by Sami Lukis
Yes. He crocheted her a beanie.
So this was how our conversation went when Kate told me about beanie-gate.
Kate: He doesn’t want to have sex with me. But I know he’s really into me, because he crocheted me a beanie. Isn’t that so sweet!
Me: He did what?
Kate: He crocheted me a beanie.
Me: Hon, he’s gay.
Kate: No, he’s not. Don’t be ridiculous.
Me: Babe, he’s gay. A straight man does not crochet. And admit it. Ever.
Kate: You’re wrong. He’s not gay.
Me: Babe. Listen to me. A man who likes to crochet does not like to have sex with a woman.
I’m sure we can all agree that there are various shades of metro-sexuality. From the guy who manscapes and isn’t afraid to moisturise or wear pink (straight metro) to the guy who sings show tunes and can’t live without his fake tan or teeth whitener (bordering on gay, possibly bi-curious). But I’m absolutely convinced that any guy who crochets has gone well beyond the bounds of straight guy metrosexuality.
After several more failed attempts to get physical with the young yoga dude, Kate realised her crush would never turn into anything more. But she kept the beanie. Apparently his crocheting skills were exemplary.
My first ever inappropriate crush was on my primary school PE teacher. Mr Gibson had a porn-star moustache and a curly mullet down to his shoulders. And he wore knee-high socks with the shortest, tightest shorts he could possibly squeeze himself into. (Why were men so fond of the mammal-toe back in the seventies, anyway?)
I thought Mr Gibson was the second most handsome creature on two feet. Scott Baio was my number one. Every day during physical education class, I would desperately try to run the fastest or jump the highest to impress Mr Gibson with my physical prowess. I knew it was totally inappropriate to have those tingly feelings for my teacher, but my eight-year-old self dreamed about marrying a man just like him one day. Oh, my beautiful, mulleted Mr Gibson. With his business on the top and party in the back.
I’ve since realised that an improper crush can hit you at any stage in life. And there are varying levels of inappropriate, when it comes to that flicker of desire for someone you know you can’t have. Like your boss, or your kid’s teacher at one end of the scale. And a cousin, or your mother’s new boyfriend at the other. I’m not sure where priest sits on the scale of inappropriate, but I’m willing to raise my hand and confess that, yes, I once found myself irresistibly attracted to a man of the cloth while I was holidaying in Rome with my trusty travel buddy Helen.
I had noticed two guys in clerical clothing standing behind us in the taxi queue after a delightful dinner in Trastevere. One of the guys was tall, dark and Ricky Martin–level handsome. If I’d been anywhere else but Rome, I would have assumed he was a male model on his way to a Vatican-themed fancy dress party. But considering I was practically around the corner from The Actual Vatican, I knew he was the real deal. He was hands down the sexiest priest I’d ever seen. Hail Mary the guy was gorge! He looked like he’d stepped straight off the pages of that annual Hot Priest calendar they sell for ten euros at gift stands all over the Eternal City. And yes, there is such a thing. (Google it: you’ll be glad you did!)
It’s not every day you spot a smoking hot young holy man on the streets of Rome, right? So I asked him if it would be possible to grab a photo. (Instagram would go craaaaaazy for this shit!) Imagine my surprise when the ravishing young holy man said, in a thick Australian accent, ‘Sure! I’ll do that for a fellow Aussie.’
We got chatting and I discovered they were both Aussies, studying for the priesthood in Rome. They were four years into their ‘path of enlightenment’ with one year to go, after which they planned to return to Sydney and get to work in a local parish.
Aussie Ricky Martin told me he used to be a Sydney banker wanker (he didn’t actually say the wanker bit. I just added it, out of habit) and then one day he woke up and realised how unfulfilled he was. That was his calling from above. The other guy said he was out surfing one morning, sitting on his board at Curl Curl, when he got the holler from upstairs. Wow!
I was fascinated by their stories and in awe of their determination to find more meaning and purpose in their lives. I mean, can you imagine something so profound and life changing happening to you while you’re just going about your daily business?
But mostly I was just drooling over the Aussie Ricky Martin trainee priest.
Our taxi arrived and Helen and I said our goodbyes and took off. But as we drove away, I felt an overwhelming urge to ask the driver to turn around and go back to the hot priest. Was this one of those sliding door moments? Maybe it was my calling. Or was it just the moment I realised I’d been harboring some weird priest sex fantasy, which was probably inspired by that episode of Sex and the City when Samantha flirts with a Franciscan? Either way, I knew I desperately wanted to spend more time with the smoking hot Aussie Ricky Martin lookalike.
I said to Helen, ‘Um, do you think it would be massively inappropriate to go back and ask that hot priest out for a drink?’
She laughed in my face. And then, when she realised I was serious, she looked at me like I’d lost my marbles.
‘I know. It’s probably completely ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Are they even allowed to drink? I could ask him for a gelato instead. I don’t care. I just feel like I need to spend more time with him.’
I never imagined I’d be attracted to a man of the cloth. Although to be fair, I only go to church for births, deaths and marriages so I haven’t really spent much time around them. But my crush was uncontrollable. I felt compelled to return to him. I was ready to confess my sins. All of them.
I had no idea if Priest was allowed to date? Have sex? Get married? Was it a sin for me to even be thinking about it? Had I just scored myself a golden ticket to eternal purgatory for allowing myself to be turned on by a priest?
It was all very confusing.
Eventually Helen talked me down and convinced me to let this one go. It was already proving to be too much hard work. And, truth be told, I probably would have had about as much luck with the hot trainee priest as I would have with the real Ricky Martin. No, there was zero point in seeing the guy again. I mean, it’s not like it could have seriously led anywhere. Dating a priest would kind of be like dating a married man, wouldn’t it? He was already committed to someone else.
And even if they could get married (to someone other than the dude upstairs), I knew I’d make a really crap priest’s wife anyway. I drink too much. I swear like a sailor. I’m allergic to sensible underwear. And I don’t see any of those qualities changing anytime soon.
It pained me to accept that there was no future for me and the smoking hot Aussie Ricky Martin lookalike trainee priest. Sadly, we were not a match made in heaven.
So I did worry that I might be dating my cousin once . . .
In the early stages of dating, I always enjoy discovering freaky coincidences that connect me to my new fella, via three (or sometimes two!) degrees of separation. Like finding out we went to the same school, a few years apart. Or that we both used to go to the Soho bar every Friday night in the late 90s. Or that he had already met one of my best friends in Vancouver, when he was there five years earlier visiting her flatmate, who he’d hooked up with on a Contiki tour of Europe (true story). That kind of discovery gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of familiarity. It’s as if the universe was leaving subtle little signposts along my life’s path, leading me, eventually, to him.
Unless the connection is a little too close for comfort.
Like, when the guy might be my cousin.
I guess that’s, like, minus three degrees of separation.
I felt that familiar spark when a guy I’d just started dating told me his grandmother was Dutch. My mum is Dutch too, so I loved the idea of our shared heritage. When we dug a little deeper, we discovered that my mother’s maiden name and his grandmother’s maiden name were . . . exactly the same. And
it’s not the Dutch equivalent of Smith. Upshot being: we might be related.
Probably not closely related. But we could be cousins. A few times removed, perhaps.
So. There was that.
Strangely, this icky discovery did not make me want to break up with John on the spot. Look, it’s not as if we knew we were related before we hooked up. But I’m pretty sure I could still hear the distant twang of banjos as I typed the words ‘Is it okay to have sex with your cousin?’ into Google (also praying that no one would ever be able to find this in my search history).
Well, it turns out that it is perfectly legal to have sex with (phew!), and even marry, your cousin in many countries. The main issue is the whole breeding scenario, but even that’s not as risky as you might expect. Doctors now reckon the risk of birth defects in babies from parents who are related is around the same as for any expectant mum older than thirty-four.
John and I were nowhere near ready to procreate but, as a woman in her early forties, I can tell you I was a little insulted to know that my age would be more of a danger to the health of our kids than the fact that we might be related. No offence to me . . . but WTF?
Luckily, we eventually discovered a minor disparity in the spelling of the Dutch names, so we grasped that Hail Mary and continued dating. And enjoying stigma-free sex for the remainder of that relationship. And we never spoke of it again.
I’m a dirty big snoop.
If we’ve just started dating, you can be absolutely sure that the moment you leave me alone in your house/apartment/hotel room, I will do a full sweep of the place. I will inspect every available dresser, drawer, cupboard, shelf and surface area I can find.
I’m not trying to steal anything from you. It’s just my way of getting to know you better. It’s also my journalistic instinct. It’s probably in my nature to investigate.
When I’m in snoop mode, I’m not looking for anything specific, and I’ve never found anything really horrific. Unlike a girl I know who reckons she once discovered about twenty polaroid pictures of different naked women in a guy’s bedside drawer. It looked like the shots were taken while the women were sleeping. In his bed.
Yep. Vile!
I suggested she never see him again. And call the police. Immediately.
I did get quite a shock, once, when I found a wedding cake in a guy’s freezer. We’d been on about six dates and it was the first time he’d left me alone at his place after a sleepover, so of course I had a thorough look around. I’m not exactly sure what compelled me to inspect his fridge – I was bored, a bit of a busybody and part bloodhound, perhaps? But lucky I did, because bingo!
It wasn’t an entire wedding cake. It was just the top tier. You know, the piece saved by the husband and wife for the special occasion of their first anniversary. It was an elegant-looking round tier covered in traditional white icing and embellished with delicate flowers and dainty swirls. I imagine the whole cake would have been very pretty, and outrageously expensive.
The discovery of that particular slab of cake confused me, mainly because the guy I was seeing had not mentioned he was or had been married. We’d been dating for three weeks, so I think it was perfectly reasonable to have expected some mention of a wife by that stage. No? Apart from this sweet little discover, my snooping had uncovered no other evidence of a female living in his home.
I called him at work immediately and, as politely as I could, asked if there was any reason why he might have the top tier of a wedding cake in his freezer.
‘Oh, yeah, I was married,’ he told me. ‘But the divorce just came through.’
Then he said the cake in the freezer ‘meant nothing to him’. He’d actually forgotten it was there, so if I didn’t mind, could I just throw it in the trash?
Umm . . . no!
I did mind, actually. I minded a lot.
‘I am not going to throw your wedding cake in the bin,’ I screamed down the phone. ‘If you don’t want it, maybe you should call your ex-wife and see if she wants it first, before you toss it out like some milk that’s past its use-by date.’
I now assume the reason the ex did not have the cake in her possession was that she still had the very bitter taste of their marriage in her mouth. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she deliberately left it there when she moved out, hoping it would one day be discovered by the unsuspecting new woman in his life. (Which incidentally, is exactly the kind of thing I would do. I liked her immediately!)
This incident happened less than a month after I started dating that guy. And, in retrospect, it should have set the alarm bells off. If your new boyfriend a) forgets to tell you that he’s been married, and/or b) asks you to throw his wedding cake in the bin, it’s a fairly good indication that he’s not a very nice fella. But I ignored the signs and it turned out to be one of the worst relationships of my life.
So I guess the moral of this story is . . . snooping is always a good idea.
The only other time my snooping uncovered something really unsavoury was back in my early twenties.
I’d had this nagging feeling that my boyfriend couldn’t be trusted, even though we’d been ‘exclusive’ for about a year. Frankie was a charming guy, working late nights at the hottest bar in town. I’d see him flirting with his female customers all the time but I told myself it was my own silly paranoia. I pretended not to notice all those times he refused to answer his phone in front of me. And I pretended not to care when he was two hours late without any explanation.
But one night, while I was staying over at his apartment, I discovered the undeniable proof that he had cheated on me. The definitive piece of evidence that proved once and for all, Your Honour, that my boyfriend was a lying, cheating scumbug who deserved to have his dick cut off.
The proof?
A long strand of jet-black hair, which I found in his – gasp! – shower. Gotcha, tiger!
Now, you might be thinking that a strand of hair in a shower cubicle is hardly undeniable confirmation of a man’s infidelity. But it was, in this case, because:
a) He (my boyfriend) was bald.
b) I (his girlfriend) had long blonde hair. See? A + B = C(heater).
When I questioned my bald boyfriend about the hair in his shower, he said he had no idea how it got there. But that sinking feeling in my gut told me I was onto something. He lived alone, he didn’t have visitors staying and he didn’t have a cleaner. The only possible way that long black strand of hair could have made its way into my bf’s bathroom was if someone with long black hair had been in it.
I felt like all my fears and doubts were validated, at long last. I wasn’t a crazy, paranoid, bunny boiler girlfriend after all! It was an intense mix of panic, fear, anger and relief. And my trusty women’s intuition begging me to break up with him.
Yes, it seems all kinds of ridiculous to break up with someone over a single strand of hair. But that strand of hair was everything. I couldn’t ignore what it represented. I’d been suspecting something was off for a very long time. And, finally, here was the proof.
But guess what? When Frankie realised he was about to be dumped over a strand of hair, he suddenly, miraculously, came up with a feasible sexplanation. He told me that one of his married friends was having an affair, and he’d asked Frankie if he could use his place for a little afternoon delight with his secret lady lover. So, after banging themselves stupid in my bf’s bed all afternoon, they’d obviously felt the need to cool down (i.e. wash off any trace of their sordid affair) in his shower. And that, Your Honour, is apparently how the strand of long black hair appeared in my bald boyfriend-who-lived-alone’s shower.
He begged me to believe him. Said he was sorry he didn’t tell me the truth at first. But when it came down to a ‘him or me’ situation, he was happy to throw that filthy cheater under the bus faster than you could say, ‘Hoes before bros’.
So, the million-dollar question is: was my boyfriend telling the truth? (Or was he just the world’s dumbest cheater?) Maybe my fella was
just trying to do his mate a solid by providing a clandestine sex den for the lousy scumbucket. But, it also seemed just a little too . . . convenient.
Well, a woman who really, really, really loves her man is prepared to hear any explanation that provides an option other than the one that might suggest he had his wang inside another woman. So I chose to believe him.
Looking back now, I realise I was dumber than a box of hair to believe that story. If I was in the same situation today, I’d be out the door quick smart. My infidelity radar is, thankfully, a little more in tune after thirty-odd years of dating.
I did not break up with my boyfriend over that strand of hair. Instead, I lived in constant fear of finding another one in his shower, in his bed, on his sofa or on his kitchen bench when I least expected it.
But from that day on, I can assure you, Frankie always had the cleanest shower in Sydney.
I fell in love once, and I ended up hating myself.
I always believed I was the type of girl who would never, who could never, find herself in an abusive situation. I was way too strong for any man to ever control me. But the truth is, there’s no ‘type’ of girl who ends up in a toxic relationship. It can happen to anyone. And when it happened to me, I found out I wasn’t as tough as I thought.
It was the worst relationship of my life. In fact, it was the worst time of my life. Full stop.
At first, he seemed attentive and affectionate and reliable. He launched a full scale charm offensive from the moment we met. And he made me feel special and desired and worthy. And that’s all it took, really, for me to fall in love with him.
But I have discovered, after three decades of dating, that men are quite skilled at presenting the best version of themselves in a relationship for – oh – about three months. Then they become complacent. Or they just get tired of trying so hard. And that’s when you see their true personality. I call it the TMT – the Three Month Theory.