The Promise of Refusal

She refuses to let him go and he holds her heart with clenched fist, with good intentions.  But not yet.

The light switch controlling time is flipped down and will never be on her side.  What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

He promised.

Marriage on her mind, and nothing on his; that’s the way the story goes.

The jury’s out and her choice is him.

Sparkles in her eyes vs. refusal meeting her gaze.

Large hands grabbing her by her tiny shoulders.  Reality shakes her into submission.

She sits and waits, and waits and sits but the timing never comes.

Move on, they say.

She never thought the moons would fall night after night with empty recognition.

Perhaps one day.

I wrote the above on the train ride home one Monday in March-  iPhone in hand, furiously typing away while trying to hide the screen from my seatmate.

It’s bad enough accidentally holding my phone towards someone, allowing them to see I’m listening to Justin Bieber’s Christmas album….in the spring.  But not this.

You could say I was feeling sorry for myself.

Doesn’t everyone feel a little down and out on Mondays?

There’s only so many Buzzfeed articles I can view with puppies wearing hats lying on babies, and YouTube videos of people fainting to cheer me up.

I haven’t written on here since November because I thought I had my life all figured out.

“Single life no more!” is what I wanted to yell from my second floor balcony while throwing my fist in the air, ready to face the world.

But it’s me.  Shit like that doesn’t work in my favor.  Like, ever.

Call it bad timing, call it me being a stubborn asshole, but settling is not in my vocabulary.

My friend sent me a quote she saw on Facebook.

“They key to succeeding in a relationship is not finding the right person; it’s learning to love the person you found.”

What the fuck?

Is that what modern relationships are made of?  I read that quote and the first image that came to my mind is me “finding” a homeless guy on 42nd St., throwing him in a shower, and chocking back bile every time he kissed me.  Is that what she meant by “learning to love the person you found?”

Finding the right person IS what it’s all about.  Someone who doesn’t mind lying in bed with me on Saturday mornings and watch war movies because I secretly love them.  Or watching him practically break his legs while trying to get into the driver’s seat of my car.  Or laugh at me every time I order my drink wrong from the bartender, like my friends do.

“Grape vodka, please, with cranberry juice and a splash of Sprite”

“OK miss, so you’re telling me you want just three bubbles in it?”

“Oops!  Switch the splashes!  I want a splash of cran, not Sprite!”

That’s the only time in my life I’m ever dyslexic.  And I want to share my grape vodka dyslexia with someone who wants to.

It’s the little bullshit things you remember at the end of a relationship, but never the big.  Like the last time he kissed you, or the last time he ever told you, “I love you.”

Why don’t we ever remember?

We don’t remember because we refuse to.  The promise of refusal to never feel that pain again resonates in our heads, our hearts, and in all future promises to ourselves.

Head vs. heart; the constant struggle.  And this time, my heart lost.

The First Date: Do’s and Dont’s

When it comes to first dates, obviously everyone is different.  Some people treat first dates like job interviews, firing questions at each other all night long and wishing you had a tape recorder in your pocket to play back to your girlfriends when they interrogate the shit out of you the next day.  We have the obvious ones below (taken from a female standpoint):

1. “What do you do?”

This is where you pray that they don’t reply with, “I’m between jobs.”  This, in turn, gets the stamp of disapproval and the famous vicious bathroom text to whoever set you up with this momo.  You could be making double me in merely unemployment and I don’t care.  It’s that I have to work 830a-530p and you don’t.  And that’s why I also can’t date teachers.  My friends know this.

2. “Where do you live?”

Please say anything but, “I live at home with my parents.”  For obvious reasons.  Girls want to know that you can survive on your own.  This means being able to feed yourself, wash your balls every day, and if you really want to impress me, keep an animal alive as you being it’s sole provider.  If your animal doesn’t scratch or bite me upon introduction- bonus points.

3. What nationality are you?

If a girl asks you this, it’s because she is curious about your temper.  Italians and Irishmen may be hotheaded whereas an Eastern European is calmer.  And when I say temper, I really mean wiener size.

So now that you’ve got the above questions out of the way, you have the rest of the date to go.  Below I’ve listed out basic etiquette of what to do/not to do.  This may vary, but I mean, it’s pretty standard.

Do’s

1. Try to find something in common with the other person right off the bat.  If conversation comes to a lull, go back to that.  My go-to is always football.  And if the guy doesn’t watch football, I’m sorry but I can’t marry you, the image of you with a vagina pops into my head, and then I run out screaming.  I don’t,  but I definitely get those uncomfortable shivers.  For other girls it may be that he hates animals, doesn’t like to travel, or doesn’t want children.  Ya know, normal things.  I’m a freak.

2. Order food if it’s a dinner date if you are drinking alcohol.  I made this mistake, got hammered, and somehow led the conversation into the realm of vaginal discharge.

3. Tell the honest truth about everything he asks you.  He loves ethnic food but you don’t.  If you tell him you do, your next date might be at, let’s say, an Indian restaurant.  You definitely don’t want to be playing out that scene from, ‘Along Comes Polly’ where you’re using his loofah to unclog his toilet as it overflows into the bedroom.

4. Notice how he treats others around you.  If he’s nice to your waiter, and is genuine about it, odds are he’s not a douche bag.

5. My last Do on the list is to play the ‘slow reach for the wallet’ game, 100% expecting the man to call me crazy for even thinking about it.  I know, I know, this is 2012 and going Dutch on the dinner bill is now somehow acceptable.  If you’ve dated chivalrous guys in the past, like me, you’re never had to pay for a god damn thing.  And why should it change because it’s 2012 rather than 2008?  It’s not a money thing per say.  It’s an “I didn’t choose to go out to a 4 star restaurant, you did” kind of thing.  Yeh, it takes me a total of five seconds to reach in my bag, pull out my wallet, take out my debit card and offer to pay half, but I’m going to hate you for the rest of my life if you don’t stop me.

Dont’s

1. Discuss politics.  There’s nothing romantic about that.  Just stay away.

2. No ex talk- even though you just ran into your ex-boyfriend’s new fiancee for the first time in the bathroom of the restaurant.

3. Don’t have your cell phone on the table.  Yes, it’s obviously rude, but if you have an iPhone, the complete text message pops up onto the screen.  Looking down and seeing, “I hope he’s better looking than in that picture you sent me earlier,” can be jarring.  Especially when you realize he can, in fact, read upside down and now knows you think his looks are less than stellar.  Way to go, bitch!

4. Don’t drink eight Redbull vodkas at dinner to loosen up.  Odds are, you THINK you’re being witty and awesome, when in reality your level of attraction just dropped six notches.

5. And ladies, please don’t sleep with him the first night.  Sleeping with him the first night 99% goes hand-in-hand with the alcohol you’ve consumed.  Odds are, it’s gonna suck anyway.  Save The Poon Campaign 2012.

So there you have it.  I mean, it’s not the most scientific of reasoning and it can be very pers0n-specific but I have just one last thought.  If you, or someone you know has broken all of my Don’t rules with the man they are married to now, please contact me.

You just might be the next (only) person I’ve ever bought dinner for in my life.

Until next time…