How to Get a Boyfriend

This weekend, my sister and I watched Fake Fiance on Lifetime (mostly because neither of us could find the remote and... you know) - and like all Lifetime movies in which the title gives away the plot (I don't want to ruin it, but there's a fake fiance involved) here's a valuable lesson I learned about us single women in our 30s: if you're still looking for true love, first become a crazy bitchface (men love being treated badly! It reminds them of football!) until the wedding day, when your ex-teen 90s heartthrob/fake-boyfriend you hired from the internet will realize it's YOU he's been looking for this whole time. And then...true love abounds! Hurrah! Marriage! Babies! Golden Anniversary! This plan is flawless!

Okay. So in all seriousness guys, here's the really sad thing about this God-awful TV romp starring Middle Aged Version of Clarissa Explains It All and Distinguished Version of Blossom's Older Brother Joey (Remember how ripped his jeans were and how floppy his hair? Oh Joey Lawerence, you beautiful, aged, sitcom Adonis...) Anyway. The Bad Idea portion of my brain actually at one point said to itself, "Dude, why are you not all over this?? You should be taking out an ad on Craigslist! You should buy a husband! You can afford it - maybe not a good one, but at the very least a workable model that requires little maintenance."

(FYI: the bad idea portion of my brain is sort of like the 13 year old version of me -just with poor hand-eye coordination, no patience at all, and extreme ADHD, and also prone to things like driving her best friend's station wagon without a license into a neighbor's front yard, and/or stealing SHARP CURVE road signs from the embankment by the canal, all the while insisting, "nothing bad will come of this!")

(True stories, all.)

So what does this mean to me, given my long history of pulling batshit crazy ideas from the people inside my TV? Well, on the one hand, pop culture has taught me that there are many creative (i.e: unusually degrading and stupid) ways to ensure that men will rain over me, like the great Donna Summer once sang about.

For instance, I could become the accident prone but beautiful assistant to a wealthy, insufferable buisnessman, or maybe the accident prone but beautiful maid for a prestigious NY Hotel - but that's only if I'm looking for Hugh Grant. Or Jennifer Lopez. Or just a scathing review from Roger Ebert. But on the other hand, while I am naturally quite accident prone (a plus in the romantic comedy world!), I am not quite at the Danger Zone Level of Desperate Retard - yet. But on the third hand (some people have these) I'm also spending my Sunday nights couch-hugging with my sister, earnestly watching Lifetime. So who am I to say what strategies work or don't work? Maybe the fake fiance plan IS flawless. Maybe I'm the idiot for not having thought of it myself. (As otherwise I've become one of Marge Simpson's spinster older sisters.) But whatever the case, bottomline is most of the lessons I've learned about love I've learned from the fictional world of TV and movies - and all have been super helpful.

So. Here's a selection of those lessons about how to find True Love (or The One!), courtesy of Time Warner Cable, insomnia, a random selection of movies I feel compelled to watch every single time they're on - usually around 3 in the morning - and the advice lady in my brain, who I imagine looks like Lily Tomlin:

If you want to fall in love, first go to a Southern barbeque and wear a low-cut bodice and giant hoop-skirt and flirt like a whore with every man in sight. Sure, being an unfair cocktease is way hard- pun totally intended! - but it does serve a purpose in the end - especially with a war on and men dying before you can get your flirting on. But of course, the most important thing is to make sure the hottest, douchiest guy in the room (i.e: the one you really want) catches you doing something endearing but retarded - like wearing fancy, low-cut curtains to jail to extort money, for instance, or selling yourself in marriage to anyone for any reason, good or bad. (After all, a woman's greatest weapon is her heaving bosom.) So. After your many husbands eventually die tragically for reasons that will mostly be blamed on you, your one true love (not one of your husbands, but this douchebag dude) will be so desperate to catch you before you hooker yourself again, he'll ask for your hand in marriage. Score!

SCORECARD: Total Fail. War just changes people, yo. Also, Rhett leaves Scarlett on the stairs, and the last line of the movie is "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Which in my book really just tends to mean, "Chase after me because I know rejecting you in a douchy way only makes you want me more!" but again... my track record with men is like -5, not including the guys who were straight before they dated me.)


If you want to fall in love, first become a hooker. (This totally works! Ask anyone!) Flash your shit somewhat half-heartedly - or until a luxury car pulls up and a ruggedly handsome rich dude invites you to his hotel room for approximately 5-7 fully paid days - or until he catches you doing something endearing but retarded: singing Prince in a bathtub, telling old people at the Opera you peed your pants (adorable), doing the Arsenio whoop at a Polo match (adorable squared), or just having sex with a lot of men for money (adorable cubed). All of these (including the paid blow jobs) are acceptable methods of wooing. And besides, what rich handsome millionaire wouldn't want to 'save' his nerdy, doofy hooker? (Don't answer that, Tiger Woods.) BOOM! Happily ever after!


SCORECARD: FAIL - hooker is redeemed but man notices burning sensation when he pees. Herpes medication needed for sustainability.


If you want to fall in love, first find yourself a tiny farm where you can treat your dreamy British farm assistant like assface (remember: men love being treated badly!) until you're kidnapped by a prince and a six-fingered man. But more specifically - just imperil yourself on a daily basis until you manage something endearing but really retarded - like selling yourself in marriage to a REALLY rich dude, because again, a woman's only weapon is her body. What you'll eventually realize is that men like you best when you're just a pretty vessel for bejewled gowns. Also, that true love means coming back from the dead and jumping out of a window onto a horse. Seriously. Or else it's needing men to come to your rescue every fifteen seconds. Or something. (Men love rescuing damsels! It reminds them of their childhood obsession with Superman!)

SCORECARD: FAIL. Repetitive piracy and kidnapping needed for sustainability.


(Sidenote: The Princess Bride is otherwise awesome. Period and end of sentence. "Never mess with a Sicilian! Especially when death is on the line!" "ROUSes? Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist." "I have a kingdom to run, a wedding to plan, a wife to murder, and Gilder to frame for it. I'm swamped." Go watch it NOW, guys. And then learn from it and find a swarthy farmhand with a kick-ass British accent to treat badly and fuck your brains out.)


If you want to fall in love, first move into a high-rise posessed by a fifteenth century demon so you can mack on the first charming doofy idiot with a bulging proton pack who breezes through your front door. Play aggressive and hard to get with him. If that doesn't work, play the Posessed by a Fifteenth Century Doberman Pincher card. This will be your big chance to let him catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like having returned to the very same apartment where eggs fried themselves on the counter and sinister demons beckoned from the fridge (FYI: men love saving you from demons and your own stupidity! It makes them feel like they're in a video game!) This is how you'll get him to rescue you on the first date (women always need rescuing! We can't fall in love otherwise!) and carry you down 120 flights of stairs into a ticker-tape parade. And by the way - not at all lofty to expect a ticker tape parade. We women expect unwieldy pomp and circumstance. Also, shiny things and men who will save us from giant marshmallow men.

SCORECARD: FAIL. Demons and kidnapping needed on date night for sustainability. Case in point: are Dana and Peter together at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2? No? Exactly.

(Sidenote: Ghostbusters 1? And Ghostbusters 2? Awesome squared. "That's right, your honor. This man has no dick." "It's a river of slime!" "Being miserable and treating other people like shit is every New Yorker's God given right!" FYI: I refuse to believe it's so wrong to put myself out there and expect Peter Venkman to show up. As in, sometimes I sit in the NY Public Library and wait for him to come busting in. ONE DAY HE WILL, GUYS.)


If you want to fall in love, first lose the bra, super-glue Cinnabons to your head, and move to a galaxy far far away. This for sure always works, you guys. And while you're at it, you'll want to spend some time kidnapped - because while you are a badass space renegade, you are first and foremost a lovely damsel with interesting, dessert-shaped hair. So. Now all you have to do is insult the guy who comes to save you (Remember: men love girls who insult them and shoot at them! It reminds them of playing paintball!) until finally you've been rescued and imperiled so much you're exhausted, and you realize it's time to play the Super-Slutty Gold Bikini card, and.... so, okay, any time you whip out your tits, that'll do it. For men in space or anywhere else.

SCORECARD: FAIL - Intergallactic war, cinnabon stylists and the perpetual perky breasts of a twenty-five year old needed for sustainability.

(Sidenote: All implied misogyny aside, if any of you out there in cyberland have still not seen Star Wars, you are dead to me.)


If you want to fall in love, spend at least one summer frolicking on a California beach where all the gayishly handsome and vocally promising gang members like to hang. Work your wiles on just one of them and follow him everywhere - like from your home in Australia to a hip American high school where you can express your love in the style of 50s pop (or what the 70s is sure 50s pop sounds like.) Eventually you can go insane and your harmonious gang member will catch you doing something endearing but retarded - like changing every single thing about yourself to suit whatever you think he wants. In the end he'll be so enchanted by your crazy leather pants, the two of you will fly off into the sunset together.

SCORECARD: Total Fail. High school romances never work for various reasons - usually youthful stupidity. In this case, death by flying car. (Or a little from column A and a little from column B.) It's always something. Still. Go Grease Lightning!

If you want to fall in love, become a hooker and find yourself another mother-effing hooker. (Duh, mofos. DUH.) But seriously - go ahead and become a hooker. There's a reason this one's in here twice, ladies - IT WORKS. So go nuts! Throw crazy parties in your swank Upper East Side apartment, wear awesome clothes bought for you by skeevy pervs, and spend your days as a completely irresponsible, money-grubbing slutbag. Eventually a male hooker/writer will come along and hear you doing something endearing yet retarded - like playing an adorable banjo on a windowsill. Or, I don't know, lying about your past, ripping up your apartment in a blind psychotic break, or scheming to wed royalty from Mexico (Men love obvious mental instability! It reminds them of their moms!) In the end he'll be so taken with your slutty insanity he'll help you chase after your pussy (cat) in the rain. (And who doesn't love a wet pussy[cat])?

Scorecard: FAIL. Too many dueling STDs; non-hookerish behavior required on behalf of both hookers for sustainability.

(sidenote: if I looked like Audrey Hepburn and could pull off Givenchy, my career path would have taken a whole other turn. Or so says the Bad Idea portion of my brain. Who needs to contribute to society in any meaningful way when your legs are that long and you look that good in expensive hats?)

So in the end, all I'm saying is I'm romantically screwed, you guys. And not in a good way either. Romantically SCREWED.

(Upside: Hot Tub Time Machine is coming in the mail any day now. I.e: Time travel love! Hurrah!)

That's all.

Change is Good For Spring (Spare Change or Otherwise)

It's finally Spring, bitches!

This means it's time for new beginnings - also Cadbury Eggs, bunny-shaped Pez, chocolate baby chicks and delicious Marshmallow Peeps (and what is the word for those Kosher jelly rings? They're like tiny raspberry-candy donuts covered in chocolate? Just delightful. How is it I've been Jewish this long and don't know? That's like not knowing foil-covered chocolate coins are Gelt. Blasphemous.) Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. So Spring is the season of delicious change. And this year, in the spirit of really starting new, I've decided to change some long-held bad behaviors of mine.

But for the sake of thoroughly explaining all this, let's map out my bad behavior like an algebra equation. Which means if Highly Suggestible is "X" and Remarkably Low Impulse Control is "Y," then X+Y=Lifelong Social Retard.

To elaborate further: I am not exactly the queen of containing myself when an idea is put in my head. Like if you were to suggest to me how wonderful a donut might be, I would last maybe a minute before running out to buy half a dozen donuts (chocolate frosted with sprinkles, Bavarian-creme-kruller, devil's food, strawberry frosted, black-and-white marble and Boston Creme - shut your mouth blogland; my philosophy is always have a gameplan in a Dunkin Donuts - otherwise it's baked good anarchy.) Of course, fast-forward five hours and I'm lying on the couch in a state of either pre or post-vomitness - then fastforward nine more hours and I'm consuming donuts like nothing happened - or doodling on a steno pad what is essentially a giant donut with arms and legs exclaiming, "You know you wanna eat the crap out of me!" (Sometimes I pin these to the wall of my cubicle.)

Anyway.

The point is, I am constantly far too tempted by the donut. And by tempted I mean in a way that knocks out logic and will-power and normal reasoning skills - like when I run the air conditioner and vacuum at the same time and it knocks out the whole fucking apartment because god forbid the super should replace copper wiring laid out in the frakking 1970s. (Is it possible the Super in my brain is also a lazy son of a bitch? Now that I think about it, other things never seem to work right either. Damn you, Lazy Building Super In My Brain! Why must you be so inept and at the same time, so imaginary?)

Moving on.

It's probably no great shock that my Algebra Equation of Bad Behavior has long been a source of trouble for me. For instance, when I was a senior in college and my friend Laura, at a house party, suggested to me that our combined lack of idiotic college badassedness might be a thing to regret after graduation, I immediately tossed back about half a gallon of 151 (that's rum with a flame-retardant barrier over the lip - literally one step from sucking gasoline out of a hose) and then I selected from the crowd a drunk boy who I thought might be game to - shall we say - mack on my awesomeness.

"Hey you hey hey you yeah you hey no not you not you yes YOU wanna make out with me?" was what I slurred to pretty much the entire room before I finally grabbed my friend James, yanked him into a corner and climbed him like a spider-monkey; literally, I wrapped one leg around his legs, knocked both of us into a side table, and then, after a half-assed drunken display which involved my mouth and a stuck zipper (it's better I not describe that part in more detail), I excused myself to the porch to vomit into a houseplant.

From that point forward, many post-college-football parties seemed to end this way - with my drinking until wicked-retarded and then striking out (spectacularly) with some guy until I eventually excused myself to go vomit off, over, into, or at something. (Once, after six Goldshlaggers at Club Cairo and a boy-wistful conversation with my roommate Tiff, I drunkenly hit on my friend Brian - who immediately reminded me that he already had a girlfriend - and then I vomited over the railing of the roof deck. Another time, after a shot contest in which I downed more than 10 Red Eyed Sluts because it was suggested by my friend Renee that women should not be afraid to out-shoot [out-shot?] the men they want, I made a pass at Brian - who STILL had a girlfriend - and crawled into Tiff's bathroom, where for the next hour I pushed tissues into her sink, named all of them "Brian" and then vomited into the cat's litter box.)

So to build upon the original equation:

X+Y=Social Retard
WHEN
Social Retard= Substance + Want To Mack On Hot Guy
OR
Value of X is bad idea
Value of Y is well-meaning friend

Of course, now I'm older and wiser (whatever that means) and sure I've stopped going to college football parties, sure instead of complaining about my lack of badassedness I now complain about the pain in my legs and back and how that untalented fetus Miley Cyrus is ruining music for everyone (because she is), and sure I'm "so mature and so over it all," but really, 20 year old retard me has been floating around inside mature 30 year old adult me for awhile now.

So as much as I hate wake-up calls (emotional, metaphorical, iphone alarm, that guy who delivers packages to my desk at 9am and fails to grasp that it's 9am and nobody should be like a Skittles rainbow, dude!) I'm also of the mind that change is good. And eventually, change is absolutely necessary. Like when you reach that point in life where you realize you don't need to think or try so hard. Or when you realize that - hey - my own instincts are pretty good when I just trust myself - and not someone else. And so what if it took me 30 years and several hundred vomits into plants and litter boxes to realize this; the important thing is I can now be like Scrooge McDuck in Mickey's Christmas Carol: "There's still time! I haven't missed it! I can still change!" (Merry Easter and God bless us, everyone!)

Which means Spring is totally the season of my spiritual and emotional growth (as I say this, I'm bending paper-clips into animals and murdering them by hurling them over the wall of my cubicle - great start!!) But the truth is, I'm already learning. As in - from every experience and person and situation. (Craziness!) Also, I've learned that I don't need to eat every donut in front of me just because it is the donut in front of me. Furthermore, I deserve better than some thirty-five cent fast food desert. Like some Cadbury Egg with luscuious creme filling and rich milk chocolate- who needs that? I CAN and WILL wait for something better.

(Oh god but I love Cadbury eggs so much....)

Why must everything I want always have to be so crazy unhealthy despite its shiny deliciousness? That just feels like punishment from the Heavens, yo.

Ugh. Change is hard. Wish me luck, blogland.

Boys, Boys, Boys: The Things I Tell My Dog

Nothing like snowmageddon 2.0 locking me inside with my yappy dog for three straight days to encourage a bit of productive (painful?) introspection. And nothing like a bit of hot chocolate and some bad 80s pop (still synthesizer-filled but still oddly satisfying) to accompany the resultant brain-spill/writing exercise on the subject of boys - specifically, my very first boyfriend, Matt.* (Hold on to your hats- this one is filled with tales of epic high-school loserdom.)

Oh, the disasters of youth.

(Beware: re-creation of youth ahead.)

To begin with:

Having always been the smallest and goofiest, uprooted from Long Island to South Florida at the age of thirteen - probably the worst age ever for anyone, even without a transplant to the land where your grandparents literally go to die - I suffered through years of incessant bullying; everything from prank-calls to prank-dates to being chased into public restrooms while being barked at, literally, like a dog - my adolescence, no joke, was John Hughes epic; it was Oprah prime-time special epic.

So eventually, seeing no other way out, I clung to my best friend Jane*, who was adorable and blonde and had lots of admirers and pageant crowns and trophies and sequined dresses, like a Madame Alexander doll with a baton. Which meant that when she joined the marching band I eagerly joined with her - even though I lacked things like experience and musicality and talent... also I occasionally had problems, you know, not injuring myself when I walked. Still. I actually learned to play the clarinet and spin a six-foot flag (and even in my old age can still toss a mean quad - look out, boys!); I also developed a slightly mean-spirited wit and an oversized wardrobe that often made me look like an angry midget basketball player. I read a lot of Edith Wharton and Star Trek novels. I kept Mulder and Scully collector's barbies on a shelf next to Princess Leia from A New Hope. I was always prepared for any occasion with a Mel Brooks reference. (Actually, that's still true.) I was admittedly a little defensive and mean.

I was, in short, a nerd.

Thus it came as a huge shock, my senior year, when the captain of the drumline - that's the bandnerd equivalent of the captain of the football team, for you non bandnerd laymen - inexplicably began showing up wherever I was; before first period, after practice, in the bandroom, after school - there he was like some nerd groupie - this tall guy whom everyone liked, who was so talented and charming you couldn't help but crush on him, even if my go-to move was to ignore him and/or tease the shit out of him like some retarded asshole. Me in my baggy jeans and huge t-shirts and my thick wool socks from Target, my horribly awkward jokes, my obliviousness when it came to guys; I'd see him and immediately say something like, "Why the lopsided new haircut, LaSalle*? Did your blind grandmother shave your head?"

Yeah.

Nevertheless, he'd call and we'd talk about silly things - moving to Europe after high school, hopping on a jet plane and taking off to Amsterdam, where I would take a World War II tour around the city and Matt would smoke weed at bars and get "European drunk" with hot Dutch girls. That he even talked to me about such things, that as a result I knew which bra size he found most fascinating (34-C - oh god, I hope he's not reading this) was seriously the coolest thing ever.

Then one Saturday, at the Auxillary car wash, when the other twirlers and I were busy scrubbing down Ford Expeditions in our inappropriate bikinis, getting tipped by middle-aged rednecks who would watch us and dirtily ask us to please pay special attention to the mud flaps, Matt showed up out of the blue and brought me lunch - a Number Four Combo from Checkers - a "move" I of course missed, thanks to the double-cheeseburger.

After about ten minutes of me silently shoveling fries into my mouth like a fry dispenser, he finally made his big move:

"I like you," he said. "I think you should be my girlfriend."

Around a mouthful of cheeseburger: "I'm sorry, what?"

"Go out with me," said Matt. "You're weird, but it's cool. I like you."

Still waiting for the punch-line of this bizarre joke, I repeated, "I'm sorry, what?"

"Look, I don't think anyone else has asked you out. They haven't, have they?"

"Not really." I shrugged, trying to pretend it didn't matter that the furthest I had ever been with any boy was when I'd let the foreign exchange student see up my skirt in the teacher's lounge at the ninth grade dance (he'd told me I was pretty and then he let me eat his chocolate bar). "Well," I babbled, "There was this one guy in this AOL role-playing chat-room that Nik* and I like - The Pub in the Lake? His name's HanSolo25. Well, that's not his NAME name, but you get what I mean. I think he lives in Michigan. He typed a rose at me last time we talked - well, before I got kicked off. Dial-up ruins everything."

Sheepish, I shoveled a few more fries into my mouth.

Matt's left eyebrow shot up. "Whatever," he said. "Just go out with me, okay? Why not? We march together and we talk all the time anyway, and you're cool when you're not saying something completely retarded. Let's go out. Sound good? I'm stealing some of your fries."

And so it went - the first time I got asked out, for real, by a boy who wasn't gay.

I turned my head and mouthed "YES!" to myself. This was all going to be totally great, I thought. Totally, totally great.

I turned back around and nodded my head, yes.

Jubilant, Mike gave me a nuggie - it was a done deal. We were boyfriend/girlfriend! (In the gutter outside of a Checkers - right before he donated a whole $1.00 to our bucket for me to wash his dirty-ass car.)

It was a stunning romantic moment.

Later that week, after convincing myself that having a boyfriend would probably be just like working really hard on the Algebra II homework I never understood either, I got up each morning at 6am, tried on nine different unfortunate skirts from 5-7-9, and posed in front of the bathroom mirror, testing out equally unfortunate turns of phrase. Absurd things like, "Hi, can I reserve this seat next to the Snares? I'm Matt's girlfriend." Or, "Hi, can you scooch a bit? I'm dating the drum captain, thanks." Or, "What's up, single losers? See that hot guy over there? We totally make out. Totally share saliva. Bet you didn't see that one coming - BAM!"

(Oh, seventeen year old me - why can't I go back and slap you?)

Matt, meanwhile, was just confident enough to pass for slightly arrogant, also no less than eighteen feet tall, while I was shy and quiet and just tall enough to legally sit in the front seat without a booster (missing the limit in Florida by about two inches - holler!) Matt was known for being talented on Snare Drum and I was known for having thrown up on the bus on the way to Medieval Times - twice. The world I had come from was one in which I'd once waited by the fountain at the Wellington movie theater for hours, not realizing that I had been asked out as a joke. Matt, meanwhile, had already gone through plenty of girlfriends, and as a single guy, he constantly swam in a sea of stupid and flirt. My world was not Matt's world at all. Nevertheless, I liked him and it didn't matter - after all, Jack and Rose had made it work in Titanic, right? (until the Titanic sunk and Jack froze to death - why wouldn't you get on the damn lifeboat, Rose?? -and then Leonardo DiCaprio didn't even get nominated for a goddamn Oscar... oh shut up all of you, you know you saw this movie 17 times when you were in high school, too.)

Fast-forward a week.

After what ended up being our first real date - not actually a date at all per-say but a group of band dorks hanging out in front of the Winn Dixie on a Friday night - Matt pulled into my driveway, killed the engine and turned to me, his face expectant. For a second, I thought of my grandmother's matzoh ball soup and that moment right before digging in. Being both Jewish and a late bloomer, I'd only ever looked at food with that same expression of primal anticipation. If someone had told me that eventually I'd want to put anything other than food in my mouth, I'd have laughed in their face - unless they meant Leonardo DiCaprio (delicious) or David Duchovny (also delicious); at that point, I'd only ever seen kissing on TV or from a non-creepy distance; I'd only ever hung out with my gays and the other nerds and a few couples who'd once used my study group to make out - ultimately, I was the brainy, clueless Velma to Daphne and Fred's obvious fucking around in the back of the Mystery Machine.

"I wanna take you home and I wanna cook for you," was the first thing Matt said - in a slightly creepy voice. He still had that look in his eye - like he was thinking which condiment might make me taste better.

"What?" I said, hugely nervous. "Okay, yeah. Okay."

(Was he going to kiss me, I wondered? Is that how this worked?)

Matt took off his leather band-jacket - with a flourish that nearly resulted in injury - and added,"I'm Italian. We're very passionate about our food. We're just very passionate in general. About everything. You know?"

"What?" I repeated, and flattened myself against the car door.

(Now? Was it going to happen now??)

"I make some amazing ziti," Matt added, waggling his eyebrows.

"Huh?" I managed, growing increasingly frantic that I had somehow missed the euphemism and thus ran through my mental rolodex of well-known and lesser-known sex words - could a piece of ziti possibly resemble anything dirty? A penis, maybe? A very tiny penis?

No, that couldn't be right.

"You're gonna love real Italian cooking," Matt went on. "It's so good - so much better than Olive Garden. That's poser food. Real Italian makes your mouth water until you're hungry for more. And then I'll give you more. You know?"

Another eyebrow waggle.

And suddenly I absolutely couldn't wrap my brain around this weird version of Matt - with his spaghetti-talk in the creepy voice with the waggly eyebrows. Had I missed something? Had I missed my moment? Was this kiss supposed to happen before or after the Italian sex metaphors?

At this point my brain was working so hard I accidentally smacked the back of my head against the passenger-side window.

"Oh, shit. You okay, J?"

"Um," I said. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. No, I am. No worries. No worries!" Then, in a heart-pounding daze: "My mom makes pretty good meatballs - they're so awesome. Like just round and juicy and... with like, tomatoes. Uh. I should really try them sometime. I mean, no - you should try them sometime. I mean we like latkes and kosher things too. Because we're Jewish. Um. That's not what I meant."

Which of course garnered only one possible response: "You have a concussion, Morris?"

"No," I said, my eardrums ringing. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I don't have a concussion."

I shifted into what I thought was a sexier position - still smooshed against the window, but now with my palm upturned by my cheek.

(When was this going to happen? Now?)

(NOW?)

Matt shrugged and moved in ever closer.

(NOW???)

"You like meatballs?" he asked, his hands pressed to the window on either side of my head. "Because let me tell you, I could put them in your mouth..."

And finally, finally grateful to have latched onto one thing I DID understand - a bad dick joke - I managed, "Is that your big line, LaSalle? You're gonna put a meatball in my mouth?"

Which is when he FINALLY moved in to kiss me - my first kiss ever ever EVER- and being both petrified and excited and at the same time somehow picturing my mother's meatballs, I kissed him back with what I had convinced myself was the passion of Kate kissing Jack (shut up people, it was a cool movie back in 1997 and you know exactly how many times you replayed that stupid Celine Dion song.) In reality, so much effort went into this kiss that I accidentally leaned onto the horn - BEEEEEEEEEEEP - scaring the shit out of both of us, and then - in the midst of my panic - biting him in the tongue and throwing him forward into the dashboard, where he hit his head.

Commence nerd freakout:

"Oh, God," I managed. "I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry! I was thinking...I don't know what...meatballs?"

(Why I said that out loud I'll never know.)

Matt rubbed at the side of his face, now imprinted with radio buttons, and backed away.

"I'm so, so sorry," I repeated, my embarrassment now a live, nuclear thing. "I'm so sorry. I'm just, I'm so new at this, like I haven't kissed any, I mean at all, no - not at ALL, of course I've kissed guys, um, you don't know him, the guy I kissed I mean, you don't know him, and I...I mean we could still be, um..." I struggled for a word, and after a few blank, panic-filled seconds, I landed somehow on "Juicy?"

And buried my head in my hands.

Another stellar first.

"You are fucking weird," Matt finally declared. "Really weird. I just don't get it. Sometimes you're awesome and sometimes it's a shame. You'd be hot under other circumstances." And off my horrified expression: "Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. I bought your ticket tonight, didn't I? That shit cost me eight dollars."

BAM! ROMANCE!

Not long after this First Kiss Of Disaster, Matt and I decided to go back to being friends - ah, how short young love can be. On the one hand, I'd crushed on him for so long and he'd actually liked me back - the first boy to ever really like me or want to kiss me - and man I wanted to hang onto that. On the other hand, we were completely inept as a couple, he kept wanting me to be someone less weird and I kept wanting to be myself - also, could have lived without him demanding I pay for his prom ticket and tux. Oh, high school - you crazy bastard.

And thus, I let him go.

It was a bittersweet end to an awkward first experience.

As an adult, I'd like to believe that the awkwardness of my first experiences will be directly proportional to the greatness of what will happen when it all goes right. Or at least, that's what I tell the dog as I stare into the endless avalanche of snow blocking my front door.

And even if cute boys still, to this very day, make me so nervous I occasionally turn back into that overgrown SuperNerd who babbled about tomatoes in a parked car, I suppose I also have to remember that one of these days, I'll meet that guy who digs SuperNerds and is into all of me, and not just pieces.

(Which is gonna happen before I'm eighty, right?)

(Right?)

Sometimes, I wish my dog had a few answers.

(And not just because I want life's answers, but because a dog that could talk would make me so much money.)

* real names omitted to protect the old and not-so-innocent