Friday, December 31, 2010

My Favorite Mistakes (in no particular order)

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To this day, every time I see gefilte fish on the end cap at the grocery store, the last thing I think of is Passover, or Ramadan, or the holiday that would celebrate the return of Jesus (would the man just return already so they can stop waiting?!).  Instead I think of a particular dating faux pas.  The Jewish man that was so stingy he wouldn't tip a new york cabbie, but would spend $700 on rejected ties at a Hugo Boss sample sale.  Recently my husband and I saw an old dusty jar of gefilte fish at a discount store in town.  Colin made a point to inform me that gefilte fish is a mix of pike, carp, and whitefish (the cheapest fish, ironic? ...I warned you of my offensiveness).  Not to mention it is pickled in a delicious jellied sauce.  The concoction sounded just as appetizing as my jew ex-boyfriend did.   Moving on.  I've really only been in love with two people in my life.  Real love, not the love that makes you impulsively buy expensive lingerie, cook steak every night, and wait by the phone with heart palpitations when it doesn't ring only to send a blank text after enough time has passed to get them to respond.  Then pretend like you didn't know it happened, but now that they texted you back...game on!  Once I went on a gaggle of dates with a dentist. I was pretty confident with my perfectly straight pearly whites that he complimented on the first date.  That is, until he started buying me floss and banned my red wine drinking habit in fear it would stain my teeth for eternity.  No one bans my red wine. No one. But that wasn't why it didn't work out.  I think it might have been the upper east side Central Park parental-funded apartment complete with its own maid service.  And by maid I mean Mom. Every Sunday morning she would make a 2 hour commute for cleaning, sweeping, dusting, and laundry.  He was a 30-something.   And I felt like I was the main character in a bad lifetime movie titled My Mother My Lover: A Story of Jealousy and Murder.  The Doctor wasn't any better.  In fact I think he was a recluse...or maybe he just didn't want to be seen in public with me?  Either way, finding a jackpot of porno in all forms was enough to send me running down 2nd avenue the entire 94 blocks home.  After a string of bad romances, you start to convince yourself you are dating the wrong men. Why not try the other side of the track for your forever after?  So I went after the mega nerd. He worked IT at American Express. We met at a local bar.  I ordered a martini, he ordered chocolate milk.  I prayed he was merely a member of AA and not a juvenile that would leave me with a petifile complex. As soon as we sat down he fumbled for 5 minutes trying to open his jammed briefcase with papers coming out all the sides.  Eventually he pulled out a NY Times from earlier that week.  He had the crossword page bookmarked.  With complete duress he told me how he has been stressing for days over his last unanswered question. He asked me if I knew the capital of Kyrgyzstan.  Let me see...I graduated from fashion school.  I can tell you that your sweater vest is horrendous with your corduroys and the Christmas socks that you are wearing in March are questionable, but the capital of your unheard of country?  Think not.  Thank god for my ability to come up with unique and crafty excuses as to why I must urgently leave.  If I remember correctly I think I said I had left a quiche in the oven on high. No one likes burnt quiche.  Awkward. And of course, as most people can attest to, there is always the one person they dated where they swear they were hypnotized, drunk, drugged, delirious, and only responsible for their actions because of some shit similar to the story line in Weekend at Bernie's.  For me that happened to be a marijuana addicted, alcoholic, jobless oompa loompa.  Not my best move. I hate that god damn thing that happens when your body tricks you into forcing someone ugly to be not as ugly.  My only excuse is my desire to date up and down the totem pole.  He was the bottom part.  I like to think of that as my "blue period".  It worked for Picasso.  Gefilte fish is starting to look much more appetizing now.  Luckily, and I mean that in every sense of the word, I was freed from the overpopulated and dreadfully discouraging world of dating. Thank you dear husband.  I have hung up my name tag, left my baggage at the door, and entered the world of domestication.  And let me tell you, it sure beats dating, but a typical domesticated housewife I am not.