TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

As much as I’d like to think that I can walk into a bar and leave twirling pinkies with the hottest babe in the room, I’m actually about as good at talking to girls as I am at chess, a game I would lose to a diapered chimpanzee. The few times I’ve gotten a girl’s number, it’s only after taking 500 milligrams of beta blockers and breathing into a paper bag with my head between my knees. The little attention I do get from pretty young things has less to do with an open mouth than with dexterous fingers. Meaning, even though I’m as likely to call a girl as I am to snort coke off a South of the Boarder coaster with Charlie Rose, I am a master texter. For those like me, the face shy and the phone shy, this is for you.

From Text to Sex: A Beginner’s Guide

1. The Accomplice
Because you are unable to talk to girls unless you’re thanking one for telling you that there’s toilet paper stuck to your shoe before running out of the bathroom and hyperventilating in the alley, you’re going to need a spy. Fags make the best spies. Your fag friend can introduce himself to the girl you’re peeping with an opening line as innate to him as breathing: Oh, girl. Where did you get that handbag? He can also check out her manicure for you, which is a key indicator of a woman’s sexuality. While many straight women keep their nails hygienically short, the only queer woman who let their nails grow above the finger tip are guitarists, coke heads, vampires, and dirty bisexuals. And while all of the above might be fun for a swing around the neighborhood, your cervix will look like scratching post after your first late night date night. Best to skip the unknown and let the ones with the French tips buy their own drinks.

When your fag affirms that the object of your objectification is on the left side of the fence, he’ll give you a secret wrist flick and you’ll know to walk over and hand him his appletini while he’s talking to your new friend/future lover. All you have to do is say hi and hope some of his glittery shine rubs off on you. If you don’t have a fag in your closet, any friend less cute than you works, but the wing womyn approach is the only way around starting with face-to-face contact, with a few notable exceptions. More on this later.

2. The Facebook
This is where it all begins. Get your fag to friend the new babe and write a flurry of witty shit all over his wall. Take, for example, the following update, penned by myself: Side effect of the earthquake: Lot of people talking about ‘Chee-lay.’ Best case scenario, your new friend/future lover friends you first, if for no other reason than she feels inadequate about only having 647 friends when her ex has over a thousand. If she does friend you, let the wall flirting to begin. But if she doesn’t friend you first, you have to take the bulldyke by the horns. Friend her, but also send her a message. I have used the following intro line in more than one friend request (like, way more than one, possibly even on people who are reading this right now): My avatar wants to be friends with your avatar. I generally prefer to limit my friendships to Facebook because my two-dimensional self is far more charming than my real life self, so maybe we can get virtual drinks sometime. This line works so well on gay ladies that I encourage you to copy and paste it in your message. According to my straight lady friends who’ve tried this approach, however, it seems to be less effective went sent to dudes. Good thing you’re gay.

After a few messages, ask for her number and give her yours. Because you are phone shy, say something about how you’ve already used all your minutes volunteering for the suicide crisis line but you’ve got unlimited texts.

3. The Text Message
You may be afraid to make eye contact with any same gendered person whose same gender you want to hang out with, but don’t be afraid to send the first text. Use this: This is the inaugural text of what promises to be a fulfilling textual relationship. I look forward to getting to know you 140 characters at a time. If she doesn’t respond, she’s not someone you want to make homemade mac ‘n cheese for. Defriend. If she responds in a manner worthy of a few laugh-out-louds, you have climaxed the first mole hill. As your textual relationship evolves, you should say things like, Can we have a song? Can it be Birthday Sex? and What third world nation would you like to adopt our babies from? Asians are good at math but Russians have hearty livers. My favorite text of recent days reads something like, I will rub your body down with camel spit and shower you with moonbeams, fake tanner, and assorted office supplies. What’s love got to do with it? While I was the recipient and not the sender of this bedazzler, I intend to steal it the next time I’m trying to textually woo a bitch.

4. The First Date
After you’ve been texting for a while and have investigated her on Facebook, you should have enough information to make engaging in actual human conversation less nauseating than teaching a sixteen-year-old to drive stick shift. It’s time to move into the actual world. You could go for a walk or have dinner or get coffee, but I strongly advise you to spend your first evening together drunk. Alcohol isn’t just for sterilizing forceps. It’s also for making you hotter, funnier, and more likely to give it up on the first date. I see no downside to getting shit horsed and making out with someone you only know via text message and Facebook. If the two of you meet in your neighborhood, take her to the places you know best. When the bartenders are buying you drinks and the patrons are giving you high fives, she’ll either think you’re incredibly popular or that you’re on your way to liver failure. Either way, at least you’ll get to show her off to your friends. If your new friend/future lover doesn’t drink, you should get loaded anyway and hope you’ll at least get a ride home out of it. If you don’t drink, well, hopefully there’s some nice girls in your book group.

6. The Exceptions
For the face shy, there is, of course, another way to meet people—dating sites. While you might be a little uncomfortable trolling the Internet for strange, I know several people who’ve met their people online. I personally have an Ok Cupid profile, which, shockingly, hasn’t been at all effective at helping me meet hot babes. The only messages I’ve gotten are people asking what’s wrong with my face and if I know what eroto-comatose lucidity is.

If you do choose to go the world wide webular route, put some thought into your profile. Be honest. Take my friend Michelle Dawson, who, besides being a master dry-humper, is also responsible for concept behind this post. Michelle is entirely able to find lovers without the help of the Internet, but she’s into the real weirdos, so she turns to Craigslist. Her ad:

I need to find love and I need to find it fast. My ovaries are talking to me, and they’re getting loud and obnoxious. Two days til ovulation.

Things you should know about me: I’m a stage five clinger and I like to front-to-front orangutan all night long. I enjoy pillow talk starting at around 7:30AM. You must be okay with inhaling large amounts of pet hair and should not be disgusted by dirty dishes or dust bunnies. It’d be cool if we can occasionally use mayonnaise in place of lube. I’m not so into kink, I just really, really love mayo.

Perfect, right? I would totally date her if she weren’t her and I weren’t me.

There is one other exception: write a blog. Girls like it when you can string words together. The problem with this approach, however, is that if you meet someone who’s already read your blog, you run out of stories before your second drink. Your coming out story? Your fear of upholstered furniture? She’s knows. She knows that you aren’t sure that you’ll ever be anything but a part-time worker with bad credit and crooked teeth. She knows that you don’t believe in God and that your spirit animal is a cartoon puppy and that you have the word “brunch” tattooed on your arm. She knows that your friends moved away, that your mom pays your phone bill, that you measure your worth in the number of people who wave at you on the street. And when she figures out that you really are better on the Internet than in real life, call your fag and leave your house and start over one more time.

Valentine’s Day lost it’s sparkle for me a few years ago when a girl threw up sake and sashami on my Nikes after a romantic dinner at China-A-Go-Go and then karate chopped me in the gut when I tried to get her in the shower. Besides, mandated flowers and edible panties are about as romantic as my old Sunday night routine with Small Fry: large pizzas and laxative tea. When I choose to be with a person who chooses to be with me, I don’t need a holiday to do sweet shit. I do sweet shit all the time—see, for example, Fall 2006, when I donated a kidney to a girl I had a crush on, who then lived to marry a doctor. I don’t need a construction paper heart to show a girl that I want her on my health insurance. But because I work at a bookstore and have been ringing up more Sade albums than New York Times in the past few days, I’ve got Valentine’s on the mind. Actually, it’s probably less the pink and white displays that’ve got me reflecting on love and the lack thereof and more the fact that I’m a few weeks into a break up. Not an angry break up, but still a break up. I’m looking for someone to blame for my dirty snow and litter box opinion on matters of the heart, but because it’s really no one’s fault that I currently feel like the world is a cruel blue orb and I hope it only survives for another 5,000 years before the sun explodes, I blame the advent of mobile communications.

Mobile technology has changed the entire courting process. Texting is the first step in creating a connection, meaningful or mean. When my favorite and most current ex and I started dating, we gave ourselves carpal tunnel with all the texting. I worried that if we continued with such behavior we’d never be comfortable on the phone and I’d spend the next sixty years wearing off my thumbprints when I could just call to ask if she wants to eat in or take out. I solved this problem by calling her from the living room when she was in the kitchen so we could practice.

The ability to give good text is an indication of intelligence. Highly intelligent people can give terrible text if they are too busy deconstructing deconstructionism to bother with correct punctuation, but the ability to make a person LOL in 140 characters or less is more important than holding open the door or having great taste in music. I send or receive an average of forty-seven texts a day and actually talk on the phone only when ordering sesame tofu from Jade Palace. I’ve had entire relationships that have never gone from textual to audible, which is a sure sign that something isn’t going to work out. It is also possible, however, to fool yourself into thinking that because she sends texts that you read aloud to your friends not to analyze but because they are actually funny, that because her Facebook profile is honest but not too honest, ironic but not too ironic, that because she is awesome on Gchat, the real life person is going to be as cool as her avatar. But there’s no guarantee that she’s anything but quick wit and fast thumbs. It’s a 2.0 problem in a 2.0 world, and a serious one at that.

Facebook is the place to go when you’re in the mood for a good cry. You don’t want to look at your ex’s profile but you do it anyway. You can’t see her sitting on your couch in woolly slippers and her grandmother’s sweater anymore, but you can see her on Facebook. You let your mind run to the dark every time you log in. Who are those new friends? What’s that status update mean? She’s says she stressed. Is it because of work or because she misses me and regrets saying she would never have babies with someone who uses self-tanner. She looks happy in the photo. Does that mean that she’s over me? Or maybe she’s trying to look happy so I think that she’s over me when she’s actually sitting at home watching Law & Order in her sweat pants and sleeping with my old Camp Kanuga t-shirt under her pillow? Shit. She’s definitely over me. Facebook is a living archive of your relationships, one you can’t delete without deleting the proof that you were real. Those pictures? Those comments? You did exist. There are no letters to hold when you want to feel her again, but there are emails to reread.

The Internet is also where you find the refreshment of a new crush. You’ve never actually hung out, so it’s her Facebook profile that provides your only insight into who she is and what her life’s like, if she’s a Pisces (good) or a Scorpio (bad). You scan her pictures, throwing out anyone with self-portraits taken in a bathroom mirror wearing only a towel. You judge her taste in books and music, looking for evidence of humor and depth. How much information did she share? Too much or too little? You friend her, then you message her, write on her wall and respond to her status updates. And then, in this ritual, you proceed to text messages and phone calls and, eventually, actually getting coffee or a drink or walking around the neighborhood, your footsteps beating in real, not virtual, time.

And this, when you’re finally stalking someone besides your ex—when you’ve stopped trying to understand why two people who fit together don’t fit together—is when you know you’re going to be okay. It might be Valentine’s Day, but you’ve stopped looking at your ex’s profile, checking your in-box, waiting for her to come back. The Internet is a space to despair, to find solace in other peoples’ pain, a place to feel good about feeling bad. But it is also a place to renew your interest in the world, to move on and feel better when you start to think less about her and about more about the ones you don’t yet know.

Things have been a little sandpaper and sour milk around here since the intern left after realizing that she wasn’t actually getting school credit to convert Sinead O’Connor’s entire discography from tape to MP3 and sharpen pencils with a paring knife while I’m trying to sleep because the white noise makes me drowsy. Then the au pair went back to one of those Eastern European countries where they speak Pidgen or Elfish and live in ice castles after I paid her in coupons for hugs and back rubs. This was right before the babysitter left to go change diapers for the elderly and wouldn’t even finish ironing my underwear first. Fuck, I haven’t eaten since the cook quit when I asked her to clean the skank juice out of our spaghetti pot. Worse yet, I realized that I’m too old to be on the Real World and that no one wants to adopt a 26-year-old wayward youth.

Thank god there’s one thing that always makes me feel less like I want to go Amish just so I can get my Rusmpringa on and have sex in trailers and join the union of meth lab line cooks: the Internet. The wide wide world is a series of tubes I would never ligate, not just because how else would I find a new nanny to write my status updates, but also because it has provided me with the perfect one-dimensional distraction. Yes, friends and lovers, I have an Internet girlfriend.

I can see you silently judging. Stop. It’s not even weird. It’s 2.009, people. It’s not like she answered the Missed Connection I posted about paying someone to hold the shower curtain away from my body every morning because when the plastic touches my skin I have to take a whole other shower which makes my Catholic guilt spike when I think about how many dolphins my water usage kills.

It’s a little less random than that, anyway. My pal “Clare” moved to San Francisco about six months ago because apparently Carrboro isn’t as “exciting” or “urban” or “cultured” or “gay” as “actual cities that people have actually heard of.” She lived in the Bay Area before moving to the Triangle a bunch of years ago but most of her old friends are too busy adopting dogs and talking about urban gardens to troll for strange, so “Clare” turned to Craig’s List’s platonic only listings. Again, don’t judge. It’s fine. Shit, you met your LTR in a bath house. The pals Clare found are very fun to hang out and laugh with and do whip-its with and one has a seven year old with a thing for Chambord whom I hope will be my drinking buddy in a few decades. The other is my Virtual Girlfriend.

Here’s what happened—”Clare” told her homegirl about this here blog, and, rightly assuming that I am an amazing lover, she friended me on Facebook. I’m still working my way through her 1500 photos, but we started writing shit on each others’ walls and calling each other Virtual Girlfriend or sometimes VG, which is kind of cute and kind of gross for it’s close proximity to that euphemism for vagine that everyone was saying after the Grey’s Anatomy/Oprah thing a few years ago.

In the midst of this Facebook romance, I started my summer project, Text Message From A Stranger, in which I posted my number and invited you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to anonymously text me about what you had for lunch or if you laugh or cringe when you see a cat on a leash or what you think about cryogenic afterlife. There were, of course, a few creepers. I mean, I did put my phone number on the Internet. Was it really a good idea to give my number to someone who would Google “gay centaur fucking a man”? Probably not, but there have been a few Internet strangers I’ve developed healthy textual relations with. Most have dissipated now that summer is approaching it’s natural death and everyone’s sniffing erasers and kicking leaves, but I was courting more than one phone stranger this pool season and I eventually started to feel like I was cheating on people whose names I didn’t even know. Not having one primary texter to cheat on gave me vertigo. Gays sometimes talk about fluid bonding, which is basically having unsafe sex with a primary partner and wrapping it up for the others with whom they make the love. It was like I was bare backing in the airways. (Incidentally, I think girl/girl safe sex is silly. I don’t care if you can get gonorrhea of the knee—I’m not eating plastic for breakfast. I mean, why did we choose to be gay? Because we’re allergic to latex. Besides, I’m pretty sure that gayelles are immune from STDs because if touching fussies could make you sick, my junk would look like a baboon’s ass, but I keep getting tested and I keep staying clean. Just sayin’.)

There was one particular texter whom I felt seriously serious about, 512 stranger. She seemed to really get me, like when she told me that the world has become unmanageable when an honest woman can get fired even after sleeping with her boss. And when she said, I’ma woo you, bitch, I knew that we are unlimited texting soul mates. Cat in a bunny suit or bunny in a cat suit? Trundle bed or a mattress on the floor? Can you break up with someone for using AOL? How about for wearing Crocs? So many questions to ask 140 characters at a time.

And then one night I asked Small Fry to freestyle for my anonymous texting soul mate. Small Fry, who is truly an amazing rappist and not just because she is white and miniature, laid some “sick beats” and some “tight rhymes” even though 512 actually answered the phone despite texting instructions to send it to voice mail and we had a freak out moment upon realizing that she had actual ears and an actual larynx. It was revealed right after Small Fry concluded her hippity hop masterpiece that 512 stranger is not actually a complete stranger at all but the complete stranger who was also my virtual girlfriend. This was the beginning of an actual three-dimensional meeting.

Yes, I met a stranger from the Internet and may have possibly flown 3500 miles across this gray nation to make out with said stranger via mouth rather than mind (and to see “Clare,” natch)—but I’m interviewing a new life coach this afternoon so it’ll have to wait. Sorry, 512….

It’s been a long time, butterflies and bay windows. I’ve missed you. Well, I’ve missed the dirty emails (Actually, gross. No more treadmill action shots, please). An explanation for my world wide webular wastyface is forthcoming, but first, let’s talk text messausages…

I get a lot of tomfool text messages, especially as of late, what with the spreading my number over the Internet like KFed spreads seed and all. One stranger recently told me that she drank four shots of vodka at work. Another stranger asked if I would officiate her gay wedding, which I probably would do if said communal bliss wasn’t happening the same weekend of my monthly menstrual hut. I’m currently in two texting relationships that are far more hopscotch than any homo-to-hominid romanicism I’ve had since that thing with the lady cop last summer. Unfortunately, my pillbox only holds 30 texts at once and I deleted a bunch of rubies from 512 Stranger, my most LTR virtual girlfriend, before recording them (many apologies, 512), but below are examples of recent pop rocks:

* Just got a kitten. Thinking of naming her tyra banks. I almost went with Oprah… Obviously she’s black. (828 Stranger)
* I was gonna go to work. Then I puked. Then I realized my kitty is noticeably bigger. And I don’t want to miss her youth. I will be a shitty welfare mom one day. (Also 828 Stranger)
* The unemployed do not have the joy of being surrounded by drawers with such labels as “trachea chopper,” nor do they have the opportunity to order herring sperm from a catalog. By the gallon. For reasons such as these, work can be pleasantly surprising. Or maybe you have these things at home. I don’t know. (812 Stranger)

Fun, right? My unlimited texting plan is getting mad kalistenics and sometimes I get answers to the important questions in life, like, is it ok to break up with someone for using AOL?, or, how about for using the term foodie? Also, how do you know if a dude is gay or if he’s Italian? There are also, natch, the dang-shooky-dirty texts that make me wonder why people don’t understand the concept of good, clean text messausaging fun. Rude.

But the worst t.m., the one that gave me heart palpitations like that time I mixed poppers and ketamine, didn’t come from an anonymous wwwer. No, it came for my very first landlord, a woman who’s house I lived in for my first nine months as a nutrient-leeching pig fetus until rudely being evicted in the parking lot of a Mexican restaraunt: Mazog.

The text? Rding 20/20.

That’s right, wwwers, Mazog read my very public, very Googlable private diary. And although this really shouldn’t be that big a deal—after all, this a woman who told tried to convince my sister to spend a full day on that most democratic of public transit, the Greyhound, by saying, “It’ll be fun. You can pretend you’re poor.” But even though Mazog and Pazog are about as lowdown straightup combo of xx and xy one could want in a landlord, there was a not-so-small pool of urine at my feet when I found out that the innermost secrets of my public internet diary were being read by my MOTHER. I mean, I’m developmentally only 19 years old. I’ve done some really dumb shit; mostly dumb rite of passage shit—getting arrested for skinny dipping in a water trap at the country club, for instance, then getting kicked out of the dorms the following week for making my room into an opium den/speakeasy. Nothing too terrible, but still not the shit I want my xx and xy donors to know about when writing their will. Kids have always lead double lives. The part of you that’s masked from your ma and pa under a sheen of business casual and dinner parties is what makes being human worth singer songwriters and popped collars. I consulted my doctor friend about this (ok, more astrologist than doctor. And more Miss Cleo than friend), and she showed me a scientastic paper about how, back in the pre-Madonna day when life expectancy was about 15, six-year-olds hide their papyrus secrets under stone pillows. True story.

You can imagine how I felt. Exposed. Betrayed. And, mostly, terrified that my patrons/benefactors are going to cut me off the family plan if I don’t get my shit together. I considered retiring 20/20, but I already paid for the domain and the blood bank said my plasma was discount murky so I’m not willing to blow that 80$ hosting bill. Then I considered only posting lists of my good works (Thus far today: getting ranch with my cheese fries even though I’m terrified that the Brit Brit in me comes out merely by saying the words “ranch” and “cheese fries.” Meaning, I laid classism at the feet of french fries. Also, I didn’t call my most hated barista faggot under my breath this morning, despite the fact that he is definitely not Italian.) Instead, I’m going to man up. I’m going let my testes swing under these denim cutoffs. I going keep up this shit. I’m going get Mazog to sign a contract stipulating that if she ever peeps this again, I’m getting Tori Amos’s face tattooed on my neck.

As much as I love a good hotbox, summer without purpose is fun for about a week before malaise sets in and all of a sudden I’m ten years old and sick of sharks and minnows at the urine-filled community pool and definitely not going to summer camp (communal showers) and almost, unbelievably, ready to go back to school because at least school is boring with central air.

That said, I’m going to break my summer of 2009 malaise by starting a new collection: a text message collection.  Although even my most Peter Panish pal advised me against this, I’m giving you my phone number and I want you to use it.  Liberally.  Here’s the deal: I want you to text me, but I don’t want you to write boring shit like, “wazzup” because a) my mom already does that, and b) we’re not here to talk about feelings.  But do text me.  Tell me what you had for lunch today or the stupidest thing you did last weekend or your middle name or your mom’s sangria recipe.  Whatever.  If you call me, I will ask Peter Pan to listen to my messausages because that’s one chore I cannot do alone and she’s good at translating.  I definitely will not call you back unless you offer me money and/or a free box of Graham Crackers.  This is about texting people, not talking.

Get those thumb-typers ready….

828.231.8508

P.S. Don’t be a creep.