POSTUDIUM

A couple of years ago, when I was bartending to support my flailing acting career, I started dating this girl for a couple of months who happened to be the older sister of one of a male server who worked with me.  She was shy and introverted, yet she was a firecracker in the sack.

Unfortunately, every time I looked at her, all I saw was her younger bro and it immediately turned me off.  I ended up breaking up with her five days before Christmas (shitty, I know) and then she avoided coming into the bar for months on end.

It was during that time, I met Kat.  She was eight years younger than me, wild, played sport, drank beer, listened to The Smiths and she surprisingly knew where the origin of the word ‘frak’ came from.  In short, she was a man’s kryptonite: The ‘One of the Guys’ Gal.

We immediately connected because she seemed low-maintenance, easy going and made every curse word that came out of her mouth sound strangely erotic.  She made me feel young and alive—but then months down the line, I realized that although it was easy to fall for Kat, it was extremely difficult to maintain a long-term connection with her.

When we started dating online, she was a girl that held a lot of mystery to her.  She stood out from the crowd simply because she never had a group of female friends around her.  Later I realized she didn’t have any female friends.  In fact, all of her friends were dudes and although I am secure enough to be comfortable with my girlfriend having male companions, I wasn’t comfortable with the fact that she seemed to go OUT OF HER WAY to claim only men in her life as “platonic” buddies.

I then became conscious of how utterly immature she was and I also noticed her incessant need for constant praise and attention from men—even if they were just the sad, old regulars who came to the bar I worked at every day.  Sure, she was “one of the guys,” but she was always the one that gave herself that title.  I started to see how more insecure and envious she was than other women who actually didn’t negate the estrogen flowing in their veins.

I saw how vain she really was and how her artificial confidence would show every time she was surrounded by a gaggle of her guy friends talking about her love of the band PRIMUS  (The band that performed the South Park theme song.) and how I wanted to smack the smug and self-satisfied grin off her affected face every time she was able to get an overly-excited reaction from a man who shared the same unbridled passion for Danny McBride as she did. (Or least I wanted another woman to smack her.)

It was then I had the epiphany that “one of the guys” girls are not more fun to be around-despite how often they exclaim the opposite.   A woman with only male friends is actually not low maintenance at all.  They are actually so high maintenance that they need four to ten loser guys around them to keep their precious egos properly stroked.  Does that sound like the fun and laid back type of chick you want to date?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

One day while Kat was at home researching more male-driven conversation topics, (i.e. watching Breaking Bad DVD box sets) I was working the bar and noticed the girl I once dated and dumped sitting by herself in the back.  I noticed she was reading Elmore Leonard’s Road Dogs and blasting Roy Ayer’s Searching in her headphones.  I went over to say hello and instead of throwing a much-deserved drink in my face, she was all smiles.  We talked for hours and caught up on things and then I realized that this was the girl I SHOULD HAVE been with.  She wasn’t “one of the guys” but rather she was “one of a kind.”  Unfortunately, it was too late for me because some other guy already snagged her up.

I said good-bye to her and watched her walk away with her boyfriend that was waiting outside the bar.  It pissed me off that I had let someone that incredible go for somebody else who had four to ten male shoulders to cry on if our relationship didn’t work out.  (By the way, that’s exactly what happened!) It was my karma after all.

What I’m trying to say is that although dating a girl claiming to be “one of the guys” may sound appealing at first, it’s generally best to avoid pursuing a long-term relationship with them.  Stick with ladies that are not afraid of being vocal about their own interests and don’t pretend to like things just because other women don’t.