It's my way to occasionally post about this or that engagement here, or about how, after that first engagement, I then got engaged to that same person four more times in about six months.
Romantic stuff. Things that bring a tear to your eye and which, if they didn't bring a tear to your eye, would mace you for the same effect. Results are what matter.
What I haven't done is provide the world (OK - not much of the world, but whatever part of the world happens to have a broken tivo right now) with a detailed look at the skills - the wit - the charm - that have brought me success in my romantic life.
This evening, and quite wistfully as this story does indeed fill me with wist, I'm going to invite you to learn from the master as I recount a night that is very dear to my little heart.
Her name was Sally Inkfinger. And I loved her.
It was a night in June of 2005. This means that I was still engaged to Aydika at the time which shows how much she trusted me, and also maybe why we got engaged five times during our relationship.
So, as I was saying, it was a night in June I had picked because my fiancee was at work. The first order of business in a relationship is respect, and I mean that for both your fiancee and whomever else you're dating. Respect all-round. Saying that you have respect for someone is a great get-out-of-guilt-free card.
But back to that soft June night.
I headed over to Sally Inkfinger's parent's house and negotiated a good curfew that was fair to all parties involved. I was invited by her father to come in and have a glass of Pepsi. I sat there at the dining table while the family looked at me as I sipped that Pepsi. Sally's one-eyed grandmother stared at me from across the room so hard you'd swear the woman had twice as many eyeballs as she did. Her glare was so tough I wanted to give her an honorary eye, but I didn't follow through because it looked like she wanted to bite me.
After I had sipped Pepsi in excess of my desire, I announced our departure: "Well, we gotta get going. You want Sally home soon, and I want to score, so I hope you don't mind if I take this Pepsi and your daughter for the road."
I received the silent assent of the majority of the family. Only the grandmother put a hex on me, which I thought wasn't very friendly. I mean, c'mon cyclops - Sally was seventeen. That's old enough to go to an R rated movie. So gimme a break.
Uptight.
They might not have been so judgmental had they seen my ride. When I'm picking up one of my ladies, I always take her away in a stretched Hummer limo chariot of love:
My main concern is safety. Should we need to drive through a lake to avoid an accident, I want to be prepared.
Some guys are all, "THAT'S BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!" but I'm clever and I always say, "YOUR ATTITUDE IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND I'M GOING TO REMOVE IT FROM YOU AND THEN THROW IT ON THE SIDEWALK AND IT WILL BE LITTER CAUSING BEAVERS TO DIE IN AFRICA SO DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AT LEAST I'M GIVING IT SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS BAD BOY!"
Women like this. Watching men argue about a vehicle is, according to a Gallup poll conducted in 200mumblemumblemumble, women love fights about trucks, and it makes them receptive to the rest of the mating process.
That's my first rule of dating: Memorize Gallup poll results that are relevant to your case. If you aren't sure ahead of time what you'll need to know, then just pick a year and memorize everything.
That's my first rule of dating: When preparing for a date, ensure that the work you do can also be put to use on Jeopardy.
Whatever anybody else feels about the things, Sally Inkfinger loved the limo. This seventeen year old woman was sophisticated. She threw off her backpack and luxuriated in the warm epileptic glow of the ceiling mounted strobe lights.
After a couple minutes, she tried to tell me something about herself, so I poured her a cognac, put a crazy straw in it, and handed it to her. Rule number one of dating is to avoid conversations. You'll find out things about her that you just don't want to know. Until you've listened to a couple of your dates talk, you wouldn't believe just how insincere, untrustworthy, petty, and self-important women are. They're all "Oh, feelings, oh..." and you're all, "BORING."
When Sally finished her glass of cognac, she talked without giving me a chance to stop her. It was going to be THAT kind of a date.
"Where are we going?"
"My place."
"Oh. Well, wouldn't it be fun to-"
"No."
My first rule of dating is to control the itinerary. Who knows what kind of stupid restaurants you might wind up at if you let her decide what you're going to do. Anyway, if she only knew the delights that awaited you back home, she'd be happy to forego anything like "dining" or looking for a "romantic view" or other nonsense. That's all just crap printed in those secret female magazines that they read when they all go to the bathroom together in public places. I've always wondered why they don't go to the bathroom together at home. My theory is that there's only one toilet in any given public women's restroom, and it's very difficult to use, so they take turns operating the pulley system that suspends them in place while they "freshen up."
The limo driver dropped us off chez-moi. I led Sally in through the side entrance because there was this huge kitty litter tray blocking the main entry. It didn't start there - it slowly made its way over as a possum that had eaten my real cat pushed it farther and farther from the bathroom until it was in the cleanest part of the apartment, which was the entry. Apparently the possum didn't find the bathroom sanitary enough for its appropriated litter tray. Granted, it used the box to lure in other neighborhood cats which it then promptly ate, perhaps explaining why the possum, not wanting to sup amid unpleasant odors, sought cleaner ground, but still... An uninvited snob of a possum impersonating a cat it killed and ate doesn't even deserve to have its litter box on one of the more even parts of the bathroom floor, let alone in the lobby of my home. Fortunately, it's all water under the bridge now. That damn possum died two years ago, so the only thing left of its tenancy is the litter box, and that box isn't hurting anyone. I consider it part of the apartment now. The only reason I'd move it would be if I could get it unstuck, but the urine all around has hardened into a sort of amber over the years, cementing it to the floor. That aside, it really is a nice litter box, and I'm keeping it.
I closed the sliding door behind us, flipped a light switch, and then invited her to sit down. I had a table that was made of four stolen traffic cones with a road sign set on top. Women love it because it shows that I'm a rascal. They love it when I do crazy things like change the channel right in the middle of a show, change the channel again before I have a chance to see what I changed to, and then do this ten more times before finally going back to the show we were watching which seems to be ending with the words "To be continued..." on screen. This display of rascality sometimes excites women to such a state of arousal that they beat me with the remote control to set their wild horses free.
Rule number one in Rory's Book of Dating is: Change the channel. Don't matter what. Just change it. A lot.
It might surprise you to know this, but my first rule of dating is to establish intellectual dominance. This rule is easily remembered with the word EID. I forget why I called it that, but it helps me to remember I think.
You can do this differently, but what I did with Sally Inkfinger was bring out a recognized standardized test for intelligence called "Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars Edition." I have played this game with people who have done great things in life - amazing things - and none of them can beat me. Looks like I'm a little more amazing then all them.
Sally lost quickly. I didn't expect her to be so stupid. Her opinions of self worth had all been tinged with doubt. And rightly so, for the love of god. The correct answer to "Did Han shoot first?" is, as any remotely intelligent beast might know, absolutely NOT, "Who's Han?"
I rocked her. That's something I'll always cherish about Sally Inkfinger - I kicked her ass so bad at "Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars Edition." It's stuff like that which keeps married couples together for as long as months. The engine of love is fueled by cans of whoop-ass.
Following the "game" (it really is, like I said, a test of your intellectual superiority (or INFERIORITY if you're Sally Inkfinger! hahaha)) I used the clever psychological tactic of offering her sustenance. Trust me - all that losing makes a woman hungry. Feeding her at this point is wise, as she's going to need it to rebuild her strength for all TEN MINUTES of lovemaking this is all leading up to.
I led her out of the living room, into my study, through my smoking room, and into the kitchen. It's actually only two rooms, but the strangely grid-like mold patterns on the floor would say otherwise.
Now, as a woman, I expected she would want to make her own food. Normally, she would make food for her man, but as this was a special occasion, and as she was still downtrodden from having to face her own stupidity over an easy Han Solo question, I chose to give her the night off.
Cutting Ms. Inkfinger some slack over meal preparations worked out well for two reasons:
- It made me look like a really nice guy.
- Of all my many mold-delineated rooms, the kitchen was the last place I'd be stupid enough to search for food. If she could capture it, she was welcome to it.
Proper and well established domestic gender roles aside, Sally had a surprise in store for me:
"Do you cook?" she asked.
Gotta hand it to her. She was a real modern woman. This was unusual, and I like unusual, so I went for it.
Seriously - Do I cook?!
With a sweep of the arm, I referenced the wide array of cereals I had stacked up on the counter. They were all from health food stores and were ridiculously high in fiber.
Hell YES I cook.
I held one of the boxes up and shook it around a little to see if it enticed her. It was called "Enough Fiber in Each Bowl for Twenty Senior Citizens," and the photo on the front showed a very satisfied looking elderly gent looking down on a bowl of something that looked like Christmas for squirrels.
She looked apprehensively at the box. I continued to shake it, even putting a smile on my face to communicate that there was no danger in the consumption of this extremely high fiber cereal, but her unflattering grimace lived on. There was an issue here. I have a sixth or seventh sense about this stuff. Rule number one in dating is to always know what she's thinking better than she does and to use this information to your advantage.
This is why you need to know how to read women. She had a concern, and I knew how to address it.
I'm a cool character. I could handle this.
"Don't worry," I said, pointing, "The bathroom's right over there."
More happy-shaking.
"And I have lots of toilet paper."
Wink.
Shake-shake-shake!
She obviously felt better, as she started speaking again, which I found distasteful.
"Can we just go out for Chinese?"
Shake-shake-shake!
"Nope!"
Shake-shake-shake!
Finally giving in to the shakes, she chose the cereal that advertised, "It's like a PRESSURE HOSE of ACETONE for your INTESTINES!" but I don't think she saw because it was written in a small font on the bottom of the box next to the barcode in roughly the same color as the background it was printed on.
I poured her a bowl and handed her a spoon.
"Isn't something missing?" she asked.
"You didn't say 'Thank you.'"
"No - milk. I can't eat cereal without milk."
"Yes you can."
"No. I can't."
"Use your spoon."
"That's not what I mean. It's too dry. I don't want dry cereal."
She had a point. That's one reason I was so in love with Sally Inkfinger: she was a classy tart. A lesser woman would have face-planted the bowl and vacuumed dry cereal as though it was going to give her wealth beyond indigestion, which it most certainly would not. Indigestion is the only thing that would await such a foolish woman. Don't trust a woman who happily accepts a bowl of dry cereal.
Rule number one in dating: always make your woman's cereal wet.
I took the bowl from her, headed back to the kitchen, and came back with her cereal to order. She poked her spoon in it for a second.
"What's this?"
"What's what? You didn't want dry cereal. And you forgot to say 'Thank you' again."
"But... it's clear."
"Yep."
"And it's bubbling!"
"It's beer. Don't worry, though - it's lite beer. You won't put on any more weight than you already have. Not that it matters - those jeans couldn't possibly get any tighter."
Rule number one, gents: always pay the woman a compliment when she's whining.
"I don't want cereal in beer!"
As much as I loved her, enough is enough. My hospitality has limits.
I smacked the cereal, bowl, beer and all, onto the carpet.
"FINE. FINE! THEN YOU DON'T GET ANY CEREAL! OH MY GOD! JUMPIN' JEHOSEPHAT! AAAAGGGGHHH!"
I took a couple deep breaths, found my spiritual center, looked her in the eyes, and told her what's up.
"Look... I'm sorry you don't like my cooking and that you're going to go hungry for it. Let's forget about what happened and do something together that we both love."
"Sex?"
"Actually, I was thinking we could watch a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. Jolene Blalock is HOT!"
"I don't want to watch a stupid space show with Jelly Fratbock or whoever you said. I want to go home."
I kept my cool.
"FIRST IT WAS THE BEER CEREAL THAT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU... OH, YEAH, I GET THAT YOU DON'T LIKE MY COOKING, BUT DON'T EVEN GET ALL JEALOUS ABOUT JOLENE BLALOCK. THAT'S JOLENE EFFIN' BLALOCK!"
"What? I'm not jealous. I just-"
"Not JEALOUS? Are you KIDDING me? You obviously figured out that I was going to fantasize about her while we were making love. DIDN'T YOU. Oh my GOD - you're PSYCHIC, and you've been using it all night to get inside my head!"
"You're insane. I want to-"
"Insane? INSANE?! That's what you WANT me to think. Hang on, Inkfinger!"
I ran off to my study and returned a moment later. I anticipated her question.
"What are you wearing?"
"Ah-HAH! It's proof that you're psychic! If it didn't work, you could have read my thoughts and figured out what it was!"
"Figured out that you're one of these tinfoil hat people?"
"So, you recognize the armor of the psychic warrior! Nevertheless, you can't win now - your powers are NOTHING to me!"
Accepting her defeat, she picked up her purse and stormed out of my home. I followed after her with a handful of what I think was beer-sogged squirrel vomit and threw it. None of it reached her, landing instead on my walkway like holy oats from heaven. But I didn't need to hit her; mine was a moral victory.
I ran out into the street where she was getting into a cab she must have called earlier (typical deceitful woman!). The last view she had of that night was me, in the street, ESP Head Shield in place, my cloak billowing in the wind, and my fist thrust in the air, shaking at her, warning her that all witching kind was not long for this world as long as I had anything to do with it.
She didn't even say thank you for the wonderful evening.
Rule number one in the Rory Blyth Book of Love: never date impatient crazy women no matter how much they clearly want you.
Sally Inkfinger.
How I miss her.