I need to interject a contradictory and seemingly hypocritical rant. Dating rules: love ‘em, hate ‘em, and it is perpetually proven that once I think I have a handle on them they inevitably change or some new circumstance crops up and alters everything yet again. Rules about calling after a date, for instance. God forbid you call a guy before the allotted 24 to 48-hour waiting period has expired. Or, depending on the guy, that you call him period. (Funny how old social mores never really die.) Yet annoying as these random rules are, they are also apparently necessary if one is to date effectively and progress from one date to the next. I refuse to agonize over whether or not a guy is going to call after a date. It’s not worth my time to sit and wonder if he’s interested, if he had as good a time as I did, if he’s not calling because he’s not interested or because he’s intentionally playing it cool. I refuse to miss out on other dating possibilities by waiting for a certain one to contact me (love ya Trish!). If it works out, great. If not, then I have nothing to regret on my end. I’ve been told that this is a cold and heartless way to approach the whole dating process – but isn’t that necessary? Dating is rough on the self-esteem sometimes, and it is often, if not always, practical to have some defenses in place with which to guard yourself. If you’re going to play the game you must be properly equipped. But how can you do that when the rules are unwritten and constantly fluctuating depending on the person and the situation and your level of interest? You have to keep a little distance in the beginning or you’re going to get worked over every time it doesn’t work out, which, let’s be honest, is more often than not.

For instance, I went on a date with a guy a little while ago. We had a fabulous time at a club downtown and a super hot make out session at his place, and then I didn’t hear from him for almost four days. What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I know I said I refuse to engage in these waiting games, over-analysis, blah-dee-blah, but I actually like this guy, so not agonizing is way more difficult (hypocrisy? Perhaps…). And then I ran into him randomly in the produce section where he was squeezing a mango. Talk about your awkward situations! And I don’t do awkward. The allotted waiting period hadn’t expired yet and it was clear that he didn’t quite know what to do – did he intend to call after said expiration or not? Unanticipated interaction can often sound the death knell for any nascent, undefined situation. Or it can be great – it jogs the memory of either party into remembering that, “hey, this person is cool and I want to hang out/make out again.” And then there’s the inevitable questioning of what you say when you unexpectedly see that person: “hey I was meaning to call you…” as the voice trails off, he breaks eye contact and frantically looks for a means of escape. Or he doesn’t reference your connection at all and treats the situation as if he’s meeting an old acquaintance, the memory of whom has gone completely stale. Regardless of the details, because we saw each other in that weird limbo waiting period, it threw a kink in our whole process and so prolonged the wait for the next official contact which ended up being longer than I anticipated, which caused my usual cool to become extremely ruffled.

So this time, I obviously wasn’t a fan of the whole dating rule book. But there have been past dating fiascos where it has been vitally necessary. So what’s a girl to do? Inevitably end up drunk with her girlfriends minutely deciphering the actions of each party involved while strategizing the next move either could take and what the counter move should be. Needless to say, this is exhausting. I could suggest that we all just take a far more honest approach and not dick around with these guessing games. And sometimes that works, but you have to know your audience and be willing to accept the fact that the guy could very well - and probably will - freak out. So if total honesty isn’t the best option, then what? You can’t rely on memorizing all the rules because that quickly leads down the road to paranoid neuroticisim. I think the point is that there is no answer - isn’t that part of the reason we keep coming back and engaging in this ridiculous process? It’s the element of the unknown, the adventure, the mystique. There’s something primal and hunter-like about it all. And the payoff can be so good — assuming that after all your pain and mental anguish he has the ability to make your toes curl.

Bike messengers have always had a certain element of mystique that I am inherently drawn to. One deliciously cut courier delivers our paychecks every other Friday and we’ve had a mild flirtation for months. These men (yes, I know there are female bike messengers, but I’m not infatuated with them so I’m consciously choosing to ignore their existence, though they are, arguably, more badass than the men) risk life and limb every day just because they love riding. The intensity of their need for adventure and apparent addiction to adrenaline is tantalizing. Plus there’s the whole badass element, which goes without further explication. I don’t care how much of a nauseatingly goody-two-shoes you are – you’ve been inextricably attracted to a badass in one form or another, so you should all know what I’m talking about. Why is it that I automatically assume the sex will be better and – dare I say it? – positively earth-shaking simply because the guy’s lifestyle is more edgy and a bit (or a lot) on the extreme side? You’d think I’d have learned by now that there is not a direct correlation, but I haven’t. I’m intrigued: why would anyone choose a job where you know the consequences to be potentially dire, and where you’re practically guaranteed to fuck up your body?

This curiosity, plus the fact that this guy is super hot (and I couldn’t help wondering just how ripped he was under those bike shorts), led me to suggest we meet up for drinks. We met at some little hole-in-the-wall frequented by, surprise surprise, bike messengers and a motley assortment of other hard-core athletic types. Let me be very clear in distinguishing this set from the gym-rats. These people get their exercise through their lifestyle, not through spending thousands on a gym membership where “runners” will never encounter asphalt or gravel. While there is a definite aroma of exaggerated male ego when around messengers and their ilk, it is – to be fair – at least partially deserved. They ride a lot. They sweat a lot. Their muscles are chiseled. They exude raw testosterone. And now that I’ve thoroughly distracted myself…

Anyway. About the date.

He bought the first round – some kind of micro-brewed beer for him and gin and tonic for me. We talked easily, and he wasn’t the least bit phased to hear I’d been in grad school, which can often be a conversation inhibitor with certain men (Competitors in particular). Though, there is a fine line between not being phased and not caring. He shared the mechanics of how bike messengering works and talked at length about the pros and cons of riding a fixed-gear vs. the more traditional geared bike. There was a slight sneer of scorn when I admitted I was ignorant on this point. And then, somewhere into the third round, I asked him what he wanted to do after he was done being a courier.

And that’s when it all went horribly wrong

I have undoubtedly never been a “good girl.” This does not automatically mean that I never wanted to be one or was never jealous, as a teenager, of the girls who oozed wholesome naïveté and as such were instantaneously loved by teachers and friends’ parents. But I got over that jealously by the time I got to undergrad. Now don’t get the wrong impression – it’s not like I was screwing around at a terribly young age or had some kind of skewed vision of how I should handle my sexuality – if anything it was too much the opposite. My single hippie mother made damn sure I knew everything there was to know about sex and the human body and its normal functions and desires. She was the mother who encouraged masturbation and made sure I knew the ins and outs of condom usage, much to my mortification at the time (but it sure came in handy later…). I was the girl in school who told all the other girls about sex (not because I was having any but because I was the only one who’d been remotely educated about it outside the sex ed classroom); my upbringing made me the only authority in an otherwise relatively conservative neighborhood. This prized information came at the price of not being invited to others girls’ homes and birthday parties because their mothers considered me to be a “bad influence,” and my mother’s single status made my presence all the more awkward for others who were from more conventional, if not functional, families. That is, until they found out I was also the smart kid, and then my association and influence were suddenly prized by bitchy neighborhood mothers.

I remember feeling bored throughout high school. I had friends in almost every group (though the stoners were always my favorite) and I floated a lot from clique to clique. I got good grades but never really had to try that hard, which is an obnoxious thing to say, I know, but it’s true. I had more drug-related experiences than sexual ones, which was reversed when I left for college (especially when I started dating one of my professors…big giant oops on that one.) I think most people assumed that I lived a wilder, more sexually-explicit/porn-like existence than I did. I’m not entirely sure why this is - apparently I emanate some kind of “fuck me now” or “I’m a nymphomaniac” energy that invites these assumptions. Regardless of what it is or how it’s interpreted, it has resulted in a definitive “bad girl” reputation.

I don’t know my dad – I met him once when I took a road trip out to California to look at colleges during high school. Then he lived somewhere around Humboldt in northern California and was not excited to see me arrive on his doorstep (sounds like a movie, I know, but there was no saccharin ending). The last I heard was that he’d moved to Los Angeles with his family and makes a shit-ton of money as some kind of doctor. It would be fitting if he were some slimy plastic surgeon featured on E! but he’s actually a pediatrician. When my mom met him he was trying to make it as an artist – I’d like to know where that ambition ran off to. Like most kids with one parent I dreamed of meeting the other and winning him over, but thankfully that faded somewhere in high school. My mom never openly (or otherwise, as far as I know) regretted the circumstances of my birth (a brief tryst while she was vacationing on the west coast in the last hey-days of free love and unprotected sex) and has never referred to Karl as my father – he was the sperm donor and that’s about it.

So obviously we could do some kind of Freudian analysis on how my lack of relationship with my father/absence of male role model and/or authority figure has negatively impacted my interactions with men and is perhaps directly correlated to my “bad girl” status. But I think that’s bullshit. If anything, my “bad girl” status is a result of not having a repressed sense of self or sexual identity – and if it’s necessary to label that as “bad” then I’ll accept the title with pride. I’ve had lots of sex but that doesn’t mean I’ve been indiscriminate or that my sexual behavior is a negative reflection of who I am as a person. I won’t say that sex is a celebration of the body because that sounds trite and, once again, too much like my mother. It feels good. It’s fun. And there’s nothing wrong in indulging these senses. Not even indulging, because that implies that it shouldn’t be done with any kind of frequency. Gratifying would be more appropriate. Satisfying, perhaps or fulfilling would be more accurate. It all just boils down to the simple fact that bad girls have more fun.

The showdown happened, as Trish alluded, at the salon. The funny thing is that I had already heard of Trish. The Attorney (whose name is Thad, by the way – and no, names have not been changed to protect the culpable) had been referring to her for a few weeks at that point. He would casually refer to his “business associate” (which was a tenuous nugget of truth, since she’s a court stenographer and he’s a lawyer, though at the time he never specified her occupation) and the fact that they met regularly to discuss “business.” It didn’t strike me as odd – he is an attorney after all and works crazy hours and meets crazy people all the time. Especially with his brand of lawyerlyness – I assumed she was a client of his – an assumption we still laugh over. Trish having a DUI is about as likely as me becoming a domesticated housewife. The connection, though, was surprisingly easy to make, and when it hit me I wasn’t all that surprised. I take that back – I was surprised at his choice in Trish because we are, as we’ve both mentioned, almost completely opposite from each other. I don’t linger over break-ups. Get it over and done – clean breaks with as little gore and prolonged agony as possible (this blog excluded). That doesn’t mean I go out of my way to be gentle or spare anyone’s feelings when the situation requires it, as with Thad. He barely reacted when I told him I’d met Trish – he just waited to see how much I actually knew, or if I’d give him an opportunity to lie his way out of the confrontation. He didn’t deny it when I asked him if he was sleeping with her. He didn’t even blink, which is perhaps to his credit – that he didn’t shirk the truth, though I’m sure the slimy cretin would have if I’d given him the space to wriggle in. There were no apologies, no specifics given or asked. I refuse to put energy towards someone or something that doesn’t reciprocate. Why throw a big scene or obsessively wonder about the details of circumstances that have already come and gone? There’s nothing to be gained from that behavior – and you usually end up looking like a jackass anyway. This is not to say that I didn’t verbally assault his manhood and moral fiber (or lack thereof), or have the almost irresistible inclination to throw my glass of Syrah in his complacent face like some kind of self-righteous primadonna. In short, I told him off, and when I got home later that night I threw out everything he’d left in my apartment. Why should I return his pomade and infuser and ridiculously overpriced boxers at my inconvenience? If I’m not enough of a priority where you can’t be troubled to keep your pants on outside of my presence then I’m not going to care if you get your fancy-pants, egomaniac Versace cologne back.

Read More to learn how Mel made Trish cry

I saw Trish when she first came in – it was tragic, I must say. Mostly because she thought she was being so smooth. It makes me smirk even now. And I will confidently admit, with no holds barred, that we are a bunch of bitches at my salon. When people like Trish walk in – who are obviously uncomfortable and out of place – it makes my heart hurt. Briefly. And then I just kind of have to laugh because it’s obvious that they’re trying to fit in but can’t quite make it happen. It’s like spotting a native New Yorker (or at least one who has been here a long time) compared to a tourist or someone just arrived: i.e., it’s a glaring oddity that’s painful to look at but you just can’t turn away regardless of how awkward it is.

I started working at this salon, which shall intentionally remain nameless, during grad school so I wouldn’t starve to death living on a TA’s stipend. I will admit, I was moderately intimidated when I first walked in. There’s a distinct aura of “what the hell do you think you’re doing here?” as their eyes bore into you and you feel your soul start to shrink and ooze out your ears. But the point (my dear, dear Trish) is not to let them know that. You project back as much bitch as they choose to throw at you – it’s an unwritten code, like most selective societies. Gangs. The animal kingdom. The popular kids in high school. Fraternities. And salons. If you show weakness in any form, you will be destroyed, which is not to say that I don’t love it or thrive in that kind of environment because I do. I always have; it’s a curse and a blessing rolled into one big messy and complex heap of crap that I’ve never successfully deciphered or managed to interpret and I ceased trying a long time ago. Everyone has certain things that come easily to them and weird idiosyncratic elements of their personalities for which they are envied — I was always one of the “popular” girls, with everything that goes along with it, and so have largely been despised by other females for most of my life. It hasn’t helped that I’m largely unapologetic for this — and why should I be? Why should anyone apologize for what they inherently are or what comes easily to them? Would you automatically hate the math genious simply because he’s better than you at math? No. So why hate women who can negotiate situations in their favor and seem to have a natural magnetism that others lack? Jealousy doesn’t look good on anyone, like pleated, tapered jeans.

But we get people like Trish into my salon with a fair degree of frequency - mostly friends of regular customers in dire need of help. And such was Trish. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t cut her hair that first day - I was stuck with some wench from the Upper East Side who didn’t know what she wanted and couldn’t articulate much of anything beyond how incompetent she thought I was (what I wouldn’t have given for a baseball bat). But I couldn’t help overhearing Trish gush to my friend Sara about the new man in her life. And just how similar he was to the man in my life, who had been a consistent part of my life for a while at that point but whom I’d been having my doubts about lately. Not just his fidelity, but our compatibility in general. Turns out I was right to doubt.