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The Stories...
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Love Stinks. Sometimes we get dumped.
: submit your own
rat bastard asshole
by RBA
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I will not use anybody's name here, but you don't know any of the people in this story, so it won't make any difference to you. (Or maybe you do, in which case it makes a very big difference to me.)
FEMALE's friend, who is also my friend, passed FEMALE's email address along to me, and mine to her. We seemed to have a lot in common: we live in the same city, we enjoy meeting new people, we are native Midwesterners, and are separated by only one degree: the friend.
This was a disaster! Do not meddle and mingle your friend sets! Here's a true, bad-case scenario:
I email FEMALE. We make plans to meet for dinner. I arrive early, and wonder how I'll recognize her, having never seen her before. (Some of my friends had, though. They told me she was cute. I'm picky, or something, because these friends have, in the past, hit on girls that I wouldn't've.)
When FEMALE arrives, I quickly ascertain that she is alright, but not my type. One dinner, several drinks, and some entertaining conversation later, however, we're enough each other's type to kiss on the subway platform!
We make plans to meet again, and I foresee a very good chance of getting slept with. FEMALE mentions a film showing at some place where she used to take Spanish lessons. The whole thing sounds unpleasant to me, but I don't have any better ideas, and am sort of thinking strategically at this point, with an eye on the prize, instead of deciding whether the prize is something I even want, which is what I should have been thinking, because if it isn't, I certainly don't have to sit through this movie, which I suspect is going to be the cinematic equivalent of worldbeat music. ( I turn out to be right about that.)
I'm running a little late to meet FEMALE at the agreed-upon bar. I'm reading THE ONION on the subway, and the horoscopes are cracking my shit up. I'm trying not to laugh, since people who laugh on the subway are CRAZY, but Jesus, this stuff is too much.
A pretty girl asks me what's so funny, and I show her the paper. She has never seen THE ONION before, and doesn't exactly get it. But she's so cute! She's be in workout clothes, and something about her suggests that she might be a dancer. She has a wet spot in the middle of her back from sweat, or her damp ponytail maybe.
She gets off before I do, and I tell her she can keep the paper. After she's gone, a thick-necked, gold-bedecked fratboy-cum-guido wearing too much gel (any is too much) says to me: "dude, she wanted more than your paper."
In spite of what a sleazeball this joker seems like, he might be on to something. I know a lot of things, but look at this guy. If he knows one thing I don't, it's CHASING PUSSY.
When this whole debacle with FEMALE is over, I'll wish I'd followed the dancer, and been later to meet FEMALE. It's like SLIDING DOORS, kind of, if you think about it. Or at least it's like the preview to SLIDING DOORS. I didn't see that movie.
Anyway, I don't chase the dancer; I go straight to my appointment with FEMALE, thereby forestalling her opinion that I am a jerk by about three days. FEMALE has a skirt on that I don't like very much, but the wheels are already in motion, grinding inexorably toward our mutual dissatisfaction!
After the film, I'm dismayed to learn that FEMALE writes poems.
We get drinks! We go to my apartment! We have perfunctory sex until I eventually just ask if we can stop! (Something smells kind of unpleasant, about which, the less said, the better!)
The next morning, lacking the consideration to leave me alone with my regret, FEMALE asks "so now what?"
"Well, I have to clean my bathroom," I say.
"Do you want to get some coffee?" FEMALE asks.
"I don't really drink coffee," I answer.
"Do you want to get some breakfast?"
"I don't really eat breakfast."
"Do you want to sit with me while I get some breakfast?"
I surrender! FEMALE takes no less than 45 minutes to eat a bagel. I spend this time wondering how I could have gone so wrong, and pretending to listen to a story about camping.
Many days later, I get an email consisting of one word and a question mark: "hello?" I reply with a weak excuse for not having gotten in touch with her earlier, and a weaker suggestion that we "be friends."
"Of course," I write, "it makes perfect sense to me if you sort of think: 'You, MY NAME HERE, are a fucked-up creep. Go to hell.' If that is the case, you can even copy and paste that sentence back."
And she does! Her email also says "not calling after a date sends a pretty strong message" (though it seems to me like the message was not strong enough). She begins the paragraph that sort of forgives me like this:
"while i am glad to hear that you are not really a rat bastard asshole..."
Now we keep running into each other, over and over again, in increasingly improbable places!
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