Due to the well of my friends’ “def not an axe murderer” date recommendations drying up, I have turned to that most sacred of modern relationship institutions: online dating. As a very busy person trying to get it in with other very busy people, I prize honestly and directness above all else when it comes to profile creation. I include full body shots in my photos, try to minimize the use of MySpace angles in selfies, and write at the very top of the summary/caption/profile that I am fat. Not “curvy,” not “thick,” not “lots to love”–I’m f*cking fat. I’m not ashamed of it, but I also known that weight is a dealbreaker for lots of people. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
About a year ago I met “Evan” via Tinder. We exchanged friendly messages for a few hours one night and agreed to meet up for drinks the following evening. I waited for a full hour past the designated time, and just as I was getting up to leave, the texts started rolling in.
“I can see you sweating from here.” “How long does it take you to roll out of bed every morning?” “Is there an earthquake or are you just getting up for more pretzels?”
Really idiotic, juvenile shit. Four separate numbers, commenting on things like my clothes, which clued me in that the senders were nearby. This went on for 15 minutes before I finally saw Evan, trying to hide in at a corner table and giggling with a group of buddies. I made eye contact, saw that he saw me, and then walked out. The texts kept up until I blocked the numbers a few hours later.
I ran into Evan about 3 weeks later. We got on the same elevator, and he tried really hard at being super interested in the emergency phone instructions. I just confronted him, and he admitted it was just some “game” that him and his friends play. He knew I was fat before agreeing to meet up; they all did, because that’s what they do. Match up with fat women, then either ghost them or “troll” them at the meet-up. It was also kinda obvious he’d never seen any consequences from this bullshit, as he was sweating pretty hard and looked more humiliated than I felt. I just said whatever and walked out, expecting to never see him again.
About a month ago, some local foodie wrote a great review of the restaurant I own, and we’ve been slammed ever since. In the past, I stayed mostly in the kitchen, but I’ve been doing more and more front-of-house stuff lately, and Valentine’s Day I was working a bit of a split between the two.
I saw Evan just as he was pushing in his date’s chair. My name isn’t on the restaurant, and he didn’t see me. I checked the section up at the hostess stand and saw that one of my favorite old-timers, Nan, was going to be his waitress. I went to the bar till, took out $400, put it in her hands, and said, “This is going to be your only table for the rest of the night. You are going to make this the worst date he has ever been on.”
She spilled every single thing she brought out to the table, all over him. I was waiting for him to blow up on Nan, but he bottled it up, obviously trying to make a good impression on his date. She seemed like a perfectly lovely lady; I told Nan to make sure everything was good for her and terrible for Evan.
She poured ice water on his d*ck. She smacked the back of his head with the edge of a tray. Spilled soup on his shirt. Dropped every fork he asked for. I personally oversalted his food, used the shit liquor for his drinks, used flour instead of sugar on his dessert. To be honest, I don’t know why he didn’t just walk out. He must have really wanted to f*ck this woman.
Finally, he cracked. Demanded Nan find the manager and bring her out. I was only too happy to emerge from the kitchen with my chef’s coat and say what, I’m not ashamed to admit, I’d been planning out all night.
“I would have said hi earlier, but I didn’t want the earthquake to disturb your dinner.”
I will savor the look on Evan’s face for the rest of my life.
He was a little too flummoxed to explain, so I pulled a chair up to the table and introduced myself to his date, Amanda. Told her how I met Evan. Showed her some fun old messages. Then I told gave her a voucher for a free meal on her next visit and told Evan to get the f*ck out and never come back.
When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.
My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.
I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.
Holy shit
how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?
i used to think green apple was a flavor invented by the candy industry like blue raspberry bc i had never seen a green apple before I just thought all apples were red and long story short when i realized i was red green colorblind it really fucked me up
there’s also yellow apples
now yall are just fuckin lying to me
i just assumed that everyone just ate apples if they were in the mood for a surprise i dunno
the best story i think i’ve ever heard at a party was from this ex-Lutheran who was absolutely shitfaced and told us all about the origins of Lutherism bc it’s so??? incredible??? apparently martin luther was this like twenty-one year old college student and atheist (of course) and he’s walking home during this thunderstorm, just soaking wet, miserable, probably cussing out the god he supposedly doesn’t believe in, and he gets struck by lightning, which, obviously, sucks. he’s probably pissed as hell because he’s miraculously alive but also probably in a lot of pain, probably cursing god’s name yet again, and he gets struck by lightning a second time like??? What the fuck!!! how unlucky is that!! and so now he’s running for a forest to hide underneath the trees, once again furious at god, and he gets struck by lightning for the third time!!! so he finally makes it to the trees, probably crispy as hell, exhausted and in pain and he drops to his knees and says basically “god, please, for fucks sake, stop hitting me with lightning. I swear if you leave me alone i’ll go to a monastery and become a monk and re-invent this religion i guess but please just leave me alone” and he’s not struck by lightning again so he becomes a monk like??? i’m not Lutheran so i don’t know how accurate this drunk re-telling is but i believe it whole-heartedly and have gained a healthy respect for the wrath of god
When you get your hair cut by a black barber for the first time 😭😂
lmao which one of yall niggas changed this mans life?
I’m dyinggggg 😭😭😭
When he talked about that warm towel I lost it.
Loooool
I actually had a similar experience. Pre-transition when I was in the army I went to a barbershop outside of Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and I was the only white person there. Granted, I never really fit into men’s spaces so it was a bit awkward there, but the barber lined me up.
Also, I’ve never gone to a proper salon and gotten my hair done.
So my mom hated all Bobby Darin/Sandra Dee films on like a bedrock second-wave feminism principle. She hated the color pink, she hated barbies, she hated anything that was too “girly.” But she ESPECIALLY hated Sandra Dee movies based, I think, on the abundance of frills and pink.
So NO ONE believed her about this “imaginary” movie she was SO SURE existed where Sandra Dee uses a dog training manual to make Bobby Darin into the best husband. She could never remember much about the film beyond that and a vivid description of the final scene in which Sandra Dee comes home and finds Bobby Darrin literally down on all fours with his leash in his mouth, coming out of the doghouse he has built in their apartment.
WE LAUGHED AT HER EVERY TIME IT CAME UP. WE. LAUGHED.
But then my sister went through this old films phase where she, like, learned all these ways of hunting down copies of films no one else could get. (I have never questioned this power and y’all don’t really get how magical it was back in the day before youtube and streaming and itunes and whatnot, but she had CONNECTIONS. I think she had an In at TCM?)
But yeah so for a birthday present, my sister tries to hunt down this film based only on the dog training thing.
BOOM. IT EXISTS.
This is the movie.
It turns out the dog training manual is only one of the plotlines? If I remember correctly, there’s also a question of whether Sandra Dee’s Italian or Boston ancestry is dominant and that they switch? And there’s like a music cue and she goes, “BOSTON COLD” and then like cold shoulders Bobby Darin until he pleases her in some way? And she does indeed get a dog training manual and she does indeed use it on him? And he is unaware and I think it turns out that it makes their marriage, like, the envy of all around them. Only then he finds the manual and is butthurt that she would use a dog training manual on him and they almost split, but then he realizes he is the subbiest sub ever that he really loves her or whatever and does the final scene where she comes back to apologize but he has the dog leash and is willing to be her pet forever and ever amen.
i went to the local shakespeare festival (and by local, i mean on the other end of the state) and during the day i convinced my mother to go hiking with me because we were in the center of like four national parks
so we end up hiking this trail that sort of jack-knifes down the mountain and I end up climbing partway up a tree on the edge of the trail to see further out, so my smartass mother asks “legolas, what do your elf eyes see?”
and i, in my smarmy glory, go “they’re taking the hobbits to isengard!”
which is funny enough as is, but then the entire mountainside of hikers hidden in the trees goes “THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD-GARD-GARD-GARD-GARD! THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS, THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD, TO ISENGARD!”
and that’s how an entire hiking trail of people who never actually saw one another convinced my mother i’m some sort of meme-summoning mountain troll
i used to get self-conscious over the smallest things but friends let me tell you that today i had to smuggle a furious 8ft python onto the bus during the school rush and not a single person noticed. not one. if people don’t care enough to notice a shopping bag writhing and seething with barely-contained reptilian hatred then i promise you that no-one will pay any attention to that blemish you’re fretting about or how you’ve done your hair
So y’all keep blowing up my notes with the various Family Lore stories I’ve been telling, so I guess I should tell one on my parents now.
My Mother’s Father was part of the United Auto Worker’s Union, and during the 50′s and 60′s, was on strike a lot. My point is, grandpa got himself an entirely deserved reputation for being a sucker who loved animals, so people would dump thier pets on him. Hence, my mother grew up in a house with pets such as Picket the one-eyed tomcat, Tweety the Bald canary, Dummy the cat, Stupid Son of Dummy, Spooky Garbage Dog and Chiquita the Tarantula. Eventually Grandma put her foot down when Grandpa brought home Gerta the Saint Bernard.
I say all this because it provides some context for how the following occured.
Mom and Dad had just moved in together (my parents dated for six years and were engaged for 13 days, driving everyone on both sides insane), and unfortunately, My mother’s German Shepherd, Cops, has just passed away due to bone cancer. After mourning for a bit, Mom and Dad decided to get a dog together, as a couple.
For context, my father had never owned a dog in his life. His mother had ‘Pretty Bird” the budgie as a child but parrots are alien life forms, not pets.
So they go to the Palo Alto Animal shelter to adopt. The year was 1987, and at the time, Palo Alto was… not a great place. Lots of drugs, gangs and poor civic managment. Mom told me that she learned to identify different types of gunfire while living there. They get there, and mom explains that she’s always had a preference for Big Dogs, and the guy’s face lights up. Oh Yes, he says, We have a Big Dog. For expirienced owners, yep, adoptable today, here we’ll give you a discount even-
Somehow my parents were not suspicious about this.
They were shown to the Animal in question, a Gorgeous blue-sable beastie with pretty golden eyes who immediately pressed herself against the fence and gave them the best PUH-LEEEEEEASE TAKE ME HOME puppy eyes 100lbs of canine can do. Mom and Dad fall in love instantly. They sign all the paperwork and take her home for $10, and name her “Mazel” as in “Mazel Tov.”
Within the hour, it becomes clear that something is amiss.
Cops had lived with his kibble stored in a plastic garbage can in the garage for six years without incident. Mazel figured out how to open doors and got the locking lid off the can in six minutes, horking down about four pounds of the stuff before my mother notices that it’s been weirdly quiet. Most dogs bark at or chase squirrels. Mazel stalked and caught one the second day, presenting it to my mother like an offering. Mazel knew all her commands but would clearly stop to consider before obeying, and trained my dad to give her good treats within a week. The locks on the side-yard gate were undone, and she took a stroll around the neighborhood, but always retuned home for dinner.
After a week of gradually realizing that Mazel was smarter than most of the professors my mom worked with, they took her to the Vet for a routine checkup.
Dr. Hamada walked into the exam room, dropped the clip-board and said “Where the HELL did you get a Wolf?”
After a bit of prodding and a very-angry-dr.hamada-calling-the-pound, they determined Mazel was a high-content hybrid, probably with a husky, but was going to be a lil shit her entire life. OK, said Hamada, I don’t like destroying animals and you’ve got a lot of expirience with dogs, so I’m okay with letting you keep her, but you should keep her away from small children because her Prey Drive could kick in.
Two years later, mom got pregnant with me.
Mazel noticed instantly, and reacted by digging a large hole in the yard and catching even more squirrels for mom, because she needed the protein or something. That what you do when the Alpha Bitch is preggers, right? Dig a den and ply her with food? On the advice of my grandmother, my mom stayed overnight at the hospital once I was delivered, and dad went home with a shirt that had moms and my scent on it. Mazel spent the whole night puzzling over it.
The next morning, when mom came home with me, there was the sudden and instantaneous recognition of PUPPY!!!!!! :D:D:D!!!!! PUUUUUUUPPY!!!!!! and Mazel turned into the most aggressively maternal being I’ve ever met. Playing with me on the blanket, sitting under my chair at meals (I was a messy eater), sleeping under my crib, teaching me to walk by letting me hang onto her fur and shuffle around.
Dr. Hamada thought mom was a madwoman, until he saw me holding Mazel’s mouth open and sticking my face in so i could look at her teeth. He gave up when my mom announced she was pregnant with my sister.
I’m making living with a Wolfdog sound awesome, but it did come with some drawbacks:
Mazel did have to be muzzled at the vets, because she had Opinions about having things stuck up her butt.
HAIR. One of my chores growing up was to brush her out every week and I’d frequently end up with more hair than animal.
the only way we could reliably get her to stay in the yard was with an overhead tether with a STEEL cable, which she chewed through anyway.
Do you like waking up by being hit in the face with half a dead animal? No? Wolfdogs may not be for you.
More than capable of opening the fridge and eating everything if you’re not watching
Will get into everything if not otherwise occupied. Including eating your tax forms.
Howls along with sirens at 4 AM.
PROS of growing up with a wolfdog, as a small child in the 90′s
I was afforded a degree of freedom normally associated with a pokemon trianer. It was no big deal for me and my sister to walk three miles through my not-really-good neighborhood to the Froyo if I took Mazel with us. People tended to leave us alone when we had 100lbs of overprotective Apex Predator following us around.
WINNING at Pet Day at school. There wasn’t actually a compettion but Billy’s hamster sucks in comparison to an animal that is perfectly willing to demonstrate how she can snap an oak branch in half on command.
PTA moms losing their shit because Mazel would walk down the block by herself to come pick ups up from school.
Grew up associating the word “Bitch” with teeth and the willingness to rip an asshole’s face off for being rude. Never changed the definition.
Learned the I-Own-This Strut and Murder-Stare from the absolute best.
When she was 17, Mom and Dad decided to add another room on to the house. They rigged up the overhead tether so she could be outside but not underfoot for the contruction guys. One morning, mom came out to notice them all milling in the side yard entrance, muttering worriedly. When mom asked what was wrong, one of them explained that Carlos forgot to bring the Hamburger. What do you need a hamburger for? Asked mom, and they pointed down the side yard to where Mazel was sitting, doing her best Viscious Alpha Bitch Stare.
Apparently they’d never realized that she was on the VERY end of her tether there and couldn’t actually get to them, and had been scamming them for a big mac a day for a month. Mom had my six-year-old sister pull her away to show she wasn’t dangerous and tired her best not to laugh but kind of failed.
Mazel ended up living to be 19 and a half, and except for some minor arthritis, remarkably hale until the day she passed away in her hole in the back yard while taking a nap. I maintain that Death had to wait until she was sleeping to get a crack at her, or she would’ve taken his scythe for a chew toy.
tbh this sounds like one of @seananmcguire‘s stories and I do not doubt it a bit bc I know all of Seanan’s stories are true. XD
@dollyp shared a story on twitter about refugees after the news of trump’s new ban (which has, thankfully, for the moment been stayed by a federal judge)
