Dodging Bullets

The advent of social media has turned us in to a bunch of schadenfreude obessed stalkers.  We can now look up anyone who has ever wronged us and laugh at their failures.  If you don’t have a friend on  Facebook who is solely there to make you feel better about yourself, then I will be the first to admit that you are a better person than I.

I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed last week, instead of doing something far more productive which is pretty much the norm when I came across some current photos of the guy who brushed me off last January. My reaction was, "I’m Glad I didn't end up going out with that guy. He is not attractive without the beard.”

                That is the funny thing about rejection.  Sometimes, having a possibility removed leads to the best possible outcome. I think an easier way of explaining it is that idea is the, “Man, I just dodged a bullet there”, feeling.  When it comes to dodging bullets I think back to the last guy I went out with and thank fate, the gods, or the butterfly flapping its wings in Argentina, whatever made sure that relationship never went anywhere.  

                The last time I went out on a date was nearly two years ago. (Yeah I know.) I had gone on one successful casual outing before with this guy, and for our second outing I hitchhiked down to Knoxville to spend time with him. What followed was an awkward encounter in which we sat on opposite ends of his couch, not speaking, drinking individual bottles of schnapps out of paper bags while watching Phantasm. (Not that I have anything against the Phantasm movies. I got lucky once after watching Phantasm II. ) When the movie was over the guy told me he was just not interested in having any kind of relationship because his life was just too uncertain at the moment.

                Apparently, a few weeks later happened to a better time for him because that’s when he started dating this size zero brunette.  I wrote the guy off as a douche bag, went through a stage of “forever alone”-ing and life went on. 

                As time passed, this guy began to remove himself further and further from his friends, turning down invitations for outings and parties in order to spend more time with his girlfriend. It happens, we all know it does, but eventually after that new-girlfriend/boyfriend smell fades away they come back. Only this guy didn’t. He had close friends wondering if they had said or done something to piss him off, but basically he abandoned everyone from his former life in favor of spending more time with his girlfriend. He switched his major to her major in order to be constantly close to her.  His life is a constant orbit around her.  When she is not present, he falls apart. A mutual acquaintance told me that he was incredibly torn up when his girlfriend went to see Lady Gaga without him. He said that he was jealous of Lady Gaga because she with his girl that night and he wasn’t.

                I wonder if Mark David Chapman ever said that about John Lennon.

The more I hear about this guy, the more I feel bad for the girl he’s dating. Now maybe everything is just happy puppy dogs and glittery unicorn farts for them, but to me it doesn’t seem to be healthy to have someone constantly fluttering around you like a moth to a flame.  There are a lot of people I care about, but I also know that the more time I spend with them the more likely they are to piss me off. No two people get along all the time.

                If I had continued to date this guy and he started acting that clingy around me. It wouldn’t have been long before I would have clocked him in the face. So everything worked out in the end, right?

                There is one thing, however, that disturbs me to the point where I shudder and again thank the heavens that all I ended up with was an awkward experience. This guy is so creepily obsessive with current girlfriend, should anything ever happen and she has to break up with him he will be devastated.  He changed his entire life plan to sync up with hers. He alienated his former support group. If she goes, she takes part of his identity with him. This guy will be broken.

 Then it either goes one of two ways, he becomes really depressed, or she’s come home to find her pet rabbit boiling on stove.

So the next time you get rejected, don’t be sad. Just tell remind yourself it could have ended up with that person holding a gun to your head screaming, “If I can’t have you, no one can.” 

Just once, I’d like to be hit on by someone who isn’t a Lovecraftain horror.

There is a local Roller girl whose rules of engagement are as follows:

1.       Don’t hit on me.

2.       Don’t hit on me, especially if you have facial tattoos.

It was one of those pieces of wit so good; I had to steal it and make it my own.

When you are single it never seems like you are approached by the people you to be approached by. If that ever happened,then you probably wouldn’t be single. 

I have the uncanny ability to attract Lovecraftain monsters. I am not referring to that fact that these people are unfathomably hideous, they are, it’s just it seems hardly fair to hold against people in East Tennessee, where everyone is an inbred fish monster.  I’m referring to the fact these people I encounter have to be from some dank unearthly dimension where there are no women because otherwise I would have no explanation for the inherent lack of social skills.

     So don’t hit on me if:

1.       You are in a moving vehicle -   I’ve never understood the whole yelling at someone out of a car window thing. Has this ever worked for anyone?  Did anyone’s parents meet this way? When someone in a vehicle going about 45 miles an hour and I am traveling at leisurely pace of 6 miles an hour listening to my slow jams on the iPod, the most I hear as they pass by is, “HEEEEYYYYYY ARRRRRrirorrororgggggggooooooooooooooooo.” Is this a distance and velocity problem?   As far as I know the guy could be yelling at me because his breaks are failing. How would I ever know. Let’s say that I understood whatever the hell you were saying and was flattered by it. What am I supposed to do? Run after the car? Write down a license plate number?

2.         I am with  another man -  When I go out when with my friend Big Daddy, I want to spend my evening with Bid Daddy.  He isn’t my date, but is that something you really want to gamble on when the guy I’m with is over six feet tall, and while I was never good at the “Guess the chicken’s weight” game at the fair, I’d say someone you don’t want to fuck with.

The thing is, he isn’t the one you should be worried about. If you ruin my evening out , all 5’1 of me is going to fuck you up. It’s akin being eaten alive by cute cartoon squirrel.

3.        I am clearly not interested - Here is a pro-tip, If it’s finals week and I am in the college library frantically typing a way on a computer, I don’t want to talk to you. If you strike up a conversation and I don’t make eye contact with you, I don’t want to talk to you. If I pull out my phone and start texting someone, while continuing to not looking your general direction, and making gritting noises with my teeth, just stop.

4.       If you like rape and torture movies - You can look at me and tell I like horror movies. It’s like guessing that my favorite holiday is Halloween, you don’t necessarily have to be Horatio Clark to figure that one out.  It’s great that you think The Human Centipede and Paranormal Activity are highlights of modern cinema. Even if I did 10 Whip-it’s every day for a year, I don’t think I would ever reach that conclusion , but please don’t feel the need to tell me how much you loved Salo’/ A Serbian Film/Cannibal Holocaust/Irreversible, etc. I have seen those movies; I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.  Telling me that you’ve seen them 17 times doesn’t convince me that you are cool; it convinces me that you probably have a vagina in a box.

5.       If you make animal noises:  It saddens me that this has happened to me so frequently I had put on a numbered list. My name is Kat. K-a-t. The domesticated feline is spelled C-a-t. Hooked on Phonics/The Internet has screwed over a whole generation of people when it comes grammar and spelling, I know, I’m one of them. Still, it doesn’t explain why you would meow at me. It’s about as effective as meowing at an actual cat. I’ll give you a look of boredom and disgust and then go vomit on your shoes.

So to conclude: Don’t hit on me, ever.

The Best Advice I Could Ever Give You

      Over the years I’ve tried keeping track of all the really good decisions I've made and all the really bad ones. I like  to think of it as my own method of Quality control. I’ve done so pretty stupid things my life, but I’m the kind of person who doesn’t learn things unless it’s by finding out exactly what I shouldn’t do by experience.  So I’ve bought these bad experiences wholesale and I’m passing the savings on to you.

 1. Never mix Uppers and Downers:  I used to drink a lot. I do mean a lot.  During that time I discovered that many things do not always mix well with each other, like eating Chipotle before a night of binge drinking.  The worst combination for me was taking speed on top of binge drinking. The guy I got the speed from told me that I should keep well hydrated while taking it, and my reaction was, “I don’t need worry about that I have all this beer, Hurf Durf!”                 

Now imagine a night of being incredibly drunk tired but too keyed up to pass out, and when I did finally managed to pass out, the hangover that followed was the worst I ever had. Period.

2.  Don’t be afraid of being alone:  I wasted a year and a half of my life hanging around a group of assholes and dating a guy I didn’t have any feelings for. As absurd as it seems to me now, there was a time in my life that the Idea of being alone on a Friday night absolutely horrified me. It was preferable to spend time with any person that could spare a moment than to deal with perpetual screaming going on in my head.   I was utterly miserable.  I had to gradually acclimate myself back in to spending time alone.  Eventually I began to realize that I was much happier being able to do things on my own terms. I used to put up with a lot of shit from people that I thought were my friends, but in reality they were just people who took advantage of my kindness.  I was willing to drop everything for them, but they were never there for me. The sad thing was that I also had many wonderful people in my life that did care about me, but I didn’t get be around them because those poisonous individuals leeched up all my time. It wasn’t until I was able to pull away from everyone that I began to realize who my real friends were.  Learning to stand on my own and be comfortable with myself is one of the most important things I’ve learned.

3. Always trust your instincts:   Never ignore that feeling down in the pit of your stomach. If someone or something doesn’t feel right it is probably because it isn’t, even if it doesn’t seem logical. Human behavior isn’t always logical. Only you can determine what is necessary and right.  There were times when I went along with someone else’s advice and urgings because I thought that they seemed to be the reasonable things to do, even though my heart wasn’t in it.  Most of my biggest regrets spawned from this and numerous bad decision subcategories could be filled under this this one.   Now, if something doesn’t jive with me with me, it doesn’t happen.  If someone starts acting funny or gives me a bad vibe, I drop them like it’s hot. If I really want something I go for it.  I wasn’t able to start living that old ‘Live without regrets’ cheese until I started trusting my intuition.

4.       Don’t try dating people that are friends with your Ex: Just because your circle of friends has a hard time adhering to the “Bro’s before hoes” rule doesn’t mean that the exception is universal.

5.       Stay far away from K-2:   If a drug addict tells you, “It’s perfectly legal”, run or punch them in the face.  Worst. Trip. Ever.  Technically this stuff isn’t even fit for human consumption; there is no way to regulate what kind of chemicals they put in to “potpourri” and everyone’s chemistry reacts differently to it. So basically, it’s like ingesting a small dose of poison just   to see what happens.  In my case, it affected the memory center of my brain.  I smoked my little fake weed joint in the bathroom of crappy hotel outside of New Orleans and within a few minutes I no longer knew where I was. I could not recognize my surroundings at all, I knew that it was familiar to me, but I couldn’t tell you where I was, how I got there, or where I came from.  It was like being completely and utterly lost in some new territory and simultaneously having déjà vu.  Then about 9 minutes in everything began to flatten out and lose its three-dimensionality, and then the colors started to warp. I remember looking down at my phone and seeing that only 10 minutes had passed and with the last shred of lucidity I had I noted that I still had 30 minutes before the effects wore off. That was when I started freaking out.  To make matters worse, there was a domestic assault going down in the hotel room beside of the one we were staying in and the cops were called in. On top of my already panicked state I became convinced that the cops were going to knock down our door and arrest us.  At some point I was distracted by my druggie companion who was completely oblivious to all this and watching Bob’s Burgers.   The TV screen lulled me into a sense of security and I curled up into a ball and fell asleep. The next morning I woke up with second to worst hang over in my life.   The thing that terrifies me more than the actual experience is the idea that people could be out and about, possibly even driving under the influence of this stuff.    I’d rather smoke sherm than try that stuff again. Yet, this stuff legal and Marijuana is not, this does not compute.

6.       If you don’t know what is, don’t eat it:  I believe that all Chinese buffets should come with labels. Some things seem pretty obvious, dimsung , egg drop soup, should look one way, but then there are those mystery items to reside in a kind of gray area. I picked up this doughy round thing covered in sesame seeds from a buffet once because it kind of looked like a cross between a sugar doughnut and baby hedgehog. I was expecting some kind of delicious dessert pastry. I was not expecting it to be filled with this custardy type material that had the consistency of mucus and tasted like nothing.     
The same goes with items on a menu that you have no idea what they are. Sometimes you get something amazing and exotic that expands your pallet, other times, you a hot dog that soaked in Canola oil over night and thrown on to a bun.  This is actually the one thing I haven’t learned not to do, sticking strange things into my mouth. I’m curious by nature; therefore I have to know things that I don’t know.
     The best thing to do is to let me eat the mucus filled baby hedgehog, so you don’t have to.