How To Make His Arm Want You

Cosmo tells me that what makes men fall in love is doing stuff like putting my hair in a pony tail one day, wearing it down another day. That way he doesn’t feel trapped with one person. That way there’s no need for him to worry that we’re in a rut. You gotta trick a guy into feeling like you’re multiple people, because lord knows he’s going to get tired of banging you really quickly.

Cosmo tells me that I need to tell him if I’m afraid to commit, because that will make him happy. Cosmo tells me men think we’re all out to get babies put in our bellies and rings on our fingers. But if I’m afraid to commit, that’s because I don’t really like the guy. So I guess I shouldn’t tell him. This is so confusing.

When I first met Alan, we lived an hour away from each other. A Wisconsin hour away is no small thing. In LA, that’s just like, “She lives in Silver Lake, he lives in the valley. There’s traffic.” A Wisconsin hour away is dark and cold and full of black ice and deer running out in front of you. That drive will age you.

So, when we weren’t together, I would write to him. The emails were long, beautiful, streaming narratives. I vaguely remember writing something about elephants. There’s irony in me forgetting what I wrote about elephants.

When I first met Josh, he lived in Chicago and I lived in Waukesha, WI. Our first morning together was so beautiful that I cried when I woke up. I’m that kind of girl. When I couldn’t see him, I wrote to him.

When I first met Lee, he lived in England. K was in Santa Barbara. Ted and I talked via email for 6 months before we met in person.

Cosmo, a printed publication full of words about how you can get a man to love you, is missing out on something pretty major. It’s called words. And it’s not some stupid bullshit where you try to get crafty and play it cool and be evasive. It’s just, what are you thinking about?

Now, I get that this isn’t going to work across the board. Because sometimes what you’re thinking about is really boring. I think about boring stuff all the time. Just earlier I spent a good long time thinking about what it would be like to work in a pretzel factory and if that would make me not like pretzels. Yesterday I thought about my hair for a good chunk of the day. Sometimes I’m thinking about some conversation I had and how I should have said something different.

But, when I’m still, and I look around, or when I’m walking to the bus, my head is just full of stuff. Memories. Something I saw on the sidewalk. And that stuff is just going to go away. It’s not going to end up anywhere other than my head. But if I write it in a letter to someone I adore-if I just write all that stuff I was just thinking exactly as I was thinking it, I’ve just communicated in a rare way, thereby sharing parts of myself that the recipient isn’t going to see on some date.

It’s not a manipulation or a game or waiting till he texts me three times to text him back or not always being available when he wants me or whatever nonsense women are supposed to do. It’s the opposite. It’s honesty and communication and giving him something raw and vulnerable. It is intimacy. And it really, really works.

That said, a handie ever now and then doesn’t hurt. Whuhtwhuht.

This post contains Nicholas Cage

I’ve been using OkCupid since 2008. If you don’t use that site, you don’t know how it works, but it like, totally encourages you to stick around. It’s like an aggressive version of those little creatures popping up behind Sarah in Labrynth, “Should you need us…” Only it’s like “Listen, we’re really happy that you’re off the market, but if you delete your profile you can never use the same username and all the hard work that went into creating this stunning profile will be lost, so how about you just click the “Disable” button. Then, if things don’t work out, you can just pick up where you left off.”

And over the years, I’ve become protective of that profile. I love my username. That profile is one of my finest works, always evolving. That profile gets me so many messages that I’ve never been at a loss for anything to do. If I’m bored, I just make my way down the list and find someone who’s not busy right then. Bad or good, that profile has been a huge chunk of my self-esteem for years.

“Don’t forget to text me when the race is over so I know you’re not smashed to bits.”

Yesterday, as the hours ticked by and I hadn’t heard from him, I realized that if there was an accident, I wouldn’t know about it. He races bicycle for a living. I don’t know how to say that. He’s a pro-bike guy. A professional racist? He goes out on these big races with a team and they race and they get hurt and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in Jerry MacGuire and I am watching a football game and my husband Cuba Gooding Jr. gets smashed into by other football guys and I don’t know if he’s going to get up and dance around. Only I can’t watch *his* race on tv. Or can I? I dunno. Never checked the channels for this kind of stuff.

In the past, when I’ve met someone on OkCupid and I really like-like them, I’ve changed my status to “Seeing Someone”. This is a thing you can do. You can say “Seeing Someone” and that you’re only looking for new friends. Or you can say “Seeing Someone” and if you say you’re looking for casual sex or dating, that shows up to other people as “Available”. So, I’d change it, as a gesture, as a way to say “Look, I think you’re pretty great.” A few times I even disabled that profile. That was when things were really going full-steam. Like, when Josh and I moved in together. Or when K and I started dating. Hell, I didn’t even disable my profile when Lee moved across the ocean to live with me.

We lay in bed one night trying to figure out what we’re going to hate about each other. He’s gone a lot. We both have a bit of the crazy in us. I post about my personal life on every imaginable platform. He’s fairly private. This is a thing I usually do by myself. Whenever I feel especially drawn to a person, I start to think of the things that won’t work about it. “He dresses like a dweeb.” “I already can’t stand the way he chews.” “He dances. I hate that.” It’s not a thing I try to do. I’m just the kind of person who thinks long-term about everything. I worry it into the ground.

But now that worry is replaced by a new worry. I’m terrified that now that I’ve met him, something will take him away. One of my co-workers got hit by a car on his bike Friday night. There were 618 bicycle riding deaths in America in 2010. Remember when Nicholas Cage became a human so he could hang out with Meg Ryan and then they are super happy? What takes her out? That’s right. She’s riding a bike and gets hit by a truck. Bikes are death-traps.

I woke up because I had a dream he was telling me goodbye in the morning. I woke up smiling. What a twit. That keeps happening to me. My face hurts from smiling. I keep staring off into space, thinking of him, looking like someone just plunged me full of morphine. My friends are downright sick of my infatuation phase.

I opened OkCupid, gazed at a few of the faces of people who’d sent me messages. No interest. I clicked on my settings, got to the disable profile page. They let you do this thing where you can tell them why you’re going. You can tell them who you met on their site. They say this improved their matching abilities. I guess that makes sense based on the numbers system they use. And I entered his name, and was about to hit that disable button. Then I thought better of it and hit “Delete”.

Now I’m waiting for the hours to pass, the text message to come, and reading too many articles about bicycle deaths. Everyone loves in their own way.

And I promise, one is coming soon. My computer is in the shop right now, and posting from my phone isn’t ideal. For now, enjoy this video of Tim singing a beautiful song about me.

Friday night’s birthday festivities lead to a really rough Saturday morning. Then Tim & I headed down to Fatburger so we could actualize our dream of eating 24 ounces of fat-dripping, peppery meat patties. My stomach still hurts today, and my earlier proclamations that I am always in the mood for a hamburger aren’t feeling as strong.

What’s better than not having cancer anymore? Having a job and not having cancer anymore.

— Nikol Hasler (@NikolHasler) March 12, 2013

Outfits!

There's no way I'm making it under the limbo stick.

My mother’s third husband used to throw us these bang-up birthday parties when we were kids. He went all-out with a scavenger hunt, pin the tail on the donkey, that dart balloon game, and a pinata. It was this massive event, and all of my classmates came, and I wonder what they thought of our tiny, roach infested apartment turned into a temporary carnival.

I loved those parties so much, because I felt so damn special. Those are the earliest birthdays I remember, especially remarkable because that particular step-father had been a Jehovah’s Witness when my mother first married him. For a few years we didn’t celebrate a damn thing. Then, once he denounced his faith, he went balls-to-the-wall with every single holiday.

I would open my gifts from my classmates delicately, softly pulling the tape away so I could save the gift wrap. No matter what the present was, I would loudly declare that it was exactly what I’d wanted, feeling some new bond between myself and the giver. Even Megan, who’d been on my shit-list since she reprimanded me for kicking Phillip under the table in kindergarten, was transformed into my closest friend as I opened the transistor radio she gave me in second grade. Such a thoughtful gift indicated that Megan knew of my deep love for listening to the radio. Megan, I had you all wrong.

Later, when the cake was eaten and the friends had left, I would smell the paper, imagine their mothers’ hands pressing the creases, hear the pull of the tape. I would picture them at the store with their parents, choosing the perfect gift, considering me as a person. “I think-,” they’d tell their parents, “actually, I am sure I hear her say she doesn’t like the color yellow. How about something in blue?”

Sometimes I woud re-wrap the gifts and open them all again, pretending that each classmate presented the gift to me along with a speech about the kind of friend I’d been to them. I’d wave their sentiments away in gestures indicating that really, it was nothing! That time I gave you my animal crackers at snack? Forget about it. Or I’d engage in eye contact, clutching my chest, eyes full of tears, as they talked about how close we’d become.

Truthfully, I didn’t have any friends. Probably because I was a goddam weirdo who sat in my room play-acting scenarios in which I was loved. Or it could have been because I ate my crayons and cut off my eyelashes at school. Maybe also because I was always dirty with my hair sticking up, and in the winter I’d come to school with baked potatoes in my pockets. Maybe also because I claimed to be a powerful witch- a thing I’d prove by swinging as high as the top of the swingset and jump off, landing on my feet.

But, on my birthday I had every friend in class. They all came to our apartment, and they brought things to me, and they sang to me, and I was the queen of everything. And that was the bar at which birthdays were set for me. And then, any year after that, when my birthday was forgotten, or when it was remembered but there wasn’t any celebration, my queen of everything heart was crushed.

At some point, I stopped worrying about my birthday so much and started to try to recreate that feeling I had as a child for other people. It was rewarding to see them feel really special. I love throwing parties for my kids and for my friends, complete with a speech about how much they mean to me.

On the 15th, I’ll be 34. This time last year I was in the midst of serious illness, and on my birthday Tim came over and we ate pho and I threw it up and went back to sleep.

This year I was going to plan something big as a way to celebrate not being full of cancer anymore. I was going to make my own Queen of Everything celebration, instead of hoping that at some point a bunch of people were going to show up and say “We remembered and we got you a blue transistor radio and a hamburger!”

I think, instead, I’m going to spend the day in a different way. I think I’m going to find my way down to the ocean, stare out across the water, and have a day of thanksgiving and reflection. This year’s been kinder than it’s been cruel, and the dust is just starting to settle. I’ll have just completed my first week at a new, wonderful job, after all. And this year has taught me that I don’t need to be the queen of anything at all. I am content with my small speck of a place in the massive world.

But, I will be taking a hamburger with me to the ocean-side. I may even stick a candle in the burger, make a wish, and laugh at the giant weirdo I’ve been all my life.

And not just my own. I genuinely cannot see a baby without wanting to sing to them, a toddler without making a goofy face or smiling at them, an awkward pre-teen without wanting to hand them a good book, or a teen without wanting to let them know I’m around if they need anything.

And it wasn’t even a thing I grew into. I have always felt this deep-rooted maternalesque bond with kids, even before I went into foster care. I think it’s partially biological, like I was born to care for smaller things. But I know it’s also environmental. Each time I moved, I felt more of a need to demonstrate strength and compassion to any younger child, to show them that not everyone bigger than them was cold, screwed up, or downright mean. It was important to me to help guide, show patience, and listen.

In all that listening, I found out really quickly that children are great company. They drive me insane at times, mouths and noses running like they’re competing in the olympics. A few years back my oldest son was saying “Mom. Mom. Mom.”, a thing I’ve learned to nearly tune out, as if the “Mom” is silent. “Whaaaaat?”, I’d said. He thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t think I wanted anything. It’s just a habit.” And kids can be a lot to deal with when they’re in the midst of figuring out things for themselves, or when they’re feeling embarrassed, but too proud to apologize.

However, kids are one of the biggest delights in my life, in the way they word things, the sweaty heads of little boys who’ve been running around in parks, the observations that they make about adults, the sticky hands wrapped around your neck while they nap off the exhaustion of a post-carnival day, the first swear word uttered in front of a parent, the belief that a kiss on a scrape is an anesthetic, the high pitched giggle at every fart joke, the way they grow into and out of each phase of their lives.

I’m always a little bit put off at the inclusion of so many  child characters in movies or on tv who are precocious and say things wise beyond their years, not just because it’s over-done, but because on their own, it’s much more interesting to see a child figuring things out with kid-logic. The way kids think is pretty damn special already.

And with that, I’ll leave you with the trailer for my favorite movie of 2012, in which the main character poetically shows us that wonderful way that only a child can piece things together.

Beasts of the Southern Wild trailer

You know that thing where you’re watching sitcoms and you keep wondering if they’re just hanging out, watching your life and writing it all down? It happens to me only all the time. It could simply mean that my life is boring and predictable and just like every other single 33 year old woman’s life.

Anyway, Tim, you’ve been my best friend only forever now, and recently I was watching the Mindy Project because, yes, I like the Mindy Project. I do, after all, have a heart and ovaries and it’s an adorable show. Mindy was at this party and she assumed that these two people were a couple, and got upset when the guy asked her out. Turns out they’re just best friends. And I was making fun of it at first because these best friends were really over-doing it, like, all up in each other’s daily lives, frequently talking about how much they love each other, being affectionate. I mean, they’re just best friends, tv show! You don’t have to hit us over the head with it. Real best friends don’t- ohhhh. Yeah.

Yeah, I like The Mindy Project. I do, after all, have a heart and ovaries.

And we know that if we were the sitcom, the audience would be yelling at their television right now that we should just get together already. Hell, most of the men I’ve dated over the past few years have told me that we should just get together already. I even used you to get rid of one of them. He was convinced we were in love and wouldn’t shut up about it, so eventually I told him he’s right, I love you, and could never fall in love with him.

But I love what you had to say about it, the other night, before our Valentine’s Day date-night, when I was asking why it is that we aren’t together. Because, people ask me that and I never have any sort of good answer. You’re one of my favorite people, and sometimes I feel like I’d never make it through (through this world without having you) and all other manner of sappy 80s love lyric. We have fun together, you’re great to my kids, and I think you’re the most attractive man I have ever met. We both understand each other very well, and you’re brilliant. So, why aren’t we together?

“Because why would we screw up what we have?” As things stand, we already do everything a couple does, except for get in big, dumb fights. We have fake fights sometimes. Those are fun. And then there was that one time you punched me in the back of the head, you jerk. And last night I got mad at you because you made me find the HD PBS channel when I was content to just watch Downton Abbey in standard def. You were right, by the way.

But, seriously, once you put a name on a thing, once you stake the claim of boyfriend/girlfriend, things change fast. All of a sudden there’s more pressure on both of our sides to try and live up to things. Right now, when you disappoint me, it’s stuff like you decide at the last minute that you want to stay in and play X-Box when I’d rather go to parties. As my boyfriend, you’d be disappointing me every time you didn’t wash a dish, or chose to go to a burrito place even though I said I didn’t want a damn burrito. Right now, as friends, we get to see each other in that special spotlight reserved for people you love, where they look amazing from any angle. As my boyfriend, I’d be putting you under an interrogation lamp, assessing you constantly for flaws.

What we have is good, Tim. We should keep this up forever. Sure, in the sitcom, the best friends ended up confessing their love to each other and making out on a stoop. But this isn’t New York, and we’re aware of how we feel about each other, so there’s not going to be a passionate revealing moment of confession. Plus, everyone knows, if this were a sitcom, we wouldn’t end up together until the season finale.

Take Valentine’s Day and Shove It Right Up Your Stupid Ass

By Delicious Tacos

A smart person treats Valentine’s Day like an atheist treats that Shiite holiday where people slash their kids with machetes and put swordfish through their face. Stay indoors and don’t get involved.

Is there still a sucker out there suffering through this shit, in two thousand motherfucking twelve. Is there still a guy who called in December to book a restaurant that’s gonna be packed to the gills, overpaying for some bullshit prix fixe menu, ordering from harried miserable waitstaff working the longest shift of their lives. Is there a guy who bought a heart shaped box of chocolates.  Is there a guy who Went to Motherfucking Jared™  and bought a god damn diamond that some Sierra Leonian kid had his arms hacked off for.  Is there a man left on this planet who doesn’t know that romance only earns contempt, that the quickest way to a woman’s heart is to not give a fuck, that you’re only cementing your status as a tool as you lean back and accept your annual blowjob, every cell in her brain frantically trying to imagine it’s any cheese smelling dick but yours.

Is there still a woman out there who doesn’t know that your valentine hates this shit with every fiber of his being.  That none of this is a gesture of his love for you.  It’s just a sad and desperate attempt to not fuck up. To not piss you off. Like a wise man once said, it’s a DUI checkpoint.  The best case scenario is you get to zero.  But you better get out there and spend money and time and hustle, and this bullshit bouquet of roses isn’t gonna cut it.  You can’t just do what everybody else is doing. You better do something original.  You better do one of those engagement proposals that makes the front page of reddit, or she’s gonna be thinking about the guy who did.  And then next year you better do even more. Look at this guy, he sent flowers to his wife every year from beyond the grave.  Motherfucker, you better keep me happy after you’re dead.  You better be Valentine’s Jesus, never once fucking up in life and then showering my ass with expensive and useless shit from your fucking tomb.  Do it right and I’ll reward you with some sex.  Every cell in your brain pretending it’s any cold yeasty blimp hangar of a pussy but mine.

Look, don’t listen to me. I’ll die alone, my bones gnawed by starving pets.   I’m just jealous of your love. Why not have a day to  celebrate.  While we’re at it, why don’t we have an It’s Great To Be Rich Day where the Romneys take one of their G rides down their car elevator and parade around town flashing wads of cash.  They could toss around those fake 20 dollar bills that say “if you think you need this money, you need THE LORD” on the back. The poor would be lined up on the sidewalk, forced to applaud.  Why don’t we have an It’s Great To Be Good Looking Day where models on floats point and laugh at the leering ugly masses.  Why don’t we have it’s great to have a big dick day.  I’ll tell you why: there are 365 of them in the fucking year already.  I don’t need my wounds salted by the likes of you.  Take your loving relationships and your happiness and shove them right up your ass.

Almost everybody fucking hates Valentine’s Day. All men hate it because it’s a stupid scary obligation they don’t understand.  All single women hate it because their hungry pets are just waiting for them to drop.  Women in bad relationships hate it because it just reminds them of the hollow contemptuous loveless hell they suffer through.  That leaves: women in good relationships.  That’s who like Valentine’s Day. Women who have attained the prize they’re told their whole lives is the crown jewel of womanhood.  Women who won. Let’s celebrate, put on your favorite Disney® Princess™ dress and let’s watch your special edition DVD of Nicholas Sparks Laughs All the Way to the Fucking Bank with the Money You Paid for His Retarded Fucking Emotional Porn starring The Guy Your Girlfriend Is Thinking about When She Asks You To Hit Her From Behind.  You got what you wanted.  Why the fuck do you need us to hurt so you can flaunt it.

Eat shit, princess.  We all know Christmas is bullshit too, but we suffer through it for the children.  At least they have an excuse.

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Delicious Tacos is an unemployed drunk who lives alone, in an apartment that smells like old chicken.  He will weep bitter tears into his cat’s fur while you are enjoying Valentine’s Day.