I’m Just Sayin’: I’m Not Unapproachable, They’re Just Undesirable

The last thing I expected when I agreed to meet one of my “exs” for lunch – and by “ex”, I use the term loosely – was to actually be the main piece de resistance, and not even served on a silver platter!

You think it would have behooved her to give me a little warning? Clearly if I am about to get grilled, at the very least, I want to make sure I look fab!  Evidently absolutely nothing about my frumpy “I so don’t need to impress you anymore” attire spelled gourmet, but little Miss Cordon Bleu totally went to town with me as her fancy feast.

Here’s the deal: Kylie and I kind of had a little flirtatious fling going on a couple of years ago – and by “little” I mean we dated for a minute. I’m not going to go into the boring details as to why whatever was going on (or not) between us never materialized into what people call a “relationship”. The fact is that we were mature enough to remain friends. And the point that I am making is that that ephemeral minute was apparently long enough for Kylie to now allow herself to exercise her very much self-appointed rights to a certain closeness and familiarity towards me.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m used to a “don’t get too comfy” buffer zone and am usually pretty good at sending out the vibes. Not so much this time obviously.
I’m personally convinced that the fact that Kylie was now in a solidly steady relationship with someone she clearly was madly in love with gave her the guts to not give a fuck about my buffer zone boundary. But that’s what happens when people are in LOOOOOVE. Not only do they want the entire planet to know about it but they also all somehow morph into matchmakers extraordinaire – as if all single people need rescuing from some plague or something! And they do so very subtly (or so they think) by always bringing up the subject of conversation to the dreaded topic of your dating travails, which in my case boils down to “lack thereof.”

“So, are you seeing anybody?” she asked a bit too enthusiastically with an almost imperceptible tone of smug superiority.
“Nope! I’m still happily single,” I retorted accentuating the intonation of my voice on the operative word “happy”. Then shifting gears to my cynical mode – a staple of my multi-dimensional Gemini personality – I proceeded to add: “I’m not interested in dating anyone and as a matter of fact I don’t even bother to go out at all. What for? It’s the same old scene – the same cliques of people who have all dated each other.”

Doesn’t she know that I don’t shop at second hand stores, so why would I even consider dating used goods?
“I know what you mean. LA is a difficult city. You should try Long Beach. There’s a lot of quality single woman you could meet,” she replied.

What part of “I don’t bother to go out” was not English to her?
Clearly I if I drive two blocks down to West Hollywood, what makes her think I would venture myself anywhere outside of my (323) area code – and Long Beach of all the undesirable places!

“Thanks but no thanks. I’m perfectly fine flying solo right now. Plus I’m super busy and am not looking to invest my time in getting to know someone else than me, myself and I,” I answered jokingly yet affirmatively.
“C’mon, don’t be negative. You have to check out the Long Beach scene. You’d be surprised. Tell you what! How about we all go out some time soon, that way you can also meet my girlfriend,” was her comeback line.

See what I mean about obnoxious people nauseatingly “in love”. They’re like disciples of the freaking Church of Scientology; they try to recruit you any chance they get! You’d think Cupid gives them a commission or something.
Her borderline harassing tenacity was really starting to annoy the hell out of me.
I was so ready to move on to the next topic but she obviously had something else in mind and was only beginning. I needed to devise a way to assuage my jitters and come up pronto with a subtle strategy to shut her up. Since the good old traditional “Mind your own fucking business” was not the politely correct punch line to deliver, I elected to go with the more sensitive approach. I then decided to throw a poor-me pity party to counter-off her delirious, over the top perfect happiness. I was hoping that misery would make (my) company equally miserable – in other words my goal was to rain on her parade so she would drop the entire “love is all you need” discourse.

With that in mind, simulating unsalvageable discouragement I grandiosely pulled the victim card.
“What’s the point anyway? Clearly, I’m nobody’s type. Every time I do go out no one comes and talks to me,” I said feigning despair. Ironically, little did I know that what I had actually done was far from deterring her to zip her mouth once and for all.
Quite au contraire, I had unconsciously opened a can of worms, which somehow she interpreted as her carte blanche to verbally massacre me!

Basically for the next 10 minutes she went on some kind of venting session meticulously enumerating everything she noticed was wrong about me. To think that until then I was convinced I was flawlessly perfect! This was shocking breaking news to me. Do you know how long 10 minutes lasts? Do you know how much crap can be said in 10 minutes? I mean, for God’s sake, some people even make short films condensing someone’s entire life story in that same amount of time. I felt like a lab rat being brutally and cruelly dissected, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

To tell you the truth, it seemed rather capricious and arbitrary on her part.
But because I know your curious minds are dying to know what I was specifically being accused of, here are the items on her “You suck” list:

• I’m always in my own world looking very serious and unhappy which sends out a standoffish vibe with borderline bitchy signals
• I don’t practice the art of smiling & laughing in public too often which makes people think I think “I am so great”
• My body language is unfriendly and uninviting: I tend to keep my arms crossed, apparently do not make frequent eye contact, and in the rare instance that someone does talk to me I provide short “yes or no” answers.

You get the gist of the picture, right? All this really spells one thing: UNAPPROCHABLE! Again, shocking! Me? Unapproachable? Seriously? For crying out loud, is a person who named her dog George Michael really unapproachable? I think Kylie’s completely lost her mind and clearly never got over “the way we were”, so she’s now having her little bittersweet retaliation – as they say revenge is a dish better served cold, and by cold I precisely mean two years.

Whatever! Personally, it’s my educated guess that all of her blah blah blah truly insinuated one thing: I am (seemingly) Ms. Unapproachable, because I have the appearance of an intelligent and classy woman. So, pretty much people automatically assume that I already have a girlfriend. Or they tend to believe that I have probably been approached about fifty times that day and if one more idiot asks for my number, I’ll just go berserk. What can I say? I am cursed for being the fabulous me – and obviously the side effects are very mona’stic!

There! I said it! Nothing’s terribly wrong with me; I’m just an innocent victim of a huge public image misunderstanding and in all actuality really have the choice of women but willingly choose not to elect it. Of course I wasn’t about to cop to the fact that behind all of my bullshit hides a mortally terrifying fear of rejection. And it’s not just a benign phobia, it’s very much a terminally lasting disease.

Long story short, we managed to live through this lunch hour in the utmost civilized way, even though on more occasions than one I wanted to punch her in the brain. How dare she be fresh with me? The jig was certainly not up!

Admittedly, I was so upset with this whole business of being “unapproachable” that the minute I got home I called my buddies McKenzie and Sunshine to urgently schedule one of those unfabulous Lesbian Sunday afternoon Abbey excursions. I figured the best way to prove Kylie wrong was to immerse myself in a sea of women who like women and for a minute, if need be, practice the art of rejection, to not only show her how approachable I am but also how I can do the approaching too.

Jump cut to Sunday and zooming in our trio’s glamorously fierce arrival at the Abbey. As expected the joint was jam-packed with a predominantly female attended crowd – more like a herd of cows if you ask me! Anyway, we ordered our uber fancy party refreshments – a coffee in a to go cup for me, an ice tea for McKenzie and a raspberry lemonade for the more daring Sunshine – and strategically set camp by the busboy’s counter where we could enjoy a panoramic view of this highly entertaining parade of clowns.

Out of nowhere a bunch of ladies (clearly under the influence of one too many umbrella drinks) who were inconveniently stationed at proximity much too close to ours, instigated some sort of a mini commotion. All we heard was the loudest mouth of the bunch enthusiastically belched out in the most stentorian fashion “Guys! This is the girl who fucked Sara in the bathroom!”

Needless to say all eyes – including ours – were instantly on said girl who allegedly fucked Sara in the lavatory as if that was the most extraordinary exploit of the century. And then again, she made the call a second, a third and a fourth time: “Ladies, seriously pay attention. I’m telling you this is the girl who fucked Sara in the bathroom.”

Wow! What a classy introduction. No ambiguity there! Because women can’t evidently ever shut up, we quickly found out that the reason why the fact that this nameless girl had fucked Sara in the restroom was such a spectacularly sensational accomplishment worthy of public announcement was because the Sara in question was none other than San Francisco Sara from the Real L Word – as in Whitney’s girl (at least one of them!). Oh! And please pronounce her name properly! It’s SAH RRRAH (rolling the “r”) or some crap like that.

And this is what I have to look forward to when I make the colossal effort to leave the coziness of my house to go look for my potential soul mate. Really? Hmm, let me think about this for a minute. I DON’T THINK SO!
All I can say – to quote McKenzie – is “God Bless”!

Clearly the problem is not that I am unapproachable. The problem is that they are undesirable…I’m just sayin’!