Did you say your name is Rambling Rose?

Greetings from California. I am currently on vacation in this paradisical state, mostly just hanging out all by my lonesome, which is nice, except that I'm far too pensive and moody and could use some good chat. I'm trying really fucking hard to maintain a positive attitude about life and shit like that, but I don't think it's in my nature, and the past week has been a sucky suckfest. But you don't want to hear about that, you want to hear: what ever happened to that earnest guy who loved to translate Petrarch and hide his condoms in obscure places? Well, I'll tell ya, I don't think I'll be calling this guy anytime soon. I present to you the bizarrely passionate e-mail he sent me. No, not passionate towards me, or towards the cause of peace, or towards Led Zeppelin or something I could understand, but towards a little magazine called Harper's.

We were e-mailing short conversational messages (a la "hey, I was in Vermont, it was so much fun...") and then I didn't hear from this guy for like a week, and then, this. It's in response to what I meant as a throw-away comment about a publication I don't like.

harper's is run by the Dead White Men's Club of New England. it's overbearing in its elitism; i prefer a lighter touch to gawking.

OK, maybe these are fighting words? I don't know. His response:



Elitism and gawking.. unlike... the New Yorker? [Last issue's
contents: a clucking piece on Hot 97 and the man "whose hip-hop name
is Gravy" (bringing immediately to mind their similar hip-hop-gawking
foray puff pieces on Eminem and Jay-Z), "Blue-collar Gold" -- can you
believe what these blue-staters laugh at?, in addition to a
have-you-heard - Mike Wallace actually going _barefoot_! this is in
addition, of course to the usual hacky politician-focused articles that
might as well be in the Nation where at least the readers contemplate
doing something about it.] Elitism and gawking, eh?

and this is just the last issue I happened to pick up.

I don't know how to define eliteism. I suppose featuring experimental
writers and contemporary art is now de facto eliteist. But the past
few cover articles -- post-oil-crash future, Spiegelman's piece on
offensive cartoons throughout history, real-estate ownership as serfdom
so politely praised, the regimented business spin insidious in
education reform. these are eliteist and gawking?

I don't know that they are.. I do know, though that they're ideas.
ideas that could possibly matter. it took a while before I came to
understand that this is not the best lure for a steady stable
readership of Upper East Siders, who would like some stories about
people, or food, or a chance for shaking their head at those silly
hip-hop artists or the coopting of corrupt politicians, all before
forgetting their issue on the glass tabletop when fretting over which
new restaurant over on Madison to choose this night -- maybe that one
mentioned in the New Yorker last month?

It took me a while to realize what the New Yorker really is. Sure, the
New Yorker has issue pieces. The New Yorker has politics, art,
science. Well, sort of. Actually, if you read iit it won't be
politics -- it'll be a politician. It won't focus on the science,
it'll investigate the personality of the scientist who scienced it.
Always the story will hone in on the artist (or the framer or the
curator) more than the art. You realize why the New Yorker (never the
more-dicey Harpers) shows up at the dentist's office -- right next to
the People. The New Yorker is all about people. Nearly every story is
biography and gossip in disguise. The New Yorker is People for People
who read (and who don't want People seeing them reading People.)

So, take the last two issues at random and tell me, why exactly is it
that Harpers is the gawking one? Or do you mean historically? Are you
talking about Barbara "Dead White Male" Ehrenreich's nickel and dimed
piece? The article five years ago about growing up poor on the
Mississippi and the evil effects that muddy river has? Where is it?
The vietnam article? The flashmob story (gawking perhaps, but gawking
at Williamsburg.) The superbowl article? The piece on
slaughterhouses and pig farming? (the new yorker, by contrast, sent
some person boar-hunting. much less depressing.) Ben Marcus' defense
of experimental fiction? -- you might wish the New Yorker treated
fiction half so seriously.

Happy I would be to go through whatever New Yorkers or Harpers I can
find and count. Count the pages before I hit some gawking -- at the
balefully naive and simple midwesterners, or the dumb, gullible
Southerners (inch by inch stealing our center of gravity). You want to
bet that happens earlier in the Harpers?

I suppose, in the end, I have mixed allegiances, really. It's true, of
course, Harpers is the One Magazine no Proper home should be without,
but true, now and then there have been good articles, the kind you wish
you wrote and are glad you read, in that other leading worthwhile
general-interest magazine. To be fair, though, I think in the end, the
important fact is that you don't have to pick one or other, you don't
need some blinkered allegiance to only one. You're allowed to pick
both! You can get both. So yeah, maybe I really should get that
subscription to the Atlantic.

It's sad, because I kind of liked this guy, but I feel that we're not yet at the stage in our relationship when he can go crazy because I don't like the same periodicals as him. (I only read the Emily Dickinson Quarterly and Barely Legal, I don't know why he keeps going on about the New Yorker.) Farewell, Earnest Guy. We hardly knew ye.

It's a sad sad sad sad sad world

The Experiment: Go to a bar and try to pick up men.

Hypothesis: An oldie but a goodie. This "experiment" is also known as "every Thursday night" and it never really goes as I hope.

Expected Outcome: Passing out alone while watching Degrassi Junior High: The Next Generation.

There are a lot of things to get a girl down these days: Nobody wants to publish my poetry, my fantasy baseball team is slipping in the ranks, fighting with my roomie...


All this, and a mind-numbingly dull day job. Recently I've been spending a lot of time mooning about, listening to Bob Dylan, sighing heavily within earshot of others until they say, "Is everything OK?" Also, avoiding conversations about Israel. My new conversation mantra is "Let's not mention Israel."

So when my friend Crazy Jane called me up and said, "We are going out to pick up some Nice Jewish Boys" I jumped at the chance to get out of the house. Everybody has a friend like Crazy Jane: the kind of person you can't take to parties because the host will come up to you and say, "This tiny freakshow has crashed my party. Distract her while I get the net ready." Jane keels back and forth between maniacally happy and enraged. She gets worked up into fits, then twists her face, screams, "Who cares!" and laughs uproariously, all while I stare at the ground and try to avoid her flailing fists. But she is a lot of fun, and she has moments of great lucidity. She is also gorgeous, and a good person to go out with, because the boys love her. At least, until she starts talking.

So Crazy Jane and I went out to dinner, and I listened to her talk about all the hot sex she's having (she's always having hot sex, and is totally shocked when I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I think I had sex six months ago, I can't remember.") Then we went to a hipster joint and parked ourselves at the bar. We seemed to be the only women in the place. To our left were a pair of gents, and to our right, the same. Behind up, seas of men. We couldn't believe our luck. The one catch: every pair of men seemed to contain one hottie, and one ugg-o. I was annoyed until I realized Jane and I were part of the same configuration, with me comprising the unflattering part of the team. This is a horrible realization to have.

The other thing is, even though we were the only women for miles around, nobody came over to talk to us. We just sat there frozen in fear, too intimidated to hit on anyone, and too awkward to talk to each other. It was as though the embarrassment of masculine riches had dwarfed us. Crazy kept kicking me and whispering, "Go talk to them..." I think all the pressure had gotten to me. I had performance anxiety.

Finally some guy started chatting us up. We'd been ogling him because he was the most Semitic looking man in the place. He looked like the Jewish Aladdin. After about thirty seconds, though, we realized he was a complete idiot, so Crazy downed her drink and said, "We were actually just leaving," and dragged me out. The night was a bust, but Jane and I made a promise that we would try this once a month until something came of it. "We need practice," she said, before shrieking and taking off down the street. I thought this was just her being her usual freakish self, until I felt A RAT RUN OVER MY FOOT. If you know me, you know this is my worst nightmare coming true. A rat. Touching me. I burst into tears, and had to come home immediately. Where I passed out alone watching Canadian pre-teens. Things have not been going my way.


The good news is, I quit that dull job.

Sophomore Slump

Well, kids, I went out on a follow-up date with old Earnesto about a week and a half ago, but I've been too busy to write about it. So here it is, in all its banality:

The Second Date is always bad. I don't know what it is about the second date, but you start to notice all the bad things about the person you were too excited to notice on the first date, but the "getting to know you" awkwardness still abounds.

Earnie and I met for drinks at a bar in his neighborhood. I made sure to tell him I'd be in his 'hood anyway, so that he would have to do the ask-back. I hate doing the ask-back, but my desperation requires that I'm always the one coming up with elaborate arguments for why a guy should go home with me.

We didn't meet until 10:00 on a Saturday night, so naturally I already had a few in me by the time I met him (I mean, who can wait until ten fucking o'clock?) We drank a bottle of wine and chatted about super dull topics like what states we'd lived in. One of my conversational tics involves constantly asking people to rank everything, like "What's your favorite brand of moist towelette?" or "What are your top three interstate driving experiences." But any time I indulged in this behavior, he looked perplexed. He would turn the question over in his head and say, "Hmm. Well, I suppose that the interstate is a formative site in the American identity." Disclaimer: I'm exaggerating. But he was so gosh darn serious about everything, I didn't know what to do. I liked it, but I didn't know how to engage with it.

Anyway, the evening wore on, we drank more, we went back to his apartment, we had the awkward pre-smooch yammer. I despise pre-smooch yammer. This is where you sit in a darkened room, usually on a couch or something, and talk about really really stupid shit and work up the courage to speak the truth like our good friend Kissy von Tonguenstein. All so you can get to what the whole date was really about: hot make out session. The nervous chatter went on for an agonizing twenty minutes until we started the actual smooching. Shortly thereafter, I was naked and in his bed, where I had the audacity to assume we would be having sex. "Do you have any condoms?" I asked. He became confused and disoriented. "Oh...Right. I guess? Um..."

I mean, was it wrong of me to assume that once he'd stripped off all my clothes and climbed on top of me that we'd be having sex? Am I a monster? I looked at him expectantly, so he went to get condoms. And I mean went. He had to go across the apartment and dig into a closet to get out a discrete box and then dig through the discrete box. Apparently, he keeps his family planning as far away from the bed as possible. Who does that? And why? He seemed so tentative about everything thereafter. When I talked to a friend about this, she brought up the possibility that he has feelings and hang-ups too, and that men are capable of profound emotional responses to sex. My theory is that he just thought I was too fat.

Anyway, now I'm playing the waiting game to see if he ever calls me. And, in the words of Homer Simpson: The waiting game sucks. Let's play hungry hungry hippos.

The Bad Kisser

The Experiment: Go on a date with a boy my mother set me up with.

Hypothesis: My mother could never set me up with someone I could possibly like.

Expected outcome: A mediocre date that will lead nowhere.

Set 'Em Up We all love Mama Crash Tester. She's out there daily pounding the pavement for her little girl. She thrice said to me in the past two weeks, "I gave your phone number to some guy. I can't remember his name. Go out with him." Three different men! She was on such a roll that she accidentally gave my number to a gentile. I think she'd fallen into the habit, and it just came out. She was having dinner with some friends who were in town visiting their son, and their son brought along his roommate. Mom saw a single young man and immediately blurted: I have a daughter! She is pathetic! Take her out!

He called. I wouldn't usually go out with someone my mom picked out, especially a non-Jew (isn't that the only good thing about parental set-ups? finding a family-friendly guy?) but 1. It's not like the boys are pounding down my door and 2. I've got to experiment for my loyal reader. My mom kept saying, "He's a writer," so I figured at least we could talk about writing. During our phone chat he quoted Tom Wolfe and said, "the most important thing is to keep writing." I began to worry.

At least he didn't claim to be translating Petrarch.

Knock 'Em Down We met up for coffee. He wore a fedora and egregiously tapered jeans. And not a classy fedora, but what looked like a hat Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's might wear. It was vaguely paisley. But over coffee we had some some sustainably interesting conversation. I liked talking to him about baseball, movies, things that generally interest me. After coffee we went for a drink, and here's where the evening went downhill.

I mean, I wanted to keep talking about books 'n' stuff, but he was in the mood to take things to the next level. Unfortunately, I didn't find him attractive, so when he tried to turn the conversation towards all things sexual, I would turn it back to neutral topics. He asked me about past relationships, I asked about his novel. He told me some horror stories about ex-girlfriends, I asked him what his favorite Van Morrison album is. By this time I was ready to leave, but he nursed his beer for ages. He also edged closer to me and kept nestling up against me. "You sure are nursing that beer," says I. "I'm trying to work up the courage to kiss you," says he.

Shove Your Tongue At 'Em I didn't know what to do. In the moments between the declaration and the pounce the following thoughts all simultaneously popped into my head: Wait, I don't want to kiss this guy. What's the harm in kissing? Can I say NO? Would that be weird? Maybe I'll like making out with him? Before I had time to whip out my phone and dial my therapist's number for a quick session, though, he swooped in for the kill.

I think he was actually trying to eat my face, or possibly swallow my whole head. There wasn't even any soft lead-up kissing, it was just an immediate tongue down the throat/junior high-esque/Jeffrey Dahmer face-eating make out kiss. Once it had begun, though, I didn't know how to put the breaks on. Am I alone with this problem? What is proper etiquette for saying, "I like you, but I'm not in like with you, and PS you are the worst kisser ever"?

Escaping the Incredible Face-Devouring Machine During the pauses in our make-out session, I just kind of sat frozen while he stroked my arm and whispered sweet nothings. I felt bad, but I just wanted to go home in time to catch a Seinfeld re-run.

He was very pleased with himself. Sample between-smooching conversation

Him: Wow, I'm really glad I called you. Aren't you?
Me On The Outside: Yeah, it's great.
Me On The Inside: Where is the nearest exit?

Him: You and I will never have any problems with physical chemistry! Right? I mean, right?
Me On The Outisde: Um, right.
Me On The Inside: I'm repulsed by you.

Finally I felt like he was mauling me, so I demurely protested, "We're in public!" I finally had an out, and explained that I wanted to go, but he looked sheepish and said, "I'm gonna need a minute." The guy had gotten a hard-on from some public smooching! Finally, I stood up and said I wanted to get out of there. He very uncomfortably stood and walked out of the bar sort of side step. What is that? Does that actually happen?

Conclusion I suspect that I can never see this man again. I would like to be his buddy, but perhaps that is an impossibility?

Is it hot in here?

The Experiment: Go on a date with an earnest, sensitive man. Try to have sex with this man, because goddamn it I haven't known the sweet touch of a man since Coach

Hypothesis: The sensitive man will say many things that cause me to cringe because they are so earnest.

Expected outcome: Let's play this one by ear.

The Meeting A while back I was in the local pub with some pals and this guy came over and hailed me by name. He said "You went to [my college} right?" He seemed to think we were old college buddies, but I didn't remember him at all. I asked if we had classes together. No. Was he in the English department? No. He said we had friends in common, but when I named some people, he didn't know any of them. It was all very fishy, but I went along. He claimed he was a grad student in the sciences while I was an undergrad. I couldn't imagine how we'd met.

My friends immediately decided that this was a con job, and that he was a stalker. They were unconvinced by the rehearsed assertions, "Yes, I had many fun times on Collegiate Quad and attending courses at Institution Hall." I was intrigued by this stalker theory, and went to question him some more. (As I later realized at my reunion, I don't remember anybody anyway. I think I have that Memento disease.) We chatted for some time and I gave him my e-mail address.

The e-mail:The Con Man wrote to me seeing if I still wanted to hang out some time. I was psyched, because, really, who ever asks me out, but as I read on the message took a turn towards the ugly. Con Job decided for some reason to extensively describe in faux-poetic detail his desire to engage in nautical-themed activities. Here's an excerpt:

there is lure in it, in the history of it -- the way if you look glaze-eyed at a subway map, the yellow gets all blurry and you notice the nexus of blue -- new york's original birth reason, there's the foreign language at our water's edge: the rolling guttural englishness of old seafaring terms, here furled through the thick accent of the grizzled old dutch sailor they got to review this stuff, there's the physics of it which is both clever and still slippery...

Painful!! At one point, he used the phrase "god's blue earth" which for some reason made me want to shoot myself in the head. Of course, I forwarded this to everybody I know to ask, "Why would this man write such a thing? Does he have emotional problems? Should I go out with him?" The ruling came back 5-2 in favor of going out with him. Straight Male Advisor Patrick said he was just trying to impress me because he knows I'm all up in the literature. "His only crime is trying too hard," says my advosiro. So I respond, yeah, let's hang.

Then, old Mr. Earnesto never replied. I was being rejected by a con man stalker with terrible writing impulses! Truly, it doesn't get worse than that. I'd hit rock bottom. But by now I'd gotten excited to go out with him, so I pursued again, and we made plans to meet up. He said he'd been too busy to write back because he'd been spending all his time "translating Petrarch." For real.

The Date Here's how you know you're going out with a real earnest guy: he wants to go see an off-off-Broadway play about man's search for meaning in the lost city. Now, I HATE the theater. Watching actors strut across the stage yelling contrived lines in oddly affected tones makes me squirm. I always want to yell out, "Dude! Just act NORMAL!" But I was trying to play it like I'm not the bitter chick who can only engage with irony. After all, I was trying to bag Mr. Earnesto.

The play was, predictably, horrible, but the good news was he also realized it was horrible. We went out and had many drinks (I do like to drink) and I genuinely enjoyed his company. He didn't mention god's blue earth or anything like that. He didn't mind that I smoke, or that I have a nervous habit of babbling while shifting around in my seat. He was, as the kids say, cool. All was going well until it was time to go home.


The Woo It's a very awkward thing to go home with someone. Start to finish, it's an uncomfortable process. He didn't seem to be asking me back to his place, because it's probably some bomb shelter from where he stalks unsuspecting young women. I asked if he wanted to come back to Brooklyn, which led to a painful journey back to my home. The period between the invitation and the making out is always the most awkward, shameful expanse of time, meant only to convince me that I'm a hardcore idiot.

How I Deal With Awkwardness: I babble about stupid shit. In the cab I rambled for no less than fifteen minutes about my air conditioner. I talked about the different ways I've installed it over the years, my concerns about the environment, my BTU's and my roommate's BTU's, on and on. It was like I couldn't stop. Finally, he was like, "Wow, sounds like you're really interested in air conditioning." To which I could only reply, "Um, yeah, it's really important to me." I was so humiliated by this conversation that when we finally got to my bedroom, I refused to turn the a/c on, even though it was like 400 degrees and we were all sweaty.

Sincere guys don't put out During our awesome make-out session I extended the invite to engage in sexual intercourse, but he was hesitant. " Gee, it's only the first date, I don't know, what do you think?" When he asked that I sort of shut down. Personally, I'm all about teleology. I want this mucking about taking off our clothes and touching to lead to the main event. Like, who leaves a show during the opening act? But he was a proper gent, one of the old fashioned sort who thinks that finger fucking is acceptable first date behavior, but certainly not sex. That's cool and all. I mean, he knows I won't buy the cow when I can get the milk or something like that. Or maybe he didn't want to get too involved with a freak who is obsessed with her air conditioner, but refuses to actually use it.

SMA Patrick asks an important question, which is, "What kind of guy doesn't want to have sex?" Maybe it's better to wait. I just don't know.

Conclusion I had fun, but, as usually happens during the awkward morning-after run-away, I wondered if I'll ever see him again.

Reuniting is hard to do

The Experiment: Go to my five-year college reunion

Hypothesis:It'll be so great and I'll run into old friends and maybe reuinte with an old crush

Expected Outcome: Meaningful connections

For some reason, I decided to go to this thing. I sort of thought that it'd be fun. College was fun. The people were fun. Reunions, however, are NOT fun.

One of my major problems is that I never remember people. Almost every conversation I had this weekend went something like this.

Guy I've never seen before in my life: Hey! Crash Tester!
Me: Blank Stare
Guy: It's me, John Smith. We had like eight classes together.
Me: Um, OK.
John Smith: I dated your roommate Meredith, remember?
Me: I had a roommate named Meredith?

Apparently, I've forgotten everything that has happened to me in my life.

The reunion was semi-pathetic: a bunch of adults caught up in a manic fever to relive college in a compressed period of time. Mostly, it was just boring. Reunions are the kind of institutionalized group "fun" I never would have partaken of in college, which is probably why almost none of my college friends were there. Or maybe they were, and I just didn't remember them.

Also, I had nowhere to stay. I'm such a flake I didn't register or rent a dorm room like everybody else. Friday night I stayed with a darling couple who took pity on me and let me crash in their room (thanks so much, guys), but Saturday I had nowhere to sleep. The friends I thought I could stay with were determined to party all night, but I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I'd been up all week working on a seminar paper and spent the night before setting a record for most whiskey drunk by a non-alcoholic; now I was stuck confronting nostalgia and a healthy sense of insecurity all by myself. To make matters worse, I had gotten sick, lost my voice, and could barely rasp out the words, "I desperately want to go home."

So at two in the morning I went on a quest to find somewhere to crash. You would think most guys would be thrilled with a girl wandering up to them and saying, "Can I come home with you?" But when I tried this with some men I sort of know, they looked horrified. "I just need a patch of floor to bed down on," I told them. They almost keeled over from the awkwardness of the situation, and when I followed them back to the dorm, they acted so unbelievably uncomfortable I thought the world would end from the sheer force of their desire to get rid of me.

Luckily, just before the apocalypse of awkward, a friend called and said I could sleep on the floor of his dorm room. Where he wouldn't be. End result: two men I've never met before and I had a slumber party in my freshman dorm. This may or may not have made them uncomfortable, I was too tired to notice. Also, I learned what boys talk about with each other in the dark. They gossip about other boys.

On Sunday when I finally rolled into Penn Station I wept with joy to be back in New York. Instead of meaningful connections, I came home feeling lonelier than ever. Being alienated at home is easier to deal with, because I have TV, and at the very least I can call my mom and pick a fight with her. But being alienated three hundred miles away from my bed? It's too much.

Conclusion: I will not be at the tenth year festivities.

Sunshine State

The Experiment:Publicly and drunkenly make out with a stranger at a friend's wedding

Hypothesis: This could be fun

Expected outcome: I'll feel a little less lonely, a little more kissable

Procedure:Let's get one thing straight. I was dead wrong about this one.

This weekend I went to a college friend's wedding in Florida. First of all, I hate Florida, possibly because I had to go to Miami on every single family vacation as a child, and if you know my family then you know that family vacations were more a time for deep traumatic scarring that fun in the sun. Also, I am a whiter shade of pale and can't go into the sun at all. I fear the sun. Furthermore, I have a very low tolerance for heat, and when it gets about eighty degrees I lose it. I'm like the Hulk; when I overheat I swell up and scream, "get me air conditioner or I smash smash!"

I'm one of those New Yorkers that people in the red states hate because I'm so cut off from "real America" and eat sushi and drive a Volvo and other terrible sins. I get this from my parents, who have lived on the island of Manhattan for their whole lives and believe the rest of the country to be a bunch of anti-Semitic fat people. When my dad met my college roommates, who were both from California, he genuinely asked them, "How do people even get to live out there? Are you descended from goldminers?" So, you see, my NY-centricity is deeply ingrained, and I don't love to leave my comfort zone. I booked a very short amount of time, just 24 hours, to be in Florida.

But then I missed my flight and had to spend eight hours cobbling together a series of flight to get there in time. So at the reception I figured, what with the open bar and my limited time to enjoy myself, I deserved to have a few drinks. Eight glasses of wine later, I'm chatting with the only single guy at the wedding. He is unattractive and not too bright, the kind of guy who thinks that if he keeps saying things like, "you've got pretty eyes" and "wow, you have a great vocabulary" (this is an exact quote) I will swoon away. All I was thinking was, "How can I get a kiss from Ugly here? I MUST get a kiss." Something about weddings makes me desperate to get with a boy, any boy, which I think is fairly common. All the talk of commitment and lifelong love makes me want to go out and sleaze it up. When he was leaving he asked for my phone number, even though he lives in California. (How did he get there?) I sloshed out the question, "Hey, can I get a kiss before you go?"

Hence the public face sucking. But as soon as it ended and he left, I regretted it. I went to talk to the bride and she said, "I hear you were making out with Tommy?" I was momentarily confused, because I didn't know the guy's name, but then I felt terribly ashamed of myself. This was a small wedding, a polite affair, not the raging party-wedding you might be thinking of. The bride is a sweet, virginal-type of girl who consider me "wild" because I stay up past midnight. And here I was making an ass of myself by slobbering all over a complete idiot I didn't even like. I felt so bad I started apologizing to the bride, saying things like, "I wasn't hitting on him! I'm not using your wedding to pick up men!" Fumbling over these words, I burned with even more shame at my incoherent rambling. I blame the heat.

In the end, it wasn't worth the bad feelings just to collect the kiss I was angling for.