Vagina Resolutions: What the Men Had to Say

In the last post, I laid out the five most immediately helpful New Year's resolutions anyone with a vagina (or immediately pre-op) could adopt to help make life, and specifically relationships, a little easier on everyone of any gender. I didn't just pull them out of thin air (or plagiarize them from a combination of Dr. Phil's column in O and back issues of The L magazine...that would be wrong). I actually talked to a total of 35 functional or near-functional adults, all of whom had strong opinions on the subject of what we need to do differently to make relationships more ecstasy and less agony in the future.


Before I launch into Resolutions Everyone With a Penis Should make (and that list is a-commin', don't you worry...), I wanted to share a few highlights from the men-folk themselves, as they almost all stem from the same issue: men and women still don't know how to talk to one another. While there's nothing groundbreaking about that news, the research is still fun to read when it's laid out in front of you.


The gentleman interview subjects, all hetero and between the ages of 22-49, were asked this question:  What is the ONE thing women, as a gender, should resolve to do to make us all, as a species, happier? Below are some verbatim highlights and insights from their occasionally impassioned responses (and my totally glib, entirely unserious first reaction to each while transcribing the interviews). All names have been changed:




Greg, 28: "Learn how to play video games. Trust me, that will help a lot."
Because all arguments should be settled via a winner-takes-all death-match down Mariokart's Rainbow Road.


David, 30: "No comment. I need some time alone in the shower to think about this. I'll call you back."
Odds he used shower time to masturbate: 3 to 1.  


Joe, 27: "It's shallow, I know, but keep dressing sexy? I love the woman I'm with no matter what she's in. But when the girl you love comes out in something sexy as Hell it's like Christmas. And when it's like Christmas, I'm like Santa."
Hoe, hoe...hoe?


Zack, 38: "Please remember men are from another planet and we really have no idea what language you're speaking. Like, we understand the words. They sound like words we know. Just not the way you say them. We don't know what you mean."
So dealing with women is essentially like dealing with a stroke patient? Interesting...


Philip, 23: "Stop lying. Little white lies especially. Like what? Like compliments you hear a woman give to the same woman she bashes 15 minutes later, or a lie about why she broke a date...picking and choosing what days she's into me, that's a lie too, either on the day she likes me or the day she doesn't. The point is lies are disingenuous and unpleasant and confuse the Hell out of us."
Omigod, I love your bracelet...no, no, no jokes, he's right. The sentiment is totally valid. So we'll stop lying...as soon as men do. Riiiiiight, that's what I thought. The Mexican standoff continues.


Jacob, 31: "Stop beating around the bush. If you're into me, grab an ass cheek or pull in for the kiss."
Kissing is for pussies. Next time, I'll grab the scrotum. 


James, 27: "Stop expecting us to know what you want. You can't spend 5 minutes telling us what you'd really like to do, but you can spend the next day AND night bitching about how we 'should have known' what you wanted--NO I SHOULDN'T BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T TELL ME. And lemme set this straight too: It's not that we're not capable of deciphering women's covert signals, it's just that we're not programmed to. That takes time."
You should come preprogrammed to know that The Olive Garden was a shit choice for our anniversary. 


Tim, 26: "Please don't date until you've completed rehab/therapy/work-release, etc. I'm begging you." 
Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of this bong rip.


Sam, 23: "Give all guys a chance. Yeah, there's a lot of dicks out there. But if you start ruling out everyone in one category entirely because of a couple of dicks, you might miss that one worth having."
I'm trying not to be cynical. But the urge to pinch his cheeks and go, "Oh, Jesus, you are just so young and SO pretty that that really does make sense to you still, doesn't it?" was overwhelming. Then I got all distracted and starting thinking about dick...


Paul, 25: "Honestly? Short of tying a red ribbon around the neck of every mixed-up, insane chick I've dated in Williamsburg, I'm at a total loss about how to stop the bullshit that gets tossed at me. The mixed signals are too much. I like you, I don't, I'm into this, I'm not, etc. I'm starting to think it boils down to chicks lying to themselves about what they want. The differences from one night to the next make it seem like you don't even know yourself, let alone what you want from me."
My first reaction was to get all pissy. My second was to remind him that's what he gets for dating in Williamsburg. My third was to check my neck for a red ribbon. My fourth was to deduce he's right. 


Chris, 49: "Stop leaving anything you should talk about face to face in a note."
*crumples up paper, furtively tosses behind back. backs away slowly*


Kevin, 23: "Start wearing signs with adjectives or phrases explaining you/your damage on them."
Okay, fine: jaded; suspicious; flakey crust conceals deceptively sweet, stubborn, smart-ass filling. 115 calories per serving. Helpful, Kevin? 


Shawn, 39: "Stop playing the game. It's making me tired."
You're just pissed I own Boardwalk and Park Place. Now pay up.. 


and my personal favorite:


Frank, 32: "Stop asking us to turn the lights off. We're too excited about getting laid to notice your 'fat day,' break-out, saggy boob, or whatever you think is wrong. We're really not that observant."
And thank God for that.


Much love and thanks to all the male participants, listed or unlisted. 


Please discuss or add to this list as needed.

New Year's Resolutions Everyone with a Vagina Should Make

Ah, the obligatory resolutions post. Generally, I don't do public declarations of behaviors I will abandon the third time the Devil tempts me. However, I DO support making New Year's resolutions as a practice--it's one of those rare annual traditions which seems logical to adopt, particularly as a unified society. (Also, it's seasonal and these blog posts are chronological, so the subject was an easy out. I've got writer's block. Sue me.)

But expanding in a blog post on my own New Year's need to eat more leafy greens and stop dropping the word "motherfucker" during business meetings seemed ridiculous. So instead I interviewed a group of 20 men and 15 women, gay and straight, single or dating, ranging in age from 22 to 56, about what resolutions would make 2010 a better year for all of us. While there were a lot of overlapping answers, as well as some additional highlights which I'll post in the future, five in particular stood out as changes which could immediately improve the daily functionings of my fellow womenfolk and the men we love (or used to love) if we all made them simultaneously. In no particular order:

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FOR EVERY VAGINA:

1. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. No, seriously: know what you want. Sit down and think about it. Grab a beverage, it might take a while.

Do you want to make babies? Climb the career ladder? Date by the book with intent to marry? Blow blindly like seeds until rooting wherever the soil looks nice? 


Do your fantasies include a stable partner with a square jaw, a brooding artist who'll keep you infuriatingly titillated or a German Shepherd trained to keep all humans 100 yards away from your bunker? Would you rather settle down or whore around Babylon? (NOTE: I'm not knocking whoring in Babylon. In fact, if you haven't already, might I recommend taking your next conquest to the hanging gardens? They're exquisite.) There is no wrong answer.

The reason I ask is because the most emotionally raw people I interviewed all mentioned they'd been hurt by A) pursuing lives which didn't make them happy, or B) being misled by someone who said they wanted one thing but really wanted the complete opposite. Take it away, Cool Hand Luke: "WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE."

No more fooling ourselves, and no more testing out lifestyles on other people. Harm is done to innocent bystanders as much as the person in the mirror when we're misrepresenting ourselves, and most of us aren't pathological liars--we're just self-ignorant. So it stands to reason even a single dose of KNOW THYSELF could make a difference in 2010.

Yes, desire is a fickle and many of us don't know what we want. But you can't revise a plan that hasn't been drafted.

2. GROW (A LIFE) ORGANICALLY. This could be read as a partial contradiction to #1, but it's meant more as an addendum.

Knowing what we want is a double-edged sword. "Knowing" can lead to desiring; desiring can lead to impatience; impatience can lead to going bat-shit-estrogen-insane and demanding a new lover immediately label the relationship at 3AM in the morning, post-coitus, because we really need to know "what this is" RIGHT NOW. See? Scary.


Point is, knowing what we want and cultivating what we want are two totally different things, and the latter frequently relies on a nightmare variable: patience. The number of relationships I've seen die early deaths because one of the parties involved was trying to hydroponically rapid-grow a union like Silver Haze buds before a Phish reunion concert (and not letting nature wisely run its course) is unsettling.  


Remember: Engaging in control freakiness doesn't mean you'll actually control freakiness (it just makes you a freak). Let's all take a deep breath and try, just this once, seeing what happens when we're not trying to drag a happy ending into the picture by its hair. And don't worry. If this tactic fails, we'll go back to clubbing potential mates and pulling them back to the lair, caveman-style, in 2011.

3. REJECT ANYONE WHO WILL NOT GIVE AS MUCH AS YOU DO. This applies to friends, roommates, colleagues, anyone...but particularly those welcomed into hearts and beds.

Chronic non-reciprocators are an epidemic. I know it's a cliche, but women are wired for nurturing and empathy (and justifying others' bad behavior so we can nurture and empathize with their poor, tortured souls), so we do end up sucking the fuzzy end of the non-reciprocating lollicock more (and for longer stretches) than, say, most men.

With that point made, I have to admit watching plenty of otherwise admirable femmes taking and taking and taking lately...girls, this is unacceptable. It doesn't matter how pretty (or witty) you are. "Gimme gimme" behavior is the sort of shit that propagates the myth of women as merciless succubi.  Please knock it the fuck off, you're screwing up all the good mates and making life difficult for the rest of us.

And for those of us giving 100% while the people in our lives give just enough to keep us from killing them in their sleep? Time to cut the deadweights loose.  


Yes, it's hard parting ways without winning the validation a non-reciprocator's disinterest makes us crave (and stick around trying to get), but having a circle filled entirely with people who match our enthusiasm is worth the awkward housecleaning.

4. DISCONTINUE "DEATH BY SILENCE." We've all been Death by Silenced at least once; if you haven't been, you're probably a Silencer. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about at all, please send me a postcard from Narnia, I've heard it's lovely there around Christmas.)

For those Narnians unfamiliar with the scenario: You've been dating, or psuedo-dating, or intimately trekking through relationship purgatory, or enthusiastically sending flirty text messages. Maybe you've even crossed over into love-making and discussing the familial benefits of birthing two children instead of three. Regardless of the exact situation, it's blush-inducing bliss. Then, momentously...nothing. Tumbleweeds on a deserted plain. The phone goes silent. The text messages and Facebook "like" thumbs disappear. Your shared late night conversations evaporate into awkward, anxiety-ridden monologues...delivered by you to your lover's voicemail.

The person you've been entwined with literally up and fades away, as if you've hallucinated the whole thing, and you're left with so little closure you can't help but wonder if you did hallucinate the whole thing.

In many ways, Death by Silence is the single most callous and disgusting thing one person can do to another because of how efficiently it invalidates anything you shared as a pair. I understand from both sides that this isn't always intentional. On paper, exiting without a word can seem less cruel than saying, "You lay there like a piece of raw veal cutlet during sex and I just can't take it anymore." But it's not.  It's heinous. It's cowardly. It puts the person you've been dallying with in a state of stress and worry and self-loathing and loss so awful that all other end-of-relationship alternatives seem like a vacation by comparison.

A favorite of the aforementioned Non-Reciprocators, Death by Silence is its own epidemic. It's gotten to the point where all of us, at one point or another, have been spiraled into a neurotic panic if one of our flirty texts to a new partner goes unanswered for more than 12 hours. "He/she always texts me back. Did I say something wrong? OH GOD, I'M NEVER GOING TO HEAR FROM THEM AGAIN!" This is hardly healthy behavior. So, for the sake of our idealism, sanity and the future of unjaded human interaction, I'm proposing we all remove this one from our list of behavioral options and STOP DOING IT.

I venture that the effort invested in ending a relationship should match--and, in some cases, exceed--the effort invested in starting it. Karmically, this is just good practice...and you'll likely agree with me if you're ever silenced against your will.


We'll all be (marginally) less neurotic if Death by Silence dies.

5. STOP READING WOMENS' MAGAZINES. Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. So ask yourself this: whatthefuck does reading a book with an airbrushed photo of Leighton Meester on the friggin' cover say about you??

Want to feel like you're too fat, too short, too blemished, inept with make-up, don't own enough stuff, are painfully unstylish, don't have enough hot shoes, live in an embarrassingly ugly home or need to max out your life savings for a beautiful but shallow wedding? Would you like to absorb dangerous blanket statements delivered by an "expert" who may have gotten their degree via the internet, or read incomplete summarizations of actual medical studies? Pick up a chick mag! They're glossy.

A wise man recently told me he dies inside when watching beautiful young women reading Cosmo or Elle, because he knows they're being fed plates of sterilized bullshit. I think he's right. Womens' mags are the Soilent Green of the publishing industry, processed from the grey, decaying bodies of other insecure women. Want to learn about real women? Talk to them. Want dress better? Talk to a gay. Want to learn about yourself? See #1...or hire a shrink. You'll also save a ton of money.

Thus ends the vagina-oriented installment of this seasonally appropriate blog post.

And don't think the men-folk got off easy. They're next.

[** NOTE: Before closing, let me squeak out a "thanks" to the witty, compassionate people who showed support following my sulking Sartre-dry-hump post. Your words were downright comforting, like a sweet, vanilla-scented grandmother smearing Vick's Vapor Rub under my clogged nose.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, but after those  heartfelt emails and encouraging messages (cue saccharine Capra-esque music swell), I've resolved to keep writing here. I'm still finding my footing (and figuring how much real life can currently be documented on this newfangled interweb without people getting hurt), so cut me a hot slice of slack if the next few posts, uh, blow. But I am soldiering on, and thank you]

Happy New Year.

Confession: Hiding in Plain Sight

One of my best friends and most objective critics--Ariel, clearly--looked at me last night and asked where my blog was.


I told her I've been busy. With, you know, like, work, which slowly drains my words away over the course of a 10-hour stretch in a fluorescent-lit cube. And those oh-so-busy bustling holidays. And, um, my pro-antidisestablishmentarianism activism work in that commune in Johannesburg. Or somesuch. Ahem.


She called shenanigans on all excuses. (For the record, the draining death-cube part is true, but it's never stopped me from writing before, so...yeah. Erroneous.)


"You're afraid to tell the truth." Bitch. Acting like she knows me... 


...she does know me. I can't not write the truth. But I don't want to write it, because then it's documented, so it's real. So it must be dealt with. Dammit.


The partial truth is I get home at night, at whatever time, drained or undrained, and lift the screen. I put my spritely little hands on the keys, stare at an empty page--and immediately begin to panic.


Not because I've got nothing to write. I've go so much to write my life is bingeing and purging Post-It notes. I could sleep under them, like a bag lady under newspaper. I found one stuck to the back of my cell phone the other day. All it said was: "awkward hyena laugh." There could have been an interesting post in that phrase, but I've forgotten what I meant when I wrote it. There's also the two different totable notebooks filled with scrawl, handwriting spilling into the margins, frantic little arrows pointing to connecting thoughts disjointed by separate pages. "LOOK! More! There's more!" Plus two new moleskines received as gifts recently, already front-heavy with notes and dog-eared pages and----I know, I'm sorry----poetry. Lots of it. Point is, I've got stuff to write.


The partial truth is I've morphed into an anxiety-ridden, talentless bullshit artist being dry-humped to death by her own pathetic existential funk. Excuse me, Mr. Sartre? Could you get off please, I'm starting to chaff...


...and it's all rooted right back where this blog started.


The whole truth is that around the time of The 2nd First Date, Alex and I not-so-secretly went on a 2nd Second Date. And then a 2nd Third Date. And then a fourth, and so on, until we were not-so-secretly seconding right back into an intimate, albeit unlabeled, something that was obvious to everyone but us. And it was wonderful. I slept in his nook again. He looked at me with eyes that know every single thing about me. We walked our dog, together. We even not-so-secretly celebrated our six-year anniversary, as if we'd never split in the first place (even though the term "boyfriend/girlfriend" was blacked out of the syllabus entirely), and dropped the "m" word (m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e) again.


And then, lightning-fast, the brakes. Me, slamming on them. Again. Alex getting whiplash. Again. Me resting my head on the dashboard in shame and frustration. All the people who'd been predicting our inevitable marriage since we were 20 and wringing their hands gleefully over our romantic re-coupling watching the hubcaps rolls down the street.


The prediction most people made when I posted on this blog about he and I testing a reunion was that we'd get back together and the same problems  would still be there. What actually happened was that the old problems were essentially gone, but an entirely new garden of ragweed was springing up in its place, with one gigantic, choking vine in the middle, namely that--through listing, through life, through god-knows-what--I've become someone very different than the girl who grew up with her hand in his. He is still very much the same wonderful man. I do not know if he and this foreigner fit together.


It's been a revelation shocking to no one but me.


I'm trying to think of something to liken it to. This is one of the only things in my limited range of experience that fits:


When I was 17, the punk band I'd been playing in for two years blew up. A meandering impersonation of something we all aspired to be hit a streak of luck and local acclaim, climbed to modest (pre-iTunes/pre-MySpace) and centralized esteem, and set out on a half-cocked tour of the East Coast. Five guys, one girl, a U-Haul of equipment and a van. Eight exhilarating, sweaty, wild, debauched days in, we were cruising down the interstate at the Florida border at about 90 miles-per-hour, all six of us stomping out our own (assuredly heinous) double-bass beat to a Poison the Well cassette jammed in the tapedeck. It was glorious. And at THAT exact, blind, blissful moment, the hood of the van popped up, caught in the wind and slammed against the windshield, starring out the glass in a spiderweb of cracks and blocking the road entirely from view, causing the entire band to let out a sustained unison scream than would have shamed Macaulay Culkin. We swerved off the road and into a small ditch.


Sitting in the side of a drainage shoulder in Florida, broken down and broke and drenched in sweat, our bass player calling his mom for help on a brick-sized cell-phone, reality burned itself into our skin: we were not rock stars. We were kids. And we had no idea what we were doing.


That's what this is like--the sort of utterly unexpected, blink of an eye disaster that stops everything in its tracks...and was, in many ways, totally foreseeable to any of the more mature people around you.


Until very recently I felt like there was a direction. Forward. To Alex? To something. If not to the happy ending, then to a major footnote with illustrations and a bookmark. Now, no direction. I'm an awkward, domesticated house-cat, released back into the wild...again...and confused as fuck about where the Fancy Feast is.


The first time I left, and Hitch Listed, and settled all smug down in Brooklyn to write my gimmicky blog about rediscovering independence, I did it with one hand still holding on to some piece of my old life across the Hudson River. It was being held back in return. I checked items off the list and started to mutate into whatever I am now with the confidence that comes from knowing that, even if you fail miserably, someone loves you and will take you back if you show up on their doorstep and say, "I'm a mess. Please love me anyway." I confess the one hand is still partially there---however, the fingers are being severed. Have been? Are being. There's still an index finger and a thumb wrapped around the doorknob.


Now, I'm settled, not-at-all smug, in Brooklyn, wondering if my gimmicky blog is even read and what the point of it is if I can't write it with some modicum of knowing authority, some end-point in sight. I know the blogs I like best are honest, well-written and exciting because there is no end-point...everyone's along for the ride. But I always need to like the narrator.  And I know that I, personally, don't really like the floundering, confused, frightened me---or at least not her rambling monologue relentlessly being broadcast inside my skull.


So I've been hiding.


There's one question I keep getting from friends and family about slamming on the brakes again. "Why?" Okay, fine:


I want too much. He doesn't seem to want enough. And there we both somehow went.


That's the whole truth.

The Wingman Chronicles, Part V: Messy Midnight Oysters

Okay, I'm sorry. I know. I went MIA. But, wait baby, don't go--I'm back. And, even after that inexcusable absence, The Wingman Chronicles is back with me, returning for its final installment (for now). Reliable future posting, and an explanation of my disappearance, to follow.


Thus far The Wingman Chronicles have delivered us blues-singer sex, Ivy Leaguers on balconies, a free strip club romp and a shameful home invasion perpetrated against an award-winning actor. There's only one way to trump all that for this, the final part of the chronicles: 

Bivalve Mollusks.  

The Night of the Midnight Oysters crossed over into new territory, requiring one maneuver I'd never tried in flight school. I'd heard legend of the controversial move, a socially dangerous combination of laziness and perfectly calibrated match-making, but never dared try it: A Double Wingmanning? Mythic, beyond me, like the Five-Point Exploding Heart Technique or a public health care option. 


Ariel was, of course, the ideal partner for the last piece of my official reintroduction to the wild, a "low key" night she declared would be run, casually, on her terms.  (RED FLAG: Ariel metabolizes gin the way normal people do Vitamin C. So unless you're Keith Richards or Liza Minnelli, "low key" may be misleading...)


Due to a random work commitment, Ariel, two gay pals and myself were forced to begin our evening in what is the New York social equivalent of Dante's hell: an 80s prom re-creation/dance party set in the upper level of a bridge-and-tunnel cesspool on the LES. Bitter but motivated, we (the only attendees not dressed in stretch fabrics) did what any dedicated band of Saturday night revelers (who make under $40K annually) can do in such situations--roll in with flasks and an hour's tolerance for drunk bachelorettes dueting Bon Jovi covers with actors crammed in a fake varsity jackets. 


The night thankfully took a turn for the better at midnight (after we escaped the club, stealing a bounty of Ring Pops in the process), when Ariel decided New York City had but one jewel worth seeking, one orgasmic drug to be ingested: raw seafood.


"Oysters?" I half-protested as she grabbed my wrist, leading us down a side street. Her chin was tilted slightly upwards, a gesture midway between militant defiance and a hungry pit bull sniffing the air. This was followed by an even more skeptical "the Meatpacking District??" when she Pied Pipered me (the gays dropped out at the first suggestion of oysters, heading off in search of a very different kind of briny valve...) onto Gansevoort Street. "We're going to spend our night in the fucking Meatpacking District?"


"No," Ariel called calmly, ignoring my distain as I stumbled (literally...WHY are the streets cobblestone in a stretch of city that heavily trafficked by stilettos??) behind her. "We are going to spend our 'fucking' night with really good oysters."


Just then, my phone rang. James was on the line.


James is a blue-eyed, dark-haired professional modern dancer who happens to be my sister's ex-boyfriend. Having amicably parted from sis several years ago (actually she broke up with him in a not so savvy way--I told her she was crazy, then made it clear I was still hanging out with him whether she liked it or not), and having carefully sculpted himself a body ready for the pages of Why Wear Clothes At All? magazine, this laid-back Adonis was recently snatched up by a high-profile celebrity trainer. He now travels the globe shaping the bodies of blockbuster action heroes and willowy indie-ingenues, occasionally landing in NYC (though not nearly enough).


[Fun Fact: James drinks a gallon of whole milk every 1-3 days. He needs an extra-large refridgerator to support his crippling dairy addiction, which I find hilarious since his clients usually end up on strict "no sugar, no dairy" diets. Meanwhile, their Personal Jane Fonda's secretly got a cow's udder running teat-juice intravenously into his heart-stoppingly chiseled biceps. I digress...]


James got into NYC that night just in time to inform me that A) he was looking for a good time, B) it was his BIRTHDAY and C) he was hoping I was free, because his birthdays "always suck" and he needed a wingman. After emphasizing to Ariel his epic existential sulk about a shit string of birthdays, she agreed to make our duo a trio. 


"He's pretty," she also commented, off-handedly, when he met us shortly thereafter.
"And a giver, according to my sister."
"I didn't mean it like that," Ariel, ever-stoic and emotionless, said. "Too young. Too pretty." A pregnant pause. "Oysters."


Not to get all Proustian and shit...but Proust wrote, upon tasting his first madeline: ..."a shudder rain through me, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that had happened to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my sense, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin."

That's what that first oyster was like.

Before Ariel paraded us into that French brasserie, I'd never had an oyster. Despite growing up on the shore, and maybe because of the year I once spent shucking be-shelled tongue-surfers for a clientele of frat boys and local businessmen at a local Hooters, I'd managed to go 26 years without tasting one. I know...not a big deal.

But for some reason--be it the company, the three carafes of red wine consumed, the gentle reminder I've seen and experienced so little that even nights begun at a faux-80s prom can be righted--when that first salty, squirming nubbin of satin protein swam down my throat in a flourish of brine and lemon, an unjaded piece of me stirred. It was like The Awakening (only instead of walking into the ocean like a suicidal bitch at the end I sucked down bougie shellfish...but you get the point).

The combination of oysters and wine slammed into my brain like a bag of Columbian narcotics.


"Dancing!" I declared. "We must dance! We must drink! We must drink from the cup of life!"


"You must stop talking like that," Ariel said, wearily, from across a mound of empty shells. 


"No, she's right. We should dance," James chimed in, eyeing Ariel. "It's my birthday." 


Having blown a week's worth of responsibly budgeted cash on bivalves and wine, we had to do continue the night on the cheap...which meant hiking across the city to the one bar where we could dance, and drink, for free because Ariel knows the bartender. A schizophrenic half lounge/half sports bar boozehole in Murray Hill isn't really our scene, but if you want to shake your hips with a strong drink in hand for free at 2:30am, anyplace will do.


Especially if you roll in with a gorgeous professional dancer on your arm, one who commandingly twirled, spun, lifted, arched and salsa-ed (alternately and, more impressively, simultaneously) with Ariel and I while pounding back birthday beverages. 


Until three large, bejeweled, slightly terrifying hoodrats interrupted us. 


"Hey, yo, my man," the leader, a 6' thug with a flat-brimmed BROOKLYN cap and a Puerto Rican flag jersey on, said to James. He was rubbing one hand suggestively around his chest, that creepy motion which signals heartburn more than sexual prowess if you're anyone but LL Cool J circa "Doin' It." "You bein' greedy, my man. You can't keep both these beautiful girls to yourself. Bro's gotta share."  His wingmen nodded in agreement.


"Well, bro, it actually looks like I can?" James answered without hesitation, drawing both Ariel and myself into his hips. "Because you're the guys with no one to dance with."


I fell mildly in love with him at that moment.  


But I also saw the exit strategy, the move that left me capably in my element--manipulating social retards--while Wingman One and Wingman Two, intoxicated and by now flirting shamelessly despite Ariel's "too young, too pretty" mantra, were left as a pair. You're takin' one for the team, so your friend can live the dre-ee-eam....


"Papi," I said to Alpha Male Interloper, extending my elbow and leading him away from the pack. "I like your hat. See, I need a little Brooklyn help? I just moved into the 'hood and am pretty sure my white ass is going to get shot..."


Half an hour later, my new friend "JoJo" had called his dogs off James and Ariel, bought me a drink, taught me how to properly haggle with empanada vendors in Bushwick (3 for $5 is standard) and given me the number of his weed dealer. (Uh, thanks Jojo.) More importantly, my wingmen had been dancing.  With their hips very close. Without Ariel coming over once to tap out. I eventually thanked Jojo, gave him a kiss on the cheek, took his number (deleted it the next day) and headed to the dance floor to approach my duo.


"Guys, I'm sooooooo drunk," I (half) lied. "We have to get out of here."


"'kay, you'll shtay with me, right?" Ariel slurred, subtly, to me.


"Only if you help me convince Birthday Boy to come back with us."

Her eyes narrowed.


"I know what yerrr doing," Ariel hissed in my ear as we started staggering out of the bar, James a few steps behind.


"Doing? What do you mean?"


"He's too young. And pretty. I don't do young and pretty," she protested. 

Right. Cuz chiseled virile reciprocating oral-sexers are such a bad idea. 


"I know." I hailed a cab.


"No, but for really. Heeees sleeping on the futon with you," Ariel declared.


"Sure. Hey, Birthday Boy! Get your ass in this cab..."


It took precisely seven minutes for both of them to disappear into her bedroom when we arrived in Queens. It doesn't matter who shut the door.


I myself pulled out the futon, my Queensian home away from home, poured myself a trough of water and turned on the television, peeling off my tights and dress while Planet Earth annointed the Midngith Oysters with a vibrant array of sea creatures (including an octopus that could run on two of its eight legs, which is fucking awesome). All the while I was smugly thinking: I wingmanned my wingman my wingman. Mission, even if done so lazily, accomplished.


The next day, back in Brooklyn, vowing to lay off the expensive socializing until I jump into the next tax bracket, I mused on The Chronicles. What, exactly, had been the point? Originally it had been to re-socialize myself after five years of sequestered nesting in suburbia, but...honestly, on some level I knew it was all shallow, booze-soaked behavior that meant nothing in the scope of the universe. 


Then, later that day, two texts came in: 

JAMES: Best. Birthday. Ever. Missed you. Miss you.

ARIEL: Well played, Wingman. Welcome back.

Ah, there it was.

The point.

Good to be back. 

EPIC FAIL: The Wingman Chronicles Part IIII, or, EMMY AWARD Winning Loss of Dignity

Occasionally, even the best wingman missions go awry. Generally, this leads to public embarrassment and, sometimes, blue balls.


Or, it you're wingmanning with Ariel and I, it can turn into a belligerent shit show that ends with a slightly immature scavenger hunt through an Emmy Award winning actor's apartment.

A few Mondays ago, Ariel and I hit wingman turbulence. Short version: Ariel got blacked-out drunk in a midtown bar, told me she was going to the bathroom and disappeared. For an hour. Midway through her evaporation, I abandoned my drink and went tearing through the craphole, three-level bar we'd landed in to find her, accidentally stumbling upon an authentic freak show (no, seriously...bearded lady, burlesque dancers, the works) getting ready for their 1am performance in the process. Taking the bearded lady as a bad omen, I called Ariel's roommate--who calmly informed me that Ariel was already HOME, slurring drunk, and wearing MY coat. In QUEENS. Ariel did not find anything odd about this.


Soon I was standing on the streets of Times Square, around 1:30am, drunk and without outerwear. Naturally, because life is a sitcom, it began to rain. I did not have enough money for a cab to Brooklyn, and my Metrocard was in the pocket of the jacket Ariel was curled fetally upon, like a tiny, drunk, Irish puppy in a whelping box. A whelping box in Queens. Then, my phone hummed a text:

Mr. EMMY: Up to anything this rainy night?

Mr. EMMY is an older, unreasonably friendly, single and exceptionally talented actor we've affectionately nicknamed for the honor bestowed up him during one of those televised awards shows. We all met through mutual friends, resulting in his randomly joining Ariel and I for a platonic concert and meal one night. Whenever we catch him on TV, or whenever he's not off being successful and is bored, we occasionally like to verbally spar via text-message, because I am a smart-ass and he went to Harvard and bizarrely finds gauche smart-assedness amusing.

POLLY: I am wet, cold, stranded. May whore myself for cab money to the Lil' Wayne wanna-be giving me the eye.

Mr. EMMY: Only worth it if he's ACTUALLY Lil' Wayne. Do you need to crash here?

Which is how I woke up in Mr. EMMY's freaking beautiful apartment because Ariel went all fucking kamikaze on me. NO, there was no illicit behavior between Mr. EMMY and I. (This isn't US Magazine.) We kept conversation to the basics (Him: "I just finished shooting with Salma Hayek." Me: "I farted next to Howard Stern once. Everyone thought it was him.") until I eventually sobered up enough to sprawl on his couch. (It's a really nice couch.)


The following is a true-life transcript of the string of texts that were exchanged between Ariel and I after I woke up, alone, in said apartment. Mr. EMMY had left at some earlier time to do whatever it is successful actors do after 9AM, leaving me his spare keys to let myself out whenever I was not quite so pathetic again:


**ARIEL'S PRELUDE: "I think this text log is funnier when you include YOUR belligerent texting of me before you made it to Mr. EMMY's, you Hot Mess." 


She's right, so I'm including it.

Also, on THE VERY OFF CHANCE "Mr. Emmy" ever read this himself, I hope he'd understand we love and adore his hospitality, and him, and hold his privacy in high regard (and have hence changed many details in this post to protect his identity)--but when broke and 26 just don't have the maturity NOT to be fascinated by things like Emmy Awards and really nice apartments in mainland Manhattan**

POLLY (12:45am): Where are you??? We are looking.
POLLY(1:30am): I blame you.
POLLY(4:55am): Goddamn you Ariel. Let's play Polly Ended Up ___________________.
POLLY(4:57am): And do you really have my jacket, or is that lost forever in some scum hole in Midtown? 

DAY BREAKS.
(Polly wakes, hungover. Polly DID NOT have sex with the owner of said apartment, but is in his pajamas anyway. Her phone lights up.)

ARIEL: Based on these drunken musings......Shit! You're at MR. EMMY's, aren't you?
ARIEL: And I really do have your jacket.
ARIEL: You're totally spooning next to THE EMMY right now....... Amaaaaaahhhhhhzing. 


(Polly finally acknowledges phone. Is thrown into blind, stubborn, but bemused rage by Ariel's texts, which are coming from Ariel's desk in corporate America.)

POLLY: Oh, fuck you. You don't know me! 
ARIEL: He took you in his big drama major arms........Bwahahahahahahahahaha.
POLLY: I. Hate.You. I do. I. Hate. you.
ARIEL: Sooooooooo not true.
ARIEL: But points for punctuation on what must be a rough-like-mcduff morning.
POLLY: Also, big, beautiful picture of Mr. EMMY and [show he's famed for] in the foyer....

ARIEL: He has a foyer..... I hate him. 
POLLY: You were sooooooo not supposed to take my jacket, withOUT me in it, back to Astoria. Wtf am I doing in Flatiron??
ARIEL: Making out with an EMMY.... duh.


POLLY: WEDIDNOTSHUTUP. 

(Polly sees she's alone in the apt. Begins exploring apartment while holding phone.)

POLLY: Oh my God. He left me a towel, a wash cloth, and a spare set of keys stacked in the bathroom.

 

ARIEL: KEYS! Danger Will Robinson. Tread lightly. But make a latte first. He so has an espresso machine.
 
POLLY: OMG, HE DOES HAVE AN ESPRESSO MACHINE.  
 
ARIEL: He has amazing skin products too, doesn't he? FML. 

(Polly looks in bathroom.)
 
POLLY: Holy shit. Full Origin's men's care line. Like, every product. Are you hiding in this apartment with me?? 


(Polly pauses, peeks back at the pile of towells and the keys. She begins to text her hungover idiot wingman again.) 


POLLY: Keys? Fuck. Keys.............................................Fuck. [Note: Keys are scary, because they must be returned. Which means you'll have to face the person you drunkenly appeared on the doorstep of. And admit to being a Hot Mess. In their home. And then apologize. Fun, right?] 
 
ARIEL: It's going to be okay......
 
POLLY: I brought this tragicness upon myself.
 
ARIEL: Oh, it's so hard being 26 and pretty with a brain and sharp wit. 


(Ariel gauges exactly how fucking hungover she is in the middle of corporate America and remembers she and Polly have to see a violent indie-film starring Willem Dafoe and Willem Dafoe's penis later that very same night.) 


ARIEL: Also? Tell me we are rescheduling Willem Dafoe's screening? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease??
 
POLLY: Oh we are so not even a little bit going to that fucking film.
 

ARIEL: Holla......... 

(Polly passes by the bedroom. Looks around, then flops onto empty bed.)


POLLY: Oh, these pillows of his though. Thread count is HIGH. So wonderful...so...*buries face in pillow*
 
ARIEL: **slams head on desk** 


(Peels herself out of bed. Continues exploration.)


POLLY: Hmm. Dipolma from HARVARD, huh?
 
ARIEL: Oh cool. He's crazy smart too...I feel smaller and more unimportant by the second.
 
POLLY: Floor to ceiling vinyl. Complete Bob Dylan next to Gorillaz Demon Days next to Fleet Foxes. ALL VINYL.
 
ARIEL: Omg. I want to make out with him...
 
POLLY: Do...do I...do I look for The EMMY?
 
ARIEL: FIND IT AND TAKE A PICTURE! Then text it to me immediately. 

(Looks around at walls, shelves and desks. No luck.)
 
POLLY: WHERE IS THE EMMY?!?!? 


(After a few more moments of wandering, amazed, through eclectic, Not-A-Rich-Douche apartment, Polly notices framed item on the wall. It's a picture, with a note hand written on it. She takes picture, sends it to Ariel.)


POLLY: No EMMY. But this. The signature: "With awe, love always, STEVE." As in SPIELBERG.
 
ARIEL: "With Awe"....Right, me too. 

POLLY: DELETE THAT NOW.

ARIEL: Already done. Duh. 
POLLY: So many humidifiers here. And dehumidifiers. And other nifty---oh, look, a Fender guitar.
 
ARIEL: I love that people let us stay alone in their homes...Fools.
 
POLLY: Fuck. What am I going to wear to work?
 
ARIEL: Right......no ideas. Buy something?
ARIEL: Cool shirt of his? 

 
POLLY: Dammit. All he has is man hats. I cannot make yesterday's outfit, sans coat, sans make-up, work with an Indiana Jones hat...
 
ARIEL: Own it.
 
POLLY: I'm stealing his Harvard hoodie...............I mean borrowing.........

POLLY: What? I need a coat.
 
ARIEL: Sorry about your coat. I have no idea what the thought process was on that. But there was one...somewhere.
 
POLLY: Ur cute.
 
(Hot Mess Walk of Shame Polly leaves note for Mr. Emmy apologizing, explaining about the hoodie and confessing she went through his record collection. She begs forgiveness. She then emerges from apartment wearing last night's heels, jeans, a Harvard hoodie and smeared, black eye liner.)
 
POLLY (texting Bromeo, she and Ariel's gay, male wingman): Just stumbled into midtown morning in last night's clothes and MR. EMMY's Harvard hoodie. Um......right.
 
BROMEO: Bwhahahahaahahhaahahahahha.
 
POLLY: I blame Ariel.