舊文一篇: My Lady Troubles

看自己的博客找到一篇挺有意思的舊文。寫來參加一個 悲慘的情人節 的比賽的，結果輸給了一個39歲卻從未有過男朋友的女子。

My Lady Troubles

“I’m gonna go back into my closet and cry!” I announced and slammed Dee’s bathroom door shut behind me. That happened 3 nights ago and roughly 3 seconds after Dee laughed at me and told me to suck it up.

Dee is my best friend / shrink / babysitter / co-star in re-enactments of scenes from “Scrubs.” I showed up at her house un-announced that night with a grande white chocolate mocha -- her favorite at the moment. After pointing out that her boobs are kinda showing in her flowery kimono jammies and receiving several punches for doing so, I promptly started whining about Rebecca. Rebecca, by the way, is my former friend with benefits, who recently cut the benefits on me because I told her the truth -- that I just “kinda sorta like” her. My excessive bitching was what led to that little episode I told you about at the beginning of this here piece of literary masterpiece.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, this chapter of my life is called “My Lady Troubles.”

My lady troubles started exactly 1 year 6 months and 15 days ago. On that day -- June 26, 2005 -- my then-girlfriend-and-soon-to-be-ex, Gabby, dumped me. We were together for 6 years 6 months and 16 days before then.

I still remember how it all started. -- We were camping with three other friends in the Angeles National Forest on a beautiful summer afternoon. We had our tents set up and just started the barbeque when a 300-pound black bear decided he’d join the party. It’s a good thing I still remember what I learned in the outdoors club back in high school -- run away from grizzlies but never give your back to a black bear. I ordered my friend Kevin to get the girls back into the cars while I stayed behind to cover their back. Armed with a steak knife in one hand and a barbeque fork in the other, I jumped onto a nearby picnic table and screamed at the bear to get his attention. For the next two minutes or so, the bear and I engaged in a staring contest. It felt like an eternity, but at the end, the bear turned around and leisurely strode away before Kevin came back with a park ranger.

Gabby totally fell in love with me after that incident. And I was pretty good to her too. In addition to writing all her art history papers and critiques for her, I also cooked for her and folded her panties. Not to mention spending a good five hours in the mall with her almost every week and going to arts and crafts shows with her. We were looking at rings only three weeks before she dropped the bombshell on me. I was totally traumatized.

I have not had a steady relationship since then. Perhaps I’ve lost all my mojo, or maybe I haven’t gotten over Gabby, or it could just be my terrible luck. The bottomline is -- I am about nine dates from getting enough material for my memoir titled Fifty Disastrous Dates.

Take Dee for example -- smart, good sense of humor and fairly good-looking. She started out as what I call “a person of interest.” I was recovering from being called too aggressive and was taking things slow when I started seeing her. Things were going great until our fifth date. On that particular evening, I got an excellent view of her boobs. -- Nope, we were not in bed. We were actually in a fitting room in the Urban Outfitters in Old Town Pasadena. -- And no, it’s not what you think. She was trying on what I would describe as a jumpsuit and the zipper got stuck half-way. She called me on my cell and I went in there to help her. I struggled with the damn thing and finally got it to loosen a little. We locked eyes. I leaned in and my lips were no more than 3 inches from hers when a knock came. “One person in there at a time please” was what the clerk -- I mean sales rep -- said, and that totally killed the moment. One thing led to another and we became just-friends, despite the fact that I know her size and measurements.

There’s a whole lot more. There’s Julie, the social-worker who thinks six years is too much of an age difference; Becky, the grad student who literally turned around and ran away when I tried to hold her hand; Vicky, the computer programmer who refused to pick up my calls after our little hiking accident; Suzie, the accountant who told me she hates red roses after I gave her those damn things on 4 different occasions. I was either too aggressive or not aggressive enough or too young or too old or too wimpy or too rough or too sensitive or too insensitive; my hair was either too long or too short or my hair color too avant garde; and my jokes were too hard to swallow. On a few ocassions, I met the perfect gal, but they are already taken. It has gotten to a point where I’m ready to try voodoo magic, or match.com.

So, there, that’s my love life in a page... and a half.