The Chivalry Patrol
As a woman, there is nothing better than having a group of boys to defend your honor when it's being threatened.
Oh, wait. Hi. How was your weekend? Are you more tired today than you were going in, like I am?
So this weekend was a little bit of everything good all rolled up into one. I got some tennis, some pool, some sleep, some errands, some day tripping, and a lot of going out. A lot. Like, a ridiculous amount. So much so that I (almost) caused a bar fight, accidentally made out with my friend, met a guy who I'm convinced is perfection personified, and as a result, spent most of my Memorial Day passed out on the couch, plum tuckered out.
The trouble began on Friday. I met up with about seven or eight friends, all of whom were in town for the weekend. We drank, celebrating a fellow friend's birthday, and the fact that we were embarking on Day 1 of a glorious three-day weekend. All was well until my friend - my very platonic friend - got a little angry with a guy I was talking to. Apparently "the guy was speaking to me in a very condescending tone" - or, as I believe, "the guy was speaking to me". The next thing you know, heated words are being exchanged, there is some shoving, my other male friends jump in, this douchebag's friends jump in, and I find myself begging my friend not to beat the shit out of this drunken douchebag I didn't want to talk to in the first place. Fortunately, my friend's bladder rang, so we ambushed the bathroom and snuck him out the back before he could head back to where aforementioned Douchebag was located and get all of us into some serious trouble.
The rest of the night was blurry, except for the part where my ordinarily chivlarous, gentlemanly, platonic friend took me a little by surprise in the parking lot of the bar and decided to lay one on me. And then again in the car. And then again before I dropped him off. And then again after he asked me to come in. Eek. I won't share anymore with you, other than that it was the first time in my life that I was 100% surprised by someone's motives. I am too confused by the rest of this story so I'm just moving on.
The night was great, save for the fact that I woke up at 9 AM the next morning to head to Athens for the day with my sister. Athens, GA, that is. I wanted to see what the big whoop about Georgia was. It was nice. No big whoop.
I stayed in on Saturday, because the truth was, if I didn't, I would probably throw up smelling someone's beer. Plus, no one else was going out, and I had to gear up for Sunday.
Sunday started normally...well, kind of. I walked in to the bar to meet the same friends from Friday, except for this time, there was a guy I had never seen before. A tall, tanned, blue-eyed, smoking hot guy. He may have had a halo over his head, I'm not sure. He was a perfect angel. And he was all mine. For two hours. For whatever reason, we kind of gravitated toward one another, and spent the better part of the night talking. Me likey. I'll keep you posted on that one.
He had to get up early, so he left early. And then more melee ensued. There was more drinking, and another quasi-fight...this time between my male friends and a bartender who was rude to my friend Susie. At this point I dubbed them "The Chivalry Patrol". Poised to take over the world, this dynamic duo travels the Highlands by foot, searching high and low for men who are treating their woman friends disrespectfully.
The Chivalry Patrol continued their quest to eradicate unchivalrous behavior at around 4 am later that night, when, after a series of relentless phone calls from an ex, the Chivalry Patrol proceeded to confiscate my phone and answer the phone with heavy breathing and chants of "Leave her alone" every time he called. Which was...well, repeatedly. My friend who shoved his tongue down my throat, by the way, did not take these phone calls well, but as I like to say, love me, love my baggage. Actually, I've never said that, but I didn't really have a good segue out of this story.
Monday, I slept. Pretty much all day. I pretty much didn't leave the house until it was time to go to my friend Susie's for some chicken curry and good conversation. And then, before I knew it, the Chivalry Tour of Duty was over and it was back to work on Monday morning.
I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard.
If Ace Has A Few Screws Loose, Does That Make Him A Tool?
Two weeks ago, I met Ace* at a bar in the Highlands. Ace is 30. A Georgia alum, he is a rabid Bulldogs fan. He owns a hardware store, hence the moniker Ace. This is his profession. As long as Ace is passionate about tools, that's alright with me. (Tangent: once he told me what he did for a living, I was tempted to ask him if he liked flat head, but I had to restrain myself. It was difficult to do, but I managed.) Ace's sister, who is much older than he is, used to be a groupie and snort cocaine with Axl Rose - a story I was skeptical of, but still found to be incredibly entertaining. It is also important that you know that Ace is a recovering alcoholic. But don't worry - the beer he was drinking when I met him was only his first beer. Ace believes in taking everything in moderation - although last time I checked, that was not one of the 12 steps. If anything, it may be a step backward.
*names have been changed to protect the very guiltyThe thing of it is - Ace is nice. He is very gentlemanly. He insisted on keeping my martinis fresh the entire night...and charging them to his tab. He said "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and "I'm sorry". He wears a baseball hat, and if I have a weakness for anything in this world, it's a guy in a baseball hat. He has a nice Southern drawl that marries Mr. Rogers and Matthew McConaughey's voices together quite nicely. Despite his alcoholism, he did not appear to be drunk at all. I am fairly certain he nursed the same beer the entire time...okay, I'm not certain at all, but he did seem to be relatively with it. And Ace likes me. A lot. So much so that after I gave him my number (which I wasn't sure of doing in the first place, but at that point my third martini had just kicked in and I threw caution to the wind), he somehow lost it and CAME BACK into the bar to apologize and ask for it again.
So Ace has called me twice in the last few weeks. He leaves very nice messages, but in
what is starting to become a pattern with me, I was ambivalent. The last guy was a Dairy Queen owner. This one owns a hardware store. I seem to do quite well with business owners, don't I? On one hand, I felt guilty for not returning his calls because he is so nice and I can just imagine poor Ace, sitting at home by the house phone with a broken heart. It is definitely a house phone, by the way, because Ace does not own a cell phone. He made a point to tell me that at the bar. Anyway, I would hate to be the cause of this poor guy's broken heart. On the other hand, my finely honed women's intuition is telling me that I am overlooking some
BIG
RED
FLAGS
and that there's no way in hell that anything would ever come out of returning this guy's interest.
After a long talk with my friend Susie (and every other good girlfriend I have), I decided that I had nothing to lose by calling him back. After all, he seems like a really nice guy. And truth be told, I am running low on men in my cache these days, so it couldn't hurt to go out with him. Who knows, perhaps I would be pleasantly surprised by his wit, his ability to drink in moderation, and his entertaining stories about his sister, the poor man's Tawny Kitaen of the 80s.
Tonight I was grocery shopping after a really long day at work, and I thought to myself, "Self, you should call Ace. There's no time like the present!" (Apparently Ace's cliches have already begun to rub off on me as well.)
I dial his non-cell phone number. A woman answers, "Hello?"
I hang up immediately.
Okay, so either he has a female roommate (bad), a live-in girlfriend (worse), or a wife (worst). Let's consult the judges........aaaaaand it's unanimous. Three zeros, but an honorable mention for effort.
And then, as I'm strolling through the pickle/condiment aisle, it occurs to me: if he's such a loathsome, adulterous (but persistently adulterous) man, this woman deserves to know it. So I wait another 7 minutes (in the hopes that she forgot someone had just called and hung up 3 minutes ago), and call again. (For those of you who are mentally shopping with me, I was in the paper products aisle at this point.)
"Hello?"
"Um, hi. Is Ace there?"
"Hmm...let me see...no dear, it looks like Ace isn't home right now. Can I leave him a message?"
"Sure, can you tell him that KA called?"
"Oh no problem dear, I'll be sure to let him know when he comes home."
Not sure whether it was the creaky senior citizen voice that I couldn't detect from the earlier hello or the gratuitous use of "dear" that tipped me off, but I froze in horror when I realized that I had just introduced myself to Ace's MOTHER.
Yes, it's true, Ace lives at home. And he's 30. And he owns a hardware store. And he's a recovering alcoholic who still drinks. And he obviously doesn't seem to have a problem with his mother taking messages for him. From girls. Like me.
I called Hilla and told her the story. After she managed to calm herself down from her hysterical laughter, she suggested that there might be a reason why he is still living with his parents. I asked her to give me a reason. She came up with, "Well, maybe his girlfriend kicked him out of their apartment."
Oh, well then, automatic green light.J had this to offer: "Well, maybe he just got out of a really rough divorce."
I hate everyone and everything.My sister, ever the optimist, suggested that maybe he is building a house that won't be ready yet and is living with his parents until he can move in.
Doubtful.If anyone else can come up with a good reason, please - post it. Post here, for the world to see. Tell me why you think I should go out with this guy, and if y our reason is solid enough, I will go, I promise. But I'd like to remind you at this time that "watching a train wreck in action" does not quality as a legitimate reason.
Neither does all the wrenches my heart desires.
White People Do Not Know How To Socialize
White people.
We are not a friendly bunch.
We've managed to master political correctness, the "with liberty and justice for all" mantra, and some etiquette basics, but we can't f*cking talk to one another. We have not mastered the interpersonal.
This weekend, I went out with four or five girlfriends. It was a brilliant plan really, as one of my good girlfriends had just gone through a painful breakup. The plan was to rally the single girls, head to the nearest watering hole, hit the sauce, and see what happens. That was bound to produce a great time, right?
Wrong.
We showed up at a well-known bar in Buckhead that I had originally suggested because I am sick of meeting unemployed alcoholics in the Highlands. We walked in, stood there, ordered drinks, and continued to stand there. For a long time. Like, a really long time. Like, there was no point in buying an $8 drink if we all could have stayed at home and talked to one another, because that was pretty much what we were doing. The entire bar consisted of small groups of people who obviously knew one another and no one was venturing outside of their group. There was the Georgia group (also known as the "We think the sun rises and sets in Athens, GA" crowd - I have good friends who went there, but
my friends do not fall into this category), the "Lip-filler-is-delicious...it-matches-my-fake-tits" crowd, the "Who's-your-daddy...do-you-want-one-because-I-am-offering" midlife crisis crowd (to be found in close proximity of the fake-tits crowd), and us. The ethnic-looking girls. The girls who have natural boobs of all sizes and will actually order food and eat it in a restaurant. The girls who did not go to Georgia and don't necessarily care all that much if you did (but go Dawgs). And me, the blondest of them all, fooling no one into thinking that my blonde hair might be anything more natural than a bottle of Schwartzkopf hair color, thirty minutes of peroxide, and the Midas Touch of Gay Ken. Weird, weird dynamic.
We quickly devised an escape plan, which consisted of hitting Krystal, because the only Dawg-related team we could all agree on was the Krystal Chili Cheese Pup. (Go Pups!)
The crowd disbanded rather early (12:30 to be exact), so my newly-single friend and I were left to our own devices. We weren't tired, but we couldn't figure out where to go...until my newly single friend (who is also a budding salsa dancer in her spare time) suggested The Havana Club.
For those of you unfamiliar, The Havana Club is a Latin club in Buckhead -- a modern-day Copacabana, if you will. Salsa, Merengue, Cha-cha, Rumba, Samba, Mambo, Bachata, Cumbia, Bolero...you name it, they play it. (And thank you Wikipedia for enlightening me about dances of a Latin American origin - you learn something new while posting at work.)
We walked in, and it was like...well, I can't describe it. Okay, I'll describe it. It was a lot like "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights", which I wholly admit that I saw in the theaters on opening day in 2004. It was not my best judgement. It was all hot, balmy, and smoky, and there were a lot of people sweating. There was the occasional Tecate, but a lot of people were drinking water. My first thought was that there must be some great underground ecstasy ring or something, because the only time I've ever seen that many people on a dance floor with only bottled water was in that episode of "My So-Called Life" when Rayanne and Angela go to a rave. (And for the record, I am not totally sheltered, but where recreational drug use was concerned, my crowd of friends usually found that a bag of schwag or a plain, old-fashioned joint would get the job done - not that I am condoning this in any way, of course.)
And the men...the men were all over the place. I couldn't lift my bottle of water for a sip without some guy coming over and extending his hand. It was so nice! So welcoming. So sociable. My friend and I danced for a good part of our time there, with a small handful of guys. They were respectful, they were nice, and most of all, they were just there to have a good time - they were not copping a feel of the breast or playing a mini-game of slap ass, as would be expected.
Now, I will throw a disclaimer in here: the bar was full of locals. Local what, I don't know, because everyone I asked seemed to be from somewhere different (that is, when I could pull the response out of a pile of broken English) - Bolivia, Andorra, Mexico. I saw exactly one Gael Garcia Bernal lookalike but he was taken by a really pretty girl who had ass for weeks, so that was an automatic hands off. Her ass alone could have kicked my...well, ass. But I digress.
The truth is, most of the guys were creepy-looking, yet oddly unafraid of rejection. As far as they were concerned,
I was the dumbass if I couldn't handle how sexy and light on their feet they were. And if I turned down their offer to dance, f*ck me because there were other girls in the bar that would dance with them. I mean, good for them, right? Confidence is key. Here they are - hot, sweaty, smoky, and in my opinion, icky, and they do not give a shit that I have just turned down their offer to dance.
The whole incident got me thinking - why is it that on any given weekend night at any given Yuppie bar, there is little social interaction without the direct involvement of alcohol? Why is it that we are so dependent on alcohol, so obsessed with appearing aloof, so focused on hooking up, on f*cking, on adding another notch to our bedpost?
I'll admit, I am guilty as hell of all of the above. The better part of my twenties thus far has been spent playing a game...walking a fine tightrope of love and indifference, of interest and apathy, of figuring out if I think I could spend the rest of my life waking up next to the farting sleeper next to me or if ten, twenty, thirty years down the road resign myself to having settled?
I will say one thing for The Havana Club - it is exactly how the world
should be, at least in my eyes. It is exhilarating fun - people dancing and not caring if they look like assholes, drinking some beer (or water, if necessary), and meeting people. And having fun! And not letting their fears of rejection deter them. It's an interesting f*cking concept, don't you think?
Perhaps I can take the best of both worlds and aim to be the kind of girl I was on Saturday night at The Havana Club, except for this time, I'll bring it to the Yuppie bar. Perhaps I can muster up the courage to revolutionize my generation's socialization skills. But until then, I'll probably be knocking back shots at the bar like everyone else, waiting for my buzz to kick in.
Throw Me A Loaf of Bread Or I Am A Nasty Bitch
Today is Day 4 of not eating carbohydrates. While I realize that this isn't wholly healthful, I have a wedding coming up in a month and I'd prefer to not have to return the cute polka-dotted sundress I bought especially for the occasion because someone mistakes me for a giant block of Swiss cheese instead of the fashion plate I aim to be.
So no carbs. This means no beer, fruit, pasta, bread, corn, beer, polenta, couscous...shit I am getting hungry just thinking about it. This also means no chocolate (which I am totally violating because to ask me to go without chocolate is like asking Nicole Ritchie to compete in a corn dog eating contest).
In high school I went on this no-carb crash for about two months. I worked out four or five times a week and ate a lot of grilled chicken breast, which resulted in my looking pretty fantastic in my prom dress (although having looked back at pictures recently, the hair could have used some work). And then one night I ate a bowl of pasta and never looked back.
This is the first time I've done this in over 8 years and I have forgotten what it's like. No carbs = grumpy little bitch. I am mad at everything. I hate everyone. I have been like a human minefield this week - say something in the wrong tone of voice and I will seriously punch you in the face.
Case in point: I recently reactivated the subscription on my XM radio. Apparently, since my trial expired the better part of a month ago, I have to leave the radio on, in my car, unobstructed, in direct sunlight, tuned to Channel 1, and while standing on my head at a 27 degree angle to receive the signal beam and allow it to reactivate. Needless to say, after having tried this twice, I gave up. Today, when I logged in to my XM account online, I was told my service was "deactivated". Nevermind the fact that I paid for three months of service less than a week ago, right?
So I spent the better part of my morning constructing the nastiest email ever written to Mr. XM, detailing my poor experience with reactivation and threatening to seek legal recourse if my complaint was not addressed within 48 hours. (Literally - I wrote this. No joke.)
I ended my complaint letter with a bang: "If I do not receive a response within 2 days, I will seek proper recourse and ask to have this bogus activation charge removed from my credit card statement. I refuse to pay for a service I do not have access to."
As soon as it occurred to me that I had used the word "bogus" in a letter of complaint, I hit "send" quickly and proceeded to eat a block of American cheese as a midmorning snack.
Three and a half weeks to go.
Our Health Care System is F*cked, but I Am Nice And Healthy
Our health care industry is FUBAR. Honestly. With all of the claims and forms and receipts and referrals and forms and de-forms and disclaims, it's a miracle if you can get out of the doctor's office before you manage to damage another body part.
So a few weeks ago, shortly before my new job, I decided to go on a medical spree and hit up every doctor in town. And no, it wasn't because I was looking for a cheap thrill. I just wanted to make sure my stuff was okay. Nothing wrong with that.
So I go to the very nice, very compassionate, very loving OB/GYN, who begins our friendly little visit with an anemia blood test and a pregnancy test. Awesome. What better way to help me into the stirrups than to familiarize me with the two things I hate the most - bodily fluids and pain. Hop into my nightmare, everyone, the water is warm!
I will spare you the details, but I will mention this - before I walked in the door, they made me fill out a little card with my name and address. The card (which, if I recall correctly, does not even fold over) features a little unoriginal note that says,
"Dear _____ (you fill in your own name, how ghetto), thanks for visiting our offices. Your:
- pap smear ____
- cervix test ____
- STD test _____
- pregnancy test ____
- uterine cancer test _____
- insert anything more invasive of privacy that you can think of to put on a card that will be mailed to you _____
has come back _______. Thanks for visiting our offices!"
Can you imagine a more mortifying system? I mean, I can't even pretend to be so clever.
To add insult to injury (sorry, but that is definitely an appropriate phrase given our little discussion of the medical industry), I received this little card in the mail, and next to the check marked boxes that applied were....
hand-drawn smiley faces.
What the hell has our world come to? Smiley faces on test results? "Congratulations, Ms. KA! Your cervix is happy!"
This makes me wonder...what if my results weren't normal? Would they mail the card? Would they put a little sad face next to "pap smear"? Do they have a "syphilis stamp"? I can just imagine what goes on in the administrative offices of these doctor's offices:
"Marge, do you have a minute?"
"Sure Dot, what do you need?"
"Well, poor Ms. Smith has gonorrhea and I seem to have misplaced the stamp..."
Smiley faces. A smiley face. A hand-drawn "two-dots-and-a-juxtaposed-parenthesis" smiley face.
Woo hoo!
Immediately I was transported back to fourth grade. Seeing that smiley face made me so happy for so many reasons. The first, obviously, that I am cancer-free. Not that I'm making light of this in any way whatsoever because if you've ever had a scare as I have, you know that shit ain't comical. Secondly, I was happy because this was the first test I've passed since I finished school two years ago. Seeing that positive reinforcement made me second-guess whether I should go back for a law degree or something. I miss tests.
Most importantly though, the smiley face told the U.S. Postal Service that I am clean. Which is always good for them to know they're delivering to a clean box.
