The Frenemy.

I have been single for a very long time.

Besides the obvious benefits of being able to take up my whole bed at night and making out with people I don’t know, there are some slight downsides to this freedom. Some of these downsides consist of deep sorrow pits after glasses of whiskey (don’t judge, I Eat Pray Florence & The Machine my way out of that mess in no time). Most of them consist of dating advice by smug assholes who confuse a Facebook relationship status with happiness. They want me to find similar joys in the 3-month anniversary Thai food dinner and the candid kiss Polaroids. They currently view me as a sorry basset hound who lumps along smelly and without somebody to split an appetizer with. I am the ‘before’ in a makeover photo, the unfinished person that will only be complete until she can call somebody pumpkin tits or something. This usually leads to some sort of misguided dating advice like ‘maybe he didn’t call you for a year because he’s busy or dead’ because they want everybody you kiss to be the one you date. The thing is, sometimes people assume that because they have some sack of potatoes on hand who is willing to make out with their crotch on the regular, they are ultimately qualified to give me the tips I need to stop being such a single loser. Sometimes they are other fellow single people who are know-it-alls and watch too much SATC. The truth is, no amount of good or bad advice is going to make me any more prone to finding a relationship except for ‘don’t chew with your mouth open on dates.’ No amount of words is going to make me shave my legs and be the kind of person who gets a boyfriend or girlfriend. I’m fucking terrible, but happily so. I just assume that somebody will eventually slug trail their way over to me and be like ‘oh she’s as gross and perfect as me!’ and then we’ll have a wedding with an open bar and crepes. I’m not THAT worried. So stop giving me dumb advice about it. And most of all, stop giving me the dumb advice to end all dumb advice:

You’ll find love when you least expect it.

I hear this thing at least once a month. It has been passed around more than Amanda Bynes’ Twitter account or maybe just Amanda Bynes. It is one of the worst pieces of crap I have ever received all the fucking time forever, and I’ve seen at least 3 Ben Affleck movies, so I know crap.

Expecting love is not a bad thing. However, there is a way to go about ‘expecting love’ without just praying to Kate Hudson Movies and wearing pink popped collars. This usually means just..keeping an open mind? Telling a guy you made out with about your childhood? I don’t fucking know I’ve been single for three years. But I do know this: telling me I shouldn’t look for love makes me look for love MORE while trying to trick myself into thinking I’m not actually looking for it. This is my way of fooling the universe, so I start going to museums or trying to be the kind of girl who bumps into people while jogging or knocking over Sloppy Joe stands in the grocery. This doesn’t work ever. The kinds of people that think that putting out this pure karmic lack of expectation are the kind of people that take their horoscope way too surriously. They are the kind of people that buy blenders they see on TV. They are the kind of people that are full of shit. They just yap their yap brains out with yogi phrases like ‘the light in me greets the light in you and my heart is just BURSTING and READY and be the best me now! I am a surprised and loyal affection magnet!’ You sound crazy and I want to chakra all your chakras to death so bad. Of course, these people have success rates. They meet some long-haired elementary education teacher who ‘doesn’t give out grades’ and they yoga love each other to death or some heavy-muscled townie who the Dunkin’ Donuts employees know by name and they get happy. Fuck off, that’s not me. I’ll tell you why:

I expect love. I cannot stop expecting love. And the truth is, I don’t think you can either. Who exactly is walking around EXPECTING love? Oh, right. All of us. We are willing to go through all the asshole sexters, the bad musicians, and the nice but incompatible geeks because we expect an endpoint. A person who makes all the boo-boos better and all the bad lonely dates or single times worth it. We have to think this. If we thought for one second that we would be single forever, we would jump off some high-rise cliff into a pool of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Julia Roberts rom-coms, and all sorts of pathetic things. Of course I expect love. Love, to me, is as anticipated and possible as the last Harry Potter Film: I’m so fucking excited it will happen but I’m just not so obsessed with it I can recall the date of release. I’m not going to dart around town trying to find it, but the day I stop expecting it to happen is the day I lose hope and that’s the day I buy 8,000 pet guinea pigs and try to make my dolls come alive with the memories. I will always, always, expect love because it would be cruel and inhuman not to. I am pessimistic about so many things, but I simply cannot be pessimistic about one of the basic joys of human life. I just want a relationship that is interesting and cool and not so ‘we buy each other chocolates on Valentine’s Day!’ I just want a relationship as cool as Gwen Stefani’s outfits! And I refuse to stop that kind of hope. 

So please don’t tell me otherwise.

1. I ignore you at parties but stare at you from across the room for hours at a time. Never moving, never wavering- like a sturdy rock in a sea of blazers and well-intentioned but unattractive hats. My goal is to summon you over with my mind powers that I have collected from the Eye of Sauron and Will.I.am’s hologram. I will not talk to you because rocks can’t speak. Rock. The Rock. Kid Rock. Love me.
2. I talk to the friend directly next to you but stare at you instead. I will speak twice the volume while I say something hilarious like maybe a topical joke about how I would want to have sex with you. LOL, I mean discussions of Charlie Sheen and the Celtics. You never notice but News Flash: I am not listening to what this guy is saying. I am picturing us doin’ it on maybe a revolving bed. Justin Bieber is in the corner singing an acoustic cover of “Genie in a Bottle.” I am wearing an alpine lace swiss cheese teddy and when we both climax, Gob Bluth comes out blasting “The Final Countdown” while doves cry. I’m not a virgin, I swear it!
3. I like one of your Facebook statuses and spend six to twelve hours thinking of something hilarious to write on said status. Okay, well YOU don’t really know that I do that, but I do. I can’t really think of anything to say so I just timidly like it so you know that I like all of the things you say as well as the idea of my face in your crotch. I can’t look your pictures in the eyeball, for fear of you knowing. Thanks Zuckerberg, for making us all such passive-aggressive sheep! Good luck at the Oscars?! I wonder if people say that to you.
4. I see your ex-girlfriend on the street and stab her to death with an icicle or maybe filet her with the butterfly knife I used to make a nice goat cheese stuffed chicken breast earlier this afternoon. Either that, or I just stare at her and decide that she looks like a dumb fucking fuck face because she wears pink or laughs at something or just generally breathes. Then I try to get the bitchy girl that we both know to tell me something gossipy about her like one time she threw up in a ficus or volunteers at the ASPCA. By hook or by crook she will BURN.
5. I think about you more than my hot celeb crush, who would totally LIKE me if he just KNEW me. Really. We both like (band) or (color) or (his movies).
6. I drink too much wine alone in my room at night and end up listening to lots of Radiohead or Cee-Lo Green’s “Old-Fashioned.” Then all of a sudden I’m imagining romantic running through field montages with the two of us as the brightest of stars! I am wearing such a lovely flowy dress. I am as powerful as Sabrina the Teenaged Witch but I would NEVER fuck it up like she did, only make new outfits and spaghetti appear. Our cat that we bought together, the beloved and immortal Mr. Felix, runs next to us wearing a top hat as he is the top cat. It is raining Netflix DVDs and fettucine alfredo. The world is in love with love!
7. I NEVER LET GO. Not pointing fingers, but maybe some bitch Rose on the Titanic is a lying ass c*nt who needed to move the fuck over on that door and let the best looking Leo of our time not freeze and die. I kind of get where she was coming from, though. She just met the guy jeez let’s not move too fast I only save your life after a couple of dinners you buy me and you seem to be a PAUPER. I guess this joke would maybe have worked better 10 years ago (not IMDBing, just a guess) but movies aren’t made that way anymore. Mostly because there are no more acceptable-to-capitalize-on disasters at the moment to make big-budget love stories about. What can I say to be topical now? I’d like to Black Swan you to crazy hot lesbian town/town with an impressive set of dance skills but an impressive lack of sanity?
8. When I know I will see you, I make the attempt to put on makeup really nicely. Instead, I smear my eyeliner and scream for twenty minutes till the devil fears me. I have no time to wash my face because I am late, having got involved with you-tubing cat flumes and other important matters at hand. Instead, I just say ‘fuck it’ and put on the nice outfit I think looks nice and you haven’t seen me wear yet. However, today it makes me look like a sausage link of bloat-town. I put a curse on all of the houses. I shave my things, anyway, just in case.
9. When we are talking, I perhaps lick my lips not unlike a dog does after eating leftover cold cuts. I run my hands along my chest and I guess all the nervous touching leaves a rash on my chest. I try to drink you into liking me by saying ‘OH HAVE ANOTHER DRINK’ and make you drink more because for some reason I think this is my IN, BRO. 
10. I never, ever, ever tell you. EVER. NEVER.

Some people find flirting easy.

I know this because I go to bars. I see girls whipping their wavy-but-not-frizzy hair over their probably floral dress shoulders. I see them touching the forearms of tall men with fashionable jackets and giggling like both alarm sirens and the other, more sexual Sirens. I am in awe of their fluid movements, their ability to grab at the tiny drink straws with their mouths on the first try. They are the penguins behind glass at the aquarium and I want to see them swim but secretly hope they will start having sex because that would be hilarious. I also kind of want to bash my sturdy glass of tonic over their head and watch it shatter over their well-manicured eyebrows.

This is because I am not a flirt. Instead of flipping my hair over my shoulders, I awkwardly twirl and pull at it like I am a sixth-grader giving an oral book report on The Giver. This kind of comparison is especially apt because I still act like a middle schooler in my sexual prowess. For one thing, I wish it were still possible to tell a friend who will tell another friend who will tell the guy you ‘like’ that you ‘like him.’ That was always a relatively pain-free way of determining whether or not I would go to the Spring Fling alone in my Macy’s junior bridesmaid attire, except now the Spring Fling is my crotch. Same Boyz II Men songs, different location.

Furthermore, I’m also not good at eye contact. I’ve read in all too many places that ‘eye contact with somebody you don’t know’ basically means ‘I’d like to rub myself all over you like I am your Jergens Lotion.’ I often go to bars to find the guy I’d like to have unsuccessful eye contact with, a feat that always makes me painfully self-aware of how terrible my taste in mustaches is and how I could also benefit from an eye exam. When I finally spot an attractive but not overly attractive gentleman with a really original plaid shirt sitting across somewhere, I look at him for about .3 seconds until he looks back/looks anywhere but I think he’s maybe looking back. Then I twitch my head away as if I just saw one of my old high school classmates at the Target and need to hide. I stare into my drink and at my hands for a while or make loud HILARIOUS conversation with my friend to hopefully intrigue the guy with how funny I am with my really awesome close friends. I slowly look over at him with some shit-stupid face on at least 8 times but never make full on eye contact with him again. Later, I am disappointed he did not approach me and bring me roses and love me forever.

Point is, I’m terrible at all this. Even if we get to the ‘actual conversation’ point (once I start womaning up and drinking whiskey), I will probably make fun of you, be obnoxiously self-deprecating, or touch my face too much, or just be a nervous ball of cheese curd. I’d like for you to think I’m tough. I’d like for you to think I don’t fall for the ‘you’re pretty’ boring yawn country song lines. I’d rather you not know I am really attracted to you, so I will most likely treat you like you are the electric fence Tim deals with in Jurassic Park: the idea of just casually touching you is terrifying, but if I’m brave enough I will definitely climb up on you. I don’t know if that metaphor works but whatever.

What’s worse is that I have shamefully allowed myself to feel craptastic when I go home with gin breath but without the number of some jerk guy I chatted up. I feel terrible when no guy approached me to talk about how cold it is or if I’ve read The Watchmen, even though I’ll probably never hear from them again. Which is bullshit. Tonight, I stared at some guy with a big ass hood for twenty minutes and probably ignored all of the awesome friends who were buying me rounds and generally being awesome. I also am one of the millions of girls who banks on ‘personality’ over ‘face.’ This is not a self-esteem thing, I’d just rather you like me for how hilariously annoyed I am by all the things, not the fact that I used enough concealer to not look so hungover today. To like me at a bar is to like a museum statue, and I get really bored at museums.

And it’s more than just bars. I don’t want you to send you sexy flirty text messages because I don’t want to start lingering over my phone like it’s the snack table at a party. I don’t want to learn how to wink because I hate creepy old people who wink. I don’t want to position my cleavage in your direction or learn how to laugh like the wind chimes in Twister, either.

Truth is: I’m not good at flirting because I hate flirting. Well, that and I’m also scared of rejection. I’m not Joan of Arc here, people. Unless you think that’s cute.

Cosmo magazine has always been excellent at predicting the future. From foretelling the return of the cork wedge to the sex move that will make you feel ‘lustier than ever before,’ they’ve always held the power of the third eye. A particular article entitled “Where to Meet Your Future Boyfriend” is not only another example of that, it also makes you FORGET. WHAT. YOU. LEARNED. all over the fucking place. Cosmo used to tell me I was only allowed to MEET MEN in grocery stores and sports bars. In fact, I don’t even buy food when I go to Trader Joe’s. I just sit by the Cream of Wheat and wait until an unsuspecting man in a polo shirt, basket filled with only Hungry Man and chicken sausages, walks by. I then barrel roll in front of him and spit a Cosmo tip in his face. “What kind of oolong tea do you recommend giggle giggle?!?!?” I’ve met at least no men this way. Anyway, in this article, they listed some handy new ways to snag a real man (I think I’m going to send Cosmo headquarters an article about what a lesbian is for future references).  Only theirs are really terrible. First of all, they suggest I go skiing to meet men. The last time I did that I laid on a bunny hill for an hour until my friend Zac found me half frozen to death. Second of all, they told me to go to hospital cafeterias and no I’m not lying. Third of all, they told me to go to a wine tasting and not ‘get so drunk at 6pm you decide to call your mom up and chat about your dating life/eat enough Pad Thai for all of a city’ so I question their taste. I think I’ve come up with better options:

Meet men at :

• Your local watering hole. You wait, crouched beneath the grass, as the young prey moves slowly away from the pack. When he bends to take a lap of Samuel Adams flavored water, you move closer, closer, quieter than the rustle of birds that ripple over the African landscape. Finally, using only your animal instinct and your sinewy muscle, you leap forward and rip out all of his throat/ask him his take on Justin Bieber’s new haircut and if he comes here often.
• Myspace. I tried to google ‘myspace’ the other day and when I did, I was kindly escorted out of the Internet by Marc Zuckerberg’s slave labor workers. Is it possible to meet people on Myspace anymore? I guess I should follow the motto I live most of my life by: If Tila Tequila can do it, by george, so can I! This is really the only reason why I wear leather corsets and the shame of my family all the time (Also applies to being steampunk).
• a crime scene. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the first three minutes of every Law and Order, only attractive people walking through the park discover dead bodies. If you just kind of wander around the city until you hear the Law and Order menace music playing, you are sure to meet up with some newly traumatized attractive aspiring actors. They’ll be so frightened your face won’t look that bad anymore!
• 3am, Saturday, diner. If you’re like me, most nights at a bar consist of standing in a corner with one of your friends, staring at an attractive man from 2,000 feet away and mind-powering them to buy you a drink from across the bar. This never works, because NOBODY buys you a drink across the bar unless if they have a ‘confused look’ fetish. What might work is finding the people that are intoxicated enough to be eating banana pancake omelettes with their bear hands. You could probably get a number or two from their drunken, hot-sauce covered paws.
• a townie bar. I call this the Eminem Trick: Stand in the middle of a dive bar in your hometown, preferably one that is decorated by neon Bud Light signs. Raise a boombox over your head and play “Lose Yourself.” Men in high school lacrosse sweatshirts will begin to zombie walk towards you since they are single and want to develop an intense relationship where they yell at you in Dunkin’ Dounuts Parking lots but go on weekend vacations with you as well.
• The Gap. I mean, there’s no evidence proving you CAN’T meet a man at the Gap. There’s nothing quite like an atmosphere of mildly expensive denim, thirty dollar gold flats, and a variety of belts to get your libido moving. Simply approach a man and ask him if hunter green or salmon is your best color choice for this trendy but classic New England shopping jacket.
• at a local community theater’s re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet. In this one, Romeo is a space robot and Juliet is a beautiful Latina OB-GYN. Lean towards the cute guy next to you and tell him about the time you played Mercutio as a hooker with a heart of bronze.
• the dentist’s office. After I had my wisdom teeth removed, my brother had to carry me out of the office as I drooled all over his shirt and tried to explain to him that the wild horses were in fact, dragging me away. If you love me at worse, you’ll definitely love how adorable I am in the dentist’s office.
• the YouTube comments section. M3talRokker’s hilarious comments of a 13-year-old’s cover of Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like A Bird” lead me directly to a free Ipad!! if you clik!! here!! And JasonDeRulesYo’s scathing political argument during my favorite ‘Baby Eating A Lemon’ vid lead to the whirlwind romance of a century.
• your mom’s suggestion. Yes. THe nice boy who cuts meat at the deli counter, her dental hygienist’s adorable and single 3rd cousin, and James Franco? All perfect ways to snag that man of my dreams.
• a prison/a Chevy commercial. Lots of guys in those!
• guys in your class, guys you work with. I mean, anything else just feels like effort.
• sitting on your bed watching infomercials and burping. If this doesn’t, I might be single forever. Oh my god, please tell me this works.

I fancy myself a bit of a smart girl. I did pretty well on my SAT’s (only if math doesn’t count), read online newspapers, and know how to pronounce foie gras right 9 times out of 10.  Did you know that foie gras is duck liver? Do you remember the Aflac duck? Because I do, too. All of this being said, you should know I am an incredible dumbass when it comes to dating. My behavior is borderline offensive to all the women before me, such as Sacajawea Coin, and it is shocking the things that I will ignore about somebody once my loins are set ablaze for them. The excuses that I make (“He didn’t text me because he has to sleep and drink all day!” “He has anger problems because he’s passionate like Eminem!”), the signs I simply do not see, and the lengths I go for ‘el douchebag of the moment’ are just ridiculous. But to kill a plant you must destroy the root, and the root of the problem is this: I choose really stupid people to make out with. It is simply shameful the amount of men I choose to tongue fuck with who “really respected Angels and Demons.” Logically, if I start to make out with better people, I will end up with less shameful relationships. So I have conducted a list of dealbreakers in order to hopefully push me towards better decisions! I have listed them here for your benefit:

The person in question

• lists ‘exorcism films’ and ‘body-switching comedies’ as their favorite film genres. Or that they liked ‘Crank 2.’ Even though I’m sure Jason Statham’s neck veins have been through more shit than all of us combined, that movie is terrible! Edit: I probably mean ‘The Mechanic.’ Sorry Jason. I think ‘movies with men who look like UFC fighters dodging explosions’ is a film genre as well.
• finds it perfectly easy to choose between sweet pancake brunch or savory omelette brunch. This is the one impossible decision and if you can make it easily you are a fucking robot freak. Blueberry pancakes or a goat cheese omelette? SOPHIE’S CHOICE.
• wants to see ‘Drive Angry’ because it looks like ‘a pretty good film’ and not because ‘everything Nic Cage does is like the a 2 hour long SNL sketch that is actually funny but also has a lot of wigs.’
• has more than 50 profile pictures on Facebook. I don’t get it. How many pictures of you making a sarcastic smirk and holding a beer at a party can we see of you? Oh, how creative- a picture of you at the park in the summer. An impressive candid!
• Doesn’t cry about sad animals he doesn’t know: Bambi, those ASPCA commercials, Babe, and The Lion King come to mind at the moment. Oftentimes I just take a blunt butter knife and rip out my heart before I can watch those things and not cry a river of tears ala Justin Timberlake.
• uses ‘gay’ as a substitute for ‘lame.’ Hey guys that party was really gay! I don’t get it. Was it a homosexual party? Should I not even try to be hitting on you right now? Do you just want to go see the Spiderman musical and eat expensive specialty chocolates? (that’s a thing lame people do, not gay people)
• suggests that you should ‘grab a drink’ but really means ‘coffee.’ Dude, I don’t want to sit in a Starbucks listening to Sia with you! I want to get drunk enough to decide exactly how attractive to you I am and touch your thigh underneath the table! You fucking lemon square get with the AA program!
• wears boat shoes. What, do you own a fucking boat now? Same goes for: sunglasses indoors and Crocs. Do people even wear Crocs anymore? Those have gone back to the pits of hell along with those demon servant Furbys, right? Okay, I’m pretty sure my Furby is going to come back from the pits of Toys’R’Us Hades and destroy my soul. One time I found it perched above my bed with a knife (but it has no armmmms).
• watches Spike TV, specifically the program Manswers. “HOW MANY BOOBS DOES IT TAKE TO DESTROY THE EIFFEL TOWER WITH FOOTBALLS?!? I guess what I really mean is that if you are a bro, brah and you are talking to me, you should know I am not what you are looking for. Read: I’m don’t like  cargo shorts or have a penchant for The Fast and The Furious franchise. Axe body spray!
• is part of a band with a stupid name. “I’m in a band” usually means “I live in my parent’s basement and play in dive bars once a month and please, can you buy me dinner?” so it’s already a lose-lose. I don’t want to make this all worse because you’re called ‘d3mon star’, ‘weathernot’ or ‘Creed.’ Plus, realize you have to go to their shitty gigs and listen to them sing Coldplay covers forever.
• goatee. hoop earring. newsboy caps. THUMB RING. Generally anything that will make somebody look like they are in zoot suit band. ‘Zoot Suit Riot!’ is a song only appropriate if you are a guest at a bat mitzvah. Stop looking like you take “The Game” really seriously and give up the pinstripes.
• unemployed. ‘Funemployed’ is a phrase that only means ‘I watch Maury and eat breakfast at 3pm want me to never buy you anything?’
• No plan for the Zombie Apocalypse. BUT WHAT IF IT HAPPENS?!?! ‘Okay, shut up, geek’ would be a fair thing to say right now.
• secret princes. I’ve watched enough romantic comedies to know that sometimes the person you date is royalty posing as a citizen to lead a normal life. If you kiss this person, it is guaranteed the foreign press will take pictures of you making out and it will be a scandal and you will find out he lied to you all along!
• doesn’t like dip. I actually search for things I can dip into things. Sometimes it’s crackers. Sometimes it’s pieces of shoe leather. Sometimes it’s just shame. I have this theory that the only people who don’t like dip are aliens. I guess I’d fuck an alien if it was cute, though, so this is a stupid point because I just have to say ‘cream cheese’ at least once a week. Oh hey The Frenemy likes cheese big fucking whoop surprise. I really liked the movie “Mac and Me.” Did I say dip? I meant all the food.
• is clearly an asshole but is really hot, so I say ‘oh man he’s totally going to change’ and he doesn’t because what the fuck, you idiot!
• is a popstar who uses a lot of autotune. Drake, do you even have a real voice? 
• is a murderer or still talks about Garden State. Both offensive.

I have always loved food.

When I was a kid, this was completely acceptable. I’d go to some bitches princess party, let’s call her ‘Ashley F with the denim jumper’, and be greeted by mounds of pizza and chip things. I would then put my face directly in the Jax cheese puff bowl and lay there like an ostrich until somebody pulled out the Carvel cake. Then I would finally emerge to make cake soup and growl at whoever got the biggest frosting flower. 

When I was a teenager and lived an innocent life with no booze or hangover pain, I would have ‘GIRLS NIGHT SLEEPOVERS’ where we’d eat 3 pints of Ben and Jerry’s, 16 pounds of Turtle Shell chocolate syrup, and a party sized bag of Lays BBQ chips. We’d then AIM the fuck out of our crushes and talk about Northfaces or whatever the hell else human training bras talked about. 

I loved food and people let me love food and I was a happy little baby clamwich. However, as I got older, things changed. Somewhere, I think around 16, food + girls became more about ‘moderation’ and less about enjoyment. It was about constriction and guilt. I remember this starting slowly, maybe one evil c*nt diet coke at a time. We all started getting fro yo and low-fat Oreos at the supermarket. My friend pinched about a centimeter of belly fat and decided she couldn’t eat her tater tots because she was ‘getting fat.’ Uhhhh bitch they are your TATER TOTS, respect it. We’d see cover girls with concave stomachs and the ribcage of a starving deer, soldiers of the bikini season and fruit salad army. We’d stand sideways into the mirror and suck in our stomachs because that really fucking helped so much. I remember the first time I felt weird about wearing a bathing suit in public and the first time I looked at someone thinner than me and thinking ‘this is what you are supposed to look like, kid.’ I remember trying to use my grandmother’s Weight Watches pamphlets to attempt to lose weight. I remember thinking that’s what girls do. I mean, sure, I wanted to lose weight eating only cereal and butter sticks, but I used the point system anyway. I began to get bitter and mean towards food because HER collarbones stick out more than MINE. I was a real little shit, but this journey is normal for a lot of little shits just like me.

I began to turn my back on food. Being on a diet is a totally normal thing for a girl to do, it is expected and accepted and gets you on the road to being beautiful, amiright? Girls should totally fucking hate food! Eating bread, after all, was the sole reason why this 4’11 girl with hips could NEVER be a model. Noshing on full-fat cream cheese was obviously why Jonathan didn’t ask me to the dance. Food is a slutty whore! This lead to some darker moments of my young life: eating only low-fat Hot Pockets, not eating cookies for a whole year, measuring everything I ate, vicious calorie-counting. When the guy I was dating told me if I gained weight he would break up with me, I ate Ramen broth for a week (jokes on him though, he’ll forever have that nasty ass face). I declared a thumb war on the five pounds that I was always intent on losing. It was a constant battle of ‘I should lose, I want to lose, food is a dick.’ News flash, though: 5 pounds don’t make a fucking difference on your body. Whenever one of my dumbass friends is like I lost five pounds can you tell? I go ‘no you shit I lost that after peeing out all of my three coffees and Big Gulp I had today IDGAF.’ Still, I poked and prodded at any bit of fat I thought I had and was a miserable asshole nobody wanted to hang out with. I would try on dresses small enough for slutty toddlers in the most unflattering dressing room light ever and hate myself forever and it was just all generally bad. I developed some terrible, shameful habits that are all too normal amongst girls nowadays.

When you love something, though, you cannot stay away from it for too long. That is why, after being too skinny and too unhealthy and too unhappy, I had a moment. For one thing, I’m not going to be a supermodel because a) I don’t wanna be and b) come on, what am I, a Russian fembot? The main thing is that I fucking love food. If you gave me the option to settle down with a grilled cheese sandwich, white picket fence and all, I would think about it for a minute which says something. I am always hungry and will always eat. I was sick of being unhappy because I ate a bagel for breakfast, I was sick of feeling guilty because girls aren’t supposed to eat they are supposed to salad and take Xanax and wear coral. Fuck that. This wasn’t about being fat or skinny or in between since it has nothing to do with weight. It has to do with low self-esteem, images of super Photo Shopped tan bitch bodies, and a need to meet an impossible standard by depriving yourself of delicious things. This was about being happy instead of unhappy.

I started to REALLY eat again. Eat for pleasure. I had deliriously happy moments during bites of hamburger, pulling apart a grilled cheese sandwich, or going to a tapas bar and not ordering a salad. I was happier enjoying my food than depriving myself of it and being one size smaller because NO SHIT ITS DELICIOUS. Throw my hands up, they’re playing my song!

Truth is, I think that if you grab at my hips, there’ll be a little more meat at the buffet now and I’m not a nun-like angel so I still have moments about it. Also, not really. The difference between total deprivation and responsible enjoyment is smaller than you think. I still look hot in dresses and fuck off since it also means that I can dip my fingers into the dips and not feel terribly guilty about. I don’t want to feel guilty about it because there’s enough real world problems to actually worry about than Doritos intake. Now, my diet is this: I run around sometimes and I have some self-control and know that eating 400% Saturated Fat is a no-no because I will die to death. I will also no longer deprive myself of fried pickles or ranch dressing when the moment calls for it. I’m cool with this.

The thing is that girls love food. They are allowed to eat and enjoy and giggle at all the good food. They should dig it without feeling like they kicked a puppy. There are so many things worse than gaining a pound-Two and A Half Men comes to mind-but you’d never know it from all the Lean Cuisine Fat-Free guilt vomit out there. ‘Ladies should only enjoy raw vegetables and quinoa and water or else you won’t look good in this high-waisted jumper.’ Oh come the hell on. I’m bored of all of the damn pictures of girls with tamed eyebrows and weapons-grade hipbones staring at the ocean and drinking water. I present you real girls who eat and drink because they fucking love it. They are not freakazoids praying for burgers to be calorie free. They are happy eating because you should be happy eating: Food is good. Life is short. And you guys, really, you are all very beautiful and I swear it’s not the vodka talking. You really just are. And I want you to love food and eat food and not feel like you are an evil bloated fuck for it. EAT ON. 

So yes, fuck yes, I’ll have fries with that. Suck it, you hungry bitches!

I wanted to start this with a “hey bitches” but I need to really let go of high school sooooo lets not:

Listen. Half a Friday glass o’ wine in and I’m having these wacky ideas I’d like to put into play. Well, just this idea and a plan to have a party featuring only songs with a guest verse by Ludacris. Neither here nor there.

Seven months into the blog and I am tired of you guys being so faceless because I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. I know that you are eating a lot and maybe drinking a lot and generally just being awesome. I’d like to document this. Sometimes, I feel like blogs are filled with too many pictures of boring ass bitches staring out into the sunset. They look hungry and sober and yawnworthy. I’d like to counter this with lots o chicks in the most desired and peaceful state of being: Eating and drinking. With friends or cats or ghosts but really having at it.  Rah Rah Girl Power, ya dig?

So, do me a favor, will you? Find me on IAmTheFrenemy@gmail.com or my ask and put your favorite pictures of you eating or drinking. And then I’ll choose my favorites and make a nice little album tomorrow. Decorate the picture if you want with your Tumblr name or an “Alida I fucking LOVE you” I don’t give a shit, but there must be food or beverage present. Do it! Do it to it! Here’s mine:

And Happy Friday, fuckers. 

To all the girls who look good in red lipstick:

Why do you hurt my feelings today? 

Every time I wear red lipstick, I look like a grandmother or a hooker. A dead hooker, really, because my skin gets so washed out I have the glow of a woman that has been decomposing in a weedy marsh for three days. I put it on and expect the vampire from Bones or the cast of all the 532 spinoffs of CSI to find me and solve my murder. It was my ex-boyfriend! “How Rude!” -Stephanie Tanner

Anyway, you all end up looking like a character from the Great Gatsby or a sexxii Rosie The Riveter and I deeply, deeply hate you for that. You are a person of the glamorous and oppressed past! You are so fucking cool I feel like I should take away all my cool points and just live confused about who Arcade Fire like all the fools forever. I bet you look good in vintage clothing. Once, I bought a 3 dollar floral shirt from the 1980s. It smelled like moth balls, made me itch, and it took me 6 hours of searching through used Ralph Lauren polos to find. I am so grossed out because I know all the nasty things I do in my clothes. Me do not like the vintage shopping. I bet you use ‘musk perfume’ and not ‘the leftover linger of stir fry and Herbal Essences.’ I bet you can do pincurls, you fancy ass bitch. 

You also seem to remember that you wore lipstick today. I, however, forgot that I wore the red lipstick so I don’t ‘blot’ my napkin I ‘rub’ my napkin and now I look like I have a cold sore. One of my greatest accomplishments yet is how I don’t have herpes so don’t get it twisted, L’oreal! It seems as if ladies who look good in red lipstick are not even the kind of people who need to have a napkin. Yours sit squarely on your lap because you are not afraid of the spilled BBQ sauce or the slippery fork. I, on the other hand, like to call my mouth the “Slop Hotel.” Many things go in, many things like bread crumbs go the fuck out. I also am in my deepest pit of ‘single life’ yet, so I feel like wearing lipstick is counterintuitive to making out with all the world at this bar. So now not only do I look like a hooker, I think like one now.

Do you use virgin blood to stain your lips, you demon woman? Because you don’t have any on your teeth, and I always end up with a nice layer on my front bucks as if I bit off my tongue. I can only deduce that because you are shiny and clean you are one with the devil. Seriously, though. You look very pretty today but fuck off and die. Ugh, I might be overreacting but you are destroying me forever and you should know about it. You are tearing me apart, Lisa! On another note, is that CoverGirl? You look Easy Breezy Gwen Stefani Choke You To Death. I’m sorry. I just know that you are more dignified than I am. I know that you cross your legs more than I do. I know that you charmingly stain your ceramic coffee cups and blow attractive kisses in pictures.

On the flip side, I know that my Lip Smackers Dr. Pepper makes my lips take bomb ass good. Kidding! I’ve graduated to Blistex or whatever. That’s a real, small baby victory for you right there.

From a reliable source, of course-

That yes, some of the people who work for Cosmopolitan magazine know about my blog. And yes, some of them are mad and pissed and I get to have these lovely visions of starting some kind of scratch fight beef with girls who are twice as tall and twice as able to wear cardigans. Some of them like what I do and read it in secret, too, which is better. And some of them probably eat Greek yogurt and don’t give a flying shit. I feel like Ugly Betty but I’ve never seen that show.

Either way they have read the critiques. And for just a chunky turquoise necklaced second, they have realized that there are some girls out there who think bikini waxing tips are boring (but also are considering one because come on?) and pencil skirts are unflattering on our hips and we don’t wanna take it anymore. Because we don’t live vicariously through embarrassing SEX STORIES or meeting guys at sports bars. And we will gently poke fun at them with soup stains on our pants because I never said we were more dignified.

Cue Sally Field with the picket sign. Cue all of us with fireworks shooting out of the chests. As Janis Ian said: SUCK ONNNNNNN THAT.

(I listened to Destiny’s Child today, which is mostly why I am writing this.)

I’m not proud to admit it because I am made of stone and kill bears with my bare hands, but I have visualized my wedding on more than one occasion. Maybe even vaguely planned/told my friends these plans about it one or six times. I’d like to make some dumb fuck ‘this is what all girls do’ excuse, but I’m not a backwards-thinking slug. And although I’m pretty sure my menstrual cycle includes phase ‘drink a bottle of red and get my sappy on’, this is not the explanation for my behavior. 

I’m not even sure I will get married, for obvious ‘but I spend so much time eating my feelings and cat cat cat’ reasons. I’m am sure that I shouldn’t be thinking about this crap because I am 22 and still have at least 8,000 more people to tongue bang until I make any lasting decisions about my life. Still, picturing my ‘wedding’ has been a thing I have done, shamefully and in my darkest of corners. I like staring at poufy expensive dresses. I like thinking of buttercream. It’s a thing that happens very rarely, I swear, but still. Sometimes I blame the fact that I watched the Little Mermaid when I was a kid and thought “yes I’d like to get married to a Prince on a boat and then the sea witch takes out the boat but it’s part of my world so no big.’ Then I blame the fact that Jim and Pam are so damn cute. Then I blame all of Lionel Richie’s touching, heart-felt #1 hit singles. Either way, know this:

At first, my wedding was going to be a cupcake pink pouf fest with rainbow cake and glitter gluesticks because I was 6 and really fucking stupid. Then, I went through a phase in high school where I wore a three million dollar Vera Wang dress and had a horse and gilded carriage entrance. I went through another phase in high school where I wore all black and the Phantom of the Opera played and I was an immortal vampire. Now, I’ve made it a little more simple-

I buy some cool vintage dress that makes my ass look like a ski slope and my hair look awesome and good for once. I slip’n’slide down the aisle to “Rock me, Amadeus.” Bill Pullman, after reenacting his speech from Independence Day, officiates the ceremony. We take shots of Jack Daniels and than some kind of fire thing happens. We’re on a beach because LOL romance. The food is just a six foot tower of nachos, a life-sized Jeff Goldblum statue made of Cheddar, and a kiddie pool filled with mac. Open bar, bitches! My friends get too drunk and make awful speeches about how I once made out with a reality show contestant and they make me dance and then we do the Jewish chair thing because I am marrying a nerdy famous Jew celebrity comedian. We slow dance to “Inside Of Me” from forgetting Sarah Marshall. Nic Cage dresses up like his character in Con Air and dances with my grandma and serves mini hot dogs. I get cake spilled down my dress and make out inappropriately in public. At 4am, somebody vomits into a plant so I get on a plane and go to Croatia or Hogwarts for a whole week.

That wedding will fucking rule! And although I am slightly embarrassed of how stupid and COSMO I can be for picturing these things, I will not waver or stop it. Mostly because I listen to cheesy songs on my Ipod sometimes so I can’t stop it. Mostly because I hope it’s just a thing a lot of people do even if they understand how lame and Bachelor crazy it can be. I sort of like having these discussions with my girl friends because it bonds us in the weird ‘oh yeah we are so crazy let’s get lost in the fantasy for a second’ way. You’ve done it too, I see you! I’d really rather admit to you I murdered a European mob boss or a family of Smurfs than this wedding shit, but whatever. Is what it is. However, I do think I have an explanation for it that allows me to deal with this blip in character so I don’t want to give myself a lobotomy/bake cookies forever until I die of apron choke. 

These wedding fantasies all have a common theme. They show us the root of the things we want to dream about and hope for. They show us the things we might really want in the lamest way ever. And for me, it has nothing to do with weddings. It’s love and parties, bitches. At the end of the day, all we might want is: to have a big fucking party where she is the center of attention and is the best, to have friends who get drunk and dance with her, to look hot in some hot ass outfit or something, to find somebody who makes us so happy, we will dance with them and they eat cake with us and make us good cry sometimes. This does NOT mean she has to assign half of her assets to him in front of a DJ who plays Kool and the Gang, but whatever.

Let’s let it not be an insane way to pass the time. I’d rather it be a creepy, mind-fuck of a reminder that we might have some standards. God, I am softly making love to this analysis right now. Screwing it gently from behind. But let it be that the next time you hang out with that bitchy dumb friend who gives backhanded compliments, remember your non-dumb friend imaginary wedding party or something. Same goes for the next time you meet a douchey douchefuck. Or the next time you decide this outfit looks only ‘okay.’ Ugh. Maybe this is a point, or maybe I just need another excuse to find reason why I imagine weddings, Oscar Speeches, and my stirring but touching performance in the next Judd Apatow movie in my spare time. I’ll go with the former, if only for my sanity.

Today was a fuckyeah kind of day. I finally received some news that is a major gamechanger for me, just like the very moment Air Bud trots in with his golden paws up in and tears it up in the b-ball court.

The Frenemy is going to be a book!!!!!

Sloppy, drunk-ass me is going to write a real book and get it published by a very real and very awesome publishing company. Look Ma, no hands! I am so excited about this that I could Andrew WK PARTY PARTY all over this place and I did so there. You see, this is a dream I have had since I was a little chubs kid who sat in her dark room reading Cam Jamsen and suckin’ on Cheetos. This is a dream that I fed thousands of dollars in student loans for even though much of my early writing was the worst poetry in all of the world. Whatever, that’s neither here nor ‘ribcage/streetlights/veins’ there.

I started The Frenemy right after graduating from college. Around that time, I terrifyingly realized that ‘doing papers in a rush’ and ‘drinking at 2pm’ were not life skills. I lived in an apartment with dirty dishes and my best friend Brittanie who was pretty and exhaustingly talented at all the things and I worked in a coffee shop and ate Lean Cuisine six times a week. I was going through a real freaked moment. A “what the hell, economy?” and a “what the hell, lazy primitive Alida?” kind of thing. I was no way in fit for the real world. For example:

 I hated wearing pants. I drank whiskey in pink picnic cups. I stuck my finger in dips. I got drunk and laughed at Cosmo magazine all the time! I wasn’t a Cosmo Girl- I could never buy throw pillows or eat crudites or do sea salt masks because I wore snowman pjs and had full-on text relationships. I also had a hunch that as disgusting and dirty as I was, there might be other girls like me. Girls that thought ‘gnawing a cheese block’ was a better activity than ‘800 ways to please your man at happy hour in a pencil skirt.’ Girls that went to see the Sex and The City movie drunk on Jim Beam and MAYBE enjoying it but also making fun of it. I decided that since I wasn’t having sex and I was never having sex, I would use my pent-up sex rage/free time to blog sarcastically. Blog: So original. I mustered up my sloth-like motivation, got to writing and nobody read me (big shout out to mustardampersand for being my first real non-friend follower. You are dear to me, lady. Oh, and EvanKaufman for being my first follower ever). I swore that there were other drunk ass sassy bitches out there and I wouldn’t give up because I ALWAYS GIVE UP. “I gotta feeling” just like the immortal Will.I.Am might say. Okay, I really kept up with it because I was still not having any sex, but whatever.

Seven months later..here I am. A book. You kidding me, hooker? I gotta say thank you, readers. Thank you for reading me. Thank you for being the awkwardly single or the burping comfortable taken. Thank you for being the unshaved, sweatshirt-wearing, Liz Lemon army I didn’t know existed but hoped was out there. Thank you for being beautiful without shoving your boobs up to your neck and wearing sparkle makeup. Thank you for wanting to date without sacrificing your intelligence. Thank you for staying in and watching Bravo and trash TV. Thank you for treating your body respectfully enough to eat snacks and pizza and gin and not starve it to death.  Thank you for being funny nerd guys who can read the period posts and not cringe. Thank you for being real girls: angrily menstruating, hopeful, drop everything to drink wine with your best friends, reading, loving, pissed-off ladies. I used to think I was the weird ‘only girrrll in the worrrlldddd’ who wore glasses and grimaced at everybody at bars but also tried to hit on them. Now I know that there are so many of you out there, so thank you for making me feel warm about the human girl (and guy) race every day. We are weird, we are so weird, and we are fan-fucking-tastic. I truly love you all. 

To show you how much I love you, I promise you I won’t stop writing on this thing every day. I promise you I won’t turn this into a ‘shove it down your throats buy my book I won’t write new content anymore’ extravaganza 24/7 (only a little. Just the tip). The Frenemy is my baby, and I’m gonna keep updating it on the not too drunk to make sense daily. 

Seriously though, I am drinking six drinks for all of you right now. You guys have made me one happy bitch with smelly feet and a terrible penchant for assholes. Thank you for giving me a dream. 

-Alida

I hate you, dressing room.

For one thing, you make me feel as if I am locked forever in your closed-in oppressive walls like a caged orphan animal. Some bored-ass retail worker with a side ponytail and floral leggings just tagged my door with the number 4 and now I’m one of those sad Corgis in the very ASPCA commercials that make me want to jump out a fucking window. 25 cents a day or else I get put to sleep! It’s all too much to bear.

 I turn slowly towards the mirror and remember why I used to call dressing rooms “Satan’s favorite vacation destination.” You see, this morning I felt like my hair looked okay and that my makeup made me look pretty but this happiness bubble is about to get stabbed in the fucking neck thanks to the florescent lighting. The florescent lighting is a cruel, evil bitch. I’d rather pee on the floor of a McDonalds than have to see myself now, and that is the right choice because I look like Nosferatu just got some pathetic makeover on the Tyra Banks show. I scream for 30 minutes straight before I realize I have to try this shit on so I take off my shirt tentatively. I undress myself with the same shaky hands a B-list actress uses to opens the door in a horror movie right before she gets sliced. I liked the movie House of Wax just so you know.

Now, standing here like a naked Cabbage Patch Kid, I have the luxury to stare at the cellulite I am absolutely sure does not exist and the patches of hair I didn’t know could grow. Are these funhouse mirrors? Is this real life? If I owned a clothing store this would be the moment blood would be poured on you with a bucket for extra fuck you effect. Self-esteem beaten down like a pinata, I begin to take off my pants the very same way I undressed in the middle school gym locker. As if that hellcat bitch Ashley Dobbs with the Ugg Boots and the bedazzled cell phone was judging me. Whatever, she has like three kids now. Still, I might as well wear a training bra and make out with my pillow at night because I feel 13 at the moment. I’m not bitter about middle school, guys, I just think all young girls are possessed by the demons and must do their bidding. Let’s move on.

Finally, I stand in my ratty panties and I stare at my dress and realize I am trying on the fabric version of “bad idea.” I will look like a sausage link in this. On the rack, I visualized that the dress would be worn in some club where only Joseph Gordon Levitt’s exists and everything was beautiful and nothing was sticky. I would look like Dita Von Teese and get free drinks thrown at me. I forgot that I have a normal human body aided with maybe some Spanx and that boobs up to the neck are not my ideal look. Valiantly, I start to slide it up my thighs before I realize the cruel bastard does not have a zipper. Sonofabitch, what kind of cruel Saw prank is this?  Now I have to do the dreaded “put it over my head” and start sweating because I get stuck in it for 127 hours and have to cut my arm off all by myself. Finally, it’s on. Oh good, I  can fit into a small sort of. I peek and retreat. I refuse to be one of those ‘sad about my body girls’ especially since I eat 35 pds of Cheetos a week and I’m normal and it’s fine, but all of a sudden I have unflattering thoughts the polyester has created. I blame the polyester! I remind myself that I look really good in everything else that isn’t a 29.99 dress. I try to take off dress, get stuck in dress again and it is a cave of terror.

I now put  on a dress with a zipper and realize I would buy this dress only if I wore it with a specific kind of jacket, wore a certain kind of tights with it, and maybe I grew an inch. I throw it in a pile and realize my blood pressure has reached some kind of terrifying heart-attack level. Consider just going out this weekend in a sequined skirt I have never worn because I’m not (currently) in a production of The Wiz.

I pull on the last dress with the same kind of excitement the babies had in the Dust Bowl. Find that this dress looks good. Really good. Like the forgotten labor pains of childbirth, I completely abandon the memory of the last ten minutes. I check myself out in the mirror. I finally found the dress for dirty talks and dry humping! Celebrate. I am ‘the only girl in the world!’ too, Rihanna!

I love you, dressing room. But watch your step, bitch.

I love coming up with romantic comedy pitches. It fills me with the same kind of smug joy I will have tomorrow when I tell everybody ‘yeah I listened to Arcade Fire WAY before they won all of the Grammys.’ It also passes the time while revealing I watch too many romantic comedies. I’m not really proud of any of this, but here they are. Seriously, I should just make millions of dollars making the romantic comedies I would hate to watch:

1. The ‘this movie is centered around an impossible circumstance’ film: Till Dan Do Us Part

Tagline: Meet The New Kind of Wedding Crasher

Premise: Dan, an attractive to women over 30 but ugly to me kind of gentleman (Bradley Cooper), makes an exorbitant amount of money doing a job that doesn’t exist: He is hired by husbands or boyfriends to seduce women into cheating. He charms, he jokes, he sets up stings to have said husbands catch the two of them in coitus (Dan loves sex!), and therefore husbands can break up with these women easier so they can go marry their mistresses or whatever. He is paid enough money to buy his fancy gray suits and also be ‘really jaded’ about love. He is jaded about love to his attractive black funny best friend and attractive douche best friend while playing hoops in the park. He also buys watches. Then, Dan’s big break! His biggest assignment yet is from Harper Grey the famous senator businessman (that silver fox on Mad Men). Dan will get 125,000 dollars to seduce Harper’s wife (Malin Ackerman or whatever blonde breasts you can find) because their prenup states if she cheats, Harper pays no alimony! So crazy and unreal and SO CRAZY UNREAL. Dan is so excited because he can finally ‘quit the biz’ (the biz that does not exist) and go sailing in Europe or whatever thing that makes him a likeable character. Until- a moral dilemma! He obviously falls in love with the chick’s sister, a brunette actress that is 85 pounds/ girl next door face. They get coffee together. They stay up all night reading James Joyce together. But he has to trick her sister! What will he do?!?!? We all fucking know!

2. The ‘City Girl In Country Town’: South of Hollywood

Tagline: Lights, Cattle, Action

Premise: Lena Allbright (Kate Hudson or Anne Hathaway) is an A-List bitch who has no likable qualities. She is dating an actor who has very ripped muscles and is a stupid moron. She has a small dog if this is a straight to DVD film, but mostly just has Jennifer Coolidge for a mom and lots of money. She gets caught doing something mildly scandalous like showing her vagina while climbing out of a taxi or doing shots of whiskey and virgin blood and now needs to ‘sober up her image.’ This means auditioning for the most serious role of her lifetime, a role about an abused but powerful female. She gets this role when the caricature of a director ‘takes a chance’ on her after she has the most best audition ever. Except she’s like ‘WHAAAA????!’ *record scratch* when she finds out this means she must locate to bum hell Southern State for all of three months. We watch her walk in heels on fields and trips. She picks at her plate of poop meat. She falls in the mud while trying to milk a cow for the film. She fights with (Penn Badgely, Matthew Goode) because he is the owner of the farm they location shoot in. They argue so much! They talk under the stars. He inspires her. She wears a cowboy hat and goes line dancing. They fall SO HARD when she makes a pie or some shit. She becomes a successful actress who also lives on a farm by the end.

3. The Bitchy Career Woman Is Bitchy: Between The Lines

Tagline: This Spring, Judge A Book By It’s Writer

Premise: A comedy for the middle ages, an actress your mom approves of (Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston) plays a high-powered book publisher who wears pencil thin skirts but still can sit at her desk and eat takeout all day. She is looking to get some promotion out in California or ‘bring back the written word’ or some shit. Her ticket to success is the new book she’s publishing by a genius writer that everybody loves (Ryan Reynolds, Mark Ruffalo, any guy from Grey’s Anatomy) But he is a douche! He wrote a best-selling memoir on love that is heartfelt and beautiful a year ago and all women love him now. He is writing an anticipated second book about love but he is such a douchebag! They inexplicably have to work together all the time. They spend nights in high-rise apartments together. Everybody you will ever love you will fight with. They get to know each other. They share one stupid ass kiss even though she’s dating like, a rich but boring and totally normal guy that is nice. And she’s a bitch for breaking up with him in real life but this is the movies so we deal. Turns out, she’s not the ice bitch we thought and he was REALLY HURT because the girl he based the first book on broke up with him cheated. They both help each other to find love and be less shitty people by having lots of sex. He writes a great book! She gets the stick out of her ass. Betty White is probably in this.

4. The Look How Different Our Differently Ethnic Familes Are: Now We’re Cookin’

Tagline: Love. Kicked Up A Notch.

Premise: In this “Romeo and Juliet without the suicide at the end” adaptation, a wonderful tight-knit African-American family (made up of all the black actors in the world and the lead girl Anika Noni Rose) own a wonderful BBQ restaurant on a street in a nondescript city. An Italian family (made up of all the Italian Actors in the world and the lead guy Adrian Grenier) moves in next door with their big fucking Italian place. They fight in hilarious ways over BBQ chicken vs Chicken Parmigiana and try to sabotage each other by doing silly things like letting live rats into their dining rooms. They are both so close but still so different in all the ethnic stereotypes portrayed in this movie! The Italian family uses a lot of olive oil! The African-American family is able to dance in this dance scene! They’re both struggling! The economy is so bad! They both have a sketchy male cousin that is the comic relief in a comedy! Why are they competing? I have no idea. But I do have an idea why stereotyping ethnicities is great. IT’S FUNNY (?!?!?!) Good thing the girl and the boy fall in love. They kiss on fire exits. They are full of secrets! This also eventually brings a family together, opening up the first successful BBQ Sicilian fusion place in the whole fucking world. 

5. The Smart High School Flick: Smart Girl, Stupid Guy

Tagline: Remember Freddie Prinze Jr? Neither do we. 

Premise: Here is a really smart 17-year-old girl who is sarcastic and makes references to ’80s movies. She wants to be a novel writer and physicist. She is so aware of how stupid high school is and has loads of insight on cliques and makes awesome digs at the popular girls in denim skirts. She isn’t afraid to wear glasses, but she doesn’t wear them usually she is just skinny and probably Kat Dennings or Emma Stone. She has wacky parents. She has a really hot or really geeky best friend. The teachers are terrible but also such funny character actors and comedians. She takes a stand against something! Hot guy likes her even though he totally shouldn’t even though this lead actress is really hot! I’m bored. If it’s not Mean Girls, I don’t give a fuck.

I’ve done this before. If you haven’t seen the one I did 4 months ago, here it is: 

http://thefrenemy.tumblr.com/post/1318798787/5-romantic-comedies-i-am-shocked-have-not-been-written

I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.

I don’t want to meet you when I’ve been drinking.

If I meet you when I am drinking I will kiss you too soon. I will nod at you across the bar because you are attractive and I will end up judging the fucking book by the fucking cover. I will be shallow and hormone-soaked because it’s 2am 4 drinks in. You will buy me a gin and make me laugh, you will refer to some movie I love and didn’t think anybody else watched. I will silently smile at my friends across the bar like “can I pick them or what?” as if you are the deer head I have mounted on Gaston’s wall.  We will sit in some dark corner talking about the best burger place in town, the jobs we have and hate, the towns we grew up in. I will confuse my newfound excitement with a moment to act with my mouth. Again, I blame this mostly on hormones. Your nice hair, your strong hands, a good solid laugh will make me leap at your face like some sort of confused bug on a windshield. I will act the same way I did in high school when I drank three Budweisers and felt like I was Brigitte Bardot in a Northface. I will be a mess. The ridiculous black dress I am wearing will smell like beer and we will kiss in front of two roommates and a homeless man and I will give you my number. I will eat a grilled cheese sandwich I burnt in the pan after we are done and there will be nothing special about the night we met. I will be surprised you called, I will go with you to another better-lit bar on Wednesday at 830 in case we hate each other and need to bolt. Our story will be as boring as those stupid match.com commercials that make me question the nature of human connections. We will become exclusive because we realize we’ve run out of options. 

I’d rather kiss you when it’s a Thursday night and you are standing awkwardly outside my door after our first awkward Thai food date. I am holding a box of leftovers. We hug three times before we realize that we’d like to shove our mouths against each other and maybe we’d use tongue but I don’t know the etiquette for that. If it’s not outside my door, it’s a couch with cold pizza and Arrested Development DVDs. I invited you over under the pretense we would kiss but if I kiss to Gob Bluth I could live with that. If I am feeling cinematic and cheesy as fuck we could be under a streetlight but I will never be cliche enough to wish we were in the rain. If I am drunk on three beers but met you sober, that’s fair too. It’s only because I want a little bit of courage to feel…I want to say vulnerable but I haven’t ever cried to Taylor Swift so…not so sassy-pants and cynical. Maybe a little vulnerable, but you didn’t hear that from me.

Basically, I just don’t want to be in this bar. I don’t want to sit underneath a dartboard with the smell of skunked drinks and 46 types of cologne, some Mellencampy music in the background. It’s not even fair for us, I love everybody when I am drunk. I love the girl with the shoes on the bathroom line I am standing in. I love the friends I am texting, the guy who picks a good song on the jukebox, my own reflection. It is only natural I love you, too. I am horny teenager when drunk. I am not a pretty picture.

I’d rather meet you at the supermarket, even though I look terrible in Whole Foods lighting and I wear my Ipod so I’m basically unapproachable. Meeting you on a subway is a sweet thought but rather unrealistic because I think anybody who smiles at me on a subway wants to grope me. Let’s just promise right now to meet on a line at a bagel shop, okay? If I am hungover, so be it because you’ll see that a lot. It is also acceptable for you to be a friend of a friend, a coworker of a roommate, a little obscure connection that makes us say “I can’t believe we never met till now!” and it’ll one of those dinner party stories to tell. I’d rather you know the sober me before you meet the drunk me because they are different beings, I think. The sober me won’t ever give you hugs like I do when I’m three drinks in, so I don’t want you to think you met “cute little affectionate girl” when really it’s “cold hearted Youtube expert.” I don’t want you to meet my little white lies, the bands I say I like but haven’t listened to or the books I say I’ve read but only have read half of. I want you to meet my Wednesday morning disdain, my diagonal doctor’s office smirk. I want you to like those things.

These days, drunk kisses are expected, the new form of normal dates. I think they are wonderful and appropriate when they are single-servings: the guy who is so gorgeous but can’t read, the friend who you just really like at the moment, the lead singer of the band you saw and didn’t really dig but he’s with the band. They are not for somebody you want to have brunch with. They are not for somebody you want to show your high school yearbook to, not for somebody you could love. When I go to get a drink I want to meet people I don’t tell my real name to. I want to meet people who tell me stories of going to Thailand for a summer, I want to meet people who tell me the best place to get cheap throw pillows in the city. I want to meet people I hand my number off to and never remember, I want to talk to my friends about how we should quit our jobs and live in Europe. I want to bum cigarettes off strangers and nod about how these kinds of margaritas knock us off our feet. I want to split taxis and buy rounds for friends and get toilet paper stuck to my feet. I want my life to stay the same. I do not want to meet you here. You. Special, lovely, life-shattering you. I want to meet you sober.

These are the things I fucking love and I hope you fucking love them too:

• unwrapping a present that’s not some lame ass sweater but a good thing you want.
• hot person you’d sex gives you a passing smile on the street
• being smug when you talk about some current events/book/smart person shit somebody doesn’t know anything about.
• strutting the fuck down the street to your Rihanna Ipod music
• Youtube videos that don’t suck. This usually means cats or babies fucking stuff up in this place on a Roomba or something.
• cat gifs where the cat clearly and obviously sees into your soul while licking water or some shit
• first cup of coffee
• sex? eh. Hot chocolate, mostly. But okay, sex too.
• chugging water after waking up hungover. I’ll drink this whole water glass you slut you watch me
• covering up your toes in bed so the monsters don’t obviously eat them
• rubbing your newly shaved legs together so much they start a campfire
• pulling warm clothes out of the dryer and just laying all over this piece
• turning the radio on at the start of the best song like you own that radio
• Girl Scout Cookies. Punch the Scout take the Cookies. Eat those Samosas, you psychotic bitch
• 80 hour shower
• Pearl Harbor you stupid ass movie
• Putting on an outfit and it doesn’t make you look like a dead whale 
• Paul Rudd’s on TV? I’m going to fucking watch Paul Rudd on TV
• Friend has a six pack, asks you if you want a Magic Hat. Hell yeah you want a Magic Hat.
• When you knife a ho
• The Slap Chop? No. Watching The Slap Chop commercials when under the influence? YES.
• First kiss with somebody you don’t want to club to death with the blunt end of a screwdriver
• freeing a leash kid
• laughing uncontrollably at an inappropriate time
• Getting a Target Gift Card. You better fucking believe I will buy 3,000 Luna Bars and a shampoo with this thing
• That dumb bitch from your high school gets knocked up and you laugh and laugh
• 65 and sunny, long ass walk in sundress
• Colin Firth, Jon Hamm, Hugh Laurie and other old people you wanna bang
• Paychecks. Drink all the expensive bar things and get like, 6 bags of cheese at the grocery store.
• Somebody buying you something
• Punching somebody who does high fives or pops their collar in the face
• Sleeping late, getting sick and so mom feeds you soup, getting your wisdom teeth removed and being high as high, and any other moments you can just loaf around and never feel a shower.
• Finding a dog tied to a pole and you just play with that puppy while it’s stupid ass owner goes and buys deodorant
• Friends who have seen you without makeup and just don’t even give a hoot
• having your grandmother tell you how gorgeous you are even though she’s too old to see the truth
• weekday morning talk shows about pregnant cheating liars or whatever
• Alone time so you say hey I guess I’ll belt And I’m…TELLING YOU…..I’M NOT GOOOOOOOOOOING now
• watching people slip and pretend like they didn’t slip
• somebody thinks your joke is so funny and they laugh so hard and you’re in the Gap and it’s like fuck yeah, I’m funny in the Gap
• Burning down the Gap
• good happy drunk, good happy full, good socks
• when you kick everybody’s stupid ass at Monopoly and you get to also be the dog piece
• watching your ex slowly burn to death
• good hair days
• berries are cool. So is revenge.
• peeing when you can’t pee the exact moment you want to so you have to wait and it’s torture pain but then you pee and it’s like celebration
• Bill Pullman’s speech in Independence Day
• when zombies take over the earth and all the people who have planned out how they will survive get eaten and so do the people who haven’t and only you, your friends, the hawtest celebz, and Tom Arnold survive on an island full of doughnut pizza.

I will never buy a Kindle. I look at the Kindles, the Nooks, and the e-books of the world with the kind of distaste saved for the eating of a sour fruit or an overly cologned gentleman at a bar. These electronic ‘download your book’ devices upset me and I am stubborn and steadfast enough to refuse to play devil’s advocate or see the other side. 

This does not mean I do not embrace the advancement of technology. Technology can wrap up my music collection in a 120 gig I-podded package and technology can turn its back while I illegally stream all of the Oscar contender movies. It can make me force unwanted connections with old high school boyfriends and force wanted connections with online daters. I proudly waste too much time on the Internet, spend hours refreshing the Firefox bookmarks and substitute newspapers and magazines for online content. I embrace the things in my life with a limited battery life and I am not ashamed of it.

But it cannot and will not take my books. 

I am a reader. I am a lover of books and this is why I can never own a Kindle. To me, books are precious. They are meant to be held and adored.  To me, there is nothing like taking home a new paperback from the store, to search the aisles for a new release from your favorite author. You get distracted, you find yourself reading the back of a cover you find interesting and yes, you judge a book like that. You scan the first pages and get hooked and you have money so you buy it. You are willing to spend 14.95 because books are expensive these days and you reach three back into the pile to find the coveted uncreased paperback cover. You allow yourself the ritual, the moment you crease it back and now it is your book. To me, there is nothing like the old smell of a library book. You like the crooked stamped Nov 6 1997 Dec 21 2001 on the back flap, way before there was the electronic way of taking books out with a scanner. Those dates meant somebody just like you read this very thing, had held the awkward plastic coating of a library find. There is nothing like the smell of a library, the harsh and worn down carpets, the shush and the paltry YA collection. Here, you find the lost 1998 VHS section, the tiny chairs for children and the tiny pencils with no erasers. The librarians with the glasses chains, the Beck Rolling Stone covers. You stumble across a book here, an old classic you have meant to read and never will read and you flip through it. If you are lucky there are footnotes. The underlined and highlighted paragraphs, the exclamation points, the feeling you are reading somebody else’s diary. You come in the library for one book and you take out six. You return them late and you smell them all. 

There is nothing like taking the book flap off a hardcover, abandoning it underneath your bed to collect dust until you find it when you are looking for a pair of shoes.  Or losing the place in the book you are reading. You refuse to fold the corner of the pages and you refuse to buy a bookmark because you are perfectly capable of remembering a page number. You read a whole page before you realize you read it already and that is fine. There is nothing like sitting on the floor of a Barnes and Noble, remembering why you don’t go there because you feel guilty you will never get to read every beautiful cover, every book. You want to read every good and wonderful book in the world.

With real books, there are moments in a a doctor’s office. You watch a girl, maybe fifteen, pull out the Great Gatsby. You remember the moment you fell for it during the bare legged swing and lemonade sip of your sophomore summer. That month you soaked up the pain of love with the kind of awe and understanding that you will never be as brilliant as Fitzgerald. Or Vonnegut. You remember reading sentences from the great and the dead that throw you against a wall or rip your heart out, so you touch the pages and run your fingers down the ink in substitute. There are moments on the subway. A cute, tousled hair kind of guy pulls out a book you have never read. You watch his face, the movements of his mouth as he soaks it up and for a moment you love him. You take out your book, ruffle through your purse, find that paperback and let somebody fall in love with you as you struggle to read with one hand gripped on the crowded railing.

There is nothing, nothing like a book that is yours. The tattered and wrinkled dog, the pages you have scanned over and over, rubbed your fingers down the spine. The first time you read a book that is yours is like finding a soulmate. It could be a sentence, three sentences, a paragraph before you know. You are hooked. You hug the book. You are elated at finding the kind of words that speak to all the parts of your bones and organs. You take it with you to all the apartments you’ll ever have, packing it safely in the boxes you write BOOKS on. You underline the BOOKS part in the box it is in so you know to be extra careful with it. You go to certain pages when you are sad. 97 will make you cry. 313 will make you laugh. 14 contains the life mantra you live by. You look at the corner crease in the upper right back cove- that came when you let your best friend borrow it. The ripped binding. The underlined sentences. The oil stain in the third chapter. It is as weathered and loved as your very first blanket. The reminder of somebody you loved, you take it back to the time in your life you were in Pennsylvania whipping your hand out the car window. This book is as memory inducing as a favorite song. For me, this book is The Picture of Dorian Gray. For you, it is whatever made you love the written word. Pull it out when you want to visit beloved friends.

The thing is, you cannot trick the ebook into being a book. You cannot substitute a soulmate for one night stands. An ebook may let you scan words, a Kindle may make you understand a plot and introduce characters, but you will never read  with one. You will never curl up with a Kindle on a cold night and feel its warmth. You will never give a tattered copy of it to your children. You will never admire your father’s electronic book collection, you will never love an ebook. If you have one, fine. I understand that the story is the heart of the book, electronic or not. The paper, I think is its soul. 

That is why I will never buy an ebook.