Mind Your Own God Damn Business

Actually, that's pretty much what it's like. This is why I never come within twenty feet of an industrial taffy puller without pants on.

First of all, I need to re-emphasize how effective antiperspirant is in preventing jock itch, chafing, and all around unpleasantness when applied to the balls. If I had known how much my quality of life would improve with a few swipes of the Right Guard over my junk after applying it to my armpits, I would’ve been doing it for years.

Seriously. It’s like I have a whole new set of balls. Sure, they still hang like they’re made out of taffy, but they smell really sporty and fresh while they’re doing it. I assume. I mean, It’s not like I’ve been smelling my own balls. What, are you a cop or something? STOP BROWBEATING ME.

Moving on.

I was cleaning today, and while my brain was on autopilot I had a strange, random memory.

I have this sweet routine with girls.

Sometimes, a girl will be into me. She will send me clear, obvious signals that she is interested. I will have no idea that this is what’s happening. Oftentimes, I am attracted to the girl in question, but I simply assume that she is being nice or having pity on me (This is for two reasons: first of all, I have some weird self esteem issues. Second of all, my radar isn’t finely tuned enough to tell the difference between the way that girls interact with me when they’re into me and when they’re just being nice. It all looks exactly the same to me. I don’t want to freak anyone out, so instead of trying to make a move, I err on the side of “She’s probably just buying me beers because she’s friendly and she’s telling me to put my hand on her boobs because she’s drunk”. True story.)

Either way, the point is that short of tackling me, showing me a powerpoint presentation and drawing me a diagram, there’s nothing you can do to make me understand that you’re attracted to me and not just a nice person. No hard feelings.

After spending a few weeks, maybe a few months sending signals that I should be trying to make a move, the girl in question decides that I must just not be into her and moves on.

At about this point, I suddenly realize that I was getting hit on, but by then, it’s too late. Maybe I flail around a little bit and try to salvage things, but it’s never worked.

This is my little routine. It’s what I do. I’m consistent if nothing else.

Anyway, that’s not the story. I write about my ineptitude with girls all the time, so it’s really nothing new to anyone who’s ever read anything that I’ve ever written before. It’s just a type of human interaction that I’ve never quite been able to figure out.

So, when I was in…2nd grade, I think, there was this chick with red hair that I was totally into, and she was into me. She was always pulling my hair and talking trash to me. I was always pumped up about this. We went through this routine for a couple of weeks. My Dad was the art teacher at my elementary school, and I even asked him to put her next to me in art.

Then, one day at recess, one of her friends ran up to me and asked me if I liked the girl in question.

In hindsight, it seems likely that if a friend of the girl who had been flirting with me asked me if I was into that girl, it was probably because my little red haired friend wanted to get her hands on my tiny, hairless balls. At the time, however, I assumed that it was because they wanted to embarrass me and use the knowledge of my crush as a tool for blackmail and humiliation. As always, I also didn’t realize that all of the flirting that she had been doing was flirting. Plus, let’s not forget the fact that I’m a pussy.

So I said no.

After that, things weren’t the same with me and that girl. No hair pulling, no hanging out with me. There was still some trash talking, but it wasn’t really good natured like it had been before.

I had completely forgotten about all of this until today, and until now I never really connected the dots on the whole “she had the hots for you, and all you had to do to make sure that you two were doing it 2nd grade-style by snack time was tell the truth when her friend asked if you liked her.”

"Look, you asked for it this way. If it's so goddamned important to you that you don't have a prolapsed rectum, maybe you should have said something BEFORE I put the costume on. Now help me find the lube and my sword."

Don’t ask me what 2nd grade style is. Maybe holding hands? Slipping her the tongue with my Go-Bots mask on? Shoving a ninja turtle in her butt? I don’t know. I’m not a fucking doctor. All I know is that if you ask me to do it with you 2nd grade-style without explaining what that means, you should be aware of the very real possibility that you will be making a very awkward trip to the emergency room later that night.

I didn’t think that my struggles to interact with people with vaginas had started until I hit puberty, so it was kind of startling to realize that I had begun my pattern at a much earlier age than I previously realized (the gap between 2nd grade and puberty for me was even further than you might think – by the time I had visible hair on my chin, my friend Dan looked like Earnest Hemingway).

It made me wonder a little bit if that moment on recess in 2nd grade was some kind of turning point for me; if I’d said “Yes” when her friend asked me, would it have started a different pattern for me than the one I tend to fall into now? Would my regrets of missed opportunities be replaced with regrets of awkward morning-afters and meaningless one night stands that ultimately left me feeling hollow? Would there be a girl out there, somewhere, who to this day would flinch whenever someone so much as mentioned teenage mutant ninja turtles?

Now that I'm looking at this picture, I'm realizing that Abe and I have roughly the same posture, hairline and eyebrows. I'm apparently a natural at casting.

I feel like I’ve just described the plot to a shitty late 80′s early 90′s movie. We could cast Abe Vigoda as adult me, and have him wish upon a haunted charm that he bought from a creepy gypsy earlier that day that he had said yes instead of no on the playground that fateful day twenty years ago.

Then, he’ll wake up the next day, back in 2nd grade. We can cast a young Fred Savage as childhood me. He’ll say yes to the girl, and it’ll seem much better at first, but then at about the halfway point he’ll decide that ultimately, he was happier with his life the way it was. He’ll spend a quarter of the movie frantically trying to figure out how to get things back to the way they were, he’ll find the old gypsy just in time, he will go back to living his life the way he was before, more satisfied knowing that the alternative wasn’t all that he had thought it was cracked up to be. Roll credits.

Are you paying attention, Hollywood? I just described a shitty movie that will be panned by critics and make you six or seven hojillion dollars. Find a way to shoehorn Eugene “I’ll keep starring in these shitty ‘American Pie’ spinoffs as long as you stupid movie executive motherfuckers keep writing me checks” Levy into the movie somewhere, and you have a bona-fide hit.

Since my life isn’t an 80′s movie (or if it is, it’s a very, very boring one that has far more death metal and masturbating than most of its peers), I’ll never know if that’s how it would all play out. It seems unlikely to me – although there are exceptions, I tend to think that it’s stupid to to assign single moments like that as turning points that somehow drastically effect the outcome of your life. I think it’s pretty unlikely that I would’ve magically grown a spine if I’d said yes that day. Although I’m sure she’s over it if she even remembers it, I feel worse about the fact that I probably hurt that girl’s feelings. Either way, it’s in the past, now, and there’s not really any way to tell what would’ve happened if it had gone down any differently.

But, if I wake up tomorrow, look in the mirror and see seven year old Fred Savage looking back at me, I’ll be sure to tell you what happens.

See you Wednesday, bitches.