From Two to Zero

In six days or less, too! I’m checking with the Guinness foks, but I think it may be a new record.
Guy One (the nice one) went first. He wanted to come visit me at work. Considering I had met him once, briefly, at a bar and would have never even given him my phone number if hadn’t come with references, I thought it would be really unprofessional to bring him to work with me. I wasn’t going to mention it and hope he forgot it, but he asked me on Monday and I told him the truth.
Haven’t heard from him since.
Guy Two (the asshole) was a little trickier. He came back into town for a brief time and was there but not there. Something was up.
That something was his on-again, off-again girlfriend. They were kind of off-again when we started talking. But she’s good. Oh, she’s real good. She lost her job and started freaking out and guess who she turned to to get through the crisis.
Guy Two didn’t have a chance.
What pissed me off about the whole scenario was not so much that I lost either one of them. Because let’s be realistic. If either one was the right guy, then I wouldn’t be writing this right now. Truth be told, if either one of them was the right guy, then I wouldn’t be worried about the other one. But I really didn’t like how I felt used. Both guys had other agendas. It wasn’t about me. It was about filling a specific need in their lives. And when that need either wasn’t fulfilled (in the case of Guy One) or wasn’t necessary any longer (Guy Two) then Goodbye Hopeful.
Sometimes (and this has been a huge issue in the past year), I feel like I have the Mark of Cain on my forehead and it shines like a huge beacon to needy men around Manhattan. Need someone to get you through the long, lonely nights in a war zone? Call Hopeful! Need to work on your career? Hopeful’s good for advice. Need a beard, because you’re 33 and your friends are all wondering why they’ve never met a single one of your girlfriends? Hopeful loves the gays! Trying to come down off a coke addiction? Hopeful will put a wet compress to your head and hold you while you shake.
Jesus Christ. What is wrong with me?
My mom attributes it to the fact that I curse. She says guys are “old-fashioned” when it comes to cursing. I wish it was as simple as my filthy mouth, but I really don’t think my love of the word fuck is what’s attracting the needy weirdoes.
I think my big mistake in all this is that I genuinely care. When Guy One was worried about his daughter (oh, yeah, he’s a single dad to boot), I assured him that he was doing a great job raising her and that she had amazing people around her so he shouldn’t beat himself up for not being able to provide her with the white-picket-fence dream. When Guy Two was getting shot at, I made a point of checking in with him and of making him check in with me, so he knew somebody wanted to make sure that the only hole he should be concerned about was the huge asshole he was turning out to be.
In the last post, I talked about how all girls want is the asshole, the guy they can’t have, but I’m realizing this week that guys are the same way. You don’t want the nice girl. You want the bitch. The one who could care less if you got shot in the ass or if your daughter wound up on the pole.
When it comes to matters of love, is it all about the thrill of the hunt? And, once someone resigns themselves to becoming the prey, do we all just sniff the carcass and walk on to fresh meat?

You Can’t Always Want What You Get

There are two men in my life right now. That alone is worth posting about, but the two men pose a very interesting dilemma.
These two guys, they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Guy One is sweet and nice and wants to be good at me. He calls me to tell me that he’s going to be in the middle of nowhere and may not be able to call, but he’s going to try. He doesn’t ever want me to think he’s not interested. He wants to take me on nice dates and have fun and just be my boyfriend. He’s got a great job and a great life and he’s looking for a great girl to complete the circle.
Guy Two has no interest in commitment. He just wants to do nasty things to me in bed.
Guess which one I’m hoping calls tonight?
I’m hoping that my visceral reaction to Guy Two is just a reaction to AJ’s only wanting to snuggle and that I’m not completely screwed up. Don’t worry if you’re snickering. I’m not really buying it either.
Guy Two doesn’t call on a regular basis. He hardly calls at all. He’s a big text-message and email fan. Part of it is the hours that we work, but the bigger part is he doesn’t want to get too close.
Guy Two knows just how to be sweet enough to keep me intrigued. He asked me to email him a picture (oh, to really blow a hole in my “not completely screwed up” theory, Guy Two is currently across the world, reporting from a war zone. Did I mention Guy Two and I work together? I rule!). He makes sure to deal with my neurosis and calls when he leaves on life-endangering missions and every time he lands after getting on a plane. He spends 12-14 hours a day talking with me.
But Guy Two isn’t looking for a girlfriend. Guy Two is looking for Osama.
Why is it that the biggest turn-off to me is a guy who’s interested? There is nothing that peaks my interest more in knowing that I might not be able to get what I want. If I have to fight for your interest, if I have to pull out all my tricks to keep you entertained, then you’re the one that I want.
Just want me to be me? Chances are we aren’t going to make it to the fourth date. The attention’s fun for a while, but I’m going to get bored faster than a hummingbird with ADD.
For all I preach about how all I want is a nice guy to be good to me, I really don’t. I want an asshole. I want an asshole so badly I can taste it. I want somebody who won’t call when they say they will, somebody who won’t commit, somebody who lives in a place, physically and emotionally, that is completely inaccessible. And then I want to bitch to all my friends that I’m not being treated fairly and why can’t I find a nice guy? But I had the nice guy. Had him in the palm of my hand. I didn’t want him. There was an asshole around and he distracted me like something shiny.
I know I’m not the only one out there. I know a couple, friends of friends, where the girl is the sweetest, cutest person I know and the guy she’s been dating for a year and a half doesn’t want to admit he’s in a relationship because he’s too full of himself to realize he’s never going to do better. In fact, he should be thanking his favorite deity every day that he got somebody this good. But he treats her like shit and she chases him around like a puppy dog and that’s how their relationship works. I always look at the two of them and say, “Why won’t she dump his sorry ass? She’s so perfect, she can do much better.” And then I go lust after whatever asshole isn’t interested in me at the moment.
What is it that’s so attractive about the asshole? I wish I knew. Usually, they’re good-looking and they know it. They just exude confidence. They are charismatic to a fault. They can make you feel like the most important person in the room when you’re around them and, when they take it away, it’s like coming down off a high. You spend the rest of the next few years trying to get back to that original high. The one that made you feel like you were queen of the world.
Nice guy? Well, he’s not so great-looking. He’s cute, but he’s never the drop-dead-gorgeous that asshole is. He’s usually smarter than asshole, but not as charismatic. And he definitely lacks the confidence asshole’s got. He walks around wondering how in the hell he got so lucky with a girl who can clearly do better.
It doesn’t take much time for that attitude to pervade the relationship. Pretty soon, you’re both wondering how the hell he got so lucky. Maybe it’s time you try to find that something better. And so you blithely go chasing after asshole, heart on a platter, free for the stomping.