A year or so ago, I was sitting at home googleing people I had gone to school with. I went to school with one guy (who we’ll call Corey) in particular that I was curious to find out what had happened to. He was a big nerd in school, I can’t even remember who his friends were. He moved from town in grade 9 or 10 and I’d never heard anything about him since. Given that he was a big nerd in school, I had assumed that he would be a lawyer or accountant or something lame like that. And I was correct. He works in corporate law.

So I found his company’s website and e-mailed him a quick note to say hello and reintroduce myself. I was surprised to see that responded rather promptly. He was living in New York, with his wife who was expecting a child any day. He said that he came to Toronto often, and that hopefully on a trip here, we could get together for a drink and catch up. We had actually made plans for the following week, but he cancelled because his wife was giving birth.

Then I never heard a peep from him for a year, where, out of the blue, he sent me an e-mail asking to hook up on his next visit, that week. I was quite excited. I love hanging out with people from my home town. Something so familiar about it.

So we met in the bar of the hotel he was staying at (some swanky place downtown). And spent about an hour and a half drinking martinis and talking about who we still know from school and what they are doing. My first clue that this guy wasn’t as sane as I would have liked, was when he described his social circle in school as the “cool kids”. Like I said before, I don’t think he had a social circle. I’ve actually since asked some of the people he said he hung out with if it was true, and they didn’t even remember him.

Then came the bomb. “Darcie, the real reason I wanted to ask you out for drinks tonight….” as he says this, I’m thinking, naively, that he wants something business related “….is that, well, my wife and I got married rather young….” Shit. Now I’m thinking his wife is upstairs wearing some sort of leather bondage outfit with a video camera set up “….and we’ve decided to have an open marriage. And I was hoping you’d be willing to participate” Ooooooohh. Right. I’m sure before he left for this trip, as she was feeding the baby, she yelled out “Don’t forget to get laid dear!”

Of course, as soon as he says this, the music in the bar shuts off and we are surrounded by dead silence. I yell up “Gonna need another drink here!” as I try to collect my composure. So I say “I’m flattered, really, I am, but I don’t know you that well, and I’m really not that kind of girl.” To which he responds with a tap on my leg “I’ll let you think about it.”

THINK ABOUT IT???? Gee, thanks, now that I have thought about it, I would love to help you cheat on your wife, destroy your family and ruin your child. That sounds like a grand ol’ time. Also, I’ve been waiting for some pre-maturely balding pot-bellied lawyer-type guy to come up to me and ask me for sex. There certainly aren’t enough of them around!

Was this guy for real??

I work out with a bouncer (Read my post on Mustang) for some hip dance clubs downtown. One of the clubs he works at is currently “under renovations”. Which, is true, even though it is not the real reason it will be closed for several weeks. He was describing to me what they actually plan on renovating. It was all pretty meaningless to me because I don’t really plan on ever going and have never been. (Two reasons: #1- I look like I’m in pain when I dance, #2- I try to stay away from places that I must get frisked at before entering).

One of the things he told me the club is adding is an exit door from the washroom. Why hasn’t this been done before? Why can’t we get it all restaurants and bars? Do you know how much pain I could have saved myself if I’d have been able to say “Excuse my while I use the restroom” and then never return?

It makes perfect sense for these exits to be in every club. When you’re talking to a guy only because he bought you drinks, and you really want to evade him, but don’t want to walk away and have him nag you all night, you just go to the bathroom and never come back. I love this idea.

I also love this idea because I have some sort of weird internal sensor that lets me know I need to leave a bar, and fast, or I will fall over. I have a habit of not telling any of my friends I am leaving, I just turn, walk away and hop in a cab. Sometimes, this plan of escape fails when they are congregating around the front door. Then they all want to know where I’m going, ask if I want to get Chinese food, tell me they are coming with me but talk to some guy who has no interest in them at all hoping that he’ll give them their numbers…With this exit, I can just say “I’m going pee’, and never come back.

I wonder if there is some sort of petition we can get to make this a legal requirement??

What sucks about losing your phone in a cab in Las Vegas, is that you lose all the numbers. I kept a lot of numbers in my phone of people I really didn’t want to talk to so that I knew who was calling and I could ignore them. Now that I no longer have my numbers, I want to make sure that all the important people get added back to my address list, so I’ve been responding to text messages from people I don’t want to talk to, and last night, I answered a call I didn’t intend to.

It was from the boxing instructor at my gym. I gave him my number about 2 months ago, and was actually quite surprised he hadn’t called sooner. But it was the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had in my life. First of all, who makes the first call on a Saturday night? I had just gotten out of the shower, and my hair allows me a limited amount of time to dry it before it frizzes up. Which was a good thing, because that was my out. I did end up talking to him for about half an hour though. Er, I mean, he talked to me for half an hour. He spent a lot of time in Mongolia as a kid training to be a fighter (which is hot), so he has a bit of an accent that kinda comes out a slur (not hot). After he told me about Mongolia, he went on to lecture me about my workouts and what I’m doing wrong…telling me that I’m at the age where I’m pretty much going downhill. Great start buddy.

Then I asked if he did anything besides train at the gym, and he said he works in a shoe store. Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere. A guy with discounts! Then he went off for about 10 minutes on how horrible the gym is. Oh. Lost me again. Then he said “So tell me about Darcie” but before I could answer, he asked “Well, just tell me what your sign is and I can figure it out.” Yes. Everything you need to know about me you can find out from my horoscope. And that was pretty much the last question he asked me. He told me all about himself, and his sister (her favorite food is chicken and she lives somewhere near me).

So, it was an interesting conversation to say the least. Now, how do I avoid him everyday at the gym?

At my last gym, there was this guy, David, that would work out pretty regularly. He had some sort of mental disorder. Rumour had it that he was in a car accident (as an adult) that gave him brain damage. I was always pretty friendly with him. Saying hello, asking how his workout was going, etc. This gym promoted the social aspect of working out a lot, so I was friendly with a lot of the members and most of the staff. This was also the gym I worked out at when I was training for my competitions, so I was pretty well known and drew a lot of attention.

One day, David asked if I wanted to take a card, that had his name, phone number and e-mail address on it (his words). I said sure, so he went to his locker and brought it to me. I put it immediately in my workout journal and finished up my workout.

The very next day, I saw David at the gym again. I smiled and said hello, and then he lost it on me. He screamed “Why didn’t you call me? Why did you take my card if you weren’t going to use it? I want it back. Give it back!” Of course, everyone turned to stare. I stammered out that I didn’t have it anymore (which was a lie). Then I ran out of the gym as quick as possible.

From then on, whenever I’d see him, he would overtly turn his back to me, to indicate his anger with me. He never recovered from my obvious let down. It was very embarrassing.

In high school, it was very easy to know if you were in a relationship. One person asked another person if they wanted to go out, they said yes, and boom, a couple was formed. Once I graduated, that line was not so clear. That’s when you start “dating” people. You can date several people at one time, and both parties are aware of this, so it’s a little tougher to figure out when you go from “dating” to “in a relationship”.

I’ve never had to discuss this with my boyfriends in the past, eventually, you just kinda know that you are committed to each other, and start calling each other “boyfriend and girlfriend”.

Facebook has changed all this. When I signed up to Facebook, I set my relationship status to “single” because I was, and I wanted people to know that in case they knew someway to change it.

About a year ago, I was “dating” some guy we’ll call Jim. We dated for about 2 months or so, and, from experience, 3 months is usually where the “boyfriend/girlfriend” thing comes into play. It was a little more complicated for us because we had friends in common. At the 2 month mark, I started wondering about my Facebook status. Do we now have to have a “Facebook Status” talk? What if he wasn’t ready to commit? Was that how we were going to announce to our friends that we were a couple?

Thinking I could avoid this, I decided to remove my relationship status completely. This way, I figured, the “relationship” part would come naturally. What I didn’t realise at the time, was that removing your status from Facebook puts a note in your friends’ feed saying “FitDarcie is no longer single”. Oops. This turned up in his feed. I KNEW I was not in a commited relationship, technically, but I was afraid that he would think I was either jumping to conclusions too quickly or in a relationship with someone else. I made the decision not to talk about it with him.

Recently, in my post about 20 year old hussies are ruining my life, I talked about a high school friend whose relationship I knew about because he updated his status on Facebook. So I asked him how he made the choice to change it. Apparently, they had the “Facebook Status” talk. She brought it up. 20-year-olds have so much more balls than I do.

So I guess that is part of our culture now. A Facebook Status talk. One the same lines, I’ve very curious about how I’m going to tell prospective boyfriends about this blog.

FYI- Jim never spoke to me ever again after I changed my Facebook status.

A guy I went to high school with recently began a “relationship” with a 20 year old (he would be 30). While age shouldn’t matter, I find it hard to believe that I would have anything interesting to say to a 20 year old, at least for long enough that we would be considered to be in a “relationship”. Granted, women are way more mature than men. However, when I was 20, I though men over 24 were old and gross. Whatever, her prerogative.

He justifies the relationship by saying that she’s really fun. Well duh. At 20, she probably hasn’t finished school yet; probably has just started racking up $10,000 of credit card debt; probably still goes to her mom’s house to raid the fridge; probably still lives with her mom; probably still has new clothes as her #1 priority. (Yes, that was me at 20…except the living at home thing. I got out as soon as I could). If I had no care in the world, I would be really fun too.

To the 20-year-old: Please leave men my age alone. I find it hard enough to get a guy somewhere near my age…I can’t compete with a 20 year old. I have a career and an apartment lease and a car and a student loan and nasty hangovers. You can’t be serious about anything at 20, so leave the good guys alone. When you dump him, you’re going to put some damaged goods onto the market. He’s going to feel old and ragged because he can’t keep a 20 year old and he’ll have an early mid-life crisis and then we’re the ones who will be stuck cleaning up after you.

Text messages leading up to the date:

Me: i’m running late. be there in 15

Dude From Bar: Me too

Me: i seriously have no idea what you look like. be there in 10

Dude From Bar:lol (aside: I HATE “lol”)

Me: Can u make yourself obvious?

Dude From Bar: I’m the naked guy with a lampshade on my head and a bottle of jagger.

Me: Sweet.

So I walk into the bar, and I only see one guy sitting alone. He was old and gross. I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. Phew. Not him. Then I turned around and saw another guy sitting alone. He smiled and said “hi”. He was hot. Phew.

Taking the advice of my co-worker Chad, I decided not to make an effort to find out his name….to see how long I could go. I seriously didn’t think he knew my name either. We bar hopped and were at some restaurant when he went out for a smoke (ew). From the open window he shouted my name. Dammit. He did know it. I guess when he called me “Eyes” all the time it was just a cute nickname.

Leaving the restaurant, some guy shouted “Hey Shawn!” Dammit. That was not a really funny way to find out his name.

Anyway, we went to another bar (where girls drink FREE on Thursday. Uhm. New favorite hang out.) Needless to say, I got wasted. Woke up this morning, going through my pockets and came up with the number of some guy named Enzo. Would be interesting to remember how I got that number.

A few weeks back while partying with some friends, I met some guy in some bar. The reason I know this is because he’s been texting me ever since. I don’t remember his name, or what he looks like. I have him in my phone as “Dude From Bar”. We’re going out tonight.

Some suggestions on how to slyly ask his name?

Recently, I was having a conversation with a co-worker about profile pics and how often, when you meet someone you’ve known only online (extremely common in my industry), they look nothing like you expect them to. This annoys me because I find it to be a form of false advertising. When we were having the conversation, we were speaking specifically of colleagues and co-workers.

The subject of online dating came up, and I was reminded of how ridiculous I think men look when they have pics of themselves up without shirts on. I don’t care how great your body is, but put your shirt on. Women are not as eager as men to find out what you look like underneath. (Much more exciting to find out the hard way ;-))

I was browsing my Facebook, and clicked on the profile of a guy I met a few months ago, and never really had any communication with (because he’s pretty much a big loser). I clicked on it because he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and I was curious to see how deluded this guy was about his body. And I was surprised to learn that he had 400 Facebook friends. I was surprised because he joined Facebook after meeting me. That’s an average of 100 friends a month since I met him. Odd, I thought. So I clicked a little further. From what I can tell, about 95% of his friends are female. Fine.

But what I noticed about his female friends, is that most of them were half naked…some more naked than that. There were butt shots, boob shots, and shots I just can’t talk about. I’ve met this guy in person. He is not nearly cool enough to have friends that hot or slutty even…the only thing I can think of is that they are all hookers. Has anyone heard of this before on Facebook? A Facebook network of whores?? I suppose Facebook is a logical place for this. It IS a social networking tool, but it really makes it rather public. I mean, at least 400 other people are able to find out that he belongs to a “One-night Stands” group.

I’m not going to argue that being sexually compatible isn’t an important part of any successful relationship. But I don’t understand why men need to know that immediately.  “Hi. How are you? I’m Ben. Are you good in bed?” First off, if we slept with men on the first date, we’d never hear from them again, regardless of how good it is. So why do we need to let them know immediately if we’re compatible or not?

A few years ago, I’d gone on a few pathetic dates with a guy we called “Urckle” cause he looked like Steve Urckle. There was nothing standout about the guy, but nothing that totally wanted to make me barf. So I went on 3 or 4 dates with him. During the last one, he’d gotten completely wasted at a friends party (who lived upstairs from me), so I’d offered him my couch to sleep on. I was hoping that after he left, I’d never hear from him again.

Of course not. He pinged me on msn messenger later that day, and asked what I was like in bed. He said he didn’t want to waste his time with me if I was a prude. That was the last sentence he ever spoke to me.

Browsing through my very disappointing eHarmony matches this evening, I was reading Joel from Toronto’s “Must Haves and Can’t Stands” (someday I’ll explain how eHarmony works…whenever I get my first crummy date). In there, he put “Sexually Knowledgeable”. I can understand how this would be important to someone…but you only tell that to women you expect to sleep with right off the bat.

Nice try guys, guess you’ll never know.