blame it on your lying-cheating-cold-dead-two-timing-double-dealing-mean-mistreating-heart

For the Record

I was just accused of cheating, perhaps not for the first time, but certainly for the first time in a long time. Now, however the stakes are pretty high, how high you ask? True love high ...so i reckoned i better find out exactly what cheating was to mount a proper defense capable of swaying the hardened heart of a mistrustful and stubborn man.

I thought i would start with wikipedia. For your information Wikipedia lists definitions for several kinds of cheating: education, sport, gambling, personal relationships, video games and ecological relationships...in that order. Their conclusion on personal relationships: Many people consider cheating to be any violation of the mutually agreed-upon rules or boundaries of a relationship, which may or may not include sexual monogamy. Since i am completely incapable of abstract thought this means very little to me.

What i could get behind was the definition of ecological cheating : Between organisms of different species, cheating often refers an individual of a species not upholding its end of a cooperative bargain. For example, nectar robbers are birds and insects that are often related to or mimic pollinating species; however, nectar robbers take nectar from a flower without actually engaging in pollination. - Now that's fucked up... although it does seem to metaphorically resemble protected sex.

(I digress is a disturbingly neo con Christian direction)

Our friend the Bumble bee - a nectar robber!

I once had an anthropology professor convincingly argue that the the biological injustice at the root of the oppression of women was that since the dawn of man, women know who their offspring are and men must go on faith. Since the bottom line human imperative is to perpetuate your genes, the primordial fear that a man could be feeding and protecting a child not his own is one theory as to why men have more or less always had the instinct to keep their women under lock and key.

German Chastity Belt

So what happens if you cheat?

The stories of Tristan and Isolde and Camelot and heaps of others all attest to the downfall that "cheating" can incur when women cuckold their husbands. Essentially entire peaceful kingdoms crumble. Then there were the many mortal women coveted by Zeus who had to pay the Greek-style price for cheating: bestiality! Since the philandering god took the shape of bulls, swans, even money to avoid the prying and omniscient eyes of Hera. Moral: even the innocent suffer. We are taught that cheating - of any

kind- rapidly eats at the tenuous moral fiber of human relations, and our most fragile periscope to the public: trust.

There is also the question of revenge. Once suspicions are confirmed, or even validated by a third party, or even validated by four cocktails, there is no telling what insane lengths people will go to when they feel they have been betrayed. No email account, bank account, piece of personal property, dark secret, favorite pet, gun cabinet, friendship, job or public image is totally safe. Although I suppose once in awhile some wanky moral high-grounder will abstain, i wouldn't count on it.

So Why Cheat?

Wiki says that cheating is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one's own interest and often at the expense of others. But I think that romantically people are motivated to cheat out of fear and general malaise with themselves. When i asked a man who cheated on me why he did it, he spoke the only truth that i ever knew to issue from his stinking maw: " You can never be new to me again, you will never again satisfy my need to feel i have conquered a woman, the feeling of ultimate power when she acquiesces and says yes". But that was Europe, so why do people cheat in Richmond? They're drunk! Still i am sure the same forces are at work; power, desirability, fear of the hold a partner has on you, boredom, general misery, yada yada. I have to say for the record, though, it's never really worth it. It doesn't fix what's broken and there will be a inevitable and gruesome slippage between how important it was to you (probably not very) and how earth-shattering it will be to the betrayed party (they will never get over it, forgive you, or trust again).

My Own Cheating

My own cheating! are you fucking kidding me! I'm in love in a small town, it's impossible! I just got accused of having an affair with a person in Florida, where I haven't been since I as 6, when my infirm aunt and her ex-husband took me to Disney World and fought the entire time, buying me an incredibly life-like green parrot to assuage their guilt . I'm accused of cheating with a person I met once! a person I wouldn't recognize on the street if I passed him! Did I mention the person in question is in Florida! Further investigation revealed that the accused is " 19, jobless, and has an aversion to baths" in the words of on expert. This is the most preposterous notion, you're out of your god- dammed mind and you better believe team Carmen San Diego is getting to the bottom of this fishy rumour, even if we have to go all the way to the sunshine state and crack some skulls.

special...for a living

i have decided to leave my job and work for Match.com.

i love personal ads. i read them compulsively. i am absolutely fascinated by what people think other people find alluring. i have learned more about Richmond by reading its personals ads than by any other means. i read them all. men for women. men for men. women for men. women for women. other. casual. serious. i find them all thrilling and curious.

Here are the first few ads from Richmond this morning:

WANTED: Enlightened, intellectual spring flower - 31
I am picky. But if you have, big, loving eyes that are filled with love (and wear that long skirt), you have damn good chances.

Bored Guy loves oral - m4w - 33
I'm an athletically built construction worker who absolutely enjoys getting women off with absolutely NSA or touching of my. My gratification comes from pleasing and tasting you. Front and back, its all good.

Southern Gentleman Seeking Younger Girlfriend
I am a mature and responsible white male seeking companionship. I have a son who is off to college.

Do you need a Loan? - 42
I can help.....email with your details/situation if you are serious about getting it!

okay okay, i'll stop, but i love them all. i wish that i could read them all aloud. I know that there were personal ads long before the advent of the internet, but it seems that there has been an explosion in the past 10 years of online personals, romantic or intimate chatting, matrimonial services etc.

like any other market that was opened up by free trade and quick and easy travel, the relationship market has opened up as well. it's a sound premise...just like you can easily find any obscure book, film, vintage handbag, nazi souvenir, now you can search through thousands of people to find exactly what you always wanted. the combination of your dream traits and fantasy looks.

the internet dating pool is overwhelming. no longer being forced to choose between the three village eligibles, our minds can wander and wander and wander, musing on what exactly would suit us best in a partner.

only that if you're anything like me ...your idea of suitable partner is invariably WRONG. forging a relationship with someone new, should be done, for most people, in the close quarters of their families and loved ones. basically, surrounded by people who are smarter about you than you are.

still, people have built veritable empires from internet dating. sites like eharmony and match.com and jdate proliferate...and they're NOT cheap. i am sure there are a number of factors that contribute to their success, but i think the key ones are that now people feel as if they can meet their true love from the comfort of their office, and since that is where they are spending 70 hrs/week, it's a pretty good idea. also, we all seem to be convinced that greater selection means increased chances of happiness with the choice we finally do make ( like "wow, i love this supermarket, they have over 50 kinds of tomato sauce, i'm sure to find the best"). i think this is erroneous, but never mind, i'm not going to let it stand in the way of my new career as a professional special person.


the new commercial that i hear on the radio for Match.com is themed : " go ahead, it's okay to look"

then they go on to say that if you use their service for 6 months at like $20/month and you don't meet anyone special, they'll give you next six months free.

Six months free! how is THAT for a guarantee??

it sounds to me as if they stand to lose a pretty penny, because even if you DO meet someone special, after six months, i'm sure you're hooked on the whole shopping aspect, and besides you never know when you might meet someone MORE special, especially if it's free. ..i mean go ahead, it's okay to look.

so i thought that i would offer myself to Match.com as professional special person, so that they wouldn't loose so much money.

basically i would go out on dates with as many eligibles as possible. i am infinitely qualified because i am REALLY good at going on dates. in fact i am as good at going on dates as i am bad at being in actual relationships. i would go out with men and women, i'm not picky. I imagine Match.com would set me up with the biggest train wrecks, those who they thought were the highest rick at making good on the guarantee after six months.

i would hep myself up, go on these dates and be ebullient and charming . i can make ANYONE feel interesting, so i imagine i would have to do a lot of that. when the time was right because we'd been skinny dipping in a water tower or drinking scotch at a drive in ...and maybe it would take one or two dates....i would move in for the clincher and say .... "Wow, goodnight, that was really special, wasn't it?" or " My, you are so special, i never thought i would meet anyone special like you"

and i would look so sincere, that whether or not they felt it, they would pretty much be obliged to respond in kind and be forever captured by the tiny hidden mic tapped to my chest as having said " you are special too". forfeiting their chance to a free 6 months.

since anything disingenuous seems to be a major asset to the modern business, i basically think this would make me the match.com employee of the month...forever. and think of all the train wrecks i would get to meet!

you are how you eat

food is important to me...my friends and my waist line might say VERY IMPORTANT, the only thing more important than food...that i can mention without shaming my sweetheart...is EATING! (you thought i was going to say drinking, didn't you)

Eating is an old and sacred ritual. I didn't realize how i felt about it until i moved to the states where people eat crummy food by themselves -but it's the later that i don't condone under any circumstance, barring the untimely deaths of the other members of your polar exploration party.

nearly every day i do a strange thing at lunch time, which is to drive home rapidly and procure or make lunch for my sweetheart. it takes a lot of time and energy. everyone thinks this is some "sweet" or incredibly loving gesture on my part, but just like most of what i do, it's pure selfishness successfully gussied up as something more noble.

the truth is i have this phobia about eating alone or with anyone i don't like a lot. i feel like bad ju jus will get me if i don't at least stick to the part of the ritual that involves breaking bread with people one is really fond of. So midday finds me hauling my cookies to a bicycles shop where i eat standing up and dribbling a bit-part meal over orders for wheel sets and repairs. usually i have to check my work email at least once to ascertain if anyone's noticed my absence and thrown a fit. it's a little stressful, but i wouldn't have it any other way.

i just have to share my meals with someone i can talk to and laugh a little with, otherwise, frankly, i'd rather not eat at all...and we all know that's not going to happen!

i realized i'm not so much a food snob (I get this accusation often) as a meal snob. I love to feed myself while i look at people i like, or think i might like in the near future. i don't care what i am eating so much as who i am eating it with. much to luke's dismay i am forever inviting such and such neighbor or friend for a meal he will no doubt get roped into helping with. I can't help it! if i meet someone i think is interesting the first thing i want to do is eat with them.

luckily for all of you who have been tolerating this for years...my cooking seems to be improving.

i am illustrating this with a picture of my hot car for reasons known only to myself.

driven to drink

The French are always accusing Americans of being puritans, something that used to really get under my skin. The French can be painfully traditional and conservative and nearly the entire country is Catholic, so i never really saw where they got off pointing fingers.

But i am beginning to understand. Firstly, the French are only culturally Catholic, so the extent of their spirituality is limited to freezing their tits off in a medieval church on Christmas eve and occasionally waving a palm frond lazily on....that holiday with the palm fronds. Besides this sort of stuff...they don't actually believe.

Now that I am living here I am beginning to see that Americans are real Christians...even the awnry punk rock ones that I frequent, who wouldn't be caught dead at Sunday service, are still genetically Christian...you can tell by the omnipresent belief that life should be misery and suffering.

it's a real downer.

I realized all of this when i was introduced to the concept of DRINKING GAMES. maybe you are familiar with some of them...i'm not, but i guess i have gotten to witness my fair share of "Beer Pong" and "Asshole" and a few others in the past six months. EVERYONE here plays at one time or another.

Beer Pong seems by far the most popular in Richmond. people use a long table (sometimes a specially decorated sacred plywood board is brought out) You arrange cups in a triangle, fill them with beer, let the person at the other end try to throw what is probably the world's-dirtiest-ping-pong-ball into your cups of beer. If they get the ping pong ball in then you have to drink the, now-contaminated, beer. If they miss, the ball just goes into the corner of the room and collects more dust and germs...so that's also good.

at least this is how it works from what i can tell...i've never actually played. Why haven't I played? am i spoiled sport? a tea totaller? a bad shot? NO!

i just don't need any excuse or justification to drink. none what so ever. i love booze. i love all kinds...i like the feeling of being warmed by alcohol. i like beer and wine and liquor, i drink them all because i can't tell which one i like best..i like being a little tipsy, pretty drunk....whatever. then i like eating, dancing, or running around. did i say like? because what i really meant was LOVE, as in I LOVE IT.

alcohol is one of the most ancient human social pleasures. Many advanced cultures understand this. for all of its' flaws, France is at the vanguard. But america seems to be lagging despite the fact that drunk people here are drunker than anywhere else.

I think this is the hidden subtext of drinking games, unconsciously, people here, even the wild ones, seem to feel guilty about pleasure. The real motivation driving the game is to assuage the sense of guilt that so many puritans associate with pleasure, thus forcing them to have fun. By besting someone in a drinking game you force them to drink, punishing their loosing with the pleasure they wanted in the first place and easing their conscience by making them feel that they just had to drink, since it is the penance for loosing. afterall, they are just following the rules

and we know how puritans love penance and rules.

it is not uncommon to hear someone say " i was sooooo drunk on Friday night, it was terrible, I just had to keep drinking, everyone beat me in Beer Pong" or " I lost at such and such and they made me drink three 40's"

it is not uncommon to hear me say " I was sooooo drunk on Friday, i drank everything in the house because i wanted to and I had a delightful time"

or, in truth, even more frequently: " Luke do you have any money? Good! let's go out on the lash and go crazy"

let's all embrace pleasure! ecstasies! aesthetics! irreverent spending! humour! beauty! poetry! sex! booze!



Hopefully my stint here will witness the ushering in of a new era of Bacchanalian Good Times.

we can do it if we try.

gotta work fast

There is a shelf at my parent's home that is empty, save for a sign that reads " Reserved for Nobel Prizes and pictures of grandchildren."

abject failure is getting me down.

like bandits

"making out" is a staple of the the Richmond social diet. it's fascinating and not a little fraught with peril. "making out" means some sort of extended kissing and groping...like snogging, although it can also mean to get a really good deal, or to discern something clearly, so you can see how i get confused.

as in:

he sold us the entire knife set AND the nun chucks for five dollars, we really made out!

or:
In the dark I couldn't quite make out whether it was him or his sister.



or..confusingly:
i don't remember his name, but we drank like 10 beers each and made out.


most of the time you can go on context, but not always, so beware.

i was at a show on Friday night at Casey and Marshé 's store and was introduced to some kid who got that dreamy faraway look in his eyes we all long to see in those of recent acquaintance.

we talked for a few minutes before he said "we should hang out or make out sometime"

i thought that i misheard him over the bad band from New York, but someone present repeated it to me later, so yep, i guess that was the real offer for kissing.

wow

an offer indeed.

one fellow who likes to mosey up and smooch ladies on the piste de dance was labeled by Marshe as a "walk up make-outer" . This, perhaps needless to say, is a bad thing.

So if, like me, you thought that french kissing and heavy petting was indelibly linked to sex....as in.... basically something to do with you face during....well, come to Richmond and think again!

Here you can kiss someone's stinky sweaty party mouth...or even more than one person, if you're feeling exuberant, and not worry that you have made a solemn oath to fuck them all night long! really!! people here do it all the time!

so for those coming to visit me in the near future, keep this in mind and brush up with mirrors, the backs of your hands, anything handy that you find around the house and prepare to make out!

you should not

(a leeetle more advice )

drink in the middle of the afternoon and fall on your head, thus frightening brand new boyfriend and putting your dentist's children through college...and graduate school...and probably a cruise.