Oh, was this your package?

A couple of weeks back I ordered some girly dishes (see pic for their beauty). Though, as the weeks passed, I wondered to myself, where art thou dishes? And so of course after going through the process of tracking my package, I discover it had been delivered to me three days ago...that is, delivered to my old residence.  Bollocks.

After knocking my head for my own stupidity, I immediately contact my landlord (who was out of town), and write to the company (who were also closed, thanks to the holiday weekend). And after three days of waiting, wondering, obsessing (because I truly have nothing better to do) over the poor china, I get an email from my landlord who tells me that they have in fact been delivered and the new tenant has them at his house, and gives me his email address to contact him. 

So I do.

This is the response I get, "Curiosity got the best of me and I opened that package and tossed the box.  Not to worry though, the plates were delivered in one piece! " 

Part of me is ecstatic that he has my dishes. The other part of me is slowly stewing with a volcanic rage. 

Not only did this chump open my package, he threw away the box with the absolute intention of keeping my items. I mean, for one, does he just happen to have those exact same plates (because seriously we might be star crossed lovers if that is the case)?

Or is he so poor that these two china plates were going to start his collection of dinnerware, and save him from the paper plate hell he had been living in? 

And did he use them already? Especially since it was a holiday weekend. Did he pile them up with finger food, grubby frat boy finger food, made up of cheetos and salsa? 

I also wonder if it had been something of a more manly interest, like an Xbox, would he have kept it, and lied about receiving the package at all? Then again, he kept my dishes, and for whatever asinine reason admitted to it. 

Have we as a society become so clueless as to the morality of how things work? For one, he just had to contact my landlord for a way to contact me (I have only been out of that apartment for three months), and for two, he just simply had to write, "return to sender, person no longer lives here."  What the blazes have we come to when even dishes are not safe!!! 

Even better, what sort of idiot am I dealing with? For all you idiots out there, who wish to make a crime at stealing other people’s stuff, let me clue you into something:

a. Don’t steal a UPS package that is easily tracked, 

b. Don’t admit you have the package to two separate parties, 

c. Don’t tell the party whose package it belongs to that you opened the package and even imply that you had every intention of keeping the materials, and most importantly

d. Don’t have your full name (with your work address) on the email that you responded with.

So Yes Mr. Ryan ******* I know who you are, and if you don’t return my dishes in a timely manner, you should know that I grew up in the mountains where people still play the banjo and like to own guns, cops are the least of your worries, as us mountainfolk don’t take too kindly to strangers who invade our property. And boy, you sure do have a purdy mouth.

Hasians, mmmmm.

I almost fulfilled my fantasy in dating a hot Asian boy. It's true, if you don't already know this about me, I somewhat have Asian fever. Which was brought on by watching too many anime and samurai movies as a young kid. Some people had romance novels, I had Jet Li. Some people loved King Arthur, I wanted a Ninja. 

Of course, the main problem with having Asian fever, when you are 5'10, is that many of them are about half your size, and if they are not half your size, then they are weirdly proportioned (ever seen Yao Ming, famous Chinese basketball player, sure he is a good player, but he also moves around like a marionette doll, his body clearly uncoordinated). So throughout my grown up life, I secretly held onto my longing desire to date a hot Asian. Or Hasian, as urban dictionary has so fondly nicknamed them.  

My first boyfriend was half Filipino, but unfortunately I don’t really count him as Asian, because as much as he tried to play up that halfy Asian card, he looked Spanish. 

During art school I had a huge crush on a Japanese boy, but again he was half my size, and his girlfriend was half his size. Obviously a sizeist, and out of my league. Years later, when I moved to Japan, I thought surely in a land of a billion hasians I would find one to fall madly in love with (preeminently because the Japanese men, in my mind, are some of the hottest hasians out there, I mean just look at their outfits!!! I heart the 80s!!!). Nope. I did not find a single one. Dated one, briefly, but there were other things at play aside from my height (mostly Japanese mothers). Granted, I did get a lot of Japanese men complimenting my looks, "American woman, big boobs, yeah!" 

So it was rather rare for me to stumble across a Hasian on an online dating site. 

If you have ever used an online dating site, it's not that it is devoid of Asians (in fact I think about 40% of online dating sites are made up of Asians) but it IS devoid of hot Asians. And boy oh boy was this one a gold mine. Hot, and I mean HAWT! With samurai long hair, tall (did I say 6'0 and not awkward), slim hips, raspy Bob Dylan voice, talented (singer, songwriter, incredible guitar player), well read, well spoken, and a smile that cocked to the side just the right way. 

Sweet, beejesus holy mother of all that is good, GOLD MINE!!!  Whatever was I going to do with myself!!! I was ---><--- close to licking my screen. 

At this point, I almost wish I had a fairy godmother, who would come down and say to me, "Jessica, now why would such a hot piece of Asian ass be on a dating site?"

And I would have to respond to her, "well, I am a hot piece of ass, and I am on here..."

And then she would raise one of her sparkly eyebrows, and remind me that I am cursed in the boy department, and point at my blog as proof.  

Of course I would stomp my foot at this admission, and whine about maybe he is a dime a dozen, a diamond in the rough, cursed like me, in which our curses combined would cancel it all out. 

And of course she would laugh at my stupidity. Dammit Fairy godmother, you ruin everything. 

Of course, I don’t have a fairy godmother, and none of that happened. Thus, I emailed the hot Asian.  Bring on that psychosis. 

By email three, the strange tidbits began to surface. Things that made one go: maybe he is not a paradox in the universe. 

For one. He only dated older women. Did I forget to mention he was four years younger than me? Well, I was young to him by his standards, as his normal affairs were at least ten years older than him. And by normal, I mean all of them. 

For two. His parents paid for everything. And I mean everything (I should also point out that he is two years away from being thirty). At the time he was still going to school, so I couldn’t hold that against him, but they also paid for his room and board, his food...etc...etc. Part of me wondered if his dad would be paying for dinner, the movie, the condoms. That conversation did play in my head:

"Wait, do you have a condom?" 

"Oh shit no I don’t, let me call my dad to transfer some money over so I can go pick them up." 

"From Asia? Wouldn't that take at least three days?"

"Hmm...ok, well hold this ~gesture at our naked bodies~ thought...."

Ok maybe that’s a little absurd, but these are things I think about when I am being told that mumsie and dadsie pay for everything. Its not that, that should necessarily be a bad thing, some parents are just more generously endowed with money to splurge on their children, and yes I have been chastised by my friends for thinking this silly, but in the end, what sort of struggle has he had to achieve anything, if everything has been given to him? And, on top of that,  if he liked to date older women, it did make me wonder if it was just in his general nature to be taken care of.  I should also allude to the fact that he was the baby in his family, and the only male. In an Asian culture, pampering doesn’t even come close to these types. Adoring worship would be more of an accurate assessment. 

Three. He viewed me through a series of standardized tests. Am I an INFJ, ENPJ...ABCD, BBDD???!!!!....I already have a problem with standardized testing, but to relate to my personality type through such a thing, well fine, then let me break out my tarot deck and get a reading on you while we are at it. (Oh, and in case you are wondering I am an INFJ, now you know everything about me.) 

Four. He began to tell me how he wanted to hold me, and how he saw a future with me. I don’t know about other ladies, but hearing this from a guy with whom I have had a handful of email interactions with (that mainly involved around reading books), and a Skype conversation (that revolved around him obsessing over his guitar) that admission was CREEPY. I imagined him lathering me up with lotion so he could use my skin as a new case for his guitar. Going too far? Well I don’t like when guys are overtly romantic for no known reason, especially when they have yet to meet me in person. Serial killers are that way; Ted Bundy used this to his advantage. Cute guys who use early declarations of endearment equal one thing to me, false. 

So basically, I realized I had to put down my hot Asian. Mercy kill. I waited a day, because part of my irrational mind was stuck in my imagination and my imagination was stuck on how great he would look on my arm. My very own hot Asian party favor, he would go great at art openings. The rational side of my mind was like...this guy is going to be problem, if this is not resolved quickly. 

So I ended it. With a thank you, it’s been great, but I don’t think there is a match. I mean, after my birthday experience, I learned some great phrases, though instead of sugar coating it with heartfelt lies, I basically told him the truth. You are hot, but too many red flags. Thank you and goodbye. 

Two hours later, I get a 24 minute recorded conversation of how he feels. This is no simple voicemail message, this was a computer recording that he attached to an email (which was also a long missive explaining his emotions). So I basically got a double whammy of explanatory emotional diarrhea. The recording not only had him crying, it had him telling me how he could get any hot girl he wanted, that he was going to be successful, and how dare I, obviously I have issues to not choose him, and that he opened up to me and that had to count for something, and in the end its all about manifestation, and if I manifest that its not going to work, then it is not, but that he is manifesting that it will.

---Oh lord. 

Is it a bad thing to say that I laughed? Ok, part of me felt slightly bad, I did, at the beginning, but when he started talking about how he could get any girl, and yet here he was recording a comeback to my farewell email, all I could think of was, THANK YOU GOD I didn’t sleep with you.

Maybe all in all, my fairy godmother did come to visit me after all. She just hid in the periphery. I owe you one Fairy Godmother. But man, a samurai boyfriend would have been so cool. 

You like my slide???!!!

The new phenomena amongst present day men is not to be the knight in shining armor, but to be the jokester. The josher. The buffoon. The comedian. Thanks to video games, YouTube videos of crotch shots, and comedy based on crassness, men have reverted back to little boys.

My run in with a funny man was completely unexpected. After a slew of psychotic dates, being approached by someone whose sole purpose in life was to make people laugh, was rather refreshing, or should I say endearing. And not only that, he was successful at it. A well-known comedian, one could even Google his name, find his wiki, see him on local comedy channels, become his YouTube fan, etc, etc. He was, in many critics’ eyes, the new Buster Keaton. Slap that pan to your face, bam bam bam. Hahahaha.

Our first dating dances were filled with an innocent banter of wits, flips in the air, and stories of our disastrous prior dates. His involved going out with a girl only to end up sleeping with twenty Asians on the floor of a downtown massage parlor.

At one point, he teasingly jokes, "...well wait until you come over to my room, you can enjoy my slide."

Now, I must admit, my mind lays in the gutter about 80% of the time. I was the girl in high school who asked her friends, "...so if the world blew up and this was the only room left, which guy would you screw?" and related to people as seeing them in "sexual positions" (e.g. gym teacher totally likes doggy, that cook likes it with latex, and my coworker does it with a hole in the sheet.)

So, when this fool mentioned his "slide," my mind obviously was up to no good. Of course, instead of being coy about it, with an "I want to ride your slide, vroom" sort of comeback, I just laugh nervously, because as dirty as my mind can be, I can sometimes be thrown off by other people's vulgarity. Weird, I know. I think it's because I am really a puritan who just happens to own crotchless panties. No, I kid, those things are worse than thongs.

He, of course, notices my conflicted look between: do I say something funny, flirt, or just go ew. I am literally on overload mental freeze.

In turn, he nervously laughs, "That sometimes throws girls off, but it's true you can see it in my videos, it's attached to my bunk bed, at one point I put a rope swing in my room too. I hope you aren't turned off by that, maybe I should have waited to tell you."

Now at this point, my mind has suddenly compounded in on itself, here I am thinking he is talking about the slide in his pants, and no, in fact, he is talking about a physical slide in his room. And, bunk beds...and a rope swing?

He continues, "I mean do you have a slippy slide in your house?" Obviously, he is grasping for straws at this point, or maybe, he is hoping I am his holy grail. If I say yes, I am sure he will marry me on the spot.

Instead, I laugh, out loud, and hard, with booger bubbles almost surfacing, "No I don’t have a slippy slide in my house!"

I try to understand what it would be like to sleep with this person in their playroom. I mean, after sex, would I take the top bunk and he take the bottom? How many bare asses touched that slide? And would we act out Tarzan and Jane on the rope? (Well, that last one has been a fantasy of mine.)

At my laughter, his demeanor shifts. "Well you obviously are just an adult acting older than they are." Uh oh, tantrums are a surfacing. But yes, he is right, while deciding between day-glo hot pink Barbie bed, and grown up metal-framed bed, I went with the grown up choice. What can I say, my big girl pants were on that day.

He continues to pout at me, "I have no stress, no worries, and everyday is a weekend for me, so I must be doing something right." I mean, he is right, if his day is still filled with the sounds of unicorns laughing, god bless him.

Needless to say, the laughter at the slippy slide, and my adult fascist ways, turned him off, and we parted ways. Me, back to my fancy pants grown up casa, and him, back to his slide.

I will admit part of me did want to ride it. The slide, you perv, the slide.