The Least Hygienic Hook-Up Ever (and how it made me momentarily internet-famous)

I still haven't done my own TMIT Thursday, but hey, a guest post from one of the raddest chicks out there? A very close second best. Right?

Hey guys! It’s TKOG, over from Not That Kind of Girl, psyched to steal a little of Rebel Mel’s spotlight on this most TMI of Thursdays!

My current project, Not That Kind of Girl, focuses on spending this year doing 250 completely uncharacteristic things – many of them relating to being newly single out of a blissful four-year relationship. And dudes – dudes! – when it comes to dating, there’s good reason I’m looking to become a totally new kind of girl. What follows is a tale of dating failure so rank it’ll curl your nose hairs.

During the time this story took place (when I was 18, during my first year of university), I had the bad luck of breaking in a rash of virgins. A rash. My wording is not coincidental.

In my freshman dorm, my bff Justice and I took an interest in tormenting slash socializing a particular quiet specimen who lived next door. He was kind of immature for his age, and weird-smart. He never seemed to have anything interesting to say. Until. UNTIL! I google-stalked him one day and realized that the seemingly shy little wallflower next door was in fact an internet rockstar. I can’t give too much away, but let’s just say he has a Wiki entry, a friggin’ famous-ass blog, and he was the number-one google result for his (common) first name. Swoooooon.

So one night, after a few drinks, I asked him to take a walk with me after a party, we ended up laying in the grass talking about intellectual property rights, and – when I couldn’t handle my Blog Star Complex any longer – I leaned in and gave him his first kiss.

Kisses turned into make-outs – awkward and unskilled, but not entirely unpleasant make-outs – and we went up to his room, where I bee-lined for the bed, but he lingered by the sink. He said he had to brush his teeth, and took a new toothbrush out of its wrapper. I, I’m sure, pouted and kicked the mattress.

“You know,” he mused, mouth foaming with Crest. “This is the first time I’ve brushed my teeth at University.”

You guys. You guys. It was JANUARY.

Did I make out with him anyway? Oh, you know I made out with him anyway.

Things went well for a week or two. Although we only had one other hook-up of note. We made out for a while one afternoon (man, I miss college) and I realized that he didn’t just have a little natural funk. His particular funk had an almost physical heft to it, like an oil that clouded through the nasal passages. Potent, guys, potent. At one point, I stuck my tongue in his ear, then recoiled in horror. When I subtly rubbed my tongue on his pillowcase afterwards, there was an enormous chunk of orange-yellow wax left on the fabric.

Shortly afterwards, I made my escape. Then in the room a few minutes later, my back started itching. So I took off my shirt and asked my roommate if she could see anything. She told me I seemed to have a rash or hives, but then started giggling so hard that I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I found a mirror and saw to my horror that my back was emblazoned with screaming-red hives IN THE SHAPE OF A HANDPRINT on my back.

But TKOG, you’re saying, at least you got to break up with the (literal) slimeball and improve your break-up karma! And I’m touched, dear reader, by your simple, misplaced faith in 18-year-old TKOG. Although we stopped hooking up, I didn’t end things until weeks later.

Oscar Night 2005, to be exact. Martin Scorsese had just lost Best Director for “The Aviator,” and I was taking it hard. My mother called me and, I’ll admit, I may have been crying.

“Oh sweetie,” she told me, “you’ve already read it? Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.”

When I gave her the venerable ol’ wtf, she reluctantly told me to check Hive Boy’s blog. Where he had just posted basically a live-blog of our first hook-up. It wasn’t flattering. He basically gave the internet – using my real name, with a link to my real-life blog! – a blow-by-blow of the hook-up and his reactions. Apparently his first hook-up wasn’t a great experience, because he dispatched the whole mess with the type of ennui and disdainfully clinical curiosity usually reserved for describing surgical procedures in third-world nations. And, insult to injury, throughout the whole ordeal, he painted me in broad strokes as a floozy.

Me! A floozy! I mean, okay, obviously I was a bit sexually indisriminate, but come on, I’ve read “War and Peace,” I used to do calculus for fun, I have friggin’ thoughts about heteronormativity! I’m not exactly a “The Price is Right” model over here.

Shortly after reading the blog entry, I grabbed his (no doubt gangrenous) arm, dragged him outside, and shouted healthy, productive things (“I hope you get chlamydia of the face AND DIE!”), finally ending the semi-relationship. Although it didn’t end there; not really. Because the bastard had linked to my blog, which had my email address attached, I received an influx of literally hundreds of blog comments and hate-mails, all positively reaming me for apparently forcing my grotesque make-outs on the poor sainted little computer nerd. People dug through my blog archives, google-stalked me, found out information about me through channels I can’t even imagine, and sent me the absolutely filthiest hate-mail you could imagine. For months. In fact, up until the point my university email address was deleted, four years later, I still received the occasional hate-mail; my personal blog gets about 30 hits a month from that old entry, despite the fact that he removed my name and blog address after the chlamydia rant.

So. Basically I win at dating forever.

Oh, and a coda to the story: I found out, while googling him to write this, that he’s apparently gay now. Which makes me feel slightly better about the whole “hated hooking up with me so much – despite the fact that he continued to do it – that he had to live-blog the friggin’ experience” thing. Not much better, but a little.

If you want to check out more TMIT's, head over to Lilu's blog!