It's Not You, Dude, It's Me

My friend Lindsay is going through one of those slow-motion breakups that everyone has to go through at one time or another. Naturally, she’s reading the new bible for confused women – “He’s Just Not That IntoYou” by Greg Behrendt. Essentially, the book explains that if a guy is sending you mixed messages, he’s probably not that “in” to you.

“Duh,” I said, when Lindsay explained the premise of the book to me. I said this because I’m a guy, and when guys are given the chance to display actual compassion, we’ll opt for ridicule every time.

“You needed a $20 book to tell you that if your boyfriend won’t spend time with you then he’s probably not into you?”

Lindsay didn’t take my sarcasm well. “Maybe the book is stupid, but I’ve put two years into this relationship. I don’t want to just throw it away.’

Not Long After…

I was talking to my friend Kieth about a mutual friend of ours named Matt.

“Hey,” said Kieth, “Did Matt call you yesterday to tell you that we’re all going bowling tonight?”

This took me by surprise. I didn’t realize that we were bowling kind of guys. I’ve known these two guys for twenty years and never once have we bowled. So this was similar to Kieth casually mentioning that we were Buddhists – only that’s not weird enough. It was more like Kieth mentioning that we were Buddhist German Shepherds.

“Nope,” I said looking at my caller ID box. “I don’t think he’s called.”

“Hmmm,” said Kieth, “That’s strange.”

Only that’s not strange for Matt.

“Usually,” I explained, “Matt doesn’t call me unless I call him.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I replied. “It makes me feel kind of stupid. Even worse, I called him last Friday to see if wanted to come over to a little dinner party my wife and I were throwing. You wanna know why he didn’t come over?”

“Why?”

“He said he was gonna watch some television.”

“Oh,” said Kieth understandingly. “Well, he does watch “Enterprise” on Friday nights.”

“C’mon, Kieth! Why would he ditch our dinner party for “Enterprise”? It’s not like he’s missing “Next Generation” or even “Voyager”. And why do I have to call him first every…holy crap.”

Holy crap, indeed.

I had just realized something. Matt was just not that into me.

Duh.

So, I may just buy a copy of that Behrendt book. I have, after all, put twenty years into this relationship. I’d hate to just throw it away.

Star Trek and Sparkly Sashes

It’s a basic tenet of science fiction dogma that there is a universe parallel to ours. This universe is a replica of ours in every way except that it contains evil, negative versions of us regular humans.

In the Star Trek universe, these negative versions are easy to spot. They wear sparkly sashes and goatees and incorrigibly try to seduce anyone who moves. Ironically, this is very similar to the way conservatives view gays – as negative people who wear sparkly sashes and goatees and incorrigibly try to marry anyone who moves.

But I digress.

Regular readers know that in my last post I joked the hell out of my wife’s bad moods. I took great pains to portray myself as a hapless and bemused victim who anticipates the storms and rides them using only my plucky wit and resolve. I even coyly inferred that maybe my wife’s menses had something to do with it.

Heh. I’m a stitch.

Today, though, I did something embarrassing. I yelled at my wife on the phone. Real loud. It had to do with money and absolutely none of it was her fault. Exactly two seconds after I hung up the phone, I had a few epiphanies.

Yelling at my wife is bad, for instance. Also, I’m pretty sure I’m not having a period. It is, I deduced, possible that being an ass is unrelated to whether you’re having cramps or not.

But it also made me think about evil, parallel Star Trek universes and the evil, negative people who live in them. At any point, does one of the negative people look down and have a moment of self-awareness? Does he look down and say, “Oh, great. I’m wearing a sparkly sash. I’m an evil guy!?”

I think it probably does happen. And it’s probably a jarring moment. But it’s reversible. All the evil guy has to do is apologize to his wife.

Oh, yeah. And take off the sparkly sash. They may be completely wrong about the gay thing, but conservatives are definitely right about sash wearing.