I am single. Yes, at my age. Shut up.
Being single, however, isn’t the end of the world because I was never the girl who was desperate to get married. I don’t have a dream wedding (okay, I say it’s Rabbi Elvis in Vegas, but mostly because I honestly don’t care about that crap). I never put a towel on my head and pretended it was a veil. And at weddings, when the bride throws the bouquet? You can find me cowering in the corner, rocking like an autistic child and chanting, “They’re just flowers. They can’t MAKE me get married. They’re just flowers.”
But I AM dating. Which, as I get older (not old, older. Call me old and die), gets harder and harder to do because I’m starting to think that the guys left in the dating pool are the crazy weirdos who no one else wanted.
That or I am just somehow a magnet for psychos, who have smelled my blood in the water and are circling me like rabid sharks moving in for the kill.
For example, I got dumped this weekend.
By a male stripper.
Who I had never even gone on a date with.
Yes. For real.
I met this guy about three weeks ago. He was hot. He was tall. And despite the first two qualifications, he was Jewish! AND he wasn’t even related to me (I’d begun to believe that the only tall Jews on the planet are in my family. We are generally a short, hairy, gold-loving Hobbit-like people). Clearly he was soul mate material. This was fate. Beshert, if you will. So I gave him my number.
He calls the next day (which I now recognize as a sign of crazy. Normal guys wait a day or two. But following the How I Met Your Mother Hot/Crazy Scale, we were still in the acceptable range).
We start talking and he mentions a photo shoot that he needs to leave town for. I laugh and ask, “What? Are you like a model or something?” He tells me yes, I crack a Zoolander joke, conversation continues. But he’d mentioned a law degree, so I ask what his real job is. I mean, he was cute, but I wouldn’t think he was cute enough to be professionally good looking.
At which point he tells me he’s in “entertainment.”
Now I’ve been around the block a few times. I once dated a guy who told me he was in “sales,” which actually meant that he was a drug dealer. So I hear “entertainment” and a little warning bell goes off in my head.
“Entertainment? What does that mean exactly?”
Long pause.
“Actually, I’m a stripper. And, in the interest of full disclosure, most of my modeling work is nude.”
Okay, so he wasn’t going to be my soul mate. Yes, I’ve been offered jobs stripping. And yes, I’ve had guys ask me to do nude modeling. The difference here is that I laughed in those people’s faces because I have ZERO desire to do either of those things. You want to see me naked? Buy me dinner and, at the very least, feign interest in my books, Bruce Springsteen, and Rosie. Sticking cash in my underwear isn’t gonna do it for me. Sorry boys.
But I’m pretty open-minded. I was willing to keep talking to the guy. Strike two came when asked me to come watch him strip that night. Um, no. And when I said that I had plans (which, okay, I didn’t, but sitting at home with Rosie and Netflix ranks higher than going to a male strip club. Seriously. Not my scene), he asked for my email address.
Why did he want that? Oh, because he wanted to send me nude pictures of himself to use for my “private girl time.” Yes. He actually said that. Guess how long I stayed on the phone for after that? Did you guess less than 10 seconds? If so, you guessed high!
I got off the phone, texted my seven favorite people on the planet and told them the story in all of its hilarious glory, and thought that was the end of it. (Note: almost all of my girl friends wanted to know why I didn’t get the pictures to show them. Sickos. I love you, but you’re dirty, dirty girls!)
But no, that’s NEVER the end of it in Sara-land! I live in a world where people will drive down from New York City just to call me an inappropriate name in a record store (happened last month and let me tell you, it was SUPER fun).
So Friday night (three weeks after our one and only phone conversation), he called me and I got an earful about what an awful person I am. Apparently I’m fake and dishonest for ignoring his phone calls (he never called between that first call and Friday’s call), not answering his emails (never got any emails either, even checked my spam folder), and for leading him on when I never had any intention of being with him. Then he told me that while I may look good, he’s done with me and we’re over. Which confused the hell out of me because I didn’t realize we were under. But okay. Peace out, crazy stripper dude.
I’d love to say that it’s them, not me. But getting dumped by a stripper who I never went out with was so not strange to me that I’m starting to realize it has to be me who is attracting the crazies. I don’t know exactly what it is about me. Maybe there’s a crazy pheromone and I just give it off. Maybe there’s some Statue of Liberty like sign above my head that says, “Give me your crazy, your unbalanced, your huddled masses yearning to stalk me…”
Whatever it is, I think I’m going to start requiring a full psych evaluation before I give my number out to the next guy. So if you want to take me out, but see the axe-murdering monkey demon that lives in your closet on every card of the ink-blot test, don’t be surprised when you get a fake number from me.
It makes great fodder for my blog and all, but I’m getting tired of getting dumped by guys I’m not even dating.
