Awkward Things I Say To Girls

Uh, hey.

Look, I know it’s been a while, and I know I didn’t call or write, and I’m sorry. Though it’s little consolation, I want you to know that I thought about you constantly. I only saw other people like half a dozen times, and frankly I didn’t enjoy it and missed you.

There were lots of reasons not to write the blog, virtually none of which I can describe in detail without continuing the extended metaphor much further than is approved by the FDA for human daily allowance of metaphor. However, I do realize that I won’t get out of this week’s blog post alive without hitting three more things:

1. Yes, I am 100% single.

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I wanted my mom to follow her car to their house to see where she lived, but she wouldn’t. She was the cutest girl in pre-school. All I remember are overalls and brown hair. I didn’t really feel like coloring, so we just kissed instead.

That was before we got caught. Now that I think about it, it’s astounding that between all the school buses, parked cars, parents’ houses, and non-private-areas in college in which I’ve made out, the only time I got in trouble was when I was in pre-school.

“Justin! No kissing girls until you get to big-kid school,” the woman said. I figured that’s, what, a year? I can wait a year to kiss girls again.

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Those of you who’ve dutifully checked my recently unupdated blog have suffered enough, and deserve some sort of an awkward oasis to quench your thirst for ridiculous things I have said to girls.

It’s time to write about the time I went to a strip club and got a lap dance.

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“Oh geez, what do I do? How does this even work?”

“Well, the first thing you need to do is to take everything out of your front pockets and put it in your back pockets.”

I was out with some acquaintences on a bachelor party. It was maybe two summers ago. As bachelor parties go, this one was entirely unsuccessful in its intended purpose because the bachelor, a coworker with a cubicle contiguous to mine, didn’t show up. (We didn’t see or hear of him too much after that, until he was arrested later in the year for attempting to kill his then-estranged wife. Three times. That we knew of.)

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I used to believe in love at first sight. I can remember three specific girls who made me feel like I was getting hit by a train the first time I saw them. I thought I knew it was love because every time I saw them it felt like getting hit by a train again. It even felt like I got hit by a train all of the times all three of them rejected me, too.

When you think about it that way, it makes you wonder if love is supposed to feel like a train wreck at all.

Either way, that’s why I don’t believe in love at first sight anymore. Maybe people who can trust their instincts can have it, but I went 7-24 against the spread in college bowl games this year. I watched the Howard Dean scream as it happened and thought, gee, that guy sure sounds like he has the energy to get this thing back on track. I heard the Spice Girls for the first time on my first trip to London in high school, and was immediately struck by the inferiority of the British taste in music, because Americans would never listen to something as ridiculous as the Spice Girls. It’s not that my first impression is wrong, more that it is spectacularly disastrous.

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The awful DJ was playing mid-90s pop songs, the sort that we all have been trying to forget for ten years. I don’t know what his deal was. It wasn’t like I hadn’t helpfully given him my Temple of the Dog and Live CDs (labelled with my name so they wouldn’t get mixed up with anyone else’s Live or Temple of the Dog CDs). If there’s one thing a dance party in 1996 needed, it was a healthy dose of alternative rock.

It was late evening, December 31, 1996 in London, England, and I was impatiently looking around a New Years Eve themed London hotel ballroom for my at-the-time favorite girl in the world. We were there on a high school marching band trip, which intelligently incorporated opportunity for inter-genderal socialization for the same reason that you have a fuse on circuits in your house. The girl was only the cutest and most ticklish blonde flute player in the universe (I think it is okay to admit that tickling was a key component of my game back when I was 15), but despite a heavy amount of apocalyptically inept flirting, she wasn’t my girlfriend yet.

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“Hello?” Oh good, she’s there.

“Hi, it’s Justin. Hey so how are you doing?”

I still remember her phone number. Still, at 25, I remember the number of both of the girls I had simultaneous perpetual background-radiation crushes on from 11 until about 17. Who even memorizes a girl’s phone number anymore? The world lost something important when cell phones made phone numbers unmagical.

“Um. I am fine. Hey so why are you calling?”

It is Thursday, November 9th, 1995 at 8:31 pm. I am a freshman in high school. I know that this conversation happened on that date at that time, because of 30 seconds I just spent searching the internet. This is possible for a reason that shall shortly become painfully and awkwardly apparent.

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Edit: I am sick, like, things are happening that I don’t really want to talk about. This has been this way since yesterday. There’s no way I can write an INAD:ILWMBF episode right now. So, instead, you get the thrilling conclusion of last week’s mystery. Enjoy!

Last week in TMotHGM – TSB, I impressed a girl with my frisbee skills, then went up to talk to her. I was just working up the nerve to take things to the next level by asking her what she majored in, when I was interrupted. But why was I suddenly ignoring her?

This is because one of the most spectacularly hot tennis-playing girls in the history of my college, who happens to also be a friend of a friend, walked by. And naturally I have to say hello. I’m going to be honest: blonde girls aren’t entirely my thing, although I’ve been known to make exceptions in the interest of science. My current girlfriend is deliciously brunette, though. And even if I were interested, which I wasn’t, Tennis Girl had a boyfriend. But spectacularly hot Bench Engineer didn’t know that. And, I might be wrong, but it’s my hypothesis that if you’re hitting on a hot girl and another empirically hot girl just happens to walk up to talk to you, it doesn’t hurt the cause one bit. I think there have been a few scientific studies. Or at least, you know, I read a thing on the internet.

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This is an archived awkward adventure in two parts. I just got way too wordy, so I decided to Kill Bill-style it. Enjoy.

“Hi. Do you mind if I sit here?” Folks, if you’re scared to talk to someone because they’re intimidatingly hot, but there are places to sit nearby, this probably the easiest possible way to get your ass planted within a 10 foot radius of your object of affection. But, generally, the awkward silence that immediately follows pretty much kills the entire mood like a big cup of mood-hemlock.

That’s why I recommend being a total rock star. That way, there won’t be any awkward silences.

“No, go ahead.” Her big, dark eyes flash at me with recognition. “Wait, were you the guy who caught a frisbee amazingly just a bit ago?”

I mean, whatever. That kind of thing happens all the time, when you’re an ultra athletic rock star like me. “Sure. That was me.” Like I care.

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“Oh my goodness, that’s a sweet forehand that girl has,” I said to myself. It was college, and some friends and I were tossing a frisbee around. One of the friends was a girl I’d never met before who was short, had brown hair, big eyes, and, seriously, could make a frisbee look like it leapt out of her hand powered only by happy thoughts, bound for the second star to the right. I was playing frisbee because frisbees are like the optimistic dreams of footballs yearning to be liberated from the pernicious grip of an oppressive gravity. This makes it way easier to make spectacular catches that impress the ladies.

No, I’m serious. I already had in my future blog post list a story about a girl I impressed by catching a frisbee, and subsequently said an awkward thing to. But, now that I think about it, that happened twice. We will get to those stories eventually. But first, I need to talk about girls who can throw frisbees before we get to how hot I am when I catch them.

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“Hey! Dudes, seriously. Take a look at those girls in that lane. They are so hot.”

I mean, sure. I guess I’ll buy that. The girls in question were, in fact, bowling in the lane next to us. “Us” represented a thrown-together conglomeration of probably a dozen medium-level acquaintances and good friends, out for a fun night of drinking and bowling. There were about as many guys as girls, although the girls were paying attention to each other, or at least pretending better. The guys were gathered around the beer, doing what guys do.

When it comes to bowling, I’m usually good for a solid 75, and occasionally if I get hot I can crack triple digits. On this day, I think I bowled a 17. Seriously, I’m just saying, bowling alley bars should be illegal. If you make us wait 45 minutes for a lane, then charge $3.50 for a pitcher, how are we expected to retain the ability to maneuver our own thoughts, let alone bowl? I drink classy beer because I am a snob, so I generally don’t expect $5 of beer to make me wasted.

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