ickis.com / Julene Horowitz

I think I’m over trying to scope out boys in coffee shops. I start out wondering what they read (if at all) but quickly move on to shallower topics… like their ability to grow chest hair. My eyes wander from baby faced 20-something’s to guys clearly unaware of how far their silver fox status will take them if they quit being so self-conscious about it. I crack jokes about varying creepy preferences of mine, but lately I’m paying more attention to what kinds of guys it is that I’m looking at.

Turns out, I have less of a set “type” than I thought. I don’t bother checking out dudes with shaved heads, throat tattoos or lobes big enough for me to put four fingers through. (My inner comparison of that last bit to fisting doesn’t escape me.) Looking around, there’s fewer would’s in here than I would have been able to spot a few years ago. Has my taste changed that much or are people getting uglier? I want to believe I am becoming more refined in my choice in men, but the second option is equally as likely.

I watch women a lot too, though I’m pickier and harsher in my judgments of them as they walk by. There’s fat-faced high school girls abound in here, and the low-budget edgy dye jobs are a red flag that I don’t need to go there. (I learned this lesson the hard way about five years ago. Remind me and I’ll tell you guys about it later.)

A girl just walked in the front door–she bears slight resemblance to a coke-y Lohan. I’m feeling it until the guy two steps behind her makes jealous eye contact, so I go back to pretending to read something really interesting on my laptop’s screen. My sexual preference has always been fairly fluid, but I suspect I’m years past wanting to actively sleep with women… thinking about, however, it is a different story.

That’s precisely one ‘would’ in four hours of people watching, by the way. I know it’s not that I’m not interested in looking, but everything I’ve been looking at hasn’t been all that interesting. Well, maybe interesting to the kinds of girls I mentioned in my last paragraph but not to me.

Trust me, I’ve been evaluating my options. The rockabillies are too chubby, the punk rock boys too thin. The older dudes are in no way comparable to foxes, the younger dudes could use a bath and a box of Nicorette. All those formerly delicious bros are packing beer guts and hipster boys have no visible package in their skinny jeans.

Picky, picky, picky. It’s not like this was intentional, but I suspect my sex drive is on sabbatical for a while. I’m not bothered by the idea at all, but it’d be nice to see someone worth making eyes at on occasion.

Then again, between work, websites and my anal-retentive work out schedule I don’t have much time to ‘entertain’. Unless by ‘entertain’ we mean spending hours writing by myself in coffee shops where I stare at (ugly) boys.

For the record, I will probably never stop having enough time for that.

I know lots of you hate John Mayer and think I’m totally retarded for liking him. That’s fine, because particular gems of man-to-man advice like the one below should not be ignored.

Don’t get me wrong, we all can appreciate those good intentions. However, they don’t say that the road to hell is paved with them for without reason. If you can be direct while still using tact (which is every bit as difficult as it sounds) you will have hit the goldmine.

A few weeks back I found this: 8 reasons to move on from a relationship/dating experience. However, the list seemed to be missing a few key points I wind up bringing up when counseling my female friends about the lame dudes they go out with. I’m posting my additions here for all of you ladies (and fellas) that need to clue in about when to say fuck it & search for Mr. Right elsewhere.

1. If he doesn’t call without you having to ask, move on.
Jesus this is so true. I hate the “who’s going to call/text/IM to initiate hanging out” game–it’s awkward and frankly, after high school these types of power games need to end. More importantly, why should you have to ask someone to call?

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Actually I’m pretty sure this is the perfect explanation as to why people don’t make it past date three with me, really. (However I have trained myself not to create or answer any “list” type questions. It’s for everyone’s benefit, I promise.) I still love Henry Rollins, and I feel all the better for knowing that he can probably get himself off in less than five minutes. Ah, romance!

I got three phone calls in rapid succession recently from a number I didn’t recognize. I don’t know about you, but I don’t answer numbers that aren’t already in my address book unless I’ve recently put something up on Craigslist. When I called the number back I hit an obnoxious voicemail of a recorded song instead of identifying phrase telling me whose phone I’d just rung up. (I thought that went out with pagers around the year 2000, but maybe I’m just out of the loop.)

Here’s the text message exchange that followed:

UnIdentified caller: Hey, how are you?
Me: Uhhh, who is this?
UnIdentified caller: This is Samson, we had lunch once.
Me: Oh, I deleted your number. You should do the same thing with mine!

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You guys have read about my adventures in e-dating and have clearly noticed the fact that few dudes last past three or four outings. One time I met a dude off the internet, and he was actually pretty cool. Attractive, smart, fun in bed; the trifecta of a good time. He was going to be leaving end of January for military shit overseas and things were flowing appropriately for that type of separation to be looming in the future. While it seemed like something legit could result, I wasn’t worried about it; I figured he’d leave and that would be the end of that.

I left town for New Years, and our communication became increasingly infrequent. This was the kind of guy whose phone died while he was out with friends so he borrowed his friend’s phone to keep texting (and then call) me; not responding to a text letting him know I was back in town for several weeks seems like a textbook case of loss of interest to me.

I’m a strong believer that ladies should not chase men or buses. When dudes flake I wind up putting all that energy into getting shit done. DMAC, m’dears. I was bummed that I didn’t get the last few weeks of quality romping out of it, but that was about it.

Until the Mormon (okay – former Mormon, but it’s what he’s being referred to for storytelling purposes) sent me a text in response to the last thing I had sent him a few weeks prior. Guys out there, that’s some super ballsy shit to try to pull with any girl. We always remember how long it’s been since the last time we spoke, and you acting like you haven’t been ignoring us adds insult to injury. So I sent him a sassy message which pretty clearly let him know to fuck off.

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