Most zones aren’t good. No parking zones. The Demilitarized Zone. The ever-confusing, Cosmo-peddled erogenous zone.

But you may also find yourself in the Friend Zone, which is a dreaded place indeed, a no-man’s…or no-woman’s land of platonic friendship and compliments with the sexiness of a soft-boiled egg. How did you get here? Could you have prevented this hormone-hindering categorization? Why does it itch? What’s more, is there anything you can do?

Unfortunately, over the years, yours truly has become an expert* acquainted with of all of the nooks and crannies of the Friend Zone, so allow for me to give you a little tour.

* The Lonely Planet Guide to the Friend Zone [Paperback] by Ainsley Drew (Author); 456 Page/5 Map edition (August 7, 2011) available now!

Well before Josephine de Beauharnais opted to take an army’s-worth of lovers instead of writing back to her lovesick, battle-stationed husband Napoleon, the Friend Zone has been recorded in history. Numerous books, classical plays, helas madams, and just about all romantic poetry touched on the shitty, sucking feeling of being able to interact with someone who strikes your fancy, while knowing full-well that you’ll never see them naked. There are also worst-case scenarios that have been recorded in the annals of time, like that of Catherine of Aragon, who was put in a pretty awful Friend Zone by her husband King Henry VIII once he found the eye-pleasing trollop Anne Boleyn. (It should be noted, Anne was able to net Henry – and the Queen’s crown – by putting him in the No Sex Zone, which, while a cousin of the Friend Zone, sure as hell ain’t the same thing. Withholding the pussy is a means to an end. There is no end to the Friend Zone. Once you’re there, chances are that no amount of alcohol will move you. You’ll never get to see the family jewels. You might even end up banished and poisoned.)

Now, the Friend Zone isn’t entirely an inhospitable place. At times it’s a very appropriate destination. Let’s say you’ve reached the end of your romantic venture with someone, and the both of you agree that it’s time to move on to greener panties. You still respect one another, and can even stomach seeing them in their skivvies, but a love match it’s not. The Friend Zone is a perfect retirement spot for the two of you, one that shouldn’t be approached with any sort of seething or spite.

But there are those curious circumstances that can lead you into the Bermuda Triangle of ambiguity: crushes. This is the sort of anxiety-inducing murkiness of human interaction that used to lead us to pass notes in second grade emblazoned with a question and two empty boxes - Do you like me? Check YES or NO. Not knowing another person’s feelings when you’re wanting to see their ‘o’ face and taste their pectoral muscles is part of that so-called spice of life, the dopamine-receptor-ringing fiesta of fun known as the initial state of courting, the intoxicating precursor to dating itself.

But if the feelings aren’t reciprocal – and, let’s be honest, if you aren’t a Victoria’s Secret model or rumored to be hung like a San Fernando Valley star, they’re often not mutual – the Friend Zone is the airport where you might be stuck on a permanent layover, ever hoping that the weather lifts and you can catch the next flight to the bedroom.

In case there’s any question (and, really, unless you’re tasting their 32 flavors, there shouldn’t be) below are some signs that you’ve found yourself in the Friend Zone. Just remember, if you’re the one doing the zoning, do not fuck someone you put in the Friend Zone. That’s the cardinal rule. Don’t drink, drug, or dance around them, if any of those vices lead to deviating from this mandate. Once you violate this rule, there is no Friend Zone, and self-induced slut shaming, incessant dramatic texting, inevitable heart break where you are the villain, or an unhappy marriage may occur. Proceed wisely.

Famed American psychologist Dorothy Tennov – known for coining the original synonym for bunny boiler with the academic-sounding limerence – famously stated that the only way to successfully douse desire in cold water is to obtain “indisputable evidence” that your crush is really not wanting to do you.

Seems simple enough to discern, but yet, it’s not: he may cringe when you bat your eyes in his direction, change the subject when you talk about sex, he may have even made a joke where he compared you to his sister, but yet he’s fine with splitting an order of buffalo wings and watching Top Gear with you once a week. Little do you know that, if the future of humankind depended on it, he would rather cut off his dick than so much as expose it to your longing gaze.

Other signs are more subtle. She could talk about her ex in a way that can only be described as “Ahab-like.” She says she doesn’t do relationships, or she starts bustin’ out the L-bomb after the second time you’ve hung out, only for her to laugh it off, saying that she says that to all of her “girls.” (But wait, you’re a guy…) You may have met on an online dating site or a social network, and after months of R-rated G-chats or steamy sext message exchanges, she still won’t meet you in real life. If you do kick it in the flesh, she might prevent you from so much as seeing her smart phone, keeping it closer to her than if it were a third boob.

Does he tell you about his romantic pursuits in a way that indicates that he doesn’t give a shit that you’ve told him that you think about him when you masturbate? It could be worse, think about what it would mean if you weren’t privy to his lusty details. Oh, you’re not? Yeah, he’s not that into you, ‘cause he doesn’t even choose to tell you about how it’s going in the case of his courting. If guys avoid talking about sex, even innuendo, it’s usually a sign.

More tips, this time for the gents. Does she call you to do things because nobody else said yes, or because her “real” date fell through? That just signals you’re not at the top of her list, bro, which means that, most likely, you’ll never be on top of her. Or, worse, do you offer her baseline tickets to the Knicks game – or the Michael Buble Arbor Day Special or whatever typical girls like – and she turns up her nose at the opportunity to do something so fucking awesome, even if you’re part of the package? Face it, she’s just not that into you.

The map of the Friend Zone can also be decoded with this helpful quick key: you’re not in his phone, he doesn’t call or text back, you’re not friends on Facebook, he only deals with you because he’s paid to. That first one, that’s a killer. I’d given a guy more than one private tour of my clitoris before I scoped that my digits were just that in his phone, math without a name attached. Sex aside, I knew where I stood. Friend. (…but not on Facebook.)

If you are in a pay-for-flirt situation, you can exploit it to your advantage, of course. If you’ve got the funds and he’s a masseuse, your superintendent, a personal trainer, or your therapist, you’re in luck. Set up a scenario where he’s yours for an hour or two regularly, all for some USD. Of course, then it isn’t the Friend Zone, so much as it is unrequited love and some form of prostitution.

Keep in mind, a lot of these Friend Zone symptoms seem simple, but things can get tricky if you’re crushing on your coworker. Sometimes there’s little difference between the Friend Zone and complying with your company’s policy against sexual harassment.

In a 2007 copy of the Chicago Tribune, the Friend Zone was described as follows: “When a guy agrees to be friends, he’s forced to stifle his attraction while regularly seeing and talking to the woman he’s attracted to. She discusses her love life and has the audacity to ask his advice on it. He performs occasional “manly” household and automotive favors for the woman. Essentially, he does everything a boyfriend would do — without the benefits.”

I take issue with this. First of all, women can totally exist in the Friend Zone, obviously. Secondly, you can be in the Friend Zone and hump. Granted, this is probably a sign that things in your life are really going poorly and the Friend Zone may very well be the least of your problems. Lastly, what’s described in that article isn’t the Friend Zone. It’s a bad B-story to a failed romantic comedy, otherwise known as “being a chump.” Get wise, dude. If she’s having you change her light-bulbs without letting you screw anything else, go to the hardware store and ask if they have a radial arm life.

Existing in the Friend Zone is enough to drive someone batshit insane, or at least to the point of writing poetry. (Basically the same thing.) Even the Roman poet, Ovid, wrote of remedies for the Friend Zone in his famed tome Remedia Amoris. He suggested traveling, avoiding love poetry, being sober, and hanging out in nature. All are good things, and sound advice, though I’m not sure that – as a sober, poetry-avoiding, frequent flier who avoids any destination too far from modern urban conveniences – partaking in any of Mr. Ovidius Naso’s solutions will fix the problem for yours truly or just create more suffering. I’m sure I’d be put in the Friend Zone by a lovely nurse or orderly in the psychiatric wing of whatever hospital I’d wind up in after an attempt at wilderness camping.

But let’s say you’re not the unlucky victim in this case, instead you’re looking to be the concierge for a suitor’s endless reservation at the suite of your Friend Zone. How do you do it in a way that doesn’t either offend them, mortify you, or continue their Pepe le Pew-like pursuit…all without cutting them out of your life completely. After all, the whole point of the Friend Zone is to stay friends.

Of course the most direct approach, and the one that respected publications like Psychology Today would suggest, is being upfront and honest. To which I say, “Bullshit.” Honesty is the mature person’s way out, and it is hard. Instead, here are some simple ways to get your Friend Zoning across without having to directly address the problem at all.

Start by asking yourself, “Do I have a crush on anyone?”

No? Okay, fine, Ryan Gosling it is. (Gentlemen, if you can’t even go gay for Gosling just this once, there’s something wrong with you.)

Now get lost in the blissful abyss of thinking about all the lovely things you’d want them to do to let you know they were hip to taking you out on a date. What sort of non-verbal and verbal cues would Mr. Gosling, or whoever, toss out?

Next, think of all the ways that Hollywood producers illustrate courtship in romantic movies and sappy sitcoms on TV. Try not to retch.

Got ‘em all?

Okay, now, here’s the kicker…don’t do any of those things with the person you’re looking to Friend Zone. Say something in passing along the lines of, “I’m so glad we’re…friends.” Which really is the way to say, “It’s not you, it’s me” without ever exchanging fluids.

Of course, you could always do some charity work, sleep with ‘em, and then tell them just that over brunch. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and, after all, it’s a Saturday night. So do me this solid, would ya? Isn’t that what friends are for…

I’ve written more than once about my gym crushes: Dead Eyes, Hot Dad, and Triplets of Belleville, who is also, coincidentally, a hot dad. (For the purposes of this post, I’m going to omit Dead Eyes, as I don’t believe he’s a father and I fear he might succumb to either his drug addiction or synaptic glitch in the middle of a super-set any day now.)

My neighborhood is one of those stretches of concrete in Manhattan that used to be the bastion of bad behavior, ground zero for gay male prostitutes in the early 1980s, an area key to both the LGBT movement and the initial outbreak of HIV/AIDS cases that plagued the community. These days the epidemic is more along the lines of ever-increasing astronomical rents and the spread of chi-chi designer boutiques from the Meatpacking District southward. If Sex and the City reinvented this neighborhood, the harpy-like super-fans of that show have descended upon the village like vultures with their credit cards in their talons. While the negative impact of over-development and gentrification can be seen, felt, and sold with a side of locally-grown organic fiddlehead ferns sauteed in artisanal lemon butter for as much as your car payment, the positive impact is pretty clear, too: yuppies.

Yes, yes, die yuppie scum, I know. Don’t worry, I haven’t grown soft. But for every yoga mat you have to avoid on the street, there’s a hot MILF carrying it, wearing nothing but a glorified leotard over her enhanced figure. And for almost every MILF, there’s a DILF. The difference between moms and dads that I’d like to fuck, other than the obvious, is simple. While new moms often (but not always) embrace motherhood with a zealous, biologically-rooted enthusiasm, it seems, from my limited and wholly ignorant perspective, that new dads stumble into fatherhood with one emotion at the tip of the spear: panic. And it’s just that sort of all-thumbs approach to their new masculine role that makes my Spandex stick to my parts.

Hot dads work out, not only because they’re trying to keep their figure rooted in their long-gone 30s, they work out because there’s no other constructive way to deal with their abject terror. Or so I’ve observed.

Before I go any further here, I’d like to say two things. First of all, before any new moms fashion a shiv out of a bootie and a broken bottle, I’m not a mom. I don’t claim to be that mature, capable, or selfless. My vagina has been a club with lax entrance policies, little security, and sparse accommodations, but it’s never been used to expel another human being from my body. By writing this, I’m neither marginalizing your experience nor trying to move in on your men. I just find them more attractive than they were before they had kids.

Secondly, the more serious aspect of what I’m sort of addressing here is that nearly one in four new fathers suffer from postpartum depression. That’s not sexy, it’s just sad. While I’ve seen a fair number of shows illuminating the struggles new moms have had with postpartum depressive symptoms, the worst of which can cause psychotic breaks and dangerous mental collapses, I can’t recall ever catching a Doctors episode that highlighted the emotional trauma of new fatherhood. And, trust me, if there’d been one, I would have seen it on mute at the gym.

If MILFs tango with one corner of the brain that’s titillated by the idea of a woman who can embody both a maternal role and a sexual one, Hot Dads fill a completely different niche, at least to me. The men who I find myself ogling have several key traits: they’re in good shape and they’re scared to death of their new role. There’s something about the juxtaposition of an aging but well-kept body and an exhausted, somewhat confused look. They might be television producers, hedge fund managers, and chained-to-their-Blackberry publishing types, but, when confronted by the accoutrement’s of their latest life change, they’re reduced to the expression of my seventh grade lab partner who realized he was actually going to have to stop making wisecracks and cut through the belly of the frog.

The day that all of this really came to a rolling internal boil for me was the morning of the Maclaren incident.

It was a Saturday or a Sunday and I realized I needed some bougie sundry good like kombucha or tofu, so I ran out of my apartment and down the block to the health food store, which is located next to a diner. Of course, due to the store’s proximity to my house and my general lack of scruples when it comes to my appearance, I was wearing a mismatched, stained sweatsuit and hadn’t brushed my hair.

There, blocking my entrance to the health food store, was Hot Dad, who, back then, was known only to me as the older fox who ran on the treadmill in between taking what looked like Very Important phone calls. From my foolhardy attempts at conversing with him between those two activities, I learned that he had traveled to China to cover the Olympics (swoon!) and had previously worked for the Los Angeles Clippers (ultimate swoon!) A tall NBA fan with a job that somehow had to be linked to sports, I set my sights on our eventual marriage and started daydreaming about what gown I would wear as his date to the ESPYs.

But that morning he wasn’t in workout gear fueling my misguided fantasies. Instead, he was in civvies, hunched over a double-wide stroller, the almost-balding crown of his head nearly eye-level with me. Being an unfortunate mix of creepy, uninhibited, and oblivious to the fact that not everyone likes to be approached by strangers, let alone strangers that look like homeless punk orphans, I interrupted him.

“Hey!”

Hot Dad looked up from the stroller, sweat nearly breaking on his brow. Generally speaking, Hot Dad is a tall dude, probably measuring in at about 6’3” and well-proportioned. The double-wide, while still being gargantuan and the equivalent of a loveseat on wheels to someone my size, was theoretically no match for his strong, overly-large hands.

“Hi! Hi,” he said through a look that was on the far fringe of frustration, bleeding into desperation. “I can’t…I can’t figure out how to close this.”

He said it in such a bleak, earnest way that my heart melted. He went from being simply that hot, older guy at the gym to Hot Dad, just like that. Inside of the diner, his wife and one-year-old twins were waiting for him to join them for breakfast. He’d remained on the street, struggling to collapse the contraption that, when open, would have wreaked havoc on the inside of the greasy spoon. Nobody wants their wife covered in an omelet, or their kids put in the line of a falling carafe of coffee. Hence the necessary breakdown.

This guy could field as many lucrative business propositions on his Bluetooth between circuits at the gym, but a stroller reduced him to panic.

And my body cried out, “Get it in here!”

It meaning his penis, not a baby or an omelet.

It’s pretty easy to chalk up my affection for the Bugaboo bumbling basketball fan to a simple case of Daddy Issues, but there’s a little more to it than that.

I suppose it’s finally time for me to delve into actually daddy issues on this blog, and not in the usual snarky, self-effacing way. Let me break it down for you, pop-psychobabble style: What we colloquially refer to as “daddy issues” is actually a manifestation of the Electra Complex. While most people have heard of Freud’s earlier theory of the Oedipal Complex, the Electra Complex came later, and was hypothesized by Carl Jung.

Jung, a pioneer of neo-Freudian psychology, believed that the Electra Complex was a psycho-behavioral response to a little girl’s penis envy, stemming from a desire for her father and competition with her mother during what’s known as the phallic stage of development. (At risk of sounding like I’m trying to review Matthew Barney’s Cremaster series, the phallic stage is the third stage of psychosexual development according to Freud. The five in total are the Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent, and Genital, respectively.)

Basically, in my understanding – which is likely wrong, as my grasp on psychology has always been limited to a few freshman year prereqs, Google searches while eating a snack, and Lorraine Bracco’s character on The Sopranos – little girls suffer from a similar sort of penis envy that boys do in their early psychodynamic character development. Only the young girl, who subconsciously views her own castration as being caused by her mother, identifies her mom as competition for the newly-established, and innate, attraction to her dad. Still with me? Okay. So here’s where it gets a bit like a David Lynch movie: the little girl’s perception of the maternal role becomes internalized and the kid’s super-ego splinters off into a more acceptable fledgling sexual identity, as embodied by the ego. The penis envy she’d been experiencing as a result of realizing that she can’t sexually possess her own mom (which is a totally id-based desire, if you’re keeping score at home) the girl’s sexual needs are repurposed and projected onto her dad instead. This eventually becomes the so-called heteronormal idea of femininity, which, according to this theory, results in eventually having a baby of her own in order to replace her absent penis.

And now we wonder why some people think psychology is all bunk.

Though I don’t subscribe to neither Freudian thought nor Jungian, old Siggy did say that the “feminine Oedipus attitude” – aka, the Electra complex – was more emotionally intense than the male version of this unavoidable developmental conflict.

Also, if you decide to get into psychology (or you’re already there, or you’re my therapist…hi!) you may see the Electra complex referred to as the Bernfield Factor as well. While I can’t say for certain, I think this moniker is attributed to the Austrian psychoanalyst Siegfried Bernfield, who wrote The Psychology of the Infant in 1929.

Well, when I say I have daddy issues, I don’t mean that I want to boink my dad as a result of not being able to boink my mom. I just mean that, when it comes to a lot of my predilections and what I find attractive, often it’s stuff that can be considered paternal, authoritative, or the kind of thing that renders me in a less mature role. (Not paraphilic infantilism. I just mean that I like older dudes.) But it seems that, psychologically speaking, I’m not alone. Most women have daddy issues of some variety.

A 2006 study showed that men who are perceived as “baby friendly” were considered attractive as mates and potential partners. Aside from the obvious traits – such as hotness and masculinity, which represent a good gene pool, or wealth and not kicking puppies, which indicate the ability to partake in a huge, collaborative effort such as starting a Fortune 500 company or creating a human life – girls also find guys who are cool with kids sexy. There were even further studies to see if this “baby friendliness” could be perceived by women simply by looking at a guy’s face. As in, he might look like a good dad, based on his features alone. Screw whether or not he can assemble a Dora the Explorer Fiesta Favorites Kitchen Playset, or open a double-wide stroller.

Scientists have also discovered that single dads are far more successful than single mothers when it comes to finding a mate. Men who pay child support and visit their kids regularly are 30% more likely to find a long-term partner in the future. (Single moms might not want to read this study. Their data doesn’t look so good.) The sociologists expressed that paternal involvement, rather than simply having kids, is what women found attractive. I mean, anybody can bust a nut and make a baby, right? Antonio Cromartie has nine with eight different ladies, and can’t even remember all of their names.

Regardless of what science dictates as why, I know the reasons behind my child-creating crushes. It’s because there’s something sexy about a man who can be powerful both professionally and physically, and fulfill his role as a kid-rearing, biologically-sound patriarch, which usually involves some pretty demeaning stuff. It might not be an international trip, suit-strapped conference, or multi-billion dollar merger, seeing a man smiling at his toddler and tossing them up onto his shoulders is fucking badass and hot.

So, to the Hot Dads out there, I say keep up the crunches and bicep curls, sure. But just make sure I get to see you pushing a stroller and yammering on about Bob the Builder around the neighborhood, okay?

(Serious stuff: if you think you’re a new dad and you think you might be suffering from postpartum depression, check out this link to a self-exam and reach out for help. Do it for yourself. )

Dating, for me, comes in a very predictable cycle which can easily be mapped out like, say, photosynthesis or recycling.

Mounting sexual frustration → Hope as biproduct of sexual frustration → Clouded judgment → Internet dating website → Hilarious/miserable first date with a stranger → Sleeping with someone I already know → Disappointment and awkwardness → Vow of chastity → Deleting of profile on Internet dating website → Triumphant smiling → Boredom → Afternoon spent watching music videos by Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Nick Cave, et. al. → Mounting sexual frustration → Hope as biproduct of sexual frustration → Clouded judgment, etc.

Now that’s a flow-chart.

Through a few years of partaking in this pathetic rigmarole, I can chalk my lack of success up to three things, as illustrated thusly:

73% – my taste
7% – my age
20% – the website itself

Further explanation of this chart is as follows:

7% – my age
At my age, most people* are married or pumping out their first two children. I know that, in five years, Divorce Season will likely start for my generation, and I’ll have my pick of the litter. But, until then, I’m stuck with individuals who were either too fucked up to find someone in their twenties, or have a serious flaw in their system. I can say this as somebody who, without getting sober, would just be starting to question why I was always alone, as I tripped over the six empty bottles surrounding my leaking, borrowed (read: stolen) air mattress. Fortunately, with a clear head, I can tell you why I am single, and no longer sleeping on the floor. It’s because when everyone was partnering up for the dance I was draining the punch bowl and trying to pickpocket the chaperone.

20% – the website itself
I don’t think I’ve ever been contacted via FastCupid, the amalgamation of Salon.com, Nerve.com, and The Onion personals sections. Considered the “smart person’s” dating site, there’s plenty of pretense, and an equal measure of insecurity. Either that or I’m just really ugly. OkCupid appears to be an STD/STI vending machine and an example of how Darwinism has failed. While I’ve gone on more first dates because of that site than I’m willing to count, all of them – and I do mean all of them – have amounted in hilarious failures, or at very least a sad, sad mismatch of two computer-savvy people, algorithms be damned.

And that final 73%? My taste. This is not an insult to my ex-boyfriend, who is as awesome as I am. This is also not an insult to my ex-domestic-partner-wife-sort-of from when I was in my early, early twenties. She’s…she’s nice. Still. And can handily kick my ass, after taking up boxing and sword fighting after we broke up. (Not kidding.)

But my taste in men and ladies, generally speaking, is where the true crux of my problem lies.

Generally speaking, I like hardass, butch women who go for high-maintenance, super-feminine girls, of which I am not one. Try to put me in conventional-colored lipstick and a dress and you get what looks like a boy in fourth grade being suckered into a stunt that is a direct result of being beaten up by mean-spirited school chums. I coped with not scoring the women I wanted in the same way that many straight men do, I got drunk and slept with girls I wasn’t entirely attracted to. Call it charity work.

Once I got sober and started being an equal-opportunity harlot, I learned that my taste in men, while more multi-faceted, was just as disappointing. In fact, my taste in mates seems to be biologically predestined to phase out my lineage, as the single unifying and establishing characteristic across the gender board is a lack of attraction to yours truly. While the Gina Gershon in Bound doppelgangars and Jenny Shimizus of the world can be accepted as the women I would like to fuck but never will, no matter how much Ecstasy they’ve consumed, the men, for the sake of this post, will be limited to one sub-genre of failure: goth boys. (Yes, tall, unemployed hipsters with bicycles, I like you, too. Even though you don’t like me.)

For the record, I blame my dad. After he left my mom, his first girlfriend was a goth twenty-one years his junior. They would go to The Batcave and tell me all about it during our visitations. It was then that the mold was cast.

Observations on the Male Gothic Subgenera

Ensnaring a goth boy, on paper, should be simple. Unlike hipsters, whose interests can be as varied as Dura-Ace to Campagnolo, or Xanax to Vicodin, goth boys pretty much fall into two camps that are factory-assembled and easy to understand.

The romantic male goth.
Similar to: Morrissey; Trent Reznor prior to any film scores; Robert Smith from The Cure prior to his discovery of donuts and hockey; that girl you had a crush on in chem lab; any of the male characters from Interview with a Vampire, though these men often feel a particular affinity towards Tom Cruise’s vampire Lestat.
Interests: looking down, England, wearing repurposed women’s clothing, sitting in graveyards, reading dead poets, working with computers.
Listening to: Depeche Mode, Icon of Coil, Covenant, The Cure, bands no longer in existence.
Defining characteristics: black eyeliner; lack of smile; 28″ waist; rosary beads; possibly passing a kidney stone, or just that unhappy.

The industrial male goth.
Similar to: the members of KMFDM, Trent Reznor prior to sobriety, your German professor, a villian in a Jeunet film, any of the male actors from a steampunk haunted house.
Interests: looking angry, using boots, yelling while flailing, optics, explosions, working with computers.
Listening to: Assemblage 23, Front Line Assembly, Nitzer-Ebb, KMFDM, bands no longer in existence.
Defining characteristics: metal accessories, ability to holler one or two words in German, patience lacing eye-holes, usually a Miata or Civic with a black paint job that’s in remarkably good condition.

One would think that, knowing these established parameters, I would have concocted a foolproof plan over the past twenty years of crushing on these sub-types of a category. But much like Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, or, somewhat more appropriately, Wile E. Coyote and his rock-and-anvil laden foiling by the Road Runner, this chase has been going on wholly unsuccessfully since Marilyn Manson was playing sports bars in Florida. (I think he may be back to doing that again now. And he’s another angst-addled artist who has discovered the dangers of donuts.)

Unfortunately for me, I was born with both a solid weird streak and a sense of humor. While the former makes me momentarily interesting to these men, the later launches the sexy train clear off the rails and into the canyon of rejection. I blush, even through white face powder. I giggle relentlessly. I make inappropriate jokes about what the ghost gansters say to their ghost molls (“I got you covered, boo.”) I don’t cry unless I’m cutting onions or suffering from an allergy attack. I don’t brood. When I’m attracted to someone, my m.o. is generally to make them laugh and to stare a lot, since relying on my looks and pocket-size has never worked in my experience.

But even if I were able to sustain the interest of a goth boy for long enough by wowing him with stories about how I interviewed Front Line Assembly, talked on the phone with Ogre, and ate with Nick Cave*…or if I simply taped the dude to a chair, what on earth would we have to talk about? His unsuccessful band? The trouble with trying to wear fishnets on your arms? How it’s difficult to be so overcome inside the dark chasm of human emotion while sustaining a job at Best Buy?

No matter. My attraction to Trent-types isn’t cerebral, so I’ll just stick a roll of duct tape in my purse and make sure to parse goth gatherings that contain folding chairs in dark corners. But, wait, where does one go to get a goth anyway?

Goth Habitat Evaluation with Reference to Mate Selection and Breeding Behavior

Unfortunately, even with the locations scouted and tape close by, there are some inherent pitfalls to this plan. For one thing, my bedtime is, on average, well before the opening hours of any goth or synthpop night that could still be in existence. And while I’d love to delude myself into believing that I would get out of bed in the middle of the night, dress myself in intricate black finery, and then stomp over to whatever sports bar or desperate club is hosting the event, I’m not going to kid myself. You know what makes me moody and withdrawn? Sleep deprivation. Fuck that.

You’re computer-savvy, obviously. You know that the easiest way to procure the obscure – from international spices to vintage tee-shirts – is to look online. What a brilliant idea! I can find my very own prince of gloom through the ‘net! Well…not so fast.

Checking through the forums, the most comprehensive of which was last updated in 2003, all of the local events and community pages redirect to that stock photo of the blond girl with the backpack. Domains no longer maintained. Or, even more depressing, the one site that’s still up is preserved in amber, stuck announcing the “First NYC Goth Picnic is Coming!” in 2002. (The photo of a poorly manicured hand holding what appears to be a Wheat Thin dunked into a container of paddlefish roe completed my crestfallen realization that this subculture is more dead than it had ever desired to be.)

So the apparent failure of the “gothnic” (goth + picnic = gothnic) in my town might lead me to believe, perhaps wisely, that goth is extinct. No, no. Not so fast. While the current state of local affairs might be sad (like goths!) there are certain sites dedicated to those of us who both listen to The Birthday Party and want to find love. [Editor’s Note: WE EXIST.] But, um, unless you have some painkillers on hand, or you’re happily married, don’t click on Goth Passions or Gothic Love Match, which also happens to be affiliated with Bike Love Match, Big Beautiful Lovers, and Horse and Country Lovers. These portals to passion and pain are, in a word, disheartening. Even my bitter and relentless sense of humor can’t buoy my way into filling out a profile. For now I’ll stick to OkCupid, and when that starts too feel too much like a petri dish filled with predators, I’ll take a peek at GothicMatch.com, “the #1 Online Dating Community for Gothic Singles and Friends!”

While all of this might seem wholly obvious and not all that interesting, I will leave you with this timely declaration. It’s New Year’s Eve. Tonight, the ball will drop, drunk people will puke, and, somewhere in the bowels of the East Village, a gothic New Year’s party will be coming to fruition. While it may not happen this evening, and perhaps not even this month, my sole resolution for 2012 is to have a dalliance with a goth boy. Or least two dates.

And you can bet you will hear about every attempt I make, duct tape in hand.

Maynard James Keenan. Yup.

* “People” being those who are, at the baseline, moderately attractive or not nauseating, employed or employable, articulate or not high on heroin.

** In the same restaurant, at the same time. Close enough.

For the first few years of my life, less than a decade, really, I had the Christmas every kid dreams about. The kind with a massive tree, lots of decorations throughout the house, and countless batches of cookies. The Johnny Mathis Christmas Album and Handel’s screeching Messiah would ring through the halls endlessly, mysterious shopping bags would be perched on every shelf above my head. (That would make every shelf in the house.)

Christmas morning there’d be gifts, so, so many gifts. Enough gifts that, even then, I knew there were too many. I wanted for nothing as a child, most likely as a result of my parents recognizing that their shitty, shitty marriage was irreparably damaging me. I mean, by first grade I’d repeatedly gotten in trouble for biting classmates, eating crayons, and failing basic math tests because I’d bark like a dog instead of writing down the answers. Barbie, Cabbage Patch, Light Bright, Rainbow Bright, Playdoh, you name it, if it was a toy in the 1980s, I got it on Christmas and broke it by New Years.

Other than excessive drinking, eating, and my cousins and I playing tag until we ripped our good dresses, there was one Christmas tradition that was kept more sacred than Sunday mass: Santa’s arrival. Each year on Christmas Eve, my cousins Sandy, Debbie, and I would conspire to convince their parents to let them sleep over. It would be nearly midnight when my aunt and uncle would begin to collect the shopping bags filled with unwrapped gifts and Tupperware containers of leftovers from my mom, ready to pile into their station wagon and head back to Hicksville, a seemingly interminable half-hour away from my house.

“Can we stay over?!” my cousin Sandra would exclaim, the princess and the youngest in her family of three kids. Well-accustomed to getting her way, it only seemed sensible that she’d ask first, as the three of us had determined that her parents would likely acquiesce immediately, succumbing to Sandy’s blond, pouty powers.

“No, sweetie,” my uncle would respond, searching for his coat among the pile of anonymous parkas on the couch, his cigarette and car keys already in hand.

“But we’re already heeeeere, and in pajaaaaamas,” Sandy’s older sister, Debbie, no more than ten, would diplomatically exclaim, yanking on whatever new pajama set that Uncle John had given the three of us girls, all identical, all pink, every year. (He’d still send them to us now, but he doesn’t have our addresses. Intentionally.)

“No. Santa’s going to come and you’re not going to be there…” their mother, Aunt Jackie, would say, exhaustion causing her words to run together, as though she, too, were excited for Santa’s arrival.

“But. But. But,” I’d stammer, the youngest, the dumbest, the one unused to negotiations since my parents had always just drowned out my whining with their marital spats. I was an only child and therefore unfamiliar with the UN Counsel-like statecraft of larger families.

“If Santa comes and you two aren’t home, he’s going to leave and not put any gifts out,” Aunt Jackie would finish, as though she’d known some poor child in her youth who’d suffered the grave effects of not being back at his house in time for Santa to do his work. A reputable Santa authority, that’s what my aunt was. She would then search the house for my cousin Vince, three years older than Debbie, twelve years older than me, and find him, wearing all black and cuddling with his goth girlfriend in front of some horror movie they’d brought to watch in lieu of partaking in the festivities. Vince and Quiet Scary Girlfriend did not seem to care about Santa, and they certainly weren’t clamoring to stay for the night.

Up until the age of seven or eight, the rest of the evening would go as followed: I’d hop around my stumbling parents singing, “Santa! Santa! Santa!” unaware of the fact that, after seventeen straight hours of hearing Johnny Mathis or Elvis sing about Christmas, punctuated by nothing more than liquor and a child screaming the word, “Santa!” like some Tourette’s-suffering cheerleader, my parents were regretting their shoddy methods of birth control. My mother would meekly succumb to my requests, leaving carrots out for the reindeer

“Why don’t you peel them like you do for me?!”
“…”
“Let’s peel them, mom!”
“No. Reindeer like the carrot skin. They need it…for their coats.”

And then we’d leave cookies out for Santa.

“Let’s leave out the oatmeal cookies!”
“Um. How about just chocolate chip? Santa loooves chocolate chip cookies.”
“How do you know what type of cookies Santa likes? Have you met Santa, mom?!”
“…”

And then we’d leave a note that I would then insist on writing.

“’Dear Santa, I hope you like the cookies and that the rain deer like the carrots with the skin for their coats. I am sure their coats are soft and shiny. If you want to wake me up and let me pet the deer like Rudof that would be really, really fun. I have been very good and so I should get a pony and if I do not get a pony I hope I get a Barbie and…” and…and…Mooooom! What should I say next?…”

Seemingly hours later, my mother would tuck me into bed.

“Let me stay up so I can say hi to Santa?!”
“NO. No, no, no. Santa, er, Santa can’t work if every child stayed up, honey. He would, um, he would lose a lot of sleep. Time. He would lose a lot of time and not all of the children would get their toys. You really wouldn’t like that, would you, to cause Santa to neglect any little girls or boys?”

Guilty and still unconvinced, I would wait to hear my mother and father finish whatever clean up they were doing downstairs. This was often when, after hours of sugar-binging and Santa-obsessing, I’d pass the fuck out. If I didn’t, and silence finally descended upon our house, I’d sneak back downstairs and crouch under the dining room table, waiting to see Santa, so I could tell Sophie Steinbeck and Diana Baxter at school, and then maybe they’d stop calling me Anal-slee and pushing me in my locker.

As soon as I’d assumed my crouching post, the Catholic guilt would creep in. What I was doing was wrong! It was going to cause Santa to mess up…for the first time ever! I had to go to sleep, or I would ruin Christmas…for everyone!

Terror would seize my stomach and I’d race back up the stairs to my bedroom, hunkering down under the covers, hoping it wasn’t too late. Angry Old Testament God and Santa would get switched around in my head. I would be kept awake, plagued by fears that I’d get up the next morning to find Santa pitched over under our tree, frozen reindeer and bag of undelivered goodies on the roof, all because I’d try to spy on him.

Of course, if you’re an adult, you know that the Santa carnival can’t continue forever. (And if you’re a kid, let me just say, SPOILER ALERT.) I assume that most parents discuss how to best dispel this magic, they debate the safest way to burst the fairytale bubble and let their child down easy, teaching them that the true meaning of Christmas is rampant consumerism, religious skirmishes, and debating whether or not eggnog is a disgusting means of getting drunk. Of course, I wasn’t blessed with most parents. And so it was bound to happen.

I must have been around seven, maybe eight years old, that fateful Christmas. My cousins had been collected and said their goodbyes, I had showered and changed into my new pink nightgown. Downstairs was quiet. As always, I was convinced that maybe, just maybe, I could hide and steal a glimpse of Santa without destroying the holiday globally. If I didn’t interrupt him and stayed hidden and maybe held my breath, I reasoned, perhaps he wouldn’t lose any precious minutes. I could brag to my bullies and Santa could continue on his annual gig none the wiser.

The stairwell that separated my bedroom from the rest of the house was long, at least to an eight year old. Though more than a decade and a half has passed since I believed in Santa, I can remember counting the seventeen steps, taking them agonizingly slowly, creeping through the dark like Tom Cruise creeping through the darkest parts of his inner closet. The tree twinkled from the living room, I could see its multi-hued lights reflected in our polished floor. Once downstairs, I figured I would crouch in the corner, behind the table and chairs, a perfect hiding spot where I could blend in with the other homey objects in the dark. You know, side table, easy chair, curled-up eight year old asphyxiating herself.

“…of course you say it’s “not being a big deal,” you don’t have to lift a goddamn finger!”

Santa?

My mother stormed out of my parents’ bedroom, clutching the fuzzy red stockings, swollen with gifts, to be hung by the chimney with care.

“If you weren’t so fucking uptight about everything…” a man’s voice hissed.

Um, Santa?

My father followed my mother out of the bedroom, a stack of presents barely obscuring his wine-flushed face.

“Uptight?! I have to do everything by myself around here! You just fucking sit there all la-di-da like a king!”

And, lo, the shattered marriage of my parents came upon me, and the glory of eternal single life shone around me. And I was sore afraid…until a little voice inside myself said, “Fear not! For, behold, if you go to bed and pretend that you didn’t see anything, you can at least have them think you still believe in the Easter bunny in April.”

So that’s just what I did. The next morning I was a little glum, but able to keep quiet about what I had seen. And, as spring arrived, I looked forward to getting my chocolatey treats, though suddenly the fact that I’d ever thought an overgrown rabbit brought easily-breakable baskets filled with candy to Catholic and Christian girls and boys seemed stupid. I mean, I’d seen live rabbits. They didn’t seem to have the capacity to discern religion just by looking at people, and they pooped a lot. My mother, ever influenced by the seasonal magic of holidays, cooed to me about how the Easter bunny was going to come. I smiled a wan smile. It was when she used it as a threat to get me to wear a new, lace-trimmed dress that I had to draw the line.

“Come on, Ainsley. Get dressed. It’s time for Church. If you don’t behave the Easter bunny won’t come and…”

“You don’t have to pretend that the Easter bunny is real. I know he’s not real. Just like Santa.”

If my parents marital spats had caused them to have any rift, the panic that seized them both that day was a uniting force. I was not the type of little kid to keep secrets. Weak, sensitive, prone to tantrums and fits of crying, I was nothing if not predictable. I’m sure my parents had each individually anticipated the histrionic blowout that would occur on that day in the future where the other parent would inform me that all of these whimsical, generous holiday figments were lies. Instead they got a resigned, crestfallen little kid sighing her way into a frilly dress, aware that the holidays were just a whole lot of stress over nothing.

I hate to say it, but it took a long time for me to get back into the Christmas spirit. I think I didn’t enjoy the holidays again until I learned to drink. (And then, once alcoholism took over, I had even more reason to dread them, Santa be damned. Sorry, family, for that whole thing with the screaming and the gravy boat.) This year, for the first time in nearly a decade, I’m looking forward to Christmas. Sure, my cousins are older, all but one married and creating families of their own. And, yeah, Santa is still make-believe. I don’t have kids or a husband, but I have a Chihuahua and a loving family, and being able to revel in a day that’s dedicated to warmth, cheer, goodwill, generosity, and some whimsical tale of giving is enough. I hope that, no matter what holiday you celebrate, even if you don’t celebrate any holiday at all, you’re able to enjoy it, dear Internet.

And if you have any doubts about whether or not you should get married, or exactly why we need to make merry, hide in your parents living room. There the true meaning of Christmas will be revealed.

It’s mid-December in New York, which means that the streets are even more crowded than usual. Between the tourists, grumbling locals with shopping bags, and the Christmas tree vendors, it’s nearly impossible to do something simple like get a package of condoms from the bodega down the block without hip-checking someone you don’t know.

Usually I meet this time of the year with the sort of dread and resignation reserved for green, furry mountain-dwellers with dachshunds, the kind who indulge in major felonies and child abuse in order to cope with the holidays. Over the past five years or so I’ve been anywhere from destitute to unemployed, so dealing with the season of overindulgence and rampant consumerism usually consisted of me hiding my head under a blanket and praying that it would end quickly, with little as few carols and Christmas cards as possible. I expected this year to be no different.

Maybe it was the end of the NBA lockout, and the fact that they scheduled the greatest gift of all: a Christmas Day triple-header to start the season, featuring both my home team (the New York slightly-injured, AARP-eligible Knicks!) and my favorite team (the two-man Los Angeles Clippers!)

Or maybe it has to do with my puppy, who makes me view nearly everything, including excrement, as awesome and fascinating.

Maybe it’s because I dabbled in both prescribed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications over the past year.

Maybe it’s because of Tim Tebow. It’s probably because of Tim Tebow.

Regardless, my heart grew three sizes this season, and I can only say that I’m full of glad tidings and tinsel. I am in the holiday spirit. What the fuck.

I even put up lights. Sorta.

So I’m all holly and jolly and shit. And why not? It only comes once a year. I’m single, I’m sober, I own a shit-eating Chihuahua. There’s a lot to be grateful for, and I want to share the glad tidings of giving and all that. And cookies! I want to share cookies. With everyone. From my nearly constant use of the Internet and various social networks, I’ve learned that not all of you are in the mood to roast some chestnuts over an open fire. Kenny Chesney, maybe. But not nuts, unless they belong to a Republican candidate. But because I can’t bear for y’all to suffer through the season, here are some peculiar facts that will at least make it temporarily interesting. I hope.

Atheists! Avoid feeling awkward! Sure, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the word itself is a contraction of the words Christ’s Mass, but putting an X up on the bitch doesn’t change the meaning. The first letter of the word Christ in Greek is ‘chi,’ which is the equivalent of the modern Roman alphabet’s letter X. So basically Xmas is actually an ecclesiastical abbreviation that’s been in circulation since, well, forever. This will also be awesome for those of you fighting with idiot conservatives who say there’s a war on Christmas ‘cause it’s written Xmas. No it’s not. Conservative FAIL, as per usually.

Feminist caribou! First of all, reindeer are technically a subspecies of caribou, a non-flying land four-stomached land mammal. What’s interesting is that all reindeer grow antlers, both male and female deer, but the men lose their headgear in late November through mid-December, while lady deer retain theirs until spring. Which means that, if you see Christmas cards, cartoons, or other depictions of Santa’s eco-friendly vehicle, and the reindeer have antlers, they’re female. Rudolph the red-nosed, slightly gender-confused reindeer, had a very shiny nose…probably because applying lipstick with a hoof is hard.

The Real Housewives of Christmas Baked Goods! More fun, feminist facts for your festivities: both gingerbread and fruitcake are the desserts of spinsters. In the 18th century, British wedding guests who were unmarried believed that if they put a piece of fruitcake under their pillow before they went to bed, they would dream of their future spouse. Meanwhile, other British single ladies would gobble down gingerbread “husbands” (ie, men) to garner some luck when it came to meeting the real thing, giving a whole new definition to the term “maneater.”

Tree munchies! While on the topic of holiday sweets, you might not know it, but those cool, little boxes of Barnum’s Animal Crackers were imported to America from England in the 1800s as Christmas ornaments. Their string was meant to make them easy to hang on Christmas trees, so maybe grab a few, string ‘em up, and then put out some animal crackers for Santa. Oh, and also, Christmas trees are edible. Pine needles are a good source of vitamin C, while the nuts and cones aren’t exactly bad for you. Tell that to your vegan guests, though they might expect you to serve something a little more delicious. Like textured vegetable protein. Yum!

Boo! If you visit the Ukraine, they’re not having a white trash Christmas by merely recycling Halloween decorations; they often decorate their trees with artificial spider webs since finding a spider’s web on Christmas morning is considered good luck. You still have no excuse not to throw away your rotten pumpkin.

Bad Santa! Thinking of taking your niece or nephew to get a photo with Santa this week? Maybe just take ‘em out for ice cream instead. Nearly 7% of mall Santa applicants were found to have criminal backgrounds, while the rest of them are just creepy. (Not a real statistic, but why take a kid and shove them in a holiday jumper to put on some strange dude’s lap? It’s kind of traumatizing. Case and point.)

The Twelve Days of Dogma! Like the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? Find it hilarious when someone forgets the words or some large network forces overpaid athletes to humiliate themselves and sing it to their fans? Well, some believe that the song was created as a means for Catholic kids to remember important parts of their faith. Here’s the Rainman-like breakdown, though it’s been widely disputed by urban legend sites: A partridge in a pear tree would be Jesus; two turtle doves would be the New and Old Testaments; three French hens are faith, hope, and charity; four calling birds are the four gospels; five golden rings would be the first five books of the Old Testament, otherwise known as the Pentateuch, which records the history and laws of ancient Israel; six geese a-laying are the six days of Creation; seven swans a-swimming are the Seven Sacraments of the Holy Spirit; eight maids a-milking are the eight beatitudes; nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit; ten lords a-leaping are the Ten Commandments; eleven pipers piping would be the eleven faithful disciples; and twelve drummers drumming are the number of doctrines in the Apostles’ Creed.

Another interesting numbers-related fact about a song that loves to count so much, if you got all of the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” you’d get one up until the next time you sung it. The total is 364.

Thanksgiving carols! In 1857, James Pierpont wrote “Jingle Bells.” The only difference? It was called “One-Horse Open Sleigh” and it was originally penned for Thanksgiving, not Christmas. So when you start complaining next year about Christmas decorations making an appearance right after Halloween, just remember, they’ve been jingling the damn bells before Thanksgiving ever since the middle of the 19th century.

All howly night… And, in case you want to tease me for buying Booger a special Christmas stocking filled with treats, a survey reported that 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts each year from their owners. I’m assuming that almost all of them were Corgis.

Next week: How I learned about Santa! Don’t worry, it contains childhood trauma.

[Note: If you’ve stumbled on this page somehow because the Internet led you here in the event of your pet being poisoned, call The National Animal Poison Control Center Hotline at 1-800-548-2423.]

I went to Nebraska with Booger in tow. Well, technically in TSA-approved, overpriced bag. But she went with me to Omaha, we were going on an adventure.

This wasn’t her first time traveling. She’d been on a semi-successful road trip up the coast of New England. After driving all the way up there, we wound up in a two-hundred year old bed and breakfast in New Hampshire, where she promptly fell off the bed and cut her foot. While she wasn’t phased (or slowed down) in the least by the blood pouring out of her paw, I quickly packed up our stuff and checked out, driving five hours home to New York in the dead of night. In total I drove nearly eleven hours that day. She slept on my lap. In spite of her clumsiness, I learned that the Chihuahua travels well.

And her paw was fine. Fortunately she has a super-hot (yet curiously creepy) veterinarian, so visits to his office are less traumatic than they could be. Between my daddy issues and the fact that, on the first day I met him, he killed my previous dog (RIP, Snack) I’m pretty attached to Greenwich Village Animal Hospital and Hot Vet.

Our trip to the midwest provided many hurdles we needed to cross as a family. Booger’s first flight. Booger’s first introduction to a cat. Booger’s first ingestion of Acepromezine, aka “puppy Xanax.” The night before we left, I cycled through a whole host of possible calamities in my head. The drug would kill her or make her ill. The cat would shred her eyes out of her sockets, or, worse, they’d attack one another and both get hurt. She would yip and whine on the flight, thereby making me “that” shitty passenger, much like she had on her first train ride to Long Island. (To her defense, the LIRR sucks. A lot.)

But everything went fine. The Acepromezine knocked her out like Lindsay Lohan after a few bottles of “kombucha” and while the cat had some initial difficulty emotionally coping with the intrusion on his space, the two of them worked it out so that they could coexist with a fair amount of chasing and a shared bowl of dog food. The cat was really into dog food.

Fast-forward to the end of our trip. My flight was at around 7AM, so I went to bed early. At around 2AM I heard Booger making noise, a peculiar little cough that I’d never heard her make. Of course, I was half-asleep when she started the curious chortling, so I chalked it up to her inhaling a ball of cat hair or something equally possible, like that she choked on her own spit or was smoking pot in the kitchen.

At 4 I woke up and pieced my woozy self together while the puppy zoomed around like a coke fiend halfway through the last LCD Soundsystem album. I thought, “Wow, my dog sure is intuitive. She can tell we’re leaving and she’s excited to go home.” About an hour and a half later I called for a cab to take me to the airport. While shoving errant stockings and bottles of girlie potions into my bag, I picked up Booger’s blanket in order to get her carrying case ready for the journey home. A chunk of something solid and brown fell onto the carpet.

Usually if something brown is found near anything associated with my dog, it is poop, which she loves to produce, eat, play with, and put in places never before touched by excrement, like any clean pair of socks that are on my feet. However, this time the mahogany mass was far too flat to be poop. In fact, it was nearly the shape of a perfect square, like some sort of historic artifact, a paleolithic bathroom tile or the precursor to the modern guitar pick, albeit one lined with teeth-marks. I gingerly held it close to my face and looked at it, noticing that it didn’t have the usual eau de pooh, but instead a not-so-subtle aroma of chili and…chocolate.

It was then that I realized what had happened. The cat had knocked down the artisanal chili-laced dark chocolate bar that I’d given my host as a gift. It had been on the counter, sitting there innocently throughout the duration of our trip. Once it fell, Booger had eaten it and gotten high, the effects of which she was obviously still suffering. In the battle of cats vs. dogs, cats were clearly winning. The coughing had likely been because of the ancho chili powder that the bar’s Brooklyn-based manufacturer had blended into the mix in order to charge nearly $7 for it. Why my half-Mexican dog wasn’t able to handle a little heat in her health hazard is beyond me. Perhaps it should have come with a side of arsenic laced guac.

Because the bar was small-batch and fancy, there was nothing written on what remained of its wrapper other than Spicy Dark. The puppy had eaten the majority of it.

Anybody who has ever had a dog likely knows what I’m about to say, but chocolate is toxic to dogs. I had no idea how much she’d consumed, but basic math, logic, and a quick Internet search revealed that it was a lethal dose.

Before I continue with my cautionary tale, let me break it down for you, science-style. Chocolate contains two types of stimulants that are part of the drug class methylxanines: caffeine and theobromine. While caffeine in large quantities is great for an insufferable workday and, in even larger quantities, is lethal to everyone, there’s only a slight amount of it in chocolate. But theobromine, which is a toxic compound, spikes the stuff in a much larger dose. Theobromine can send a dog to the great kennel in the sky if he or she eats merely 100-150 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. (For those of you dumb at maths like me, a kilogram = 2.2 pounds and a milligram is 1/1000 of a gram.) As for caffeine, it’s toxic to people at 150 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, which is the same ratio that can kill a dog. What makes a puppy’s ingestion of chocolate even worse is that theobromine isn’t metabolized quickly, its half life inside of a dog’s body is 17.5 hours.

As I made my way to the cab, I called Hot Vet. It was before office hours, so I got the messaging service which, after hearing my predicament, immediately gave me the number to the ASPCA’s poison control hotline. Once connected, things went from bad to dreadful. Indeed, Booger had eaten enough chocolate to kill her. I mean, the dog is only four pounds, it wouldn’t have taken much. What’s worse? The toxicity increases the darker the chocolate is. It takes 20 ounces of milk chocolate to end the life of a twenty pound dog, but only six ounces of semisweet or two ounces of baker’s chocolate to do the same. The bar of dark chocolate that Booger wolfed down was the human equivalent of a bottle of bleach with a heroin chaser. Unless my pocket-sized pooch had the staying power of Keith Richards, things weren’t looking good.

“Is there any way you can cancel your fight and go to an emergency clinic? This is a life-threatening situation,” the woman said. “You shouldn’t fly with her. She’ll likely have a seizure during the flight.”

Financially and logistically, this was as reasonable as asking me to build my own plane to fly us home. So the ASPCA, Booger, and myself were forced to implement plan B. Miraculously I was able to find a 24 hour convenience store, where I ran in and purchased hydrogen peroxide and peanut butter. Following the instructions of the woman on the line, I forced two plastic spoonfuls of the chemicals down her throat, followed by a bit of smooth Jif to get the taste out of her mouth. She threw up in a matter of minutes, but I couldn’t tell how much of it was chocolate and how much of it was miscellaneous Chihuahua chow. Standing outside of the airport, on the curb, peering at dog puke under a dim streetlight, I fought back tears. It was freezing outside. The look on Booger’s face was a mix of “what the fuck, you’re harshing my mellow” and “what the hell have you done, this sucks.” She looked like me every morning during my first year of college.

As advised by the lady, I administered small amounts of water followed by the puppy Xanax, the same amount as I had given her for the first flight. She said there was a chance that the pill would slow Boogs’ heart rate down and reduce the risk of complications or seizures. My vomit-coated, miserable-eyed dog was doped to the gills. We boarded the plane and I wondered if, when we touched down in New York, I’d be hauling a puppy purse filled with dead weight.

The flight was a nightmare. I’ve written extensively about my fear of flying and how I hate it. I assure you, I will not be doing it again. Ever. Call me the Lars von Trier of dog ownership, we’re done with planes. It took two flight attendants and a Christian missionary to intervene and stop me from screaming and crying during the two and a half hours of continuous turbulence. When the wheels hit the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, Booger was still alive, and I appeared to be closer to respiratory and cardiac failure than she did.

By the end of that night, she was right as rain. Granted, I wouldn’t let her out of my sight for an instant. I wrote with her in my lap. I cooked dinner with her under my arm. I took a shower and washed the vomit off of her at the same time. We slept in the same bed. I couldn’t stop looking at her and tearing up. Man’s best-friend, maybe. My best-friend? Definitely.

While this story has a happy ending, and Booger will live to enjoy many more fecal feasts and poop-permeated playtimes, it could have ended horribly. So I’m going to provide some advice for dog-owners out there that I would have found useful the other day. (If you’re a cat person, your pussy isn’t immune. Cats have an even lower tolerance for chocolate. But fortunately they don’t usually get into the stuff, as cats can’t taste sweetness. There’s your ace for trivia night.)

Remember, I’m not a veterinarian. I’m just a slut with a dog and some stories. But here’s what the Internet and this experience taught me:

A FEW THINGS TO KNOW TO KEEP YOUR DOG FROM DEATH BY CHOCOLATE

First of all, let me get this out of the way. There’s no antidote for chocolate poisoning.

More bad news? Your dog can show signs of theobromine poisoning or chocolate toxicity anywhere from four to twenty-four hours after eating it. Theobromine stays in a dog’s body for a long, long time, even if your dog is like mine and shits more frequently than Justin Bieber gets Googled.

The darker the chocolate, the more concentrated the toxins. If your dog has eaten any chocolate at all, it’s best to call your vet. A 9-pound dog can experience signs of chocolate toxicity after eating as little as one ounce, so call ‘em. Even if you’re drunk after a holiday party and Fido only ate a bite of the Advent calendar. Chances are, you’ve already paid your vet a shitton of money to keep your pup healthy, calling in an emergency should be a no brainer.

Which means, I repeat, if your dog ate chocolate, it is an emergency. You probably wouldn’t accept “But it was just a little bit of meth, mom!” from your kid. One Hershey Kiss could kill ‘em. Call your vet.

Signs of chocolate toxicity include:
Puking
Shitting
Increased body temperature
Increased reflex responses (which was why Booger became like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil on fast-forward)
Muscle rigidity
Panting
Increased heart rate
Low blood pressure
Seizures

Other things the ASPCA worker told me to look out for included shaking, which can be caused by low blood sugar, staggering, and drooling. (Drooling more than normal, bulldog owners.)

What your vet might have you do is what I did, induce vomiting. There are two ways to do this, though I guess you can say that forcing your dog to watch Kim’s Fairytale Wedding could be a third. More reliably, you can give your a single teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide followed by a bit of peanut butter or syrup of ipecac. These days vets often recommend using syrup of ipecac instead of H2O2 because hydrogen peroxide can cause esophageal ulcers.

If your dog is acting like a nutjob, running around spastically, or having seizures after consuming cocoa candy, time is of the fucking essence. Get to the fucking vet, stat. Any vet. Once you’re there, the vet will likely give your dog an IV of fluids and anti-seizure meds. They may also give your pooch something to protect their heart, as supporting cardiovascular function is really important in the event of a canine chocolate crisis. Other possible treatment may include supporting respiration, maintaining a healthy balance of electrolytes, administering charcoal, and monitoring them to make sure fluid isn’t gathering in the gut.

The ASPCA has that hotline you can call and get veterinary advice for a nominal fee. (I paid $65 bucks, which was well worth it, as it saved Booger’s life.) You’re paying for volunteers who answer the phone and provide information, even in the earliest hours of the morning, even to a histrionic girl flying home from Nebraska.

The National Animal Poison Control Center Hotline: 1-800-548-2423

and now…

A List of Possibly Delicious Foods That Your Dog Should NEVER Eat
Avocado. Has persin in it, in both the fruit as well as the plant itself. Is toxic.
Onions and garlic, even in powdered form. Can cause anemia.
Grapes and raisins. Cause kidney failure. (I learned this the hard way.)
Milk and dairy products. Can cause the shits, puking, and itchy allergies.
Macadamia nuts. These are basically cyanide to dogs. Never, ever, never, not even a little.
Gum or candy containing Xylitol. Can cause liver failure and blood sugar issues.
Fat. Like meat trimmings. Fucks with the pancreas.
Bones. Sharp, can scratch the internal bits of a dog. Dog insides are soft. Bones are not.
Persimmons, peaches, plums. The seeds mess with the intestines and peach and plum pits actually have cyanide in them. Fo’ real. William Carlos Williams can have whatever’s in the icebox if you own a dog.
Raw eggs. Salmonella, E.coli, enzymes that mess with the absorption of B vitamins.
Raw meat, raw fish. Bacteria that can cause food poisoning.
Caffeine. Same reason why chocolate is bad.
Alcohol. Duh.
And giving your dog too much salt ain’t good ‘cause it can lead to sodium ion poisoning, while too much sugar can cause diabetes. Nobody wants their dog to be nicknamed Wilford Brimley.

So there you go. Feed your dog dog food. Go to the vet. Keep chocolate far, far, far away from where dogs can reach it or cats can knock it to the floor. And hug your pet. ‘Cause it’s likely that you realize they’re important to you, but often it’s during a life-threatening emergency that you’re forced to recognize just how much.

Recently I had to learn how to give a lap dance. Don’t ask me why. You can assume that it had something to do with a lost bet, or the fact that I’m a sucker when people ask me nicely for things. Or you can just jump to the natural conclusion that I have Aaron Rodgers tied to a chair and locked in a basement right now. The point is, I had to learn how to do some sort of stripper moves, using nothing more than my computer and creativity.

For those of you who’ve never seen me in person, allow me to construct a little mental Etch-a-Sketch. I’m five feet tall, more white than whole milk with a side of Wonder bread, with less coordination than a three-legged kitten in the trunk of a Miata.

In a purely G-rated context, my little brain has become so exhausted after a few decades of trying to coordinate my movements that these days I basically navigate the world like a tiny hippopotamus, slamming into everything and hoping to take it out of my way. I should add the super-sexy details that I have a haircut that can only be described as Olympic-era Kerri Strug gone homeless, and I have the build of a preteen boy. I could be a stripper, if boobs, hair, and basic motor skills weren’t required.

So now that I’ve gone all Bob Ross on your imagination’s canvas, let me repeat: I’ve had to learn how to give a lap dance. Using the Internet.

Have you ever tried to use your computer to obtain information about anything even slightly sexual? Do you basically realize that you’re sitting neck-deep in a jacuzzi of porn every time you utilize a search engine? I don’t care how many safe search modes you have, there’s no denying what the ‘net is good for: sexual stimulation for people too busy, too bored, or too hideous to find someone to actually have sex with. Therefore trying to find an instructional guide to give a lap dance without knocking your teeth out or causing a guy’s penis to invert is a little more difficult than you’d imagine.

YouTube is often affectionately thought of as a sort of tree chart, by which you view one video and then leapfrog to related clips, thereby broadening your horizon and learning more and more about whatever subject matter, musical artist, or random act performed by a kitten that you have typed into the search bar. This is an incorrect assumption. YouTube is not a tree chart, it is a drug dealer. Anything you type into the search bar is like an alcoholic’s first Zima, an addict’s first puff of weed.

Let’s say you type in something benign enough as, “How to ride a motorcycle.” In no time you’re mainlining clips of pony porn. Trust me, YouTube isn’t the tree chart of knowledge. It’s the rabbit hole of vice. In my pursuit of “How to give a lap dance” I wound up watching two teenagers choreograph what can only be described as an elaborate hokey-pokey with their buttocks that made me want a Delorean so I could go back in time and perform forced vasectomies on their fathers.

I didn’t learn how to give a lapdance on YouTube, unless I was able to glean some sort of step-by-step guide through a Russian-language clip featuring the most absurdly gorgeous woman I have ever seen.

The only thing I could obtain from my search, other than the fact that there’s at least one studio band paying for their mortgages by churning out nondescript softcore porn hits perfect for half-naked ladies to gyrate to, is that I needed to practice. Like, a lot. If I was going to take off my clothes and grind on somebody, I was going to make damn sure that I at least knew what motions I could make that would sufficiently prevent both ego-withering giggles and an injury. After all, I’m currently uninsured.

I also decided that, if I was going to do this, I was going to do it all the way. I drew the blinds. I selected a handful of slow tracks conducive to a little bump ‘n grind. I put on a leotard and leg-warmers. (Not bullshitting.)

I was alone this whole time, mind you.

To sit in for the unfortunate recipient, I put an empty chair from my kitchen table in the center of the floor. And then I pressed play.

It only took one move where I bent over for my Chihuahua to spring tongue-first at my face, licking and hopping and trying to partake in this new game of musical chair. Frustrated and further humiliated by the fact that the puppy couldn’t understand the nuance in my sexy thirty-second swaying, I locked her in the bathroom, where her whining and scratching served as an undesired metronome to the remix of La Roux’s “In For The Kill.” I reasoned with myself that the dog couldn’t have understood what I was doing in the first place, especially since I’d recently paid a veterinarian to spay her.

I kept trying. Four tracks into Portishead’s “Dummy,” an album permanently associated with my earliest sexual experiences, and I’d run through my full roster of moves.

Several times I did something that one of the clips had referred to as “The Lotion,” where I pantomimed slowly rubbing lotion on my leg like a stoned sufferer of eczema. I crept around on all fours like a spastic, arthritic cat. I arched my back, stuck out my ass and imaginary boobs. I gyrated my hips as though I were trying to hula-hoop inside of a Mobius strip, and I tossed my head around as though I had a bad case of lice.

I created my own choreography, with maneuvers like the Spontaneous Turn, when my ankles defied their joints and wrapped around one another as I tried to keep my balance, and The Bambi, where all of my limbs jutted out at odd angles on my slippery wooden floor. There was also the Spiderman, where I tried to “drop it low” like the do in rap videos, only to discover that I couldn’t keep my balance and had to stick one of my legs out while bending the other and balancing on my palms as though I were the webbed one perched at the edge of a building.

All in all, my improvised dance routine didn’t exactly flow well. In fact, it would have seemed funny to me, if I hadn’t caught glimpses of myself in the mirror that forced me to behold the look of pained shame that froze my face into some sort of resigned, cow-eyed grimace.

It’s hard not to wonder how this could ever be considered sexy. Turns out it was simply a wise promotion for a business back in the day. One of the oldest porn palaces, the Mitchel Brothers O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, went from simply providing xxx entertainment to allowing customers to get an up close and personal feel for their dancers; in 1980 they altered their rules so that patrons could pay a buck to have one of the dancers sit on their lap. The benefits weren’t simply that more bodies came through the door, the trend took off because club owners then could pay dancers less money. And thus lap dancing was born, and George Washington’s face got a little more dirty.

I think that, judging by my moves and midget linebacker-like physique, I’d be paid to get the hell away from the potential recipient of a lap dance in a professional setting. Which makes me wonder, if this private performance doesn’t leave me in a body cast, maybe I can get paid to stop threatening people’s genitals with my awkward, spasmodic gyrations, kind of like a robbery where I use my body as a weapon.

In the meantime, you can get this lap dance here for free.