I just remembered something very important that I feel like I should cop to.

I once had phone sex with a wrong number when I was 18. At my parents’ house. I hadn’t even left for college yet.

Wait ’til I tell my therapist; that’s going to be awesome

Note: When possible, date men who can benchpress at least 1.5 to two times your weight. It makes you feel really skinny.

Note: Ask male friends if telling a dude you want to ride him like a pogo stick is hot or laughable.

Note: “What the hell” is always the right decision.

Note: Ask November to validate self for engaging young man in phone sex. Ask him to give the talk that begins with, “Yes, you are still a good person, no, this does not make you less of a person, yes you are still worthwhile, something something something do it in the butt.”

Dear Every-Dude-Who-Ever-Felt-Me-Up-Before-I-Hit-25,

You boys should get down on your knees and thank Jesus you saw these tits in their prime. They’re just not the same prize-winning perky little things they used to be.

You’re welcome.

Sincerely,

Mela’s-31-Year-Old-Tits

In the morning, when you wake me up, caress my hair away from my face and say, “Hey pretty girl.”

That’s it, really. That’s all I require.

Just “Hey pretty girl.”

“Every dude in this bar is wearing a polo shirt.”

She scanned the bar. Which also happened to be in a basement, making it both really dark and a bit of a fire hazard.

“There does seem to be a disproportionate amount of polo shirts in here,” she said. She made the weighing scales motion with her hands, one hand up, the other down, up and down, up and down. “That should be a key factor in our assessment of bars: the ratio polo shirts to t-shirts. Disporportionate polo shirts. What do you think that means?”

“I think it means all these guys are east coast,” I said.

“Is that bad?”

“Yeah, dude. It means these boys come from breeding,” I continued. “They’ve been bred. It means they went to private schools for high school and then moved on to the Ivy League, or even worse private liberal arts schools in Maine, like Bowdoin.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Exactly.”

Girls from west of the Mississippi have not only never heard of colleges like Bowdoin, we think that they are gay. Just like polo shirts.

“I see,” she said. “These boys are pedigree.”

“Dude, exactly. Pedigree. And we don’t have any of that where we come from. The only Pedigree we have is dog food.”*

“These people are dog food,” she said.

“Yup, this is a total dog food bar,” I said. “Dude, I think my big ginormous purse is a turn-off. I think it’s scaring boys away.”

“What?”

“Look at that girl over there, she looks really cute, but then she has that ginormous purse, and that just says ‘I’m high maintenance,’ and that’s a problem for these dog food people. I think I need to leave my big purse at home, it’s definitely working against us.”

I decided to continue talking because this monologue seemed to be animating my mojo.

“Plus, I think we need to look really engaged, like we didn’t just come here to scam on boys, like we came here for the obvious ambience and each other’s engaging company. Like when I just laughed really huge and loud, that looked like we were really intriguing and didn’t give a fuck about the boys around us. That makes boys want you. When you don’t give a fuck about them.”

“Right,” she said. “Like when I did that weighing scales move with my hands, that looked really engaging. Boys looked at us and they didn’t know if we were talking about a math problem or a new algorithim or what. They would have to come and talk to us.”

“Exactly.”

“Let’s leave.”

“Yeah, I feel like we need to leave before some boy from Bowdoin tries to diss us because we aren’t dog food.”

“Do you need to use the ladies’ or anything?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back.”

I walked over to the ladies’, which was really a joint men’s and ladies’. Some dude in a pink polo shirt snarled at me.

“The line starts back here,” he said.

Oooooh. I bet he gets laid left and right. I decided I didn’t need to use the ladies’ that badly.

“Dude, let’s leave,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s leave.”

I guess we showed them.

*In my reteling of these events, the dialogue is sometimes punched up a bit to make me sound funnier than I really am. I never do this for her. That’s because it’s my blog. If you want the version where she’s funny, you have to go to her blog

Or, he did play soccer for Mississippi State and it was a club league, because the NCAA doesn’t have men’s soccer.

Sometimes you’re wrong about the soccer players you make out with.

 You know how it is.

God, Mela can be such a self-righteous bitch sometimes.

“The night will not end this way. I will not allow it.”

A Sweet Young Douchebag at the bar had just asked her if she was a lesbian. Prior to inquiring about her sexual preferences, he complimented her breasts.

One can understand how that combination of comments could put one in a foul mood.

Then the Douchebag said to her, “It looks like my friend (Sweet Young Soccer Player) and your friend (Sweet Young Mela) like each other, and they’re going to be talking all night. You’re going to be really bored.”

You can see how we decided it was time to leave, and how one would not want the night to end on such a note.

Fortunately, that’s when the Hollywood Producer showed up. He was warning us to clear the way, as he was so drunk he thought he was going to fall over the railing outside the bar.

We found that to be quite charming.

“Wait,” she said. “What cologne are you wearing? I’ve made out with that cologne before. Can I smell you?”

Things progressed nicely from there. We both smelled his neck and debated the scent. I for one had never made out with that scent. She decided to make out with the scent again, in order to determine if she had,  in fact,  made out with said scent before. It was a very important bit of recon.

Plus, my Sweet Young Soccer Player spotted that we hadn’t actually left yet, and he came over and made out with my scent, which I found to be interesting, as I wasn’t wearing a scent. But he didn’t seem to mind.

I asked said Sweet Young Soccer Player why his douche of a wingman said such bullshit things to my wingman, he answered, “I don’t know. Maybe he thought she was a lesbian ’cause she works for a women’s organization.”

He was really sincere when he said it. Bless his darling little heart. It was just so precious.

Not really.

But his blonde-haired, blue-eyed, soccer-player-for-Mississippi-State, Southern-accent-that-caused-him-to-say-the-Fourth-of-JOO-lah-little self made it quite precious. And his hands in my back pockets. That also helped. And his upper body, which was oddly very well-developed for a soccer player (red flag, we discovered later). And that when he put his hands on my waist it made me feel really skinny, because they were big hands. All those things helped the preciousness.

Let’s be honest, that last one helped the most.

When we left (which we had to do because Scent-Man claimed he produced the Oscars, in addition to revealing his criminal record), his attempts to have text-sex with me until 5 a.m. were less precious. I don’t put out on the first text and I don’t have unlimited messaging, so not only were my morals being compromised, but he was running up quite a phone bill for me.

It was even less less less precious when he picked up where he left off at 1:30 p.m. the next day when he woke up. Seriously. At 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon, I’m not going to be giving any text blow-jobs or anything.

These are the things we will put up with from a soccer player.

Except that according to Google, MISSISSIPPI STATE DOES NOT AND NEVER DID HAVE A MEN’S SOCCER TEAM.

I said, MISSISSIPPI STATE DOES NOT AND NEVER DID HAVE A MEN’S SOCCER TEAM.

Is this the new M.O. at bars? Because if that’s the case, my wingman has pointed out that we could have some kick-ass dating personaes. Like we could be FBI agents who chase aliens and explore paranormal activity. Or nurses from Seattle Grace Hospital in town for a conference. And at the end of the night, we could drive ourselves into the Grand Canyon.

But only if it means we can make-out with soccer players and Hollywood producers. Because I’m not driving myself into the Grand Canyone for anything less than that.

Grown men are funny little creatures. They play with big toys and lots of money and they like to own things. They don’t really fight except over things they want to own, like land and resources and women, because those things give them more power than the other guy. If you take his house, the land it sits on, his access to water and his wife, you’ve pretty much made him your slave.

Big Business Boys are like that.

Nothing personal, Boys. I have to say that. It’s my way of taking back a little power, of regaining my footing. If I don’t belittle you, then I’m stuck staring down the reality of my subordination.

I think the Big Business Boys regard me as an oddity, but I can’t tell. Some of them give me a fair shake, some of them write me off immediately, all of them make verbal note of my minority status in their world. The last group rarely mean any harm. It’s natural to point out an aberration.

In every case, they always prove that if the world were a strip club, we could take over in a matter of seconds.

We are their most valuable commodity, and we will never be in short supply. Demand will never decrease. Men will always pay.

How we let you Boys take over the selling and the buying of us, I’ll never understand. Why we still seem to think that hiding our bodies under suits that look like yours is the only way to get ahead, I’ll never understand either. Actually, that one I understand. You still control the buying and the selling. Hence, the topography of our bodies commodifies us. Therefore, we hide it.

I usually picture the Beginning of Things like this:

At some point early on, you Boys started to get surly. You started to make rumblings about taking over the next village and so on and so forth. We looked at each other over the gaggle of babies in our midst, and the homefires we were tending, and rolled our eyes.

“Bless their hearts,” we said. “They’re just full of piss ‘n vinegar, now aren’t they? It’ll pass.”

And now we are looking around at our power suits and our burkas and head scarves and we’re like “WTF?”

But if the world were a strip club, you Boys would be on your knees. That is dependent, of course, on women regulating the industry. You Boys can’t be in charge of the buying and selling.

We all know that would never work. There’s too much to take care of, what with the world peace and global warming. We can’t be running around naked all the time. You Boys would bust a blood vessel, and we can’t have you overwhelming the Emergency Rooms. We’re going to need those for the 75 percent of the world that’s malnourished.

But don’t be surprise if you see my suits turn into dresses and my stare become just a scooch more lethal.

I’m sick of your shit. I want my piece of the pie back.