Julie Jacobs



Listen, Doug, you seem like a really nice guy. You're even kind of cute, in a well-adjusted sort of way. All in all, you seem really harmless, and that's the problem. I'm looking for someone with that special something that makes my friends worry I might suddenly disappear without a trace and never be heard from again.


You were nice to ask me out, but I have to say that the way you did it was a little weird. You said, "There's a movie I really want to see. Would you like to come with me?" Huh? How can you be assured you're going to have sex with me if the evening's plans do not specifically include drugs or alcohol?

Then you were all, "Let's go to dinner afterward." Whoa. What was that? Are we married now or something? Slow down! What is this, the '50s? Women aren't impressed by that "normal person" stuff anymore. I like to know there's at least a chance that a suitor will stuff my body into a car trunk and then toss it into a KFC Dumpster two towns over.


I'm sorry, but you're just not my type. I'm into guys who wear leather jackets, dirt-caked fatigues, or jumpsuits. I don't see any tattoos, piercings, scars, cigarette burns, missing eyebrows, open sores, self-inflicted wounds, blackened teeth, or incorrectly set bones. You don't even have an excessive number of fillings. You make eye contact when you speak to me and don't have any off-putting tics or compulsive, repetitive tendencies. You've never been to jail, and you don't have any addictions—not alcohol, heroin, cocaine, or even gambling or pornography.

God, I could take you home to meet my parents. You would never sneak off for three hours, leaving everyone to nervously glance at each other as we waited to open my sister's birthday presents. I'll bet you never once got up to go to the bathroom in a restaurant, then called half an hour later to say you "ran into some problems" and that you'd call the next day. No, I didn't think so.


I'm standing right next to you, and I can't smell a trace of body odor. Your hair appears to have been washed recently, probably just today. There's absolutely nothing feral about you. Your clothes are even unwrinkled. I'm sorry, but there's absolutely nothing to indicate that I might end up a statistic in the police ledger of some backwoods Oregon logging town, my family never giving up hope for my return until the day they die themselves.

Don't get me wrong, Doug. You'd be great for my sister, or maybe one of my coworkers. You're just not for me. You've got respectability coming off you in waves. If there's no chance one of my friends will pull me aside and ask me how I can stand you, I'm just not interested.


You're nice, though, so let me help you out. Try something like this next time: "Hey, my friend's band is playing at the Red Shed this Friday. They're called Meatmagnet. They totally suck, but I get to hang out in the back and drink from the cooler, and those dudes always have weed. If you're at the bar, maybe I'll get you backstage." Now that's what I call a date.

See, all that dinner and wine stuff doesn't do anything for me. The kind of guy I'm into is big on going out to get eggs. Usually at Denny's, at 4 a.m., and I end up paying for the eggs. Here're some other things I like to do with the men I date: hang out on their friend's couch, rent porn, drive around looking for drugs, or sit at a kitchen table and drink.


I noticed you're in pretty good shape, but that doesn't impress me. It doesn't take a lot of muscle to drag a woman's corpse to the river's edge. It just takes that special inclination. Anyway, with all those muscles, my friends might respond when you proposition them. Oh, but you'd never do that.

Doug, you're very sweet, and I'm flattered by your attention, but unless you do something in the next minute that lets me know you might put me in the morgue, or at least the intensive-care unit, I think we need to end this.