Dating Commandments and Lesser-Known Drinking Holidays

I was thinking today about the different balances men have to strike. If women are stuck between Madonna and Whore, then men are always trapped somewhere from Warrior to Minstrel.

When I wear my Harley-Davidson boots and don’t slouch, I can reach about 5’11” and change. Add in 160 pounds, glasses, and cheeks that make girls want to pinch them and I’m far from an imposing figure. So it’s impossible, or at very least, improbable for me to act like a warrior. I’m roughly as physically imposing and intimidating as Calista Flockhart.

I’ve made peace with that. And I know that plenty of women out there are looking for a creative, intelligent, compassionate guy…or at least THINK they are.

I’ve decided that no one really knows what the hell they want. That’s why I don’t make lists of what I’m looking for in a girl.

I was speaking to someone today who’s led a very goal oriented life: looking for the right school, the right program, the right job, the right partner, the right house and so on. But now, having gotten all that, they’re not happy—and they’re running out of accomplishments to aim for. And after speaking for a while with them, you just get the sense that something’s going to give. Sort of like O.J.’s marriage.

Years of dating and experience with the opposite sex have led me to develop guidelines about what doesn’t work. Things like:

• Girls who get drunk and sucker punch my friend’s fiancé.
• Girls who decide to spend $3,000 a month on blow, Ritalin, and X.
• Girls who passive aggressively maintain lists of my faults to spit back during arguments.
• Girls who decide blow dumb, skinny rednecks and think I won’t find out

You know, just some basic guidelines of what I’ve found hasn’t worked in the past. It’s sort of like the ten dating commandments. Thou shalt not date girls who gargle with hillbilly semen behindest thine back! Now that’s catchy.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s much better to be open to whatever comes by. Or at least, not be so intent on what you think you’re looking for that you miss something great right in front of your nose.

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us again. Let me ask a serious question: Are we, as a culture, really that desperate for another drinking holiday? I mean, between this, Cinco de Mayo, Fat Tuesday, Marti Gras, and all the rest of these ridiculous little binge-fests that we create, are we really fooling anyone? Have we reached the point in our society where we can’t drink just because we want to? No one really knows what the fuck St. Patrick’s Day is celebrating anyway, aside from some half-assed salute to Irish Homosexual parades. That’s why I like to pick random days to enter bars and bellow, “Give me five shots! It’s a holiday, bitches!”

To which someone will invariably go, “Really? What’s the occasion?”

My answers depend on my mood:

• Guy Faulk’s Day
• St. Swithin’s Day
• National “Venereal Disease-Free” Day (beware of people who don’t drink on this holiday)
• Canadian Independence Day
• Australian Thanksgiving
• That crazy Mexican Dead-Person’s Christmas

It’s amazing how many people will suddenly decide that it would be the gravest of insults not to honor the struggle of our slow speaking, mild-mannered Mountie neighbors to the north by getting absolutely falling over drunk.