Me and my boyfriend had a fight. We totally had to break up over it.

It was ok though, because we hadn’t met yet. It wasn’t like it was a big traumatic thing or anything. It was, however, more energy than I’ve ever put into a conversation with any man, let alone some dude I’m e-mailing on a dating site.

We were totally connecting in the beginning, and it was cool. He was all smart and in touch with his feelings ‘n stuff. Then he started taking a week to respond to my e-mails, even though he was logging on everyday. And I was like, WTF? Am I getting played online? That is so not happening to me. Plus, we’d been e-mailing for a month, and while I found his online persona engaging and all, I was like, seriously, I need to assess your skills in person so I know if this is a worthwhile investment. So I was like, Let’s meet, and he took five days to get back to me, and then he was like, I’m just so busy, but we can meet, and I was like, “Oh thank you for your approval (we can meet? seriously) and five days? I see you log on everyday. And busy? What exactly do you do at work for eight hours a day? Because I know your surfing the Net half the time, just like everybody else. Anyways, I didn’t say that to him.

But I did say, “Your response time is a little off-putting and my natural response is to be hesistant, as I don’t know you from Adam, Eve or Abraham or Curly, Moe or Larry.”

And then he was like, “I need to assess your response. This leads me to believe I possibly don’t have the time to invest in a dating relationship right now, as I am already pressed for time and falling down on the online communication.” And I was like, “Ok, I hear you,” only it was much more eloquent and philosophical and smart than that.

And then he e-mailed back and said, “I want to thank you. You have provoked me to some introspection that made me realize that this is so important to me, I want to be able to really devote time to it, and I can’t do that right now. I’m letting my subscription here expire at the end of the month.” And then he was like I hope you find someone, you deserve to, and I was like, Um, yeah, I know that.

So we broke up. It was a very intense relationship, as you can see.

I forwarded his thank you note to the Great and Powerful Best Friend, and she said:

“…he very much wants to sound important and intelligent. I bet he was a super geek in high school and is counting, overly much I might add, on adults not calling other adults booger-face geeks.”

And I was like, exactly.

Fucking booger-face geek.

I am never kidding about these things. Let’s all remember the one who pulled out to break up with me. Before he climaxed.

Alas, moving on. 

Answer the following multiple choice questions. You may not use your notes.

1) You meet a girl on Saturday. The following Wednesday, she engages you in phone sex. Your next move:

a) Text-blast all your buddies to tell them you got tele-laid.

b) Make arrangements to see her as soon possible and close the deal.

c) Call her the next night a little bit after midnight and ask her if she’s horny.

d) Don’t call her for three days. Everyone knows that rule.

2) You meet a girl on Saturday. The following Wednesday, she engages you in phone sex. The following Friday, she sends you text messages at work alluding to you, her and your desk. Sometimes she is on the desk, other times she is under it, depending on the text message. Words such as “Please” and “please, please, please” and “begging” are used, in addition to a phrase that went something like, “anything you want.” Your next move:

a) While she is in her heightened state, convince her to break her plans for that evening and go out with you instead.

b) Turn her messages into a PowerPoint and share them at work. This is too good to keep to yourself.

c) Nothing, you have plans to go out drinking with your roommate tonight.

d) That night, between the carefully selected hours of 12 a.m. and 2 a.m., text her twice and call her four times. This is an important phone call because this is when it is convenient for you to fuck her, and she is clearly doing nothing but lying around fingering her pussy and fantasizing about you anyway.

3) In response to some cajoling from you, this same girl (The Saturday, Wednesday, Friday girl) text messages at 4:30 Saturday morning with two texts that use the words “need,” “want,” and “you” in the same sentence. You see these when you wake up later in the morning. Your next move:

a) Call her. Get her all hot and bothered and then ask for her address. Google map it and head over there pronto.

b) Ask her out for that evening. This girl is officially begging for it.

c) Nothing.

d) Nothing.

4. This same girl (Saturday, Wednesday, Friday and early Saturday morning girl) calls at 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon. She leaves a message and uses the words “crazy”, “frustrated”, “wet”, “you”, and “when”, “when”, “when” in the same sentence.

a) You put her on speaker for all your friends to hear.

b) You say “Right now” and give her your address.

c) You torture her a little bit with some phone foreplay, then ask her out for that night.

d) Don’t respond.

5. That night, at the carefully chosen hour of 2 a.m. (see possible responses to question #2), you call this girl and ask her to come over. She says no, I have a migraine and am puking. Your next move:

a) Badger her to come over. Tell her migraines aren’t that bad.

b) Ask for her address. Come over and nurture her, because women go crazy for that shit.

c) Tell her you want to see her when she feels better and to call you.

d) Tell her to man up and come over and fuck you.

6. She responds that she’ll come over in the morning if she feels better. Your  next move:

a) Call her back twice and ask her what time.

b) Tell her you’ll be waiting with breakfast and warm hands.

c) Wash your sheets and buy condoms.

d) Call her back twice and ask her what time. Then call her at 9 a.m. and wake her up. Text her at 10:30 and ask her how long it’s going to be. Call her at 11:45 and ask her if she’s left the house yet, because you have to go and watch the baseball game with your buddies at 1 p.m.

If you answered c, d, c or d, d, a, d, then you too have just destroyed your opportunity to have sex with Mela. This is most likely because you are 26 years old and are still behaving as though you are in undergrad, when a man courted you by calling you at 2 a.m. and asking you to come over and fuck him. The fact that you are from Mississippi may have something to do with it. We hear y’all are in-bred down yonder.

The lesson we have learned here today is that even when a woman is begging you to fuck her, you cannot rely on her to fuck you at your convenience. It is best to book her time at least 24 hours in advance and refrain from rushing her so you can watch a baseball game. It is very, very difficult to ruin a sure thing, boys, and you have to try very, very hard to do it. As you can see, once a woman is hooked, she will put up with a lot of your bullcrap. This will last until you fail to close the deal by simply demonstrating your clear lack of skill and mojo.

We here at MelaLane.com, Inc., hope this has been a useful exercise for you. Please feel free to retain our services at any time.

Great and Powerful Best Friend: “Why are you having phone sex if you live in the same town?”

Right.

“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.

You would think that after all that puking, I would at least have a flat stomach. Usually after that much illness, I walk around for at least a day thinking, “So, this is how the skinny-half lives.”

But no. After all that, it’s not even flat.

There is some sort of major injustice going on here.

And probably a little bit of a body image problem.

“Do you think he’s in love with me?”

“Of course he is, I mean, how could he not be?”

“Right. But how can you tell?”

This is a tricky question seeing as she has never met him in her entire life.

“Because he hung out with you for so long. Dudes don’t do that unless they are in love with you.”

“Ok, but I acted retard* all night, so how could he be in love me?”

“What? You were so not retard, nothing you told me was retard.”

Yes, but I only gave her the highlights that made me look genius. I refrained from telling her how I chatted him up about my purse being too big. That, my friends, was retard.

“He said he had a good time with you at the end of the night,” she said. “You are the only person I know who can take that and turn it into ‘I was retard’.”

Not true. She could do it in a heartbeat.

“Ok, but what is our strategy, because I can never see him again,” I said.

“What? I thought you wanted to see him again, why can you never see him again?”

“Because I can’t. I have to hide behind a pillar and pretend I’m not there.”

“Ohhhhh, I see. You do that thing that I do where you can’t talk to boys you like.”

“Exactly.”

“We can overcome that. We can design a training program that will prepare you.”

“But who is going to be the technical expert? I feel like we’re not qualified.”

I feel like we’re not qualified, said the retired sex columnist. There’s one more sign that proves Armageddon is coming like a nightmare.

“I think we can do this. Between the two of us, I feel like we can design a quality program.”

“What if we do the Cyrano de Bergerac thing, and I wear an earpiece and November has the other end and he tells me what to say?”

“I don’t know, is November good at hitting on boys?”

“He probably knows what boys want to hear. Wait, scratch that, he’ll probably tell me to flash him my tits and say, ’something, something, do it in the butt.’ That’s not a good plan.”

“No, we’ll have to scratch that. When are you going to see him again?”

Silence.

“Wait, does he have your number?”

“No.”

“Right.”

Retard (pronouned ruh-TARD) is a special word to us, although we try to avoid using it in mixed company, as it is quite offensive. We use it in honor of one of our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, to commemorate the time she was trying very hard to yell at a man, in French, and tell him that he was late for their appointment, or “Vous etes en retard (ray-TAR).” Instead, she told him “Vous etes retard (ruh-TARD)”, which translates into absolutely nothing. God bless her. He probably thought she a little bit retard.

Do you want to know what I did yesterday?

Yesterday, at the end of the work day, while I was doing 65 down a five-lane freeway, I put on a full face of make-up, using the rear view mirror and my finely-tuned make-up application skills, which have taken 20 years to perfect, but required that I steer with my knee as my hands were occupied, so that I could go and pick up my cell phone from a boy, who is not my boyfriend, or a boyfriend-interest, in the parking lot of an old folks’ home, because that’s the only place that’s between his work and my work.

And then I came home and went, Shit. Now I have to wash off this goddamn mascara, which is something I hate more than anything in the universe. I will clean my apartment, pluck my eyebrows into oblivion and tweeze out every single leg hair individually just to procrastinate washing off my mascara.

But well worth the application.

I’m sure they loved me at the old folks’ home.