Portland boyfriend I was only the runner-up girlfriend—it was all in vain.