dah
Dear Readers,
Dating & Hookup website is being overhauled. We will be back at you soon with more great, provocative content and brand new multimedia developments. We’re excited. Please stay tuned!
In case you had any doubt that dating is dead, we held a funeral for it – and buried forever the harmful and irrelevant notions about romance, women and relationships that have plagued us for so long. RIP!
As Victoria from The Village Voice writes, we “have no problem bidding goodbye to bullshit rules of courtship.” Nope. Not at all.
(VILLAGE VOICE: dah GIRLS Jessica Donalds & REBECCA WIEGAND HOLD FUNERAL FOR DATING)
Every lady knows and loves and yearns for this guy. The One Who Got Away.
By definition, he’s not in my dah, but he’s been in my life for practically all of my 27 years.
We met – as it were – as toddlers in the mountains, where our families vacationed at the same rustic resort. There’s a photograph of five-year-old, platinum blond, chubby-faced me staring at him across a wildflower field. He had long, curly, silken dark hair and in the picture, he’s wearing a red t-shirt and looking back at me cooly, like a miniature rebel without a cause.
If you go up to the resort even now, there’s a piece of driftwood where we both wrote our names in magic marker, probably that same year. He’s a year older than I am, so his name is spelled correctly and mine has a backwards B and Y.
It wasn’t until much later that I consciously knew I was in love with him. I was 12-years-old, with knobby knees and ears that stuck out, but I was still a sun-kissed, freckled blonde and had happily evaded the awkward ‘awkward phase’ that had stricken most of my friends during this time. At home in the suburbs, I was making out against lockers and in his bunk-bed with Rob The Hockey Player, though refusing every day to ‘be his girlfriend.’ I had that compulsive desire for male attention (even adolescent, slightly be-pimpled male attention), but I knew I was saving up my “official” love life for someone truly epic.
That’s when I re-encountered him, The One Who Got Away, on vacation with my family in the mountains.
In real life, if there were a dah category called “The Guy Who Gives Lots of Love Advice to his Female Friends,” then this week’s dah guy would be a perfect fit. Well, there’s not! But lucky us, we got to pick his brain and glean his post-dating wisdom anyway. Keep reading for some male advice on relationship sex, long-distance flirtation and why men are such assholes.
To submit your questions for next week’s column, email us at with “Ask A dah Guy” in the subject line!
I do not know this person. LinkedIn is officially not safe.
Perhaps at some point I accepted an invitation to connect with this man because we are relatively in the same industry, but I do not personally know this person. We have never met.
I don’t know about all you other professional adult people but, I’m on LinkedIn to engage in business. I’m there to make new connections, explore new opportunities, and gauge movement my industry.
I’m not there to flirt. (Even if I am the biggest one I know, I understand boundaries.)
I knew everything was going to change when I turned thirty and got married in two consecutive days. But I figured there was no reason to space out these major life events. Bring it on, I told myself. Let’s see what the future holds.
Then nothing changed. My husband and I had been together for a year and a half, and we had moved into a new apartment in the months preceding our wedding. I had already phased out my dah of guys and adjusted to a warm and easy routine of contented coupledom. I’d also gone through a ‘process of strategic career adjustment’ (as I deemed it) and was finally embedded in a creative day-to-day of reading about medieval art and philosophy, attempting to write plays, screenplays and novels, and playing music on my piano, flute and guitar.
My world had changed without my noticing it. I realized, with some shock, that I had changed as well.
What had happened to the flitting, pugnacious, amorous and shameless twenty-something lady I had been? How had she disappeared, fading away even from my mind, absolutely, and without saying goodbye?
I became introspective. I had changed, but how and into what? Who had I become?
My favorite English teacher had always said, “people don’t change, they just become more themselves.” I felt this observation to be true. I had evolved, or returned, to a more authentic version of myself. But I was caught pondering: How did the disparate decades of my life cohere? What the heck had I been doing then and what the hell was I doing now?
Read the rest at 40:20 Vision, where a celebration of ‘thirty-somethings’ is underway!
photo credit: Aisha Singleton Photography
Day 11,065
Dear Oprah 4,
Adulthood is the best. There is so much freedom! All you have to do is fulfill your responsibilities and the rest is basically up to you. Sure there are drawbacks, like cleaning out your own fridge, but that is the small disgusting price you pay for being able to vote, rent a car, and pay for your own square dancing lessons.
Sometimes I feel like a little kid walking around doing grown-up things in grown-up shoes, as if tricking people into believing I’m a human wasn’t enough, so I further tricked them into believing I’m an adult. But the evidence is clear: I can drive to Taco Bell and get nachos at 1am, legally buy fireworks in 16 states, and there is no rollercoaster for which I am too short. The privileges of adulthood are numerous.
The first time I ever felt this kind of freedom was when my human friends and I would go for long bike rides during summer vacation. There were no schedules to stick to and no rules to follow. Our parentals were like, “Here’s a quarter for the pay phone, check in with us in 5 hours, peace,” and off we’d ride. They probably thought we were going on some adorable suburban-kid adventures, like tanning in the park or graffitiing abandoned properties, but no. We had other priorities.
My friends and I didn’t care about anything on Earth except hanging out at Aldo’s Pizzeria, every day, where we would get pizza and discuss the important tween things happening in our lives. Aldo’s was in a strip mall that was sort of like the town hub. If you wanted a Coolatta or a haircut, you went there. There was also a bank, a dry cleaners, a pharmacy, a deli, and a Foodtown. Aldo’s was in the middle of everything, so we would sit outside and people-watch the crap out of everyone’s comings and goings. It was a place to see and be seen, to leisurely sip Coolattas, and to admire the complex gumball machine. But superb ambiance wasn’t the only reason Aldo’s was our preferred destination.
All of the Aldo’s employees were males in their 20s, and they all had tattoos and knew how to toss pizza dough in the air. Everyone who worked there was greasy in the best way. We wanted them to think we were cool so badly. It was with this goal in mind that we set forth upon our bikes each day. While other kids our age foolishly wasted their summers earning paychecks as junior camp counselors, we were heading off to flirting practice.
Jess & Becky here, harkening back with the title of this post to our original blog, WTF Is Up With My Love Life?! which spawned Dating & Hookup and led us to becoming writers.
We are psyched to be participating in a “blog roll” of authors contributing insights on the creative process. We were invited by our friend and author of chick lit with a brain, Maria Murnane, whose most recent book, Cassidy Lane was just published. And in a 21st century twist, you can friend the heroine, Waverly Bryson, of her Perfect on Paper book series on Facebook here.
So…how, what, when, where and why does writing work for us?
Day 10,979
Dear Oprah 4,
Wonderful news today!
The Council has deemed the research I conducted on humans during my 20s a sparkling success, and they were more than impressed by my babyhuman-themed transmission! They loved me so, so much Oprah, like elderly people love well-known human Shirley Temple. They were so, so appreciative of all my hard work. I mean, they didn’t say this exactly, but I could tell from looking into their super-reflective eyes that was how they felt. Their admiration and pride did not require words to be communicated.
What they did say with words was this:
“Agent USL04, we think you did an OK job so we’re going let you stay on Earth to continue your research, and we are trusting that you are now self-motivated enough to keep this thing on track. We want you to continue to build the identity of your human avatar, gain the trust of as many humans as possible, and gradually unlock their behavioral patterns and most tantalizing secrets. Be as sneaky as you need to be.
You are to proceed into your next decade in this manner, and we will heretofore expect one transmission from you every full lunar cycle, forever, until your earth body expires, which means you have a great deal of work ahead of you unless you get hit by a bus or something. Understand this: you can no longer be lazy about stuff. We know from prior research that the humans often experience great angst about why they’re even on Earth in the first place; What does it all mean, What is my true purpose, etc. Well, L, in case you were wondering this also, we’re telling you straight up that spying on humans is literally your purpose in life, ok? Mystery solved.
Please remember that as scientists we deal strictly in factual information. Therefore, you must constantly try to maintain a balance between living the true human experience and getting so caught up in it that you forget why you’re there, like you did with Transmissions #1 and #2, which were both terrible. This is not a game, dammit! The information you are extracting is being put to very important use! A lot is riding on the efficiency of our ISA agents, and we need you to stay absolutely focused. You are not typically focused even slightly, which is why I’m pointing this out specifically.
I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that no one, under any circumstances, can know of your extraterrestrial origins. No matter how emotionally connected you may become to the humans, or how badly you want them to all pay attention to you at happy hour, you must never divulge the truth.
The worst thing about breakups is when they never happen. When you get dumped, when a guy or girl breaks up with you, then you can watch Almie’s video and take her sage advice, and you will suffer and grieve, but you will survive. But what about the non-breakup? The disappearance? The ghosting? The slow, inexorable self-removal of a person from your life, via unreturned text, via sudden, unexplained, constant busy-ness, via silence.
You think you want closure. Or you think it’s “just a phase” and that s/he really is that busy right now. Or you make a list of all the things you did wrong, all the signs you should have seen, all the ways in which you let yourself get too invested. Too vulnerable. Too needy. Too independent. Too Much Too Soon, or Too Little Too Late. You blame, blame, blame, him, her, or yourself. You dwell and obsess and it all spirals down into anger, hurt and sense of helplessness or is it hopelessness? No. The sadistic thing about the non-breakup, the slow fade, the disappearance is that there remains a tantalizing sense of hope. You guys had something! It was real! Technically speaking…it hasn’t even ended! Maybe he/she really is just that busy right now!
And so it goes, but that is not the worst part.
Sarah and Sara weren’t in a fight. They were best friends and had ruthlessly stuck by each other since middle school, when there had been three other Sarah’s and two other Sara’s in their grade. So they would never fight now, let alone “over a guy.” They were not in a fight over Mark.
But they could disagree about who had the right to email Mark first after he and Bev broke up.
As it turned out, they had both emailed him that morning, shortly after learning about the breakup via mass text from Aaron, who always knew the gossip. Aaron had suggested that the friend group rally to support Mark, because Bev had, in fact, been sleeping with her good-looking Russian co-worker, whom she had nicknamed Sergei the Great while swearing he was gay. Mark’s ongoing jealousy of Sergei had seemed so mean-spirited that everyone had interpreted it as insecure paranoia. They had all, over the course of many months and in group emails as well as one-on-one, persuaded Mark to “tone it down” and “trust Bev.”
Now they all felt guilty and complicit in her deceit. As if the glint in her eye every time she said “Sergei the Great” hadn’t been a dead giveaway.
I am an alien from outer space. I was banished here by the rulers of my home planet for a perceived misdeed, to observe life on earth while disguised as a human female. I am called L.
It all started a while back, when I got pinched for intergalactic shoplifting.
I was just minding my own business one day, doing a little light shopping, when out of nowhere The Intergalactic Criminal Police Organization, also known as Space INTERPOL, also known as SPINTERPOL, apprehended me and took me to Space Court. They were like, “She’s guilty!” and I was like, “No I’m not!” and they were like, “Yea you are, we have you on film at multiple Trader Yoda’s locations throughout the Local Cluster, your face is clearly visible in every instance, blah, blah, blah.”
Look, obviously I am innocent of these charges. Obviously, a being with my level of integrity would never do a thing like this. Obviously those surveillance videos were totally fraudulent because I was obviously framed.
But the jury didn’t see it that way. Instead of sending me to Space Prison, however, they decided to hand me over to the Council of Interdimensional Species Activity, so I could work off my alleged debt to society. That is how I came to be exiled on Earth. I was sentenced here to do research.
It’s hard being a space alien living inside of a person. There are still so many things I can’t get right! How not to act weird at funerals, for example. Remembering to send cards to people, for another. There are a ton of rules to keep track of: eat, sleep, brush teeth, obey social cues, avoid creepy eye contact! It’s taken me a long time to get used to how things work within the confines of society, and it’s hard to balance it all while trying to stay focused on my mission.
Every 10 Earth Years I am required to beam a transmission back home and report my findings to the ISA Council. The Council reviews my performance and determines the effectiveness of my research here. If the review is good, I get to stay and continue my work. If it’s bad, I get booted from the program, leave the Earth, and serve my full term in Space Prison, where I’ll no doubt face unspeakable horrors.
Unfortunately, my transmissions have a history of not going very smoothly.