The Only Man I've Ever Loved

For nearly all of my adult life, I’ve been single. It used to really bother me. I used to think to myself, What is so different about me than other girls? A lot, I eventually discovered.

You could be thinking, You’re probably just ugly, and you sound kinda mean. Eh, you’re only half right there. But it turns out a lot of guys like cold-hearted bitches, so that can’t be the reason.

Part of it could be because I was essentially raised by a pack of wolves, AKA my close friends. I can remember as far back as preschool associating myself primarily with boys. No, it wasn’t one of those transgender gigs where I would cut my hair short and dress like a boy. In fact, I refused to wear anything but pink in preschool. I still can’t figure that one out, since now I despise the color.

I hit puberty at a very young age. I had acne and a regular period at the age of 10. I had size DD boobs by the time I was 14. (Now THAT, Mother Nature is fucked up! Thanks a million.) Needless to say, I had a poor self-image during that time since I felt that the only attention I got from boys was due to my ta-tas. At this point, I still surrounded myself with the opposite sex. I played their games, like kick the can, hacky sack, and kick and catch (all very dynamic games, I assure you). I adopted their language. Every word had “-age” tacked onto the end of it. For example, “bikage” meant riding our bikes and “prank callage” meant making prank calls. And alas, I followed them into the malevolent jaws of delinquency.

We really weren’t bad kids. We just did things that are generally, shall we say, frowned upon by society. Some of our nightly hobbies included ghost riding bikes, egging houses and passing cars, stealing and assaulting innocent stuffed animals, trespassing, stealing lawn ornaments off of our neighbors’ yards, and setting various items on fire (trash cans, telephone poles, and an abandoned snowplow, to name a few). Autumn was a particularly fruitful time of year for us, since there were so many pumpkins to smash, scarecrows to burn, and leaf bags to cut open and throw up in the air.

We never got caught, at least not by the police. Every one of us used a code name (mine was Snookums) and we had police scanners. Not to mention the backyard shortcuts we knew like the backs of our hands if we had to run from the cops on foot (which totally happened a countless number of times). If I may say so, we were a pretty badass band of 14 year-olds. We thought we were unstoppable. Nay, invincible.

What does my dance with delinquency have to do with me being single as an adult? Quite a bit, I think. Delinquency gave me this sense of power and attitude. I learned to find humor at the misfortune of others. My emotions gradually became more and more desensitized. Furthermore, this malicious bond between my friends and I truly made me value their companionship and non-romantic affection. We were like a family. A twisted, fucked-up, pyromaniac family. We had sleepovers, we knew each other’s parents by their first names, and we trusted each other. As I grew older, I began to fear any kind of relationship with the opposite sex that differed from that which I had with “my boys,” as I would call them. These boys, by the way, are still some of my closest friends to this day. Oddly enough, most of them also seem to suffer from eternal celibacy.

So naturally, I blossomed into a horrible, tyrannous, monster of a teenage girl. I had a radical attitude and an enormous ego. I generally disrespected any authority figure. Like any teenager, I rebelled against my parents. But my teenage relationship with my parents is another thing that highly correlates with my inability to keep a boyfriend.

My parents, Jebus bless them, have always managed to provide for my siblings and I, but have rarely demonstrated what a healthy relationship should consist of. Aside from being drunks (happy drunks, but nonetheless drunks), my parents can hardly stand to be in each other’s presence, or have a discussion without it turning into an argument. I once asked my mother why she married my father. Her reply was, “Well, things were a lot different before we had kids.”

Aye, aye, aye! Where do I start with a statement like that? I didn’t know whether to laugh at my mother or slap her across the face. There is so much here that is so incredibly wrong. That is like saying you jumped out of a plane without a parachute because you didn’t think it would be dangerous. Did you honestly think there would be no consequences for having kids, Ma? Really? Did you not think your daily life would drastically change for the next 25+ years? I guess you thought we’d magically raise ourselves to be responsible, upstanding citizens and that you and Dad definitely wouldn’t need to devise a game plan, nevermind agree on how to discipline us or what to cook for dinner. No, don't worry about any of that. You guys just keep knockin' those drinks back. We got this.

Needless to say without going into too much detail, life at home was a bit volatile. And my teenage attitude only added fuel to the blazing fire that was my household. My path was a detrimental one of emotional wreckage. I eventually got help for these anger issues and, frankly, I’m a better person for the whole experience. I’m not sure if you could tell or not, but I still harbor some resentment toward my parents for half-assing my upbringing.

It is this resentment that affects my inability to have a romantic relationship. I have this intense fear of ending up like Mom and Dad. Can you blame me?

So let’s fast forward a little to college. Freeeeeeeee-dommmmmm!!! I’m 18, on my own, and I’ve discovered sex. Not only sex, but I’ve realized something that has probably changed me forever: I can manipulate men. Easily, at that! I used to play a “game” that would amaze the females in my dorm hall. I would have my eye on a particular guy. A guy in our dorm building, a hottie in Chemistry class, or the guy who always worked at the computer lab on Friday afternoons. And I’d see how long it took me to get him in bed. It never took very long. I soon became the envy of every girl in my dorm hallway.

OK, I know what you’re thinking. So what? College guys are damn easy. Agreed. The important thing is that I began to think of myself differently than I ever had before. I felt like a Siren, a woman so beautiful and powerful that men were instantly weak under her spell. To set the record straight, I was not the slutty college girl who slept with pretty much anyone. I was the slutty college girl who was no give and all take; who enticed specific individuals, chewed them up, spit them out, then laughed about it before choosing my next victim. I didn’t feel like the victim anymore like I did at home. I was the predator. And I fell in love with myself. I carried this newfound self-image with me into adulthood.

In my early 20s, I avoided relationships at all costs. Men didn’t seem worth anything to me, other than the obvious anatomical advantage. The only men I valued and respected were my close friends. But after so long, I began to feel a bit empty inside. I thought that I should give relationships an honest try. I found myself surrounded by a bunch of meatheads in south Florida, so I tried online dating.

Oh. My. God. What a waste of time and money. Seriously, I got matched up with the nerdiest guys on dating sites!! I was immediately unimpressed with my matches, but I was trying with all my might to keep an open mind. One guy actually looked attractive, so we started talking via e-mail and decided to meet. We made plans to eat at a local Japanese place, since we both loved sushi.

So I pulled up to the restaurant and got out of the car, looking around for my date. At first I didn’t see anyone who looked like him. So I kind of nervously stood around by the door, shifting my weight from left to right, waiting for him to show up. Great, I got stood up. This is what I get for thinking this would actually work out, I thought.

Then he appeared. There he was: the kid who was unmistakably the last one picked in PE class every time. He was several inches shorter than he portrayed himself to be, a little on the shrimpy side, wore thick-rimmed glasses, and had a very large forehead. More or less a shorter Screech Powers. He looked only vaguely like his pictures online. I wanted to run away. But I didn’t. We ate dinner and engaged in small talk, and he was actually a really nice guy who I think, intellectually and emotionally, had a lot to offer a woman.

After dinner, we went bowling. As soon as we got our lane, I B-lined to the bar and asked him what kind of beer he likes. “Oh, I’m not much of a drinker. But I’ll have what you’re having,” he said. What a sport. God, I felt like a drunk. I downed three beers in the time it took him to drink one. I then continued to talk about how much I enjoy drinking, describing beer as one of my passions and referring to Samuel Adams as “the only man I’ve ever loved.” Maybe I was subconsciously trying to appear unattractive to him, in case he wasn’t picking up on my vibes. If I was, it worked. After the date he e-mailed me saying he didn’t think we were a good match. Gee, was it that obvious?

So online dating was a bust. I realized that I just might not be relationship material and I might be single for the rest of my life. This does not upset me. I still think like this today, and I’ve not only accepted the idea but embraced it. I like having boy toys rather than boyfriends. I'm OK with the fact that I've never loved a man like I love Sam. Romance may find me someday, but I’m not willing to put forth the energy to chase after it. Instead, I’m focused on putting myself first and living my life to the fullest: traveling the world, making friends, working hard, and partying harder. As long as I have a plethora of idiotic yet attractive meatheads to take advantage of, I’ll be just fine. ;)