I Want Him To See It...But Not Really

Watching a trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife today, I once again craved a stable relationship. In actuality, there would be nothing stable about waiting around for Eric Bana to come in and out of your life. He would conveniently miss your daugther’s birthday on the pretense that he can’t control his travels, when that woman’s intuition Oprah always speaks of really tells you he was on another golf trip with the boys. But still, a nice thought.

At this point, I would take a handsome (if often absent) boyfriend over the gems I’ve been lucky enough to encounter since elementary school. Much like the battlefield Pat Benatar describes, my love life has been fairly gruesome. Young, heartache to heartache, I’ve stood. No promises or demands.

In fifth grade, I had a huge crush on a boy I was (wrongly) convinced felt the same way. This, I soon learned, would become the theme of my life. Rather than telling said boy directly, I decided it would be more appropriate to write “I heart E.D” (I don’t want to use people’s names here, so I’ll go with initials. And no, E.D does not stand for Erectile Dysfunction. Although maybe he later developed that, I don’t know) on the rubber part at the bottom of my shoes. I found this to be equally subtle and dramatic. I wanted people to see it, but not really. The real shocker came when E.D’s friend saw the writing on the wall...or rather, my shoe, and told a bunch of people in class about it. Horrified, I ran to the bathroom and scrubbed feverishly before scribbling over the confession with a black pen.

I learned a lot from that incident and kept the public proclamations of love to a minimum in those next few years. I really wanted to marry my cousin, who was two months older than me and a real treat to be around, but I had the foresight to realize our children would most likely be born retarded. Instead, I settled on my male best friend. In eighth grade I moved on to a boy with incredibly greasy hair who became the center of my universe for no apparent reason. I was fairly certain Lonestar had written “Amazed” that year just for the two of us. Faith Hill must have also gotten the memo when she wrote “Breathe.” Both ballads spoke to my love for B.B. By the end of eighth grade, I knew I had to make my move. Walking to the bus on the last day of school, a friend confessed that she, too, liked him. In a moment of pure panic, I decided to grab life by the balls and go for it. And when I say grab life by the balls, I mean force my good friend to track B.B. down on his respective bus and let him know that I was ready for this relationship to begin. Real shocker…he did not agree.

My four years in high school produced no real romantic prospects either, save a creepy boy I met on a cruise to Canada who wore Corona swim trunks and told me to meet him by the basketball courts one night. I said okay, followed by “but if I don’t meet you, it’s because my parents wanted to do something with me instead.” I’ve never been one to hurt anyone’s feelings. I spent the remaining days of the cruise trying to avoid Corona boy, which was especially difficult considering he just so happened to be staying in the room next to mine.

Freshman year in college I figured it was time to try some new methods. My school was sponsoring a Speed Dating night to help raise money for the ultimate Frisbee team. With nothing left to lose (or so I thought), I skipped on down to the event, only to realize I had arrived 15 minutes early. This in no way made me feel like a loser.

The only other person there early was a guy with the tiniest human ears I’ve ever seen in my life. This was especially bizarre because he was a pretty stocky guy otherwise and at least 6’3”. He wasn’t adverse looking though and we talked briefly before the actual event began. Meeting the others, I became particularly frustrated when one guy told me his girlfriend also liked the Orioles. GIRLFRIEND? Turns out he was only there because not enough guys had signed up and they weren’t about to force two women to become lesbians. “By the way,” he said, “you interested in playing Frisbee?”

At the end of the night, the guy with tiny ears asked for my screename and I was thrilled. He was almost 24 and still in college and still living with his parents but he was interested, and that was good enough. For the next week we talked on AIM, but I was plagued by one question. Just HOW tiny were his ears? I felt like I needed another look at him in the daylight. Naturally, I went onto Facebook and pieced together his class schedule. (He had no pictures on his account, which should have been a red flag right there). The next day I hid behind a giant magnolia tree outside of the history building, waiting for him to leave his American studies class. Getting another good look, it was pretty clear his father must have been a tiny mouse. Still, who was I to judge someone? I wasn’t winning any America’s Next Top Model contracts. Ears aside, our contact fizzled shortly after that. Call me crazy, but discovering lyrics on a guy’s profile that call for a bitch to suck one’s dick are a bit of a turn-off.

Sophomore year I really thought my luck had turned around when I met a guy who seemed perfect in every way. Deep dimples, tall, a love for children and basketball…this was it. He was also 27, back in college for the third time, and about to serve a week in jail for some DUI troubles. Actually, this would be his second time there. But does it really count when you spend one night in jail for gently beating up a bouncer? I think not. In all seriousness, this guy genuinely seemed to be a changed person and to this day I stand by my choice to go out with him. Frankly, I was sorry our one date never turned into anything more. Call me crazy, but he was one of the nicest guys I ever met. But alas, he was not my Romeo.

That summer I sold my soul to the retail devil and became a reluctant Target team member. Despite the cons (morning chants and the responsibility of stacking the tampon boxes just so), the job seemed like a great way to meet some guys. Volume was my strategy and the new faces I was sure to meet everyday had to translate into a love connection. Sure enough, a week or so later a fellow team member asked me out. A wannabe singer/songwriter with a tattoo, there was something about this guy that I was really attracted to. On our first (and only) date he took me to a place on the water to watch the fireworks for the 4th of July. Prior to his arrival, my mom made chocolate covered strawberries for us. I tried to explain just how incredibly awkward that would be and refused to take them. Instead, I ate them all myself moments before he arrived, rushing to get the seeds out of my teeth before he knocked on the door.

The ride to the fireworks felt slightly awkward, probably because I was ready to throw up. He was nice enough but I already felt like I wasn’t into it. Claiming our spots on the lawn once we got to the water, he inched his chair closer and closer to mine while explaining his tattoos. I quickly decided I wanted this night to end. It wasn’t his fault, really. It was his fault, however, when he put his arm around me, pointed to a family full of children in front of us and said, “we’re going to have four, right.” Wrong. I was also alarmed when he announced we would have to come back next year. Suddenly we were dating for a year? This was moving too fast for me.

We spent the next hour in the car waiting for all the traffic to die down while listening to Dane Cook talking about getting his first blow job in…a car. I wanted to be dead. That night I sent him a text explaining I would prefer to just be friends. It was a bit rushed but I was very uncomfortable with this whole dating world. He continued to contact me bi-annually for the next two years. It’s a real shame, too. Thanks to my awkwardness and his open mic appearances, I can no longer frequent my favorite coffee house on Friday nights.

The remainder of my college years were nothing more than crushes gone nowhere and one very unfortunate run-in at a local bar with a man I affectionately call Cutter. I call him this because his myspace page included multiple pictures of razor blades and an assortment or very disturbing poems. I’m not sure what is was that moved me to dance with him that night. Maybe it was his regal entrance into the pub, his right arm bleeding profusely. After getting a towel from the bartender and cleaning up, he explained that some guy had called him a faggot. In response, he bashed in the guy’s windshield with his elbow. Naturally. After stalking his myspace the next day, I also learned he had a possible drug addiction and a dead baby. And also a girlfriend. I did not return his texts.

After graduation, I worked for several months at a local pizzeria, where I met a very sweet guy named D. (I can't recall his last name). D asked me out my second day on the job and we hung out less than a handful of times. Like my old flame at Target, D was a very nice guy who treated me really well, but there was no chemistry. He was about half an inch shorter than me, which as it turns out, I have a problem with. Things got worse when he took me bowling and asked for size 9 shoes. I had to ask for a 10. This was more my problem than his, but I had to end things. (It didn't help that I was also very much in love with an illegal Mexican immigrant who worked in the back kitchen and made me roses out of tinfoil). Determined to cut it off that night as D. drove me home, I was just about to say something when he reached in the back seat and pulled out a giant bouquet of flowers. I then became the bitch who broke up with him in the driveway, flowers in hand.

Clearly the United States was no place for me to find love, which is 30 percent of the reason why I moved to Ireland for five months. Okay, more like 60 percent. While there I met a strapping Irishman who lived in Dublin. We hit it off that first night and began writing to each other every day for a month. He came back to visit several weeks later, only to ditch me the next day, later claiming his phone died. Apparently no one in Galway had a phone charger he could borrow and his legs were broken, which prevented him from walking to the internet café.

My most recent shot at love came this past winter when a friend set me up with her boyfriend’s buddy. One night I went over to this apartment for dinner and was pleasantly surprised to hear he was making pancakes. Everyone else found this incredibly cheap but what can I say, I love pancakes. After asking if I could use his bathroom, he said, “let me grab that measuring cup out of there first, I need it for the pancakes.” To this day, a lot of questions still plague me, the top three being: 1) what was the measuring cup doing in the bathroom? 2)why did i still eat the pancakes and 3) why didn’t I immediately leave?

Recognizing my love for softball, he also told me he’d take me to the batting cages, explaining they were only open on Thursdays. I later discovered the batting cages were open every day of the week. Thursday, it turns out, was the only day his roommate worked there, and therefore the only day he could get free tokens. This may come as a shock to you, but we are no longer together.

As I sit here now, I can tell you that my latest man of the hour has a girlfriend and is therefore off limits. Perhaps there will come a day when he realizes I am far better for him than she ever was and we’ll begin dating. Or maybe I’ll just decide to write his name on my forehead. I’ll want people to see it, but not really. When he inevitably notices, I’ll spend the next three hours in the bathroom crying and rubbing my skin raw.

Oh well. At least it’s a good story.