Desperate and painfully lovelorn singles aside, excessively flirting with someone in an attempt to gain the attention of their friend never works.
Jealousy and competition do NOT inspire lust within the self-actualized person.
It is enjoyable, though, watching the realization flash behind an arrogant cocksman’s eyes the moment after he shoots himself in the member.
When I’m in it deep, you can dangle your worm just out of my reach for months and still – I’ll gladly bite.
Just know, though: you’re free to take a pause, wipe your brow, and even fuck someone else; but if you get cocky or overwhelmed and let the line spool back out, chances are high that I’ll snap free and my affection will drift away forever.
Promiscuous though I may appear to be, I don’t love for sport. This heart ain’t for amateurs. If you can remember that, then come on, boiz –
Hook me.
On my family vacation in WIsconsin, last week, I took both my credit and debit cards and all of the cash I had previously withdrawn. Every – spare – coin. My V.I.P card for the Factory, West Hollywood’s hottest Friday night dance spot, however…
THAT I left behind in the safety of my quadruple locked bungalow.
Had I lost my wallet, I wouldn’t have been able to gas up my car or put food in my mouth, this week, much less pay to check my bag on the flight home, yesterday. Come the weekend, though, I’d have no trouble securing free access to all the Lady GaGa, B.o.B, and Beyonce a boi could ever hope for. I’ll bet I could even caress a few biceps and flirt my way to inebriation, too.
“…You really need to rethink your priorities,” I can imagine my mother saying after a long pause.
Don’t tell her, but in this instance:
She would be right.
“What should his code name be?” My friend Liana asked as we speed walked to dodgeball a couple Tuesdays ago.
“Nothing! I love his name!” I gushed. “I want to say it all the time!”
“Maybe not in West Hollywood, though,” she suggested. “What if someone overhears?”
“Let ‘em!” I continued, manically. “It’ll all be good. I’m not going to say anything TOO crazy.”
“Yeah…” Her tone didn’t match the consensus usually implied by the word.
“Do you think I’m already getting too crazy?!” I gasped.
“Not yet,” she smiled, “but it’s just that everyone’s red alert button is at a different sensitivity level and you never know what might scare someone else off.”
“Hmm…Fair point,” I acquiesced. “I’ve never met another gay man with his same name. What should we call him, then?”
“Dishes!” We both concluded at once.
Inarguably, linking this piece to the stream of other, thinly veiled references to this particular crush negates the stealth method of classification Liana hath suggested. Especially as his commenting, “What a fortunate homeless man,” beneath my Facebook post directing friends to the first instance made it quite clear that he knows I am writing about him. However, Dishes has already disregarded my affections. Thus, while unfortunate, exposing his alias is no longer kamikaze in nature.
And at least it was through a face-to-face interaction that our potential pairing was botched. Operation Be Bold And Follow His Text Cues And Him To MJ’s In Silver Lake After He Left The Eagle Without Saying Goodbye Even Though We Had Made It Known To One Another Earlier In The Week That We Would Both Start Our Nights There And Most Likely Finish It And Each Other Off At My New Bungalow – to be as transparent as the Obama administration once promised. Although expertly strategized, his friends’ churlish reaction of, “SERIOUSLY?!” when aghast upon witnessing the completion of my mission confirmed the need to abort any plans for continued pursuit.
Apparently they saw me as more of a STALKER than a romantic warrior. But again, rather that I watched myself shoot myself in the heart than to have had an acquaintance of his do it for me by relaying that a fit, shaggy haired white boy with a propensity for self-made sleeveless attire had been overheard publicly rhapsodizing about falling in love with him after just one date. In that sense: I consider Operation Don’t Fuck It Up to have been a success.
Now on to the next target!
Whenever I take a trip back to Wisconsin, we Wienkers always make sure to find the time to sit down together and at least skim through a few of the more hilarious home movies in our family archives. One of our collective favorites features a particularly prophetic scene the night my younger sister, Mary, turned four:
“Geez, you guys don’t give me nearly this much for my birthday,” I lamented as she began to tear through a heaping pile of presents.
“Mmmhmm. You get nothing,” my mom replied, revealing the origin of both my sarcastic disposition and penchant for onomatopoeia.
“What movie is it? ‘Barbie’? Ew. If it’s BOY’S stuff,” I spoke of the gifts yet to be unwrapped, “I want it.”
While we have watched and immediately re-watched that particular bit numerous times in the past, it is the irony of the last statement – more than the signs of a spoiled first born apparent in the opening line – that has elicited the hardiest guffaws since I came out to my family.
Five or six years away from puberty at the time of filming, it’s not surprising that my declaration appears authentically adamant. Still, while I had not yet become conscious of my sexual proclivity, my parents couldn’t have held onto that masculine moment for long. Certainly not once I began plopping down beside my sisters for each viewing of the newly acquired, female oriented flick.
The exact number of times we slid that VHS from its glittering case and into the VCR, I cannot say. It was enough, however, that I will never forget the basic storyline: two irrepressibly spunky teenage girls – one Japanese, one blonde and Scandinavian – gallivant around Epcot in Orlando, Florida, sending Barbie birthday wishes from around the “world.”
Obviously, the hostesses were cute, but it wasn’t their looks by which I was most thrilled. Not – at – all. Like my younger sisters, I was more envious than desirous. And it wasn’t even their faux global adventure that inspired our longing, so much as the neon pink and surprisingly compact cell phones through which they communicated whenever they would zip off in their own personal golf karts to record lone segments in separate sections of the theme park.
“You probably did want that movie,” my mom finally mused after we played the clip of my sister’s fourth birthday again, Wednesday night.
“Um…Yeah!”
It may have took her sixteen years to come to that conclusion, but the important thing is that neither she nor my father ever expressed disapproval of my joining my sisters each time they hit play. In or out of the closet, they’ve never really been anything but supportive. The fact that I can rattle off the synopsis of what was, essentially, a low budget, straight-to-video, Disney marketing campaign when I can’t remember a single formula from Geometry or Advanced Algebra, however –
That would certainly evoke a sigh of disappointment from the both of them.
© 2010 JJ Wienkers. All Rights Reserved.
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