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By Katie Gard, April 25, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Robert S. Donovan via Flickr

Ladies, have you ever complained about the insensitive boyfriend who couldn’t pick up on the fact that you were having a bad day, even though you told him you were fine?

Gentlemen, have you ever been called a conceited ass for thinking a girl was going to sleep with you, when she came over with only platonic intentions in mind?

One of the (decidedly few) merits of being a married, 28-year-old waitress with a college degree is that it brings me in contact with people who would otherwise fall well outside my social sphere. From the “regulars”–the middle-aged men who sit on the same bar stool night after night and literally wither away lonely hours via Jim, Jack or Crown–to the slurring, unsteady newbie drinkers who haven’t yet learned their limits, this place is a veritable variety pack of personalities and life experience.

The bar employs an exceptionally popular young bartender I’ll call Jack. Picture a 23-year-old with the confidence and charm of a Wall Street banker, combined with the interest and curiosity of a world-traveling nomad. Plus, he’s adorable. If Kurt Cobain’s ghost had a love child with Justin Bieber, the irresistible little nymph would undoubtedly resemble Jack.

Although I find myself immune to his trademark charisma (probably because he’s wisely never pointed it in my direction), women of all ages are simply elated when they find themselves attached to Jack’s arm for an evening. Over the months, I’ve become desensitized to the false-smile introductions of the various women he escorts into the bar on his nights off, knowing the poor girl whose limp-noodle hand I was shaking would likely be sitting by her phone all day tomorrow, waiting for a text that would never leave Jack’s fingertips.

Surprisingly, a bedraggled Jack arrived unaccompanied one night, plopping himself down on one of the lonely-man bar stools and mumbling about a girl.

Finally, I thought. Someone actually got to him.

Continue reading 'Why Can’t Men Learn To Read Women’s Minds?'»

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By Rick Allan, April 11, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Blue Images

After discovering I could get women to chase me, I’ve collected some priceless stories. But is that really how I want to talk about my future girlfriend or wife? With stories of how I got her to jump through all of my hoops?

Of course not. The kind of woman I want to spend the rest of my life with won’t jump through those hoops. She knows doing so won’t get me to pursue her.

Because if I am interested, I will pursue her.

If I am not, I won’t.

It sounds simple. But if everything in life was as simple as it sounded, birth control would be 100% effective, every person on the planet would be a master at parallel parking, and the girl knocking on the door to your Vegas hotel room would actually look like the girl on the card.

I allow myself to get chased because it is amusing, and my ego (among other things) always appreciates a good stroking. But when that special woman, with a twinkle in her eye and a deceivingly innocent smirk on her face, lets me know that I’m not going to catch her so easily, I take off after her while the other girls fade into the distance. Continue reading 'If You Chase Me, You’ll Never Catch Me'»

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By Kat Richter, March 7, 2011 6:00 am

"So Anne, I know it's been a while but..."

This year, Valentine’s Day came and went with nary a card, a box of chocolates, or even the usual fighting between my preschool students for the honor of calling me their “girlfriend.”

Can you blame me for being depressed?

I began serial dating in August. And by “serial dating,” I mean that I challenged myself to go out with 30 men in three months. I nearly made it (I got a little creative with my mathematics in the end), but despite all of the first dates (20), the second dates (7), the third dates (4) and the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth dates (1 each), I still find myself single.

Being single, I’ve since learned, breeds not only depression but desperation. In my defense, I’m not yet desperate enough to call up the man responsible for my most recent eHarmony disaster, although I would like to know exactly why he left me standing on the street corner to hail my own cab. Nor do I find myself entertaining thoughts of a reunion with the Match.com man who made it all way to an eighth date with Yours Truly (okay, actually I do, but only when I’m stuck on a very long bus ride surrounded by undesirable characters of the malodorous variety; I have no intention of acting on these thoughts).

Instead I find myself reaching further back—into the vault, if you will: the vault of boyfriends past. Of course, this is a very dangerous road to go down. Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows how easy it is to forget all the very reasons you ended the relationship in question and to instead to focus on the what-ifs.

What if I had slept with my first boyfriend?

What if I had been content to marry the man I dated in college, instead of moving to London?

What if I had stayed in London, instead of moving to Philadelphia? Would I be sharing that tiny flat in Hammersmith with my ex-boyfriend and his fundamentalist Christian sister-in-law? Continue reading 'Why Do We Look Back On Past Love?'»

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By Matthew Sanchelli, February 21, 2011 6:00 am

Serendipity

While doing some light shopping at Cabela’s the other night, I met a girl. She worked there. She was cute. She was witty. She was a red-head. Her name was Cassie.

I remember walking towards the register with a few items in hand and thinking, “Wow. She’s really cute. Perhaps I should ask her out.”

As she began to ring up the few items I had laid on the counter, I initiated conversation. She volleyed the verbal ball back to my side of the court. Following up with a humorous quip, she giggled and asked me a question. My response must have been intriguing because, as she finished bagging my items, she leaned forward to listen more intently.

Our conversation continued for what I imagine was perhaps five minutes (at least).

Things were going really well.

I’d be a fool not to ask if I could call her sometime before going on my way.

My gaze fixed on her eyes.

Her gaze fixed on mine.

As my palms became slightly damp from nervous sweat, I casually slipped them into the pockets of my jeans.

She smiled.

I took a breath and opened my mouth ready to speak the words…. Continue reading 'May The Forced Small Talk Be With You'»

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By Danny Braciole, January 24, 2011 6:00 am

Image by deejaynye via Flickr

In the foggy haze of a slightly hungover morning, I heard an earthy voice echo softly in my ear, “time to get up, Danny Boy.”

I buried my face into the strange, pink-fringed pillow I’d slept on while slowly realizing my own nakedness. I opened one eye to see an oddly darkened purple room that wasn’t mine. I realized pretty quickly that the wet lips on my ear and the warm breasts pressing against my back weren’t mine either.

My memories spread over me like syrup over pancakes, slow and sweet. I’d only met Maggie the night before, but here we were, in her bed at 5 AM on a Friday morning. I reached up to stroke her hair.

“Maggie,” I mumbled, “you’re a beautiful girl.” As I grabbed a handful of hair and pushed her face back down into her pillow, I continued, “but you’re a shitty alarm clock.”

She laughed. I grumbled. She pushed. I woke up. She made coffee. We kissed. I went all the way back to my house, showered, and went to work. Later, I gave her the “obligatory day-after” phone call, but it didn’t feel obligatory. Maggie responded with a text that she was at work. We made tentative plans in text conversation that we’d get together the following week.

I’d had plenty of one night stands before, but this didn’t feel like one. I wasn’t thinking about hanging out with Maggie, I was thinking about taking her on a date. I was legitimately excited about a woman for the first time in a while. And that’s exactly why I fucked things up.

How soon after meeting somebody new do we feel totally comfortable? How long does it take before we take off our cool and just be ourselves? There are a thousand different reasons why and when we decide to reveal ourselves, but the one constant criterion is that we need to be comfortable enough with our own feelings to let our guard down. Most of the miscommunication that causes men to think women are crazy and women to think men are idiots happens during that critical period between feeling an initial spark of interest and knowing for sure how we feel about the other person.

For me, dating is less about figuring out women than it is about figuring out myself. Continue reading 'How I Fucked Up My Own Game'»

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By Dennis Hong, January 3, 2011 6:00 am

There’s a perception floating around that men are more promiscuous than women and, hence, have more sexual partners during their lifetimes.

Well, I call bullshit. And I’m bringing my army of math to back me up.

In a survey taken by ABC News, men reported a lifetime average of 20 partners, while women reported a measly 6 partners. That is, the average male in the United States has more than three times as many partners as the average female.

The article goes on to explain that it’s probably a small percentage of highly promiscuous men who skew the male average upward, in much the same way that a singular percentage of partial-term state governors skews the average intelligence of Alaska noticeably downward.

The problem is, not only is the survey result a mathematical impossibility, so is the promiscuous male explanation. Here’s why:

For simplicity, let’s represent the population of the United States as a group of five men and five women. Taking ABC News’s explanation, we’ll start off with one über-promiscuous male in our population. He’s slept with all five women, while each of the five women has only slept with him:

Continue reading 'Mathematical Proof That Women Are Just As Promiscuous As Men'»

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By Danny Braciole, December 27, 2010 6:00 am

"So how long are you guys gonna wait to call your babies?"

I was back home on my first summer break in college when I met Amy. I was 18 years old, rushing around the mall trying to find a gift for my newborn cousin. Amy was a kind-hearted brunette, willing to help a flustered (and charming) stranger find a gift for a five-day-old baby girl. I insisted that she give me a chance to repay her kindness, so she gave me her number.

When I got to my uncle’s house that Saturday afternoon, I was happy to tell my family about the cute girl who had helped me pick out the gift I’d brought. Almost immediately, the question was asked, “So how long are you going to wait to call her?”

My uncle chimed in, as if on cue, “Tuesday, Dan.”

I immediately agreed, telling my younger cousins, “Uncle Mike’s right–gotta play it cool at first.” And I believed this.

This was 1999. Amy had written her number down on the back of my Babies-R-Us receipt. She hadn’t entered it into my cell phone, because neither of us had a cell phone. My cousins didn’t ask me when I would text her, because “texting” wasn’t even a verb yet. When I decided I was going to pick up the phone and call Amy, I literally picked up the house phone, dialed a (1) before her area code, and hoped that she would be the one to pick up on the other end. This really wasn’t that long ago.

On that Tuesday when I finally did call, I gently reminded Amy who I was, and she definitely remembered me. We went out a few times before realizing that we had very little in common besides dark hair and newborn cousins, and we amicably decided to go our separate ways.

Fast-forward to 2005. Continue reading 'Playing It Cool Isn’t Cool Anymore'»

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By Dennis Hong, December 6, 2010 6:00 am

Image by minifig via Flickr

I have no problem with the Friend Zone. The Friend Box. Friendship Island. The Vortex of Platonic Optimism….

Whatever you want to call it, I think opposite-sex friends are splendid. They can be an arsenal of insight when we need help understanding, well, the opposite sex.

What’s not so splendid is the opposite-sex friend who desperately wants to be more than friends. Especially when the opposite-sex friend who desperately wants to be more than friends is….

Me.

Oh, how I hate Me when Me gets Myself into that rut.

Years ago, I had a classmate, “Holly.” She had just moved to Southern California, and I was one of the first friends she made here. I think she gravitated towards me because I was already familiar with the city. That, and I also threw parties. Lots of them. If friends were crack, then my apartment was her pipe, and she’d show up at my place whenever her social life needed a fix.

One night, a group of us set aside our rampant partying and went out clubbing instead. Late in the evening, Holly and I found ourselves separated from everyone else. In a fit of drunkenness, we somehow started making out.

Over the next few days, I realized that I wanted to be more than just friends with Holly. So, I did what any rational non-eunuch would do: I asked her out.

Unfortunately, she confessed that while she enjoyed our impromptu kissing session, she wasn’t interested in dating me. Pretty brutal rejection, right?

Still….

Continue reading 'Wasting Away In The Friend Zone'»

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By Jasmine Curry, November 22, 2010 6:00 am

"Please, oh please, let me out of this box!"

I admit it. I have a lot of boxes. A box for friends, and a box for enemies. A box for frenemies, one for family, another for lovers. I even have a box for barely tolerable coworkers. I put the people I trust into one box, and the people I’d like to throw out the window into another box.

And once someone is read, stamped, classified and packed away into a box, it’s almost impossible for them to get out of it.

Take my friend, Greg. We worked together and hung out all the time. And early in our friendship, he dated a friend of mine. He was also younger than me, and our politics did not match up. So, he was in the Friend Box.

A few months later, as we were hanging out and having a great time, he implied that we should date. I informed him that he was off limits since he once dated a friend of mine. This was only partially true. The real truth was that he was in the Friend Box, and I wasn’t going to let him out.

Greg and I may have been incredibly compatible. Or we may have completely ruined a perfectly good friendship if we dated. We’ll never know. Once in the Friend Box, always in the Friend Box.

I was so good at pigeonholing men into “datable” and “not datable.” But, aren’t we all? Doesn’t everyone have some way of categorizing the opposite sex?

My system was working just fine. Until one day I discovered it wasn’t. Continue reading 'I Put Men In Boxes'»

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By Julie Hartley, November 8, 2010 6:00 am

I’ve come to expect all sorts of reactions when I tell people that I’m dating someone eighteen years older than me. The blood-curdling screams have been (thankfully) few in number, though I usually expect jaws to drop and eyebrows to shoot up into hairlines.

There are also those whose expressions remain suspiciously blank. When their trained smile spreads across their face at just the right moment, and there’s no unconscious flicker of facial features–not even so much as a forceful blink–I know that the rumor mill got to them before I did.

I expect people to find out about my relationship. But instead of just admitting that they know, people treat it like a dirty secret they’re not supposed to be privy to. Um, hello? It’s not a secret anymore. We’re even “Facebook official.”

Before I was dating a man significantly older than me, when I was just normal, seemingly-well-adjusted Julie, it always came as a shock to people when they realized my parents were divorced.

“Huh, that’s funny, I just always assumed your parents were still together,” they’d say.

But after becoming Julie, The Cradle Robbed, people’s assumptions changed. When I mention something about going to visit my dad, now an overwhelming number of people ask, “Oh? Do you have a good relationship with your dad?”

“Uh, yeah, I try to see him when I’m in town. Why?” Continue reading 'No, He’s Not My Daddy'»