I’ll try my hardest with the greatest of intentions and clean-slate affirmations but it won’t matter. Subtle hints under candy-coated mannerisms or absent life experiences or perfectly unscathed skin will stop me from putting my trusting eggs in your promising basket. Perhaps it’s judgmental. Surely it’s conjecture. Either way, it’s intelligent.
1. You don’t have at least one tattoo. Anyone who decides to forgo beauty because of too much pain will never understand my self-destructive tendencies or masochistic impulses. You also, probably, won’t appreciate my numerous skim emblems.
2. You’re happy all the time. If you truly believe the glass is always half full you’re nothing more than a walking pair of rose-colored glasses, incapable of living in reality or embracing the darkness of life or sinking in the sweet loneliness of pain.
3. You’re a morning person. Anyone who wakes up full of delighted promise, when the complexities of that day are a complete mystery, is clinically insane. You can prepare for the night with drinks and makeup and run-ins and music, but the morning? Without three cups of coffee how can you possibly prepare for a sunrise? Or me?
4. You don’t drink whiskey. If your pinky is out when holding a martini or your tongue craves the sweet simplicity of some fruit-labeled cocktail, I’m clearly too much for you. While you prefer a sweet kick I demand a harsh burn and those two never mix.
5. You don’t like sports. If the draft doesn’t get you hard and the postseason doesn’t turn you on and a touchdown doesn’t feel like an orgasm, you’ll never handle me in the bedroom. If you can’t play a shit talking game of tit for tat, believing you capable of handling serious conversations is impossible.
6. You refuse to read a book. How can you be reliable without knowing Faust or meeting Holden or understanding Atticus? If you haven’t cried a Million Little Pieces or valiantly fought windmills or burned 451 degrees Fahrenheit, you cannot possibly be entrusted with my heart.
7. If you don’t completely disregard this list. If you can’t stand toe-to-toe and push when I pull and call me out on my ridiculous judgements and disprove my natural conjectures…
How can I trust you at all? 
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Thought Catalog » Love & Sex
Like many American 20-something girls, I use Pinterest. Unlike many American 20-something girls, I do not have a wedding board. Sure, I may have pinned a wedding dress to the obligatory style pinboard that comes automatically with every Pinterest account, but that’s about the extent of my interest. Since a wedding is something I would probably only wish to have once (at least at this point in my life), and since I’ve never really thought of it as the defining event of my life, I really could care less about looking at wedding ideas. There are so many other things to think about in life, like Benedict Cumberbatch, whether peplums are flattering or not, and Wes Anderson’s next film.
People with wedding boards annoy me. I understand seeing a pretty dress and wanting to remember it, but seventy nine pretty dresses? Seventy nine dresses which are all variations upon the mermaid dress. When is the point where a girl says uncle? How will pinning seventy nine dresses help you narrow it down? Will you really be able to judge fairly between dress number three and dress number forty one? These are all questions that I asked myself as I was slogging through my Pinterest feed after one girl had gone on a wedding dress pinning binge.
After a few days of this madness, I realized that I didn’t need to subject myself to this and unfollowed her wedding board. That was all it took. My Pinterest feed regained normalcy and once again provided me with a steady stream of pretty desserts, cute kittens, and Modcloth dresses. I became drunk with power and vowed to never let my feed be hijacked by a bridezilla again. I systematically unfollowed every other wedding board I had inadvertently subscribed to when I had so innocently and unknowingly clicked the “follow all” button. Pinterest very wisely makes it difficult for a girl to see who still follows their boards, and only if they go through all their followers will they see that you aren’t a devoted fan of their fetish for cheap, dead ringers of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. I was in a state of supreme bliss.
And then it happened. One day I found myself barraged with wedding horrors pinned by a girl who had recently become engaged. She was making up for lost time by going on a pinning spree that rivaled that of a shopaholic with a new credit card. Well, fine. I would unfollow her too. No sooner had I done this when I realized I had just made the worst mistake of my Pinterest career. Her wedding board was like What Not to Wear: Wedding Edition. The magenta and gold eye shadows, garish bouquets, and satin prom dresses straight from the 1980s were simply begging for an intervention by Stacy and Clinton.
My sense of the absurd began to silently reproach me. I found myself regretting my hasty decision to unfollow her Pinterest board. But my hands were tied. If I refollowed it she would be notified and then she would know that I had unfollowed her. And so I learned my lesson, even as I counted down the days until the wedding of the century. Be careful who you unfollow, because sometimes the bad can be a blessing in disguise, and since we still have a few days until Arrested Development comes back, we need all the entertainment we can get.
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Colorado can be an interesting place to live. At times, it seems to operate on a system of binary cultures. To some, we are the land of disillusioned gray haired hippies, holdovers from the sixties that still sell natural gemstones on Pearl Street. Others focus on the deep seated right wing ideology of Colorado Springs, and the pervasive gun culture that remains entrenched in our everyday discussions. As macabre is may seem, and despite the recent efforts of our state government, many see us as the massacre state. We are the wild and crazy middle child of America, defined through bloodshot eyes and blood stained past.
This is a label I’ve struggled to understand through the years, having lived comfortably in an enclave of fixed gear bicycles and endless tattoo sleeves. It is a space that is very much removed from the American gun culture. That isn’t to say that I’m immune to the political discourse surrounding the issue. In four years of living in Denver, I have witnessed firsthand two public shootings.
While these experiences have no doubt come to shape my views of gun control reform, I’m cautious in employing them in an attempt to define gun culture as a whole. As Colorado continues to position itself as ground zero in the ongoing debate, I remain ignorant of a culture that, by and large, remains closed to the rest of society. It is a brotherhood of sorts, a fraternity of firearms, which has successfully maintained a political and social presence for several decades. If one were to begin to try and understand the underlying implications of gun control in America, the easiest and most direct route might well be the Tanner Gun show. With over 700 tables of high powered assault rifles, handguns, magazines, butterfly knives, and the occasional baked good, it is the perfect place to take in America’s obsession with firearms.
However, the gun show emerged from our local consciousness onto the national stage in 1999. It was at this time that two 18 years old, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, purchased several firearms which would go on to be used at the Columbine High School massacre. In the process, these two shifted a national focus to the nature in which these gun shows operate. More importantly, it moved gun shows, and specifically the Tanner Gun show, into a sphere of rhetorical debate. Overnight, the trade show became a gun control battleground. Having nothing better to do on a recent warm Sunday afternoon, I drove down to the Denver Merchandise Mart to take it in for myself. I wanted, if nothing else, to see this phenomenon firsthand in an attempt to understand it from perspective removed from judgment. I did this with the belief that one day, we will all have to try to understand one another just a little bit better than we are now.
I dressed conservatively in an attempt to fit in. It was ironic, as I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I perhaps believed that my boot-cut Levis would shield me from unwanted political debate. The idea was quickly dashed when I first encountered the fliers warning against the illegal sale of firearms from the parking lot. I may have gone home right then, if I hadn’t been encouraged to come inside by the security staff patrolling the area outside of the hotel lobby.
In fact, most people I encountered were terribly nice, the kind of warm and honest geniality that one almost doesn’t trust entirely. Having explained my position to the ticket takers at the door, I was let inside the convention center for half price, with the agreement that I wouldn’t take any pictures of what I saw inside.
There were no weapons laid out on the first table I saw. Instead, I found highly polished bits of turquoise and small bits of silver jewelry. From the earliest onset, one can see how these individuals view themselves within the framework of American history. This is Colorado, after all, and we are quick to embrace the ghosts of the old West.
Beyond these specters of the American cowboy, I saw an vast sea of elongated card tables, each covered with handguns, ammunition, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles. Many were draped with banners depicting various forms of Libertarian rhetoric. Old men with receding hairlines casually strolled by wearing t-shits quoting Wayne LaPierre, and smiling ladies sold old glossy photos of John Wayne in Western wear. Off in the corner, a group which claimed not to be a militia recruited teenagers of both genders for pseudo-military exercises, citing the ongoing “culture war” and the necessity for preparedness. They would smile as they came over to show me how to properly hold and AR-15 assault rifle, clearly picking up that I had no idea what I was doing.
The sobering moment, if there was one, came at a table adorned with large plastic bags of spent ammunition. Each was labeled in a series of unfamiliar acronyms. After politely inquiring as to what they were, I was informed that each was conflict specific, and that some people liked to collect shells from various wars around the globe. I picked up a small bag, labeled “German, WWII,” and I felt a tremendous sadness in the weight of it all, speculating on where the other half of these bullets might have ended up.
I recognize that this does not reflect gun culture in America as a whole, but couldn’t help but feel the irony in the suggested violence of these small objects.
Despite coming close to purchasing a vintage 1851 Colt revolver, I ultimately decided on a picture of Val Kilmer, dressed as Doc Holliday, and signed in silver ink: “I’ll be Your Huckleberry, Val Kilmer, DOC.” It was, without question, the most unintimidating piece in the entire room. It was also the most satisfying purchase I had made in the last three months. Everyone loves that movie, and Kilmer is badass.
It is in gestures such as these that individuals like myself, whom may feign ignorance in the face of a culture they do not understand, in turn celebrate various aspects of America’s troubled and violent past. The ghosts of the cowboys continue to haunt the state of Colorado in ways that words cannot adequately describe. While we struggle to navigate the complexities of the modern world, we still continue to romanticize the complicated violent legacies of our past. While I may not understand this perspective completely, I think that’s alright.
Given that we operate in a system of multiple subcultures, we are allowed to have different perspectives or definitions of what we consider freedom. In these varying perspectives, one opens the door to the possibility of multiple “truths” that may exist simultaneously, varying from one individual to another, and defined by our surrounding environment. While we may not understand the significance of gun culture in modern America, it has become an aspect impossible to ignore, let alone reconcile. Ultimately, regardless of how we interact with one another, the world remains how we choose to see it as individuals.
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There are no more men on the planet.
No males in my generation want to be men. Why do I say this? I met an extractor. His quote?
“Have you seen the movie Taken? That’s what I do.”
That is a man. He goes to foreign countries to retrieve people who have been kidnapped. Not only does he go, but he comes back. Comes back! That’s a man. When he’s not doing that, he’s a bodyguard for Saudi princes and people like Ralph Lauren. And before all of this? He was a New York City drug cop in the eighties. Boom. Full man. He’s been a man for decades!
I could have talked to that guy for hours. Talk to men of this generation?
“Oh, I’m a web developer.”
“I work in advertising.”
“I re-tweet things for companies.”
That last one is a job? Unbelievable. Men of older generations wanted to make an honest living. Men now want to make money by making statements in 140 characters – by making videos or taping a friend getting hit in the nuts with a voiceover of what the pole says.
“Whoops, that guy’s nuts are coming down on my head. One of us is gonna feel this! Won’t be me, I’m made of metal!”
No men want to get dirty anymore. Everyone wants to look perfect and smell good.
“Change that tire? Didn’t Steve Jobs create something to do that before he died? He didn’t? Well, then that’s what I’ll focus on. Re-animating Steve Jobs so he can make that thing. Does my iPhone re-animate?”
Past men created electricity, light bulbs, and the telephone. Men of this generation?
“Hey! I made an app that allows me to tell other people where I am! Pretty sweet, huh? You check in, you win things. I’m the mayor of your house! I just raised the tax! Get out of your house!”
I’m guilty of not being a man. Am I a man? No. I write, say funny things, and take on no real responsibility so I can continue to do so. Is that going to help me if I’m lost in the woods? Is that going to scare off a bear?
“Oh, man. A bear! Hey, hey, you like funny situations?”
“ROAR!”
“Wooo, tough crowd.”
Being a man doesn’t just mean doing “manly” things. Chopping wood, building Chevy trucks with your bare hands, all while drunk on whiskey and hollering at women. Being a man means taking on some sort of responsibility. Being accountable for something. No men of my generation want that anymore. No one wants kids. No one wants a job that pays anything less than what a basketball player makes. No one wants to have any commitments that could stop him from watching Breaking Bad.
“Mom’s funeral? God, did she have to die today? She knew I was doing a season three marathon!”
Mark Zuckerberg, for example. Arguably, the leader of my generation. Multi-billionaire, Facebook creator. Man? Absolutely not. Let’s look at what he really created. Mark Zuckerberg created a site that basically annoys everyone and wastes our time. Would a man create a site that lets you stare at your ex and look at picture memes? No. Had a man been around when this was being made, it would be different.
“There! Done. Just added the “Poke” button.”
“Uh huh. Where is the “Work” button?”
“There is no work button! Facebook is meant to take a break.”
“You know what a good break is… work! Add a work button, then get to work!”
Men who take on responsibility are really needed in this world. Date a girl who had a good relationship with her dad who was responsible. For the most part, she is a very well adjusted person. Date a girl whose dad didn’t take responsibility? Big difference. Most times? Emotional train wreck.
“Who just called you?! WHO JUST CALLED YOU?!”
“It was my cousin.”
“That slut cousin Susan?”
“She’s family!”
“She wants to sleep with you! I know she does! Oh, god. Why do you like to do this to me?”
“What the hell is going on? Why are you crying?”
“Fuck you! Just fuck you! I love you – that’s why! Please don’t leave… get the fuck out of here!”
If the pioneers had known that they were finding new land and building on it so that one day men could see how many head shots they could rack up online, they would have stopped.
“What? I’m gonna cut down these trees while I have scurvy so that one day a thirty two year old man can talk to a thirteen year old through a headset and be called a loser? I don’t think so. I’m going to lay down and die right here.”
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Last night, you leaned back against the head board, closed your eyes, sighed, and guided my mouth down the length of you, moaning softly when you felt the moisture of my lips and my tongue surrounding your cock, moving up and down, giving you what you wanted until finally, you whispered something I couldn’t quite hear, and you finished. You rolled onto your side and I held you, running my hand along your arm, your chest, resting it on your stomach, feeling your body relax against me as you drifted off to sleep.
This morning, I felt you reach down to touch my hair before you left for work. You kissed my cheek and I barely opened my eyes but I murmured that I loved you before the door shut gently behind you.
I had an English muffin for breakfast. I watched television for four hours before finally washing my hair with your seven dollar shampoo and getting dressed. I folded some clothes on the floor, I typed you a brief letter, and then I got in my car.
Last night, we slept side by side with our hands reaching for each other, and today, I am leaving.
What you will understand from the note I left you is that I love you. I will always love you, but you never loved me. You don’t know how. I am leaving you because being with you has been like being an alcoholic. Sometimes, I am drunk on you, and it is wonderful to be held in your gaze and to feel the warmth of your affection flowing through my veins like booze, causing me to sway and forget how to speak. Most of the time, it seems, lately, I am hung over from the sudden absence of your touch. I am in withdrawal. I ache for more, even though I know the cycle is bound to repeat itself.
There will always be an empty space in my heart that is shaped like you. There will always be a groove worn into my body where you fit perfectly. You will always be there in the back of my mind, but I am leaving because I have given you everything a person could possibly give and now there is nothing left.
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Thought Catalog » Love & Sex
1. No, cat calling is not flattering.
I feel like every man who has ever tried to convince me to take some rando shouting “Hey girl, nice ass” at me as a compliment sees it this way: You’re sitting outside some Italian café in a Betty Draper dress drinking a prosecco when all of a sudden your dainty neck scarf flies off in the light breeze. Joseph Gordon Levitt, wearing a linen suit with a pocket square and no socks with his penny loafers, steps off his Vespa and hands it to you while saying something witty about how it’s almost as beautiful as you are. You then both ride off into the sunset, laughing as Dean Martin plays in the background and the director yells cut on the espresso commercial that is your life.
In reality, it’s you getting yelled at by a bunch of sweaty men standing outside a bar at eight in the morning, telling you about how fuckable you look in your sweatpants when you’re just trying to get a bottle of milk in peace like a goddamn human being. And it is the opposite of a compliment.
2. Sexism definitely exists in the workplace.
Perhaps it doesn’t always come in the form of some obese man in a pinstriped suit who smells of cigars slapping you on the hip with a folder and telling you to “get that pretty ass to work,” but it’s definitely there. And the fact that it’s not some outtake from the early seasons of Mad Men that they cut for being too overtly misogynist makes it all the more frustrating. When brainstorming after-hours drinks are held and you are not invited, when people feel that you are not going to be competent enough to negotiate with the client, when you are passed over for a promotion because the boss just feels like he could hang out with the guy two cubicles down despite his general distate for working — it happens. And you just have to learn to work against it on a daily basis.
3. We are always under pressure to be pretty.
Every woman has experienced the vast and shocking difference she receives from the world around her when she puts effort into looking good versus when she just goes out au natural and/or in full-on scuzz mode. And while it’s true that dressing snazzily will generally elicit a better and more respectful reaction for all people who do it, there is a distinct pressure and reward system in place for women who look pretty for society at large. Depending on the outfit your wearing and the deftness of your makeup application, your whole world can become a whirlwind of free drinks and compliments. If you commit the mortal sin of walking out the door while looking like an imperfect human, you can expect a cavalcade of men who act as though their gross advances should be flattering, being completely ignored by everyone else, and having your thoughts roundly dismissed. Your worth is directly related to how you look, and it’s impossible not to feel when it’s happening.
4. Constantly smiling is not a natural state.
I have developed a theory that all of the randos who insist on directing you to smile while you’re walking through the street, minding your own business, do so because saying “Show us a little nipple, baby, you look so boring right now” is politically incorrect. I am currently working up the courage to respond to men who do so by telling them to get an erection and stand with their penises pointing north so he serves some kind of purpose and caters to my viewing pleasure.
5. We will always be on a double standard for sexuality.
We have all met the supposedly “open-minded, feminist” man — you know, the kind who insists on going down on you terribly until your entire vagina is completely numb and you just want to watch The Daily Show — who proclaims how egalitarian he is right up until the moment where he gets vaguely jealous over your sexuality. Whether you slept with one too many men, or have a flirtatious personality when going out, or dated some guy that he feels threatened by, there is no escape from the deeply harmful social norms placed on us about how women are supposed to handle their bodies and their desires. Let’s not even talk about the bros who blow through an entire sorority house in two weeks and yet are ready to get that horrible lock and key metaphor tattooed on their overdeveloped bicep. They should just never be discussed in polite society.
6. If we don’t orgasm, it’s not to spite you.
There are few feelings more frustrating than following up a sexual encounter that, sadly, didn’t end with an orgasm (which is not to say that sex can’t be fun without reaching the summit — it completely can), only to have to painstakingly explain to some guy how it’s not his fault that you didn’t operatically climax from 2.5 minutes of indiscriminate thrusting. In a terrible turn of events somewhere in the darkest parts of the cosmos, the person who didn’t reach orgasm is the person tenderly consoling the one who did it within 45 seconds, trying to come up with myriad reasons — having nothing to do with his performance, of course — why it just didn’t happen this time. And God forbid you fake it, as that is what horrifying succubi do to punish man for the sins of their forefathers, and those harpies should be burned at the stake.
7. We don’t actually want special treatment.
“You greedy bitches just want us to pay for dates so you can spend your money on clothes or whatever!”
No, you anthropomorphic anal polyp, we just want to get to a place in society as a group where outdated social norms such as these aren’t even a question anymore, and we’d be happy to start with getting paid the same amount for the same job in all fields. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to go read another 45 overwrought articles about how we’re supposed to have it all — complete with stock image of confused-looking woman juggling a baby, a martini, and a briefcase — because apparently gaining equality in the professional sphere doesn’t mean that men should also consider taking a more pronounced role at home. Of course not, they have important shit to do, and rich people’s hands to firmly shake.
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