Clam Box Epiphany!

Why do relationships fail? Why do men have a completely different view than women? What's going through our heads, and (more importantly) what's going through theirs?

Driving down the highway, it's 93 degrees and our thighs are stuck to the leather seats. We talk about men, laugh, and listen to "Rock Me Like a Hurricane" at 300 decibels. To the middle-aged man in the car next to us, we're just two happy girls taking life by the balls with the wind in our hair! But there's something missing. Something lingering. In the bottom right-hand corner of my cracked windshield is a little sticker with a big red "R" on it. What is this sticker? It's the rejection that was given to me by the smiley guy with body odor at the gas station yesterday morning. This sticker is also a small red reminder of what we have in the bottom right-hand corner of our minds as we enter the world of dating.

It all started when Jess got dumped on her birthday.
We find ourselves on the way to the beach, both in the same place in our lives; without men, covered in fake tanning lotion, and living in a trying-to-be-posh apartment (I emphasize the word "posh") with one superficial-conversation-at-a-bar after another. We wake up hungover with reciepts in our purses, blurry beer smudged phone numbers on the back. But for some reason we're happy to be alone right now. Well, thats what we're convincing ourselves. We've been through it all at this point! The guy who buys you a drink and end up next to you in the morning, the guy you date for three months who's gay, the guy who adores everything you do and hangs out with you EVERY SECOND, the guy who has so much "potential", the lazy guy, the party guy, the momma's boy, the controlling, jealous, immature, game-playing, bad mannered, illiterate, BO smelling, bad breathed, judgemental, drug-dealing, starving artist who wants you for sex. And by the way, your "I got hurt and made a big mistake" love-song, sucks.

So we sit down at "The Clam Box" to share a fish sandwich (which was horrendously bland by the way). There's a period of silence between us. I'm texting some guy every thirty seconds, whom I've never even met in person about my sunburn, and she's deleting the texts that have gone unreplied-to for over 24 hours. We look at each-other and put our phones down. Is this what we've come to?

So why does history repeat itself? We spend hours choosing the right leopard belt to wear with our skinny jeans, and days mulling over whether or not that bag is worth $400 dollars (even though it's too small for anything but your peach-crush lip salve and a condom). But we smile and batt our mascara covered eyelashes at the first guy that looks at us (provided he's not too emo or fat). Innevitably we end up getting the number, in whatever slick fashion Mr. RightNow decides to give it, and spend the rest of the night with our maybethisisapotentialguy blinders on. And so the texting begins. Maybe we see each other over coffee and decide we're not that into each-other and move on. But the phone number remains. Weeks go by and we're at home reading the latest witty pop-culture bashing novel and watching the Food Network. Suddenly Mr. RightNow doesn't look so bad anymore. A text-coversation ensues, and before we know it we're consuming large quantities of the latest seasonal brew while that starving artist serenades us with his unimpressive "love" song. We end up going back to his place and wake up as familiar strangers in his lofty apartment in East Boston. Four or five wasted months go by and we get dumped on our birthday, only to end right back where we started!