"Un-Friending"

Technology, generally, improves peoples' lives. However, sometimes it makes me consider the costs, like functioning on a human level. I don't think I'd ever text a fiance and tell her that the marriage is off and I'm packing my crap to leave our apartment. Sometimes people take advantage of technology to replace interactions that used to occur in person. I'm not criticizing the trend and actually I think in certain instances it's a lot "cleaner" than dealing with things in real life. Texts, emails, and posting on peoples' walls have replaced meaningful interactions. These have become the acceptable social norms.

Let's examine this quasi-relationship that I had with a girl. She was very keen on technology and shocked that I wasn't readily accessible on Facebook. We spent time together, wallowed in each others' neurosis, and even "hooked up" [as the kids call it these days]. Then I must have done something, something that bothered her because we stopped whatever it was that we were. One day I was bored at work and noticed that we were no longer "friends" on various social networking sites. I was mature enough to not pursue it, and relieved that she had discarded me in such a way that it was clear that we were no longer speaking. By "un-friending" me she severed all ties with me, sans public dispute and drama (read, cleaner).

I guess part of me wishes things weren't so easy. I feel cheated on this one. If I am such a bastard, the type that you cannot feign interest in being "friends" with on some meaningless online forum, then certainly that should deserve some sort of explanation. Part of me wants to email her and ask her if I can buy her a cup of coffee so I can hear why she abruptly ceased communications. I'm not really pissed at all, but maybe it shouldn't be so easy to drop off my radar.

Option 2

I loathe commercials on television. It's no wonder when I was at her apartment, just watching television, that I instinctively grabbed the remote and established a backup channel. We were watching this show about enormous catfish and the possibility of this particular species to be considered "man-eaters." I let one commercial break lapse and started up a conversation with her, but couldn't endure another 2 minutes (read, eternity). After another segment on these ginormous creatures, I looked to her to make a move for the remote. Surely, she'd want to watch reruns of "Friends." Right? After 3 seconds of a Saturn commercial, I snatched the remote and set up the Yankees game as option 2. I didn't bother to ask permission. I just flipped it to the Yes Network and didn't think twice. I didn't even have to watch the Yankees, I just couldn't stand to watch another commercial. She just gave me this look and smiled as she reclaimed control of the remote, making it clear that we were not in my man-crib and she'd be the one making the television choices. I returned her gaze with a quizzical look of my own. Doesn't everybody hate commercials? Doesn't every person think that commercials are the bane of his/her existence? I don't regret imposing my will and taking action. I would do it again if I had to.

City Time

Time is such an abstract concept. I'm not the only person to ever think about a specific dynamic related to time, but I have been thinking a lot about it recently. It's been described more precisely and better by others, and I'm not even willing to enter that competition, but the following is how I have reduced time in my head lately.

Sure, the seconds flutter away into minutes. The minutes sweep across the face of a clock into hours. The hours fade into sunrises and sunsets. Time - it's constantly moving, but I take comfort in the regularity of the progress.

In the city people are always racing against time, moving in a choreographed ballet along the sidewalks. They embrace the concept of perpetual motion and appear to be moving in a controlled rush to get somewhere. However, time slows to a snail's pace with regards to relationships. It isn't uncommon to meet a woman in her mid-thirties, who is unwed (read, single) and appears to be content. Maybe she hides it well, but her suburban counterpart is sprinting to the finish line with a husband and children in her minivan to Wal-Mart. One isn't right and the other wrong, they're just different. Funny how living in a city will make you think about time.

Exercise Clothes

"I've been reading your blog and I guess you're right about guys and girls being friends," she says as she instinctively tugs at her white Nike track jacket.

"It's really not a rule, it's just something I've noticed," I nervously confessed, realizing my inflammatory writing style. I stumbled around my mind for the words to describe my theory in greater detail, coping with the caffeine employed to mute my hangover.

Dating Deal-Breaker

Smoking. It's one of the few habits that I consider completely undesirable. Megan Fox could be a chronic nail biter or maybe even addicted to piercings or tattoos and I'd be able to stifle my vomit long enough to play the skin flute with her, but I draw the definitive line at smoking butts.

It was December 31st, and we headed to a rooftop apartment that a friend of a friend had rented. To say it was cold was an understatement. We climbed countless stairs in the decrepit Chelsea building en route to a New Year's celebration. We had sent texts back and forth to ensure that she was bringing her friends. We hadn't really seen each other until she moved to UES and I happened upon her on First Avenue walking her dog. A year and a half removed from college and the lines on their faces had become a little clearer, as the harshness of reality set in. We hugged and I kissed her cheek with a pleasant holiday greeting, but my eyes gravitated directly to her friend.

I hadn't seen her since we were freshmen at that school in Boston. She was weird. Maybe weird isn't the right word, but as a freshman she was convinced Boston wasn't for her. It wasn't New York. She was destined for New York. She had this demeanor that could only be described as indifference. Other guys found her to be intolerable, and disgustingly pretentious. Maybe that was the curse of a hyphenated last name or maybe it was attributed to her boyfriend from Europe, who she visited nearly every weekend. She was in my communications class and I was smitten. She had transferred to a school in the the Big Apple and I drowned the memory of her in pools of light beer in my mind. So you can imagine my delight when I saw her wearing her red dress and matching heels. She had just returned from the Dominican Republic and her tan was responsible and even. The six years that had passed were kind to her features, and had replaced an eighteen year old's figure with a mature appearance to match her aura. Her red lipstick and nail polish complimented her dress and shoes, and made me rethink my stance on this particular shade as an indication of a woman of loose morals. She was always kind enough to initiate small talk and would often digress from the weather into grander topics. You can imagine my fall, when she politely excused herself and shouldered her wool coat to take a few drags of a Parliament cigarette outside.

She was the type that would drive thirteen year old boys to smoke, despite years of D.A.R.E. training. She was effortlessly cool, sophisticated and had a mature sex appeal. She wasn't the Marlboro Man. She was intelligent, and when she delicately held the cigarette in between her long index and middle fingers it made me want to reconsider my dating deal-breaker. So instead of biting the bullet and licking the ash-tray, I opted to stare at my brother and gang full of solitary guys.

Ozzie Dies

I've decided on a mercy killing for Ozzie, the festering menace that has replaced my abdominal muscles. I'm going to take him out back and splatter his guts all over the pavement. Graphic, I know, but entirely necessary. Here's to New Year's resolutions in April. I'm committed (at least in my mind) to drinking less, making better decisions regarding food intake, and devoting more time to outdoor activity. I never fully grasped the significance of January 1st as the day that one would make life changes. Why not April 23rd? The date is just as arbitrary. I'm not really a work-out maniac, but I'm obsessed with the notion of making changes in my lifestyle and seeing the results, even if only temporary. I'm not stout or even portly and I do not stare at my furry body in the mirror and imagine a reflection that would make a young Arnold Schwarzenegger weep. While I do have an obsessive personality, body and image is a topic that I willfully ignore. My primary concern is the result, and beyond that, knowing that I'm capable of making a change. I find that notion particularly empowering and motivating.

Sconces & Candles

Upon crossing the threshold and entering the quiet studio, I start wondering what I've gotten myself into. She kisses well enough to lure me back to her place, and the years since college have kindly enhanced her figure, but something is odd. There aren't any pictures, posters, or art on the walls. Now, I can't really comment because my walls are barren and my room is more sterile than inviting, but I've got different reasons for that. The studio apartment is nice, and her country furniture goes well with the deep tones of her bedding and matches her chaise/lounge couch. It's not that. It's her candle fixation. Candles perched on sconces at every turn, and dried wax morphed like hardened lava being pulled by gravity downward. Even her "chandelier" above her elevated kitchen table/work area is void of light bulbs, equipped with tea lights instead. So when she turned out the lights and lit only three of these candles you can imagine my concern with her pyromaniac tendencies.

I don't get it. Why do girls love candles? It's like every girl's dream is to acquire more candles and scents than Yankee Candle. She was really a nice girl, and it had nothing to do with her piercing voice or being self-conscious about her body image. It was those God damned sconces. It's the 2000s, and we've got other sources of light besides candles. I had to leave because her apartment was eerily similar to the setting of a burlesque show.

Blue balls were a small price to pay to have every hair on my chest spared from being singed. I loathe the smell of hair burning; it's like roadkill...

Freelance Work

S.A.:"Hi. I'm S.A."
Girl: "Hi. I'm (irrelevant)."
[Time lapses as I drink myself stupid and say things that are undoubtedly funny, but are incomprehensible to her.]
S.A.: "So what do you do to pay the rent in this crazy city?"
Girl: "Freelance."
S.A.: "I'm sorry. Maybe I'm drunk, but could you describe freelance to me. I mean, I understand the concept, but it sounds like bullsh*t and leads me to believe your parents are subsidizing your extravagant lifestyle."
Girl: "Haha. You're such an ass. Freelance is anything you want it to be. For me it happens to be writing."
S.A.: "Oh that's cool. It sounds demanding. I'd imagine I'd be a good freelancer."

Opposite Sex

"Boys and girls can't be friends," I calmly explain to her. "It's not your fault. Actually it has nothing to do with you," I continue.

She darts a glance at me as I see the uncomfortable astonishment wash over her face.

I have this theory, well it's actually a rule. Boys and girls can not be friends. I should qualify the previous statement with the caveat that this friendship cannot exist without sexual tension. As a girl you will read this and think of every guy in your life that maintains the posture of a friend, hoping to expose the flaws in my logic.

There are many reasons that boys and girls are not friends. Chief among them is the fact that guys and girls often don't have much in common. The following example will plainly illustrate these differences. I met a girl, who conveniently lives on 81st in between Neurotic and Ridiculous. Upon meeting her at the bar for drinks and a bite to eat, it becomes painfully obvious that I'm in for hours of tortured misery. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a title claiming, "I brought you something. This book changed my life, but I don't need it anymore." Skinny Bitch was far from Earth-shattering and I did everything I could to stifle my involuntary reaction - laugh. That one gesture, while nice, set the tone for the night. After an hour we had covered the following topics: Skinny Bitch, going to school at F.I.T., and the strained relationship that developed between her father and her. At the brink of insanity, I made up an excuse to leave and walk her back to her apartment. During the walk I was accused of thinking that her Yves Saint Laurent bag was a fake, which is comical because I didn't even know that people cared about things like that, let alone whether this girl would actually own one. All in all the night was awful, but all was not lost as I got sufficiently drunk. In retrospect, this was a gigantic waste of time because when I think about it, I would have been a lot more content sitting on my couch playing Fifa with my roommate.

As a guy I'm concerned with a handful of things, which don't include handbags, fashion, shopping and Jolly Ranchers bathed in Zima. I like spending my time slugging beers, talking about sports, and talking about girls (read, sex).

Now let's talk about the male who you consider to be a friend, who you think has no interest in you sexually. It's true when you hang out you both have fun. He provides the male perspective when you curse my gender. Most important, he has not yet tried to cross the line and cop a feel. Now ask yourself if you've ever been in his company while he's blackout drunk. The answer is probably not, because if he was that inebriated he would have tried to swap spit with you (everyone knows it doesn't really count if he gets denied on account of being belligerent). He is not your friend. He just thinks he can endure months and even years of the title hoping that you'll become weak and eventually cave in to his pithy sexual innuendos.

Granted there are exceptions to every rule, but this one tends to withstand the test of time.