OUR WORLD:
The VP of Ops was out of town most of last week, got back on Sunday and left again this morning for the next 3 days. I have officially left the “being alone is fun!” phase of her being gone, and entered the “well, who’s gonna listen to me bitch about my day?” phase of missing her. Call me a romantic, but getting to whine about relatively benign daily happenings to someone who is GUARANTEED to agree with you is one of the main advantages of being married. Actually, part of my vows alluded to this when I wrote: “I promise never to spare you a detail of the times when an older woman will inadvertently cut me off in traffic. I promise to assign said woman some malicious motive that I fully expect you to agree with when I recount the story to you later that night.” Guys, I’m like so kidding about having written vows–we’re not those kinda’ weirdos. It’s called a joke!
Which is a long winded way of me saying that I do not miss being single. For those who are good at it, congratulations; you won’t enjoy the rest of today’s “Our World”. You live in a world that I am not a part of, if you’re good at being single. For me, and I believe many of us, the world of being single sucks, and here are the parts that suck the most:
Feeling compelled to talk to strangers at bars: Obviously, I can only speak to this from a guy’s perspective, but going to bars while single and hoping to meet a future LOVAH! is a terrifying prospect. What happens is you stand around with your friends trying to not look like you’re scoping everyone out, but you are and it’s SUPER obvious when you keep missing the straw to your vodka soda (you are watching cals BIG TIME when single). There will be the mega babes who are WAY out of your league, but you’ll spend about 9 minutes trying to come up with a snappy one-liner to level the playing field. Something along the lines of “hey…uh…getting to date you would make my dad real proud of me.” Unfortunately, Babe-a-tron 5000 doesn’t know how reluctant your dad is to offer praise, so that’s gonna be a swing and a miss.
What’ll happen most of the time, is that you’ll just stand around your dumb friends, not approaching ANYONE of the opposite sex. Instead, opting to just get progressively drunker until somebody gets a text from a girl they know that is at another bar. “She have friends?!?!? HAS TO, RIGHT?!?” Is what you’ll be thinking, but you’ve gotta play it cool, so you’ll act like “sure, guess I’ll go with you.” Then you’ll get to the next bar, realize that the girl does have friends, but those friends are not impressed with sarcasm OR outfits from Old Navy’s Spring, 2011 collection. It’s okay, though, because by this time you’re drunk-STARVING and ready to eat your feelings away. THEIR LOSS!
Having to explain to your grandparents why you’re not married with kids yet: I swear to god, once you hit the age of 22, all grandparents expect you to be married with a kid on the way. Old days were a wild time, during which, I guess everyone was married with 3 kids and a big house by the time they were able to rent a car? That’s the way they friggin’ act at least. Every family dinner when you’re single will include the “why are you still single?”-portion of the meal with your grandparents quizzing you on what exactly is going wrong. It’ll usually be a potential critique wrapped in a compliment, like: “You’re a handsome, smart kid, you should have no problem finding someone.” Unfortunately, when you’re single and, therefore insecure, that sounds more like: “The problem must be your personality.” Seriously, how are you supposed to respond to that? “Well thanks Grandpa, but I do have problems finding someone because I’m now out of college and approaching women in bars, or grocery stores, or gyms makes me so scared that I literally think about KILLING MYSELF!” WARNING: Grandparents do not find humor in suicide jokes.
Playing the 3rd Wheel: The main reason that playing the third wheel sucks is that you’re almost like the unpaid entertainment for the couple that night. I always felt the need to go a little harder, be a little funnier, be a little extra-er when I was the third wheel. Like, the couple had to be thinking: “if Jimmy bores us at any point in the night, we can just bail.” Your couple friends will ALWAYS assure you that “you’re NOT the third wheel,” but…uh…you are because you’re the third person there and your pants are a little tighter than normal because you ate a big sandwich for lunch so you feel ROUND, LIKE A WHEEL!
Then will come the part of the night where you’ll kinda’ glance at someone across the bar and the couple you’re with will see this, and convince you that you NEED to approach this person. Funny how everyone in a relationship IMMEDIATELY forgets how much of a no-go that proposition is when you’re single. They’ll give you a “what’s the worst that could happen?” or “I think she just looked at you, too.” They’re lying. Trust me, they’re lying about this 100% of the time. All they want is some free entertainment; getting to watch someone strike out with a potential mate IN PERSON is something I would pay to see. In fact, there should be a viewing section at the biggest single bars in the city. Wouldn’t you pay to go to one of these massive, DJ-booth, single meat markets, and sit in like in the security camera room? They could have a charismatic storyteller, narrating the pick-up attempts going on throughout the club, and you could just watch it and be thankful that it’s no longer you as the star of this horror-show? There really should be a channel called “Single People in a Club” which just shows security-cam footage of clubs around the country on Friday and Saturday nights. I’d vote for someone like Hannibal Burress to narrate the scenes (I really wanted to say Louis C.K. for the narrator but…like…he can’t come back yet, huh? We sure? Okay. Okay!)
MY WORLD:
I know today is supposed to be the “A Time I Made Myself Laugh By Making The VP of Ops Mad or Uncomfortable”, but since I’m not an ABSOLUTE monster with endless stories of me pissing off my wife, I’m going to write about the haircut I got on Sunday. (Calm down! Calm down! YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT!)
As you know by now, I get my hair cut at a salon because I am a fancy boy who likes STYLE! Or, mostly because I want to get my head massaged by a professional head massager person. So I’ve been going to this hip place called “Fringe” for the past couple years where I may be the only male client. (I’m sure this isn’t true, but anytime I’m in there, I’m the only guy there so…maybe it is true? YOU DON’T KNOW!) Now, I only get my haircut like 2 to 3 times a year because I’m lazy and try to convince myself that I can pull off long hair a couple times throughout the year. Normally, around like month 3 post-haircut The VP of Ops will toss a “your hair!” my way one morning when I wake up with especially sexy bed head (sexy or, as The VP would put it “gross and not sexy in the least). So I’ll wait another few weeks before the VPs jabs start to actually hurt and then, finally, make an appointment.
For the past 2-3 years I had been getting my haircut by this girl named Tori at Fringe. She was good, not great, but whatever, I wasn’t that picky. Until last time when Tori wasn’t available, but it being a hair-emergency, so I just went with whoever was available. A woman named Leah was assigned to my mangy head, and lemme tell ya’, WE CONNECTED! She gave a top-notch head massage while washing my hair (during which I made a joke about how close to purring I was that she took in stride and even gave me a courtesy laugh for!) She then gave me a killer haircut and was just a DELIGHT to converse with. Not too much talking, but enough that I didn’t feel drown in any awkward silences. I left thinking about two words in regards to Tori: SHE GONE!
After wearing a hat for most of the past 2 months, I finally made a second appointment with Leah this past Sunday. Unfortunately, I did not plan ahead and ask if Tori was going to be there. So when I walked in to “Fringe” and Tori was sitting at the reception desk, I had to make a split-second decision. “Hey!!! Our system is down, so I didn’t know you were coming in!” said an excited Tori. To which I responded, “Yeah, my name is Jimmy and I’m here for a 12:30 with Leah.” My split second decision was to act like I had no idea who Tori was. I barely made eye contact with her as she responded: “Oh, okay…yeah, I didn’t know who you were with.” It’s one of the coldest, meanest things I think I’ve ever done.
She went and got Leah, and a funny thing happened; I didn’t feel a thing. I was expecting to be knocked over with a wave of guilt but, instead, I felt nothing. It was exhilarating in the darkest of ways. This must be what the Joker felt the first time he upset the established order. As I passed Tori on my way to get my hair washed, I almost wanted to whisper in her ear “I’m an agent of chaos.”
Does this mean that Joker Jimmy is a newly discovered side of my personality worth exploring further? That the weird-astrology people were right when they take about Gemini’s having split personalities? Quite possibly. Tori’s heartbreak at not getting to cut a relative stranger’s hair (me) was a sacrifice necessary for me to find my inner darkness. A darkness that could lead to me never settling on one hair-cutter person for fear of an awkward interaction. A darkness that could lead me to finding the perfect hair-cutter person; one who would be able to give me the volume and shape necessary to hide my thinning crown. A darkness that could put an end to me having to use a blow-dryer. As Tori watched Leah cut my hair from afar, she must have felt the thing about chaos…fear. And maybe that fear that she’s not good enough, will drive her to become a better hair-cutter person. You’re welcome, Tori.
LETS LIKE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
Me in the salon on Sunday…
LETS HATE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:
Anyone watch Ariana on “Vanderpump Rules” last night? She got mad at Tom for leaving to hang out with Jax after the break-up because she wants Tom to “commit” to her being first in her life. HOWEVER, she still refuses to even consider marrying Tom. Get out Ariana, nobody likes you.
MY BOVADA PICK OF THE DAY THAT I AM GENUINELY CONFIDENT IN BECAUSE I DESERVE GOOD THINGS TO HAPPEN TO ME AFTER GETTING REAR-ENDED BY A GUY WITHOUT A LICENSE:
Well, Russ Westbrook proved that I’m stupid. That’s fun. Thankfully, I did also bet on Houston last night, so it wasn’t a total wash. For tonight, I like Miami (+10), the Milwaukee moneyline and San Antonio (+11.5). 10 and 11.5 are a lot of points for teams that play hard and have proud vets, and Milwaukee seems to have figured out how to beat Boston. BANK OPEN?!?! YOU BETCHA!
(My account currently at $180.40)
K bye.
Jimmy's Chair 