Deal Breakers and Warning Signs

Hello Dear Readers of the Traveling Wombury (all three of you). Today's topics are Dating Deal-Breakers and Relationship Warning Signs, so if you don't want to read about locker rooms and road house bars and Betty Ford, by all means skip ahead; but before we begin, I'd like to share with you a few things that happened last night and this morning. Let's start with this morning. I decided to expunge the guilt of Lincoln's Roadhouse bar by going for a swim. Swam about a mile and change and hit the hot tub. But then came the locker room.




Look, I can understand the "changing stations" in every rest stop restroom, and I can almost forgive the shmuck parents in Brooklyn who brought their kids to The Gate for happy hour. But you know what I never, EVER want to see in the locker-room while I'm changing? Some dude's kid. To the Dude who Brought his kid: You are senior level Ass Clown. Tell me Mr. McDouche, what were you thinking this morning when you read the words "Men's Locker Room" on door of the Men's Locker Room? Huh? How did you interpret those words to mean "Please bring your infant daughter along for the ride"? I hate your parents for ever conceiving you. There wasn't one old lady in the wading pool who couldn't have watched little Suzie? It's taken me 16 years just to feel remotely comfortable dropping trou in locker rooms with other men, now I gotta worry about some 2 year old girl goo goo and ga ga-ing at my junk? I hereby recommend you be neutered, sir. Your genes do not belong in the pool.



Met up with Tyler at a place in Denver called "Lincoln's Roadhouse." There were, as Tyler promised, "bikers". But who's really a biker, you know? Half the time all you need are the right clothes and some leather chaps and a helmet. On Sundays a house band plays music in the late afternoon. There was a simple three-piece outfit going through the catalogue of southern rock when I arrived. They were covering "Can't You See" by the Marshall Tucker band as strolled in a boothed with Ty. I call him Ty. We spent the rest of the night throwing back the suds and reminisced about the Mushro Ladies. Nicole called and told me I was "over the top" with my previous posting. She said I've only given 40 percent of the complete picture. She's right, But The Traveling Wombury's contract stipulates only 35 percent of the facts necessary. Sometimes you only need 35 facts total.



As the night went on it became clear I was going to stay at Tyler's place. Texting David that I was going to stay out late made me feel extremely guilty. See, what David and Elizabeth don't know about me, or they haven't informed me they know about me, is that coming to their farm is like checking into the Betty Ford Clinic for me. I'm in REHAB. I'm trying to straighten out here. David and Elizabeth are natural healers being doctors and all, but they're also natural straighten-outers. It's what they do.



By the time we got back to Tyler's crib. That's right, I said "crib." Now that I watch The Wire, which is gritty, (read: takes place in the ghetto and characters use the F-word), I will refer to a man's residence as his crib. And we were in a pretty loose mood. Tyler let it slip that he had an online dating account. Usually I'm content with rummaging through people's collection of music and movies and their fridge as a way of forming gross generalizations, but this time I was out for blood so I demanded to peruse Tyler's online identity.



There were no surprise conclusions to be drawn from his e-harmony profile, which was surprising. Tyler clearly emphasizes the central role of parenting in his life, followed by his love of killing mammals and selling insurance. What stood out to me were the misspellings in his typo. There at least three. According to Nancie Atwell, the human brain shuts off a certain dose of critical thinking if it encounters three or more errors in a sitting. It's like the brain throws the flawed text of the conveyor belt. Anyway, I fixed the spelling errors because, for me, spelling errors are deal-breakers.


And that leads me to the first of our major topics: Deal Breakers. Everyone has a list of deal breakers posted on the inside of their brain in big bold letters, hanging on the message board on the fridge. Men and women. I know some women who will never a date a man, no matter how attractive and interesting, if he's short. Talk about biological hardwiring. We're not a bunch of hunter-gatherers roaming the plains of East Africa anymore (unless, of course, you are one of the tribes of East Africans roaming the plains of East Africa). We're no longer fighting the elements to survive anymore. Who cares if someone is short, as long as they're rich and drive shiny cars.



There are non-physical deal-breakers too. If a girl describes herself as "spiritual, not religious" we will never be compatible. "Spiritual, not Religious" is a cockroach statement of worldview, and behind that cockroach there are ten more, with at least one cockroach nursing a fondness for Norah Jones and Coldplay, and another with a preference for shitty English comedies like Love Actually, and, overall moral and intellectual laziness. Either get your shit together and call yourself an atheist who likes Bikram Yoga, or swallow your Gap pride and go back to church. Or synagogue (not the mosque. Muslims are crazy). Just don't expect me to like you; or you to like me for that matter. You don't understand strong emotions like hate or love when you're "spiritual, not religious," because love for you is something you learned from Ross and Rachel. Or Maybe you're more of a Monica and Chandler kind of cockroach.



So that's one of my deal-breakers.For me, making fun of midgets or rednecks is a dealbreaker. Rednecks and midgets are the easiest target in America. Let them be. And if old people or retarded people "gross" you out, I want nothing to do with you. Also, if you're sense of irony is so narrow that you are upset with the term "retarded", you're retarded. I like girls who drink, smoke, and swear a lot, or, alternatively, do not mind drinking, smoking, and swearing. So, in this vein, I'm going to start another poll: Deal Breakers: What are Yours?



My next topic is, you guessed it, Warning Signs. See, after reading Tyler's E-harmony profile I got being curious about online-dating. Then I remembered: Nicole has an online profile. She put it up last April after we broke up, but never took it down. That's how she met the dude who's taking her out now. So I found her profile on match.com. There it was. Very nicely done. Likes, dislikes, her dating preferences. I found aspect of her profile curious: she had a picture of me on there. She had a picture of her boyfriend on her dating profile. It's hard for me not to love her if she puts a picture of me on her profile.





When Dr. Phil asks the Traveling Wombury to pinpoint the moment he knew he was a screw-up boyfriend he can say, "Well Dr. Phil, I think I started to think something was fishy when my girlfriend told me she met the man she was dating online." What do you think Dr. Phil? We need another poll: Relationship Warning Signs.


In conclusion, The Traveling Wombury has become Lester Diamond from Casino the ex-boyfriend of Sharon Stone played by James Woods. Remember Lester? He was the weasel junkie she could never stop loving even though her husband was hotshot casino boss Ace Rothstein. Lester. Awesome.

Until then,

The Traveling Wombury