The Nice Guy
By Nina Guzman
I knew there was something wrong with him when he didn’t go down on me. Maybe if I had heeded this warning I would still be able to listen to Radiohead without cringing.
My top three most embarrassing moments happened in consecutive order while I was stuck in a car listening to No Surprises for the millionth and a half time. I never wanted to punch Thom Yorke in the face more.
For the sake of anonymity I’ll call him Kelso because he looked like Ashton Kutcher, if Ashton Kutcher could fit into my little sister’s jeans. We went through middle and high school together as acquaintances and nothing more until we were reunited second semester of our freshman year at college through mutual friends. We bonded over our love for junk food and techno remixes of Disney songs. After a series of awkward dates, which usually ended with the inevitable hand job in his car’s back seat, we found ourselves in the parking lot next to my dorm room.
He just stared at his steering wheel like he was hypnotized by those faux leather handles. He had just driven me back from a party at his place, and I thought he was going to apologize for being such an asshole and ignoring me all night. We had been seeing each other for a little over a month, which made me potential girlfriend material.
I was excited to finally move on to become the “real” girlfriend who goes to the movies and eats brunch rather than the girl who gives out late night quickies in the campus-parking garage.
Instead he opened his mouth and said the first most embarrassing thing that night:
“I know you’re experienced, but I don’t want to have sex.”
I’m not sure where he got this information, but I wouldn’t call having my sexual debut with a dread-haired Colombian trust fund baby under a Starry Night poster as giving me even enough “experience” to even win a spot as a sex columnist in Teen Cosmo. Translation: he didn’t want his first time to be with someone who wouldn’t be sharing in this same sentiment, which looking back makes sense. When we started “going out” I was amazed at how clueless this boy really was. I mean, yes, he was a malnourished indie kid with an obsession for sensitive British boy bands, but chicks dug that in high school. He always had a girlfriend waiting outside his math class, and he always had a date to all the dances. I guess it’s my fault for assuming. He would twist my breasts like TV knobs (when TVs still had those) and he always shoved his tongue in my throat like he was digging for hidden treasure in my larynx.
My track record was hardly lengthy. Other than the Che Guevara look alike, I had a boyfriend when I was 15 and even that ended tragically. He dumped me over the phone on New Years Eve because he saw it in a dream. I wonder if he also premonitioned his future as a teenage father living in Middle-of-Nowhere-ville, Virginia working as a cashier at the local Piggly-Wiggly to be able to afford store brand diapers and then trying to add his ex girlfriends on facebook with his baby as the profile picture, but I digress. So even though I hadn’t been with a lot of guys, as soon as he found out that I actually had more experience than him he completely shut down.
The second most embarrassing moment was right after, when he said:
“I really like you but you kinda remind me of my sister.”
I only met his sister once or twice since we all went to the same high school. From what I remember she’s a short, blonde, chubby, bubbly girl with a love of musical theater while I’m a tall, brunette, lanky girl who punched a boy in fourth grade for taking her swing. Other than the fact that I had always known her to also carry around a tube of Burt’s Bee’s chapstick, we have nothing in common. Which leads me to wonder how my saturated lips reminded him of his sibling.
That is some Flowers in the Attic shit that I am way too freaked out to investigate, but it sure adds a whole new layer to “family gatherings”.
But the omnibus of embarrassing moments was when he told me, verbatim:
“Also, your pussy stinks.”
Judy Blume did not prepare me for this. I could handle his clawing at my breasts and his complete inability to make me orgasm. But this? Frankly, what did he expect? I’m not running a Kilwin’s down there or growing a lavender meadow between my legs. My pussy doesn’t smell bad; it smells like a pussy (and not the kind that spits out hairballs after gnawing at your knit sweater). As if his own junk smelled any better. Just because they call it the candy shop, doesn’t mean there is anything that tastes even remotely like a lollipop down there.
I just couldn’t believe it. He was such a Nice Guy. He liked Nice Guy activities like watching foreign films, wearing Pink Floyd shirts, buying vinyl records and taking me to vintage stores so we could play dress up. At least that’s what every Wes Anderson movie taught me a Nice Guy is suppose to be. Because of all of the above-mentioned things, he had a terrible illness usually diagnosed as the Nice Guy Syndrome (cure yet to have been found). One of the major symptoms is being under the delusion that the whole world owes him a hand job because he isn’t an outright sexist pig. A pig dressed in Urban Outfitters is still a pig no less.
Someone reading this might think, what could keep me interested in such an insensitive asshole? What kept me listening to the garbage spewing out from his chapped lips? Well, just like he was diagnosed with Nice Guy Syndrome, I was suffering from a bad case of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl disease. My Zooey Deschanel haircut matched my wardrobe of vintage dresses and Goodwill finds. My iPod is full of Mumford and Sons and Fleet Foxes and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t own a cruiser bike named Daisy. Why? Because that’s what Manic Pixie Dream Girls do. We are quirky yet approachable, cute yet aloof. I’m the muse, there to help the guy get loose and have fun then disappear into a cloud of glitter and unicorns. For the longest time I felt that this was the only role I could play for guys to like me. I could spew out cute statements but I couldn’t have any real opinions about anything.
Getting verbally bitch slapped by a guy who majors in musical theater was a wake up call. I was tired of being the girl that boys’ thought was cute and funny instead of a complex human being with opinions and ideas. I decided this was way too much work for a guy I wasn’t even fucking.
By the time I was snuggled into my California twin sized bed, Kelso was etched out of my pop music daydreams, and I resolved to end things at a place within a walking distance to my dorm with a clear exit and no alternative rock music playing in the background. Luckily the next day, I guess after realizing his comments were nothing less than a punch in the labia, he invited me for some frozen yogurt, even though I told him on several occasions how the taste of froyo makes me feel like I’m eating cold mucus. But my disdain for the sugary treat didn’t deter me from ordering the largest size with the most toppings and conveniently forgetting to check my back pocket to find enough cash to pay. Of course, him being such a Nice Guy begrudgingly paid for my Liberace styled dessert.
Comfortably sitting down at our window side table, staring him down through a froyo mountain peak, I told him I was over him and I wanted to stop hooking up. He tried to change my mind, but even his junior high drama class acting couldn’t convince me to stay. To be completely honest, I think he was more disappointed that he lost his free hand job service. His almost complete lack of interest proved to me even more that this Morrissey wannabe was not the person for me, and definitely not the person I want to be holding hands with while walking into the sunset at the end of my Sundance film life.
As I was walking away he said
“Wait you forgot your froyo.”
“Oh thank you,” I said as I grabbed the now flaccid looking dessert and threw it in the trash bin. I walked into the Froyo shop a Dream Girl and walked out all Woman. Every stinky part of me.