Friday The 13th

Friday The 13th

What it's Friday the 13th??? What better date to spend a post talking about ex-boyfriends. I was going to do an Ex-Boyfriend Walk of Fame complete with pictures but decided I'm too lazy just now. Besides, it would just look like this:

This is Gerald, we broke up because we fought too much.
This is Tony, we broke up because we fought too much.
This is Gil, we broke up because we fought too much.
This is Jim, we broke up because we fought too much.

Just kidding, I never went out with anyone named Jim. Not to my knowledge at least. I believe I casually dated a guy named Jimmy once but it's far enough back that the details are hazy. My main issue with past relationships is that when fighting, I lack that mechanism that tells you what you shouldn't say. Big surprise there. Guys don't take "You know what, I don't even give a shit about you. You could fall off a cliff tomorrow and I wouldn't care" very well. I mean it's not like that was ever true. I'm not really a sociopath. I would have cried for them. I cry when Bruce Willis dies at the end of Armageddon for God's sake. Of course, Harry Stamper did save the world.

I think Geo and I work so well together because he's learned the best rule to Dating Riss which is "Do not engage." I think it's a rule only someone in their late twenties could have learned. There's no way you're telling some 19-year-old guy whose girlfriend just mouthed off to him that he should save the snipy comeback. In fact, at the beginning of our relationship, my fights with Geo were off-the-wall. He used to bitch that he never had fights like that, not even when he told his ex-girlfriend that he banged her best friend. We would literally scream at each other for awhile and then he'd leave the house, once or twice escorted by the telephone or whatever book I was reading. After awhile though, the fights stopped becoming insane.

It pisses me off to no end sometimes, but what he does works. When Geo and I fight over something stupid, instead of letting it escalate into a screaming match he can't possibly win because it's me, he just shuts down. He doesn't change his opinion or back down, but he doesn't argue with me either. He just stops participating. And no matter how hard I goad him or try to bully him into re-engaging, he doesn't. And at the time it's infuriating (I mean INFURIATING), but the stupid argument can't go anywhere with just one of us arguing. So it dies and after a few minutes, usually an hour tops, I just stop caring about it and we go on like usual.

In fact, it even has a prohibitive effect that some of my exes probably would have paid good money for. I actually refrain from picking stupid fights with Geo now, because I don't want to be annoyed later on. I mean oh my God. The guy is normally talkative when it's just us and things are good. He loves to tell me all the things he did at work, the things he saw, what so and so said. But when we're fighting he literally says like 3 words every 10 minutes. And trying to pull those three words out of him is an excruciating experience. "Pulling teeth" isn't even a good analogy. It's more like trying to pull a lemon in your mouth out through your nostrils. And the silence after I ask a pointedly leading question is almost painful.

Anyway this whole post started because I had a dream last night that I was in some gang and my gang leader (some guy who doesn't exist in real life to my knowledge) was best friends with this guy I dated in college, Ben. So Ben was all over the dream, but not in *that* way because you all know it is impossible for me to have those types of encounters in my dreams. Which is just as well anyway, since I would just wake up feeling guilty, the way I wake up pretend-mad at Geo when he bangs some Columbian drug lord's daughter in my dreams. Do you guys ever have a dream starring some person you don't know and you wake up and sit and try to figure out if he or she is a real person? That was me this morning. It took me about 4 sleep-drugged minutes to figure out that Ben's dream best friend/my gang leader isn't some person I'm acquainted with.

By the way, Ben and I stopped dating because we fought too much. Hey, I'll take all the blame for the fights with Gerald. The other guys are on their own because they know they have bad tempers too. And in Ben's case I learned a valuable lesson. Never date a guy whose ex-girlfriend has his name tattooed on her chest. Some other things I learned throughout my various dating experiences:

1. Never date a guy who's ex is short, unattractive, fat AND a member of a rival sorority.
2. Never date a guy who lives in a frat house and gets jealous when you talk to other guys.
3. Never date a guy who tries to kill you after prom, by weaving in and out of traffic going 130 m.p.h.
4. Never date a guy who's dad is a minister.
5. Never date a guy that popped the cherry of some girl who lives on your floor.
6. Never date a guy whose best friend's little sister is in love with him.
7. Never date a guy who listens to some cockblocker who tells him you're a ho (because said cockblocker is mad you're dating someone), but is too stupid to realize that if you really were a ho, you would have slept with him by now.
8. Never date a guy that refuses to wear a seat belt just to spite you.
9. Never date a guy that loves drugs more than he loves you.
10. Never date a guy who doesn't tell you that your own cousin is trying to bang him.
11. Never date a guy whose best friend is in love with him.
12. Never date a guy whose best friend is in love with you.
13. Never date a guy you're related to.

Just kidding on the last one, wanted to see if you all were still paying attention. And what you didn't know is that all of those rules were learned with the same guy. Just kidding. Ben and I made a cute couple though. I found this old pic a few weeks ago in Allan and Kuen's haunted attic:

Geo even said he's a good-looking guy. But Geo can say crap like that because his heterosexuality is etched in stone. Unless of course you've got $750,000. And for $1,500,000 both our heterosexualities go flying out the window.