I just met the love of my life. It was on a bus, of course.

I wake up late this morning and wade through the shower-curtain forest of drying laundry, pick out a floaty cream-colored skirt I always feel most summery in. I get out the door with my hair still wet, tendrils beginning to curl like honeysuckle shoots. I don’t know how it’ll turn out. I don’t know how anything’ll turn out.

One of those days where the sun lays heavy on your skin. I know by mid-afternoon I’ll feel lazier than a city-zoo lion, but in the freshness of morning, I’m happy to be alive.

Small herd at the bus stop, shifting their weight from foot to foot, waiting waiting waiting.

The bus pulls up, and I hang back to leave room for people who have been waiting longer. But a young man stops and ushers me in front of him. Late twenties, I’d guess; angular jaw, small mole on his left cheekbone; plaid button-down shirt tucked into a pair of jeans, brown belt. Imposing as oatmeal. One look and you could see this was the kind of guy so placid he didn’t even mind middle school.

I don’t know why this is the kind of man I like. But experience tells me again and again that it is.

There are only two seats left on the bus, in the five-seater in the back. I grab the seat between the middle and the window, and this guy takes the middle seat, next to me. My music’s on loud enough that I don’t hear when he tries to get my attention; I look up and find him hovering above the seat next to me, delicately moving aside a flounce of my skirt I’d forgotten to tuck away.

“That’s the thing with skirts,” I apologize, one earbud out. He smells like sweet sunbaked grass.

“I just didn’t want to pin you down.”

I keep the earbud out, in case he wants to talk again, but he pulls out a worn leather-cover Bible and reads a few verses to himself. I reach into my bag and pull out the short story I’m working on drafting, a weird little reflection on Massachusetts and octopi and small towns and making out in storage units and the ache of impatience. I look at him a few times. His lips twitch a little when he reads.

His phone rings, twice, and he takes the calls quietly. When he reaches in his pocket for his phone, he jostles my hip a  little. This does not make me anxious.

A few stops later, the man in the window seat next to me moves, and for the sake of decorum, I take his old seat. Not five minutes in, though, a heavy drop of cold water plinks down on my collar bone. I jump sideways, and my shoulder catches this guy.

“Air conditioning leaking?” His voice is thick but nasal; the apex of the nasality is the exact note of stainless steel scissors whining across a piece of curling ribbon. Is he married? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he on his way to teaching summer Bible camp?

It always seems so pointless, speculating on other people’s lives. There are things he wouldn’t guess about me by looking. There are things about me that, if some people knew them, would guarantee they could never love me. I’m never going to find out this guy’s name.

I get off the bus a few stops early, to walk past the heavy construction traffic. Even taking a detour up a little hill, I beat the bus to my office, and as I’m waiting for the traffic light to change, the bus scoots ahead and I see him sitting in the back, leaning forward with his arms braced on his knees. He looks serious.

Saying goodbye always feels so heavy. But we see people for the last time ever, every day, non-stop. You think you’ll never forget, but you do. You kind of have to.

NTKOG Year Two, #18: The kind of spontaneous romantic who, when presented with the culmination of astronomical odds, wagers her heart (and a potentially awkward two-hour train ride) on the chance that it might. be. fate.

I am: continuing the story I started here, if you missed the first installion.

I am not: buggin’ if you don’t want to go back and read it.

The Recap: Spent a while flirting aggressively with a cute Canadian in a grad student bar in New England College Town. Afterwards, realized, whoa, he was actually kind of into me? and I was kind of into him? and I didn’t know anything except his first name? Went to New York (ie: the biggest friggin’ city in America), and in that city of seven million people, of all the trains at Grand Central, and all the cars on the train — he chooses mine.

We lock eyes. I blush and offer him a seat. He accepts. Okay, back to…

The Scene: The Canadian takes the seat across from me and my eyes stay snapped on him, looking for words like digging through a snowbank. Justice and Kiss-Ducker carry on their own conversation, like mama lions following from a respectful distance, keeping a cautious eye on a cub attempting its first kill.

TKOG: So I forgot to ask you the other night: you’re at Badass University, right? What do you study?
The Canadian:  Architecture. I’m in the second year of a three-year masters program.

He slides down a few inches in his chair, his knee grazing mine. An architect. I’m always drawn to men who live in quiet, orderly apartments inside their own minds. But architects, they think with their hands, don’t they? That’s something altogether different. His knee grazes mine again, more deliberately.

He asks what I do, and I explain that I’m a writer, sort of, and went to school for Russian literature. His eyes light up.

The Canadian: I double-majored in studio art and comparative literatures! I love Russian literature!
TKOG: Who’s your favorite?
The Canadian:  Totally Gogol. That guy’s awesome. He’s so hilarious.

We chat about The Overcoat for a few moments, before The Canadian exclaims:  Yeah, that story’s so funny! It reminds me of that show Curb Your Enthusiasm! Do you watch it? No, I tell him, and he launches into a five-minute reenactment of a scene, laughing a bit too slowly at his own recreated punchlines. I pull my knee away from his and he switches gears.

The Canadian: What’d you do in New York?
TKOG: Oh, we had a great day! Went to the Met for a bit, saw some German Expressionism — that’s totally my art jam. Walked around Central Park, then went to a cool Belgian beer bar and got classic cocktails at Pegu Club. You?
The Canadian:  Man, it was epic. I came up on Friday and spent the night with a high school friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then hung out with a college friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then I hung out with another high school friend. We didn’t smoke any pot.

…epic indeed. But — but he goes to one of the best architecture graduate programs in the country! He’s just one of those weekday Type-A personalities who relaxes intensely on the weekends! Besides, there’s nothing hotter than a man with a concrete talent, who works toward it with great ambition.

He digs through his backpack for gum and I see a sketchpad. Hey, I tell him, my friend has a National Draw A Dinosaur Day coming up on January 30th [click that link, y'all!] — you’re an artsy dude. Can you draw me a dinosaur I can submit and pretend I drew? He gamely produced the following masterpiece:

Architect! Artsy! Sort of! I pursue this.

TKOG: So, I like architecture but I don’t know anything about it. What’s the best building in the world? Like, what’s your personal favorite?
The Canadian:  Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t — oh! Yeah. There’s a building I like in Toronto. It’s this big brick building. It’s pretty cool.
TKOG:  Cool. What kind of building? Like a bank or an old library or…
The Canadian:  It’s made of brick.

That thud you hear is not the beating of my feverish heart, just to clarify. It is the thud of a conversation dying forever and, with it, any interest I could possibly lather up in the human being sitting across from me.

TKOG: So, uh, how much longer ’til we get to New Haven?
The Canadian: About two hours.
TKOG: Oh. Okay.

Justice, Kiss-Ducker and I spent the rest of the trip in an animated discussion of the social networking model of internet search and writing captions for New Yorker cartoons, tolerating his awkward intrusions  with conspiratorial smirks at one another.

When we finally reached the station, dead-tired and happy to be rid of him, he bolted out of the train ahead of us, then slowed to a walk so we could catch up again. Hey, he asked, are you taking a taxi, or…? It was the kind of wintry New England night so cold that your scalp constricts to shrink-wrap your skull and roman candles go off behind your eyes.

So Justice, gracious goddess that she is, dropped him off at his apartment, then took us back to her place where, exhausted, I crawled into the guest room bed alone alone oh god so happily alone.

The Verdict: To this tale of urban dating woe, I see three morals:

1) You know all those times you have sultry eye contact with a stranger, walk out of each other’s lives, and spend days wondering, by god, WHAT IF?! It’s okay, dude. You probably didn’t miss the love of your life.

2) But SERIOUSLY?! I meet a grad student. At one of the best universities in the free world. We instantly like each other. Then happen to meet him again, days later, in a city of seven million people. And he’s read Gogol. And he’s STILL a kinda-dumb stoner? How is that possibly the end to this story?! I’m not even disappointed in the universe — I’m mad at it.

3) Disappointing though this was, we can all agree that dinosaurs make things better. Draw A Dinosaur Day is Sunday, with submissions accepted today through then! You should submit one! I know I am.

[Edit: A few hours after writing this post, got an email from Justice:

"So I'm sitting on a bus right now on my way to the grad student ski trip and guess who's sitting next to me? Yup, the Canadian. Destiny."

Hmmmm. Maybe he's HER soulmate...? Too bad she's already engaged!]

Is that… Sarah Palin and a polar bear? God bless America.

It sounded too fun to miss.

Based on the description and video, we were expecting performers with prepared routines and costumes. But that is not what we found. Apparently, when they did this event last year, they had fifteen preregisters competitors. But this year, they had zero.

So unfolded one of the more uncomfortable forty-five minute periods in the history of communal experiences. There were about two hundred of us standing around wondering if the show would even happen while the bearded MC dude begged people to sign up with increasingly desperate rhetoric.

I was having one of those cartoon internal dialogues, but instead of an angel and a devil, I had the two facets of my personality: Moderate and Awesome.

Moderate: “Huh, I hope some people sign up.”
Awesome: “Dude. We have to do this.”
Moderate: “We’re not prepared!”
Awesome: “Look around. Nobody else is either.”
Moderate: “But what about all these people? What will they think?”
Awesome: “What do you think I think they’ll think? ‘Awesome!’ If we do this, we will be legen-Barney-Stinson-dary. And we don’t get this kind of awesome-tunity every day. If we don’t do it…”
Moderate: “We might regret it forever! That’s not very moderate. So really, doing an air sex performance is…”
In unison: “Optimal!”

While this was going on internally, I was browsing through my iPod for inspiration on good air sex songs. This gave me cover when people asked me if I was going to sign up: “well, I’m looking for a song.” I wanted something clever and maybe subversive. I scrolled past Blink-182 and thought, heh, “All The Small Things.” I scrolled past Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch” (“you and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals”) and thought, “too obvious.”

Then I scrolled to OK Go.

A bit of background: TKOG introduced me to OK Go, before the treadmill video, because, although she claims not to be into music at all, she somehow knows lots of cool bands. And there’s this quote that we always laughed about: someone asked the bassist, “You think people are going to have sex to this album?” and he replied, “I fuckin’ hope so.”

Suddenly I knew. It had to be “A Million Ways.” The vocals are perfect. The bass line is perfect. The beats per minute is perfect. It would be “OK Go in the backyard, fucking.”

(Comment fodder: What song would you pick for an air sex performance?)

But I wasn’t going to just dive into it. They way I see it, the fundamental challenge with air sex is that sex is normally a back-and-forth, but unless you’re doing a group act, you’re not going to get anything to play off of. So I would need a game plan. I started thinking about different acts I could pantomime and what parts of the song would fit them. Pretty soon I was jotting down a screenplay on my smartphone, cutting and pasting lines of text to get the order right. Once I saw I was actually going to be able to put something together, that’s when I signed up.

Perfect is the enemy of good, but it is the ally of awesome.

The bearded MC kicked off the performances. His routine was pretty funny: increasingly exaggerated and physically implausible masturbation motions; pantomiming having trouble opening the condom wrapper. Then came the first contestant, and it was announced that I was up second. Second! “Actually, that’s good,” I thought, “I’d rather go early before the bar gets set too high.” I was getting really nervous and trying to mentally rehearse my routine, but from what I saw, the first contestant was amazing. He was tall and well-built, totally charismatic, and he really explored the space of the stage. He was spinning his invisible partner all around and hitting it from crazy angles. At one point tossed her way up in the air, checked his watch, judged the landing like an outfielder, and caught her on his pelvis. The judges teased him but they loved it. Crap. Why couldn’t I have gone first?!

My heart was pounding, but with the crazy lights, I couldn’t see the audience very well, which helped me focus internally. Then the opening guitar chords lanced through the room, the bass started pounding, and I started my routine.

Oh yes, my routine. Here is, verbatim, the choreography I had typed on my phone:

Intro:
Standing still
Bite neck
Kiss

1st verse:
Her going down on me
Makeouts, taking off shirt, watch, glasses

1st chorus:
Face away from crowd on my knees, cunnilingus
Pull her down
Fall to floor

2nd verse:
Feeling her up on floor
Putting on condom

2nd chorus:
Thrusting to 1000000 cruel

Bridge:
Going down on her

3rd chorus:
Her Legs up, thrusting

Outtro: doggy style, collapse

The idea was to go nuts during the choruses, timing the motions to the catchy “one zero zero zero zero zero cruel” backup vocals. I started with some makeouts and feel-ups. Then I undid my belt buckle and had her going down on me in time for the first words of the song: “Sit back.” (Optimal!) In the first chorus, when I gave her oral on my knees, I faced away from the crowd, so my face wouldn’t be waggling against nothing, and so it’d be different than the bridge. The condom went on without a hitch in the second verse, and then, you know it, “one! zero! zero! zero! zero! zero! zero! cruuuelll…”

I basically stuck to my script. But you don’t have to take my word for it. One of the girls I’d just met took some pictures and video. That’s right, THERE IS VIDEO. You all will totally vote for me if I run for office in thirty years, right?

The last note of the song, I collapse on the floor with my head practically hanging over the edge of the stage. The crowd goes wild. I’m legitimately panting. I see the MC coming with the mic. I start to try to pick myself up, but he says, “no, no, it’s cool, man, just stay there,” and plops down on his stomach and elbows alongside me for some post-game analysis.

Then the best part was the commentary from the judges.

Female Judge: “I want to congratulate you. Of all the acts I’ve seen, you were definitely the most task oriented. Other people do acrobatics and stuff, it’s very fantastical, but you just got down to business and gave us some really focused floor-humping.”

Guys, she called me “task oriented.” You know what? I’ll take it. I’ll take it to the bank.

Male Judge: “I just want to check with you about something. At the beginning when you were making out, it looked like you took a big bite out of her cheek?”
Me: “Well, you know, I was thinking, Twilight, vampires are in this year…”
Male Judge: “So then you got on your knees and started going down on her, you started playing with her breasts, that was fine. But then right before you moved from that, it looked like your fingers sorta went for her ass. And I just wanted to say, you know, if you’re going to go into that area, really take your time, give it the attention it deserves.”

I came down from the stage to a sea of adoration. People in the crowd were excited to recognize me! Women I’d never met were telling me I performed really well.

Moderate: “Wow, remember when I thought we’d be embarrassed in front of all of these people?”
Awesome: “Quiet, we’re too busy being me!”

The next day, I was giddy. I kept wanting to call Air, but I knew I should play it cool. Also my abs were a little sore.

The Verdict:
1. Busting out of your shell is awesome. Being fearless is awesome. Being the star is awesome. I wonder if this is what feels like to be Muscles every day.
2. Meticulous planning for the win.
3. Sex is fun. I mean, obviously, but laughing about sex is great. Maybe it’s all the Dan Savage podcasts I’ve been listening to lately, but I’m feeling really sex-positive right now, and it’s wonderful.

In lieu of sympathy, please send saucy limericks, pictures of pugs and Koopa Troopa fanfic.

Also, speaking of break-ups, my favorite ex-boyfriend invited me to cover the Boston Babydoll’s Halloween burlesque revue — The Wrathskellar — in Central Square on Tuesday. So get psyched for a Wednesday recap. (Yes! A blog entry comprised of words instead of pictures! I’m as shocked as you are.)

Announcement! The last official NTKOG of the project (but not of the blog! not by a longshot!) goes up on Monday, and I’m going to need your help on this one. For the last day, I’m going to be the kind of girl to — do whatever you say. On Sunday, from 12:01AM to 11:59PM, I’m going to let y’all make all of my decisions for me, via blog comments and Twitter. Tune in on Sunday! Make me flirt with a cop, eat a squid, or whatever else strikes your fancy!

NTKOG #248: The kind of emotionally-promiscuous, utterly histrionic nutjob who — dissatisfied with the dissolution of her previous affairs — hires a stranger for a break-up redo.

I am: super great at planning what I want to say to people, but…

I am not: one for grabbing you by the ear and actually demanding to say my friggin’ piece.

The Scene: Nervously pacing outside the hole-in-the-wall diner by my office, waiting for a forty-year-old stranger to show up so I could pay him to break up with me. Wait, what?

This third of my TaskRabbit challenges stems from an idea Kiss-Ducker and I worked on a few years ago: the emotional equivalent of a haunted house. A Break-Up-A-Torium, where every mild-mannered girl could live out the crockery-shattering, snot-rattling break-up of her masochistic dreams.

And while we never got the caper off the ground, one measly buck on TaskRabbit had bought me a forty-five minute break-up with a local professional actor during my lunchbreak at work. We were set to meet at 11:30AM; by 11:33, I was shivering anxiously. I called to ask where he was — “I’m just walking there!” — then, after another five minutes had passed, texted again and left a voicemail.

Eight minutes into our relationship, I was clingy and he was emotionally unavailable. Great. It’s like we really were dating.

Moments later, I was greeted by a distinguished man with a gorgeous, gravely voice who bore a distinct resemblance to my Epic High-School Crush. We introduced ourselves warmly and headed into the diner. Nice to meet you. Now break up with me.

We chatted amicably while we waited for his food to come out, me angsting over how to begin the break-up. Because my last relationship ended so well (hearts, The Ex), I didn’t have any recent history to saddle him with, so dug through The Vault for a half-decade-old situation I never really got closure on. To prepare, I’d sent him a character description and a few paragraphs of synopsis. I was toying with various opening lines, when he pushed aside his burger and fixed his eyes on me:

“Well come on,” he sighed with all the weariness of a flickered-out former flame. “You brought me here to talk it out, so let’s talk it out.”

“You — I just — why were you such a dick to me?”

“I reject your basic hypothesis,” he shot back, sounding so much like the character he was playing that I had to catch my breath. Oh snap, guys. The break-up was on.

My basic objective in the exercise: to secure from Faux Beau a genuine apology for something kind of screwed-up he’d done a handful of years ago. And to my delight, the actor didn’t immediately cave — he made me fight for the apology I wanted. Throughout the first ten minutes of the argument, he weakened gradually.

I don’t know what you want from me. I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sorry there’s nothing that could be done. I — I’m sorry.

But even after he’d apologized, still, it wasn’t enough. It never is, right? I kept bristling and — classic break-up move — he went on the offensive.

Faux Beau: No matter what I do, you’re going to see what you want to see in me. If I give a waitress a big tip, you think it’s because I want to sleep with her. Did it occur to you that maybe I didn’t want to wait for change? Maybe I just got really good service. Maybe–
TKOG: Oh come on, of course you want to sleep with her.
Faux Beau: What can I say? I like waitresses.

Like all of my arguments, we spent half of our time just making each other laugh, setting aside the anger and guilt long enough to spike a perfectly arch aphorism. And, like all the best fights, our argument followed its own dreamy break-up logic. Accusations bled into apologies which flared into rage and then, for one soft moment in the middle, fond reminiscing.

TKOG: God, I just. You — you have the most beautiful nose.
Faux Beau:  Really? You think so? It’s been broken a few times.
TKOG: Probably by some waitress.
Faux Beau: I really do like them.

As is so characteristic, although I’d brought him there to scream and guilt, I ended up apologizing to him, just a little. I rationalized why we were sitting there, having that discussion, so many years after the fact, and — in a very meta move — hypothesized that I was injecting drama to my stolid life by creating an ersatz relationship.

Faux Beau: I think you mean archetypal. Like the platonic ideal of a relationship.
TKOG:  Dude, Plato must have been a fucked-up guy.

The conversation meandered its weird course to the natural finish and we looked at each other, seriously, not unkindly, before I shrugged and told him, look, I care about you, I want you to have a wonderful life. I just want to have a slightly more awesome one.

“I think you deserve that,” he said, then we parted ways, strangers again, strangers finally.

Ha! No! That was just douchebag melodrama. In reality, as he finished the burger, we snapped out of character, I thanked him profusely, and we chatted easily about the local burlesque scene. But I thought about his last line on the walk back to the office and, you know? I think I do deserve it.

The Verdict: Holy frig, guys. Holy frig. Instead of internet dating sites, there should be internet break-up sites. The second I dashed back into the office, Co-Worker asked me how the break-up went, then answered her own question: “You’re glowing!” What can I say? It was a spiritual spa treatment.

I only wish I’d thought to do this back when all the wounds were fresh. I can’t even imagine how helpful it could have been. Right now, I’m coming at the experience as a well-adjusted dude in a good emotional place but — but when something painful happens, the worst possible feeling is voicelessness. You can talk to your friends, your cat, your therapist, but they’re all people who exist to fight on your side. They’re incapable of an unbiased approach to the other person’s point of view.

All afternoon, Co-Worker’s and my minds clicked over other situations we could hire actors to role-play. Painless fights! Righted wrongs! Closure! And the best part is, after the fight, you can walk away from your opponent really-forever, the way you probably should have in the first place.

Thanks to TaskRabbit for hooking me up with a $25 gift certificate to use their amazing service in what I can objectively call the weirdest. way. possible.

On Secret Society of List Addicts, jobs I wouldn’t do for any amount of money — even if it would mean being able to pay my rent on time every month.

NTKOG #246: The kind of infinitely obliging nighttime pedestrian who, when strange men aggressively leer, seriously considers their propositions.

I am: a lady-dude and, as such, occasionally subjected to the vile hooting of apparently myopic dudes who spend their evenings leaning against chain-link fences, grunting mating calls.

I am not: ever going to get used to this. I’m the happy product of suburban geek culture, where pointedly asking a lady for brunch recommendations is about as straight-up promiscuous as a dude can get.

The Scene: Dragging my weary, frizzy and infinitely cranky self home after a(nother) twelve-hour day at the office. For the past two weeks, Co-Worker and I have been enjoying a series of work-evening “sleepovers” auditing files, and after a seriously productive evening, I was looking forward to decanting my jellified brain into a gin and ginger, then catching nine hours of the dreamless.

What I was not planning to do was talk to any dudes. Unfortunately, the early-20s punk leaning against a local convenience store wall, chain-smoking Pall Malls hadn’t gotten that memo. “Hey mami,” he grunted, “where you going?”

Forgive me for questioning your approach, Street Dudes, but I’ve got to say, that question has always perplexed me. Because of the vibrant street ensemble in the area where I work, I get it most often while walking back to the office on my lunch break, carrying grocery bags. Where you going, girl? “God, funny you should ask. I’m bringing back hors d’oeuvres for an orgy in my office. Wanna come? (ps: that is sexy wordplay about ejaculation.)” Seriously, guys, what’s your friggin’ strategy?

Anyway, after twelve hours of work stress, I was in no mood to educate a late-night convenience store buzzard on feminism, so I cranked up my music and prepared to ignore him, when he reached out to touch my shoulder and asked again: “Aw, c’mon, where you going?”

And so the unthinkable, the inevitable. I yanked my headphones out and swiveled to face him, my nose mere inches from his straggly mustache. “I’m going home. To bed.”

“Can I come with you?” he asked, before the words had even stopped vibrating through my larynx. Upon closer inspection, he was younger than I thought, his skin pulled with bouncy-ball tautness over newly prominent jaw and cheekbones. He must have been a full half-decade younger than me, a lamb in wolf’s clothing.

“Yeah, sure,” I grinned back, calm and radiant, “let’s have sex. Let’s totally have sex.” To his credit, as soon as I said it, Debauched Babyface immediately dashed his cigarette to the ground in a pretty slick Manly Man Of Action move. “So do you, like, have an apartment or a car or something? Or like, what, a moped? I guess we could try it on a moped. Let’s do this.”

Maybe it all seemed too easy, or maybe the moped accusation affronted his masculinity, but DB took a large step back. “O–okay.” Finally, unfolding before my eyes, the answer to the question: What do cat-callers do when they finally get the girl? Back away nervously, apparently. He patted down his baggy jeans pockets to dig out his softpack of cigarettes.

“Dude, come on, I thought you, like, wanted to hook up.”

“With you?”

Ouch, dude. Ouch. Was I getting rejected by him? Truly, has my life come to this?

“Absolutely,” I smiled, taking a step toward him, half a hip swivel away from AC Slatering him against the wall. “I mean, I was just minding my own business, walking home, and you harassed me. What can I say? You changed my mind.” Silence. Silence. “I assume you want to have sex. Why else would you be bothering me?”

And through his rubber babyface, a lightning-fast ripple of contrition. “It was just a compliment.” And then he hardened again — “crazy bitch” — and spat on the ground at my feet. Yeah, you might be right, kid, but you just reminded this crazy bitch why she’s so very happy to be going home alone.

The Verdict: So, my sister’s roommate has two kittens who spend the vast majority of their days tearing through the house, pouncing after flies. I’ve only ever seen the kittens catch one once and, when they did, they had absolutely no idea what to do with it. They batted it around the bathroom for a while, drooled on it some, then leaned back on their paws and let it fly free.

I always sort of imagined that turning catcallers’ aggression back on them would yield similar results. But dude he didn’t even want to bat me around or slobber a little on me. I’m not sure whether to feel relieved or sort of offended. So instead, I’m choosing to feel profoundly bewildered not only that guys find this behavior appropriate but that they’re apparently engaging in a catcalling as an end unto itself.

Dudes and lady-dudes, someone explain this to me: has catcalling ever actually led to intercourse? Does anyone — catcallers included — enjoy it in any way? And, short of uncomfortably propositioning them like I did, how do you deal with this ridiculous obnoxiousness?

NTKOG #236: The kind of awkward still-adolescent (apparently) whose soul is frosted thick with cystic emotional acne.

I am: no longer, alas, the Worst Teen Poet in Boston. Fun run while it lasted, though.

I am not: exactly kidding about falling in love.

The Scene: Last night’s Mortified reading, at Club Oberon in Cambridge. Back in June, if you recall, I won the Bad Teen Poetry Throwdown and was crowned worst teen poet in this fair city on the hill. Last night, I got on stage once again to defend my title — and compete for a friggin’ sweet vintage AC/DC notebook.

How did the night go? Electric. Hilarious. Deeply mortifying. And, uh, did I mention I totally fell in love?

It might come as no surprise that I am desperately competitive, and that when it comes to head-to-head jousts, my preening writer ego is so severe that I will shamelessly mug and cajole to win a title even as questionable as Worst Teen Poet. That said, last night I was dethroned by possibly the worthiest competitor I could ever have dreamed. Literally, had I toiled countless eons constructing a man atom by atom to be the platonic ideal of the dude I would want to snake this title from me, said dream dude would have paled in comparison to the brilliant poet who made me nearly vomit with laughter last night.

The second he read, from his masterwork, “LSD Trip”: “My third eye is cleared / the trip is over / but the trip of life / has just begun,” I knew. It was love at first phoneme.

And look, I tried to write a poem to commemorate the occasion, but there are only so many rhymes for “uncomfortably aroused” and “seriously if things don’t work out with that foxy brunette you walked out with, you should maybe call me, because when I was twelve I spent a lot of time practicing kissing on my hand so I’m like probably pretty good at it in real life, maybe.”

Since my words, for once, have failed me, I turn to the greatest poet of our age. Twelve-year-old TKOG. Retiring one of my Worst Teen Poet-winning gems, for your schadenfreudistic delight. (Note: poem was originally written about my sister’s boyfriend at the time; present annotations in red.)

Accept a kiss from this deep well,
From my lips, to your brow fell,
Or decline-- As time shall tell.   He -- uh -- he declined. They always declined.
But leave not my tempestuous soul to fare
Alone-- If you did truly care.  ENJAMBMENT! Hells yeah! Poet mo-friggin' laureate!
Leave me not in pain undecided,
When so much of myself has been confided..  Pretty sure this means sexytimes.

Related: pretty surprised the human who wrote this verse didn't die a virgin.
But alas, you’ve run, and I am not whole,   
For you’ve taken my love and immortal soul.
And so is all we ever find,
Simple purgatory of the mind?   Deep like your friggin' motha (after last night) 
(send her my regards)

A flower grew once in a churchyard;   Of COURSE it did.
Its lifelong struggle growing hard,
Until the world refused to hear it,
Broke its soul and crushed its spirit;
We can’t trust beauty until we can mirror it.   You see? You see what I did there?!
If you try to hold someone tight, soon they run away,
But I have your memory stored for another day.
There was once beauty, but it is lost,
Though I would retreive it at any cost.   Not a misspelling! NON-CONFORMITY, square.
At least I know inside of my head,
You were quite real; your memory not dead.   Hit it HOME, semi-colon! Fuckin' artful.
But no, not all we chance to find,
Can be purgatory of the mind.   Somehow didn't die a virgin. Miracles happen, dudes.

Oh god, guys, last night was just like middle school again. I just — I just have so many FEELINGS.

The Verdict: Uh, I know this is kind of a repeat of a previous NTKOG, but 1) I had to write quickly, before the gin wore off, and, more importantly, 2) if you’d told me a year ago that I would willingly get on stage — not just once, but several times — to encourage people to laugh at my searing emotional intensity and truly awful mutilation of the English language, I would have cut you off and called you a cab. Man, though, Mortified. What a great show, and truly humbling and exhilarating project to be a part of.

And seriously, not kidding about the new Worst Teen Poet champ. Dude was basically forged from the stoves of Hephaestus to eviscerate my awkward, still-adolescent heart. Plus, he smelled really good when he hugged me. Uh, call me, sir. My soul would like to scribble all manner of awkward sonnets upon thee.

On Life As A Human, an open letter to my bus boyfriend, who doesn’t know we’re dating. Even though we’re totally, totally dating.

Part three in my Infrequently Asked Questions series. You guys asked about The Ex, so here it is. (Also, I know I promised to send out prizes today, but bear with me for a few days: I want to finish drafting answers to all the questions I’ve received before I choose a favorite, or else I’ll be biased to early responders. Winners by Wednesday-ish?)

–

From The Ex:

Do you love me, now that I can dance?

Not to burst your bubble, darling, but your ability to dance was always tangential to my feelings about you. Which might be a good thing.

From Kathryn (which, ps, is one of my all-time favorite names):

Why did you and The Ex break up? You seem like you did, and still do, get along great, and he even vajazzled you post-break up. So I’m curious…why? What happened?

Okay. Let’s talk about The Ex.

He and I met in the spring of my freshman year of college, where we lived in the same dorm. (The actual story of how we met is a cute one that involves narcissism, Google searches and samurai swords. But I’m sure you can imagine it.) I’d spent the majority of my freshman year chasing after so many douchebags that I practically sweat straight vinegar; one day, not long after a hook-up so bad that it made me momentarily internet-famous, I decided I was done. I signed onto JDate and printed out a profile picture of a cute guy, taped it to my mirror, and declared to all and sundry that I wouldn’t even look at another dude until I met a brilliant Jewish engineer who knew how to respect a woman.

Three days later, I met The Ex.

Nine days after that, we were — er, involved. We spent the summer a-courtin’, all old-fashioned and epistolary, then met again and were wildly in love. We stayed together for four years, almost to the day, and as I remember it (but feel free to chime in, The Ex), we were very happy. In fact, during our whole four years together, I only remember one serious fight. Which was absolutely his fault. Obviously.

The year-long unraveling started shortly after I graduated. There were a couple of big problems.

Strike 1: The Ex, who is a brilliant and extremely talented man, ended up getting his dream job. I, on the other hand, had a mild break-down, realized I didn’t want to pursue a PhD in Russian literature, and decided to spend a year in part-time jobs so I could pursue writing. A good idea in theory, but I have no discipline. Over the course of an entire year, the only thing I ended up writing was one (very good) apple pie recipe.

Strike 2: Because we were both leaving the Ivory Tower for the first time, The Ex was concerned that if we lived alone together we would become too insular and he would lose touch with all of his friends. I was something of a social butterfly back home, so I wasn’t concerned for my own sake. Because of this, though, we ended up living in a converted 1920s mansion (swoon) with three of The Ex’s friends (decided un-swoon). Unfortunately, even living with the friends, he ended up spending most of his time with me, so living with his friends ironically detracted from his relationships with them.

Strike 3: In order to afford said mansion, The Ex (who was making about nine times as much money as me, not including benefits. I was below poverty level. No big deal.) offered to pay for a third of my rent. And, granted, were it not for him we would have been living in an apartment I could actually afford, it set up a weird money dynamic that we rarely talked about. I felt obligated to perform domestic tasks for him, and used that as an excuse to put off my writing even more; he bought me little presents all the time and bankrolled the elaborate cocktail parties I threw on a near-monthly basis. I felt, in short, like a kept woman.

So the basic swing of the situation: he worked extremely late hours all week; I worked mornings and weekends, during the parts of the day when he was actually home; I stayed at home with housewife’s depression to clean and angst, then, when he got home, was so worked up that I immediately started sniping; on the weekends, we would talk a lot about compromise, but the things we talked about were never put in effect.

And the whole time, I felt guilty and useless because I wasn’t writing. Actually, one night, I walked into the bedroom while he was on the phone with his mother, finishing a sentence. “Well,” he’d said, “she talks about writing a lot, but…” — I left before he finished it. It was the most hurtful thing I’d ever heard anyone say about me. But I opened Microsoft Word that night and saw that it had been six months since I’d modified a file.

We really loved each other — as far as I know — but it was a bad situation for a couple of months. Then, on Christmas Eve of the year we moved in, I had the insane idea to go to Boston and work for AmeriCorps (in a position that ended up not working out). I called and told him I wanted to leave, to pack up and shoot myself across the country. All the distractions of our life had been a cancer in me, and I wanted to cut them out in one shot.

We tabled the conversation for a few months, because our lease ended in July 2009. And once we did realize we were definitely breaking up, our relationship dramatically improved. We talked very openly about all of the little issues, and realized the places where we couldn’t compromise and just looked past them because they were temporary.

In the end, I really think we broke up because we loved each other. He was right about me: I wasn’t working hard enough, and I wasn’t pursuing my passions seriously. And because he was working such long hours, I think he really needed time away from a consuming relationship in order to bond with his boys, get more dating experience, enjoy being a 20-something.

And now he’s the social butterfly, I’m a workaholic, and we’re still very, very close friends. (Yes, vajazzling close. Although, for the record, I suspect our co-vajazzling days will be over soon because he, unlike me, is making a real effort to start dating, and I’d expect a girl to snap him up immediately. Years of girlfriend training have made him a real catch.)

From Michelle:

Going along with the Ex questions…how many times would you say you’ve been “in love”–if at all.

The Ex and I were definitely in love. We were a whole ice cream sundae bar of in-love with all-you-can-eat premium toppings. As for other relationships — I don’t know. I do know I’ve had exactly two relationships (I use the term with appalling looseness) that have hugely changed who I am as a person. But the other one was more of an Abiding Personal Tragedy, because I’m the kind of douchebag who just eats stuff like that up.

From Kara:

The Ex. I want to know about The Ex, and why you’re not together/will you ever be together again.

Will we ever be together again? If we are, it won’t be any time soon. When we first broke up, I’d hoped we’d get back together after a year or two — take some time to grow alone, then join back up as new, improved people. And I’d say we’re both new, improved people now. But. I guess I don’t feel the same way anymore? I want to be alone for a few years, and if the universe has other plans for me, it’ll have to scream ‘em in my friggin’ ear.

NTKOG #183: The kind of girl who VAJAZZLES! Which is, for those of you over 40 or who don’t follow Jennifer Love Hewitt’s talk show appearances, a portmanteau of “vagina” and “bedazzle”. Oh yeah, guys, it’s getting sparkly all up in here.

I am: a no-frills pubic groomer. Cleaning? Of course. Trimming? Sure. Affixing dozens of Swarovski crystals into cutesy little designs? Uh…

I am not: super sparkly anywhere except my personality. Which, last time I checked, I don’t keep between my legs.

The Scene: After hearing a bit about the vajazzling trend, I poked around online to see how one even goes about getting bejazzled. Read quite a bit about embarrassing sounding spa trips, then stumbled upon Vajazzleville — a blog dedicated to spreading the word (and some soon-to-be-sparkly inner thighs) about the latest quirk in personal grooming.

Exchanged a few emails with Mark, the VAJAZZLEMASTER (at least I hope that’s what his business card says. in rhinestones.), and he very generously offered to send me a free kit to try it out on my own.

Now, before I started, I had a lot of misconceptions about vajazzling. For the edification of you fellow non-vajazzlers, let’s clear some shiz up:

Vajazzle Myth 1: Vajazzling involves gluing sparkles inside your lips, along the hairline, and right on top of the little man in the boat.

Debunked: Vajazzling can be performed anywhere on the abdomen, but is most popular on the “cushion-top” area. It’s basically a crystal tattoos (’90s prom, anyone?), and completely non-invasive. Personally, I embellished the cushion-top. Mostly because I can’t get enough of saying cushion-top. CUSHION-TOP.

Vajazzle Myth #2: Vajazzling either needs to be done at the salon, or is a time-intensive affair involving individually placing crystals with eyelash glue.

Debunked: I was pleasantly surprised to check out the Vajazzleville kit, which was a double-diamond design a few inches across. All of the crystals are stuck to an adhesive backing, so the whole design transfers easily and sticks firmly to your clean, dry skin. It took The Ex approximately thirty seconds to place mine, and most of that was spent debating whether to place it at a rakish upward angle or a horizontal bar evenly spaced above the lips (aka: the Clitler).

Vajazzle Myth #3: The vajazzle will look cute for a few seconds, but soon you’ll be shedding awkward rhinestones and/or your boyfriend will be picking gems out of his eyebrows for weeks.

Debunked: It’s been less than 24 hours, but the gems feel very firmly attached. They’ve survived several clothes changes, ten minutes of sprinting through an airport, a cross-country flight, and maaaaybe a little inappropriate fondling.

The Verdict: Guys, I am the antithesis of the vajazzle spokesgirl. I wanted to hate this, or at least think it ludicrous. I mean, come on, vagina bedazzling? Can you say Sex Trafficker Barbie? But once The Ex finished applying it, we stood in front of his full-length mirror, silent for a moment, then simultaneously muttered: “…whoa.”

Hey, remember that time I could never, ever, ever run for office? Good thing I didn't bother going to law school. But for plausible deniability, I swear, this is a picture of a temporary tattoo on my arm. MY ARM.

It’s — really, really cute. It’s hard to convey the full effect in a suitable-for-work shot, but … I kind of love it. It feels fun and sort of flirty; the way the light plays across it is captivating; it even — Gloria Steinem shoot me for saying it — makes me feel a little empowered about my vagina. I mean, how often do you look at your ladybits and think, ‘Goodness, you are a pleasure to behold!’?

I wouldn’t go to a salon for vajazzling, that’s true, but I also don’t usually shave my ladybits, so obviously I’m just super low-maintenance. I would, however, actually do this again if I, y’know, had maybe a boyfriend I wanted to pleasantly surprise or wanted to feel dramatically feminine during a girly club-hopping weekend. I’m shocked at how much I loved this. The only trouble now is going to be refraining from telling everyone who sits next to me on the bus: “Hey, guess what?! There are sequins. ON MY VAGINA.”

In fact, I liked this so much and I was so surprised that I think you need to try it to believe it. So, dude, come back tomorrow for a little giveaway to make that happen. Words cannot capture how intensely right now I feel that vajazzling is something to GET PSYCHED ABOUT. (And, again, big ups to Vajazzleville, whose name I had to pimp once for giving me a free vajazzle kit, but am mentioning again now out of sheer love for a truly great product.)

Mom, please don’t read this. I’m serious. Don’t read it. Don’t read it. Everyone else, just blame LiLu and her amazing TMI Thursdays.

NTKOG #139: The ultimate Woo Girl. I mean, we’re talking MySpace picture-takin’, pink-liqueur-swillin’, Cancun-on-spring-breakin’ “holy frig someone swab out this girl’s throat and SEND THE PETRI DISH TO THE SMITHSONIAN” Woo Girl.

I am: to the archetypal sorority girl as Valtrex is to the archetypal sorority girl’s herpes. Natural enemies, dudes.

I am not: sure I should be sharing the following story with the internet. Helloooooooo, prospective employers slash bedfellows!

The Scene:  A sleazy little Barcelonan tourist trap named Chupitos. The word “chupito” is diminutive form of the word “chupa” which means — if I’m correctly recalling the “verbs you’ll subsequently use to make sexual innuendo” unit of Honors Spanish II — “suck,” and the whole mess comes together to mean “shots.”

Oh, and shots there were aplenty. The bar serves over 300 of the little bastards for a mere two Euro apiece. Each comes with its own little gimmick. Flaming shots, bob-in-whipped-cream shots, shots that are boiled and from which you drink only the alcoholic vapor, one fantastic shot in which a plastic drinking straw is blown into a bubble that you must teabag until your mouth (and hair) are flooded with sticky-sweet banana liqueur — all these shots are considered good wholesome fun, of course. There is only one shot the name of which is whispered in horror by all: The Lewinsky.

THE LEWINSKY.

Kiss-Ducker had seen the spectacle before, and explained it to me. Basically, a large dildo is strapped over a can of beer and covered in whipped cream. The victim is blindfolded by the bartender and, after a little build-up, has to attack the creamed-up sex toy and shotgun the beer.

Guys, I’m going to let the sheer disgustingness sink in with you for a minute. Even the threat of mixing beer and whipped cream would be enough to turn off the normal human — let alone the fact that it’s ejaculated from a communal dildo. It’s unsanitary. It’s disgusting. It’s unthinkable.

Oh yeah. I was all over that shiz like — well, I mean, consider the source material and write your own joke. (Seriously, Mom, STOP READING.) Unfortunately, before I could ask Kiss-Ducker to order the shot to “surprise me with,” a pair of flamboyant midwestern dudes shrieked out their own order for a Lewinsky. The bar staff mumbled dramatically for twenty minutes (“un hombre?!“) before they served him his heart’s desire:

Um, can we please elect a first female president who gets her own sex scandal so we can have equal-opportunity grody novelty bar shots?!

“Wait a minute!” I shrieked to Kiss-Ducker. “That’s what I was nervous about?! Shit, I could whistle Battle Hymn of the Republic with that in my mouth.”

It was a carefree, cocky TKOG who, twenty minutes later, feigned meekness as the bartender blindfolded her. (“It’s my birthday!” I explained halfheartedly to a group of American sororstitutes who’d overheard Kiss-Ducker’s order. “My friend told me she got me a special shot. I wonder what it is?!”) I mean, okay, the hygiene isn’t fantastic, but whatever, guys. I got this.

The weight of the whole bar’s attention was like a wet wool coat on my skin. Oiled-Up Bartender spun me so my back was to the bar, then leaned his lips all the way into my right ear. You. Are Monica Lewinsky. I am President Bill Clinton. You have concerns about your career… Then he spun me around and pushed down my lips to meet:

See that nose on the right-hand side? Yeah, that's mine.

You guys, I’m not going to harp, but let me just say that the fact the dildo is BIGGER THAN THE BARTENDER’S HEAD is no trick of perspective. It was wider than anything I’ve ever considered. Like, go ahead and touch the tip of your middle finger to your thumb. Now move it out an inch. Now another inch. Haha, no, I’m just fuckin’ making conversation, kids – go ahead and curl up your hand into a fist and punch the back of your throat like fifteen times. Yeah. That’s what we’re talking about.

The crowd laughed at first, but as the shot went on (and on and on and on), the chuckles faded to nervous titters to the heavy silence of a group, en masse, pointedly ignoring the grotesque. Finally, by a small miracle, the beer can was empty and I could flee upstairs to clear beer off of every square inch of my friggin’ torso. And thus ends the tale of the Lewinsky.

Except not really. For the next two days, I could barely swallow. At first I assumed it was some sort of communal dildo fungal throat disease. Then, in a moment of exasperation, I explored the back of my throat with my fingers and realized that the dildo had punched a hole through the back of my damn throat. The soft skin behind my uvula felt and looked like the gapped seam of a pillowcase around a hole that stuffing’s coming out of.

Oh, and now I probably have esophageal herpes. Woooooooooooooo!

The Verdict: Yeah, I — I don’t know why I thought this would be funny to do. Turns out that just because something is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and sort of NC-17-ily cinematic doesn’t mean you ought to do it.

Also, if some of you noticed the date today and halfway through this entry started smirking to yourself, I see what’s going on here — she’s just trying to fool us into believing that she’s tasteless enough to do something this horrific!, then, uh, fooled you into thinking I was joking?