Meet the Parents

We discovered that we had two copies of the movie “Meet the Parents” on VHS, so we got our friend to punch the extra copy in half.

My first bar experience

It was about this time one year ago when I had my first real bar experience. A bunch of girls that I worked with at JC Penney were going to see a band at a local bar. I was only 20, but I was also tired of missing out on all of the fun, so I used my older sister’s ID to get in. Thankfully, the bouncer was too drunk to realize that I’m not anywhere near 5’8″, blonde hair, or the age of 27, so I got in no problem.

I quickly pounded about four red bull Vodka’s within an hour of entering the door, and who knows what else. I’m sure it was a lovely evening, but honestly I don’t remember one damn thing.

I rode to the bar with a couple coworkers after we pre-partied at on of their houses. All I brought with me was my sister’s ID, cash, and my car keys. Unfortunately my car keys fell out of my pocket on the ride over, and were left in the back seat of that girl’s car. I then went home from the bar with my boyfriend and without my keys. That was the first night that we ever had sex. So around like 4:00am when I was a little bit sobered up, I realized that I needed to go home so I could get up at 6:00am and go to work. That was about the time that I realized that I had no keys. No problem, my boyfriend could give me a ride home, and then my mom could take me to work.

We get to my house and my mom’s car is in the driveway so I know she’s home. Front door was locked and since I had no cars keys, I also had no house keys. This led to taking a lawn chair to the side of the house and hauling my drunk ass through my bedroom window. By this time it was about 5:00am, and I realized that even though my mom’s car was home, she wasn’t. I then realized that my boyfriend had lost his phone and my phone was dead anyways, so I had no way to call him or anyone else to give me a ride to work. I then realized that if I wanted to get to work on time I needed to get dressed and start walking. I then also realized that this sucks.

So, I put on my heaviest coat, scarves, gloves, and a hat and started walking. I made it there on time. Three other girls that had gone to the bar the previous night also had to work that morning. We all showed up wearing the same clothes from the night before, slightly drunk, smelling like booze, and got away with it. We opened the store, someone went on a coffee run on their lunch break to keep us alive, we put up with the cranky holiday rush of customers, and we survived the experience. The girl who had my keys in her car brought them to me (up until that point I had no clue where they were), and my mom picked me up after I clocked off and took me to my car. I then drove home and slept for about 20 hours straight and regretted my life choices.

Hot-dog Boat

A girl that I know bought a tattoo gun on the internet. Her and her friend have been giving people really unappealing and unsanitary tattoos for about a week now. Tonight I watched her get a tattoo in their living room. It was a hot-dog that was a sail boat. She calls it “The S.S. Wiener”.

Twelve Kisses

One simple kiss can have a lot of meaning. It can make you nervous, it can excite you, disappoint you, or anger you. In short, here’s a paragraph for every guy that I’ve ever kissed.

My first kiss. I was in junior high. There was a guy that I’d known since early elementary school, and honestly the only thing that really sticks out in my memory about this guy is that he looked, sounded, and acted like Napoleon Dynamite. he was a couple years older than me and he liked me for some reason. He always sat next to me on the bus and walked me home. He even bought a cute necklace for me for Christmas, the first gift that a guy had ever given me. I was smitten like a kitten, until he kissed me. I met him at the elementary school playground and we were walking towards the swings or something. He just grabbed me and kissed me. After that kiss, he tried to make out with me, which was pretty much the most disgusting thing I’d ever encountered. He had his mouth open with his tongue sticking out. He had braces, which may have contributed to all the saliva. All I can say is that I never kissed him again.

Fast forward about a year and I got my first actual boyfriend. I was his first kiss. I remember that his lips were always really soft and he changed my mind about thinking that kissing was nasty. We never really made out, frankly because neither of us knew how. We were constantly cuddling and holding hands and I kissed him a lot, and I went back to kissing him in between boyfriends for a while. He smelled nice.

This is a man that I dated for five years, all the way through high school and part of my first year of college. I was his first kiss, and we were each other’s first time for a lot of things. He’s the first guy that I enjoyed making out with, and we made out A LOT. We also did a lot of other things a lot, experimenting in our youthful curiosity. He was my first love, and he absolutely meant the world to me for a long time. We eventually grew apart after we ended up going to different colleges, but I will forever be thankful for the experience of being with him.

This guy represents the true loss of my innocence. I met this guy in a history class, and we were in the same study group. He knew me during my five-year long relationship, and still knows me now. I’ve sexted with him more than I care to admit (the only guy I have ever or will ever do that with) but I’ve only kissed him one time. He was dropping me off and it was just a tiny little kiss. I was totally head-over-heels for this guy, but unfortunately he’s just not a “boyfriend type”.

I’ve known this guy since he moved here in the fourth grade. He was always one of my best friends, and always had little crushes on me as we were growing up. I also had it bad for him. For about a year we went through little phases of getting really close to each other, making out, kissing, and almost having sex (never got that far though). He was unknowingly fighting with his sexuality, and was never quite ready to admit it (he has since come out publicly and is in a very happy relationship). We went through these cycles of getting drunk together, confessing our love for each other, and having him pull away from me. It was a constant let-down, and that’s when I realized that you actually can have your heart broken even if you aren’t technically in love with someone. One night I gave him an ultimatum. I told him that this time would be different, and that if he said he was going to be with me, he was going to do it. He promised he wouldn’t back away and change his mind this time, but he did. And that was when the kissing stopped there, and nothing has been the same between us since that break up.

I went to hang out at this guy’s house with some of his friends and my best friend. We had pizza and we were hanging out. I think my best friend was suppose to be set up with one of the guy’s there, but that didn’t happen. We decided to watch a movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, to be exact. I sat on the couch next to this guy. He was bold, and he just flung his charming arm around me and next thing I know I’m sitting on his lap and making out with him instead of watching the movie. He put his hand on my thigh, which led to his hand being elsewhere if you know what I mean. I got nervous and my friend was upset with me due to my behavior. We ended up leaving and I never hung out with that guy again.

My friend introduced me to this cute, charming guy who was really good at impressions and he was funny. I started hanging out with him a lot, one thing led to another and I spent the night at his house with him after a movie night. By this time I was done being the nervous, inexperienced, self-conscious one. I knew that I was going to have sex with him, it was just a matter of when. I took it slow with him and we kissed a lot. He lost his virginity to me. He turned out to be a huge ass hole and was going behind my back to get with my best friend. He has been forgiven, but it took quite a while. He’s still funny and charming, just not to me anymore.

I used to find this guy attractive, in a teddy bear kind of way. He’s a nice guy that’s full of compliments. He wooed me into hanging out with him a few times, cuddling on his couch watching TV. One day he hugged me as I left his house to walk back to campus, and I let him kiss me. I blew him off every time he asked me to hang out after that.

This was the shittiest relationship I’ve had so far, mainly because I didn’t like him. After one month of dating he gave me a key to his place and I froze. I dunkenly asked him to be my boyfriend at a party during spring break, and he obliged. When I dumped him after three months of dating, I felt like I was divorcing him or something.

One of the sweetest men that I will ever meet, and I hurt him. We met in high school and we randomly started talking on Facebook one day, and never stopped. He was catholic, waiting until marriage. He was so sweet and sincere. He went off to boot camp and wrote me a letter at least three times a week while he was gone, and I only sent him one. I didn’t enjoy kissing him, because his lips were dry, but I enjoyed the simplicity of his company, being around someone who didn’t want me for sex.

Current boyfriend. He came to visit me during the summer. We walked around downtown on the levee and then sat on a bench. His kiss was hard and gentle at the same time, and I still can’t get enough of it. We started dating a couple months later when he came back to town for the next semester.

One summer night i went to a beach party. I ran into a guy that I went to preschool with, and he remembered. A tall, handsome, baby faced guy with sandy blonde hair. I let him lead me on, and walked down the beach with him. He sat down and started making out. He tried to go further, and I said no. “Come on, my girlfriend will never know, she’s not here.” And in that moment I hated myself for being the other woman. I left him sitting there at the end of the beach because he was a jerk.

Having A Britney Moment

At some point in time, we all experience living with a horrible roommate. Someone dirty, annoying, or otherwise completely unsuitable of cohabitation. My boyfriend and I, out of necessity so we could afford our $600/month apartment, let one of his coworkers move in to our spare bedroom. Two days later we both regretted it.

Roommate showed up to move in with two black trash bags full of his stuff; that’s it. Two trash bags full of unwashed, smelly clothes. I mistakenly allowed him to use our futon, which I let him keep forever because of the smell he has ingrained into every fiber of it. After he moved in it just went downhill from there. He would smoke cigarettes and weed inside, which was strictly against our landlord’s rules. He would come home at 3 or 4 in the morning, lock himself in his room with music cranked at full level, and rack up noise complaints from our neighbors because of the disruption. His room had a smell that lingered for a couple months after we eventually kicked him out, no matter how much we cleaned it.

One time, Roommate came home after work and pushed a bike inside. He didn’t have a car and was always mooching rides from us, so of course we were happy to see that he had found some kind of transportation for himself. “Nice bike, dude! Where’d you get it?” Boyfriend asked him. And what was Roommate’s reply? “Yeah, pretty dope right?! I found it behind a bush!” he explained as he wheeled it out to the patio to put it away. When he came back inside, I asked “wait, so you just found it behind a bush and brought it home?” He looked at me like I was crazy for asking him such a silly question. “Yeah man! I was walking by some apartment place on my way home and I just found it! Pretty fuckin’ sweet right?!” Boyfriend and I looked at each other, looked back at him, both of us just said “uhhh yeah, pretty cool man” and then spent the next few months hoping that no one would come knocking on our door because they saw their stolen bike sitting in plain sight on our patio.

Fast forward a few weeks. Boyfriend went out to a local bar with Roommate and some of their other coworkers for Bar Bingo. I stayed up playing Luigi’s Mansion on my game cube and listening to music. They guys walked home after the bar closed, and came stumbling in as white-girl wasted as possible. Boyfriend laid down on the floor by my feet and held up his bingo prize, a thermos with Puff the Magic Dragon on it. Roommate had gone into the bathroom. Boyfriend wandered into the kitchen and i paused my game to monitor the drunks. Boyfriend made himself content sitting in the middle of the kitchen eating a leftover breakfast burrito from earlier that day, and Roommate seemed to be in the bathroom with the door wide open, so i just left both of them alone and went back to my game. Suddenly Boyfriend gets super interested in whatever Roommate is doing in the bathroom, sets down half of a burrito on the kitchen floor and gets up to investigate. Suddenly I hear laughing from the hallway and Boyfriend is yelling “OH MY GOD HE’S SHAVING HIS HEAD!” quickly followed my Roommate yelling at Boyfriend to get out of the bathroom and leave him alone. I paused my game again and stood at the end of the hallway. Boyfriend was thinking this was the funniest thing in the world, and Roomate was thinking about killing Boyfriend. “Boyfriend, get away from Roommate before he punches you,” I tried to reason with
him. “But he’s SHAVING his HEAD!” he laughs. “I know babe, but I think he wants you to leave him alone…” I try again, while Roommate gets increasingly angry. Boyfriend can’t take it

any more and won’t leave Roommate alone. “BUT HE’S HAVING A BRITNEY MOMENT!!!” He yells at me from down the hallway. While I applaud his comparison of Roommate to

Britney Spears’ unfortunate 2007 head-shaving incident, it may have been a poorly timed pop culture reference, as it got him shoved out of the bathroom and the spontaneous movement ca

used extreme nausea,  which led to him running down the hallway and out to

the patio where he started barfing off over the hand railing.

At this point I pretty much decided that there was nothing that I could do about the current situation, so I put a glass of water on the patio for Boyfriend and went back to my game. About 10 minutes later, Boyfriend’s barfing subsided. He literally lifted his head up, wiped barf off of his mouth with his sleeve, walked inside, and started eating the breakfast burrito that he left in the middle of the kitchen floor earlier. I would have done something about this, but at the same moment Roommate emerges from the bathroom looking like someone took a weed whacker to his head. There were tufts of hair that he’d missed sticking up everywhere all over his head. He looks at me, and goes “Hey, will you help me with the back? I think I missed a spot….” Boyfriend and I are trying not to laugh and I’m like “Are you sure? It looks fine to me…” “Yes I’m sure I missed a spot I can feel it!” He yells, and to avoid more anger I went ahead and just shaved the rest of his head. While I was in the bathroom doing this, Boyfriend went outside to barf some more. I sent Roommate to bed hoping that he would wake up and wonder where the hell his hair was, and went to tend to Boyfriend. He was now laying on the couch with part of a burrito in his hand passed the hell out. Eventually the night winded down after Roommate came out to make a late dinner, Boyfriend decided to go for a walk by himself at 4 in the morning, then coming home to take a shower and we all eventually went to bed. We woke up the next morning with a bathroom completed covered in hair and Boyfriend going downstairs to cover up his barf with some dirt so the neighbor wouldn’t see it.

Although we had some Thorn Bush Rose moments with Roommate, eventually “2-stroke”, as he liked to be called, racked up too many noise complaints and almost got us kicked out of our apartment, so he had to go. We still see him occasionally because Boyfriend still works with him, but I can honestly say I will not miss the smell of drugs, alcohol, and bad choices that came from that spare bedroom. Boyfriend and I again became unable to afford our apartment by ourselves, so we moved into my mom’s house, which she started renting out after she moved a few hours away to a neighboring town. From what I know, 2-stroke moved into a super sketchy apartment complex in a meth-filled area of our town

and now sells weed. He lives alone, and Boyfriend and I now have a new roommate who smells nice, has no weird nick names, and has his own bike that he bought with his own money, and did NOT find behind a bush.

Leroy and Elizabeth

I hadn’t seen him in months and when I walked into that Starbucks and saw him I just wanted to walk right up and kiss him. He seemed taller than he was before when he hugged me, and his hair had grown out so his cowlick wasn’t sticking up. I had no idea what to order because I never drink fancy coffee, so we joked about what kind of blended thing I should ask for and instantly started laughing with each other like kids. For some reason the subject of our conversation turned to running away, like he had been reading my mind and knew exactly what I needed to talk about, just like he always does. I had been considering running away for quite a while. I had calculated how much money I’d need, where I would go, what I would take with me, and how I would get it all packed into my tiny car and go in one afternoon while my boyfriend was at work. I hadn’t been this happy in months. Seeing his face, having him so close to me made me so happy. He wasn’t just talking about ME running away, he was talking about WE running away.

I would have ran away with that boy in a half of a heart beat. 

We had this cute little plan going about moving to Seattle, going by our middle names, him becoming a huge theater star and me starting my own bakery and both of us just being happy for once, something both of us truly were missing.

All of those times that we had been so close to being together, all of the chances that I’d given to him, but he’s always pulled back and left me, leaving my heart scorched and my mind numb. Well, regardless of my knowledge, I couldn’t help but wish that this time would be different, that i wouldn’t get burned, but I would. Every ounce of me was wishing that this time he would push forward through his wall instead of building it higher, put away the insecurities and fear and just be happy together.

The text a few minutes after we parted, “It was nice to see you today.” I think we both needed an escape from our realities.

The rose in the thorn bush is hard for me to find in this story. This encounter was quite a few months ago, and the best thing that has happened in this situation is that I no longer allow this friend of mine to burn me. We are now what we always were meant to be, absolute best friends and nothing more. I will love this man forever, but only for the fun times that we have shared together and the experiences he has given me.  Now that we both have that understanding about our relationship, our friendship has become much stronger. There are still thorns here, like how we hardly ever see each other anymore because we tried to date and things went down hill from there. But we’ve been the best of friends for ten years and he is always there for me when I need him and I know that we will remain that way. There will be many more stories that include him in it, as he has been with me through so many fun adventures. So I guess the moral of the story is that even if you have a falling out with someone, or several, you should never give up on someone who means so much to you.