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My boy friend is giving me a Californian Surfer for my birthday.
“Finally!” I squealed. “A present I actually want!”
For years, I have received unusable gifts to acknowledge the day I was born.
“Gee,” I have ummed and ahhed. “Thank you for the desk lamp. It is super. But I don’t even have a desk.”
“Well, I was walking through IKEA and I thought of you.”
“Really? I don’t even think of me in IKEA.”
If the truth be told, I have never actually stepped foot into an IKEA store. The only domestic product I have ever purchased is four martini glasses. I physically repel furniture that needs to be constructed independently with a plastic hammer and, instead, celebrate beanbags.
Eventually, I am going to start registering for presents at the Californian Population Bureau.

My Gmail inbox is a virtual graveyard of received things I don’t want. In between the notifications for the penis enlargement I never asked for and NASA subscription I don’t remember signing up for, I have kindly worded letters and memos from a menagerie of boys who I don’t want to read about, let alone sleep with.
“Why don’t the boys I want ever email me?” I asked boy friend.
“Maybe because you go after boys who are too young to be dextrous enough to type?”
He had a point, but it didn’t stop me from spending nine hours pondering whether I have scent that can only be picked up on by those I would not touch if we were the last two people on earth and the survival of the human race rested on our shoulders.
Fuck Off. By Calvin Klein.
“You would let humans die out before you had sex with [Really Long Winded Email Writer]?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Have you ever seen Planet Of The Apes? Part of me wants that to be real.”

Most people have been in the situation:
Boy and girl meet. One likes The Other. The Other wants The Other Other One. One tries to woo The Other. The Other fakes their own death, moves to Rio and starts selling soup at a market stall while routinely checking emails in the hope that The Other Other one is interested. They aren’t.

If I could bottle a way to make the people I like like me, I would.
Fuck Me. By Calvin Klein.
It seems so futile to me to spend half of ones time telling someone [repeatedly] that you are not interested, only to spend the other half trying to get someone else interested. It is like being Superman one minute and a dung beetle the next.
I have always argued that the beginnings of relationships should not be difficult. If someone likes you, you will know about it because they will be in your bed and refuse to leave. If you like them, you won’t want them to go anywhere. The act of chasing after someone is, however, by definition futile, as no person who likes you or is worth it will ever make you run through a maze like a shopper at an IKEA sale.
I once witnessed a girl friend tell a boy that she wouldn’t chase him because she didn’t need to.
“Why is that?” He wondered.
“Because I am not fat or ugly.”
Days later, she was curious as to why she hadn’t received so much as an email from him. I to was perplexed as to why I had remained in her presence, so appalled was I at her behaviour and blatant disregard for manners. She had bathed in my cologne theory and proved that it stunk.

Realizing that You may be more into someone than they are to you is the emotional equivalent of one person orgasming and the other getting to sleep hours later by knocking themselves over the head with a plastic hammer. Neither are fun situations, but we seem to accept the latter scenario much easier.
“How can he not like me? I am brilliant!” Anyone with an ounce of self-confidence will say quietly to themselves, not wanting to acknowledge the menagerie of reasons that [probably] have nothing to do with them personally.
Really Long Winded Email Writer is, to be honest, a fabulous human being. But that isn’t enough to make me interested. He isn’t My fabulous human being. And that is OK. It just needs to register.

When two people who simply like each other get together, with no complications, I imagine it is a similar situation to The Big Bang. Except with way more sex.
“Who has the time to chase after someone who is quite obviously not interested in them in the first place?” I asked my girl friend during a commercial break of the third E! True Hollywood Story we had watched that day. “I would rather save my energy for the person who feels the same.”
But, even with all the rationality in the world, the reality that They Are Just Not That Into You* can still drench you momentary depression.
Its Fucked. By Calvin Klein.

*A borrowed concept.