I Love You, Babe.

When Jen told me he was a dentist, my jaw dropped. I looked back across the pool at him: sleeves of tats, Ed Hardy shades, and laughing like a 12 year old every time the six year old in the pool screamed, "motorboat! motorboat!". Shortly after, the boy's grandmother called him in from the pool, probably for fear that he might soon be drinking a bud light with Dr. Dude and his girlfriend, Babe. Maybe even experiencing his first adult motorboat.

"Yeah," Jen whispered, "he was talking about buying a practice in San Diego before you got here." And so we sat there, pretending to be really focused on eating our Paradise Bakery salads so we could listen in shamelessly on the most asinine conversation.

Babe was pretty typical: skinny, tan, bottle blonde. I learned that she was a server at a chain restaurant in North Scottsdale. She was sipping something out of a tall tumbler. I assuemd it was not water.

According to the current exchange, Dr. Dude had done something to upset their relationship. In retaliation, Babe had slept with "some 20 year old", according to Dr. Dude.

"You don't understand, Babe," Dr. Dude said taking a swig of of BL, "I don't think you are ready for all of this." he motioned to his torso, also tatted out.

"No! you don't understand!" Quibbled Babe, "I am being honest with you! You need to respect that!"

They went on and on like this for about an hour. It would be super boring to write down all of their conversation because it was cyclic and melodramatic and, mainly, stupid. At some point during the conversation, the elderly man from Nebraska (also the grandpa of the child that was exposed at an early age to an alternative definition for 'motor boat') piped in to no one in particular, "Spring has arrived! It's mating season!" Jen and I cracked up. I looked over to the older man and responded, "Yeah, the birds are going crazy." He chuckled, "And the boys!".

Dr. Dude, who was now on the same chaise lounge as babe, looked up helplessly, "You've gotta understand, man, how much I love this girl!"

Nebraska responded in true Nebraska form, "Then maybe you should marry her. You know, marriage is a fine institution." Babe smirked at Dr. Dude. Dr. Dude braced her shoulders and stated very profoundly:

"Babe, if we are gonna be we are gonna be. I love you so much. I know you don't know how lucky you are to have me right now, but maybe some day you will see." Dr. Dude looked lovingly into her eyes as he lifted her glasses. Babe had tears glistening in her eyes. Or maybe that was side effect of the muscle relaxers she was on.

"Even when you were mean to me- like when you wouldn't tell me where you were going or when you'd be home-" [pregnant pause] "I never stopped loving you!" she professed.

"Babe, that's why you should have never listened to your stupid friends! They just didn't want me in your life!" Dr. Dude popped the cap of a bud light for her. I was not sure if I should cry, throw up, or ask them for some of their drugs.

Dr. Dude began cooing some sort of gibberish in Babe's ear. Unfortunately, the sound decibles were to low for me to hear. This made me wish I was a whale because whales can hear at low decibles.* I began to doze off in my chair; as i slipped in and out of consciousness, I heard mumbling of Babe's desire to move to New Zealand "'cuz all I need in life is to be on the beach!". Moments later, she was nearly in tears because, sadly, Dr. Dude is a litter bug.

All the while that I listened to this bullshit, I wondered who was the most normal: 1) me, sitting in my chair trying to gather enough material to exploit the two lovers 2) Dr. Dude and Babe's love affair that was about as stable as Whitney Houston (not even bringing bobby into this simile) or 3) the recent addition to the pool deck- a huge German man in a French cut speedo face down on a Teletubbies towel while drinking a Capri Sun.

In trying to suspend my judgements, I thought about all of my dating inadequacies and inabilty to maintain a stable relationship. If you have read some of these snapshots within other entries, I feel this is fairly obvious. Granted, I never cried if a guy forgot to recycle.

I spent a moment wrapping my head around which was worse: a failure to commit or a commitment to failure?

In the end, the answer was clear: Hanzel over there on his Tinky Winky towel was the only one who had it going on. Especially with the Capri Sun. It made me really want one very badly. The rest of us were a bunch of dipshits who either over think or under think any possible incident or relationship. Hanzel, however, though deep down inside he knew it was fucking weird to watch PBS children's shows, clearly, was just glad to be himself. Or he was simply waiting for the six year old to come back outside.

* you are tremendously stupid if you believe everything I say. I know nothing about aquatic creatures.

Booze Hound

"Melissa, you are the worst babysitter in the world!" I looked up from my phone conversation with Jen to find Noreen shaking her head and cradling her newly adopted Tea cup Yorkie, Oliver.

"Ummmm, sorry, he was just playing with those people over there-" I motioned toward some rando's behind me on the W's pool deck, "I don't even know what happened!" I knew I could not defend my carelessness by saying I had to have a pressing conversation with Jen about which new running shoes to purchase.

Apparently, the security guards at the W had picked him up and dropped him off promptly in her arms. What she did not understand was that I had already kindred-ly connected with the dog; in so many bodily gestures, he had said to me: fuck off, Melissa.

So, like any agreeable person, I had let him carouse around the pool deck as any little dandy likes to do on a Tuesday afternoon. Though the little fucker and I have not had a ton of time to connect and bond, I felt like we were getting along fabulously during this fine afternoon at the pool.

For starters, we had a lot in common. Namely, we both like to party. Yes, Noreen's 3 month old puppy is, so to speak, a bit of a booze hound, in the most literal sense. And by booze hound I do not mean that anyone was shoving a natty light in its face frat style. No, the little bugger was basically trying to get blitzed by tipping random cups of cocktails and sipping some sangria. I am not going to lie, I was just a little bit impressed. I meannnn, even though he did get caught trying to snag some loser's mai tai, he almost got a pull out of it. Oh, and he had perseverence. After I snagged Noreen's vodka soda from his dog lips, he bopped to sip the sangria of the 50+ New Yorker who had been annoying us all afternoon with his chauvanist commentary. On more than one occasion, this dinosaur stated that both of us would not have careers and would be staying at home to raise children. He was sunburned, fat and had a really annoying accent. Dinosaur was also not buying us drinks. If you are not going to serve it, then please don't dish it out, sir. Anyhow, if the dog's health and sobriety had not been at odds, I would have fully encouraged Oliver to ravish that asshole's drink.

After several hours at the pool, we were gathering our belongings to leave when Noreen casually mentioned a fear that her dog might be blind. I had not seen the dog run into any chairs and had seen it stalking out opportunities to nip the bottle so, at this point, I had very little concern that it might be blind. Booze hound? yes. Blind hound? negative.

Anyhow, her irrelevant paranoia only inspired me to act like a jerk. As we were exiting, Ollie was bumbing around at some man's feet by the doors. Clearly, Ollister was pretty slammed after accruing about 3 sips of vodka in his 3 pound body. . This man had decided to engage Noreen in small talk about her pooch, as had about 23 other people on the pool deck that day.

I looked at the man and said, "Isn't it great she adopted a special needs dog?" Then i went on to explain how he was legally blind. I don't understand why this man was dumb enough not to question me or if he really just didn't care.

"Wow," he replied, "well i guess that explains why he seems to run into things a lot!" I smiled fondly on our little special needs dog, "Yeah," I said. What a dipshit- clearly he had no idea what a drunk dog looks like. I mean, I guess I had not either until now.

We decended the steps to the front of the hotel where Noreen's boyfriend was going to pick us up and take us to dinner. She looked at me, "That was bad karma, Melissa." I shrugged, and watched the dog try to sober up while drinking warm water out of a dog bowl outside of the hotel.

"Bad karma in what sense? Do you mean i'm going to get a blind dog or have a blind baby?" I did feel a little bad: I actually liked the little freak a lot more than I had expected to and he could hold his own amongst poolside pricks. Like I said before, we truly had a kindred connection. I also was beginning to realize that dogs that are too small to shit might not be so bad.

Once inside her boyfriend's car, we contemplated where we could go to dinner while accompanied by booze hound. Sadly, we were turned away at many a venue as booze hound's presence could potentially ruin the ambiance.

"No room at the inn, " I muttered under my breath as we crossed the street to Saddle Ranch which obviously had to accept him as they accept so many degenerates that a small dog was hardly an issue.

Once seated, I decided to mention that I had told someone the dog was special needs. Noreen's boyfriend was not remotely amused so I decided not to push the bill and try to convince the waitress.

Booze Hound, in the mean time, had already whored himself out to some woman at a nearby table. I looked over at him and I swear he winked at me. Or maybe he was just eyeing my vodka soda.

Man Maid

Sometime around early August, I got dragged out of my Scottsdale Kingdom down to the trenches of downtown Phoenix. The primary reason I look unfavorably upon going out in downtown Phoenix is because door bouncers and bar tenders do not know my name. Though, in retrospect, maybe this is a positive.

Anyhow, at this time in my life, I was casually dating a remarkable alcoholic who would basically become catatonic when drinking heavily. And by remarkable I really just mean that i was totally over it.

After jumping on and off Phoenix's light rail, which is more of just a novelty than a viably useful form of transportation, we popped into an irish bar somewhere in the downtown area. I was pretty happy to be off the lightrail as i was tired of sitting next to meth heads with 3 teeth slurping off brand energy drinks. While posted up at the bar I spotted this man. The minute I laid eyes on him, I wanted his name but not necessarily his number. He was 75, fat, and wearing a coogi sweater... well it may have been argyle, but wouldn't it be funny to see a 75 year old man in a coogi sweater?

Jen and I hopped to it and engaged him in some sort of mindless conversation. Moments later, I found myself reviewing the various vowel sounds in the english language. He was Irish and had not learned proper phonics skills. I also made sure to tell him I liked his sweater.

While Jen and i jabbered on with old man O'Leary, Noreen was flitzing around the bar for a drink and had taken up talking to some tallish blonde boy. Then i saw her look over at me and point. Noreen thinks it's a fun game to find boys for me at the bar. And i thank her for this because sometimes she just finds me really huge weirdos that she knows i'll want to 20 question, for example, the weird computer nerd who i spent 20 minutes successfully convincing to hire White Kong to work for his start up. White Kong is 17 (see previous entries "White Kong" and "White Kong in love" for more details on White Kong and how i know him).

Before I knew it, blondie had come my way and was chatting me up. He spent the rest of the night hanging out with us and got my number, called me, and took me out the next week. Now, he was a super nice guy, pursuing a law degree, and clearly from a nice family. When he referred to his mother, he said 'mom', throwing out the possessive pronoun 'my' altogether. This kind of pissed me off. I mean, She was not my mom. He also liked to wear pastel v-necks and knew a little too much about my favorite brand of purses. On many occasions, I thought about calling up my Marv in LA and having him analyze with his supreme gay-dar capacity. I already had a wonderful gay boyfriend and was not looking for another.

At any rate, these flaws aside, he liked to party but was not a remarkable alcoholic. Basically, if i were to describe him to my mother, she would be fairly supportive of this G.

The main problem was, apart from my suspicions, that the whole thing was just off from the start. My crazy friend Mark, who is both a hopeless romantic and a supreme bar star, always says, "never settle for anything less than butterflies." There were no butterflies. I'm not trying to be queer, but when you know you know. However, He was nice enough and i was ok with keeping it casual. However, I just couldn't get that excited about new jeans.

This little ditty carried on for about a month and a half. Day by day, I was losing interest and it was sliding into a slow fade. Toward the end of it, Jen called me one day and directed me to a web page: Man Maid. The page boasted jack of all trade services that included your general scrubbing and dusting, yard work, and fixing odds and ends. Interesting concept, no? Then I realized that the one and only man maid was actually the boy who I had been dating for the last month. Holy shit. He had been prostituting himself out to wash other women's windows and trim other womens' hedges. In my head, I tried to picture him in a french maid's outfit then got really disturbed and almost threw up the Luna bar i was eating. At that point, his masculinity plummeted to rock bottom depths. He could have my purses.

Amidst all of this nauseating analysis, I stopped for a minute and played devil's advocate against myself: maybe it would be a nice to date a guy who would so eagerly clean my humble home? But then I realized that I'd probably have to pay him.

Girls with Dumb Names

I tend to get a lot of flack for ripping the male population apart. In all honesty, I love men; I just find them anywhere from mildly to moderately amusing on many given occasions. It's not my fault that you walk around the gym in flip flops, or that you chose to bring firecrackers into the W and set them off under my skirt, or that you are married and trying to get my number.

So, in honor of my male readership, today I am pondering the following topic: girls with dumb names. When I speak of dumb names, I am speaking of names that end in a long 'i' sound, namely. Really, you had to name your daughter Trixi??? Well it's your own damn fault she got caught with the captain of the Lacrosse team behind the bleachers.

There is a fine line between preppy nicknames with that long i sound at the end and trashy, made up names that literally end in an i. For instance, Missy, Muffy, Kitty, Betsey and Lacey can be cutesy. Not saying they make you sound brilliant, but they are acceptable. I can even handle an I ending as long as it's a REAL NAME. I may be saying this because I have a nickname with a y at the end. But fortunately, my mom was not dumb enough to name me after a Disney character. Naming her Bambi, Roxi, or Trixi is not ok under any circumstance. At that point, you are hoisting your daughter on a stripper pole and giving her a bottle of lotion that smells like pears.

The following names, I believe, are truly the worst: Bambi, Misti, and Rikki. Especially when they are all in a public restroom together. Girls with retarded names must get together at a convention, trade hair spray and pear lotion, then say omg we are so bff4L. I was so lucky to nearly get esphixiated by Bambi's hair spray as she was re-teasing her bleached hair.

"OMG... it's been like this since 7 am... do i still look good to be out???" Bambi squealed to either Misti or Rikki. It really doesn't matter who it was, considering that combined they had enough brain cells for a lemur.

"Omg, no you look so hot. I love it short!!!" Misti/Rikki shrieked. Meanwhile, Rikki/Misti exited a bathroom stall donning some gross synthetic black dress that she was falling out of purposefully.

"Ohmigod, I'm so excited for tonight!!!!" Rikki/Misti trilled while running up to snatch Bambi's hairspray. I wondered if Bambi was still scarred from when the hunters shot her mother in the forest.

They squealed together like sick cats and I hurried out of the bathroom. On my way back to the table, I passed a table of bros. One looked at me and shouted, "Tiffani!?!?!?!" I'm not sure what kind of look I gave him but it must not have been very nice.

"Do i look like a Tiffani to you?" I asked. Seriously, I was not about to leveled down to Misti and Bambi.

"Whoa, what's your problem? I thought you were Tiffani. Tiffani's a great girl she's having my friend's baby." He looked so sad.

"Nope," I replied wondering if I looked like a pregnant Tiffani or a dumb whore, "maybe she's doing her hair with Bambi and Misti in the bathroom." I shot him a wide smile and made it back to my table, sniffed my shirt to see if I smelled like pears.