Peeves

I am not a tidy person. Not even close. But strangely enough, I am pretty anal about two things in my bathroom. One, I hate it when someone uses my toothpaste and squeezes from some random spot in the middle. Can't you tell that I have meticulously been squeezing from the bottom up? And if you borrow my toothpaste or anything else of mine, like condiments, please do not leave a sticky mess on the cap, and if you do leave a sticky mess, please don't wipe it off with your finger because God only knows where that was last. Two, I don't like it when the toilet paper roll is replaced and it's positioned so the tp comes out underneath the roll, as opposed to coming out over the roll. Follow through...

One of the boys

I pride myself on being the kind of girl who can be one of the boys. As a senior in high school, I was determined to jump off of a cliff in Great Falls with the rest of my guy friends. The girls were mostly just laying out on the rocks surrounding the pool of water the boys were jumping into, and I wanted to be the girl who could do what the boys did. You had to clear this little ledge of rocks where the water was shallow (maybe two feet) before you got to the deep part of the pool, where it was safe to jump. At the last minute, I got scared and decided not to jump, but the momentum I had worked up from the little run to the edge of the cliff was enough to send me over, so down I went into two feet of water, landing square on my heels on rocks. I ended up with internal bleeding on both of my heels and a large gash on my left heel that has left a scar to this day. The boys had to piggyback me two miles to get back to the car.

Life hasn't really changed much for me. I've been out of high school for almost six years now. I find that I'm still constantly chasing after the boys, trying to keep up with them in this futile battle to prove... what? I don't even know anymore. That I'm a really cool girl? That I can be one of the guys? That I'm just as capable as any of them? What the heck am I trying to prove?

I work in a testosterone-overloaded commodity brokerage house with fifty-some guys and seven chicks (though there are only three female brokers). It's an environment few women can handle, much less appreciate. Imagine being trapped in a locker room with a football team ten hours a day, five days a week. My office is the post-grad equivalent of a college football team locker room. I wouldn't go as far as calling it an NFL locker room because I suspect that NFL guys are used to having female reporters or trainers around from time to time. The guys I work with? Not so much. I think they're not sure what to make of me: I'm a closer. (Or an opener... I never really understood why when you close someone, it really means you've managed to get them to open an account with you. Why don't they call it opening? I digress.) I open more accounts than most guys at the firm. I am privy to an inordinate amount of information pertaining to my coworkers' private lives. I know intimate things about their wives, girlfriends, flings, and one-night stands. Things I don't want to know. At all. At times, I have been implicated in their private lives. (Let's be honest; many have fallen prey to the temptation that is inter-office canoodling. Plus, the boys at my work aren't half bad. Looks-wise, that is.) We're all entitled to make mistakes, right? Riiiight. Anyway, the boys' favorite topic of conversation (aside from work and market talk) is girl talk. Generally speaking, when they're talking about women, it's not exactly respectful. But I've heard them on the phone with their significant others, and it's amazing how quickly they turn into these huge mushballs, telling their gals how much they love and miss them. There's something about putting a bunch of alpha males into a room together that brings out the worst in them. Get them one on one, and they're actually thinking, feeling human beings.

My roommates and I are also very close to this group of guys who live a couple of blocks away from us. My roommate Meaghan went to college with a couple of guys from Bangor, Maine. Adam, who is her best guy friend from college, pretty much grew up with all of the guys he lives with; some from the age of four, others from junior and senior high. They're like brothers. Adam convinced Ned and Matt to move out here after he'd been here a while, and they then convinced Drew and Ryan to move out here as well. Drew and Ryan have set up residence on the couches for the time being. So the five boys, collectively, are known as our Bangor Boys. We spend most of our spare time with them in some capacity or another. Eating, hiking, partying, watching tv, or wiping out (well, that's just Ryan and me since we're trying to learn how to surf)... we do it together! It's strange to see more than two days go by without seeing a Bangor Boy. Their conversation is not so much centered around how much game they have or the chicks they bagged the other night, but we talk about pretty much everything all around. A few of us went out to eat Indian food the other day and a comparison was drawn between the saag (spinach curry) and a dookie. First of all, if your dookie is that green, it should definitely not be discussed at the dinner table. Second of all, I like saag! I don't like comparisons being drawn between the food I am eating and whatever it is that's in your toilet bowl. Apparently, the boys have an ongoing contest as to who can produce the longest turd. And they take pictures on camera phones and send it to each other. Gross. I will not say which of the boys participate in this venture in the interest of shielding them from shame.

After a rowdy Cinco de Mayo party, I went on a spur of the moment surfing/ camping trip with some guy friends from UVA to Salsipuerdes, Mexico. My little bro Nate was in town this weekend to hang out and surf, and Dave was in town working. (The two of them, by a strange twist of fate, are in Nicaragua right now on a surfing trip, and they surfed together all that weekend.) I hadn't planned on doing anything crazy that weekend because I figured I'd be a wreck after Cinco, but that was not the case at all. I had a minor headache and no plans, so I decided to go to Baja with Nate, Dave, and Dave's friends Rob and Colin. I'll dedicate an entire entry to this trip later on, but for the purposes of this entry, let's talk about nudity. I have never met anyone who likes being naked as much as Nate and Dave like being naked. LOVE being naked. I understand that when a guy puts his wetsuit on, he's usually naked underneath it. I appreciate that it is a liberating feeling to be able to get naked. But really, there are limits to a woman's desire to see butt cracks and penises. In some way, I felt insulted that they were so nonchalant about changing in front of me. I couldn't feign the same degree of nonchalance. I had to avert my eyes. This trip cemented my relationship with Nate and Dave as a strictly platonic one. I might as well have been a dude, for all they cared. And while I was strangely flattered that they thought of me as "one of the boys," I felt almost a little insulted. Am I not a woman? Have I not a vagina?!?!

When Dave woke up from napping by Colin's pool and he had to tuck his semi-hardon into the waistband of his board shorts and the tip fell out, I decided I needed to detox from boys for a little while. An overwhelming urge to reclaim my femininity swept over me and I resolved to overcompensate for all of the boy time I'd had by engaging in over-the-top girly activities. Like watching chick flicks and giving myself a facial and painting my toenails and dressing up and wearing red lipstick. Unfortunately, my chick flick partner bailed on me and I didn't get around to giving myself a facial or painting my toenails, so I settled for red lipstick and a night out in mixed company.

In conclusion, boys are gross, but I like them anyway. However, let it be noted that I am ecstatic about being female. Although I may not be the prototype for a proper lady, I like being treated like one from time to time, and sometimes I'll even play the part. But only sometimes. Follow through...