shenanigans.

I’m Getting Too Old For This Shit: Signs you’ve outgrown the spring break hoopla

1) Your idea of a rip-roarin’ kick-off to Spring Break TwentyTwelve is a night of scotch and Bananagrams followed by a 12:30 bedtime, but only after fuming (read: muttering “curmudgeon” under your breath) about that neighbor girl who kept yelling “Peel!” as you struggled trying to figure out what to do with all those damn E’s.

2) You use the word ‘hoopla’ in a blog post title.

3) You feel as though you’re starting a riot when you express to the grocery store sales clerk your frustration with the lack of 6-packs of Diet Ginger Ale with which to mix your alcohol. Feeling success at her response of “K, I’ll pass that along” you decide to reward yourself with some frozen chocolate covered bananas, because nothing says Guilty Pleasure like a frozen potassium booster.

4) When the 8 year old you nanny expresses jealousy at your lack-of-school situation, you tell her it is she who is lucky, she gets to go to bed at 8pm and you have to go to a loud bar and partake in trivia night, which you will undoubtedly suck at.

5) You find yourself once again muttering “curmudgeon” under your breath when more people than usual show up to bar trivia. You also spend an abnormally long period of time preaching to no one at all about how there is no way the group of girls in the corner are of legal drinking age, expressing loudly near the bartender that someone should card them, when really, to your 85 year old self, anyone under the age of 50 appears to be 17, and those girls are assuredly at least 23. 

6) You throw out your back Monday morning and your roommate has to offer to help you get dressed. A little too willingly, might I add.

7) While other girls are baring it all in Miami, you become increasingly perturbed when you can’t find your flannel pajama pants when all you want to do is curl up in bed with your heating pad and a few episodes of The Wonder Years.

8) You splurge (read: spend ten dollars) on a spicy Thai dinner because you know it will help with the troubling sinus issues you’ve been dealing with for the past few weeks, then make a mental note to use your neti pot when you get home to really show those nasal passages who’s boss.

9) The number of pictures of your cats you text message to your friends increases by 200% due to your amount of free time. Admittedly, your friends are not bothered by this, but with the 200% increase in cat texts comes a 200% increase in the amount of times you picture yourself dying as a spinster and being feasted on by a gang of felines, all named after Maeve Binchy characters.

10) The ads during The Price Is Right start to sound like something you should be looking into.

Your Beard Makes Me Weak In The Knees: Facial hair, and what I find attractive in a potential suitor

Due to a recent incident in which I received a voicemail from my Nana asking if I was a lesbian (“you should tell me if I’m going to be getting a new granddaughter!”), I have decided to set aside a blog post all about what I find attractive and enjoyable about dudes. It will also serve as a personal inventory of ‘likes’ so I can remember to make better decisions in the future. (Note: Haley, you do not enjoy tiny dudes and constant laughter, similar to the constant hum of a dying humidifier)

Beards
There is something about a well-groomed beard that I cannot resist. Now, a beard is not a requirement when it comes to dudes I’m interested in, but the ability to be able to grow facial hair definitely is. Eternally smooth jaw lines bring me an immense amount of discomfort, and I cannot risk that, in my aged, senile years, I will have more of a beard than my mate. I also feel obligated to clarify that my father never had facial hair while I was growing up, so my attraction to beards is not some sort of reverse Oedipal syndrome. If I had an attraction to Coke-bottle glasses and gym shorts with tall black socks, that would be a different story.

Sense of Humor
There are few things I enjoy more than laughing. (Those things are food and cats.) Any dude who can make me laugh so hard that my abs-wherever they are hiding-hurt is good in my book. He should also have a collection of dead baby and Helen Keller jokes that gives my arsenal a run for its money. He should also find nothing morally wrong with the previous sentence.

Intelligence
I’m not saying he has to have a formal degree, but he should be able to file a tax return, cause lord knows I can’t.

Hobbies
Acceptable hobbies: Bar trivia, Bike repair, Dog walking, Any sort of volunteer work, Cooking, Skeeballing
Unacceptable hobbies: Racism

Physical Appearance (I realize ‘Beards’ technically fits under this category, but when it comes to my search for Le Dude Parfait, beards is a category all on its own)
As I said in the previously stated Note to Self, I can’t really handle tiny dudes. I myself am not tall, standing at a mere 5’4”, and I have recently discovered that dudes whose licenses state the same height as my own are not a good thing for me. They inhibit my ability to wear heels, and when I am with them I am living in constant fear of what will happen should a strong wind blow up behind them and carry their frail body, and my leftover mozzarella sticks, away. Admittedly, their short being would not be as much of a loss as the mozzarella sticks.

I also enjoy a dude with a bit of pudge. The kind of pudge that says “I’m not ashamed to drink delicious beer or eat a second dinner with you after you get off of work. Oh hey, is that Coldstone still open?” 

Respect
Nothing makes me swoon like a dude who respects the ladies. Any dude who doesn’t might as well be Rush Limbaugh.

Now, it’s getting late, and I need to be up early, prepared to meet the man of my highly detailed dreams. And he needs to be prepared that I, the girl of his Arrested Development-esque fantasies, will not be wearing makeup when he meets me, will be wearing those clothes that one wears when they haven’t done laundry in about 4 weeks, and will be muttering profanities under my breath as the J comes to a halt for the third consecutive time and I realize my cat has thrown up on my bag again. 

Come and get it, dudes.  

Stay Together for the Kids: A cat owner’s guide to navigating divorce

Like any other single, eligible girl with top-notch gentleman suitors lining up to court her, I have two cats. Mind you, these are not your typical cats. The first, and eldest, at approximately six years, is Vinnie. Vinnie is a tabby domestic short hair who weighs in at a solid 15 pounds (down from his original 18) and enjoys playing in the empty bathtub, sunbathing on the sofa, and scratching the scratching post despite his lack of front claws.  I absolutely adore Vinnie. He is more cuddly than any other cat you’ve ever met, and only lets you hold him if he can put his paws around your neck, as if you are being hugged by a baby, or in Vinnie’s case, an obese toddler.

The second feline in my life goes by the name of Zazzles. At approximately two years old, she takes her name from a hilarious episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and has tortoise shell coloring. Having once lived on the tough streets of Bushwick where she had to hustle for food and follow slightly intoxicated college students in the hopes of finding shelter, she is an independent spirit and a force to be reckoned with. Also, she has a really pink mouth, which reminds me of a baby.

Now, you’re probably thinking that two cats is a lot for such a fabulous, completely single, completely available, completely looking to date and into dudes with beards kind of girl to handle. But you see, it is not just me, Vinnie, and Zazzles in this happy picture, but rather me, Vinnie, Zazzles, and my roommate who, for the sake of her privacy, we will call Karen.

Karen and I began our roommate relationship our sophomore year of college and have been roommates in a 2-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn for a little over half a year now. After we settled into our new abode, we realized something was missing. We longed to be awoken by a food-crazed animal at six in the morning, we wanted our furniture (read: singular couch) to be covered with fur, we yearned for our living room to be host to a plastic box where small animals could relieve themselves multiple times a day.

Enter Vinnie. Karen and I adopted Vinnie from the animal shelter Animal Haven in SoHo. Vinnie filled all of the holes in our otherwise dull lives, but after a while, it became clear that Vinnie was feeling lonely as an only child. Having grown up all my life with cats, I spent a great deal of time explaining to Karen how cats do much better in pairs, that they entertain each other, and thus keep one another from meowing in the living room in between two open bedrooms at four in the morning in the hopes that one of their parents will come out and play with them. Not that that’s ever happened. Or that I’m bitter about it.

Karen was a hard egg to crack in regards to the second cat issue, until the night Zazzles walked into our lives. We met Zazzles one evening while walking to our friend’s apartment. She came right up to us, meowing and rubbing against our legs. Karen and I jokingly agreed that, if Zazzles was still there when we came back from our friend’s apartment, we would take her home. Approximately three hours later, we found Zazzles waiting for us. She followed us six blocks to our apartment, where Karen picked her up and brought her upstairs, where she lived in our bathroom for a few weeks until we got her medically cleared to hang out with Vinnie.

And that’s how we became the happy family that we are today. But, like any other family, we have our issues. Our issues aren’t actually important, or dramatic, or anything close to a problem, so for that reason I will omit them from this story, but I will say that it is these issues that cause me to be asked a certain question by concerned citizens and other people that I have created in my fictitious blogosphere world: what happens to the cats if you and Karen split up (as roommates, not lesbians, mom)?

This question pains me to think about. What would happen to the cats should Karen and I meet our untimely demise, or if I have to move out to move in with my new, burly, bearded boyfriend who works at a cupcakery/night club? The latter would clearly happen long before the former, but in order to be prepared for either situation, I have created the following guide to navigating a roommate divorce in regards to our furry children.

1. Visitation
As the primary caregiver to Vinnie and Zazzles (you know it’s true, Karen, so don’t start with me again), I would, of course, get them during the week, and Karen would get them every other weekend. Holidays would be open to negotiation (meaning Karen would get them for Canadian holidays, and I would get them for real holidays).

2. Child Support
Having furry kids is expensive. There’s the food, the cat litter, the unnecessary toys, the outfits for holiday card pictures… It could bankrupt anyone. Now, I don’t want anyone thinking that I would, in ANY way, mooch off of Karen, but nonetheless I expect her to financially support the felines whose lives she was an integral part of up until I met my bearded soul mate. Now, I’m not entirely sure how child support works, and I have a feeling no court of law will pay any respect to a child support claim made for someone named Zazzles, but I will make it entirely clear that I have legal representation who, should I pay her large amounts of money and promise her many grandchildren, will put her career on the line to fight for what Vinnie and Zazzles deserve, which I believe is lots and lots of monies.

3. Buying their Love
Often times when a couple with children get divorced, each parent feels obligated to buy their children things in order to buy their affection. To that I say, Go for it, Karen. Buy them crap on the side, fight for their love, but at the end of the day, it was still you who spent late nights at the bar, forgetting to come home and feed them their moist salmon and white fish dinner*.

*Hypothetical explanation of why this hypothetical roommate divorce has occurred in the first hypothetical place. Hypothetical.

4. New Members of the Family
No matter how much we fight to stay as the happy family we are, laughing and hugging as we make the exchange of our furry children on Karen’s weekend to have them, in a public place so as to avoid name calling and racial slurs, there are bound to be new relationships, and new people coming into Vinnie and Zazzles’ lives. In order to avoid anymore unnecessary pain for Vinnie and Zazzles, I will require that they not be introduced to any new beaus, suitors, callers, or potential platonic life partners until it is certain that these people are not going to up and walk out of their life, leaving them even more wounded and likely to go into kitty stripping and/or porn due to their unresolved father issues.

5. New Living Situations
I can’t deny the fact that my furry children are going to be messed up after experiencing the divorce of their parents, so I think it’s only logical that Karen and I make every possible arrangement to maintain a healthy situation for them. I myself will no doubt be living with my future husband in his artist’s loft in Williamsburg, drinking organic, free-trade coffee as I sit with Vinnie and Zazzles on either side of me, the three of us staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows as my activist boyfriend designs buttons for (insert latest hipster political trend here) at his desk, the latest Belle and Sebastian record playing softly in the distance. I do not know where Karen will be living. However, I require that it be in either Manhattan or Brooklyn. I will not have my children traveling on a dangerous ferry to and from Staten Island, or being called ‘Vinnie from the Block’ in the Bronx, or living in Queens, because I refuse to take the G from Brooklyn. Wherever she lives (preferably in Williamsburg or somewhere off the L in Manhattan—traveling is a real bitch, especially with two cat carriers), I hope that our new living situations allow for a sense of normalcy in the lives of our furry children re: kitty stripping and/or porn.

To be honest, I’m hoping I don’t have to refer to this guide any time in the near future. The four of us are currently a very happy family, and even though I am beyond open to meeting eligible dudes and/or giving my phone number to anyone who inquires via this blog, I wouldn’t trade my current living situation for the world. Or Ryan Gosling. Well maybe for Ryan Gosling. Yeah, I’d totally give up my family for Ryan Gosling.

They Lost Power Before It Was Cool to Lose Power: Why hipsters will always survive natural disasters

As you all know, the great city of New York was recently hit by Hurricane (aka Tropical Storm aka Heavy Rains aka Light Drizzle aka Did Someone Just Sneeze on Top of My Head?) Irene. When the news first started to break that a hurricane was headed straight for New York, I wasn’t that concerned. Being from Minnesota I am used to erratic, abnormal weather occurrences, and thus a bit of rain didn’t seem like anything to write home about.

Enter EVERY OTHER PERSON IN NEW YORK.
At work we had an emergency meeting about how to prepare for natural disasters like hurricanes where everyone traded their tips about dealing with such occurrences. Sitting in this meeting, I thought to myself, Well I’ve read all of the news reports, and seen the radars, I should be fine. Besides, my kitchen is full of wine and chocolate, I’m clearly prepared for the worst.

Soon enough, however, my co-workers started competing about who had the best hurricane survival tactics, such as filling your bathtub with water to be able to flush your toilet, stocking up on bread and peanut butter, etc. etc. My nonchalant severe weather preparedness soon turned to hyperventilating, sweaty-palmed, overwhelmed concern. My left eye started to twitch and I became unable to use the right said of my mouth as I stuttered about the sad state of my kitchen cupboards and lack of purified water. It became apparent to me that if this Irene bitch really turned out to be as bad as everyone said she was, there was a good chance I might spend the hurricane gnawing on stale potato chips and chipping ice out of my freezer to stay alive. As I sat in the conference room, my co-workers slowly moving away from my twitching body, I could see the headline: ‘Brooklyn Girl Is Eaten By Cat Due To Unpreparedness For Hurricane’. 

Once I came out of what can only be described as my fear of death seizure, I sprang into action. I headed straight to the grocery store [the next morning] to stock up on non-perishable food items. When I got to my local natural foods store, I was perturbed at the difficulty I had in finding a parking spot for bicycle. It seemed that every other bicyclist in Bushwick had come to the natural foods store at the same time as me. After I found a spot to lock up in the sea of fixie bicycles (my single-speed being mocked by their brake-less wheels and handlebars), I hurried into the store to see what items I could scrounge up.

As I entered the store in my Saturday morning, pre-hurricane best (gym shorts and some mismatching t-shirt which I do not recall) I couldn’t help but notice the large amount of plaid shirts, cut-off shorts, and 70s style bicycle hats that laid before my eyes. In my current state I was willing to purchase whatever items I thought would keep from the plight of becoming cat food, be that cheez-its, chocolate bars, or multiple boxes of capn crunch. What I soon realized, however, is that apparently a hurricane is no reason to sacrifice nutritional value. Nay, let me rephrase that: a hurricane is no reason to sink below buying your twelve dollar loaf of bread that will go bad in two days and your obscure brand of beer that no one has ever heard of that the store didn’t even know they carried but you’ve been drinking since flannel came back into style. In fact, even though a hurricane is approaching, that’s no reason not to stand in line at the cafe in the grocery store for a soy latte and vegan veggie sandwich, extra hummus, no tomatoes. Unless they’re organic. Then totes throw those tomatoes on there.

I could not handle the amount of hipsters that I was in the presence of. In my perpetually panicked state I could think of nothing more than scrounging together some apples and oranges and seeing if the natural foods store carried some sort of healthier alternative to spaghetti-os. But as I looked around, the skinny guys and gracefully disheveled girls moving around the store were taking care to only pick up items that were organic, whole-grain, fair trade, locally grown, locally made, and a product they had never heard of before—you have to be one step ahead of everyone, even in severe weather.

My eye began to twitch again and all thoughts of grocery shopping left my mind. How could these Bushwick hipsters be so cool and calm when a spinning vortex of watery death was headed straight for us? How could they think of muesli and tofu dogs in a time like this? The hurricane hadn’t even made its way to New York yet and my world was crashing down around my feet, while the combat boot-clad feet of the hurricane-grocery-shopping-savvy hipsters in my midst floated effortlessly up and down the aisles. They put pita chips in their baskets as if their death, unlike mine, was not imminent. Round two of my fear of death seizures had taken my body by full force. 

What is it about these quiet members of the hipster species that allows them to go about during a hurricane warning without the slightest bit of concern? Do they travel in packs via fixie bicycles to protect themselves from the dangers of the outside world? What magical elixir is hidden in their PBR that makes them immortal, unable to succumb to the effects of power outages and poor plumbing? I may never find the answers to these mind boggling questions, but as long as weather variances exist in the borough of Brooklyn, I will continue to study this mystical species until I may one day find an answer. 

Baby, You’re Going Places: Why I’ve come a long way since first grade

First grade was a rough time for me. Like, considerably more difficult than it should be for any small child. As you can see in the above picture, I had a questionable wardrobe (I’m fairly certain those jeans are acid-washed), some overwhelmingly frizzy hair, and apparently no teeth. (I thought for sure I had teeth in first grade… Huh… Well, the camera doesn’t lie.) The only thing I had going for me was my prim and proper seating style.

In addition to the issues you see in the photo, I was struggling with things one cannot capture on film. I had an overwhelming speech impedament that turned my ‘R’s and ‘L’s into ‘W’s, and quite the lisp. I would introduce myself to people as Haywee. For example, when I first met my best friend of 16 years, I told her my name was Haywee. After telling me her name was Erica, I proceeded to call her Ewica. She yelled at me and constantly reminded me that her name was not Ewica, it was Erica. All of this happened while I stood there with a red mustache from my cherry Mr. Misty from Dairy Queen. I eventually just stopped calling her by her name.

So not only did I have this embarrassing difficulty with speaking, but I would be removed from class a few days a week to work with a speech therapist on it. It was positively humiliating. They didn’t trust me to keep track of time on my own, but instead decided it was necessary for the speech therapist to come into my classroom and say it was time for me to leave for a bit. If, in my first grade days, I would have known what the term ‘walk of shame’ meant, I would have compared leaving for my speech lessons to said post-coital walk. The other tiny children would stare at me as I made my way past their desks, the shiny unicorns on their Lisa Frank notebooks and trapper keepers laughing at my pathetic situation. While the other children would practice keeping time on the giant clock with a face and playing mancala and chutes and ladders, I was forced to sit in a small room and read sentences about Juan, Maria, Jose, and their trip to the taco stand. (Looking back I realize that my speech lessons were slightly racist. At the time, I was just pissed that in addition to not being able to speak like a normal person, the names were damn hard to pronounce. Thanks a lot, suburban public schools. Bastards.) 

These lessons went on for all of first grade. Being the overly neurotic child that I was (read: still am), I worked extra hard to perfect my speech. Thought a great deal of this was because I wanted to avoid the first grade walk of shame, it was mostly because I hated missing snack/milk time. (I always got orange juice instead of milk because I lied and said I was allergic to milk. (At the time I thought this was a lie. Turns out milk and I actually don’t get along well.) Even as a first-grader I was a straight-shooting badass.) So basically, what it sums up to, is that even though I really hated being made fun of for having a speech problem that caused people to simply smile and nod because they had no idea what I said, I had no problem being a little fatty, cause damn it, I loved me some cookies and orange juice. 

Edit: The only thing worse about first grade than speech lessons was the fact that my mother still dressed me in onesies because I was so small. I would go to the bathroom at school and not be able to re-button myself into them, and would frequently have to ask my teacher to come into the bathroom and help me. Thanks, mom.

No I Will Not Give You My Money: Street Promoters, and Why I Can’t Handle Human Interaction

I have these pills that I take. They have a long 18-letter name that I can only compare to that of a street name in Poland: long, funny looking, and utterly unpronouncable. These pills are anti-anxiety pills. I take them sparingly, at times when I am particularly overwhelmed, like when I’m cramming for a huge final or when people tell me that Daniel Radcliffe is, in fact, not gay. (I will believe this when he is staring deep into my eyes over a meal of shepherd’s pie and homemade Butterbeer, longing for the days when we will watch our children, Harry and Ron, pretend to ride broomsticks in the backyard of our English cottage.) 

But there is one time in particular, living in New York, that I become so overwhelmed I feel as though I am going to stop in my tracks, curl up in the fetal position, and cry on the disgusting streets of Manhattan, and that time is when I spot a street promoter standing right in my path on the sidewalk. For those of you fortunate enough to have never come in contact with these people, first of all, you are lucky bastards, and second, a brief description: they are the people that stand on the sidewalk, coercing passersby to talk to them and donate money to the cause they work for, such as saving children, saving trees, saving water, saving free speech, saving fill-in-the-blank. Often times they are in their mid-twenties, clad in Birkenstocks and canvas messenger bags, and will try to coax you their way with a high-five and a compliment on your teeth (that one made me particularly uncomfortable).

Now, most people can handle the encounter of a street promoter just fine. They keep walking briskly past, sometimes muttering an embarrassed ‘sorry’ or ‘no thank you’ and the dreadlock-sporting, Fiona Apple-listening kind soul just moves on to getting a hold of the next person coming their way. I, however, cannot navigate the situation as gracefully. As I step onto the same block as the promoter my palms start to sweat uncontrollably and I can feel a slight twitch in my left eye. My breathing becomes increasingly rapid and my heart begins to have worrisome palpitations. I shorten my stride and my eyes strain to avoid eye contact as I hurry through the options I now have to attempt to avoid the promoter:

1) Important phone call At this very moment I happen to get an important phone call. I pull my phone out of my purse as though I felt the vibrate ringtone, glance at the caller ID to see who is calling me, and answer quickly. It is important that I appear very engaged in this one-sided phone call. It is too much to be receiving the news that someone has died, but just enough to be getting a call from your friend saying she was just diagnosed with an STD.

2) Don’t speak English Desolee, je ne parle pas Anglaise!

3) In a hurry Though I usually run into promoters when I am out for a casual stroll and in no hurry to get anywhere any time soon, pretending that I am rushing to get somewhere is a surefire way to get past them. Even better, I don’t even have to stop and say a coherent sentence. All this one requires is a flustered “SORRY, GOING, WORK, BUSY, CAN’T, TRAIN” and some frantic, overzealous hand motions.

4) Deaf Insensitive? Of course. Effective? Damn right.

5) Already a donor Based on how many times I’ve used this one, I’ve apparently donated hundreds of dollars to Children International, Green Peace, Peta, ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, ASPCA, Broadway Impact, NAACP, Unicef, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Comic Relief (yeah, I thought they didn’t exist anymore, too).

6) On my way to a date with Daniel Radcliffe Works with the female promoters, causes the gay ones to talk to me even more.

Crossing paths with these people is one of the most justified reasons to take a calming anti-anxiety pill. However, since these pills cause me to become increasingly comatose soon after taking them, swallowing one on the busy streets of the city isn’t exactly an option. Thus, I am forced to resort to the above scenarios to save myself from the clammy hands and rapid, cracked-out speech that comes with the 14th street encounters with the young charity workers with degrees from Gallatin. (OHHH snap.)

All the Good Ones Are Gay: Why equality is keeping me from finding a man

I like to think of Daniel Radcliffe as my perfect man. He’s a talented actor not only on film, but has furthered himself in his craft by jumping feet first onto the Broadway stage after learning to sing and dance. At the ripe age of 21, we are under a year apart in age, and also approximately an inch apart in height. Though he was introduced to the world as ‘The Boy Who Lived’ and has made enough money to retire at his young age, he is truly a dedicated artist, striving to learn more, do more, accomplish more. His fame got the best of him for a while, but he has recently made the brave step of admitting his weakness to alcohol and vowing to give it up, opting instead for quieter nights in, reading a book by the fire or watching a movie on the ‘telly’. Watching him in the Harry Potter movies is like watching my future boyfriend and husband save the Wizarding world from doom. As I wander the streets of New York, I secretly hope that Mr. Radcliffe will stumble out of the nearby salon, hair perfectly disheveled after a $500 haircut, and I will drop my keys in front of him, my Gryffindor keychain gleaming in the hot summer sun. Daniel will reach for it, his loyalty to the lion crest pounding within his chest. Blinded by the hot New York sun (reflecting off of mine and Daniel’s pasty white skin), I too will reach for the glimmering set of keys. Our hands will meet. Together, as one, we will pick up the Gryffindor crest. We will look deep into each other’s eyes (note to the editor: be sure not to wear heels on this day) and our connection will be undeniable. We will have drank the Amortentia to quench our thirsts, not only for water on this scalding day, but for love.

But alas, Daniel Radcliffe is gay. And thus we come to my problem with equal rights:

I have been searching for a boyfriend for almost twenty-one years. The Midwest, though full of homemade pies and fatty fried foods on a stick, proved less than fruitful in the man department growing up. Thus, at the young age of 18, I made the move to New York City. Having seen such television shows and as ‘Friends’, ‘Sex and the City’, and ‘Seinfeld’, I smirked as I thought about the new boyfriend I would have every week. I was moving to New York City, the greatest city in the world. The universe would no doubt throw me a bone.

But here is something they don’t teach you in geography: all of the dudes in New York are gay. Every intelligent, attractive, eligible man in this city works in theatre, owns a Chihuahua named Princess, and can bake better cupcakes than Sprinkles and Magnolia combined. He has the perfect body, hair better than any woman would ever be blessed with, and a quaint but sophisticated one bedroom in the Village. He’ll bring you home to meet his mother, and then talk about the latest men he’s met at the gym as you drink cosmopolitans out of the ceramic martini glasses he made for his mother in middle school art class. You’ll have regular sleepovers, spooning in his silky smooth sheets, waking up to him cooking you eggs in the kitchen. Then, over mimosas and egg whites, he’ll suggest a trip to Barney’s for new shoes, and maybe a mani/pedi. 

Besides that whole only sleeping with dudes thing, the New York Gay Man (hereinafter NYGM) is the perfect man for any single New York lady looking for some male companionship. Over the past years the NYGM has become the ultimate substitute for a boyfriend for desperate, single New York women. He’s the arm candy you need for that dreaded office party, the much needed encouragement on a bloated day, the excellent shopping partner for finding the perfect little black dress. What woman in New York needs a straight man when the NYGM is just a Broadway show away?

Enter gay marriage. I remember the day gay marriage was legalized in the state of New York. Unlike the tweets and status updates declaring happiness and victory at the news, the equality for gay men and women all across the state had me feeling defeated. As the Empire State Building shone its rainbow colors that night, the only part of me that shown was the tears running down my face in the moonlight of a city where I knew I would never find love. A young girl who once thought the NYGM would be forced to marry her, to love her, I was now, against my will, a woman faced with a harsh reality: gay marriage was legal in New York. No longer would the perfect NYGM be forced to stay in the closet and thus with me. No longer would I have a faux boyfriend. No longer would I have the NYGM to flirt with men I found attractive at the bar, I would have to do it myself. Equal rights are to blame for the fact that I will die old and alone, and the NYGM will find happiness and lead a fulfilling life. Daniel Radcliffe, I hope you’re happy. So much for the loyalty you owe me as a fellow Gryffindor.

Q: Hey, hey Haley, you know Daniel Radcliffe isn’t gay, right?

A: Ha, ha. Nice try, but I just based a whole blog post off of him being gay.

Q: Ha, yeah, no seriously, he’s not gay. 

A: ……………..

Q: Wait…you seriously didn’t know?

A: NO. I mean, have you seen him sing and dance?

Q: Yeah, he was great! Didn’t you love that ‘Brotherhood’ song? He killed it!

A: OMG seriously! I didn’t know he could move like that!

Q: Me neither! I mean, he was great in HP, but seeing him on stage is completely different!

A: Right?! He just has this energy to him that—WAIT HOLD UP HE’S SERIOUSLY NOT GAY?

Q: Nope. Straight as an arrow.

A: So I just published a blog post on the internet based on the premise of Daniel Radcliffe being gay?

Q: Sure did.

A: I outed Daniel Radcliffe?

Q: In a way, yes.

A: Huh.