Clearly, I Didn't Think This Through : The Story of One Tall Girl's Impulsive, Ill-conceived, and Borderline Irresponsible Life Decisions (9781101612255) Read online

  Damn this sandwich and damn this stupid night! I clenched my fist and shook it at the sky.

  “Sam, you want any of this?” I looked back over my shoulder. There was no visible movement from under the covers, but I did hear snoring. Not cute little kitten snores. They were huge, bellowing Santa snores. He made a chain-saw sound like a music box. An ambulance’s siren would’ve been drowned out; that’s how loud he was.

  With my hunger sated and my eardrums assaulted, I knew it was time to leave. I tiptoed around his hotel room collecting my things. It was like I was trying to sneak out of my parents’ house to go to a party on a school night.

  That was when I spied two wrinkly dollar bills on his nightstand. Since I have impeccable judgment, I snatched them up and tucked them into my bra. He owed me at least that much for my trouble. (Mental note: Reimbursing me for my trouble is not expensive.) Then I got greedy.

  I sneaked into his bathroom and scooped up all of the fancy toiletries, collecting the bottles in the front of my dress like a peasant harvesting foodstuffs. It was all coming with me: bergamot shower gel, citrus lavender body wash, vanilla mint mouthwash. Hell, I even tossed in a tiny pack of cotton swabs and a thin shower cap just for kicks.

  I stuffed my dress full of the goods and surveyed the hotel room one last time, making sure I had all of my belongings. This had to be a clean getaway.

  Certain I had everything I’d come with—purse, jean jacket, now-diminished pride—I gingerly closed the door. Then I sprinted down that corridor like an ax murderer was chasing me. The soaps and lotions jumped around in my dress.

  Once I was in the elevator, I crammed my purse with the stolen swag. It looked like I had raided the travel aisle at Target. A full stomach, a full purse; the night wasn’t a total waste.

  Shielding my eyes, I walked across the lobby with my bulging handbag under my arm. The last thing I wanted to do was make eye contact with anyone. Naturally, I assumed the staff thought I was a low-end call girl because I’d stayed in this guy’s hotel room for just under an hour. A small bar of hand soap fell out of my purse, but I didn’t pick it up. I figured it was best to leave the fallen soldier and just keep walking so I kicked it under an overstuffed tan chair.

  Outside, I jumped into the first available cab.

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Take me to the Sunoco on Twenty-fourth and Fairmount. Thanks.” I directed him to a twenty-four-hour gas station/convenience store two blocks from my apartment. We were there in seven minutes flat. I got out of the cab and walked into the store, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the fluorescent overhead lights.

  “Evening, ma’am,” the guy behind the register said. I flashed him a smile.

  “Hi, there.” I pointed to the hot dogs slowly rotating in a roaster contraption to his left. “I’ll take one of those, please.”

  Fuck sandwiches forever. I play on team hot dog from now on.

  CHAPTER 9

  I Am Impressed by the Worst Things Ever

  I often think about what all of my conquests would look like if they lined up next to one another in a police lineup–type scenario. I already know the answer: It’d look like a clown college’s graduation class picture, just a total freak show. Most of the guys would be under 5′8″ and look like they hadn’t showered in many moons. They’d be a mixture of dorks and misfits, awkwardly standing around like they were at a well-lit sixth grade dance. I think about my mother seeing the sorry lot of them, shaking her head and frowning, wondering where she went wrong.

  “But, Mom, they’re all great people.” I’d point a few out. “That one knows a bartender who gets us free drinks. That one went to art school and now works at a video store. The one over there in the cardigan has a library card. You love the library!” That wouldn’t make it any better. It’d probably make it worse.

  From what I’ve observed, most women evaluate potential mates by the following criteria:

  1. He must have a good job.

  2. He must come from a good family.

  3. He must have strong morals and values.

  I seemed to have been absent that day in kindergarten when they taught this lesson, because those things aren’t even in the top five for me. My top three qualities would look something like this:

  1. He must have good hair.

  2. He must have cool sneakers.

  3. He must have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show Arrested Development.

  Mostly, I’m impressed by things that shouldn’t impress any woman, ever. For instance, I am impressed when a guy has Black Sabbath on his iPod. I’m impressed if he can toss food in the air and catch it in his mouth like a trained seal. I’m impressed if he can type at least five words upside down on a calculator, knows roughly seventy-five percent of the lyrics to Weezer’s Blue Album, and has a prized collection of snow globes. Hell, I’m impressed if he’s familiar with eighties sitcom theme songs. Now, if that’s not a recipe for quality control in a mate, then I don’t know what is.

  There must be a flaw in my genetic evolution, because none of the attributes I admire in a man have a demonstrable advantage for me or my potential offspring. I’ve never heard of a woman being saved by a guy in the wild because he could recite the theme song from Mr. Belvedere on command or pop a blueberry in his mouth with his eyes closed.

  I can see my future kids being pissed at me that I chose a guy to be their father solely because he played a song off the Singles soundtrack on the jukebox at a dive bar. They won’t care how great the song “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” is; they’ll scold me that I should’ve had higher standards. Point taken, future kids. Point taken.

  I have been impressed by guys who can do high kicks like David Lee Roth, guys who know all the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” guys who can have entire conversations using only dialogue from Will Ferrell’s movies, and guys who had a jean jacket in junior high school with heavy metal band logos scrawled in Sharpie all over it. Clearly, the bar to impress me is set woefully low.

  Seeing as I have roughly the same interests as a preteen boy, it’s no surprise that I’m impressed when guys get psyched about dinosaurs as much as I do. It quickens my pulse when he has a favorite dinosaur and can tell me why in a reasonably detailed manner.

  I am impressed with guys who have deep voices. I’ve overlooked several obvious flaws in a guy just because he had a deep voice. Somehow hearing him say in his deep, manly baritone, “I keep pictures of me with my ex on my Facebook page because I like the way I look in them, not because I like looking at her,” cushions the blow. If a guy could tell me about his favorite dinosaurs in a deep voice, I’d probably force him at gunpoint to Vegas for a quickie wedding with me.

  Girls like to muse about the qualities their dream man will exhibit. Maybe he’ll be a humanitarian, bringing light into dim huts in faraway lands. Maybe he’ll be great with kids, rolling around in the dirt, mud stains on his Dockers be damned. Maybe he’ll take Thai cooking classes, learn how to make his own compost pile, and/or take up yoga. These are all great things for a guy to do.

  But I don’t need a model citizen who pays his taxes on time and can speak three languages. My dream guy will hate someone for me on command. That would impress me. No argument, no reasons given; he will just hate someone because I hate him. And I do have my reasons for hating someone. They might be irrational or immature, but there are definitely reasons. And my dream man will accept it and share in my hatred, like a true love should. You know why? Because it’s fun to hate people together. It’s how we’ll bond. Forget chocolates, flowers, and love letters. Screw sweet texts, blown kisses, and held hands. I know a man really loves me when he’ll hate someone only because I hate that person, no questions asked.

  Now, I’m the first one to admit that none of these traits—loving dinosaurs, having a deep voice, hating people for no reason—are particularly useful. They can’t even be classified as skills, truthfully. But taken together, these qualities offer a composite of someone I’d like to do sexy things wi
th and/or to. If this person walked into the room, I’d pull down my sunglasses to the tip of my nose and do a double take while I check him out like a bully in a John Hughes movie.

  Recently, at a local Mexican restaurant, I asked Kat what impresses her in a guy. After wiping some salsa from her chin, she said with her mouth full of nachos, “Long hair and a bad attitude.” She didn’t even hesitate. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; the girl has a serious boner for Nikki Sixx, Johnny Depp, and—get ready for this—Jesus. It makes sense if you think about it because Jesus was the ultimate long-haired badass, right? It doesn’t take a session with Freud to figure out that her Catholic upbringing has influenced her attraction to the opposite sex.

  “No! I mean what can a guy do that impresses you.” I squeezed a lime into my beer can.

  “Oh. Well, it impresses me when he has his shit together.” Kat put her chip down at the edge of her plate. She was taking me seriously. “If his apartment is clean, I’m impressed. If he’s nice to his mother, I’m impressed. That guy Riley FedEx’d me a dozen black leather roses that one time for Valentine’s Day. I’m sure that required a Google search and a few phone calls, at least. That impressed me.” She plunged a chip into a small dish of guacamole.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “It’s come to my attention recently that I’m impressed with, literally, the worst things in the world.”

  “Yeah, well, no shit. You pick, like, the worst dudes ever.” If anyone could give a book report about the strange procession of dudes in my life, it’d be her.

  “I know!” I launched into it, rattling off names like a camp roll call. “I went home with that Blake guy that one time because he was the same height as Michael J. Fox. That’s one.”

  “Was that the one with the rocker haircut and the nice apartment?” she asked.

  “Yeah, you mean the apartment that belonged to his girlfriend who was out of town? Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “Didn’t you also hook up with that guy at that house party just because you thought he was a dude in ZZ Top for Halloween?” Kat is like an elephant; she never forgets.

  “Donnie? Yes. Shut up. That’s two.” Shit, I hadn’t thought about him in a while. In fact, I actively tried to forget him. “You have to admit, it would have been a cool costume if that was actually his costume, which was never confirmed. I think he just had a gnarly beard so it was more of a costume coincidence.” I kept going. “I also went home with that guy who reminded me of Riff-Raff from Heathcliff.”

  “The one with the puffy hat? And the bell bottoms? And the greasy hair?”

  “Yes! That guy! I thought I could be his Cleo.” It was a flimsy excuse, but it was true.

  “But you don’t own any leg warmers. Oh yeah, and you’re not an animated cat from a cartoon that aired on network TV in 1985,” she deadpanned.

  “Well, that did not occur to me at the time. I blame tequila for that misstep. I also gave that one guy Tony my phone number just because he was wearing a Motorhead shirt and had an iPhone.”

  “I can’t believe that impressed you. An iPhone? Really?”

  “I mean, he must have a job if he has an iPhone, right? He can afford a data plan. What are they, like a hundred bucks a month? He’s at least making a hundred dollars, minimum. It’s reassuring,” I said.

  “Students have iPhones and they don’t do shit.” Kat had a point.

  “I hooked up with that guy once who looked like Kirk Cameron. He turned that chair around and sat on it, just like how Mike Seaver used to do on Growing Pains. I went out with that guy who looked like David Spade and kept a knife on the dashboard of his car. I also went out with that guy down at the copy center that said that he could get me free copies if I ever needed any. I went out with the jazz piano player, the junior high music teacher, and the photographer who only took pictures of cats.” I was running out of fingers to count on at this point.

  “I remember that. Shit, you are impressed by the worst things ever.”

  “Dude, I know! That’s what I’m saying. In my defense, Copy Shop Dude had the same hair as Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II. It had some nice body to it. And sheen. He was like a stallion in a field, except instead of galloping, he’d stand still behind an enormous color copier.”

  Kat shook her head at me. I shrugged. I mean, what can you say with a track record like that? There’s nothing to say.

  The first time I remember being impressed by anything a boy did was when I was three years old. I met Christopher, a blond tyke who won my preschool heart because he told me that he could pee over his house. He might as well have told me that he could swim the English Channel after climbing Mt. Everest because my reaction would have been the same: total fucking awe.

  He was my first boyfriend. We held hands and he’d show me how far he could pee, which seemed really far to me for some reason. I imagined him peeing with the force and pressure of a high-end Super Soaker. He could soak anyone if it came to it, protecting me with his golden stream. To this day, him showing off and tinkling on a small patch of grass behind my parents’ house still ranks as one of my best dates of all time.

  When I was ten, guys who could slide into baseball bases in gym class impressed me. As a chubby girl in high-waisted denim from Fashion Bug, I couldn’t slide into shit. But I’d watch a guy just go for it, surrounded by a cloud of dirt like he’d just slammed a smoke bomb on the ground. He’d get up, dust himself off, and run across home base, high-fiving everyone like a maniac. I’d watch from the sidelines with my mouth agape.

  This one neighborhood kid, Ronnie, told me that he’d attended a Milli Vanilli concert once, and I was enchanted. When he busted out the MC Hammer dance by the bus stop, I had to run home to take a cold shower. When a kid in my social studies class named Shane had four lines shaved into the side of his head and memorized all the words to “Ice Ice Baby,” I fantasized about him for the rest of the school year. In seventh grade, I fell for a kid named Jeremy because he was really good at doodling in his notebook during science class. You should’ve seen his doodles; they were next level.

  By fourteen, I was impressed by guys who knew all the words to “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was also impressed with guys who watched 120 Minutes on MTV. While my classmates were slow dancing to “Stairway to Heaven” at the school dance, I was in the back of the gymnasium staring at the weird guy with stringy hair and a subscription to Spin magazine. My pickup line should’ve been, “Your beanbag chair or mine?” Sadly, I never got to use that gem because I didn’t date any guys until high school.

  I got into the local punk scene when I was sixteen and became impressed with even more esoteric, useless things: radical record collections, cool hoodies, and funny bumper stickers, to name a few. My first boyfriend had roughly thirty bumper stickers of his favorite bands plastered on the ass of his Ford station wagon. I thought it was awesome, even if it made him a magnet for cops. I could immediately identify his ride in a full parking lot at the mall; that impressed me! The fact that he had a well-respected zine made my knees go weak.

  Moving to Philly didn’t change my outlook at all. I once fell for a guy because he had a great white shark tattooed on his neck. I thought it was hot, even though I knew I could never take him home to my parents. There it was, thrashing up toward his ear with vibrant blues and greens swirling around the fins. I’d trace my finger over it and gently kiss it. I’d lick the skin and be surprised that it tasted like nothing.

  Now, I’m stoked if a guy wears a cool hat, like the one Joey Jeremiah wore in Degrassi Junior High. I’m impressed with guys who look like they’d be in a barbershop quartet. I’m impressed if a guy went to a Back to the Future convention and touched a hoverboard.

  Someone needs to shake me hard and set me straight. Maybe I can enroll in a VH1 show where I have to go to “Be Impressed with Cool Shit Boot Camp.” Dr. Drew can analyze me in a group therapy session. I’ll wear sweatpants, throw pillows at the staff, and cry on camera. At the end of it
all, I’ll be reformed and properly impressed with the kinds of things adults should be impressed with: robust stock portfolios, exotic dish sets from Crate & Barrel, and affordable cruises. Everybody wins.

  I once kicked it with this one guy named Clark who was a total scumbag. Even though I’d had a crush on him for years, we were together only a short time—less than a week. Everyone knew he was a scumbag. Hell, even he knew he was a scumbag. He’d joke about it and say, “What can you do? I’m a bartender, for crying out loud! What did you expect?”

  None of my friends could understand his appeal to me. I wouldn’t even argue with them about it. “Yes, he’s a jerk,” I’d concede, “but he’s so handsome.” That was his get-out-of-jail-free card. Even though he was a scumbag, statistically, I think he impressed me the most out of anyone I’d ever met, and the reasons he impressed me were downright stupid. I’ll get to that in a bit.

  Sometimes you meet that one guy who just knocks you on your ass. Clark was that kind of guy. He was an ass-knocker, if you will. He was one of the first guys I met when I moved to Philly, and he loitered in my head for years. The first time I met him was at a dingy club called Silk City for a sixties soul dance party called the Turnaround. I was making my way through the crowd to the bar when he stepped in front of me, blocking my path. Before I could scoot past him, he leaned in and kissed me on the lips. It happened very quickly, before I had time to react. I let our lips touch for a second before I came to my senses. My first thought was that he had mistaken me for someone else.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?” I asked.

  “Now you do. My name is Clark. What’s your name?”

  That’s how I first met Clark. Kissing me was his pickup line. Who does that? No one does that. Clark does that. I took a step back and looked him up and down. At 5′6″, he had a skeletal, bony frame and sharp cheekbones that would probably cut you if you approached him from the wrong angle.