There has been a slew of gentlemen callers this past week. Correction: male suitors. And I use the latter half of that term loosely. In addition to a steady stream of texts from Dallas, I've had three other boys unexpectedly surface with the intent of dating or at least bedding me. One of them is actually a friend of Dallas. When he sent me a text message identifying himself, I asked Dallas if he had passed the LP baton to his boy. "No," he said, "you gave him your card, too. Apparently, you gave all of us your card." Classy. I told the friend that Dallas has beat him to the punch. He bowed out. Bachelor Number three is a lawyer I met online months ago who is now motivated to meet and soon but our schedules aren't aligning.
Next on deck was a real estate agent I dated last summer. But business travel had me crisscrossing the country at a frenetic and relentless pace so I let that fizzle out. When I gave him a referral recently, he thanked me and invited me out for a drink. But my shoot for CNN went pretty late last night and we ended up meeting at my place while I packed for my trip to Mexico. We ordered in, familiarity and other factors intervened, yada, yada, yada... But before things got out of hand, I stopped him. This guy hadn't earned that kind of lovin'. His response solidified the wisdom of my decision. "What do I do with THIS?" he asked referring to his package. I had to look away because I knew he would just get more agitated if I laughed in his face.
Today he sent me an email asking if we could just be friends and while I responded in the affirmative I was a bit irked that this hapless Romeo would have the nerve to put ME in the friend zone. In an effort to regain my perception of the upper hand, I relayed the story to two male coworkers/friends and barely glossed over the details including his last comment. They were horrified and amused to no end. "He said WHAT?" one of them asked. "I don't even say shit like that to my girlfriend," said the other. It got me thinking and, due to both a lack of discretion and anything better to do, talking about other equally offensive things crass Casanovas had said to me in the past.
Exhibit A: "Can I feel some fur?" No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to erase this crude comment from my memory. By the way, the answer was no.
Exhibit B: "Kiss it." A command from the man who had shown so much promise, whisking me away in a private plane he chartered and piloted for a romantic dinner in a nearby city. After our third date, I emerged from the bathroom to find him wearing nothing, armed with an erection and the two words every woman longs to hear: "kiss it."
Exhibit C: Once when I fell asleep while watching a movie, another misguided man whore woke me up to inquire, "Would you mind if I jacked off next to you?" Again, the answer was no.
These memories had my coworkers wiping away tears of unbridled joy at my sad love life and the dork magnet I so clearly am. And it got me ruminating about something I'm often accused of lacking: restraint. But what about these losers? Where was their dignity and restraint? Or is it OK to abdicate those qualities when the prospect of lifting cars seems imminent?
