Free I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner Page B

came to pass, and nobody was calling me, or calling me back.
    Merrily I devoured fuel for my one-woman war against mating protocol, reading book after book featuring variations on the economic principle of supply and demand. And then came He’s Just Not That Into You , which provided women the tremendous relief of knowing that they were simply not terribly liked by the objects of their affections.
    I took umbrage with the idea that if he didn’t call, he wasn’t “into you”—that any guy who was in his right mind would know, if he liked a girl, how to chase her down until she was his. But what about the guys who weren’t in their right minds? The ones who were a little off or lost, or damaged from past experiences, or had no clue that they were supposed to chase a girl down like a hound on a scent? That book made the assumption that if a guy didn’t do what he should, even if he liked you just fine, then you didn’t want him anyway.
    But what if there turns out to be a lot of guys who don’t know what to do? And what if you meet one and you know he’s screwed up—like he’d been messed up to the point where he seems like an abused stray, whether it’s the kind that snaps at you or cowers—but you like him enough to take him home with you anyway? What if you thought you could change him or teach him how to treat you, or you just wanted to enjoy the good parts of him and ignore the bad ones until someone better came along?

    THAT WAS where I was, making the best of the turkeys in my path. And never did hearing that the guys I dated didn’t actually like me ever provide comfort. That book was a sneaky way of reminding women that they don’t like the way they’re treated by guys who may in fact be perfectly “into them,” but are otherwise dysfunctional. Because if a guy who knows what to do isn’t into you , you don’t need a book to tell you that. You get dumped or blown off after he pursues you like a contender, and then it hurts like crazy, because you know you lost out on someone who knew what to do.
    But when you’re young, and you’re habitually dating the damaged, and they don’t come through, you have to make the conscious choice to separate the columns in your head that say “This is who I am” and “This is how I am being treated.” And then you have to figure out how to let go of somebody who’s gone, not because you’re pacified in the realization that you’re not liked, but because you figure out that maybe you’re the one who doesn’t like him . Not just how he acts, but who he is. And then you have to decide if you want to keep going out with guys you don’t think are great, or if you like yourself enough to hang out for a while on your own.
    In no way was I in that place yet. I didn’t like myself that much, and I certainly didn’t want to be alone. I needed to make my own mistakes to learn from, and I wanted to see more of what was out there—even if it was ugly.

power of three
     
     
     
    T here was something a little off about Ryan. He didn’t seem Nike Cult/BTK Killer/Octomom-crazy, but something about him was not quite right. Maybe it was that he slept under his friend’s foosball table every night. Maybe it was his assortment of nervous tics, his clipped speech, his random laughter. Maybe it was his occasional, instance-inappropriate intensity.
    Ryan picked me up at Crunch Gym, where I was red-f aced after a twenty-minute walk on the treadmill (jealous?). We went out for coffee, then drinks, and then I took him back to my dorm room and we made out to Aimee Mann.
    Ryan was a really good-looking guy in a potato bisque kind of way—he had blue eyes like turquoise jewelry and creamy, starchy skin. But he was a lousy kisser in the worst of both worlds: sloppy, and a pecker. Maybe it was because he was one of those handsome guys who aren’t great in bed because they don’t need to try hard. So, in the interest of salvaging our make-out experience, and because I’ve