Finding a date outside the bar

Libby Peck offers tips for singles wanting to mingle without booze.

I find it kind of funny that I have absolutely no desire to write about bars for The Temple News’ Bar Guide. I mean, that’s what I talk about in every other column – why should this be any different? Well, with a boyfriend, my savings account nearly depleted and my weekends dedicated to regaining sanity and sleep, the bar scene is kind of in the back of my head.

After all, my supply of fashionable sequined tops and skinny jeans is running low, and to be honest, I find no pleasure in wearing heels. I already have to be in Center City twice a week for my internship, so I can’t really afford the cab fare to go back on weekends. And why would I want to pay three bucks per glass of Bud Light when I can volunteer at the Philadelphia Craft Beer Festival for free?

For those of you as thrifty as me, and those of you who really hate the bar scene but still like to pick up attractive singles in your spare time, here are some suggestions on places other than bars to go singles-hunting.

Go to a grocery store
Really, any grocery store. The people who work at the FroGro (that’s the Fresh Grocer for those of you out of the loop) seem to be, uh, especially friendly toward us Temple students, and if you’re an artsy type, you probably have a Craigslist “Missed Connection” begging to be written about you after perusing the organic produce at Whole Foods. Bonus: If he’s grocery shopping, it probably means he has a place to call his own. Or he’s doing a favor for a bed-ridden parent. Your call.

Get on the Internet
Sure, you can stalk people on Facebook, but that seriously limits the possibilities of your hookups to people you already know. Get on assorted dating Web sites and Craigslist. Have I bashed online dating before? Yes. Does it work? Yes and no, depending on the case, just like relationships that began in bars. But like anything, use discretion. And hey, if you don’t end up meeting up with that hot Drexel engineering student or the anonymous self-proclaimed Center City lawyer who posted a picture of his penis on Craigslist, at least you can’t say you didn’t try.

Go read a book
Or at least pretend to. I can’t be the only person who’s noticed the smorgasbord of literate hotties littering the café in the Rittenhouse Square Barnes and Noble. Rather than scurry away from the crowd with your chai latte in tow, find an empty seat across from an intriguing specimen, ask if you can take the empty seat, and eye-make-love the afternoon away over your copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Walk a dog
This is especially for you males out there – if there are, in fact, any straight males out there reading this. Have you seen the crowds that dog owners attract on Beury Beach when the weather’s warm? Girls flock to cute animals like Tiger Woods flocks to blondes. If you don’t have a dog, borrow one and walk it somewhere with a grassy area. If you’re dog sitting, then it’s like you’re getting paid to get laid – which is an epic win, if I do say so myself.

Study
If you don’t study, go where the studiers go: Club TECH. You can easily have fun with StumbleUpon as you stare at the cute Cecil skater sitting across from you and hope that at some point you’ll pay attention to the Blackboard tab that remains open and untouched in your browser. If you decide to be that annoying person in Club TECH who is consistently doing anything but homework while you’re there, you might as well get a date out of it. Taking a smoke break with a new TECH friend could easily turn into a snuggle session – once both of you are finished with that PowerPoint that you never actually started. Oops.

And if any of these suggestions don’t work for you – or you’re just too lazy to try – head to Pub Webb. It may be a bar, but it’s also a good last resort.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Staying single no more

Libby Peck’s sex column takes a turn when her love life takes a new turn as well – with newfound monogamy.

When it came time for me to write this week’s column, I originally wanted to focus on mixing business with pleasure, the whole “workplace romance” thing. I soon realized I just couldn’t get into it because it’s not really a part of my current love life.

I don’t have a job right now – and my wallet is feeling it. The only sex that goes on at my internship is book-ogling. (It’s a publishing company, not a weird fetish. Plus, the only person I know who is involved in a workplace romance right now is a friend with an unrequited crush at the Fresh Grocer bakery, if that counts. So, I thought I should write about something more applicable.

Like being a girlfriend.

Former Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan Helen Gurley Brown, if she were dead, would be rolling in her grave. Employees of the state store at 22nd and Diamond streets are confused as to why they can suddenly keep Vladmir vodka in stock. My own mother questioned the reality of the situation. And my dignity is thanking me profusely that it can begin to build itself back up to what it used to be. (Isn’t it adorable that it thinks it’s still somewhat intact?)

You see, I’ve been single since high school – officially single. Yes, there have been flings, hookups – adoring readers, you understand – and guys I’ve “kind of been seeing off and on for a year.”

Even when I dated my serious high school boyfriend, I might as well have been single, because it was his best friend who took me to their school’s homecoming dance, and in retrospect, I never liked him that much in the first place.

But this isn’t high school (Brand New reference for the win); it’s college, which means it’s about damn time I found someone to cut the crap and put a Facebook relationship status on it.

Of course, it helps that he’s a poet – and wrote a poem about me after our first date. It helps that he has thick red hair and a pair of eyes bluer than mine with a freckle in the right. It helps that he loves the Flyers even more than I love the Chicago Blackhawks. It helps that he thinks I’m as beautiful with eyes perfectly lined at night as I am with that same makeup smeared all over my face in the morning.

But, Jesus, what kind of monster has this made me into? Am I actually gushing about a boy? Is this layer of bitterness slowly but surely turning saccharine? Will I start tweeting things like, “OMG can’t wayt 2 see mah bebeh 2nite 101!”

OK, I’ll answer the hypotheticals for you: “No” to the latter statement, and “yes” to the first two, obviously. If I ever start purposely misspelling words, you – yes, you – have full permission to perform an intervention in this relationship.

But it’s so weird, this whole you-actually-text-me-first thing, this let’s-go-on-a-date-in-the-city thing, this I-want-you-to-meet-my-family-and-I-think-they’ll-like-you thing, this we-shouldn’t-think-about-the-future-because-this-is-so-perfect-right-now thing. I’ve grown so used to living for myself, by myself, that I forgot what it was like to grow with someone else.

So, for now, my business is the pleasure of being in a relationship – and getting paid to write about it. And hey, I managed to incorporate mixing business and pleasure after all. I’m thoroughly satisfied; time to watch more Olympic hockey on the other side of a romantic late-night Thursday Gmail chat.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

‘Pillow Talk’ and ‘Qchat’ cheers to booze, men

The Temple News’ sex columnist and gay life columnist decided to come together this Valentine’s Day and venture throughout Philly’s bar scene in search of one prize they both had in common: men.

This Valentine’s Day, two columnists for The Temple News found some very special people to spend a snowy February night with: each other. Originally, we planned a sociological dating experiment on a couple of poor saps in the Philadelphia area, but we became distracted after our first pitcher of beer and found ourselves embodying the qualities of what Carrie Bradshaw would call “sexual anthropologists.”

The night began at McGillian’s, a lively albeit small Center City pub offering up these two columnists’ favorite combo: beer and discounts. At $5 a pitcher, the beer made tensions between the sexes immediately apparent. From our first post near the bar, we observed a group of three guys and three gals, who we assumed to be just a group of friends having a couple drinks before their night really started.

And then the chanting began.

The blond male at the table began shouting “Geri, Geri, Geri!” and soon got the entire crowd to join in — including Josh — beckoning the poor girl to chug the rest of the pitcher on their table. Geri, obviously horrified, just kind of shook her head and refused to look anyone in the eye, let alone even glance at the beer.

Tightening up and attempting to guard herself from the crowd’s jeering, Geri was leaning into the very guy who instigated the situation. We came to the conclusion that she was interested in the blond and didn’t want to embarrass herself — even though Roxy, her female comrade on the other side of the table, was more than happy to throw back the rest of the pitcher.

After Roxy took one for the team, we spotted Geri smiling at her blond male friend, hoping to move past the embarrassment of her shyness while simultaneously seeking the approval of the antagonist.

If you’re trying to impress someone amid catchy nineties tunes and a crowd of drunk 20-somethings, a public spectacle involving alcohol is perhaps not the best idea. Gold star for you, Geri.

After becoming very friendly with a pitcher of Walt Whit and a sing-a-long of The Cure, we journeyed to our next — and least favorite — bar, Fox & Hound, which had been recommended to Libby by at least four Temple students.

It was here where our classy, casually dressed selves were forced to wait almost 40 minutes for a waitress to aid us with more beer and attention. We found ourselves playing on our phones, responding to text messages and tweets, while our waitress tended to every other table in the bar. Josh glanced at the table to our right and gasped as he noticed two of his OKCupid “quick matches” sitting less than five feet away from us. While they may not have been matches for Josh, it seemed as though they found matches in each other.

After too much waiting, not enough (read no) drinking and witnessing a 28-year-old in a McLovin’ vest butcher Michael Buble’s Haven’t Met You Yet, we decided enough was enough. It was time to move to our final destination. To the sound of Lady Gaga, we grabbed our coats and swiftly exited the now-on-our-D-list bar.

The Q Lounge was the last and best bar on our anthropological quest. Not too crowded but definitely not empty, the glittering interior was filled with the perfect mix of ages, races and sexual orientations. Its home in the Gayborhood was the perfect place for us to kick back on leather seats with a cosmo or two.

As some friends crawled into the lounge to meet us, we joined the small portion of patrons who were getting down and dirty on the dance floor. Balancing cosmos, gays and “hip swangs” (thanks, Josh), our group finally loosened and soon forgot the disappointment of our previous attempt.

While dancing, we realized there was a level of ambiguity to the crowd. To Libby’s untrained eye, the transvestite in the corner with an older man was just an everyday Barbie look-alike, and Josh was beside himself when the cutest gay in the bar wanted his picture taken with the Pillow Talker herself. And then, there was the question of the four girls – neither a gay in tow, nor one of them setting off our collective gaydar.

Could it be that these attractive women came to a gay bar alone seeking solace from the straight male vultures who seem to permeate the Center City bar crowds? We think it’s more than likely and hope they had an amazing girl’s night out.

The night ended with our heads held high — despite the beer and cosmos — and without guys walking with us arm-in-arm. Despite the lack of flirting experiment, our observations and wickedly enjoyable night made us realize this: If you don’t have someone to exchange stuffed animals and chocolates with this Feb. 14, don’t fret. Valentines come and go, but the relationship a gay man has with his straight female friend is forever.

Josh Fernandez and Libby Peck can be reached at living@temple-news.com.

Purging the new year of the past

The new year can serve as a time to put more than just 2009 to rest.

So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different. I woke up January 1 with the same strawberry blond hair, the same mascara rubbed off under my eyes, wearing the same pajamas I went to sleep in. Things just don’t change that drastically from 11:59 p.m. to 12 a.m. — unless we’re talking 2012. But I never claimed to be a scientist or Mayan forecaster, so I’m going to leave that alone.

I usually don’t make serious resolutions because, for the most part, I’m pretty darn happy with myself. I love my friends, family, sisters. I manage to do all of the things I want to be involved in and still have time to make good grades and go out at night. And seriously, I think everyone wants to lose weight no matter what time of year it is. So what’s the one thing in my life I’m unsatisfied with? Love. The very thing I write about in this column. Ironic, eh?

Instead of sitting in bed hungover waiting for Mr. Right to hold a radio over his head blasting “Crash Into Me” outside my bedroom window, I decided it’s time to take matters into my hands. These are my love life resolutions for 2010.

Time for a technology purge.
Why do I still have “Jeff Love of My Life” as a contact in my iPhone when I know the Baltimore-based opera singer will never call me? And why haven’t I blocked that asshole on AIM whose sole purpose in his sex life is to keep me hopelessly attached to him? Am I seriously still Facebook friends with the ex I haven’t talked to in two years? Gone, gone and gone. I don’t want to look at those numbers or names anymore. Plus, sometimes being able to ask, “Hey, who is this?” when I get a text from an unfamiliar number is such a sweet feeling.

It’s time to get rid of the clingers
As much as I preach about honesty, sometimes it’s just so hard to tell the truth to guys who are trying so hard for my affections. No, Awkward Kid, sleeping in your bed with you doesn’t mean I like you — especially since I don’t even try to cuddle. And no, Annoyingly Persistent Republican, I will not go on a date with you no matter how many not-so-vague references you make to me on Twitter. I’m going to stop having conversations with people I have no desire to talk to. I have more important things to do – like write about them in this column.

It’s time to raise the bar
I will no longer date guys who are shorter than I am (come on, guys of Philadelphia, I know a lot of you are taller than 5’11” out there), and I can no longer look past a man’s poor taste in music. C’mon son, playing that Nickelback single is like the ultimate female-boner killer. I need a man who loves Colin Meloy, not Chad Kroeger. Ew. Also, it’s no longer acceptable for me to go on dates with you if you consistently show up in a University of Kentucky windbreaker and UPenn sweatpants. It’s really not difficult to reach for a button-down and jeans instead, now is it?

Along those same lines, it’s time for a new caliber of man. Oh, Random Student at House Party, you’re cute and all, but there are really only so many cups of Natty Light I can drink before your shtick gets old and it becomes glaringly obvious to me that you go home on weekends only to have your mom do your laundry. I much prefer Young Professional at Bar now; at least when he drinks beer on tap, it’s Stella Artois. My parents met at a bar and are still together — so why can’t it work for me?

It’s time for me to grow up
Well, at least a little bit. I have a long way to go until I’m a powerful businesswoman strutting down Walnut Street in business casual after work at 5 p.m., but I feel much closer to that image of myself than the memories of making out with strangers pinned up against basement walls. Moldy North Philly houses are so 2008. I’ve moved on. If I don’t like doing that anymore, then why continue the habit?
Maybe if I finally start following my own advice, I’ll be able to write an optimistic column for once. Ha, not going to happen. I want to change my love life, not my life outlook.

Welcome back to Pillow Talk, kids. It’s going to be another great semester in North Philly.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: Springtime brings end to madness

The end of another school year at lovely Temple: girls’ sundresses blow up in the Philadelphia wind, guys walk around in tank tops, Starbucks runs out of clear plastic cups when an iced coffee is absolutely necessary to beat the heat and stay awake, and peaceful black alcohol bags float around the streets. These are the sights of the season, and I think it’s safe to say they couldn’t have come soon enough.

To say that my year has been interesting would be an understatement. If I didn’t have some kind of respectable reputation to upkeep and jobs to pray to get somewhere down the line in my 20-something life, I would be perfectly fine retelling the most ridiculous stories I have on file. But then, I would probably be unemployable, and being homeless really isn’t part of my vague life plan.

So, instead of somehow fitting all my stories into less than 900 words and facing the prospect of public humiliation, I’m going to end this column the way it began: with some tidbits of information I’ve learned over the past two semesters.

Prepare the popcorn, folks, because I’ve been doing some intense research since August. Here we go:

If you aren’t good at remembering names, you might want to work on that.

Otherwise, you might have the joy of being kicked out of a Kardon bedroom at 2:30 a.m. with wet hair, a ripped pair of leggings and no idea how to find your way back down to the lobby, with strangers along the way asking if you’re all right since you look like a hot mess. Apparently, nowadays it’s unacceptable to remember a last name and not a first — oops. This might make my semester in Rome a bit awkward.

If you are good friends with a girl and she hasn’t made any sexual advances toward you, chances are, it’s because she doesn’t want to. Apparently this fact is a little over both heads of our little testosterone-filled friends. A friend from high school who still lives in Kentucky recently revealed to me he’s had a crush on me ever since I moved away. Unfortunately for him, I kind of already knew that and didn’t act on it for a reason. On the same note: if someone won’t respond to your Facebook chats, instant messages or texts, it probably means they don’t want to talk to you at the moment. Get over it.

Being tall has its ups and downs. If you’ve ever seen me speed-walking across campus, there are one of two things you probably noticed: either my red hair flying everywhere or my height. You see, I’m 5’11” — taller than the average man. Cool. This makes talking to guys shorter than 5’8” look like I’m talking to a son, and I don’t want to give off an Oedipus vibe to anyone. But it also makes me stand out in a crowd of shorter girls, drawing the attention of that gorgeous man from Baltimore and not leaving anyone else a chance. I guess I can live with the pros and cons of this one.

Good things tend to happen when you least need them to. Or want them to. If you didn’t catch the reference earlier, I’m going to be spending next semester in Rome. Woo hoo! So, I’ve been practicing my detachment skills, making sure I don’t grow too close to any one person and finally – finally – enjoying the single life. Of course, it just so happens when I have my skill honed, I actually meet a nice guy who wants to date me, all bulls— aside. Maybe he’ll still be around in four months, but I think the same probability exists for a dashing Roman to sweep me off my feet. (Nah, probably not.) Good timing and Libby Peck don’t mix well together.

On that note, it’s about time I wrap up this final column. Thanks for sticking around this year with me. I’m sure I’ll miss your loyal readership, as much as you’ll miss my witty ramblings. Have a great summer, everyone!

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: Ex attempts to topple cake’s tiers

There’s a quote inspired by Shakespeare on the Washington Monument that reads, “What is past is prologue.”

We learn from the trials and tribulations of our past and move on, taking what we’ve learned in stride and using it to help prevent the same things from happening again. Our pasts are our foundations: everything that happens in our lives just builds up, layer after layer, like a sloppy birthday cake made by your best friends that just manages to be held together by sticky Pillsbury icing from Rite Aid.

Like tiers of a cake, different layers of our pasts can’t just be plucked out and switched around on a whim – otherwise the entire structure would be imbalanced, messy and in a state of complete destruction. It would look even more awkward than it already did, with uneven icing layers and amateur frosted script. To make us the people we are now, things had to happen in a certain order, for better or for worse.

But what happens when, out of the blue, one of the lowest layers of your cake becomes enchanted and tries to rearrange itself or tries to duplicate itself on top of everything else you’ve already begun to bake and decorate?

I’ve never seen an enchanted cake, so I don’t think we’ll have a real answer to that. But for the sake of metaphor, I’ll say things would get extremely complicated really quickly.

Just as I promised myself to shift my focus to topics not-so sexually based, the very base of my teetering relationship cake popped up out of nowhere – four years after conception, expecting to get back on top of things. I’m pretty bad at keeping promises.

My first boyfriend, who I’ll refer to as Stan, swept me off my feet. He picked me up from school every day in his beat-up, Barney-purple Honda – not because he was in college and had the extra time, but because he was expelled from his public high school (and had the extra time). He would take me to the local outdoor mall and hold my hand until he felt an itch to smoke. He took me to all-ages hardcore shows…that I had to pay for. I guess my standards were pretty low when I had nothing else to compare him to.

I took pictures on what ended up being my favorite night with Stan: our silhouettes glow yellow from the parking lot lights that illuminated the backseat we layed in. We lounged, listening to “Passenger Seat” because we had nothing else to do and nowhere else we would have rather been. It was simple, but I was so happy at the time. I thought it was the perfect date. Little did I know, it would become my last pleasant memory of him.

After that night, Stan completely ignored me for a week — not a returned phone call, not a single instant message. I had no idea if he was dead or alive or if I had just done something to set his unpredictable temper off. He finally called me out of the blue to say he’d been up in the mountains, drinking Bud Light every night and thinking about how his life was less complicated when he didn’t have to spend time teaching me things I didn’t know yet.

“I don’t have time to give you experience,” he said.

“I’ll learn,” I promised. And as the sobs came tumbling out of my trembling lips, he hung up on me.

I guess he decided four years was long enough for me to gain enough experience for him because Stan randomly decided he wanted to be my Facebook friend, asking me for my phone number and telling me I’ve managed to change in all of the right ways. Is this normal, or is this yet another case of a secretly embedded crazy magnet in my body? Either way, as charming as it may be, it pisses me off.

It doesn’t make any sense for Stan to try reconnecting with someone who has matured enough to know not to believe the, for lack of a better term, BS. Plus, I live hundreds of miles away from my old Kentucky home now, so I’ve shortened any chances for him weaseling himself back into my life from 52 weeks to only one – not that I’d want to get back with him at all. He’s managed to change in none of the ways I wanted him to.

Stan belongs on the bottom of my tiers. Granted, this layer consists of cigarette butts, money he owes me and crushed coffee cups, but it’s a foundation nevertheless. Changing his place in my relationship cake would completely change everything else: layers would crumble in on themselves, have totally different ingredients, spontaneously combust. And, as much as parts of it may suck, I wouldn’t alter a single layer. I’m pretty happy with the pastry chef I’ve become.

So, it’s time to delete that name and number, ignore those Facebook messages and put Stan back in his rightful place at the beginning. Besides, I actually do have a man in my life right now. His name is Insomnia Cookies, and he’s probably not going to be too happy that I used a metaphor involving a different baked good.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: Don’t spread your sex life too thin

My beloved readers, here’s a brief lesson for you in the world of music: in 1996, a little band named Weezer released its sophomore album, Pinkerton. After the wild success of the band’s self-titled debut (referred to by dedicated fans as The Blue Album), thanks to the single “Buddy Holly,” record sales weren’t as impressive as expected.

The first song track on this album is called “Tired of Sex.” Lead singer Rivers Cuomo wails, “I’m tired / So tired / I’m tired of having sex / I’m spread so thin, I don’t know who I am,” and proceeds to complain about his inability to find true love on the road while surrounded by groupies.

The lead singer of a popular, rock band was seemingly tired of sex. And so am I. I mean, it’s not like I have rabid fans of The Temple News chasing me around campus, begging for entry into our sacred newsroom (hell, I don’t even get that) in order to spend time with me. So, perhaps I should elaborate.

I’m not tired of sex; then, I would probably be a terrible columnist, as well as inhuman.

But apparently, there’s some kind of magnet embedded in me that attracts the oddest males possible. In middle school, it was the one boy who had already started puberty without realizing he needed to use deodorant, who rocked a pencil-thin mustache. He told me all about his obsession with Anime porn and told the captain of our football team he wanted me to give him a blow job.

And last night, a Penn student I’ve been talking to off-and-on called me at 2 a.m. and told me I had a half-hour to get to his house in University City, so he could take advantage of me. Then he rapped freestyle for me — terribly.

Cuomo had it right when he sang about being “spread so thin.” Despite my arguably easy schedule this semester, taking care of extracurricular and social activities and family obligations has become a chore. I somehow managed to put off dealing with all of it and instead, spend too many hours complaining about the crazies who had found me. Needless to say, I’m ready for a break – not only from this semester, but also from getting involved with people I don’t necessarily need to keep around.

Are you feeling the last-third-of-the-semester blues, too? I’ve come up with a simple list to help us get through the sluggish weeks before spring finals and the exhausting process of ignoring phone calls and Facebook chats:

Focus on the family.
I would never condone a Republican think tank – especially one that would consider this sex column my one-way ticket to damnation. But they have something right with their name: no matter who your family is, it’s a support system. So, spend time and further develop your relationships with those people any time you can. Blood relatives, best friends and Greek brotherhoods or sisterhoods all provide networks of lifetime bonds that last longer than 15 minutes at the apartment of the guy you just met at the bar.

Put away the cell phone.
In class, of course! I know it’s extremely difficult to put your phone in your pocket and leave it there for 50 minutes of your life. But if you pay attention in class, you might actually get your tuition’s worth, might actually know what your professor is referring to when you come back to the real world after an interrupting daydream and might not have to deal with a text message from some girl who claims she left her leather jacket under your bed when she left your place early Sunday morning.

Avoid Facebook like the plague.
Reading wall-to-walls, painstakingly watching your list of available friends fluctuate until you see the name of the person you’ve been dying to hit up for some action, seeing that she’s “no longer listed as ‘single’” and going through recently tagged photos, wondering why the hell he took someone else to formal all suck. So, why do we keep doing it? Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. If we’re not given the opportunity to creep, the less interested we become, the more time we can devote to scholarly pursuits.

Don’t take yourself so seriously.
We’re all college students, right? We all have those cyclical moments of debilitating stress, complete elation and ravenous lust. However, unless you really screw up in one of these cycles or consistently do things unhealthy for mental stability, the decisions and moods we find ourselves in on a daily basis change too drastically and too often for one of them to define the rest of our lives.

Take Cuomo, for instance: “Tired of Sex” shows a complete shift from the lyrics of “Buddy Holly,” where Cuomo croons “But you know I’m yours/and I know you’re mine/and that’s for all time.”

Apparently his “Mary Tyler Moore” moved on but so did he. Cuomo is still releasing music (albeit disappointing) and raising a family.

I guess he wasn’t so tired of sex after all, and I don’t blame him, really. I know my annoyance definitely won’t last forever, so for now, I guess I’ll just soak up the new spring sun and once again, see what happens this weekend.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: No relationship is ‘normal’

If you’re too dense to have figured this out about me yet, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you: I’m not normal.

I don’t have a psychological disease (that I know of), and I’m not the type that will memorize someone’s class schedule and follow him or her around campus accordingly. I don’t own a collection of skulls, and I’m not really a fan of spouting obscure knowledge to no one in particular. But, I’m still kind of odd.

I’m not normal because I didn’t start making my bed until I came to college and seem to have a mild, self-diagnosed case of obsessive compulsive disorder that must drive my lovely roommates insane.
Then again, half the time we’re around each other, my roommates and I communicate in noises rather than language. My voicemail greeting plays a recording of my voice but in a deep drawl, a great imitation I picked up through eight years of living in the South. That’s far from everything, and this column isn’t about me — it’s about all of us. Whether you like it or not, you’re not normal either.

To be honest, I really don’t think I could classify anyone I know as normal. My parents are insane. I guess I learned a thing or two from them. One of my friends is a classically trained opera singer. I wouldn’t call that normal, but I would definitely call it intriguing. Another friend has an obsession with giraffes, and yet another has an obsession with knitting.

I know a group of guys who take the term “bromance” to an entirely new level, and a group of girls who respond with a self-proclaimed “homance.” But are any of these things even weird or just uncommon?
Humans are much more difficult to define as normal than, say, inanimate objects. Carpet on a floor is normal. A lamp sitting on a desk is normal. Tires on a car are normal and definitely necessary.

However, if you put carpet on a bed, a lamp in a bathtub and tires on a television set, it would be classified as weird. There are some pretty concrete rules for these quantifiable things, but as soon as those silly abstracts of emotions and personality come into play, things get complicated.

How do we measure how much we like someone? How much we love someone? It’s a lot more difficult than spreading our arms and legs wide and saying “THIS much!”

Should we attempt to tell our significant others that we’re annoyed with them when they really haven’t done anything to piss us off aside from being themselves? And is love an excuse for the inexcusable, like staying with an abusive or unfaithful partner? (Yes, Rihanna, I’m talking to you.)

Since we have no way of defining what’s normal for an individual, how can we even begin to define how normal a relationship is? Is there a required number of times you have to text someone in a day, and are you obligated to respond to each?

Should there be a point when you get bored and move along, or are you supposed to try hard to keep things interesting? Whom should we look to in order to emulate the mythical normal relationship, and how would we know whether that public façade is the only thing normal about the person?

I apologize for bombarding you with rhetorical questions, but really, think about it — if you’ve had the pleasure of having a normal relationship, what was it that made it so normal?

The other night, I was having a conversation with a guy who I’ve been interested in since December. Exasperated with him as usual, I said “I just don’t know” in regards to, well, just about everything he’s said to me. He replied, “Who does?”

Despite how annoyed I was with him for that cop-out of a response, I had an epiphany: he was right. Sometimes the only way we can explain things is by deeming them unexplainable and leaving them at that, letting the weird be weird and accepting things for what they are until things finally fall into place.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: Make safe sex a priority

Is it just me, or has February flown by? Granted, there are only 28 days in this frigid month, but an extra 48 hours isn’t a lot of time to make a month seem longer.

Maybe it’s because I was sick every day last February. I went into the month with walking pneumonia. I had that for about two weeks and, after two days of recovery, found out I had debilitating strep throat.
Needless to say, I was pretty excited for March 2008 to roll around. This year, I slept through most of Valentine’s Day (thank you, Friday night) and had class on President’s Day (thank you, Temple). I heard lecturers on Black History Month and tried not to fail my physics class.

Amid all the excitement, I completely missed the February event that’s probably most relevant to what I do here at The Temple News. February, apparently, is also National Safe Sex Awareness Month.

Now, either I’m completely shut off from society in my little apartment bubble, or I missed any publicity that was given to this important exposure of the nation’s sexual health. Or, maybe the country doesn’t have enough money to publicize that. Hmm, that makes more sense.

Either way, I feel like I’ve failed as a columnist for not lecturing my faithful readers on the virtues of safe sex last month, so excuse me if I sound like your parent for a few paragraphs. Here are some things all of us need to remember before our reproductive organs start doing the thinking:

No glove, no love
Cheesy line? Absolutely. Does it need to be said? Obviously. Taking the time to whip out the Trojan Man (or asking for him to be present) isn’t the sexiest thing to say in the heat of the moment, but it’s a lot sexier than contracting HIV. Condoms from the Health Education and Awareness Resource Team in Mitten Hall are 10 for a dollar, so saying you’re out or don’t have enough money for them is not an excuse.

Two is better than one
Ladies, even if you’re on the pill or are using some kind of newfangled contraceptive ring, telling a guy to wrap up his junk will do more good than bad. The only thing I really remember from my high school’s joke of a sex education class is that two forms of protection are more effective than one — basic probability right there. And since I abide by everything I was taught in high school and am so skilled in math, I’m passing along the same advice.

Get tested
If you thought the condom question was awkward, then you probably haven’t had someone throw the “are you clean?” interrogative your way. One friend told me the first time her crush’s face found its way between her thighs, he asked, “So, you don’t, like, have crabs or anything, right?” Sexy, right? At least he was taking some kind of precaution. Sexually transmitted diseases common on college campuses usually don’t show themselves immediately after they’re contracted, so unless you get tested, you probably won’t know what you might be spreading around.

Less is more
Think about it this way: you hook up with someone at a party whom you know as Sarah and have heard about her reputation as a seductress around campus. Thus, you’ve also hooked up with every other person whose mouth has been on hers and every other person whose mouths have been on their mouths and so on. You get the point. Just keep in mind where that person’s been. Don’t let it stop you, but after that, getting tested might become a bigger priority to you.

Keep it in the family
My best guy friend has a Facebook group dedicated to himself. It contains about 80 pictures of his face Photoshopped onto random animals’ bodies, including a unicorn’s, camel’s, hyena’s and Elton John’s. The name of the group is “The Herp Zoo,” and all the animals have been renamed to include some form of “herpes.” My friend basically hates life because of his group’s popularity. Therefore, no matter how funny the story is, don’t go around telling anyone who will listen how you contracted Chlamydia — unless you want the story to spread faster than your infection.

Well, my parent-like lecture is done. When it comes down to it, just don’t be stupid. Keep it safe, keep it sexy, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Oh, and if you do decide to start a Facebook group dedicated to your best friend’s STD, just don’t let him or her know it’s there.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

Pillow Talk: Girls can play the field, too

The phone hasn’t stopped vibrating since late Thursday night. Text messages and missed calls litter its memory, causing inboxes to flood with ignored information, preventing things one actually needs to know from coming through.

One text message reads, “So, do you want to come back to the house tonight?”

Another, from someone who’s been trying to get a response for a couple of months, inquires, “What’s it going to take to get you to hang out with me?”

Creepy voicemails from a local who ended up with the sacred number thanks to pity are left unheard; text messages from an ex with a vendetta are promptly deleted. Eventually, most of the unwanted suitors taper off their efforts, but the evil cycle begins once more every Friday morning.

Unless you’re a hermit, you’ve been one of the people in this situation. You’re either lucky enough to have the charm to get multiple people fawning over you at once, or you’re deluded enough to think getting the cell phone number of said charmer means you’re eventually going to date him or her. Maybe you’ve been both.

Either way, the desperation that stems from a single, drunken conversation is usually associated with the fairer sex – since we’re all obviously so miserable being single and only came to college to find significant others, anyway. However, judging from girls I know and stories I’ve heard, Jay-Z knew what he was talking about when he said, “Ladies is pimps, too.”

Now, that isn’t to say that my friends and I are walking the streets of North Philly in long, furry purple coats, selling the services of our male friends to assorted passers-by – though that could be kind of fun, I guess.

I’m not saying we’re players, either. If you read my column two weeks ago, you know I would be the last person on this campus to play mind games with anyone, let alone with multiple guys at once. My brain would go into logic overload.

A female pimp, in my sense of the word, breaks all annoying stereotypes associated with girls in relationships.

She’ll give you her number, and she’ll text you back, but she doesn’t care if you respond. She reads your messages asking to hang out, laughs with her friends about them and never responds because she has something better to do. She’ll hook up with you, neither expecting nor wanting to hear from you again, and she’ll be slightly disgusted when you call her multiple times the next day. She feels no obligation to you unless she’s in a relationship with you and will be turned off when you take offense to the fact that someone else got her number.

She’s not easy. She’s empowered.

This new breed of woman quickly coming out of the woodwork has finally mastered the trait that makes men so frustrating to us: detachment.

Take, for example, a story I heard the other day. One of my female friends was minding her business in the basement of a house party and made some snarky comment about a guy’s religion. The guy then proceeded to follow her around the house for the rest of the night, ask her friends why she was ignoring him, miraculously get her number and continuously text her.

Guys, for the love of God, please don’t do this. If we wanted someone to follow us around, we would buy dogs.

After all, unless we find someone good enough, why stick to talking to just one person? We can juggle; multitasking is a good life skill, after all.

Another friend of mine was recently rotating three different guys: a Temple student with a girlfriend, a Drexel kid who would disappear for weeks at a time and a 26-year-old living in South Philly.

Am I just sheltered, or does it seem like girls haven’t done this before? Are we finally learning to (gasp!) date the way men do? Gentlemen, watch your backs because sooner or later, students surpass their teachers.

Libby Peck can be reached at elizabeth.peck@temple.edu.

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