I'm Having More Fun Than You (17 page)

One of the major issues I run into during the first few months of a relationship is acclimating myself to my girlfriend’s menstrual cycle. The beauty of being single and never hooking up with the same chick more than a few times is that you’re usually not around for twenty-eight days, and thus don’t have to deal with unannounced hormone flux. The only time a girl’s period even comes up is when she uses it as an excuse to thwart my tasteless advances. Once I have a girlfriend, though, every month for a few days I’m all of a sudden dealing with a completely illogical woman who is so convinced she’s right, I begin to question myself. And that’s what’s so amazingly powerful about menstruation: it actually makes
me
feel crazy.

The other cycle of primary importance to a relationship is sex. When you first start dating someone, ever single night that you’re together, you have sex. You’re like the Cal Ripken Jr. of relationship banging. Then, one night, a few months in, the guy whispers, “Baby, I’m
really
tired tonight.” And the girl says, “It’s OK, baby. We don’t have to have sex.” And you both go to sleep and—boom!—your sex life is never the same after that. Your routine is soon reduced to one, maybe two positions (if she’s drunk). The order is always the same: me on top, her on top, me on top so I can finish. The mere suggestion of trying to spice things up is met with such apathy: “Baby, you wanna maybe try, I don’t know, doggie style?” [Long sigh.] “I guess.” Finally, your dirty talk becomes so unoriginal: “Um, you smell good.” “Thanks. Uh, so do you.” “Did you DVR
Lost?”

When my relationship with Amanda reached about eight months, we tried planning a vacation. But the only time we could both get away was four months later. This was a delicate situation. In essence, when I put down a deposit for the hotel, I was also asking for a 50 percent advance on our relationship. Given my past investments, that didn’t seem like such a smart transaction.

When a relationship begins to pick up steam, it is soon tested by a series of holidays and milestones. The first is Valentine’s Day (unless you used it to anchor your relationship extra-value meal, in which case you’re off the hook for twelve months). To me, Valentine’s Day is like that scene from
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
where the villain rips out a guy’s still-beating heart and shows it to the frenzied throng. For Valentine’s Day is a day when men are forced to publicly demonstrate their feelings for the gratuitous pleasure of overzealous women. And given the opportunity to celebrate Valentine’s Day or be eviscerated and thrown into a flaming trench, most men would surely choose the latter. I mean, at least evisceration doesn’t require a reservation six weeks in advance.

Instead of spending two hundred bucks to go to some club that would most definitely suck, we decided to throw a party at Amanda’s apartment for our first New Year’s Eve together. It was very exciting. Not because I saved so much money and got to hang with Amanda and all of our friends, but because this was the first time in history I kissed someone at midnight whom I hadn’t met only forty-five minutes earlier.

WORLDS COLLIDE

Women always want to show off their boyfriends: “Come on girls, gather ’round. This is my new boyfriend, Karo. Look at him!” It’s like I’m a fucking circus animal. My girlfriend turns to her friends and whispers, “If I get him drunk, he’ll dance!” Now, I only like meeting my girlfriend’s friends for two reasons. The first being to find someone to fantasize about while I’m fucking my girlfriend. We all do it; it’s standard operating procedure. (Though, guys, I advise you to rip out this page of the book so that your current or future girlfriend doesn’t read it. The first thing she’ll ask you is which one of her friends you think about. You do not want to have this conversation. Trust me.)

The second reason I like meeting my girlfriend’s friends is to open up a new pool of chicks for my buddies to hit on. Every girl’s got that one friend who’s just a total fucking wreck. She’s a chain-smoker with a throaty voice, her hair is always disheveled, she’s a borderline alcoholic, but she’s still pretty hot, dresses well, and has low standards. The first time we meet, she stumbles up to me, cigarette in hand, and shouts in a gravelly voice, “Hey Karo! So great to finally meet you! Got any cute friends?” And I’m just thinking to myself, “She’ll do.”

The “cross-pollination” phase of any relationship is tricky. This is when all my single friends start asking me if my girlfriend knows hot chicks, and all of my girlfriend’s friends are asking her if I know cute boys. Soon, they all meet, a few from my side hook up with a few from her side, drama ensues, and everything gets a little awkward. Luckily, everyone on both sides is usually immature enough to simply avoid each other until it eventually blows over. I still contend, however, that a relationship is not officially serious until one of my friends bangs one of her friends. That’s when you know you’ve got real chemistry.

WOMEN BE SHOPPIN’

I refuse to go shopping with a girlfriend. Actually, let me rephrase that. I refuse to go shopping with a girlfriend when
she
needs to buy stuff. Having to wait outside the dressing room while she tries on outfits is so inhumane it should be against the Geneva Conventions. Though I kind of like the depressed looks that single women give me when they leave the dressing room and see me waiting there. I can just tell how desperate they are to have a boyfriend they too can subject to this torture.

Once I went to one of those vintage T-shirt stores with Claire. She kept pulling shirts with slogans from ’80s TV shows off the rack and proclaiming how “random” they were. Um, it’s a fucking thrift store; everything is twenty years old and, by definition, random. Now if she found a brand-new Thomas Pink button-down dress shirt hanging on the rack,
that
would be random.

Being sent to the drugstore to buy my girlfriend toiletries is another harrowing experience. One time Amanda sent me to CVS to pick up a few things for her. As I warily made my way through the skin-care aisle, I could not believe how many ointments and gels they make just so girls will think they look better than their girl friends. While shopping, I actually saw something called de-ageifying lotion. I don’t even think that’s a word.

Whenever Amanda would come back from the store, she’d have a new copy of
Us Weekly.
I would make fun of her about it incessantly. That is until I had to take a shit in her apartment and my need to read on the can outweighed my hatred for celebrity gossip. I grabbed a copy and went to work. Little did I know what I was in for. That magazine just sucks you in. Within ten minutes, I knew more inane minutiae about Shia LaBeouf and Angelina Jolie than I did about…well, than I did about Amanda.

I, on the other hand, buy my groceries online and have them delivered each week. Claire thought that was the strangest thing ever and always questioned why I didn’t just go to the market. “Go to the
market?
” I’d ask. “What am I, the fucking big toe?”

Amanda was obsessed with selling things on Craigslist. While she was at work, she’d make me wait at her place for the guy who bought her stuff to come over and pick it up. She’d say, “I don’t want to be alone with some random stranger.” And I’d be like, “Well
I
don’t want to be alone with some random stranger either! Why is my life worth any less than yours? Believe me, if that dude tries to kill me, I’m just gonna
give
him your CD rack! Fuck that.”

FIGHTER NOT A LOVER

Everyone knows that couple who fight every second they’re awake, thereby annoying everyone they come into contact with. The strange thing is that fighting couples are never self-aware—they don’t realize that they’re
that
couple. Here’s how you know you’re a fighting couple: if you regularly get into an argument with your significant other about one of you being either sensitive or defensive. Because that’s a fight you inherently can’t win and that will always lead to more fighting: “Why are you so defensive?” “I’m not defensive!” “See? Exactly.” Or: “Stop being sensitive!” “I’m not being sensitive!” “Well, you
sound
pretty sensitive.” And the circle of fighting continues.

One of the most delicate situations in a relationship is when you’re going out for the night without your significant other. Because even though you discussed it and it’s totally not a big deal, when you’re walking out and she says, “Have a good night,” you always perceive the slightest tone in her voice, and then ask the dumbest question possible: “Are you mad at me?” That inevitably leads to a five-hour argument, a box of tissues worth of crying, and one entire night ruined. That’s what’s so annoying about having a girlfriend: you’re now responsible for another person’s happiness. Fuck that. When I go to a party, I don’t even want to be responsible for the camera.

The only moments of humor I found in all my fights with Amanda and Claire were when we were getting into it while out to dinner. There’s nothing like awkwardly calling temporary timeout on a heated argument because the waiter has approached the table. I’m pretty sure that all waiters know that the phrase “We just need another minute to look at the menu” is couple code for “No one is getting laid tonight.”

A BOYFRIEND IN NEED

I wouldn’t classify myself as high maintenance per se, more like just a pain in the ass. I’m still not sure how my girlfriends were able to put up with me. For instance, I really don’t like talking on the phone. Call to ask me a question? No problem. Five-minute call just to say hello? Understandable. A little chatting before bed? I’ll deal. But there’s no fucking reason to be having fifty-minute conversations in the middle of the day. I’m busy, woman! My Bluetooth should not be overheating from talking to you. Plus, girls will never proactively end a conversation. I have to be the one to initiate the “OK, baby, I gotta go.” I’m convinced that if you don’t make the move to wrap things up, your girlfriend will never, ever get off the phone and will just take you along with her all day, like some sort of audio-only reality show.

I even get annoyed just taking a walk with a girl. Because the thing is, women like the
concept
of wearing high heels but not walking
in
them. Much of a girl’s decision-making is based around how much her feet hurt. If she’s wearing heels and the place you’re going to isn’t within a fifty-foot radius, you can bet you’re taking a cab—ironically to CVS to buy more Band-Aids for her fucking toes.

I also try to force my interests on my girlfriends, such as when I made Amanda watch hours of Yankees baseball against her will. I figured it would be worthwhile to teach her a little about my team and its players. While doing so, I discovered that Amanda learned about baseball at almost exactly the same rate as my four-year-old cousin. My conversations with the two of them were remarkably similar: “OK, who’s up at bat now? No, not A-Rod, but close…Hi…Hid…Hidek…That’s right—Hideki Matsui! Good job! And what’s his nickname? Come on, I know you know this…Godzilla, right again! Good girl! Now let’s get you some ice cream.”