No Mistletoe For You

I still had some hope about finding love in 2016. Recently, I started talking to a guy who seemed fun and goofy. I mean, look at this profile picture: 

Adorable, right? He was from the area, had a so-so career (he was in real estate), but overall he seemed to have his life together. Now, you may be thinking, why are you dogging people who work in real estate? 

I'm sure that plenty of people who work in real estate are nice people. From my experience, men who work in this field tend to be douchebags. They are pretentious, haughty, and overall superficial. However, after some criticism from close friends that I should "ease up" on my list of excluding criteria, I decided to give this guy a shot. 

We decided to meet at a Starbucks that was midway between where each of us lived. It was a little bit of a hike, but I thought to myself, this could be worth it if the guy turns out to be nice. 

I got to the shop and peeked inside. There he was, sitting on the couch, with a creepy smile on his face. We greeted each other with a hug, and I felt myself shudder. I felt zero physical attraction. I kept telling myself to stop being so judgmental. So what if the guy felt like a wet noodle? What was on the inside is what matters, right? 

He asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner. 

"Dinner? I thought we were just having coffee, so I ate already, since we were meeting at Starbucks." 

Mind you, this "man" said nothing about meeting at Starbucks first and then going somewhere else for dinner. Everything said let's just meet for a coffee and see where things go. 

"Oh, well, I hadn't eaten, so I wanted to get something to eat." 

"Well, we can go to a restaurant, and I can get a drink if you want to get something." 

"No that's okay, I'll just eat something here." 

Strike 1 - you can't seem to make normal plans. Say what you mean. 

We made our way to the line. Like a gentleman, he allowed me to go first. I ordered a simple tea latte, since I would be sleeping in a few hours and I didn't want to get myself overly caffeinated. I noticed that he didn't stand next to me in line. He stayed behind me. The barista asked if that was all. He didn't order anything. I paid for my tea. 

Strike 2 - if you want to impress a woman, be a man and pay. It's a tea for heaven's sake! 

I was annoyed, but I thought, whatever. While I was waiting for my tea, I snapped a photo of him in line. As you can see, this guy screams wet noodle. 

He ordered a sandwich and a coffee. We sat down at a small table and he started eating. It was like watching a small child - cheese going everywhere. He would wipe his mouth, and he had the creepiest smile ever. It made me wildly uncomfortable.

We chatted and went through the usual "get to know you" topics about family, siblings, job, etc. He asked me about judges and lawyers in the area, and who I hated. When I told him that the attorney ethics code prohibits badmouthing, he scoffed to me, "You are probably the first lawyer I've met that doesn't badmouth!" He pressed me again to badmouth people. I was getting annoyed at him and it left a bad taste in my mouth. Dude, we're on a date. Why do you want to gossip about people you don't even know?

The topic then moved to politics. He told me how he admired that I was not a Trumpster. He revealed to me that he was a Gary Johnson supporter. I joked to him, "So, unlike your candidate, do you know what Aleppo is?" He defended Johnson, saying that he was caught off-guard. I responded that someone running for a position of world leadership should know up-to-the-minute information about world events. Then, this response really left me with a bad taste:
"Well, who really cares about Aleppo. I mean, we're here in a Starbucks. It doesn't affect us. The city sounds like a brand of dog food anyway."

I was disgusted. What I really wanted to do was tell him to have a nice night, get up, and walk out, but I have more class than that.

We talked about other topics, like favorite writers, books, and music. He mentioned a couple of American classics, like Emerson and Hemingway. You know, the stuff everyone reads in high school. When I threw out a few other names like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, he was clueless. It became painfully obvious that he was extremely uncultured, uneducated, and, frankly, he was nothing more than a bumpkin attempting to make himself up to be more than what he was - an insensitive, unrefined Wet Noodle.

Strike 3 - you have no decency or intelligence when it comes to topics concerning current events or culture. Being painfully insensitive to world tragedies is a huge turn-off.

He asked me what my dating life was like. He started to air his complaints about how women ghost him after dates. Gee, I wonder why. He admitted he was guilty of ghosting a few himself, but that usually, when he gets home and he wants to message the person he went out with, *poof!* she's gone.

I finished my tea, and I didn't want to spend another minute with the Wet Noodle with the creepy smile and lack of human decency. I announced that I finished my tea and had to get going to complete a few errands. I bid him goodbye.

Once I was in my car, the first thing I did was ghost him completely. It seemed like an appropriate remedy to a terrible date with the Wet Noodle. If he didn't have a shred of decency to pay for a lady's tea or have any sympathy for people getting executed in the streets, I certainly wasn't going to give him the benefit of any decency or sympathy in telling him that "things just aren't going to work out."

So much for the final hopes of love in 2016.

A Very Botox Christmas

I love this time of year. Holiday parties galore, where the foods are a'plenty, the wine is flowing, and music is going. I've been hitting party after party every weekend. Last Friday, my friend "Patty" invited me to a party at a home of a friend of hers. I gladly accepted the invitation, thinking that interacting with a whole new circle of people would enrich my own social circles.

Patty texted me the party information. I was intrigued by the address, as it was located in an older part of town. As I pulled up, I thought I was driving into a magazine photo shoot. What I thought were two houses was actually one house that connected two seemingly distinct buildings. The outside was immaculately decorated with a large horseshoe driveway. Large wreaths adorned the door. I double-checked the address. "Holy shit," I thought to myself. 

I rang the doorbell. I heard voices within, but nobody came to the door. I thought perhaps I was at the wrong address. I texted my friend and rang the doorbell again. 

Out popped my friend. "You're at the right house!" she chirped. I walked inside the magazine house. 

The beauty outside the home was no match for the beauty inside the home. The fireplace was roaring. The home was decorated with poinsettas, pine, candles, and other miscellaneous holiday adornments placed everywhere. It seemed that not even a speck of dust had dared settle anywhere. Holiday music was softly playing. I was amazed. 

"Make yourself comfortable!" my friend said. I set my purse down. I took a moment to walk around the living room which was larger than my one-bedroom apartment. I looked at the photos on one of the mantles. The couple who owned the home was picture-perfect. They were young. The woman was pretty, blonde, and had an excellent body, and the husband was very handsome with a body to match hers. Another photograph showed the couple with their two young daughters. The girls appeared to be in elementary school. "This is what everybody wants - wealth, a banging body after two kids, and a hot husband," I thought to myself. 

Moments later, the husband emerged. He appeared slightly older than the photograph. He was very tall, about three heads higher than me. Like any good host, he offered to get us some drinks. "We have a homemade pineapple vodka if you would like to try that!" I accepted. It tasted like the vodka went to the Caribbean and became a citizen. It was delicious. Recognizing the danger in such a delicious drink, I limited myself to one glass of it. 

More guests began streaming in, each one a character that was distinct from the next, but I noticed there was some commonalities among them all. The wife came down the stairs, breasts tastefully showing. She greeted us and began darting about the home, making sure that everything was perfect. If something was even a centimeter out of place, she adjusted it. She, too, was slightly older than the photograph. I noticed that her face appeared to have had some work done to it. I also noticed that her breasts were amazingly perky. Upon a closer look, I concluded that they, too, may have had some work done to them. 

Every woman at the party looked like she had botox injected in her face. I had never seen so much botox in one room, complete with a pair of operated breasts. It was amazing. I observed the guests and the hosts, laughing, joking, and reveling in the gossip of the day. The women, who all appeared to be in their 40s, were dressed sexy - some in short dresses, some in tight jeans with low-cut sweaters, and all with their men following after them. The men all had the same patterns - they looked like normal men who had spent a lot of time at the gym staying fit, probably to keep up with the botox. 

The only women who did not display such work were the younger couples who looked like they were in their 30s. I wondered to myself whether they would ever enter this metamorphosis of botox. I concluded that they likely would within the next 10-15 years, based on the patterns I observed among their older friends. 

I kept an eye out for any single men at the party, but there were none to be found. I noticed that a few of the men shot quick look-overs at me, but none dared speak to me. The women were obviously territorial, keeping their drinks close to them and their men even closer. I noticed that not many of the couples ever separated during the evening, each couple staying within a 4-foot radius of one another. 

The daughters of the house later paraded through with their friends. They were not the sweet, young girls that were in the photographs I saw. They were teenagers that looked like they were working their way up to the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Their faces were painted heavily with makeup. All of them had red lipstick that was so deep and so bright that I think a clown would have been jealous. Their skirts were skin-tight and short enough to be confused with shorts. One of the girls wore shorts that were so short her butt was exposed. I wondered to myself why she just didn't walk out in her underwear and call it a day. Their tops were low-cut, exposing their still-developing breasts as far down as probably what would have been the beginning of their tits. Their heels were high, fitting for adult hookers, but not quite for such young girls. I was appalled. I thought that maybe a parent or grandparent would reprimand them. Not at all. "Oh you look so beautiful!" commented the adults to the girls. My father would have had my head on a platter before I even attempted to walk out in public dressed like that, or even wear that much makeup at that age. These girls appeared to be fifteen and sixteen years old. I could only think two words about these girls, "Jail bait." 

It occurred to me that this house was just a sample of what was wrong with our society as a whole - it was focused on the artificial and keeping up appearances and had no problem with over-sexing the young. It was a house full of people who had a fear of aging and was doing everything medically possible to prevent the appearance of age. Nobody wanted to look their age. 

I heard a disturbance in another room. A few of the party-goers had gotten into an argument that turned physical. Some shoving was happening. The host husband whizzed by me with a smile saying, "Never a dull moment!" I felt like Alice in Wonderland. What is this place? The men who were fighting separated. I saw one of them storm out of the room. The party went on as if nothing occurred. The host walked past me again with the same, bright smile. 

Patty and I chatted throughout the night, with her telling me a few stories about some of the guests. One of the highlights was a woman who, upon first meeting Patty, recommended that she get botox on her eyes. Another story included a couple who was there with their young son. Patty was babysitting for them one day, and she found a small baggie of cocaine in the cupboard. She had never gone back.

After a few hours, Patty and I, along with a couple of Patty's other normal friends that I had spent the night socializing with, decided to leave. I had enough of the weird house. 

As I got in my car and took one last look at the house from the outside, I realized that the house wasn't perfect at all. The house itself looked physically perfect, but it was filled with people who couldn't handle reality, including the owners. It made me thankful that I didn't have these problems. To feel the need to keep up appearances that much meant that there was perpetual unhappiness or dissatisfaction with oneself. 

When I turned my car on, the engine started making some weird noises. I chuckled to myself. I can take the flaws in my life, only because I'm happy with it.