You Got the Date, Hoo-Rah

So Prince Charming has jumped over the high voltage hurdles and has managed to slay all of the dragons, warranting a date with the duchess. Whether your Christian Singles account paid off or the guy you folded your laundry next to didn’t mind seeing your bleach-stained Justin Bieber hoodie... you have a date. Congrats. You’re on the right track. If you paid attention to the last post, hopefully you kept an eye out for any red flags. Don’t ever doubt the fact that your face is far too pretty to end up in somebody’s freezer. 

Now, leading up to the date is crucial. So he flirted with you, maybe you casually had eye-fornication... he made you smile. Blah. Blah. Blah. Here is the real kicker... did he have a big enough pair to confront you and ask for your number. This is very important. If he’s lolly-gagging around you with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and does nothing to harp on his animalistic instincts, you have no time for him. What’s that NSYNC song with the marionettes? Yes, bye bye bye. As my darling grandmother used to say: “Men are like buses. If you miss one, you wait five minutes and catch the next one.” 

If he does ask for your number, you kindly flash a smile and give it to him, only if you have sexual attraction to him. I’m not saying you should shell out your digits to a Ted Kaczynski look-alike. You can always do the trusty ‘If I shake my head slow enough, it looks like I don’t speak English.’ Use your instinct, ladies. If you decide it’s worth your precious time and you give it to him, pretend that the interaction didn’t even occur and go about your busy duchess ways. If he calls you, he gets a gold star. If he texts you, we give him a slap on the wrist by waiting 2 hours to respond with a quick and boring obligated text. If you don’t hear from him at all, his loss.

You keep your responses short and witty. You don’t want to send these wishy-washy lol-laden hahahahahahahahahaha texts. In all actuality, nobody ever laughs as much as they make it sound. Unless, they’re texting me, of course. We’ll keep this short. Tune-in tomorrow for advice on text-etiquette. Sext-etiquette will come later. Just kidding, that’s a goddamn free-for-all. Have at it. So you occasionally text, please make sure he’s not annoying you and blowing up your phone like your seventh grade boyfriend during study hall. You are an independent adult. Make it seem like you’re really a lot busier than you are and you don’t have time for him, even if you spend the bulk of your day searching Pinterest for additions to your Harry Potter board. (points to self) This will make the hamster in his brain start convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Men are babies, they worry. Make him sweat. Grrr. 

Let him arrange the date. It is his job. However, whatever you do, do not let him surprise you. This will end terribly. Let’s take a short trip back to a quick relationship I had with FireFighter. We met at a bar in Boston, quickly went on a few dates, hit it off and things were great. We were at an early stage in our relationship: PG-13 sleepovers, lots of dinners, wine-drinking, laughter, happiness, all of that Taylor Swift-inspired-silliness. FireFighter wanted to surprise me with a fun day trip. In return, I wanted to surprise FireFighter with my brand new Jessica Simpson clip-in hair extensions. It was July so I put on some sunless tanner, clipped my faux locks in for a Kate Middleton meets Jenna Jameson look, picked out a Vineyard Vines linen dress and strapped on some cork wedges. It was quite the ensemble. As he pulled up to my apartment I stared in horror as he was proudly sporting a topless jeep. I never cringe at the idea of topless, but let’s be real. I couldn’t explain to FireFighter that my porn-star locks would have been lost in the wind if I so much as stepped into that thing. I swallowed my pride, stepped into the Jeep and held my head in my lap like I were trying to avoid motion sickness over the Bermuda Triangle. Fantastic. The surprise ended greatly as we drove for TWO AND A HALF HOURS to a beach resort. I quickly escaped to the bathroom, took out my white-girl weave and shoved it into my tote faster than you can say ‘train-wrack.’ I exited that bathroom looking like Courtney Love after a 5 day bender. Fantastic. With that being said, surprises are terrible. You want to be mentally prepared, physically prepared and emotionally prepared. 

Clothing is a big deal. You don’t want to show up looking like Amy Winehouse, but you also don’t want to show up looking like Barbara Bush. Go for the Destiny’s Child rule. If you’re going to show legs, cover your top with at least a three-quarter sleeve. Blazers are a girl’s best friend. If you want to show off your perfect twins, flaunt a perfectly fitting bustier, but be sure to wear jeans. Of course, you want to wear heels. Doesn’t have to be an intense Victoria Beckham heel, but anything that elevates you. It will make you feel better, trust me. Just don’t drink one too many glasses of Cotes du Rhone and slide across the dining room into a patron’s soup du jour. Never a pretty sight. (not from experience or anything)

So he tells you all about the date he has planned. Great. Plan on meeting him there. It is 2012. For your own safety, avoid getting in his car. Yes it would be a lot more convenient if you could immediately spot the built-in breathalyzer or stash of pizza boxes in the back seat, but these observations will just have to wait. So you casually meet him at the restaurant. The restaurant is key. I find that French restaurants really are the way to go. Indian restaurants tend to reenact the Battle Of the Bulge on your intestines. Sushi can be risky, you don’t know what kind of quality you will get. Italian portions are ridiculous and will leave you with a carb bloat and breath that could stop a clock. Chain restaurants are an insult, and pubs are a no-no. (He’s not meeting his buddies for a burger and some hockey, let’s be honest) French it is. 

If he has half a brain he will have made a reservation. If you get there early it is a good idea to make your way over to the bar for a drink. This is key. Yes, I did rip apart men who drink white wine and estrogen-induced cocktails, so judging him based upon his drink is perfectly acceptable. Manhattan drinkers are hot, scotch drinkers really get me going, beer drinkers are ok just not on the first date and wine is always a trusted option. Martinis are perfect as long as he doesn’t order a lemon drop with a sugared rim. AKA they should have three things: vodka/gin, dry vermouth, twist/olives. I’m a purist by nature, don’t mess up a good thing... Rum is kind of iffy, let him order that when he’s taking you to Atlantis for a week... yes, these things do enter our brains.

From there, do your thing. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T ORDER JUST A SALAD. You will look like an idiot. Whoever the hell came up with that rule... was an anorexic basket case. If you’re worried about looking like a binge-eater, order salmon. You can even go to town with eating asparagus... You’re not going to be giving it up on the first date anyway, RIGHT?! Right. Duchesses don’t do that. Make him sweat. Men are hunters, or something like that... 

Let him decide if he wants dessert. Hopefully he will order it, it makes him not appear to be a cheap a-hole and it’s cute to dig your spoons together and to fight over chocolate. Chocolate releases dopamine, almost like an orgasm... It will get your minds acting up. BUT QUICKLY MAKE IT STOP. Duchesses don’t do that... Don’t be that awkward girl that stands by her car with her shoulders slumped. (never do that, chest out. always) Initiate the goodbye, you don’t have to tell him how much fun you had, this isn’t a Nicolas Sparks novel. Thank him for dinner, which I know he paid for because he surpassed all of the previous tests, and hug him goodbye. If he’s not a complete pussy he’ll make a move. Don’t do more than kiss him though. If he absolutely skeeved you out and repeatedly talked about his illegitimate child, his ex-girlfriend or his mother all throughout dinner, you can even shake his hand, hop in your car and do a burn-out. You’re a duchess. You have life safely nestled away in your Michael Kors clutch next to your rollerball and your Bloomingdales credit car.... see ya later, sucka. 

That’s pretty much all the insight I have time for today, dearies. Must be running... Just another piece on how a post-grad can have plans of survival on this sandbar. Keep party-rocking and looking pretty, dolls. ex oh ex oh

The Duchess' Guide to Finding the One

Let’s be honest, maybe the “daddy issues” card is thrown around a little too often. It’s the perfect excuse for some troubled 19-year-old to get a saline set, a tribal tramp stamp, change her name to Electra and take off in her convict boyfriend’s Firebird. Instead of such a heinous term that is used to describe half of Maury’s casting calls... I like to believe that I have ‘vacation syndrome.’ Apparently my father was good friends with Forrest Gump’s sperm donor and they went on a little jaunt and have yet to return.

I’m not one to believe in scapegoats but I think the fact that my tattooed mortician father hopped on his motorcycle and took off while I was in middle school may or may not be a determinant in my reckless decision-making and thrill-seeking behavior. I don’t need Dr. Drew to map out the social stigma that comes with that one. 

With that being said, it’s hard for all of us who suffer with ‘Vacation Syndrome’ to find a stable, healthy relationship... and no, ladies. Cats don’t count. Even more troubling is to find a monogamous relationship worth writing to your sorority about on this condemned island. Let’s not kid ourselves, you cannot throw a stone out of your bedroom window without hitting somebody that went to third base with your best friend, and your cousin, and your cousin’s best friend and your sister’s hair stylist. Yes, it is indeed a pit of incestuous scandal where the pedigree of eskimo brotherhood grows longer, one SoCo shot at a time. 

I admit, I love being single. It’s a great feeling, but let’s not kid ourselves, nobody likes the feeling of spooning with a Bed Bath and Beyond body pillow while the Hallmark ‘Save-the-Date’ cards pile up on the coffee table. So what is a duchess to do? We can a. party like single rock stars and come home to your ex’s fraying Rush t-shirt and a bowl of frozen yogurt, b. plaster your face all over some dating website with the wishes that you won’t end up in the bottom of Buffalo Bill’s well or c. always have a full face of makeup and shaved legs whilst praying to the higher being that serendipity takes control, leaving you head-over-heels for the paramedic that responds to your frequent anxiety attacks (we all run out of our Xanax from time to time). 

With bad luck in almost all of those departments... no boyfriend of mine would own a Rush t-shirt, online dating scares the shit out of me and I don’t have good enough health insurance to ever call for an ambulance. Duchesses just have to have a set of standards to offset the apparent assclowns that will infiltrate your perfect existence. These are just some rules I’ve come up with along the way, from experience. Please, keep in mind that I have dated some WINNERS. 

Exhibit A. The partier. My ex boyfriend, who shall remain nameless. I’m just too lazy to come up with some run-on slew of words that will defame him and make me feel a little better about the fact that he dumped me during finals week. No-Name would come home from work, put on Wu-Tang Klan, pack his bowl, proceed to watch 007 marathons in a terrycloth bathrobe and a pair of snow boots while chasing left over chinese food with Miller High Lifes. 

This brings us to rule number one. Illicit drug use. Red flag. If he’s paying money for drugs, how is he ever going to buy you Yurman and take you to Top of The Hub for your anniversary dinner? I like to go with the basic rule that occasional pot use is ok, but anything more than that is a bit risky. If you find roaches all over his apartment and his car smells like a Grateful Dead concert, you may want to run. Anything harder than pot? RUN. RUN. RUN. You don’t want to fall in love with a guy that will be bumping lines off of a hospital toilet while you’re giving birth to his first child. Extreme, yes, but women are crazy and these thoughts WILL run through your head. The same goes for alcohol. It can be cute and romantic to drink a bottle of Knob Creek whiskey together and to giggle and partake in silly banter and political discussion... but if he’s doing shots of Jack Daniel’s until he wakes up looking and sounding like Ozzy Osbourne... you may want to vacate that situation. Also, never date a guy who drinks stoli-raz-and-soda-splash-of-cran, white wine, Long Island Iced Teas or Grand Marnier. The first three are extremely embarrassing and your boyfriend may as well have a sand-filled vagina. The last is on principal, my sister’s crazy ex boyfriend drinks Grand Marnier and we have vowed to put the italian curse on men who drink it. Nothing too crazy. 

Exhibit B. The fix-up. That date you get when one of your happily coupled friends swears “THEY HAVE THE PERFECT GUY FOR YOU.” Be weary. In my case, you could end up in a dive bar, on a Wednesday, with a halitosis suffering owner of a windowless van, skinny jeans and a lisp. Did I mention he had half sleeves that looked more like he were chased around the room by a pack of intellectually disabled baboons with sharpies? It was the most painful hour of my life... and I’ve survived a bilateral mammoplasty and jury duty. It was not worth breaking out the Nars lipstick and my favorite black blazer, I assure you. 

Here we come to our second rule: Don’t let people fix you up. It is people’s odd way of saying: I have a desperate person that would be a perfect match of desperation for my desperate single friend. Unless their last name is Kennedy, Vanderbilt or Kardashian (kidding) you want nothing to do with this. It is a cruel tactic that allows bored couples to create other couples for the sheer hope that all four of you can eat Mexican dip on a Friday night and play Apples to Apples. Gingerly refuse the offer. 

Exhibit C. The cash-payer. Sure, it is a great feeling when a guy takes you out and throws money around like he’s Henry from Goodfellas, but think again. HE’S MARRIED. NO DEBIT CARD=NO TRAIL=NO UNHAPPY WIFE. Get it? Let’s look back upon my 5 minute stint with slimy-blonde-wealthy-douche. He walked around with stacks of cash, used to pick me up in different company rental cars and shut his phone off after 6 pm. I did not have hopes of marrying this guy, but it stings a little to eventually realize that some poor woman is home sharing a bed with this creep and he is out on the prowl for unsuspecting duchesses. 

So alas we create another rule. If he is using large amounts of cash and trying to treat you like a queen, kick him in his nether regions, explain to him that he is a piece of shit, and try to quickly jog away without scuffing your FMP’s. Better yet, just hail a cab and cry in the backseat while explaining what happened. He’ll take you to a popular spot and maybe not charge you for the ride. Be weary if he starts tilting the mirror to peer down your grief-stricken cleavage. 

I guess the overall moral of this XX chromosome ridden rant, is that we must use our gut instincts. Don’t settle for anything that gives you an odd feeling. If you feel pangs of anxiety when you are going to spend time with him. Drop him. It is not worth it. It will age you and heighten your chances of developing Irritable Bowel Syndrome. You should be with somebody who would make out with you early in the morning after you had escargots the night before, buy you super tampons and a Three Musketeers bar during day 2 of your monthly visitor, tell you that you look fabulous when you have visible panty lines (boyshorts) and lipstick on your teeth and who will at least feign pretend interest in your family stories. That is a real winner, and let’s be honest. A duchess can’t settle for anything less than everything. Kisses. 

How it all Started

Where was my roommate Cate when I needed her? Four years ago, I should have made a vision board. It should have been decorated with images of Manhattan, Moet, Manolo Blahniks and smiling emoticons. Instead, I meandered through college like it were a Ke$ha song, always showing up to class on time with just enough baby powder to kill the smell of Jack Daniel's and cologne. I moved to Boston for school immediately after graduation. I managed to study hard (Dean's list recipient, cough cough) yet always kept enough time to play harder. I spent a semester living in a hotel where the doormen and concierge knew me by first name, a summer on the top floor of a Kenmore square brownstone, and my last year concluded on the 23rd floor of a 4-bedroom-apartment overlooking the Charles River. It was quite the experience. It was my third year of school that landed me on the Cape for a summer. Like all things that leave you in a tail-spin, it was a love story gone wrong. One of the only people that I could ever imagine seeing our names together on a government document, left me high and dry.... devastated. It was ok after a month or two... I had managed to get out of bed enough times to show up unprepared to exams, unshowered for work, and to grab just enough candy from my roomates' holiday care packages to help gain the weight that would cost me two whole jean sizes... all in all, it was a mere cross between a clusterfuck and a shitshow. Of course, I phoned home and packed up all 36 pairs of shoes, Egyptian cotton sheets, 6 or so self help books and headed home with a sub-par GPA and just enough money to buy 5 or so bottles of Yellow Tail merlot and a pizza. My family, unaware of my pain over One-True-Love, comfortably converted the smallest room in the house (my grandfather's old workshop) into a lovely bedroom with a bureau, a double bed and a ceiling fan that barely scraped the top of my head when I were wearing heels, which was always. It is safe to say that I learned after about 6 or so times that the fan had to be shut off before I took my shirt off. Pavlov should be so proud.

Luckily I landed a job at a high-end restaurant where I smiled and covered up my disdain for the world with an attempt at wit and a fluffed knowledge for wine and Epicurean delights. I subtly flirted with 60-something-year-old scotch drinkers at an attempt for a 20 percent tip, while their straw-haired, fake breasted wives glared disapprovingly. I made more money than I could spend and spent my days oiled-up on the beach, fighting the previous night's hangover. It was mid-July when I realized that my current boyfriend at the time, we'll call him slimy-blonde-wealthy-douche (which deserves no capitalization) ... was indeed married throughout our whole 3 month relationship. This did not bother me, due to the fact that we only dated because he never called me after 6 pm and my only use for  him was an attempt at forgetting One-True-Love. Of course it did not work and I would have rather sunbathed nude in front of an oncoming Amtrak instead of ever going through the whole ordeal with One-True-Love again... alas, the slimy-blonde-wealthy-douche makes me ill to this day and karma will bite him in his lying ass eventually. Although my best friend, we'll call him Handsome-Loyal-Bestie, did recently see him at the Patriot's play-off game where Handsome-Loyal-Bestie told him to "Die young" and "You got fat." Such a good friend.

After my three months of debauchery and giggles, I headed back to school where I made an attempt at finishing my degree. Living in a brand-new apartment with 3 thrill-seeking, amazing, brilliant, gorgeous girls should barely be considered attaining an education... yet they all managed to pull it off, except for me. My darling academic advisor gently pulled me aside and told me that my internship credits were not fulfilled and that I would need another semester of school. I still bought the eco-friendly, ugly, recyclable graduation gown, drank champagne and posed for pictures, but I would still need to complete my internship. In a round-about-ish way, this is why I am now, back on the Cape. I am working in a mental health facility, fitting, I agree. After four years of a Chelsea Handler novel, the government cut my allowance and pushed me out on my derriere quicker than Fran Drescher in the opening cartoon of "The Nanny." I was heart-broken. Once again, Nana made my bed for me, stocked up on organic peanut butter, Rodney Strong Cabernet and low fat cottage cheese and awaited my arrival.

Here I am. Living with my grandmother. In a place where Dunkin' Donuts is popular, UGGs are just as cool as stilettos, and apparently nobody got the Cash-For-Clunkers memo. A Saturday night consists of a local bar where patrons request Oasis' 'wonderwall' from the cover band and sing along with their Michelob Ultras in hand. It is not as dismal as I am playing it out, really. It is an honest place, with fantastic people. It is comfortable and safe, the only hard feeling is the realization that I AM Sandra Bullock from Hope Floats.... only Harry Connick Jr. is nowhere to be found and my husband never ended our marriage on a mid-day talk-show. Instead my attempt at a rebound relationship ended in a bitter breakup over my choice of underwear... What is exactly wrong with boyshorts? It's 2012 people.... women can have babies in their bathtubs, vote, read, get tattoos on their wrists and still manage to get jobs... but apparently I can not opt for a comfortable alternative to the ever-popular ass-riding-sanitary-questioning thong....

Follow along if you would like to partake in the entire, unplanned, awkward moment that is in-fact my existence. Lessons learned on how a duchess can survive the small-town life on a deserted island. Cheers.