EASY BUSY taught me that sex can be a complementary activity with people we like, or even don’t like, and there’s never a presupposed commitment. Unless the guy says there is, in which case you have to keep the friendly sex with others a secret. Then, of course, he finds out and all hell breaks loose. She didn’t use those exact words, but that was the observable outcome. After college I ran away to the neighboring Czech Republic.
People meet and find out they have something in common. They bond over having been to Paris or that they were both overcharged by an auto mechanic and had to complain. If there’s a drinky-up (and why wouldn’t there be), the conversationalists grab each other by whatever keeps them upright.
I approached a girl in a Czech club who had her arm in a cast and asked what had happened. She stared quietly, so I repeated the question in English. I learned about an accident and that she was from Hungary. I asked where in Hungary.
- “You wouldn’t know it, in the south.”
- “Szeged? Nagykanizsa?”
- “Whaaat? You know Nagykanizsa? I’m from there. I’ve been here six months, you’re the first one who knows my hometown.”
- “What? Who doesn’t know Nagykanizsa?”
I bungled the subsequent date with answers like this:
- “So what do you do in your free time?”
- “I hunt down girls.”
I was unemployed and worried about the dwindling money, I couldn’t concentrate on the cutest slimmest blonde. It took me half an hour to notice the cast was off. I can’t compartmentalize. Had it gone better, woman number seven would have been number eight, which would make me look reckless. Or I would now teach László to drive and Erzsébet to say nem.
It’s the simplest task in life: choose one person and resist others. Yet nobody can do it. The marriage certificate certainly doesn’t help, it somehow encourages to be more whorisome. Why do humans do it when they know what happens next, the cheated partners do the following:
- They leave the second they learn about the indiscretion.
- Leave, but first make a scene.
- Leave and start an acrimonious legal battle.
- Make a scene, throw vases into the wall, but stay.
- Say nothing and endure years of misery while the betrayal repeats itself.
- Say nothing, endure years of misery, snap, and kill the son of a bitch / the bitch.
I went on a date with a nice brunette and she invited me over. Nothing happened, she put out only pumpkin seeds, peanuts, and potato chips. Then she asked me:
- “What’s your position on cheating?”
- “I’m against it.”
- “I would take the guy to a cliff and push him off.”
I really tried to be promiscuous. Squeeze a different set of boobs every day and be deliriously happy. Turns out I can’t. As soon as I persuade one woman to let me at her peripherals, and until I scare her away with my peculiar habits, I stop making advances on others. I also have one watch, one phone, and one 14-year-old laptop with a functioning CD burner. I have three neckties, but I only like the blue one. If something is good, it is sufficient for it to be singular.
Sometimes I wonder what I’d do if I were famous and women offered themselves to me. How would I talk myself out of that tight spot? I can only have so many headaches.