The Bachelors

Well, call off the search kids. After a month and a half of downturn, my stock is up and Lola's got some takers. Some smart, handsome, caring investment banker/underwear model? Oh, so much better. It's less like trading Google on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in a three-piece suit and more like trading used shivs behind a reform school in cornrows. And so, let's meet our putative suitors.

Bachelor Number 1: Tom's friend Frank, who paid John's girlfriend Bobblehead's Bulgarian Whore-friend to sleep with him. This Eastern European catch must have had some porno-tricks up her sleeve or roofies up her snatch, because he gave her a three-hundred dollar tip.
Pros: Apparently generous with money.
Cons: Slept with an amateur hooker (there's an oxymoron); twenty years my senior; emotionally and mentally stunted; stalker tendencies; dependent on others and; I won't go into particulars, but it suffices to say that I'm being kind when I say "he's no underwear model"
His approach: Flattery(?) by Third-Party/Marriage Broker. Tells John to forward to me the following message: "He's very excited that you're single. You've got good Italian genes, so you can have Italian babies. Oh, and you're in your prime child-bearing years." Thanks a bunch, all that's missing is him telling me I have "birthin' hips."
My response: That's a very sweet offer, but I'm…just not interested. Ever.

Bachelor Number 2: John's brother Austin, who greatly resembles the kid from Deliverance without the Banjo-playing prowess. This high-class-trailer-trash (John's words, not mine) is currently helping his family drive property values in my mom's neighborhood down by squeezing not only the ten members of their family but several of Austin's drop-out friends into an 1800-square foot ranch, along with multiple vehicles in various states of disrepair. Don't even get me started on his drug-addled father (apple doesn't fall far from the tree), whose vacant, meth-mouthed visage seems to work as well at repelling normal people as those fake owls seem to work on mice and chipmunks.
Pros: Geographic convenience and, apparently, optimism.
Cons: six years my junior; ambitionless; unable to hold a job longer than a few months because, despite his lack of high-school diploma, he feels that everyone wants to pay too little for his…talents?; a family that is Jerry Springer's wet dream; aforementioned resemblance to Deliverance kid; entourage of freeloading buddies; unstable brother with his own creepy-crush on me, who would undoubtedly kill us both and; utter devotion to his pot habit.
His approach: Direct, or as direct as a proposition via third-party can be. Drunken/high texts messages to D: (I cannot make up these quotes) "I want your sister's ass. I want it bad, so fucking bad. She should try me." D's response: Silence, thinking, "She wants you dead. She wants it so bad, so fucking bad."
My response: "She should try me?" Is that what he said? It's not like he's a sample spoon at Coldstone. Not like he's ginger wasabi ice cream and I can say "oh, well that wasn't so good." I guess there's no diplomatic way to say "If the world blew up and it was just the two of us left, I would join a convent." Never mind that apparently I'd be the only member of the convent. It would be preferable (and let us reflect on the repulsive quality of a man who could drive me to celibacy). This leads D (who, of course, was sworn to secrecy) and I into a discussion of things for which there is no diplomatic translation. The examples which follow are also examples of why D and I can never have live tv shows or run for office without competent publicists.

There's no diplomatic way of saying . . .
"She would build her own Great Wall of China to get rid of you."
"I would rebuild the Titanic and crash it into that ice berg to drown you in the Atlantic."
"She would build her own gas chamber to get rid of you."
"I would figure out how to split an atom and make an A-bomb to drop it on you."
"She wishes you had been killed in the Holocaust."
"I would kidnap 40,000 Egyptian slaves and have them build me a pyramid to shut you in it."

There's no diplomatic way to say that the cosmos is playing some perverse My Best Friend's Girl game with me: showing me what's out there and that what's out there, ain't good.

On a (somewhat) related note, I am being stalked by engaged women. This reminds me of the incredible Addison Montgomery-Shepard.
She never though having kids was much of a priority, and so, she doesn't have them. Then, one day she thinks she might kind of want to and discovers that she can't. And then, she wants kids. Really wants kids. Every pregnant woman she meets seems like she's rubbing it in her face. Pregnant women are stalking her! Well, she's an obstetrician.

Well, engaged women are stalking me. I'm a law student, not a wedding planner, so why are they stalking me? Two months ago, marriage was so not a priority for me. I have a year's worth of denial of the bar exam, a job to snare, and general squickiness about becoming a chattel. Now that the option's gone (at least for the foreseeable future), I feel like the world is bursting at the seems with women who got together and decided to settle into their relationships for life, en masse so that at one point, my entire news feed will consist of "X is now engaged" posts. I absolutely do not begrudge these women their chance to beat the "for better or for worse" coin toss that is getting married and staying that way. But sometimes, I wonder if it isn't God rubbing my nose in it, "say that you don't care about it and I'll give you the opportunity to prove it."

I got a message from a women I haven't spoken to since high school, presumably sent to every female facebook friend she knows, asking for advice from those married ladies among us to give her suggestions on planning her big day. I have a suggestion, Bridezilla. Check to make sure that you're sending this to your married or engaged friends and not to someone who's just gone through a heart-wrenching breakup. Or, you're likely to have people telling you that Ted Kaczynski does excellent caligraphy and you should have him send out your invitations. With all the time you're saving do research on photographers, florists, DJs, and venues, you should be able to at least filter out the people a) you don't know and b) have "single" next to their names.

More aware of it my ass.