At Least Half of the Boys in L.A. are White Trash.

I had never considered myself a serial dater until one of my younger sister's friends accused me of being one. When I was younger, I maintained a relationship that lasted three years, and as dysfunctional as it was, I felt as if the endurance alone spoke volumes for my levels of commitment and loyalty. I learned, eventually, that long term does not equal healthy. After that ordeal, I jumped right into a 9 month relationship with a guy who was ten years older than me. This relationship should have been a simple rebound, but it turned into this dramatic "let's get married" type of thing that was completely ridiculous. This guy is the only one that I straight up have to lie about when people ask me if we dated because he was about as smart as a jellyfish and he was bonkers. I normally answer these did-you-date-so-and-so questions with a clueless, "Who?" and drop the subject.

Anyway, after the last guy that I dated, I decided that my pattern of failures might have to do with not really KNOWING the people well before I start dating them. It seems like we (we = people who date) always jump right into the boyfriend/girlfriend thing before establishing a friendship first. What a stupid idea. This is extremely common in Western culture. You meet someone, you go out on one of two dates, BAM! You're dating. You are officially the routine wedding date, funeral date, have your own section under his family's Christmas tree person. Scary stuff. After I realized that this is a really bad idea, I shifted my mindset and my pattern of behavior. I decided that I'm not going to proclaim on facebook that I am in relationship with anyone again until I actually get to know that person on a friend level first. I decided to actually invest some time in the foundation before I hurry on into the "Can you pick me up from the airport?" stage. Thoughts: isn't it stupid to be really good friends with a guy that you'd never date, but give a certain level of intimacy and call someone, whom you just met and hardly know, your boyfriend? This just isn't logical to me.

So, we are back at the serial dating thing. Since I've moved to L.A., I've been on lots of dates. I have not DATED anyone specifically; I've just gone out on dates with interesting people. I see nothing wrong with going to lunch or dinner with a guy to get to know them. It makes sense, right? You go out, share a meal, talk about stuff, and start building the foundation for a friendship. Why does this have to come with all of these weird expectations? Let me tell you about my most recent white trash experience and about how I am getting sorely burned out in my dealings with the opposite sex.

I met this guy last week at a club. Mistake number one. I am seeing this repetitive sequence of white trashiness with boys that I meet at clubs. My dad always says that I'll never meet good people in clubs. I am not a fan of blanket statements, but overall, he's probably got something there. So anyway, home boy seems like a nice person, so at the end of the night, I give him my number. He calls me a few days later and says that he'd like to take me to lunch on Friday. This seems like a good idea to me, because lunch is platonic. Lunch = safe. So we talk for a long while on the phone about various things. He tells me that he's a professional poker player. You've got to be effing kidding me. I have no problems being friends with a pro poker player, but I am in no way interested in dating one. I tell him that I am interested in being friends. He asks me some questions about my upbringing and family and all that and I answer his questions. He says, "I'll call you on Thursday so we can make plans." I say okay.

He calls me last night and repeats himself about forty times, recirculating everything that we'd discussed a few nights ago during our previous phone conversation. I dusted my entire house and windexed everything in my apartment because I was so bored. So then at the end of the conversation, our dialogue was as follows:

Poker Player: Maybe we should just do lunch on Sunday. I mean, there will be a lot of traffic tomorrow.... Ooooh wait. You go to church on Sundays, right?

Me: Yeah, plus I have plans for Sunday afternoon.

Poker Player: I just think that it will take me like half an hour to drive to your area of town, then there will be all this traffic, and if we have lunch... We're talking like, 3 hours of my time, here.

Me: If you don't want to take me to lunch, it's cool, dude. It's not a big deal.

Poker Player: Honestly, I'm just very concerned about our differing cultures.

Me: Huh?

Poker Player: Your whole Southern thing. I just think we should talk on the phone more before we invest any time in hanging out.

Me: Southern thing? What?

(WTF is going on right now?)

Poker Player: Well, you're just really into your family and into being a Christian and going to church. And I just don't think we should invest any time in this until we talk on the phone more and find out whether or not it makes sense for us to go to lunch.

WARNING: WHITE TRASH, WHITE TRASH, WHITE TRASH, WHITE TRASH!

So, I tell him that I appreciate his honesty, and he says he'll call me on Sunday, and we hang up. I assure you that I will not be answering the phone if his white trash ass calls me on Sunday. First of all, I thought that it was very nice of me to accommodate him for lunch, because I have no intentions of dating a professional poker player. Hello, dumbass. I am in grad school. I don't have time to date people who don't have goals. Secondly, me being from the South has nothing to do with my Christian beliefs. Those aren't congruent. Thirdly, if a guy isn't going to drive and deal with traffic to take me to lunch, he is clearly selfish white trash, and I'm not interested. The end.

So, the whole point of this is to say that I meet a lot of boys who fit this mold. I am getting burned out on boys not opening my door when I'm about to get in the car. Guys, a lesson for you to learn is as follows: if a girl is about to get into your car, open her mother effing door. This applies to platonic friendships, too. You do it because it's courteous, not because you are proposing marriage. It seems like boys in LA are so concerned with their own selfish nonsense that they won't take five seconds to be courteous. My best guy friend called me about a week ago and asked me if I can see myself getting married and settling down in LA. I can see myself in LA forever, but because I meet so many untrained men, I really can't see myself getting married to someone from out here. I guess it's possible, but not probable. Plus, I meet a lot of nomads. These people come out here just to say they lived in LA for a season or two, but they plan to move back to grass roots America so they can actually buy a house and have a family. This is a noble idea, but I immediately write these guys off as prospectives, because I refuse to move to Omaha or Savannah or wherever the crap they plan to move to build their white bread lives, because that isn't what I want for my life.

Sigh. I guess I'm writing this to say that I am a big advocate of categorizing. People always get miffed about labels. It isn't right to judge a person completely by the label that you give them, and I understand that. BUT! I think that it makes sense to put people in different categories so you know the material with which you are working. I mean, if I meet a guy who says that he's a pro poker player, I automatically cast him in the friend lot. Or the white trash lot, apparently. If I meet a guy who opens my door and isn't complaining about traffic to pick me up, I put him in the prospectives category. If I meet a guy who says he's moving back to wherever after a short stent in L.A., he's in the friend zone. If I meet someone who has proper etiquette and a solid education, he's in the prospectives. Despite the category that the guy falls into, I am far from being ready to take on a romantic relationship. That's for dang sure. Are there are any guys in LA who have college degrees, real jobs, manners, and morals?