Currently Chasing: Visine

So I went to the Eye Gazing Party, an event where you essentially speed date, but instead of talking and getting to know each other verbally, you just look into each other's eyes for an extended period of time.

Now, some of you right off the bat were quick to judge. You said it was creepy. You said you'd die laughing. You said no one can do that and keep a straight face.

Boy were you wrong. Some of those dudes made it their job to stare. I mean really stare. And I can tell you how hard it is to stare at someone who looks just like this:

It's hard. Especially when he keeps turning his head and trying to do sign language with his out-of-control eye brows.

Every now and then they had to remind people that there was no touching allowed. If you are an "Arrested Development" fan then just imagine the jail scenes where they yell "No Touching!" Yeah, it was something like that. Although why was that even almost happening. I mean, would you want to reach out and grab this:

Not unless you want an STD on your finger.

For the most part though, it was a good time. Very interesting. 40 men and 40 women lined up and faced each other. Every other person was seated. They did this so that people weren't temped to glance over at someone else while they were supposed to be eye balling the person directly in front of them. Men kept complaining that the lights on the walls were keeping them from really being able look into the eyes of the women. Literally they were verbally telling the girls, "It's no use. I can't see your eyes." They were really taking this seriously. I guess I was too. At one point, even though you are supposed to stay totally silent, I heard a guy whisper to the man getting ready to sit across me "Watch out dude, she means business." 

I guess I did. Although most of the time I was having internal conversation:

"My feet hurt. I'm going to lean on one foot and let the other one rest, then lean on the other foot while the other one rests."

"My drink is empty."

"My straw just fell on the ground....can I pick it up without breaking the stare?"

"My fucking feet hurt."

"This guy is an axe murderer. I can totally see him in an episode of law and order."

"I want to check my phone. Would that be rude to just glance down at my phone while this dude is staring at me."

"Lazy eye."

"I'm going to cut my feet off and walk on my ankles."

Some people were easier to stare at and I had very little head conversation during those times. It was just pleasant. I mean, imagine staring at this:

Not hard to do.

Overall it wasn't an unpleasant experience. However, it's not something I'd do again. My friend did not make a love connection, but we did get our photo snapped about a dozen times by a random eye gazer who happened to bring his professional camera and SB 900 flash to the event.

That particular guy was already a bit off. Raving to island beats in between stare sessions.
Add a camera to his already crazy stare and needlesstosay, I'm sure my friend and I are on the internet photoshopped into his online family albums.

Currently Chasing: The Eye Gaze

So in my quest to be a good friend I have come up with the ultimate way to help my girl meet her Mr. Right. I decided to sign us up for an eye-gazing party. Since I'm already off the market, I'll only be participating as a way to offer support, and also as research for my book on what is wrong with men, perfectly titled, "What is wrong with men?" And also because I want to blog about the event, and tweet about it, and brag that I found parking in DC.

Eye Gazing is kind of like speed dating except instead of talking to someone for eight minutes about bullshit like what do you do and where are you from, which to be honest no one will remember by the end of the night anyway, and which most people lie about, you just stare into a strangers eyes for two minutes.

YOU STARE AT A STRANGER FOR TWO MINUTES. And sometimes you are even encouraged to hold hands. 

After the staring and hand holding, which lasts for a total of 45 minutes, you have drinks and mingle.

The idea behind this is that the eyes are the window to the soul and that by looking into someone’s eyes for two minutes you can tell if this is someone you can imagine yourself dating. 

Before the event begins there is a person who will explain to you a little bit about eye contact and body language so you can send the right signal and give off the right vibe.

My issue is not with the eye contact. As a journalist I make eye contact all the time. My eyes have a shit ton to say. And they often make a far better impression than whatever would come out of my mouth. But there are people that I don't even want to walk past, let alone hold handswith while gazing into their soul window. I mean, "I think you are amazing," could look a lot like "I want to rape you" depending on the face those eyes are attached to.

But I'm willing to give it a try for the sake of my friend. Although she has already asked if she can use the Kung Fu Panda Stare.

I told her if I'm going to endure this evening for her she better not scare off her potential husband with a panda stare or the stare of someone desperate to get married.

Your stare just asked me to marry it!

I will of course let you all know how it goes. I've been staring at myself in the mirror training my stare to say I’m not available. So far all it has been saying is I need to try botox.

Currently Chasing: Passionate Kisses

And since then I am because you are

And since then you are I am and we are

And through love I will be you will be we will be

I read that today and thought. Wow.

I am because you are.

I AM because YOU ARE.

When is the last time you felt like that about someone? My daughter feels that way about me because it’s true. She is because I am. But have I ever felt that way about a man? Do I even have the capacity to feel that way about another human being?

Do you ever notice that sometimes you are with someone for such a long period of time that you stop doing things that used to give you the feeling those words above inspire?

Like maybe you just stop kissing. It seems like such a small thing. You still hug. You still cuddle. You still hold hands. You still touch each other on the smalls of your backs while waiting in line. You still lean up against each other while deciding what you want from the dollar menu.

But you don’t kiss. Your lips don’t meet. And if they do it’s brief. It’s definitely not tongues swirling all which ways. So into the kiss that you don’t even care that he didn’t shave and now he is performing harsh dermabrasion all over your chin, upper lip and neck region. So engrossed in each other’s mouths that you can’t tell if he’s breathing for just him, or for you both.

A co-worker told me that grade school girls took a survey and answered that kissing was more intimate than blow jobs. Although that is a horrifying declaration, as a thirty something adult, I’m in full agreement. I mean, as a mother I of course don’t want my daughter kissing, hugging, blowing … nada. Zip. Zilch. I want her to have an affair with books. I want her to fall in love with mathematics. And I want her to long only for Apps for her Iphone.

But if someone asked me now, what is more intimate…a blow job or a kiss. I would have to say a kiss. Now, what takes more work, what has the ability to make you physical ill, what makes you wish you had no teeth…a blow job.

But what makes you feel connected, what makes you weak in the knees, what takes your breath away? . A blow job. A kiss.

Cher said it best, “it’s in his kiss.”

So if you aren’t really kissing…then where is it? A blow job?. A sweet gesture? A foot rub? Is it in his words or in his actions? Should you just let things ride and hope the kissing comes back or should you just try to sneak them in when he’s watching sports and his mouth is already open because so and so just missed a crucial shot?

I want to be because someone else is.

The happy ever after is sealed with a kiss right? Or is that just how he wakes the princess…and then from then on it’s just blow jobs the ever after?

Currently Chasing: The distance from here to there

I’m not really big into sports. When I was growing up I was picked last for most teams, and sometimes just not picked at all. Literally there was a time when a dude chose to play with a handicap of six against seven rather than pick me to even out the teams. I guess no one being there to retrieve the ball would have been about the same as me being there to not retrieve the ball. However, I was always a big fan of the men and women who played sports so naturally, I became a cheerleader. But the fact remains to this day that if all teams in all sports just kind of went away, my life would not be affected at all.

And that brings us to golf.  My bf loves golf. If he could marry his driver I’m sure he would have. In fact, golf already takes half of his income, so in a way, he is married to golf, and cheating on golf with his driver. And also cheating on his driver with his putter. And let’s not even talk about the wedge!  He loves golf so much that when he deployed to Iraq he refused to leave his golf clubs at my house for fear that if something happened to our relationship while he was gone, I may take it out on his damn clubs!

I don’t love golf, or even understand the obsession with spending $900 on a stick. But last night when he suggested going to the OG (Olive Garden) I knew he was buttering me up for a trip to GG (Golf Galaxy) and that translates to a long night where I stand around pretending to care while watching him feel the texture of every single shirt in the store to find one that breaths and has perfectly placed sleeve seams.  

He also likes to examine, pick up, and swing tons of different clubs. After he swings them he says, “that feels good.” Then he puts it back. Then picks up another one and swings it and says, “that feels good…and very light.” What drives me bat shit though is that he never buys anything. He has the money, and he has the desire…but he is also a bit frugal, and the thought of spending that much money on anything is a decision he doesn’t make lightly. It took him five years to finally buy a new car. He identified the car he wanted in 2007. Spent all of 2008 doing online research. Test drove it 150 times in 2009. He finally bought the car in 2010 at a 0% interest rate. And he still isn’t 100% satisfied that he made the right choice.

I decided I wanted a new car on a Monday. Shopped on a Tuesday. Purchased my new car on a Friday.

So here we are at Golf Galaxy. He has me look at a club and then another all the while explaining the differences between the two.

“See. This one has a thinner club face than that one. This one is also very straight. Currently mine are closed. I used to draw to the right, so I used a corrective club. But now I’ve learned to hit straighter and need a new club. But not today. Maybe another day when I’m ready to up my level. I need to hit these clubs on the range to make sure they are what I want. I’ll come back tomorrow and not buy this club again.”

He wants to me care. He wants me to be passionate about this ‘sport.’ Clearly, he wants too much.

However, I do try. So we are standing there and he is looking at some clubs (that he won’t buy) and I look past him at a sign, and I begin to read it out loud.

“Are you still using Aluminum?” I read to him in the form of a question.

He says, “no.”

So continuing to read the sign I say, “Are you now using forged component? “

He looks at me with a light I have never seen before, right before realizing that there is no way in hell I know what forged component is. Then says, “Where the heck are you getting that from?”

There was a moment there though…where I was speaking his language on his level. And then it was gone. So after we walk the entire perimeter of the store, after he looks at all of the spikes on each pair of shoes. After he hits 20 or so balls with different clubs, after he checks out the hats and the socks, we finally head toward the door.

Then we stop in front of the glass counter. Inside are golf GPS devices. There are courses from all over the world entered into this GPS so that golfers can determine the distances to the flags so they know which club to use to cover the yardage. He has been talking about getting one of these for ages. He downloaded an APP on his iphone … but his phone often dies before the end of his game…and if I happened to text during the game, reading my text kicks him off the APP. So needlesstosay it’s not very convenient. And also, he’s afraid, not as accurate as he would like.

There is another device he’s been raving about that doesn’t require constant updates as more courses become available. It’s not a GPS. Instead you aim at the flag, or whatever mark you’d like to find out the distance to, and you click a button and the screen tells you the distance to that object. It even takes into account hills and high and low points. But it’s kind of expensive and something he will have to think about for the next seven years before committing to the purchase.

So I tell the guy to wrap it up and I buy it for him.

Within seconds, it doesn’t matter that I have no interest in learning to golf. It doesn’t matter that I don’t actually know what forged component is, and it doesn’t even matter that the one time I went golfing with him I chose to sit in the cart and text the entire day. Nope, none of that mattered. This one purchase really brought us together. I was able to embrace his obsession with golf, and for once he wasn’t mad at my inability to resist an impulse buy.

We spent the rest of the evening doing two things…

1.       Doing internet research to make sure we got the best possible deal on this device.

2.       Figuring out the distance from the couch to everything else in the house.

However, without that machine I knew the distance between me and his heart was 0.

Currently Chasing: The end of the accent

You ever notice that when you visit somewhere, depending on how long you stay, and how much you love where you’re visiting, you sometimes come back with an accent from that place?

Well that is happening to me. Slowly but surely, I am losing … California. I mean, not totally. I still have the classic over processed, bimboie look and the cheerleader smile, but something is missing. People from California do not have an accent. They just talk. There is nothing distinct or stand-outish about California speak.

There was a moment back in the 80’s when people from Cali would overuse the word “like,” but now the world had adopted that bad habit so we can stop claiming it as a staple of our state. And don’t even get me started on the OH MY GOD phenomenon. It’s become so popular that it’s now an acronym. And it’s widely used and easily translated no matter where you’re from. And we’ve definitely come a long way since gagging each other with spoons.

But in the past few weeks I’ve been asked a hand full of times, “Where are you from?”

This is not a question I am accustomed to fielding. Most people look at me, always happy, always smiling, always fake blonde, and naturally assume I am high. Or from California. But all of a sudden I’m speaking with an accent and it is throwing everyone off.

You see, a good friend of mine, and a handful of my cousins live in Buffalo. Since coming back from Afghanistan, I’ve gone to visit there three or four times. The ticket is cheap and the company is great. But something happens to my voice box when I’m there. And when I return, I sound like a Buffalonian. And sometimes even a God Damn Canadian.  I haven’t pronounced the word car right in months.

I’ve always wanted an accent. Maybe something British or Irish. I could even get down with a Massachusetts or New York city accent. Something hard core. Something unmistakable.  Something that instantly turns me into a bad ass. What I’m not down with is just occasionally pronouncing random words with an accent making people wonder where the fuck I’m from. Like, wow, what the fuck is that you’re speaking? I can’t tell where the hell you’re from? Freak.

I love my Buffalo family, and I love the way they talk, but mostly because they own it. I can’t own the accent because it’s not mine. I feel like an imposter. Like Madonna. Visiting London does not make you a Brit. Good gawd wacky legwarmer lady.

I know what you all are thinking. I’m being way too damn dramatic about this accent thing. But what do you expect. I’M FROM CALIFORNIA.