The Anniversary Waltz, or What Day Is It?

Hello fellow patients,

My one-year anniversary is this week.

I know this because my girlfriend told me.

Ladies, I don't want to burst your bubble on this one or anything, but dating anniversaries are something us guys just don't keep up with. It's not that we don't want to; it's just that we don't have the mental capacity. That's the reason marriage was conceived in the first place. (Okay, maybe "conceived" isn't the best choice of words here. Not that it doesn't fit. It fits too well. Really, people. Enough with the breeding. Have you been in the express lane at Wal-Mart recently? I mean, all you want is to buy your whipped cream, dog collar, black socks, and copy of High School Musical 3, so you can enjoy a nice evening at home, and you're stuck behind the 19-year-old girl breaking out the food stamps to buy Sugar Puffs for those 6 goddamn kids she's got bouncing around the buggy like sub-atomic particles in a supercollider...)

What? Too nerdy? Okay, let me try again...

...those 6 goddamn kids she's got bouncing around like the collective sweaters of the Jefferson High School varsity cheerleader squad trying at the annual homecoming pep rally...

"We've got spirit..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"Yes we do..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"We've got spirit..." [bouncey, bouncey]

"How 'bout you??!!"

I'm sorry. What was the question?

No really. What was the question. I forgot what we were talking about.

...Oh yeah. Anniversaries. The whole reason weddings were conceived, other than as an excuse to get strangers to buy you presents, is so guys can remember anniversaries. Even though the groom is nothing more than a prop at a wedding, and the service could be run just fine without him, and even though the day is nothing more than a blur of "stand here", "say this", "take your picture there", "go say hello to this family member that you either can't remember or can't stand", and "go over there", maybe with an "I do" thrown in there somewhere, he still knows something important is going on. He's dressed up in a tuxedo and nobody has died.

Well, nobody other than his sex life, but he doesn't know that yet...

No, what he does know is that this day is important, it's all about her, and if he doesn't want to see that sex life die even faster than it already will, he better remember that day.

That's why the smart guys always put their weddings on a day they can already remember. Her birthday (apparently we're supposed to remember that too), Valentine's Day, Halloween, April Fool's (not a good idea, by the way, no matter how appropriate it may be...), something like that. Any day that will stick in you mind. Take October 7, for instance. It's her special day. And the fact that 10-7 happens to be the score of the Iron Bowl that year that you and your buddies drank too much Jagermeister after the game and you ended up going home with a girl that could not have possibly been the same one you woke up with, and that you swear to this day must have been swapped out on you in the middle of the night, because you went to bed with Marilyn Monroe and woke up with Marilyn Manson, and...

...it's not important. What's important is that you have a tool for remembering your special day.

And by "your" I of course mean "her"...

...but don't ever say that.

Ever.

The point is (Editor's note: There's a point?) (Author's note: Yes, there's a point, smartass. Just 'cause I don't remember what it is doesn't mean it doesn't exist. After all, if a tree falls in the woods, and you're there, but you're too fucked up to remember why you're in the woods in the first place, much less some shit about a tree falling, does it mean that there's no point?) (Editor's note: WTF?) (Author's note: Exactly my point.) that married guys have this big elaborate ceremony just to help cement in their tiny male minds that this is an important day.

Us single guys ain't that lucky.

I've been in countless relationships over the years, some of them even lasting more than overnight, and I have yet to figure out what event constitutes an anniversary in a relationship. Sure, back in the day, your parents could mark that day on the calender when they shared a malted at the corner drugstore, or whatever people did back then, but these days it's not that cut and dry. If you're like me, you've never once had a relationship begin with a first date. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I know how relationships even start. It just seems like you go from the state of not dating to the state of dating, without any real clue how it even happened. And yet, somehow, in that blur, she is always able to pinpoint an exact day that is your anniversary.

So what day is it? Is it the first time you met? The first time you kissed? The first time you made love? It's all so confusing. Which is why I strongly recommend, ladies, that you try to make all these events occur on the same day. You know, to avoid confusion.

But if your lady wasn't considerate enough to simplify things for you like that, you're stuck figuring it out on your own. Well, not exactly on your own. She will give you subtle little hints, hints like...

"Do you know what next week is?"

"You haven't forgotten about Tuesday, have you?"

"So what are we doing tomorrow night, you know, for our Special Day?" (Notice the capitol letters here, fellas. That is capital "don't", capital "fuck", capital "this", capital "up". Got it?)

"Hey dickhead. It's our anniversary. You're taking me to dinner, and then for a martini, and then back home for two hours of foreplay. And no, I don't count balancing the beer on my head while you watch Robot Chicken to be foreplay. Bring a miner's hat, 'cause you're gonna be down there a while, Sporty. Ya got me?"

Yes, you got her.

Or do you? I sure don't. We're expected to remember all these little things like her favourite colour, how she likes her coffee (Dammit, Salty, you know I don't drink coffee! You must be thinking of your ex-girlfriend! I knew it!), the name of that one bitch at work that she just can't stand, her mother's name, and so on and so on. We're even supposed to remember to change our MySpace status (For the record, mine still says "single". My girl's does too. That's probably the only reason we've made it a year.), and to remember to take out all the girls' numbers from our phone, or at least change them over to guys' names so she won't notice, and on top of all this, we're supposed to remember some arbitrary date when something may or may not have happened twelve months ago?

It's all too much.

For the married guys, it's simple. Your life ended years ago. You have little enough going on in your day that you can devote some brain space to remembering a date on the calendar. For us single guys, though, all you can do is poke and hope. Which is probably how you ended up with a girlfriend in the first place.

I guess what I'm trying to say is...

...Happy anniversary, baby.

Whenever the fuck that is...

His Holiness Pope Salty I

A Word From the Pit Crew (Thoughts on Love, Marriage, and NASCAR)

Hello fellow patients,

I've read somewhere that like 80 percent of all homicides occur among family. If that number seems a bit high to you, give your parents a call. By the end of the conversation, not only will you feel that 80 percent is too low, you'll be contemplating doing your part to adjust the statistics.

It was in that state of mind that I hopped into the car this afternoon. I'd just spent an hour talking to my dad on the phone. We were talking about my girlfriend, which of course means we were discussing my need to settle down. I have made two big mistakes with my girlfriend: One, I've kept her for more than a month, and two, I've proven to my dad that she actually exists by letting him meet her (Imaginary girlfriends may not be as much fun to play with as real ones, but you can't beat 'em when it comes to dealing with the fam. It could be argued that, considering everything, imaginary ones are better. Especially if you're bad about forgetting to take the porn out of the DVD player.). Mistakes like these inevitably lead to conversations consisting of statements such as:

"So when are you two going to settle down?"

and...

"You know you're not getting any younger..."

and...

"If you like her, son, you need to get married. If not, you should leave her."

It was the last one that really got under my skin. Is that it? Are the only two options married and alone? An option that means I never get laid, and one that means I'm alone?

Okay, that one was a bit too easy. But you get my point. What it boils down to, as you well know, is grandchildren. There seems to be a certain age when parents develop an addict-like craving for grandchildren. Perhaps it is their desire to see you put through the same shit you put them through. Perhaps it is they are beginning to face their own mortality, and the continuation of the family tree is seen, in some delusional way, as a victory over death.

Whatever it is, it's fucked up. My dad is more concerned about my getting laid than I am, and it creeps me out. Really, guys, it's better to just tell your folks you're gay. Even if you have to go as far as to bring a guy home and make out with him at the dinner table, it's worth it. Sure, they might disown you, but is that so bad? At least you won't have to deal with the grandkid conversation again.

And who knows? You might meet yourself a nice man out of it.

But I digress...

...So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Taking a drive.

I would have liked to have taken this drive off a bridge, but I was in my girlfriend's car. She doesn't like it when I leave my underwear on the bathroom floor, so I'm guessing she really wouldn't care for me leaving her car at the bottom of Mobile Bay. No, this drive would serve only as a momentary reprieve from the issue, not as a solution for it. My girlfriend's car only has a cassette player in it (Yes, I'm aware that makes me a bad boyfriend, but I think it should be obvious by now that she's not that picky. And let's keep it that way, okay? The last thing I need is someone telling her that she could find a man who doesn't write shit about three-ways and gay porn.), so I was stuck with the radio. I got in the car and was immediately pelted by the top-40 station...

"If you like it then you should'a put a ring on it..."

Great. My dad's got Beyonce' pressuring me now.

My girl's totally cool. She's never made even the slightest comment about getting married. Of course, that's probably because she knows she doesn't have to. Between my family and Beyonce', that one's pretty much covered.

So what about my side? I know I'm not the only guy who isn't out ring shopping as soon as he has three good dates. What about us? Do we get a say? Don't we get to have our voices heard? Considering all the pressure on us to get married, we must have a pretty good reason why we fight it. There must be something worth fighting our women, our families, and Beyonce' for. But who's going to tell our side? Who's gonna lay it all out there and explain, once and for all, why we try so hard to wait until the very last minute to enter into wedded bliss?

Me, that's who. And how am I going to explain it?

NASCAR.

Perhaps I should elaborate...

You see, ladies and family, we fellas see life as a NASCAR race. And not just because it is the same thing, over and over and over and over again, with a horrific death in a flaming ball of carnage being our only hope of sweet, sweet escape. Not that at all. No, we see life as a NASCAR race, with wedded bliss being the finish line. The ultimate goal is to cross the finish line just as that last drop of fuel is being burned. If we can draft our way through our relationships, conserving the fuel of love as much as possible, while avoiding the yellow caution flags of dry spells, and the ten-car pileups of STDs, we might just see it through to the final lap of engagement, and ultimately the checkered flag of our wedding day, and get to taste the sweet white milk of our first night as man and wife (Sorry 'bout that last analogy. I'm having a bit of trouble getting Ken out of my mind...).

Confused? Me too. I don't know shit about NASCAR. I'm just trying to get more Google hits.

Let me try again. See, what a guy really wants is to marry the last hot girl willing to have sex with him. That may seem shallow, but it eliminates the one fear that keeps guys from jumping on the marriage bandwagon: The fear that, as soon as we tie the knot, we're going to get that phone call...

"Remember me? I'm the hot chick that you saw on the subway this morning. I know this may seem forward of me, considering I didn't even give you a second glance, much less get your phone number, but me and a couple of my friends are having a dick-sucking contest, and I could tell by your sizeable bulge that you are ample enough to provide enough of a challenge to be the judge, and so..."

Hey, you have your knight in shining armor; we have our blowjob-contest girls. It's all a matter of perspective. We all have our fantasies. It's just that yours are courtesy of Disney, while ours are made by Vivid (Google it, ladies, if you're confused. And download the results of your search. Your man will appreciate you for it.).

Don't get us wrong. It's not that we don't love you, or don't think that you're beautiful. It's just that even the fanciest sportscar loses resale value as soon as you take it off the lot, and we've put a lot of miles on you, and...

...Perhaps I have said too much. I see the looks I am getting. I think maybe it would be best if I tried a different approach, one that will get the parents off my back, keep my girl from knowing about the whole subway blowjob-contest thing, and settle this "when are you gonna get married" shit once and for all.

Now what did I do with Ken's number?

His Holiness Pope Salty I

p.s.: I would appreciate it if you would not give too much thought to the fact that I don't have dick-sucking contest chick's number, but I do have Ken's. "Don't ask; don't tell", that's always been my policy.

HHPS1