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Tips To ... Avoid

Or, an expose of "tips" that really are manupulative mind games

After last week’s declaration that I don’t play mind games with women, I decided to write an expose on “advice” being offered to single males via the Internet that in reality are just negative mind games.

Some male spoilsports who have their head always in their pants seem to think certain rules of the emotional road don’t apply to them, especially when it comes to their quest to seduce women; and seduce them without a care in the world for their mores and/or social status.

Here is one lulu of a thing to say back to a woman’s “I have a boyfriend” reply to your asking her out that I found on a website called “How To Get A Girl To Like You”*:

Her: Sorry BUT I have a BF.

You: (Laughing) Come on! We just met and you are already telling me your personal problems?

What’s wrong with this?

-It is rude.

-It gives the impression of objectifying her, not respecting her as a person.

-It is disrespectful of her status.

-It is cheesy as hell and can be easily parried by any female anywhere.

In fact, this is just a more sophisticated version of the “I don’t care about your boyfriend!” comeback one woman once told me about.

Right after the above quoted sample comes an even worse “tip”:

That’s just a sample, though. You can easily come up with other ways by getting an ounce of those creative juices flowing. This is what I do personally when I ask a girl to go out and she says she has a boyfriend. I say: If he makes you happy, then you can bring him along.”

After that, without waiting for a response, I ask her: “Does he make you happy?” From her response, I will decide if she is worth pursuing. Most of the time, the girl will have complaints about her BF and that gives me something to work with…a topic of discussion.

Uh oh, this is manipulation in the extreme, not only disrespectful but borderline misogynic if you ask me. You can’t get a girl to like you by acting like this, man. And it is none of your damn business whether her boyfriend makes her happy or not! "You think you can do any better, big mouth?" Is my question for the author of that "tip."

Even more hideous is this gem I came across in an article simply entitled “Boyfriend-smashing techniques”**:

If she injects the boyfriend into the conversation unsolicited, a simple diversion to whether or not she plans to marry him might be in order. I always use it if I decide NOT to bring him up and get her to talk about him favorably.

Another thing I like to use if she is DEFENSIVELY bringing up her boyfriend is "so where is he tonight?" If she doesn't have a good excuse like he is working late because he is a stock trader, I play her into a "he's cheating on you right now" mentality. Chicks can't stand that. PLUS they have to carry this with them from now on. I break down their BELIEF in what their boyfriend TELLS THEM he has to do.

Oh man … not only is all of the above creepy, it also shows that any man who uses it cannot be trusted as being worthy of a long-term relationship and that he is just an immature loser who is going to wind up alone when he dies because he sees women as trophies for conquest in the name of soothing his immature ego. “I may not be much, but look how many women I’ve slept with! That gives me value in life.” Is the justification offered by such men even if they never say it out loud.

Sure an insecure woman might fall for such crud; it only will hurt her self-esteem in the long run if she does, though, so don’t fall for the bull quoted here, ladies. In fact, tell any guy who is trying to pull it on you to go stick it in a knothole in the fence and leave you alone.

As for all you dudes out there: if you have genuine feelings for a girl who has a boyfriend at present, that’s fine. Just respect her while you stand your own emotional ground at the same time and do not try any of the crap quoted above on her. You’ll thank me in the long run, man, for by ditching such manipulative mind games, your chances of winning her actually improve, because she will know you’ve got integrity and genuinely like her for who she is as well as the fact you find her beautiful.

Finally, not pulling this kind of crud saves you hours of needless angst when the consequences of such crass actions inevitably catch up.

No Games Allowed, Man

Why I don't play them ... and why I ask women not to

In my opinion, most of the dating advice floating around out on the World Wide Web fails to factor in how some men out there suffer from emotional wounds caused by traumas far more severe than breakups, being cheated on, and all that petty stuff.

What sort of wounds? Well, let me put it to you this way:

If any Hooters girl working at the Mall of America location had the time to look towards the vicinity of the escalators leading up to the fourth floor one Saturday night in December, 2001, they would have seen a tall, gangling dude wearing a weathered jeans jacket over an smaller coat standing there just … frozen in place, with a dull, sheepish look on his face as he finally beheld a place he knew employed some of the prettiest girls in town after seeing a commercial when it first opened … but did not come up for even so much as a walk past it until he did not even have a pot to spit in, much less call home, and wore those two coats because some bastard had claimed to his family they would be only homeless a month when they got evicted back in May!

That guy was me. The bastard in question: a man I used to call “dad” but whom I now refer to over at a couple other blogs I write as “Clyde Krebbs.”* That night at the mega mall, my family had been granted by Clyde to make a pit stop there and to stretch our legs, and something came over me at one point that said: you know, I’ve never seen a Hooters girl before. So up over to the southeast side of the mall I went.

All I remember is the din pouring out of it from the crowded tables and bar, and how one of the Hooters girls near the door cheerfully said “Ho! Ho! Ho!” to patrons as they arrived.

Then I left, unnoticed by that girl or any of the others there that night, slipping away like a thief in the night after grasping a small shard of sanity, a scarce commodity during the worst time of my life; one that now forms the dividing line between all that came before it, and all that came after, starting with that night over in Edina in January, 2002, when he pushed to get his way one more time … and got pushed back so hard he couldn’t think of anything else to do but flee not only our Chevy Suburban but the city and state.

Alas, with our lives in ruins around us, things did not automatically turn into a bed of roses. While things are looking up by and large ten years later, all I’ve got to show in my private life are a couple crushes that faded out naturally as well as dozens of women who played games with me, gave me the cold shoulder, etc. **

Men are supposed to be confident with women, and by George I am trying to catch up to the ranks of “confident” men, but damn is it tough when you are limping from old emotional wounds that stunted your emotional growth! In fact, these days I remind myself of Burt Lancaster in the rip-roaring black-and-white 1964 action film The Train: hobbling along shot in the leg but still full of determination to succeed at what he’s doing. In Burt’s case, it’s stopping a train load of French art from being stolen by a greedy German army colonel as the German army flees France in August of 1944 as the Allies drop-kick them out; in my case, it’s achieving my goals at last after seeing so many of them destroyed by things beyond my control.

What is more, Clyde was a champion mind game player which in turn made him a master manipulator of the worst sort, which is why I refuse to play mind games with women (or anybody else for that matter) and ask that any and all women I meet whom I find attractive for their inner and outer beauty not play them with me either.

Yes, I know women play them as a “test” of a man’s attraction, or for some other reason related to their self-esteem, but I would not think less of, say, a Hooters girl because of where she works, or if she instantly agrees to hang out over, say, coffee after only knowing me thirty minutes, and if she kissed me first at the end of that or another date? I wouldn’t think any less of her even then. In fact, she would be like an angel to me, because, for one thing, I am 31 years-old and still never been kissed thanks to all that hell I went through as a young man and the resulting social inexperience with the agony prolonged by bad luck and petty games.

I am writing a short story touching on my time spent homeless whose male narrator has a girlfriend who embodies what I seek in a potential lover: beauty inside and out, smarts, and above all, a kind, sympathetic heart. I already have a mom, female best friend, and female Terrier who have those qualities; finding a woman who becomes my lover who has that quality would be the best thing for me romance-wise. In fact, it would be downright healing for me to have such a relationship with that kind of girl.

Date a girl who loves to play mind games with people? Not me, man. Those games are wastes of time that get people nowhere in the end.

*http://feo.us/ & http://anomalies.us/ I am happy to say writing things for these two blogs is helping boost up my emotional health to no end.

**For one particularly nasty instance, see my article “Incident at MIAC 2005”: http://minneapolis-single.com/news/incident-miac-2005 It took a formal apology and writing that article to finally heal up after six years of intense inner pain.

The Craziest Thing

Or, a tale of pedaling many miles, a non-existent car wash, Hooters girls, cocky beer-swilling frat boys ... and colossal dissapointment

The now-closed Hooters of Burnsville, MN, not only used to host a charity bikini car wash, they used to offer one every Monday during the summertime.

Man how I always wanted to go to the regular summertime one. The simple thought of pretty girls washing my preferred mode of transportation at the time –my bicycle- stirred up fanciful daydreams, like the one that chanted: “Maybe I will meet the girl of my dreams at this car wash!” Being in my late 20s at the time (2008) it was not a bad daydream –theoretically, that is.

The trouble was, I always worked Mondays at my own job, clomping about the small parking lot of Cub Foods on Vicksburg Lane in Plymouth (MN) rounding up carts like I was some kind of modern cowboy. Giddyup! Yah, carts, yah. Git back into that cart room, doggies …

Finally, in August of 2008, I secured a couple days off which included a Monday, broke out by bicycle, and set off for adventure on an epic ride to Burnsville from my Lake Minnetonka-area home. Yes, I rode on an approximately 70 mile round-trip to Burnsville to try to take part in that car wash. I was a big biker in those days.

After a brief splashdown in Lake Minnetonka to cool myself off (I was in orange trunks and a white t-shirt, topped off with white shoes and socks for riding; a gimmick I hoped would get me comments from the girls since it mimicked their uniform colors) I rode in earnest down through Bloomington, across the pedestrian bridge at the site of the old Bloomington Ferry span, and sweated through Savage via frontage roads and then, finally, on up to Burnsville and Burnsville Parkway. From there I sweated and pedaled the last miles to Aldrich Avenue, where my goal came into sight at last.

Only ... there was not so much as a single girl in a bikini out front with bucket of suds and garden hose at the ready.

Dammit, I knew I should have called on the way down … I thought sourly.

I decided to go inside and have a snack and –hopefully- some good conversation. Alas, it was not to be: two goddam beer-swilling frat boys kept diverting the waitress at my table along with theirs, the damn young punk bastards.

Oh did they start to get my gears in a grind as the monopolized those girls to the point my server just went through the motions at my table treating me like I was nobody and that those jerks were celebrities. My attire did not get any comment until I drew my server’s attention to it; she gave me a polite but quick reply and went back to the boys from the fraternity out –apparently- to give themselves beer guts before thirty. And they laughed and talked like cocky jerks: at one point one of them even asked the girl he was talking with “Are you single?” She and her friend laughed but I can’t recall what they said back, but man oh man, my raw nerve ends got so scraped by those dudes I seriously contemplated becoming a disruptive influence to society by hurling the contents of my water bottle over them as they stood outside puffing away on cigarettes on the smokers patio. Timing my “hit” for when I departed for home.

Cooler emotions prevailed, and the contents of my bottle stayed there; a good cyclist does not waste water, especially when he has over thirty miles to go until he got home on a hot late summer day (especially if he was going into and out of a river valley!) But oh how I wanted to stick it to those two frat boys with ambitions for not only beer guts, but –apparently- also throat cancer or something from the way they sucked and puffed out on that patio as at least one of them also yapped on the cell phone about his oh so fabulous life, the arrogant dumbass.

One thing is for sure: they could not ever boast that they could do sixty mile round trips by bicycle. Man, I could have left those losers huffing and puffing in the dust in that regard thanks to their smoke-addled lungs.

Thing is, they must have been regulars who showered the girls with money as they perhaps sought to buy themselves Hooters girl love or some damn thing, which explains the girls rapt attention to them. It still burned me up like crazy, though, to the point that, on my way home I phoned the place from the payphone of the McDonalds on Highway 13 and filed a polite complaint with the manager. I did not blame the girls, though I did note I was unhappy I was not given the same level of service as those punks had, and that there had been no car wash. The manager was super-polite, claimed he would work on it regarding the girls service, claimed he couldn’t find a girl who wanted to work car wash duty that day, and invited me to come back for the car wash he planned to redo on Thursday … which also would be my second day back trudging around Cub Vicksburg’s parking lot. Lucky me.

From there I straggled on home as fast as my straining legs could push me. When I arrived, I was completely out of stuff to drink. Damn, I might as well have traveled through Death Valley for all the good that ride did me dating-wise.

So that is the story of the craziest thing I ever did when it came to trying to meet women, one that involved the location of a restaurant famous (some would say infamous) for its all-female wait staff modeling the wholesomely beautiful “Hooters girl image” (well, in my opinion it is a wholesomely beautiful image).

Today that former Hooters locale –the only freestanding one in the state of Minnesota- now sits empty and for sale, victim of bookkeeping so bad whoever did them, quite frankly, deserved the “nose in the book penalty” Yosemite Sam (as “Sam. Duke of Yosemite”) dishes out to his hapless bookkeeper in that memorable Looney Tunes cartoon “From Hare to Heir.” Reduced to an eyesore along 35W that I can only shake my head at as I drive by on blogging-related trips that take me to southern Minnesota, dreaming for a split second about what might have been there when it came to my dating life, especially when it came to meeting women via their summer Monday car washes.

The Lesson Of Laura

The sad saga of a "desperation" crush ... and its moral

In the winter, spring, and summer of 1998, I always walked to a brown and tan rambler that stood a couple blocks over on Larchwood Drive in my old neighborhood in Minnetonka.

Oh how I always trod up its tan gravel driveway that lay cocooned beneath snow and ice in winter, or was dry as a bone in spring, summer, and fall.

The reason I frequently walked over there was to call on a girl with flowing brown hair named Laura. A girl whom I did not come down with a crush on but, rather, pushed myself into one.

How’s that?

Sometimes when we are desperately lonely, we latch onto someone –anyone- and come down with what I dub a “desperation crush.” I say this because we literally are coming down with a crush out of desperation! Not a good idea, people.

I had known Laura in grade school and hooked back up with her in January of 1998. At first things went okay as we hung out together, but one day she let something slip:

“I’m not into dating.”

Instead of listening to her, I took at 180 degree turn and thought to myself: She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Yay! She will be easy to date.

So I went ahead and, one cloudy day in June that had intermittent rain showers over at the tiny satellite beach you can find next to the playground equipment at the beaches at the Commons park on Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior, MN, I told her I liked her … and got politely shut down when she explained that she was going off to college and had no time for romance.

So things got bogged down in a morass worse than her driveway got during a thaw; way worse.

Boy did I take it hard, spelt h-a-r-d. I remember without fondness trooping after my parents, my brother, an aunt and uncle, and another uncle from out of town as we wandered the Mall of America during his layover at nearby Minneapolis/St. Paul International thinking of the refrain from Naked Eye’s song “Always Something There To Remind Me.” And did anybody care about my heartbreak? Hell no. I was on my own. Damn does that leave a sour taste to this day, but I digress.

Looking back, as Martin Sheen says in my most favorite movie (Gettysburg): “It’s my fault.” I should have listened to Laura and not only cooled my jets but broken off contact altogether: she had some very irritating character traits which clashed severely with mine, such as always having to challenge the views of men because, as she put it, she “ … grew up in a house with three boys. I have to.” Implying her parents did not listen because she was a girl, or some damn thing. Heck, she even considered herself a feminist because of it; a regular Jenny Fields, if I may reference the mom from John Irving’s depressing and unfunny novel The World According To Garp (well, in my opinion it is, but I digress).

The memory of Laura has loomed large before me this year because I have so far met two women who don’t have a boyfriend at the moment because they’re coming off of a breakup. Remembering Laura’s case, I am being very cautious with them by listening up as to what their feelings are about dating and all that kind of jazz so I don’t make the same mistake again, which leads me to the moral of the story: if a girl or guy tells you they’re not into dating, listen. You will save yourself a lot of angst if you do. If not, you will come down with a case of “heartbreak” like I did as I took things waaaaay too hard starting with breaking down into tears that grey day at Excelsior Beach when she politely told me why she couldn’t have a relationship with me.

Valentines-Themed Swimsuits And Beach Totes For Her

Some unique Valentine's Day gift ideas

I originally intended this article to be similar to the three-part one I ran last year during the holiday season. However, nothing really jelled as I tried to research the market with regular sweeps around the Mall of America (my place for field research due to the massive amount of shops under one roof). Finally, on my last sweep the week before V-Day I came upon something unique at the Everything But Water store: Valentine’s Day-themed women’s swimwear.

Bingo.

Be aware, however, that since EBW offers top-line designer swimwear what follows might –or might not- be in many single dude’s price ranges, so this article is aimed at single Twin City dudes who are, say, 25-31, who have girlfriends who are into swimwear, and who –hopefully- can afford to get their honey one of the following for Valentine’s Day.

Betsey Johnson has a flirty red bikini set consisting of an underwire top and a basic bikini bottom. The tops go for $124.00, the bottoms, $78.00. They also have red triangle top-skirted bottom set. The tops: $88.00, the bottoms: $108.00

Becca has a red bikini set too: red halter tops ($68.00) and basic-cut bottoms ($48.00). Becca also had a red beach cover-up that would complete the set. ($72.00) They also have a halter top-tie-side bottom set. Tops $70.00, bottoms $56.00.

Finally, Murval Paris has a nifty beach tote that alone would make a great gift for your beach-fan squeeze. It goes for $34.00 and is the item on this list easiest on the pocket book. If you want to get her something beachy and Valentine’s Day gift-friendly but can’t afford to splurge on one of the bikini’s listed above, that tote would be hard to beat.

If money is no object and you buy for her one of the Becca suits, they are donating %15 of the proceeds to a charity named Furnishing Hope, which provides homes for severely wounded military veterans and their families, so you will be supporting a good cause if one of the Becca bikini’s catches your eye as your Valentine’s Day gift to her.

My thanks, as always, to the friendly staff at Everything But Water, Mall Of America, for their assistance with this article.

Stuck At Home

A personal look at a problem affected quite a few singles these days in Minneapolis and elsewhere

Recently I read an interesting article on MSN entitled “How to Date When You Live With Your Parents.” *

I read something in it by a dude named “Joel” who was identified as being 26 and stuck back home for three years after a job layoff. This part especially caught my eye:

"I haven't had any of those weird, embarrassing moments where I tell a new girl I live with my parents and she flips out…because I'm too nervous to even bring it up until I get to know someone a little better. Whenever I do tell a woman I'm seeing, I'm sure none of them are crazy about it, but I think they don't want me to feel bad, so they've never said anything."

I can identify with the “ … I’m too nervous to even bring it up until I get to know someone a little better.” part because I used to feel that way myself, having lived with the family unit since I was born. Only during a few days in July, 1997, and two nights and one day in 2010 have I lived “on my own”, even though it was at home. The reason why is not because I am a clueless stereotypical dweeb but because –to be as blunt as General Patton (yes, Patton), my father was a real asshole who caused nothing but chaos in my family. Chaos which always targeted money to the point he left us destitute ten years ago living in our car with one dollar to our name, which in turn meant my brother and I had to work our tails off helping rebuild our lives (mom has a bad back and can’t work). The gory details belong not here but at the Feo and Anomalies blogs **, but the above is the gist as to why, at 31, I am stuck at home. And I don’t give a damn anymore if every single woman in the world knew it. (Come to think of it, they do now know that. This is the “World wide web”, after all!)

Regardless of why I’m here, though, I am in good company, because the same MSN article claims that:

“Faced with rising rents, school loans to pay off and a tight job market, more and more adults are moving back home with their parents—about 18 million between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the US Census Bureau.”

Nevertheless, I am bored to death with living at home, so bored I am absent half the time being a man about town. No disrespect to my mom, brother, and pet terrier mix, however: they’re super sweet and understanding of my restlessness and personal quirks. In fact, mom lets me have all the personal time I want, bless her soul.

But again, I am absolutely bored (and fed up) with the situation, especially when “home” is a two-bedroom apartment so crammed with stuff you have to watch your step located (mercifully) in a small apartment building. I swear to God, I love the above named close members of the family; but the day oodles of money finally comes allowing me to get the hell out of here at last can’t come soon enough.

Oh yes: the MSN article asked those who responded what their most embarrassing moment was. Well, I’ve got a ton of them, and they all involve how there are three other single men in my building –one of whom is “living at home” himself right below me- and all I can do is stew in my juices and wish, wish, wish I had A. a girlfriend of my own and B. my own place to take them to each and every time those other dudes in my building have their girls over...

I swear, I’m going to get my own place as soon as it’s feasible.

Incident At MIAC 2005

A study in petty drama between men and women

Well you look just like General Custer

On the day of his last stand …

-The Waterboys, “Custer’s Blues”

On Saturday, October 29th, 2005, I unlatched my bike from the front of the Metro Transit Route 3A bus near the Como Park swimming pool and rode off proud as General Custer at the head of his battalion at the Little Big Horn.

I was headed into the famed St. Paul gathering place bound for the 2005 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference races being held golf course at its northern end, where I found on a small hill a certain woman I had feelings for warming up for the race with the women’s cross-country team from Gustavus Adolphus college.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied with a smile.

“I’ll see you after the race, okay?”

“Okay.”

Little did I know it, but like Custer I was about to be surrounded and decimated by something I had no idea was coming at me.

The chain of events that had led me there began on a summer day in 2003 as I patrolled the aisles at Cub Foods on Vicksburg Lane in Plymouth, MN during a shift … and saw her standing there stocking the shelves looking at me.

Let’s call her Miranda, this girl with the golden blonde hair and fit figure clad in the red black-collared polo shirt and black pants I wasted no time in going over to break the ice with. It was such a nice chat that, “Clean Team” member I was back then, I often grabbed a broom and dust pan to sweep the aisles just so I had an excuse to stop and chat with Miranda. My stopping to make time on the company dime always made her giggle.

Miranda even asked me to buy her cough drops at one point. I can still recall how I met her at the stairs leading up to the break room watching her come down, money in hand, looking like a Rockette to me as she came to pay me back. At the time I saved that receipt, sentimental soul that I am.

Towards the end of the summer I asked her if she wanted to hang out, even set a time and place. She told me she was so strapped for time getting ready to return to her school – Gustavus Adolphus – that she couldn’t make it.

So back to school she went as sure as the leaves of autumn. To make matters worse, things also were so tight financially in 2003 I had no car and ergo no way of visiting her down in St. Peter.

A few months after she left a co-worker (let’s call him Daniel) told me something I included in an e-mail to Miranda in December:

And, um, one final question: [Daniel] claimed to me a couple months ago that you, er, “liked” me (as in had a crush on me this past summer). Is the gossip true? The feeling is mutual if so! Can I enter you into my black book?

:-) *

A day later Miranda included this in her reply:

Oh and for the liking you thing the [D] said, I think you are a very cool guy –very polite and sincere to name a few, but I’ve been dating a guy from Gustavus this summer and I like him a lot. [D] kind of take things differently than what I meant to say. I think it’s cool that we are keeping in touch … **

So I put my foot in my mouth by a less than confident way of asking her if she “liked” me.

At first I took it on the chin, even sent her a message on Valentine’s Day 2004 wishing her and her boyfriend all the best, but my true feelings surfaced in an e-mail I sent in November:

I haven’t e-mailed you since Valentine’s Day because the truth is, after your revelation to me last December that you have a boyfriend, my enthusiasm to e-mail you kind of faded away. Why? Because I had a big crush on you back in the summer of 2003 … After some blah, blah, blah on my part about how a should have known “ … a popular girl like you is always taken …” and all that kind of jazz, I got down on my knees:

Still, I would like to make and appeal: should you ever become single again, could I take you out on just one (1) casual date? Sitting here, concluding this e-mail, I kind of feel as helpless as David Crockett before he dies in the recent Alamo movie [here I slipped in some blah-blah about Billy Bob Thornton’s performance before continuing:] and I am well aware I might forever stand as much chance at asking you out as the Texans had a chance of winning at the Alamo, and I know there are times one has to give up their hopes and wishes, but I still need to get all of the above off my chest … and concluded with some blah-blah about how if there is one thing I had learned in life it was to “ … get what is bothering you off your chest before it builds up and hurts you.” ***

The pertinent parts of Miranda’s reply went, first:

Ok, and for your question, I don’t have a boyfriend, and I haven’t in awhile, but it’s my personal choice. Also, I rarely have time to sleep at school let alone devote my time to one person.

And:

You are a great guy, but I’m just not ready to go on any dates right now, I’m sorry, but I hope you understand. ****

I called her up, told her I understood after she said “Sorry” again but said I wanted to keep in touch, to which she was agreeable.

Fast-forward to 2005. I called her up, said I would like to see her after one of her women’s cross-country team races … and she acted evasive. The last time we spoke on the phone she said to me “I’m with my boyfriend right now.” To which I do believe I apologized and hung up.

Still, figuring this boyfriend was “the latest as you keep track of them as they go by” (to borrow a line from Gettysburg, my most favorite movie of all) I did not change my plans to see her after a race, even kept calling and found nothing ominous in how she never picked up now when my number displayed on her cell phone.

So there I was at Como Park watching the women’s cross-country race dreaming of seeing her afterward. I even had the crazy idea a kiss would finally take place between us somehow, some way.

Except: I couldn’t find her once the women's race ended.

I wandered about calling “Miranda!” over and over, even asked several other girls from the Gustavus team where she might be. I either got “I don’t know” or “I don’t think she wants to see you.” Stunned, I kept wandering the greens calling her name.

Finally, a dude wearing sunglasses wearing a black Addias-type coat and blue jeans with his wife in tow stopped and asked me who I was looking for. I told him. He introduced himself with a name and some blah-blah about being the “Probationary officer for western Minnesota” and dropped a verbal depth charge:

“She’s back with the team, she doesn’t want to see you.”

I felt like a bayonet had pierced my chest.

This bastard then had the gall and nerve to demand to know who I was.

After finally stammering out my identity and why I was there, I got no sympathy before I broke and fled.

Later on, I took that Halls cough drops receipt and burned it out of sheer disgust mixed with guilt that was somehow “wrong” to have pursued her ...

Lest “bottom feeders” reading this try to pounce on me wailing that I was behaving “creepy” towards her, the fact is Miranda was not the only girl who shone like a star to me in the time span from the summer of ’03 to the fall of ’05. Nevertheless, she still shone bright in that constellation for the longest time in my heart, around which I built dreams destined to be unfulfilled.

The only reason I can think of for the actions of her and her teammates was because the latest guy who had dibs on Miranda at the time must have been present. (This also explains why Miranda never answered my calls before the race.) Nevertheless, their actions were uncalled for, as well as those of that do-gooder grown-up (who can burn in hell so far as I am concerned); as her e-mails to me show, Miranda twice stated I was a nice guy, so she knew I was no threat to her, which means the blame is squarely on her shoulders and those of the Gustavus women’s cross-country team that supported her. All she needed to have done instead was have an honest chat with me that day, damn it.

Moral: don’t ever drag your feet with a girl you like. You will fritter away your chances, man. By all means if you get a vibe going with her cultivate and nurture it until it blossoms into whatever it is meant to be. And the same logic applies in reverse if you are a girl who has a vibe developing with a cute guy you like.

Even more important, if something goes sour between you and a man or woman you dig, look back at events with a clear eye, refresh your memory with e-mails and texts if you still have them to see who said what when, and don’t ever, ever take too much responsibility onto your shoulders if you are the innocent party; your self-esteem will only suffer if you do.

However, there is a silver lining to this sad story of mine: the current coach of the Gustavus Women’s Cross-Country team (who in another position was present at the 2005 incident) apologized to me personally on Saturday, October 29^th, 2011, when I was at MIAC’s 2011 races getting a picture for this article. An apology I accepted with grace, and then wished him and his team all the best at the race.

I left the golf course with head held high this time walking to where I’d parked my car down by the Como Park conservatory, feeling like a million bucks now that I had gotten justice for that poor, clueless, love-sick young man driven away on this very date at this same place by some woman ultimately not worth pursuing because of an inner ugliness she did not show until then.

The Telephone Number Blunder

A cautionary tale from a visit to Hooters MOA in 2006

“What a goof! What’s with you man? Come on …”

-Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

Okay, I see your jaw dropping at the pretty girls in the picture that accompanies this article. This article is about one of them … and how I goofed-up big time with her.

It happened on a Saturday morning back in 2006 when I visited the Hooters at the Mall of America. That’s right, the “delightfully tacky yet unrefined” bar and grill that has been at the MOA since day one.

What was I doing there, me, a guy who does not even like bars much?

To meet the girls, you dummy, the girls. I was a bachelor without a girlfriend then (and, come to think of it, still am now. See my previous article this month to see my vow to fix that little problem this year.*)

My icebreaker went flawless; I asked Jennilee if she saw the irony of a banner for the film version of The Da Vinci Code hung next to one for the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. At first she thought I was talking about something else in the mall, but she quickly saw the irony when I repeated myself.

While leaving, I chatted her up again as she waited to greet guests out front; she stayed sweet and friendly as we talked.

Then I made what I hereby christen “The Telephone Number Blunder.”

To the best of my recollection, I looked and Jennilee and said: “Can I swap phone numbers with you?”

Best as I can remember, her face fell. “We aren’t allowed to give out our phone numbers,” she replied.

“Can I just give you mine?”

She said yes, and promised to call.

Meanwhile, a young-buck male assistant manager standing right at the entrance gave me a look that, when put into words, would probably have said: Is this guy serious? There’s one born every minute!

His presence also was making Jennilee nervous now that I had tried to “put a move” on her, and with reason; Hooters girls get fired for giving out their numbers to customers. Damn, damn, and double-damn. If I had known that, I would have just flirted with her and left.

Anyway, we parted as another Hooters girl called from inside “Jennilee …” And she went to see her with my number in hand.

Did she call? Nope. For all I know A. Mr. Young Buck Manager made her throw my digits away and B.

She probably had an army of male admirers in addition to a boyfriend, so what was another guy to her?

Still, as the saying goes: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Jennilee is long gone from Hooters MOA now. Only the picture of her from her big win that night in 2005 at the Myth remains on the wall to mark that she once worked there.

Still, Jennilee remains the sole beauty queen I ever tried to ask out. Also, sentimental man that I am, in my book she remains one of the most beautiful women I ever met.

Wherever she is today, I wish her well.

Irony of ironies, while chatting with another girl at another store at the Mall of America later that day, I made “the telephone number blunder” again, which leads to the moral of the story: do not ever, ever try to “close” with a girl phone number-wise on the first meeting unless there is a super strong mutual vibe going. Otherwise the outcome will … well, leave you thinking something along the lines of the movie quote which opens this article.

Time To Get Walkin'

Or, a dating decision for the new year

We gotta get you a woman,

We better get walkin’, were wastin’ time talkin’ now.

-Todd Rundgren, “We gotta get you a woman”

Searching for blog material on the web the other day, I ran across a blog entitled “According to Sauce.” Penned by a young woman who works as a Hooters Girl.* Sorry guys, she’s taken. In fact, she is so in love with her boyfriend, she calls him “Dreamy.”

I think I hear wedding bells in her future …

Speaking of marriage, I made a girl laugh delightedly one night at my health club the last week of the year when I quipped I was out to prove on the basketball court geeks could jump, then chatted with her again the next night … only to see a guy walk by and give her a wink and exchange a few words of his own. Before we parted, I asked her if that was her boyfriend. He was even more than that: she informed me he was her husband and that she was not wearing her ring (hey married couples: keep ‘em on, please. You keep confusing hell out of us bachelors/bachelorettes.) I am happy to say that, even as a feeling swirled in my gut which, if cast into words, would have read: “Damn, damn, and double damn!” I made sure to tell her that I respected the fact that she was married, which she was both surprised by and pleased to hear. I’m not as callous about being in relationships as, say, Brad Pitt was.

Nevertheless, the flip side of the coin for both incidents was that whenever I think of them, I writhe in inner agony the crew of the USS Nimitz does in that creepy time-warp storm which rips them out of the future, into the past … and back to the ol’ future, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, in that little-known sci-fi classic The Final Countdown.

Blog post pictures to the contrary, I’ve not ever had a true girlfriend.

Why not? Loooong story there, man, longer than the “Google” number (yes, it’s a number as well as a search engine.) Let’s just say that things are so pathetic right now in my romantic life people like Sauce and Dreamy seem richer to me than any billionaire when I read their stories of love as another dateless year without romance threatens unless I get my act together chop-chop. No mean feat in Minneapolis, land of 10,000 single men and precious fewer single women.

Where’s a girl for me, man? I’m not ugly, boring, or needy. I also believe in respecting women to the point of respecting if she is in a relationship even if I have a raging crush on her. Finally I believe in good hygiene and not taking myself too seriously.

Granted, I’m not perfect. I’ve got raw nerve ends (for example, if you are the political kind of young woman, do not ask me what I think of the state legislature!), and still struggle with deep-rooted bad memories from all the ugly bad things that have happened to me in the past (many of which I am chronicling over at Feo**) and an irrational fear that the same vile things that people did to me way back when will be done by new people in the future.

Another monkey wrench: fear of getting into a romantic relationship, only to see it ultimately go ka-boom! Having experienced heartbreak-like angst when I was 18 over a girl not worth it (hindsight reveals to me that she was pretty, but at heart also a shallow, insecure person ; man oh man what a dummy I was …) If I think reading stories of happy couples like Sauce and Dreamy will put me into an agony like those dudes in The Final Countdown suffer, I’d hate to see what a romantic breakup will do.

Please God, should I ever suffer a genuine “breakup” I want it to be: A. amiable, B. drama-free and C. I don’t shed so much as a single tear. As I have discovered via my passion for the “sad songs” of the past like, say, the Civil War (just because I don’t take myself too seriously does not mean I don’t take certain things too serious), there are way more things worth shedding tears over in this world than a relationship that dead-ended.

I am well aware that all of the above is so much baggage crowding my mind like so many shot-up planes on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier; it needs to be dumped overboard big time, and over the side I am sending ‘em, bub.

And besides, despite the doubts that snap at my heels each and every day about dating, I cannot help but say: Vive les femmes forever. And that I’ve got so many tender feelings regarding said femmes it makes me want to sing along with that classic Beatles tune “And I love her.” So I have to cut this short because I better get walkin’ cause I’m wastin’ time talkin’ here, guys …

The No Date Lake

Or, how Lake Calhoun is *not* a place for the insecure type of bachelor

One Sunday this fall I walked the sands of Thomas Beach, mindful of the goose dung that littered the sand here and there, lost in thought as I imagined all the hopes regarding meeting girls that had burned in my heart each time I came to this place ... then pictured them in human form clad in uniforms strewn dead all about me, for a split second mentally transforming Thomas Beach into Omaha Beach as a brisk October wind made the green Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board “Pay Parking” signs in the parking lot next door twist like a belly dancer’s hips.

I then moved on to a park bench located on an expanse of grass and weeds that gets jam-packed with people on a summer weekend now bereft of humanity save for me and the hardy trail users on foot and bike who braved a breath of autumn’s chill as it settled over Minneapolis.

Fool! Idiot! Rang out across my mind as I silently yelled at myself while a happy couple passed by on the sidewalk, another out walking two dogs right behind as pretty brunette jogger in black with a white cap went the opposite way, this silent voice of self-criticism raging over how naive I had been when I came here seeking ultimately the happiness those couples had by meeting and greeting women like that jogger ... only to fail to achieve the first goal and more often than not fell flat on my face regarding the second.

After blowing date chance after date chance with women as a teenager wandering the shores of Lake Minnetonka on my bicycle in the good ol’ summertime, I came to Lake Calhoun in 2004 and began to return starting in 2005 lured by all the pretty women there.

So I would ride around and around the lake at stopping at Thomas Beach and elsewhere in search of a date amongst the girls who had come to catch some rays, swim, play volleyball or another lawn game, go rollerblading or bicycling, etc.

On those loops around Calhoun I always passed the archery range whose hay bales usually baked alone in the sun as I sought at least a partial arrow hit from cupid that would lead me to the land of passionate kisses and mutual attraction if not true love.

All I got instead were cold shoulders and things you can (and I will) devote separate articles to.

Oh there was one summer -2007- where briefly I acted with enough confidence to hang out with girls there and even did so well I won several chaste hugs at the end of “instant dates” with women whose names are mostly now forgotten, but the magic had faded by 2008. Only once again in 2009 did I briefly achieve a mild romantic victory when I not only hung out with but squired up to the nearby Tin Fish restaurant a petty brunette who worked at Abbot Northwestern hospital as a nurse whom I’ll call Skye. She was also pretty smart and intelligent, too, which made our conversation sparkle all the more. She also wore three styles of women’s outfits I confess I find attractive: a bikini (natch) and over that a skirt and tank top. I did so well, I won another chaste hug at the end of our date, but it was a “catch and release” one: Skye already was serious with another guy and I did not push it both out of respect and fear of being a “home wrecker,” a fear born out of how society frowns on guys pursuing women with boyfriends as if it were adultery.

After Skye, things pretty much fell apart in a shower of cold shoulders at my clumsy approaches. Worse was the phrase that always accompanied those reactions that went like this:

“I have a boyfriend”

It came to sound like an insult to me, not a simple fact of life, so great was the insecurity ate away at my soul beneath my handsome exterior. Then both the dawn of my thirties and a gang-related shooting in the dead of night on Calhoun’s shores in May of 2010 (still unsolved) sapped the remaining resolve I had about searching for a date there, because not only was I out of my age crowd, city gangs had now made it one of their battlefields, so finally I bade it farewell.

Lest anyone freaks out reading this and jump to the conclusion that I am some kind of weirdo for trying to get a date at Lake Calhoun all those years, let me give you another thing to slam your eyeballs against, my friend: I bumbled about Calhoun making mistake after mistake because I had no frame of reference when it came to meeting girls because of how lousy my teenage years had been, so I got left deficient in that category; a deficiency which, naturally, spilled over into my twenties and then some. I know damn good and well what a fool I must have looked to people having a relaxing day by Lake Calhoun on the summer days I came calling, so in my opinion you can take a hike if you don’t like such candid tales of bumbling romantic ineptitude.

Also: if you are single dude going there solo on a summer day and a girl catches your eye, be confident in your approach no matter the outcome, man! I know from sad experience Calhoun is no place for a ragingly insecure bachelor; he can consider himself rejected even before he sets foot on its shores and opens his big mouth trying to woo one of the women there because be it there or anyplace else in the world, a woman can sense an insecure man from a mile off.

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