Rock out with my mock out.

The new boy brought me to a café nestled strangely in Chinatown. It's the only place in a 4 block radius that doesn't sell pho. What it does sell is lifestlye. It's aiming for the sweet spot of chic-and-trendy-but-not-trying-too-hard-but-hard-enough-to-justify-charging-$8-for-a-cup-of-coffee-that's-not-even-fair-trade. It’s the kind of coffee house that is proudly, fiercely independent, decorated with dream catchers, a collection of porcelain owls, and mismatched tables and chairs that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn were leftovers from the set of The Wonder Years.

A leopard print chair distinguished our wobbly table from all the others, and once seated we were visited by a gypsy woman with a basket full of pygmy instruments – I got a tiny bell, and Boy got finger cymbals. “It’s not much, but it’s participatory,” the gypsy woman said by way of explanation.

Participatory? Before we could properly digest this thought (or contemplate bolting), the gypsy lady and all the glorious layers of her gauzy skirt climbed up on the stage, slung her antlered guitar around her neck, and hence commenced an intense affair most commonly known as “café rock.”

Yes, her guitar had antlers.

Yes, her sidekick played such various instruments as the organ, the pan flute, and the wind chimes (these in particular meant that we should all join in with our own “participatory” contributions, eye-rolling optional.)

Yes, the gypsy woman closed her translucent eyelids, sighed an ethereal breath, and said “Now I’m going to play some Dolly Parton.”

“I hope it’s Jolene,” whispered Boy, as sarcastically as a whisper can be.

“It’s Jolene” said the gypsy woman, and so it was. And about halfway through the flakiest excuse for Dolly that I’ve ever heard, the coffee grinder behind the bar, beside the bucket marked POTATO that was literally only big enough for the one and thus aptly labelled, made a noise oddly akin to my Katy Perry ringtone. Normally I’d be relieved that it wasn’t my cell phone interrupting Great Art, but at this point I’d been plotting my getaway for nearly an hour, rueing my perch of high visibility, and was more or less numb with Great Art and was intensely craving a Great Escape. Or a brownie, which looked delicious behind its glass dome, but probably tasted of commitment (for at least as long as it takes to eat a brownie, which to you may be a modest ten minutes or so, but when the music devolved from lyrics to odd throat noises and the clanging of cutlery against green glass bottles, every painful second counts.)

Mercifully, we capitalized on gypsy woman turning her back on the audience because “lyrics are hard to remember when you’re emotional” and we fled the scene, preferring to roam the frigid February night air than to rock out over herbal tea for one more minute than we’d already had.

My mother used to tell us If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

But my mother never said nothin about blog posts.

Thanx For The Memories.

It’s a neighbourhood pub with ambition.

The red velvet-lined banquettes scream “Aren’t we neat and eccentric!” while the hanging rack of mismatched, hepatitis-stained beer steins assures “But we’re not even trying!”

We sit down at a table too small to fit all four of our knees underneath it. Apparently we should have left some of them at home. We make food selections off a central chalkboard because the “menu” is just a Xeroxed piece of paper with fresh (as in, still damp) gravy stains on it (at least, I hope to god it was gravy) and Andrew gets something on tap that he pointedly refers to as “not a stout.” It’s not the usual pub grub coming our way: there’s goat cheese to be had, and porcini mushrooms, and other things that aren’t wings and onion rings.

There are two men sharing a table nearby. They don’t exactly eat off each other’s plates, but they do halve their portions for sharing. I spend the next hour trying to decide if they’re gay. The fringed scarf trend really throws off my gaydar. Maybe the difference between gay and straight really has become that negligible.

The low lighting clearly appeals to the lugubrious kids and their dubious dates. Stacks of alternative newspapers cater to the theatre students who come to discuss truth, beauty, and America’s Next Top Model , but a bookcase full of important titles beckons to the intellectuals as well (unless you take a closer look, notice the uncracked spines, and revise that to pseudo-intellectuals.) You can see how the prop chess set and the scotch list play into the sweetly contrived ambiance, but the mood music, well, that’s another story.

Now, I suppose it’s possible that I might have interpreted the music as sexy if I was Merv Griffin, but the truth is, 70s game show themes are rarely my cup of tea. I was telling Andrew about my sudden compulsion to “Come on down!” when the music literally changed to the intro to The Price Is Right. And then it got stuck there for 20 of the most temple-throbbing minutes of my life. Thank goodness the music was so loud as to preclude so much as the attempt of conversation because otherwise I fear that I would have treated my fellow patrons to words not even seasoned pub-goers are comfortable with.

Our food arrived, rather quickly I thought, mercifully quickly, by wait staff that seemed blissfully unaware of the noise pollution assaulting our ears and who were friendly in that not-too-friendly sort of way. I watched Andrew pick perfectly harmless tomatoes off a burger that was thicker than any human jaw could hope to conquer and navigate legendary wedges the size of walruses. Walruses! Oh, the bulk! The sheer bulk of them!

The pile of potatoes defeated him in the end, but I ate his tomatoes so they wouldn’t feel self-conscious, thus restoring karma to the universe, or so I thought. Perhaps I was a tad unfair to the venerable restaurant business in a past life (or, more likely, a past post) because I can only assume that what happened next was destined to be.

Just as I was getting into the groove of The Price is Right, maybe jonesing for a little plinko, the music came to a scratching, screeching halt and something even better replaced it. I can only describe it as a fusion of blaxploitation\super hero music, porn-style. The lights went down and I braced myself.

I imagined a drag queen in thigh-high kinky boots, rocking an extravagant Tina Turner wig and eyelashes extending halfway to Maine making her grand entrance.

I anticipated the arrival of a slick dude with a plume in his hat and goldfish in his platforms who would shuffle between tables, slapping people on the back and winking at anything in a skirt. Or at the very least, I thought a caped man suffering from disco fever might make an appearance, but you know what happened?

Nothing. Nothing except for a fat guy in a very open-collared shirt taking the mic and complimenting himself on the music selection so far and psyching us up for his imminent vocal stylings .

We left immediately. We grabbed our coats and headed out into the chill to see what trouble we could find, or if trouble would find us, and on Elgin street, neither is to be discounted.

Baa baa black sheep, have you any Grey Goose?

Le Mouton Noir, it calls itself, which is a funny name for a bar, especially a bar that appears to be mascotted not by a black sheep at all but by an aloof pug named Fred. Okay, I made that last bit up. There is a pug, but the bugger couldn’t be bothered to properly introduce himself. But I suppose his name could be Fred. Nobody ever told me it wasn’t.

The Black Sheep Inn, misnamed or not, bills itself as a “musical destination” in rural Quebec. It’s the kind of place that has ski-doo parking out front and boasts nachos with “red sauce” as the highlight of its limited menu (and indeed, when they arrive, the sauce is exactly that – unidentifiable and yet unmistakably red). To show that we’ve paid, the backs of our hands are stamped with a bingo dauber, and with that, we are absorbed into the crowd.

I drink rye & diets; I don’t need to ask for a drink menu to know this isn’t a martini kind of place (if nothing else, the unironic wood panelling screams it sufficiently). Andrew is happy to continue with his love affair with stout, and this is just the place to indulge him. The tables are sticky and wobbly so we hold our drinks and don’t make the mistake of resting our elbows more than once. I feel overdressed in my jeans and t-shirt because I am not visibly sporting thermal underwear.

The first (of three) bands is setting up, and I am quick to notice that they are the kind of band who wear “interesting” sweaters and drink tea instead of beer. The singer tunes her saw. Yes, you read that right. Her saw. With the bow of a violin, naturally. But I am disappointed during the performance because the saw never makes an appearance. However, I am delighted that the fuzzy sweater has disappeared and she has donned a rather affected pair of white leather gloves that she swishes around moodily while on stage. She breathes a “bonsoir” to us from under her tousled hair, and visions of Edith Piaf dance before our eyes. My opinion is further improved when an accordion player is invited to join them on stage. I now believe that if you’ve never seen anyone wail enthusiastically on an accordion, then you’ve never really lived. Have you ever seen someone really feel the accordion? I’m talking spastic, eyes-closed intensity here. Whew.

Next up to bat was a fun and funny folk singer named Bob whose protest songs are directed towards dogs, who discouraged applause after a song, delightfully entitled “How to Build a Fence”, about the literal building of a fence, the fancy kind, with a gate that swings and everything, by saying Oh don’t clap, that song only had 2 chords so it really wasn’t that hard, and who dazzled with such insightful lyrics as If singing the blues is a gift, next time I’d rather have a toaster. You just can’t lose with shit like that, and I could have listened to this guy all night long.

It seems to me at this point that the acts tonight are a bit incongruous, but hell, this place has an African mask on the wall beside a dart board that’s beside a Che poster that’s under a disco ball that’s hanging next to a dusty ceiling fan. You might think that clashing is an intended theme of the mouton noir, but when you get a load of the waiter in his ear-flap toque, and the dog who sits his ass on the bar in flagrant disregard of any health codes, and the audience members who bang their beer bottles on the table instead of clapping, you begin to have an understanding of a sense of belonging that no bar in the city will ever have.

The, ah, headliner, if you will, goes on last (duh), and we’re apparently supposed to know that he was once in Blue Rodeo, but the only thing I recognize him from was his frenetic accordion playing earlier in the night. The accordion, it seems, was just the tip of the iceberg with this guy. He sets up a multi-media show that is accompanied variously by him on the guitar, the keyboard, and of course, the accordion, which continues to be my favourite. He really breaks that fucking shit out, he plays it like he means it, and I doubt that I will ever recover from the haunting tune that played during the death of a hand puppet. Although come to think of it, he may have almost been upstaged by a video of an older man beat-boxing so maniacally that I nearly mistook it for an epileptic fit. But then he closed the show with a tour de force on the piano so amazing that even he couldn’t stay in his seat, thus cementing his title of Coolest and Most Bizarre Thing I’ve Seen Since At Least Last Tuesday, And Maybe Longer.

And through it all, the premature clapper showed us her approval before it was ever appropriate. There’s always one in every audience, isn’t there? They over-anticipate the end of each song and clap way ahead of time, as if it were a race. Well, she won. Every damn time. Her early applause drowned out the best bits of every song, and some of it was so ahead of time that I would mistakenly attribute it to the fact that maybe one man in ten managed to zip up before exiting the washroom, but no. She just wanted the artist to know that she liked the show before any of us other fools did.

And then it was time to put our snow suits, get on our snow mobiles and make tracks homeward. Except not. Being out-of-towners and wearing galoshes-less shoes, we opted for a car in the direction of our B & B because – oh yes – if you thought my night at the Black Sheep Inn was awesome, well then hold onto your socks for my next instalment , which is even awesomer.

Anti-Social

The walls are red, the plates are square, and the pan-fried calamari is spiced with cumin and pretension.

It’s not a bar.

It’s not a restaurant.

It’s a lounge.

You know you’re in a lounge when they don’t just plate food, they present it. Presentation involves disguising the fact that “dinner” consists of only 4 shrimps by stacking them vertically. Vertically! It’s brilliant, really. I can hardly believe I’ve wasted so many meals eating plain old horizontal food; things just don’t taste as good when they’re not piled on top of each other. And if there were just 4 little shrimps sitting forlornly on my plate, my brain might think “Four shrimps! What a rip-off!”, but when they’re artfully arranged into a leaning tower of shellfish, my brain thinks “What a delightful mountain of deliciousness!” Presentation doesn’t stop at stacking though; it also includes an ostentatious and often inedible garnish that usually looms larger than the main course itself.

You know you’re in a lounge when the wait staff is hired to stand around looking pretty – literally. Their main qualifications include trendy haircuts, cute dimples, and an all-black wardrobe. Once they’ve nailed the “I don’t hurry because I’m pretty” work ethic, they move on to the “I’m just doing this until I get my big break” attitude and the “God you people fucking bore me” look. Then they mostly stand around discussing their love lives and car payments while customers starve and eventually get their own drinks.

You know you’re in a lounge when they use some pompous euphemism for French fries on the menu. Call them frites all you want, but I know the truth: you’re just too goddamned lazy to come up with an imaginative replacement for them. Who do you think you’re fooling?

You might be in a lounge when some of the tables and chairs are replaced with – get this! – couches. You know, for lounging. And for sitting awkwardly in your dress, wondering how many germs are lurking in the fabric, and increasing spills by 86% (because what else would you do with your $18 martini other than have half of it coat the already-sticky, definitely-wobbly, and more than an arm-length’s away side table?) And please note: when I referred to “replacing” those tables and chairs with sofas, what I really meant was not removing them at all but just squeezing them into the already-tight dining space. Because if someone’s ass doesn’t brush your spaghetti carbonara, you’re not really living it up. But boy, if you’re strewn on a sofa, you must be having fun. You might actually start harbouring the delusion that you are “funky” or “with it” if you’re the kind of desperate middle-aged man who hasn’t realized yet that’s tragically out of touch. But there is nothing inherently cool about couches. Hey lounge: know who else has couches? My grandma. And she also serves drinks, and trays of compartmentalized food we used to call the cheese and pickle platter, but I suppose if we started calling them “tapas” then she could start charging us a cover, right?

You might be in a lounge if the nicest thing the newspaper reviewer could think of to say was “Dan Aykroyd ate there once!” and Dan Aykroyd probably had the right idea. A lounge is a place to see and be seen, and then retreat to your hotel room, crack open the mini bar (where drinks are so much cheaper) and have a shawarma delivered to you from across the street.

You’re probably in a lounge if the menu uses an excessive amount of quotation marks. For example, the menu might offer seared “rare” yellow fin tuna. You expect that quotation marks tell the reader something unusual is happening here: either you have a reservation about using the word, or you’re using it ironically. In this instance, we may guess that the tuna is not exactly served rare. However, when the same menu includes a dessert comprising of carrot cake and “frosting”, I really start to wonder what is so objectionable about the supposed “frosting.” Putting random quotation marks around things makes them sound ominous. Like maybe you shouldn’t trust the “frosting.” Like maybe someone’s pulling a fast one on us with the “frosting.” Like maybe it’s safest just to skip the “frosting”, if that is it’s real name.

You’re likely in a lounge if you hear the word ‘atmosphere’ thrown around a lot. Posh is what these places aspire to be; coolness is a great way to justify the exorbitant prices, and possibly the only way, especially when other negligible factors such as the quality and (god forbid you should ever leave a lounge sated) quantity of the food just don’t cut it. In fact, you’re almost certainly in a lounge if you pay 138$ before taxes and tip for a drink, an appetizer, an entree and dessert, and you still leave hungry.

You might be in a lounge if there’s a special menu that comes after dinner but before dessert. In another world this might be accurately named the cheese menu, but you’re in a lounge, so nothing is ever so easy. Instead they have to call it Quebec Thermalized cow milk, with triple cream, and bloomy rind. Because to call a rose by any other name....I mean, you’d still order it if they said they’d thrown a couple of cheese slices over some saltines and microwaved it, right? Oh, excuse me, they would never stoop so low as to serve it with mere crackers. In a lounge, it’s served with fig-walnut bread or some other snobby carbohydrate. That’s another thing about lounges: you’ll notice that everything on the menu has to sound at least vaguely disgusting, or else you’d never know you were eating something "innovative."

I'm not a hater, though.
Oh no.
I can bring the shi-shi with the best of them. I can drink martinis that took 30 minutes to arrive at my table like nobody's business. I can cross my legs and accidentally knock the napkin off the lap of a lady sitting 3 tables away and apologize with a big phoney shit-eating grin like you've never seen before. I can fit right in.

Just promise me we can stop at McDonald's on the way home.

Puppy Love

When Andrew picked me up last night he said "Wow, you look really great", which is more or less what he always says when he picks me up. He'd said an approximation of that very same thing the night before, but I was more willing to accept it then, being decked out in a little black dress and heels. Later that night, sitting on the leather sofas at Social, martini (deliciously named Anika Sky) in hand, he told me that my breasts looked "particularly fetching". And yes, he really said fetching.

But that was Saturday night; last night, Sunday night, I was wearing cords, and let's face it - no one looks sexy in corduroy. It's a functional fabric favoured by us citizens of colder climates. It is not h-a-w-t.

Obviously the response to "You look good" is "Thanks" but I tend to go with something like "I know!" instead. And I do know. Someone as gorgeous as I am, as smart as I am, as funny as I am, with such impeccable taste, unimpeachable opinions and superior skill at almost anything worth being skilled at (from the proper pouring of a stout to the impressively flawless removal of red wine stains from suede) will obviously become accustomed to receiving compliments. But that hasn't made me very comfortable or particularly gracious at accepting them. (Incidentally, my mother once wondered aloud how someone so conceited came from her womb, which made me wonder if someone this beautiful can really be said to be "conceited". Conceit implies that the self-flattery is excessive or worse yet, imaginary. Conceit, therefore, belongs to the uglies. Us good looking people who know we're good looking are simply self-aware. And that's a good thing, right?)

Anyway, after Andrew and I finished arguing about whether I looked dishy, we drove to his friends' place because their dog just had puppies - twins! - and we were eager to bask in their cuteness. At just 3 days old, the little tan ball of adorable sat in my palm with room to spare. It snuggled up to my chest and sighed contentedly. Andrew's puppy, however, mewed a little and squirmed against him. Perfectly understandable, of course, since they're newborn, still blind, and unused to being away from Mummy's nipples. Mine was the anomaly of course, but I've yet to come across a male who wasn't happy to nuzzle at my breast.

I didn't volunteer this perfectly reasonable explanation of my puppy success though, because I was meeting Andrew's friends for the first time and I was on my best behaviour. In fact, sometime before we pulled up (and possibly partly prompted by my repeated use of the word CUNT in the previous post), he'd warned me not to use the word pussy. So, after dating for a couple of months now, Andrew has pegged me as:

a) the kind of girl who can really rock a pair of cords; and

b) the kind of girl who would randomly insert inappropriate vagina-substitutes into conversation with complete strangers.

And he's not really wrong, on either count.

Earlier I had fucked with his hair a bit because he looked like he was about to sit for his school portrait. It's hard for anyone to compete with my new haircut ("the most punk-ass in the 613" according to my stylist) but when he asked me if he looked dangerous I had to admit that maybe "responsible" was a bit more accurate.

"Coming from you," he said, "I know that's not a compliment." It's difficult for most people to think of responsible as being an insult, but again he's hit the spot. This kid, he's starting to know me. And this fact, slightly startling on its own, was compounded by having occasion to talk to my ex this week. My laptop was stolen last weekend and I needed the serial number from him for the police report. On a manic high last summer, he'd promised to finally return my things, box up what was most important to me, and get it to me right away with a side of divorce papers. Six months later, I haven't seen any of these things materialize, but after watching my life be torn apart by his bipolarism, I guess I'm just a bit beyond disappointment these days. We've since had months of silence in the interim, which is not something I really regret. His curiosity got the better of him though, and he initiated our first conversation since August. I was surprised to find that the 8 years we'd spent together had somehow...dimmed. The feelings I once had for him, both the loving ones and the angry ones, have evaporated. I was struck by how strange I seemed to him. He doesn't know me anymore.

He doesn't know me anymore!
Even more shocking to me: someone else knows me now (and I don't just mean biblically). I mean that I can tease him in that way that I have and not worry that he'll fall apart. He gets my scathing sense of humour. He knows where I like to be rubbed, and why I can't just put a lid on a cocoa and pretend it's a white hot chocolate. He already knows that I'm never wrong, and that if there's any sort of competition between us, I will win.

Especially if it involves puppies.

The glory days of a bi-hockey couple.

He's handsome and thoughtful and has great taste in music, but he's deeply, deeply flawed.
Andrew cheers for the wrong hockey team.

No, I take that back.
The Ottawa Senators are not just the wrong team, but the worst team.
The rivalry between Toronto and Ottawa is legendary. Politely referred to as "the battle of Ontario", fans use much more colourful language in the stands.

But with a twinkle in his eye, he invited me to the game, and despite the fact that I felt fairly confident that it could spell an end to our relationship, I accepted.
Foolishly.

He picked me up wearing a StinkySens Volchenkov jersey and hardly batted an eye at my skirt and white leather motorcycle boots (if you doubted for a second that I was the kind of girl who'd wear a skirt to a hockey game, then get the hell out). But when I ditched my coat in the car to reveal my own jersey, he lifted an eyebrow. My blue and white should normally repel his red and black, but instead they brushed together as his hand in the small of my back led me up the steps towards the monstrosity that feels entitled to sell beer at $12 a glass.

The ticket-taker was the first of many skeptics.

Are you two sitting together? she asked.

Apparently, I replied, rolling my eyes.

But otherwise I bit my tongue, which is not normally one of the many things I like to do with my tongue, but in a sea of Sens fans on their home turf, I know when to pick my battles. Plus, I didn't feel like getting jumped.

I wasn't the only Toronto fan in the building, but I was sitting in a section saturated with Senators sweaters (Andrew has season tickets, natch). I expected some ribbing, and I got some. I also got lots of high-fives from the Leafs fans pouring down periodically from the nose-bleeds in pursuit of more beer. One Leafs fan in particular was very vocal in his approval of my jersey. He went so far as to berate Andrew.

Dude, he says, if you're going to sit beside this lovely lady, you should have worn the blue and white.

I smirked.

Andrew grunted.

Or at least, he did the first time.

The second time he got razzed by this guy, he was a little less amused. The first period of the game had been intense, the Sens scoring within the first 4 minutes and the Leafs tying it up just a couple of minutes after that. The boys behind us shouted their anti-Leafs sentiments in their smug french accents while Andrew and I engaged in friendly one-upmanship. If he was on his feet clapping, then I'd be jumping up and down doing my damndest to drown him out. And then we'd make out and ignore the ice completely. It was good.

It was good up until the persistent Leafs fan showered me so strongly with compliments that he talked himself into proposing marriage, down on one knee on the concrete steps of the Scotia Bank place in a foam cowboy hat and face paint. Hawt. He took my hand and looked into my eyes and, refusing to be rejected, he assured me that though Andrew may have splurged for better seats, the real fans were further up in the stands, and that he'd have a seat saved and warmed for me when (not should) I choose to join him.

Equilibrium was not restored until a Sens fan threatened to throw me down the stairs. The entire section, witnesses all of them to the awkward scene that failed to end in an engagement, erupted in laughter, enjoying having put the Leafs fan back in her place and their energy carried them through a battle into overtime and finally a (surprising) Ottawa victory in a shoot-out.

We spilled out into the crazy-packed parking lot after the game in a sea of jubilation. Andrew grabbed my hand in the crush and we strolled happily towards where we estimated the car to be parked, having already mostly forgotten which team lost and which team won, when yet another random person stopped us in our tracks.

This one though congratulated us.
If a Leafs girl and a Sens boy can still be holding hands, I have hope for this world yet. Anyone can get along together if you guys can.

So, beacons of hope that we were, we drove home together to rip the offending shirts off our backs and do the things that make us forget that we have any differences at all, except the anatomical ones that we tend to quite enjoy.

Where the men are, sort of.

There were better bars, more worthy bars, deeper into the bowels of the market, but I was wearing spike heels and a dress so short it barely (maybe not even) covered my girly bits, and there was wetness bordering on snowness starting to fall, and our bellies were full of sushi and sake so we just wanted a dark corner to sit in and drink in and wait until it was late enough to go home and fuck.

These are all perfectly good reasons for accidentally watching UFC, I swear.

The cover charge at the door of a pub should have given it away, I guess, but I was distracted by the the 42:1 ratio of men to women and Andrew couldn't wait to get in somewhere (anywhere!) warm enough to remove my coat and get another look at my Grecian dress ("Grecian" meaning very low cut in the front and very very low cut in the back), or rather, the things falling out of my Grecian dress.

The UFC, if you have the good fortune not to know, is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which in theory involves a couple of scantily-clad mixed martial artists going at it until one of them just can't go anymore. If this sounds homoerotic to you: ding ding ding. However, the UFC seems to have some unspoken rule about not engaging anyone who is even remotely good looking, so if you're looking for the male equivalent of mud wrestling, keep looking. In fact, I would wager that mud wrestling involves more grace and more athleticism and possibly more testosterone than the UFC on any night. But maybe that's just me.

Supposedly, back in the glory days of the UFC, the only rules were no biting, and no eye-gouging, which led to brutal, bloody fights that John McCain likened to "human cock fighting", which apparently was a bad thing. Now there are more fouls than you can shake a stick at, which includes not shaking your stick and also: no head butting, no hair pulling, no groin attacks, no fish hooking, no spitting.

And they call that a fight? Come on! My six year old sister and I got dirtier than that on the concrete floor of our basement when we couldn't agree on who would be Barbie and who would be Ken.

The fighters enter the arena to the tune of their favourite CCR song, high-fiving the eager pre-pubescent crowd. Then while scowling menacingly (but not convincingly - if you want convincing, I refer you once again to my Mom's basement when someone has just eaten the last poptart) the fighter is undressed. The official rulebook states that a fighter's gloves must allow fingers to grab and grapple, but somehow they are unable to remove their own shirts. Someone in the entourage actually has the job description of Official Shirt Taker-Offer of the UFC. Shirtless (disappointingly), they climb into the ring, which isn't a ring, but an octagon-shaped enclosure called (brilliantly) The Octagon.

The fight starts and the bar is packed tight all around us, violating all fire safety codes and also the warning that keeps crawling across the bottom of the big screen TVs that says pay-per-view is for individuals only and it is expressly forbidden for public viewing, such as that in bars. Wings and nachos are being consumed in vast quantities and I appear to be the 1 in 400 not drinking beer. The two fighters in silk shorts dance around each other for much of the "fight", and action is so scarce that just lunging at an opponent is enough for the beery crowd to erupt in cheers and jeers. Andrew fails to find anything amusing in watching former high school bullies wail on each other, but I encourage him to take a closer look.

These are not the bullies, these are the outcasts. The official and exclusive beer of the UFC is Bud Light for a reason. These are the dudes that were picked on and swirlied and stuffed into lockers in high school. These nerds are getting revenge, and using the UFC to show that their tap-dance\karate lessons were not in vain. Through the miracle of steroids and spending every Friday and Saturday night in an otherwise empty gym, the dweebs have got their day.

Til Whoredom Come

You've politely sipped two martinis and said no, demurely, to a third. You ordered the angel hair pasta and left at least a third of it on your plate. You sat like a lady, with your legs crossed, you smiled at his jokes but resisted the urge to giggle, you let him open the doors even though your arms are perfectly capable of pushing and\or pulling. In short, you have spent the entire evening pretending to be exactly the kind of girl that you aren't.

But when his car pulls into your driveway, the jig is up. Three kisses and a hand under your shirt, and instead of pulling away, you're inviting him in.

So now you're sitting on the couch, each with a glass of wine from a stash of bottles you keep for exactly this purpose, both pretending to watch a movie that neither of you could identify if pressed, while his hand creeps up your thigh, the one you rubbed with lotion hours earlier thinking of exactly this moment.

I take his hand and put it right where we both want it anyway. He'll look a little shocked at first - I've just broken with the dating protocol - but then slowly, it will dawn on him that I've just saved us both 45 minutes of his hand's ascent, quarter-inch by quarter-inch. Now that the cards are on the table, the panties can hit the floor.

But wait.

Panties are last. Everyone knows that panties are last!
Shirts are first.

If you're a dirty girl, you've selected your date outfit not just for its level of hotness, but also its ease of removal. Your shirt should not be of the crazy-amounts-of-buttons variety (or god forbid the ornamental buttons - kiss that shirt goodbye if you were that stupid), and for heaven's sake stay away from the tricky hidden zipper on the side shirts (I mean, to be fair, those shirts are even hard on me!). If you like the guy you're about to have sex with, cut him some slack and go with a top that pulls off easily (and if you don't like the guy, reconsider the sex). No matter what, a dude will absolutely forget to be careful of your hair when he takes your top off, so don't be too attached to the style it took you 55 minutes to achieve. Be prepared to just shake it out, bat your lashes, and not think about it again until you're trying to comb out the sex tangles after he goes home.

Boy shirts aren't too difficult. There are basically only two varieties: the kind you pull over his head (if he's tall, remember to do this while you're still sitting on the couch) or the kind you unbutton. If he's wearing a button down, let him take your shirt off first. Then, reach up and sweetly work on his first couple of buttons. Look up at him from under your lashes, let him get a good look at the cups of your bra doing their good work, and he'll hurry the process up, either working on the buttons from below, or sacrificing the buttons entirely and forcing the shirt off one way or the other. Make sure that you let the shirt fall where you are, still outside the bedroom. The trail of clothing is of the utmost importance: more on this later.

He'll be pretty anxious to get your bra off at this point, but don't let him. The next part can be tricky, and girls, you definitely want the upper hand.

Boy belts can be hell, and I've found it's one of many tasks best performed on one's knees. There are many reasons for this, the least of which is the view he'll get, which will make him excited and get him thinking of other things you might be doing while you're down there. But you're also giving yourself the best angle to work at, and a good overview of the obstacle. Now, as the girl, you realize it's your job to be slow and teasing and his job to be crazed and efficient (without much emphasis on the efficient). A finger in the waist band of his jeans is a good way to start. If you discover something in there you don't like (say, panties that are prettier than yours) you can hit the brakes and kick him out only half naked. This is all the encouragement he really needs. He'll be unbuckling that belt faster than if his pants were on fire. Actually, as far as he's concerned, his pants pretty much are on fire. Stop him there, though. Leave the button and the fly for yourself. Say hello. Acquaint yourself, but only briefly, before standing back up, but don't be afraid to leave a little lipstick behind.

Now that you have access through the front of his pants, he now has plenty of motivation to make your bra melt right off you. Let him get the zipper of your skirt or the button of your pants, which will be done in a fumbly fashion if you're doing your job right and being a good host to the friend you made when you were on your knees. Stop before you enter the bedroom, and each shed your own bottoms. This is important because you'll want to take the opportunity to also take off your socks, because lord knows there is no graceful or sexy way for someone else to do this for you. Socks can be a real turn-off. The only exception to this rule is if you're wearing thigh-highs. Those you can leave on.

You should both still be wearing underwear when you get to the bed, but his should come off before getting in. If he's a little shy though, you can take them off for him once he's in, just be sure to throw them onto the floor, out of reach. Yours should always be left for last, because taking them off will leave him in a very opportunistic position for how you'll want things to go from there. A little upward tilt of the hips is a helpful way to let him know what's on the menu.

And the genius of it is, when it's all over, he'll have to get out of the bed to get his boxers. If he's not making the move quickly enough, just start hogging the sheets, he'll catch a draft and be inspired to find his underpants soon enough. And cleverly, retrieving the rest of his clothes leads him pretty much right up to the front door, where you first threw his shirt. At this point, it's easy to hand him his shoes as you open the door. While he's doing the hopping-on-one-leg-tying-his-laces thing, pat his bum, kiss his cheek and give him a rousing "Thanks, that was fun!"

Close and lock the door.
Flush condom.
Have a scoop of Ben & Jerry's.

And that's how a good girl has bad girl sex.