My Introduction to Eastern Bodywork and Theory class is not the best way to start the week. Based on principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine that make me skeptical and confused (“What do you mean Metal is the mother of Water? How does that have anything to do with migraines?”) and with a teacher whose voice could be featured on the album Restful Sleep 2: Guided Meditation for Self-Hypnosis, it’s great for napping, but does nothing for my general energy level or academic enthusiasm. The first half of the Monday is a lecture, followed by a little over an hour of movement on tumbling mats. The goal is to eventually learn how to perform an effective full-body shiatsu session. So far it’s like romper room meets octogenarian calisthenics. I’ve learned the basics of Tai Chi. My nervous little body wasn’t built for that sort of molasses-like maneuvering.

However, on Tuesdays I have Introduction to Swedish I. This academic foray into the predominantly western technique of Swedish massage couldn’t be more antithetical to Monday’s snooze fest. Equipped with an agile, gray haired professor who has thirty years’ experience and the sense of humor of Mel Brooks, I find myself surprised when the class abruptly finishes after four hours. It’s structured the same as Eastern, there’s a brief lecture followed by a hands-on tutorial, only the goal for this course is to be able to perform an hour-long, well-paced Swedish massage. The hope is to put the recipient to sleep. Swedish massage is rubbing Rohypnol.

A brief overview of differences between Shiatsu and Swedish, as far as I can tell as an amateur, are that Shiatsu originated from Asia as a method of diagnosing and treating disease, while Swedish massage was born from the same root as what was once called “gymnastics.” It was a mode of stretching the body and preparing athletes for more arduous competition and training. Meanwhile Shiatsu is a modality that’s administered on the floor or a mat, while Swedish is probably what you think of when you think of massage: a puffy table with a face cradle and loads of white linens. Shiatsu is meant to improve the flow of some invisible woo-woo energy called “qi.” Swedish is meant to make you forget you’re a mother of three with a gas-guzzling minivan.

Shiatsu is also performed with clothes on. Ideally pajamas. Swedish? Well, as with most European traditions, mandatory nudity is a given.

“Those short things don’t work,” my professor announced. “All gentlemen wearing those short-things, the underpants that come down your thigh like shorts? You’ll have to take them off.”

This is school.

It was Tuesday. I had barely remained conscious the day before during my Eastern class, growing ever more confused by the quietly drawn diagrams of elements, seasons, colors, and family members that were supposed to represent some mystical energy flow in the body. Today’s Swedish class was going to be the ephedrine to the previous day’s Ambien. It was the day that we were to get naked.

I am fairly body-confident. Part of this is a spiteful knee-jerk reaction to traditional female squeamishness and self-criticism, but it’s mainly that I get up at 5:30 every morning in order to squeeze in a workout. I eat healthy, I stay active, and I basically do the best I can to make sure I won’t resemble and arthritic walrus by the age of 35. Genetics is the Green Goblin to my gym-born Batman. (The stairclimber is my Alfred in this comparison.)

All of this said, I still don’t know my classmates too well. In spite of my previous ill-conceived notions that Unnamed Massage College would be filled with Jennifer Love-Hewitt lookalikes, the student body is fairly evenly split between men and women. And while I would have misjudged and thought that men studying massage would be the sort of gentle souls who would be offering their services to John Travolta, they’re mainly uber-manly young dudes, the kind who chug 5 Hour Energy and call me ‘bro.’ (Really.) Each has revealed that they hope to meet their future wives “on the table,” and I get the feeling that this is how shows like Real Housewives of New Jersey make it to double-digit seasons.

Which is to say, unless I relapsed and pounded an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with wine coolers, I would not be getting naked in front of these guys unless I was forced to. If Intro to Eastern’s nap battle was one extreme of my “rest-and-digest” parasympathetic response, Tuesday’s strip-tease was my fight-or-flight adrenaline surge at its full-throttle. I stepped behind the tiny portable curtain and tugged at my school uniform.

It was comforting to know, and to hear, that I wasn’t the only one doing this awkward veil dance. The grunts and chatter of half of my classmates drowned out the ticker of WTF that was scrolling at the bottom of my internal broadcast. My teacher tittered around, adjusting tables and making sure that those who didn’t have their face-cradle covers were rightly chastised. I tried to ignore the fact that, while I was behind a cheap, opaque plastic curtain, I was facing an open window. Granted, we were on the seventh floor, but I was showing off my itty-bitty silver-dollar-pancake rump to the lower western quadrant of Manhattan. Whatever, at least they couldn’t touch me behind the glass. This is what peep show girls must have felt like back before the days of online porn.

I grabbed my towel with the sort of white-knuckled vehemence that witch-shunning villagers in the 1800s grabbed pitchforks and torches and I stepped from behind the curtain.

Half of my class awkwardly side-stepped out in their respective white towels, all of us different sizes, shapes, and colors like a low-rent Benetton commercial from the ‘80s.  I laid down on the table and allowed my anxious partner to pummel my prone back with her own shaky-handed method of amateur effleurage. She spilled oil down my ass-crack, even through the towel and sheets, and was promptly ripped a new one by my professor who was becoming increasingly more stressed out with the prospect of eighteen incompetent massage students roaming around the linoleum floor in various stages of undress.

Eventually we switched, I reassembled my uniform, and my high-strung partner — who, ironically, was also French (like actually French, as in from France) — stripped down. It was my turn to worry about my methods of undraping, the play-by-play of which was especially difficult to recall through the mental static following a half hour of laying down and being rubbed. Would I remember how to turn the towel and fold the sheets, or would Marie Antoinette under my mits be exposed and have her bush say bonjour to room 705? My hands began to shake. Parasympathetic nervous system be damned.

I have to say, my freak-out was only momentary. While I might have had no real idea what I was doing, I didn’t misstep, or mis-fold. My partner’s bits remained covered, and I didn’t spill oil anywhere but in my palms. (And a little on the paper towels below the table, but whatever.) My posture remained erect and while I kept getting my feet and hands confused – “Navel towards the table, hand closest to your partner below!” – it didn’t take me long to create a rhythm that felt…right. Stroke by stroke, I remembered why I wanted to do this. Sure, it had nothing to do with “qi” or rolling around on mats or getting ass-naked in front of a bunch of misfits, but I was willing to endure all of these humiliations and worse. There’s something about bodywork that just feels right.

Of course, standing around in sweatpants and a school tee-shirt, silently stroking some French girl’s back, it might sound peculiar for me to say that I found it more relaxing to be the massage therapist, on the giving end of this frottage foreplay. But given the fact that I was fully-clothed and no longer had to stare at the bearlike classmate who’d devoured a Doritos Locos taco an hour earlier, I wouldn’t say this was anything as weird as believing that elements and seasons are housed below my skin.

I think that years of the Monday Times crossword being my single method of cerebral gymnastics has allowed my grey matter to atrophy into a pile of soggy Fritos, ‘cause school is hard. Sure, I comprehend that there’s no running in the halls (this was said) and that we need to stay awake in order to get credit for attendance (this was said) and that we need to avoid placing our hands on each other’s groins without asking for permission (also said.) But being back in school both surprisingly familiar and overwhelming. I feel far stupider than I had expected.

Hitting the books after a longer length of time than summer vacation requires a certain level of adjustment for everyone, of course. For example, at least one of my fellow students is too physically large to fit at a desk.

And those chair-desks seem to become harder on our asses as the hours go by, by the fourth hour of Anatomy I (irony!) we’re shifting, sighing, and groaning like a ghostly chorus.

It’s hard not to laugh at the woman who goes from classroom to classroom with her sole function being to take attendance, looking as haggard, single, and chocolate-craving as a Cathy cartoon. We’re adults. Yet we’re raising our hands, saying “Here!” and snickering at fellow students’ names that rhyme with genitals.

Once class starts, but before our asses start feeling like they’re being filleted, it’s hard not to be lulled into a nap by the drum solo of chalk against the blackboard. I’ve noticed at least one colleague quietly sucking up the curtains in the corner. Turns out he has two kids and works in real estate and is going to school full-time. It’s no wonder he’s sleepy.

Many of the social dynamics are just as they were when we tossed our caps in the air and showed off our high-school rings. But unlike the traditional tropes of undergraduate academia that we had once grown used to, the athletic ‘dude-bro’ is now a DOS worker, and the popular girl has become a pear-shaped (but still Sun-In blond) secretary at a plastic surgeon’s office. Our teacher for Western Technique and Theory I is a 47 year old sexier version of Rosie Perez who worked as a legal assistant for twenty-two years and now does yoga in place of popping antidepressants. Unfortunately, I still am the nervous weird girl who just wants to be liked. It’s almost comforting that, after so many years, I still can muster up my “too cool” stare, as I’ve already been invited to a foam-sword fight in the park by the LARPing clique and I’ve participated in more than one discussion about the countless benefits of rollerblading. Suck it, losers.

Other milestones of high-school academia have already come to pass: I’ve picked my seat in the student lounge and had my notes copied from twice. Already my classmates and I have been subjected to one common-sense, PSA-esque video about the benefits of bathing and the risk of touching open sores. The one time I tried to show off and answered the question, “What is an olafactory flashback?” my well-meaning professor gently assumed out loud that I’d been raped on a bed of lilacs or donkey punched while baking muffins. I was just trying to answer the question and prove that I had more than some bellybutton lint in my skull. This is basically the same way I became Emergency Room Girl in seventh grade biology.

So school as an adult is more or less the same as school as a kid, with the same insecurities, social dynamics, basic rules and vile fluorescent-lighting-and-linoleum aesthetic. There are some fairly glaring program-specific differences, though.

“Starting next week, you’ll be crawling all over one another on the floor,” my first professor said.

“We have these portable changing curtains,” one professor pointed out, gesturing to the curtains-on-a-stick. “Next week you won’t be wearing any clothes.” I don’t know if that was a promise or a threat.

“By all means, if you fall asleep, drool,” the Swedish I professor droned on. “If you fall asleep on the table, it’s a very good sign.”

After my first week, I can say with authority that every school should have mandatory sweatpants. Not only does an equalizing and ugly tee-shirt-and-sweatpants uniform reduce each student to a shapeless, sexless blob, sweatpants are also mind-bogglingly comfortable.

And, for you pervs, the topic of happy endings has only come up in one class so far. A bunch of us students, myself included, began an impromptu, collaborative tirade about how friends, relatives, and strangers had either solicited us for sexual contact or assumed, because we’re studying massage, we’re entering sex work.

I did not find it surprising that all of us who were speaking up were girls.

The only solution we were offered was to sternly educate the misinformed, boner-wielding offenders which, to at least one of us, was kind of impossible, as it was her uncle.

Next week I have my first quiz. It’s in Anatomy & Physiology. I’d forgotten how short weekends are. I better start laying my hands on a body. Homework shouldn’t be hard.

One of the more interesting parts of last week’s orientation at Unnamed College of Health Sciences was a command given to the five of us by the student coordinator:

“Before embarking on this journey, decide what type of massage therapist you see yourself becoming. Do you want to work in a spa or with athletes, administering massage related to sporting events? Do you see yourself working with primarily Eastern or Western techniques?”

I found this line of inquiry perplexing, mainly ‘cause classes hadn’t started yet and therefore we had no fucking idea what the differences between Eastern and Western techniques were, let alone what it’s like to give a massage to a Boxtoxed broad of the 1% versus a sweaty Kenyan marathoner. Was this a trick question? Judging by the aggressive sigh from the bored-looking girl behind me, she thought so.

As with any seemingly important life decision, it’s key to think it through, or so self-help books tell me. While I’ve always conducted myself according to a bilateral policy of “Do first, ask questions later” and “Eh, why not?” this is not the most sensible way of doing things. It’s led to several acceptance letters to academic programs that I chose not to attend; a professional stint as a fishmonger; an incalculable stretch of time in Brooklyn that involved a Basset Hound, glassine bags, and some Jenga pieces; and at least 17 of my tattoos. Now, after so many years on this planet, I figure it’s as good of a time as any to recalculate my internal GPS and maybe implement my idiot imagination to formulate a plan for what it’ll look like to be a paradigm of pétrissage in my future. A future that may or may not involve mounting Blake Griffin like an Appaloosa pony.

So, to preface this, I’m not going to pretend that I actually know anything. ‘Cause I don’t. (Obviously. Outside of the fact that school hasn’t started yet, and my checkered history of questionable choices, have you seen my dog?) But I can imagine my future career going one of two ways…

"Wow, this would be a lot better if you were Ainsley..."

Ainsley Howser, MT

Clinical massage is a bit different from the spa-centric hot-stone servicing found in the fluffy-towel-lined womb of your local Massage Envy or overpriced resort. Also known as medical massage, this modality regards any type of massage “performed with the intent of improving conditions or pathologies that have been diagnosed by a physician.” Therapists who specialize in medical massage usually aren’t employed by zen-like relaxation huts that feature scented candles and new age Native American flute soundtracks; they’re often found in hospitals, oncology centers, or physical therapists’ offices instead.

I dig this. For one thing, I could potentially wear a white lab coat. I like that. Also, there’s something awfully productive about trying to help a person with a particular ailment. Instead of working on wealthy people’s shoulders, relieving the tension and knots caused by carrying too many Louis Vuitton bags, I’d be dealing with patient’s actual ache, pain, or injury. This would also offer me the opportunity to work with medical professionals and people with sexy, scientific minds. I’d actually put my anatomy quizzes to good use.

The downside is that, well, I’d potentially be working at a hospital, and with doctors, many of whom are jerks. There’s also the risk that my therapeutic approach won’t work and that my patient(s) could still suffer. That is a total bummer, more so to me than simply being unable to relieve a client’s general stress.

Another glittery bead within the multi-colored kaleidoscope of clinical massage is athletic massage. Also known as “sports massage,” it’s used before, during, and after events. You can see trainers and their staff clambering all over professional football and basketball players during games. The opposite of an om-happy, breath-focused rubdown, this modality is like the Gatorade of groping. It’s meant to energize and engage muscles to get them primed for performance, to workout mid-game aches and kinks, and to relieve swelling and help muscles flush away the byproducts of exertion after a win or a loss. It would involve me doing all kinds of things I only dream about, and possibly doing them for money. Even though I’m the size of the average NBA player’s rectus femoris.

Aloha-Oil

I have a thing for beachside cabanas.

Does that look like your office? It could be mine.

I have a fantasy that I’d stand below a billowing canopy, rubbing jojoba oil on the travel-weary muscles of tourists, listening to the ocean crash on the shore while my beachside colleagues traverse the beach offering to split open coconuts with a machete so that sunscreen-smeared foreigners can sip coconut water from the source in the sun. I’d live in a thatch bungalow with a bevy of chihuahuas and learn how to spearfish. Or surf. Or both. At once.

I know Americans who have worked the resort racket in the Caribbean and Hawaii. They live in New York now. One was a diving instructor, he now works as an environmental scientist, the other was a pool boy and he’s currently attending a graduate program in a business school. I suppose the steady diet of wayfarers, vagabonds, and “single-serving friends” got tiresome. Either that or their lives had been too relaxing, too peaceful, too good to endure. Either way, they’re here on this miserable island now while I look to rub my way out, like Aladdin’s genie in reverse.

The only real detriment I could see to a life of seaside stroking is that, much like a diet of nothing but chocolate ice cream, it could become overkill. Sustainable, maybe. But where does one retire when one has spent years working by the beach? Ohio?

"This way to Cincinnati..."

Of course, it’s more likely that I’ll wind up giving chair massages at a local strip-mall, doling out insurance-comped rubdowns for the victims of minor fender-benders, eventually succumbing to an overlong gig at a chain spa until I grow disillusioned by my work and change careers completely. (I’m being optimistic! I’ve gotten a lot of warning emails from well-meaning readers, many of whom have pursued this path.)

That said, I’m hopeful that I’ll escape the curse of the run-of-the-mill MT. I’d look equally as good beachside as I would as a doctor’s wife. Ahem.

I arrive at orientation early, as per the suggestion that I pick up my books for the semester beforehand. Immediately there are a few things that indicate I am in school.

The first is that as I enter the student lounge I spill water down the front of my shirt and on my crotch.

Then I can’t open the package on my brand new pen, I walk up and down the same (incorrect) hallway twice, and I almost further soak my already-damp pants when I can’t find the restroom.

The bathroom has the mandatory broken coat-hanger on the back of the stall door, and there’s a metal sign telling me in no uncertain terms not to flush anything that would go inside of my body down the toilet. It smells like piss, commercial strength apple scented air freshener, and apathy.

(mouth-breathers)

Also, there is a misspelled sign in the bookstore, “LISTEN TO KEVIN HE KNOW’S BEST!” The apostrophe is crossed out in blue ballpoint pen.

The Kevin in question is about 55, Asian, and in my weight class. With a diamond earring and a smoking skull-with-crossbones tee-shirt, he is someone’s cool uncle. When I tell him that I’m a new student and looking to pick up my books, he makes it a point to only hand me two flimsy textbooks. I am somewhat disappointed by their lack of heft and quantity.

“Wait until the first day. See if the instructor wants you to get the others,” he says.

This is perplexing.

He then says one word, more of a declaration than anything else.

“Uniform.”

Kevin then walks over to the far wall and looks back at me, sizing me up.

“This is a small,” he says, pulling out a tee-shirt with the school logo on the left breast.

“Um, can I have a medium?” I ask. Before he could explain to me the seemingly obvious fact that I am the size of a well-fed gerbil and therefore would swim in anything but sizes containing a capital S or a capital Y, I add, “It will shrink.” I have played this small/medium game before. I do not have breasts. Medium, while boxy, butch, and billowy, suits me.

But Kevin wasn’t entirely discouraged. He has another trick up his Ed Hardy short-sleeve.

“Small,” he states, presenting me with a haphazardly folded pair of sweatpants.

Small sweatpants and a medium tee-shirt. Our Lady of Pompeii Finishing School for Girls this is not. This is not any type of uniform to which there is dedicated an entire genre of pornography. While I approve of any mandatory apparel that involves elastic waistbands, I can’t imagine wearing this get-up down the street in summer. If it came with a hoodie, maybe. Then I could pretend I was starring in the massage therapy sequel to 8 Mile.

Following my purchase of overpriced loungewear and paltry textbooks, I head to the room where the actual orientation session is being held. As with every event in my life, I arrive ten minutes early. I am the first person here and, predictably, the door is locked. In case it was ever in question, my happy place is in the hallway.

Eventually I’m let inside of the generic classroom by a woman who looks like every girl I used to drink with in dyke bars on the Lower East Side, only this woman is in a dress and wearing stiletto boots instead of an oversized polo shirt and backward Yankees cap.

“You’re early,” she smiles. “That’s good.”

Her voice inspires fear and awe, as does her cleavage. She was obviously cast in the role of student dominatrix to lead the orientation sessions because of her ability to command a room. And maybe for her ability to leave an entire palm-print on bare flesh.

As I initial the line on the sign-in sheet next to my name, it becomes clear that the room in question will be small. There are five other names, one of which is a student who is not in my program, as is indicated by the all-bold-and-caps blurb “NOT MT, APT” next to their line. One by one, in the literal sense of the word, the other students arrive.

There are a few opening questions for the pro-dom to get her bearings, she determines who is enrolled for morning classes, and who is enrolled in the afternoon slots. How many semesters are each of us going to be here for? It turns out that I am the only person going full-time in four semesters. I’ll be taking Eastern technique and Swedish in tandem, along with the anatomy, physiology, and myology lectures.

The next hour and a half includes a PowerPoint presentation that is derailed by the PC and the Internet failing to play nice. School policies, of which there are many, are general common sense practices that could be determined by a squirrel. Be prepared. Show up on time, which is ironically announced just before one of the two late stragglers opens the door and shuffles into her seat with a bloated sigh. Here is how to access your email. You are quizzed every week and there are midterms as well as finals. Here are the list of fees you must pay if you miss an off-site session, a test, a class.

The girl with the ankle tattoo two rows behind me, who reeks of CK One and Burger King, raises her hand and, without being called on, interrupts the sadomasochistic student coordinator with an angry, “Why you gotta charge us?”

This appears to be in direct response to the school policy of fining students $100 in order to make up a class if they miss more than three. (Which is because of New York state law requiring a certain number of hours for a person to be licensed in massage therapy. And because the threat of paying a fee makes adult children behave.)

She’s easily deflected, but the tone of the meeting takes on a distinct aura of a sequel to Dangerous Minds.

The PowerPoint presentation includes the usual clip art that is peppered throughout semi-professional instructional sessions. The kind of easy-to-insert gifs of a blinking worm in glasses reading a book or sweating hamster in a wheel. Midwestern mothers with a copy of PowerPoint for Dummies make these every day, but not all generic, rudimentary-level presentations include motivational posters.

Once everything is sufficiently outlined and she has abandoned her attempts at showing us how to log into the student portal courtesy of technology dating back to the early aughts and an Internet connection slower than Dom DeLuise’s corpse, it’s over.

Of the six of us, I was the only person who sat in the front row, except for the gentleman who came in twenty minutes late and kept his earbuds in the whole time. He was the only male attendee and, additionally, he was revealed to be the one person not enrolled in the MT program. I know I’m placing judgment where I shouldn’t, but it truly felt as though I was the only person excited to be there. Moreover, it also seemed like I was the only person incredibly anxious at the prospect of absorbing such a vast amount of anatomical information – and being repeatedly tested on it – in such a short amount of time. I’m used to being the unfunny, more lecherous Woody Allen of every room I walk into, but I left feeling stupider than everybody in the building, while simultaneously feeling superior to the majority of the human race. It was a confounding sensation indeed, and probably as jarring as an amateur massage therapy classmate’s hands on my body. I’ll see how that feels in two week’s time.

Another observation, as I packed up my notebook, pen, and student manual, was that I was also the only person of a healthy weight in the group. At risk of revealing myself to be the gigantic asshole that I really am, I’m assuming I will be licensed in whale massage at the end of this sixteen month scholastic sojourn. You can find me at the zoo on off days, performing shiatsu on the walrus. This is going to be a long year and a half. Let me know if I should shut up now and I’ll just talk with my hands.

(Like, seriously. Chime in if you’d prefer not to hear about this shit. I’m fine just writing about sex and jobs and Tim Tebow or whatever. AinsleyDrew at the gmail one.)

Orientation for school is on Monday. The last orientation I went to was in the same year that Tommy Lee left Mötley Crüe. Bush and Gore were still debating. Malcolm in the Middle, CSI (the original, not extra crispy) and Survivor debuted on television; Macy Gray was a hip new artist; Vanilla Coke hadn’t been introduced to the market yet; and I still thought I was a lesbian.

During my undergraduate orientation, I remember judging everyone around me and becoming increasingly more convinced that I was the smartest person in the auditorium. Drinking Zima on my mattress in front of my roommate’s television was my other definition of class, and when I wasn’t chasing the tail of my fellow noobs, I was trying to smoke clove cigarettes and read tarot cards as a hobby. This was the same year that I met Simon, mind you. What I’m saying is that it was a long, long time ago.

So on Monday, the bookstore at Unnamed College of Health Sciences opens at noon. I’ll spend a few hours collecting textbooks, being assigned classes and, if past visits to Unnamed are any indication, filling out reams of redundant paperwork. I’m excited, really. After months of trying to teach myself anatomy, reading books about techniques and contraindications, and perusing massage therapists’ blogs, I’m ready. I think. I mean, in truth, I’m plagued with the kind of anxiety I reserve for flying in regional jets and walking past audibly active beehives. But I’m also housing the kind of buzz one usually finds in coffee beans and the highest grade amphetamines. Buzz, buzz.

Most of my concerns are rooted in the depths of my Botox-blasted crows’ feet and years of haphazard life experience. After rounding out my twenties, am I still able to study? Can I learn without the soft-cheese brain of youth? I used to be very good at hitting the books and taking tests, but it took oceans of alcohol and the anthill-like infestation of miscellaneous vaginas in my bed in order to temper my stress, strife, and sorta-success. The stakes didn’t seem as high as they do now, as an adult making a career change instead of bounding up the first few steps towards maturity and hopefully professional achievement of some kind. And maybe that’s a large part of it, I feel like I’m walking back down those steps with slightly-aching knees, only to attempt another ascent towards a different floor. It just feels a trifle daunting.

“It’s no big deal, it’s not as if you’re going for a PhD at Harvard,” my father said, ever the champion for my self-esteem.

“Why don’t you study something else, too, something more intellectual so that all of your wit and brilliance don’t go to waste,” a friend helpfully offered.

Thanks, guys. I’ll just be over here, smacking my skull into a brick wall while chewing on some glass.

Sure, I’m entering a field most often associated with prostitution and woo-woo alt med nutjobs, but I’m not (entirely) stupid. I want to help people. I believe in the power of touch, and not just kneading the butt or rubbing on the naughty bits. Being a writer doesn’t pay my bills, and while I’m not giving it up, it’s time for me to learn a supplementary trade, one that means something to me, even if the dogs-to-tricks age ratio is skewed at this point. Hopefully I can contribute to the greater good for the field of massage, and prove that we’re not penmen of happy endings and chakra-balancing cosmonauts, but effective therapeutic adjuncts in a healthcare setting. Or in a cabana by the beach.

Granted, when my latest arena is presented to the public in shows like The Client List, featuring Jennifer Love-Hewitt’s overflowing talent cups and little else, I think I’m fighting an uphill battle. I’m just going to have to accept that I’m not going to be respected as much, or as often, as I’d like, or as much as I was when I declared myself to be a writer. (But I will be asked to give handjobs far more frequently than I am now.)

As I trudge my way into orientation for class of 2013 at Unnamed, I’ll have a little less swagger than I did the previous go ‘round back at the turn of the century. But maybe wisdom will trump moxie as I try my hands at something new. At least I can say I touch butts for a living instead of just having my anopisthographic ass handed to me.

Writing certainly hasn’t been a bicycle pump for my ego, but at least it was something I knew I enjoyed, something I knew how to do without the aid of textbooks, clinic hours, or role playing exercises meant to demonstrate how to spurn sexual advances. These days, I’m tempering my enthusiasm for my new path with an equal amount of doubt. It’s not a good recipe for more than a prescription for Prilosec. I will write about this. Even if I wind up mired in failure from all angles, I’ll write about it. After all, it’s what I do.

A brief post, as I’m going to my first seder ever tomorrow, and it happens to be out of state…

I’ve spilled a lot of pixels over the perils of online dating, yet I can’t seem to stop doing it. Both the dating and the writing about it. Perhaps it’s because I can’t quite believe that guys say and do the shit they do. (No cyber-woman has approached me with the same level of audacious cluelessness and the gents.)

("Want to listen to Bon Iver and make-out?")

Like the one whose sole profile photo was him in shades holding a pistol, accompanied by the line that he was “looking for a nice girl” and that his strong suit is his “ability to make large organizations money.” The Euro zone might want to shoot this chump a message.

Or the guy who had two photos of wrists, presumably his, handcuffed, who answered OkCupid’s question of Six Things You Could Never Do Without with “iPhone, handcuffs, car, more handcuffs, motorcycle, and hopefully you ; )”

Or the dude who wrote me with, “Your [sic] hot, I’m a hot mess, what could be better than that. Message me if you want to make out.”

Or the one whose opening line was “I will give you lengthy massages, frequently.”

Or my personal favorite, who I can’t help but post in its entirety below (sorry richiestrong12, but I kinda had to):

("for banging.")

But other than the comic relief, I’m actually on that site because I’m hoping to find someone who wants to watch Jeopardy! with me on my couch with my dog and maybe go out to the diner for silver dollar pancakes in the dead of night and play word games and, if things go right, make out for hours on end while listening to Portishead. So far it doesn’t look like this is the website to find that. Anonymous sex? Most definitely. People with fetishes that I’d never even entertained as a possibility? Yup. (Including a specific variety of furries who dig something referred to as “yiffing.”) Adults into cosplay, cops who describe themselves as “urban ninjas lol,” and many, many fans of Bon Iver? Yes, yes, and emphatic yes.

Among possible suitors who passed the velvet rope of using complete sentences and not having a photograph of their genitals or a weapon on their profile, two of the guys who I responded to were therapists. Like, for a living. And they contacted me, which, as you can guess, is quite possibly the funniest detail of the whole online dating misadventure thus far. I’ve met one of them in person as of this post. He was totally sweet and I’m looking forward to hanging out with him again. And that is all I’m going to say about that, in the interest of confidentiality. (Pour one out for richiestrong12.)

("I'm an active guy, I run pretty regularly. I'm good with my hands and tools...")

The whole predicament of dual therapist prospects got me thinking, what would it be like to date a mental health professional, especially for a complete and total basket-case such as yours truly?

Some bright spots would be that he or she would likely be a good communicator, with presumably half-decent listening skills — or at least evolved faking-it skills — and an ability to problem solve. My life would not devolve into complete catastrophic collapse when I ran out of milk or stubbed my toe, unlike the current state of affairs which vacillates from Elysium-like bliss (Booger has a new toy!) to London during the Blitz (Booger peed on the bed at 2:30AM.) A therapist boyfriend or girlfriend would likely have interesting stories within the confines of their code of ethics, they’d probably be a little smart and they’d hopefully know how to dress, or at least own clothing other than hammer-pants. They obviously are attracted to crazy, as they’ve decided to make a living off of the daily interaction with people like me who check the plug to the kettle seven times before leaving the house and who think that basic needs include coffee and Chihuahuas. And who brush their teeth over the toilet in order to keep the sink clean. Hypothetically.

People who become therapists have often undergone years of therapists themselves as part of their schooling. That’s a good thing, right? The people in charge wouldn’t let the lunatics run the asylum, so to speak, right?

Actually, maybe. The bad news is that therapists are notoriously crazy. And it would be difficult to get comfortable, for as much as they’d know how to handle me, or people like me, I’d always be thinking one step ahead of my normal behavior, like some sort of psychoanalytic spy movie. “If I do this, they’ll think that, so I’ll do this other thing instead!” (When “this” is make toast and “that” is that I’m hungry and “this other thing” is pancakes and wow I am hungry…)

("I'm really into photography, recently got my first SLR...")

I also think that a common misperception is that therapists are smarter than they are, or that they’re always in the mood to scrutinize or troubleshoot life. They’re just human. Infallible and moody like anybody else, therapists are romantically set to a higher standard in my brain, which is a bad thing. After all, would it be fair to assume that the expertise of a gynecologist would extend into a relationship?

No. No it would not. But, like I said, at least one of them was sweet and deserves another session. I mean date.

And dating a gynecologist would just be weird. Unlike brushing your teeth above the toilet.

Happy Easter. I can’t wait until Lent is over.

It’s Lent.

For those of you unfamiliar with Lent, it’s a period of forty days and about forty nights where practicing Catholics (usually) give something up in order to imitate and understand the suffering of Christ on the cross. Did the Jets call a press conference? Sorry ‘bout that. I’m excited to be here.

The Cliff’s Notes version of Lent is that you give stuff up. Every year my mom gave up cookies or chocolate. I have a pal who stops drinking every year in order to prove to himself that he’s not a lush. Sacrifice, charity, and fasting are the cornerstones of the observance, but I can’t fuck around with fasting, lest I start trying out for a cheerleading squad, passing out in stairwells, and robbing kids of their lunch money out of spite, all of which go against those other two tenets.

In spite of the fact that I don’t think the church would pick me as a poster child, I am somewhat religious! I know, with all the smut I spew and science I study you’d think I’d be an atheist, but no. Sluttiness and atheism are not synonymous. As a result of my Catholicism and unwillingness to give up a decent meal even in the name of religion, I decided, stupidly and on impulse, to give up “sexual release.” Not sex, because if the opportunity to get laid didn’t present itself to me in forty nights that would be both depressing and counterproductive to the Lenten spirit of denial, but sexual release. Like, orgasm. So, in essence, I gave up masturbation and orgasm for Lent. Which, over halfway through, made cookies and booze look like rookie team repudiation. I should have thought it through, I’d run the bases a day or so before Lent started and I was still walking like I’d won a rodeo. I’d barely finished confessing my premarital whoopsies to the priest before I’d, in the same breath, sworn off the four stages of the sexual response cycle for the following 46 days.

Within twenty-four hours I was itchy. A week later I was nearly cross-eyed with frustration. By the second week into Lent my skin had broken out into angry red patches, which I can only assume was a tantrum being thrown by my epidermis. “Oh yeah!? You’re not lady fapping? Fine, I’ll make you ugly. And itchy. Enjoy.”

This is why monks are cloistered. Because if they were kept among regular people, they wouldn’t be monks. While I’ve always checked out both genders, these days I’m like Tex Avery’s cartoon lone wolf, howling with his eyes popping out of his head. I’ve developed an irritating crush on a five-foot-two probable-douchebag with a fauxhawk and tribal band tattoo and I am not kidding. (Fistpump, fistpump.)

Sure, I’m aware that, come April 9th, I’ll probably wake up and find that the world has gone back to being hideous and my current swoon target will be seen as the embodiment of “gym, tan, Rohypnol,” but right now I would ram every part of my body into or on top of nearly any warm object in my vicinity. I’m not going to attempt to go on the subway during peak hours, or take elevators, or use a locker-room, or open my eyes. I’ve found myself like a little kid stuck in the genital phase of development, just thrusting my hips in the air, aiming at nothing and everything at once. Using the laundry room in my building is like going to a stripclub. This past week I actually enjoyed my Pap smear because somebody was touching me.

Of course, I can’t lose sight that this is a spiritual experience of sorts, at least in theory. It’s a bit like a vision quest. Separate from a bout with depression which had me shrugging off the select few things that are as important as masturbation — such as people, consciousness, dumplings, and a moment without the thought of eviscerating myself — this is the longest I’ve gone without getting myself off since I figured out how to hump a pillow. But I’m okay. I’m smiling a lot and holding the door for strangers. I find myself not being quite as much of a judgmental prick as I walk down the street. I haven’t knocked a hipster off a fixed gear in about a month, and I seem to have become calmer and more wise. One of my colleagues has taken to calling me Yoda.

This newfound mental clarity and cheerfulness must be one of the manifestations of celibacy. If I had a dick maybe I wouldn’t air-hump, I’d just find myself beaming and saying the word “excited” 44 times in the same conversation. It’s cold comfort to think that, according to an article called “Single and Celibate” that was written by Julia Duin for Insight’s “Sister Daily” column, 82 million Americans are celibate. I doubt that. I think it’s more like 82 million Americans are a specific Christian denomination, but carefully compartmentalize their bedroom practices, keeping them far from their Sunday morning ministrations. But I guess this is why I look up to Tim Tebow, along with a rumored 3% of all Americans. Celibacy is one of those things that falls somewhere between extremely commendable and entirely ridiculous. Either way, it’s at least interesting. (More interesting than an inability to accurately throw a football, apparently.) According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the percentage of American never-marrieds who choose to keep it in their pants is only 11%, religious practices aside. But it’s still unclear how many people forgo masturbation as well.

Famously celibate and asexual, Morrissey says 'v' is for victory, not vagina.

We’ll see how the next week goes in the final stretch of this marathon masturbation mislaying misadventure. I might wake up one morning and not be able to find my dog. I’ll search my apartment everywhere instead of going on an Easter egg hunt until I figure out that I have a furry protrusion sticking out of my bits like a fashion tail. Or I’m going to become one of those people on the street who is in a snowsuit, sweating, with oven-mitts duct taped over their hands, muttering to themselves. As a friend said to me after hearing me whine about the fact that I’ve been prescribed allergy medication, hydrocortisone cream, and steroids by my dermatologist, “You stop masturbating and you develop a rash. Irony.”

But even the oven-mitts might not help. More than one study since the fifties has shown that women can orgasm from exercising, no manual stimulation of the vagina required. That’s right, “exercise-induced pleasure or orgasm.” No word on whether or not the analyses took place during Lent.

On that note, I’m off to the gym.

I often write about my so-called extended family, ‘cause they’re pretty badass. I grew up with a dad who taught me cool things, like how to perform a half-Nelson, the Babinski response, and that you can create your own family simply by being a damn good friend. I’ve adopted my pops’ philosophy and have a pretty tightly-knit clan of roustabouts, badasses, and intellectual fuck-ups who I consider my kin. But I credit this only to the fact that the foundation was laid early, as I was raised with a bunch of quasi-uncles and aunts, family-friends who I consider closer than many of the bipeds who share bits of my DNA.

One of these aunt-uncle pairings had twins when I was about nine years old. Probably my dad’s closest friends, their boys were awesome, non-identical adventurers from the moment they sprung from their mom’s womb. Sadly, she passed away when they were preteens, leaving the behind three men and a whole slew of people who’d been touched by her humor and indomitable spirit. Losing Phyllis was hard on my dad and future stepmom, but I can’t imagine what it was like for the twins. Fortunately, they grew up with a dad who tackled the job of single-fatherhood with aplomb, and both kids became brilliant, multi-faceted, award-winning dudes. Because they were teenagers growing up a ways from Manhattan and, unsurprisingly, considering their intellect, they’re in college now, I haven’t seen them in a while. Last weekend was the first time in years, in fact.

A bunch of the crew went out for brunch in the neighborhood, and occurence so rare it makes Halley’s Comet look like a regular poop. A group of grey-haired dudes who have more stories than the Amazon Kindle store, I knew it would be a raucous getogether. And it was. But what I wasn’t prepared for were the boys, now men, who joined us. One of them was hot. (Predictably, if you know anything about me, it was the larger of the two who had been lifting weights and trying to cope with debilitating back issues by working out like a madman.)

This posed an interesting predicament. No, I wouldn’t bone a kid who is essentially my cousin. (Not illegal! Or really that gross! But…still. Difficult to reconcile.) The mental porcupine tossed in my bedsheets was more the question of him being 20 years old. I mean, suddenly I was old. Like, really. Botox and fully-functioning patellas aside, I remember when this kid was a lump in his late-mom’s belly. Now he is a man. And I am his elder.

Once I got over looking inside death’s mouth and recognizing my own mortality in its tonsils, I realized something. I’m old enough to blow this kid’s mind. Which means, to broaden it slightly, I am old enough to blow the minds of many young men and women. I can use this whole age thing to my advantage. In theory.

There are some clear benefits to mounting a green pony. For one thing, a man’s sexual peak occurs in his late teens, on average around 18, with a slight decline over the course of his twenties. Think of it as an internal manifestation of a guy’s hairline. So with a youngster, you’re dealing with a potent potion in their pants. Another biological benefit, or drawback depending on your cradle-robbing skills, is that once men cross the threshold of being thirty there’s a 2% drop in testosterone production every year.

(new dog, new trick)

But, predictably, many of the boons of scoping for dates at a daycare center are emotional, at least from an older-woman/younger-man split. Younger dudes remind you what it’s like to be idealistic, not roughed up or beaten down. So long as you haven’t decided to knock boots with a mini-Zuckerberg, they’re less successful than you, so your ego gets stroked along with the rest of your parts. Baby boys have less “baggage,” even if they still have some “yeah, whatever” thorns in their proverbial sides over their high-school sweethearts. Best part? They’ll be impressed. Very, very impressed. And by role-playing professor you’re doing all future ladies a service by teaching them anatomy.

As with anything that has the veneer of being too good naked to be true clothed, young men are not without their serious sad-trombone inducing flaws. They will make you feel old, even in wholly non-intentional ways. Have you ever watched a baby sleep? Try watching a child sleep on your 1000 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. (‘Cause, let’s be real, adult knees hurt after a wild night on his futon following one too many Zimas or, in my case, Slurpees.) They can be exhausting, on many, many levels. Most of the time, as per the non-Zuckerberg set, they won’t be taking you to Le Bernadin or dropping bank on you at Barney’s. Of course, if you’re me, a cheap burrito and scoping street art are fine, but try finding a boy under the age of 23 who doesn’t think he’s a DJ ‘cause he has a Mac souped up with Abelton Live. It gets annoying to talk to them. You want ’em to do something better with their mouths.

(cougar)

To boil it down to something that can easily be cleaned up with a damp towel: boys pop off earlier than men. They have a lack of consideration when being given shouted MapQuest-esque directions to your G-spot. And they don’t get your references to Saved by the Bell or My So Called Life. They think Michael Jordan makes a shoe. And they probably like Skrillex.

And to reduce it to a cliche, most younger dudes aren’t looking to be committed partners, if that’s what you’re in the market for. They’re closer to being kids than having them, which for many career chicks in their thirties is something set on their Google Calendar, next to a biweekly Brazillian wax and spin class.

But don’t fret, ladies. Sure, men in your age group might be a little more bald, and less acrobatically enthusiastic (and enthusiastically acrobatic), but biology has thrown us a bone: men hit their peak muscle mass in their 30s.

Brief backstory: I’d originally wanted to go to school for acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine. I quickly became disillusioned with this idea after reading the archives of Respectful Insolence and being unable to find adequate controlled double-blind studies proving efficacy and any relationship to EBM (evidence based medicine, not the totally awesome genre of music.) After having subjected myself to a slew of “holistic” and “alternative” health treatments in order to personalize my understanding and challenge my skepticism, an experiment which ultimately resulted in four x-rays and what was tantamount to sexual molestation, I decided that maybe I should reevaluate my future career path. I realized that my hope of laying hands on people for money wasn’t going to be deterred simply due to a few bad experiences and a dearth of med school knowledge. I applied and was accepted to a massage therapy program here in Manhattan, all in the hope of becoming a staff therapist for the Los Angeles Clippers if I pass the boards in 2013.

When I went for my admissions interview a few months ago at the school that will remain unnamed, I knew that attending classes there would be interesting. For one thing, studying massage requires you to grope your classmates. While this has always been a goal of mine at each stage of my academic life, I’ve never had it built into coursework. Moreover, massage textbooks have lines like, “Answers to these questions will help you to formulate your own hugging policy.” (Susan G. Salvo, Massage Therapy: Principles and Practice, 4th Edition.) This is unequivocally awesome. Why haven’t I formulated my hugging policy before?

There also was a man in the hallway with a ponytail and a utilikilt. A student or faculty member, of which I’m unsure, but he was there, having a conversation with another student, rockin’ his man-skirt without any evidence of having lost a bet.

“This place is like Community,” I thought to myself. “I will totally fit in here.”

Truth be told, it’s easy for me to feel like hot-shit on most days. I’m an average-sized fish who has always diligently sought out very small ponds. Outside of anticipated intense academic settings, such as AP American History and an invitation-only program for writers that I manipulated my way into at the age of fourteen, I’ve never really felt challenged. I graduated high-school doing the minimum amount of work required, and coasted through college by attending a specialized program that allowed for me to tailor my classes around my interests. I’m looking at any continuing education as the continuation of this expensive ego stroking. When I applied, I was anything but nervous about attending a massage therapy program, utilikilt-wearing classmates notwithstanding.

But then I made the mistake of taking an online preparatory quiz, a self-described “Practice Test for Certification and Licensing Examinations.”

Actual sample question:

Which of the following is NOT an attachment site of the deltoid and the trapezius?
a) Lateral clavicle
b) Acromion process
c) Medial border of the scapula
d) Scapular spine

What, no all of the above?

I did not do well.

Keep in mind, I have sixteen months of school beginning April 30th before I even have to confront one of these bad boys for real. But still, the exercise woke me up to the fact that school isn’t going to be all effleurage and rainbows. It illuminated some real, and serious, concerns. Like the fact that I won’t be able to immediately strut into the school’s clinic and declare, “It’s not lupus!” before even laying a palm on someone’s…deltoids or trapezius. I will need to work outside of my usual snarky, condescending comfort-zone in order to become a decent complementary healthcare provider. I will probably have to change my name and disassociate myself with this blog and Twitter. I am thinking that I could pass for a Jane Smith or Jenny Sparkleslit, but I’m open to suggestions.

Additionally, I’ve started studying anatomy. But this time I’m using books.

If simply arriving at the conclusion to be called a bodyworker was hard, actually enrolling in the school has proved impossible. Like many academic institutions, they appear to be in a constant state of construction, with hazardous bits of overturned carpet and exposed wires that must make their insurance company practically giddy. Everything has a new paint smell and an aura of temporariness. So it was no wonder that, after six calls, four emails, and being asked to spell my name more times than I could count, that I discovered that I couldn’t register because they were missing my high-school transcript.

Furthermore, I was told to come to campus for the assessment which was also missing on file. Once there, I watched my wholly apologetic admission’s representative — who bears an uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character Cathy — practically toss her body in the path of the slightly overweight, bespectacled bursar representative.

“She’s with a student now,” the admissions rep had hissed prior to the tackling. “If I don’t intercept her she’ll go to lunch and you’ll be waiting an hour.”

Ack! indeed.

The meeting with the bursar went as follows –

Me: “Hi.”

Bursar: “Hi.”

Awkward pause where we stared at one another.

Bursar: “You’re here for…?”

Me: “To pay you for the semester.”

Bursar: “Are you enrolled?”

Me: “I don’t think so? You’re missing my high-school transcript. But I brought my checkbook so that I can put down a deposit or just pay upfront…”

Cue dramatic eye-rolling and dragon-like sigh.

Bursar: (to herself) “Why does she do this to me?” (to me) “You can’t put down a deposit or pay for the semester until you’re enrolled. I have no idea why she sent you to me.”

There was an uncomfortable exchange, she fiddled with her calculator, showed me the ridiculous number I’d have to pay once my high-school transcript arrived as a consolation prize, and sent me on my way. I will be returning to see her next week. I can’t wait.

Next up was the assessment. Judging by what it sounded like, I assumed that I’d be stripped naked and given a hospital gown to wear as various faculty members observed me from all angles. Not quite.

I was led to the library: a medium-sized beige room with books, dying computers, and some asshole with a cellphone that chirruped and hiccuped as he sent and received text messages during his study session. The bored-looking proctors, who were students themselves or juvenile delinquents out on some sort of work-order, handed me a testing booklet and one of those papers filled with empty bubbles that are representative of standardized tests.

I was blind-sighted with 120 “competency questions” that reaffirmed my uncouth aura of cerebral superiority and general douchedom.

Lenient means
a) difficult
b) slanted
c) not strict
d) strict

This was not the sample “Practice Test for Certification and Licensing Examinations.”

I was not feeling nearly as self-congratulatory as I should, however. After five minutes of trying not to snicker and chortle at my self-affirmed intellect, my ego coddling led to over-thinking. The familiar anxiety of test-taking snaked its way up my spine in that overheated, desk-filled room that reeked of old paper, Fritos, and desperation. The young man’s cellphone peeped again like a dying sparrow trapped in a canvas bag. I began to look at the question, really look at the question, beyond the scope of the robot that created it. It was like being stoned; something meaningless was suddenly imparted with meaning and it was colossal, crucial, and cataclysmic.

“Maybe they mean lenient if you’re bending over, or on opposite day, or when you’re dealing with a person you don’t like, which would make it difficult, theoretically…” My thoughts ran into one another like the stream from a faucet with a six-year-old grasping the handles.

I looked around. No one over the age of 27 has ever applied to become a massage therapist or phlebotomist or medical assistant or acupuncturist because it was their life’s calling. No one was in that building unless their life took a left onto the exit ramp for the worse somewhere along the way, or at least a sharp u-turn into the embankment of confusion, and I’m talking about the faculty as well. If your life is a drunk driver or unlicensed then welcome to this school. You will graduate in sixteen-to-twenty months, if you’re ever able to enroll.

I should just lower my standards…

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a female friend of mine say this statement over the past year, I’d own a Maserati, penthouse, and a strapping, strapped escort for every day of the week.

Yeah, I’d own the escorts. Nightly renting is for sissies. And for lower standards.

What is is about the gray area after 27 that causes otherwise intelligent lady urbanites to suddenly seek out some form of interminable blurriness in their judgment when it comes to dating? Most of them seem to be looking for permanent beer goggles. Like liquor Lasik, only without the liquor.

Now, I know that scientifically it’s probably just the precursor the their biological clocks collectively blaring “Bell Tower” at the age of 35 but still. Lower standards? For the sake of what? Is it that they believe they can force true love with an ironically mustachioed “artist/DJ” who wears capri pants, suspenders, and a bowler hat? That they’re finally ready to settle down with a pot-bellied, pimply programmer who smells like Feta even though they have nothing in common? It’s as if my girlfriends have decided that chronic erectile dysfunction, racism, and mouth-breathing are equivalent to a slight gap between a man’s front teeth, simply because they’re single and starting to see crow’s feet. Waking up single and near thirty has set off alarm bells.

Perhaps the most infuriating detail that I’ve noticed is that this is absolutely gender-specific. I have yet to meet a guy approaching — or well into — his thirties who thinks, “Fuck, maybe I should stop hoping to bang a girl who moonlights as a lingerie model during her downtime from being a sportscaster.” My guy friends are all well aware that they want to settle down…one day. Just not yet. And certainly not now. Any shot-glass spectacles are only caused by tequila and a still-functioning erectile response. Until they have to ask their doctors if they’re healthy enough for sexual activity, they are sure as hell going to cover as many skin surfaces as possible with their personal brand of ecru-colored paint. They’re not commitmentphobes any more than they’re phobic of the particularly gruesome parts of a supernatural and wholly implausible horror movie.

The other night I was out for dumplings with a friend who is a retail sales associate/amateur MMA fighter who doubles me in all stats excluding IQ. I’d made the mistake of bringing up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and was forced to explain that it wasn’t a reality show. After I gave him the preschool version of it (“See, it’s a pyramid, which is like a triangle…”) I came to the conclusion that I should have some fun and try to discover just how deep a meathead’s river runs. This led to some pretty heavy questions being sarcastically slung over shrimp shumai as I internally debated whether or not to attempt to throw the saddle on him for the night.

“What do you want? Like, out of life, not off the menu,” I asked.

“I want a family. A wife. Kids. I mean, not now, but eventually,” he added quickly. “Like, in a few years or something. After I win my first title.”

Pull the needle off the record for a second. I know, I rolled my eyes pretty hard too. Dream answer, especially for a young man who beats the piss out of dudes in a cage while wearing nothing but sweaty underpants. But for a 25 year old guy on the quite-to-very side of the hotness spectrum, with a fun job and a good — albeit empty — head on his shoulders, what’s left to achieve? A few more years of knocking back microbrews with his buddies, maybe another trip or two to the Bahamas, finding a better apartment, and adding more weight when he maxes out, bro are all tangible and noble goals, and far more immediate than sizing a platinum band. He’s not seriously dating anyone at the moment, though if he were in the market, I could field him more decent looking women who graduated with honors than even the most selective Upper East Side madam, even though he’s as dumb as track six on Nirvana’s In Utero and his profession will undoubtedly break every bone in his face.

“What if that doesn’t happen?” I asked. “A family, a wife, those things aren’t guaranteed, you know.”

As a single-woman in New York who owns a Chihuahua, talks to her potted plants, and finds jigsaw puzzles an increasingly more attractive hobby, I don’t add the fact that the eligible pool of attractive, available mates technically shrinks each passing day.

“Well, I don’t see how that can’t happen, unless I really sabotage myself,” he replied.

And there’s why women are going to be turning the mirror on themselves, wondering why they’re still living alone even when everything else in their lives is possibly tied with a bow. As a man, how can having a family not happen when you’re ready to? How many single men in their late thirties do you hear complaining about not being married yet?

CRICKETS.

Why is it that guys can believe that a family is inevitable at any age, so long as they want it? Is it a self-perpetuating truism, caused by their unchallenged optimism? Or is it that women are shooting themselves in their proverbial bare-feet by hoping to get pregnant and be thrust into the kitchen so frantically?

In Julia Bard’s old counter-piece to Lori Gottlieb’s many treatises on settling, including her book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, Bard says, “Most of us just want to love and be loved. The data show that when it comes to money and education, women are in fact lowering their standards.”

Both Bard and Gottlieb seem to think that women are in the positions of power when it comes to this ultimate romantic compromise. I disagree. Sure, women hold the pussy, and the pussy is key. But, like Bard says, most girls just want to be cared about. Most ladies aren’t going to go all Anne Boleyn on their courting King Henrys. Feminists point out that women have needs, sexual ones, physical ones — and that they should act on them, but acting on them shifts the traditional power dynamic. Try waiting for him to call if you’ve already given it up, Miss Independent. Unless your vagina is a teleportation device to an NFL game with unlimited free wings and beer like mine is, you’re shit out of luck. As my dumpling-scarfing friend astutely pointed out to me later in our conversation, virginity can’t be reclaimed. The clit can’t be put back in the panties, so to speak.

Lee Dye said in a totally on-point ABC News article, “Men don’t need to get married to get what they want these days — mainly sex — so they feel comfortable in putting off that long term commitment until they have a few bucks in the bank, and a mortgage to pay off….The primary reason given by men for taking their sweet time: They can get sex without marriage more easily now than in the past.”

There’s also the fact that guys don’t see why they should marry. Think about it, outside of the abstract, what do men gain? This can be turned around and asked to those with the pussy power, too. But while women have traditionally been considered “taken care of” once a ring is put on it, men have formerly been put in a position of being the provider, the main breadwinner, the protector, and many of them still consciously or subconsciously buy into that historically assigned role. That’s a lot of pressure, even if that societal ideal no longer holds true in this age of working women, skirt-suits, and the rise (though hopefully not crest) of gender equality. Moreover, religion, public perceptions of morality, and peer pressure no longer poke men in the ribs saying, “Hey, buddy, time to wife her.” In fact, other than Facebook and the occasional frilly invite to get drunk on someone else’s tab, I can’t imagine what could even clue a guy into the fact that marriage still exists.

Certainly the availability and prevalence of women wanting to date him — whoever he is, regardless of his job, looks, previous success sticking his dick in a warm hole — nothing is telling him to put the pedal to the metal when it comes to that final hurdle in the race to grow up.

So I’m not going to try to figure out why men get married  at all, ‘cause I would be on my private jet wearing nothing but Louboutins while getting sexually serviced by a linebacker if I could figure that out. But with girls it’s tricky. When I look at my friends, it’s as though they’ve woken up in a foreign country and are confused, without the proper language to figure out where they are and how to get home. They thought that by “this point” (this point being whatever age or level of success they’ve achieved) they would have fallen in love with a guy who fit their own personal “forever” criteria. Because they haven’t, they slip into this kiddie pool of self-doubt that suddenly develops a rip-tide. All of the previously imagined elements of their ideal mate are thrown into question, and they believe that it’s their own inability to discern the right dude from the testosterone throng that’s been the problem.

So they decide that it’s time to settle.

Which can be good, as Gottlieb (and her self-tauted marriage) seem to imply. But why do women want to get married in the first place? And how in the hell could lowering their standards help them to achieve that goal? Again, I don’t get it and can’t solve this riddle, but maybe I’m just not there yet. Perhaps growing up still isn’t a priority for me. I’d rather play Twister with a full-bladder than attend another wedding, even my own, even if it somehow meant that I’d have a weird, abstract, intangible future goal checked off of my nonexistent list. Maybe all cat ladies were smug and self-satisfied wannabe writers in their thirties. Maybe years earlier they owned a Chihuahua and enjoyed going out for pretentious “modern Chinese” cuisine. Who knows.

The dumplings were damn good, and I didn’t take him home with me. I guess I need to keep my standards high. To me, that’s not unreasonable…not yet, anyway.