Romantic Faux Pas
an emily blunt rant

I don't whine about the dating scene - I avoid it.

Granted, most of my romantic faux pas can be directly linked to my morbidly shy flirtation techniques. Sure, I can babble on endlessly in a group of many on several subjects and keep up with a multitude of topics by pivoting between the dialogs. But, God forbid a man I actually find attractive jumps into the pot. Then I become a mute bimbo, or worse, a silly girly girl. I morph like a creature from Dr. Moreau's infamous lab, frothy and frilly….not a pretty site. Now I leave at the first sign of interest in a bloke - exit stage left. It's easier and I've come to live with it. There's nothing I can do, this phenomenon is out of my control actually. Why? Simple, because it's just the pesky gypsy curse place upon my grandmother's head decades ago that to this day my female family members must endure.

Poppycock you say. Bruhaha. It's true....one day in a land far far away, this fancy footed fair faced grandmother pissed off some gypsy witch while out gallivanting off the Alps of Switzerland. She fell for, and married, the witch's beloved Johan. Oops. The result was a verbal exchange (and cat fight) they're still retelling in folklore fables amongst the local villagers. I'm convinced that head gypsy witch (looking like the warty one in The Werewolf in my thoughts) brewed up a big old vat of hate gruel for the women of my family - and placed a curse of 1000 dysfunctional relationships upon us.

I am positive this curse was placed and continues to haunt us. It is just not natural the things we women folk go through. Cop out? I think not. I'm a chickbabe and perpetually single. Is it bad hygiene? Or perhaps a bad personality? Nope, I have one and I bath. Nope....it's the curse for sure. Oh, negative Nelly read on, hear my tale, and see if you don't buy into the curse theory by the end too.

This shy as a bug, yet vivacious outwardly, "phenomenon" has haunted me since childhood - before I even knew what a silly boy was. The curse first reared its evil head one innocent day when a budding crush, a boy named Kenny, and I were playing on the jungle gym. When Kenny made the mistake of sneaking a kiss, I promptly slipped off the bars - bang - down I went smashing to the ground. Two teeth gone and about eight gallons of blood gushed from my skull. So much for subtle reciprocation huh?

Hmm, you think maybe it's some weird psychological handicap buried in the catacombs of my subconscious that releases an endorphin of memory that men equal extreme pain and dental work?

Now before you go thinking I'm the oldest virgin in the USA….I am not. I am oddly normal in matters of the boudoir. I mean considering how hard it is for me to flirt and find a mock-breeding partner.

I've been married twice. Get a grip, it happens. The first time I was tricked. I was drunk on tequila and great open skies. It was my first time on the stuff, worm and all. Next thing I knew, I was head first in a tacky south Texan hotel toilet, with the 'Wedding March' repeating over and over in my aching head. In my defense, I'll say I did obviously know the guy - and for a long time. He just moved in when I was unable to be logical after getting me liquored me up real good, and found some backwoods Duke of Hazzardish Justice to quickly get me to scratch a legal form before the blurring buzz wore off. I thought it was a joke. It wasn't. It lasted six or eight months. My mother eventually kind of traded a 1963 Thunderbird for me, provided he'd "go away"...

Hmm, you think that relationship added to my already deep-rooted fear of flirtation and gave me the odd gag-reflex I get when I see a bottle of cheap tequila?

Wait it gets better. The next husband, as a pre-husband, approached me at a bar I was perusing on a birthday outing. He spit out about thirteen well timed and hilariously delivered pick-up lines like "What sign are you?" "Come here often?" and " Like Sulphur on cardboard we have a match". He was retro-punky, tall, cute, smart, and had big brown eyes one could get lost in…

For the first time I took a man's number and didn't immediately dump it. I never called though.

So how did we end up married? I brought the encounter up at lunch about a week later and a gal pal yelled at me about soul mates, serendipity, and the rest of the make-believe crap one sees blazon across the screens usually starring Meg Ryan. She grabbed his number from my pocket book and called him on the spot, and pretending she was me, made a date for that Friday.

I had dinner with him, we fell madly in love and we were wed six months later. That union lasted five years. I'd still be there if it weren't for one pesky snafu. He had a drug problem which, turns out, gave him the personality I fell in love with. When he cleaned up I was left with a sanitized barren shell of a guy that spoke once or twice a week - if he was feeling spunky. I was going to slip into madness if I stayed to be sure. I could almost hear the old gypsy laughing from the beyond....curse her!

So divorced again, and afraid of bars, tequila shots and jungle gym's I remain alone and happy. I'm like a sexual camel. And, It's not like I don't have a zillion times infinity squared offers to get down-get funky on a weekly basis, but I also happen to be very, very picky and find one in a billion actually attractive. My taste is quirky and often considered …well …strange.

Maybe someday my prince will come. He's apparently fallen off his stead, been jumped, beaten, and left in a coma somewhere along the road to me…yeah that's it.