me: No.
judy: The glitter love dust from New Orleans?
me: No.
judy: The rose quartz from the psychic I met in the Bahamas?
me: No.
judy: What could possibly be more powerful than a psychically charged piece of rose quartz; the pheromones from the most attractive, fertile Filipino women; and good old-fashioned voodoo?
me: A set of pink dice; a bodacious, bad-ass barbaric alter ego; and some good old-fashioned role-playing.
judy: No! You’re a terrible friend! Jodi doesn’t even play D&D.
me: Minor hurdle. She’s just going to look the part. The rest will fall into place.
Judy: I still think the book I heard about would be better. The author is a renowned couple’s therapist. She knows what works! Come on, what show was that—
me: What’s the difference between your books and my D&D books?
judy: My books are written by experts. The authors are world authorities on relationships and psychology. They have proven track records! They’ve been in USA Today!
me: My books are written by experts. Dungeon Masters are experts on relationship psychology. D&D’s been around for more than three decades, so that’s a pretty decent track record. D&D has been in USA Today.
judy: Really?
me: Really.
judy: Well, I still think you should give me her address. You know, for backup.
me: No way. Talk about being a terrible friend.
Let’s pick on single people, shall we? What? Everyone picks on them. At least it seems like that from the pile of self-help available to this lot in life. I feel like I can offer my own advice here (but not make fun of them) because I have spent 99% of my own life in this camp and 98% of my life fending off the advice of Judy and other well-meaning friends.
Saying things like, “How can you be single?” and “What’s wrong with these guys?” doesn’t help. First, I hadn’t really thought about why I was single or what was wrong with all my possible suitors. Are you implying that I had all the tools at my disposal and have somehow messed up, therefore guaranteeing me a lifetime of spinsterhood? Or that my potential suitors are all broken, flawed, idiotic, or too wrapped up in their action figure collections to give me the time of day? And that’s the pool I get to choose from? Thanks. (And for the record, there are worst things than action figures for a guy to be into: raising and slaughtering goats, meth-making, and the Twilight saga, to name a few.)
Second, people always assume that single people don’t want to be single, which may or may not be true. Hey, you don’t know what kind of baggage I’m toting around that prevents me from coupling. Maybe the onus isn’t on the guys. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe my shrink staunchly advised against dating, fearing for the safety of others. Maybe I’m sorely in need of a shrink! (And also, for the record, there’s nothing wrong with having a shrink. Especially if your insurance plan covers it.)
Third, single does not mean alone. Do you know single people have the freedom to date as many people as they like? At the same time? Just because someone isn’t in a committed relationship doesn’t mean they’re not having relations.
While I may have tried to give people that impression because I was sick of answering their why what how questions, it was definitely rooted in frustration rather than reality. The only “relations” I was having were with the sandwich artists at the Subway down the street and Fred, the guy who delivered my pad thai every Thursday night.
By contrast, we have my friends who are always in a relationship. One’s been dating since nursery school and has never gone more than three months without being “the other half.” And we’re talking good, healthy relationships, too. She was the first one of my group to get hitched and she probably already has a cabin booked to celebrate their golden anniversary on a Carnival Cruise to Cozumel.
Me? I was a late bloomer. Don’t get me wrong. I went on dates. I had tons of crushes that were more fun to not act on and a few long-term relationships. Most important, I got very good at ignoring Judy’s musings on what it would be like to have a son-in-law and my cousin Lulu’s inquiries into my sexuality. Hey, Lulu, if you thought I was gay because I was single, then wouldn’t that just make me a single lesbian? I’m not getting how one excludes the other. Whatever.
Having a boyfriend never defined who I was. Either I was single or I wasn’t. And when I was I always had seemingly endless fodder to write about, like why people are so obsessed with single people.
I admit that I, too, am obsessed with single people, regardless of my own relationship status. Or more to the point, obsessed with setting people up. I’m quite good at it, too. Just pick someone from column A, match them with someone from column B, and presto! A couple!
Matchmaking is the kind of butting in I can get behind. While I was always the friend everyone claimed they couldn’t believe was single, no one ever tried to fix me up, claiming they didn’t have any friends they thought were “good enough.” Seriously? Then why are you friends with these people? Truthfully, I think no one had any idea what kind of guy I would be attracted to. He’d have to be part Simon Le Bon, part Simon Doonan, and part golden retriever. Hmm … now I can see why I never went on blind dates.
But seriously, why can’t we leave the single people alone? Shouldn’t we put all this “find a cure” energy into something meaningful like cancer or adult acne? And by “we” I mean “mothers.” And by “mothers” I mean “Judy.”
Judy treated my singlehood the way an experimental doctor might treat a rare, recursive virus.
“Try online dating! I’ll pay for your first three months!”
“Try going out more! I’ll buy you a new outfit!”
“Try reading this book! It and thirty others just like it are on their way!”
The books! There are more books promising to find the lid for your pot than there are Italian cookbooks for beginners. It’s true. I counted. I knew what Judy’s motivation was—a bad case of Grandma Envy. Finding me a mate wasn’t so much about making sure I always had someone to pick me up at the airport as it was about ensuring there would be a small person with her delicate ankles and a button nose sitting at the kids’ table on Thanksgiving.
“That’s not true,” Judy insisted when I told her my theory. “I just wanted you to be happy. That’s all any parent wants for their kids.”
“But again, you’re equating happiness with couplehood. I know plenty of couples who are anything but happy.”
Even Judy had to agree with that. But “happy” to her means someone to take care of you. “What if you needed to go to the hospital or had the flu or slipped in the bathtub?”
I reminded her of the time I stabbed myself while de-pitting an avocado, in front of Bart, and had to calm him down before removing the paring knife from my palm. Neither of us is good with crisis, I’m afraid. But it was nice having someone to open the wine bottles while my hand was bandaged.
I have another speculation as to why single people get picked on. It’s because they’re an easy target. Everyone thinks they know how to manage someone else’s sad, lonely life better than they do. I mean, obviously, right? These people are sad and lonely. Look up “single” in the dictionary and that’s exactly what it says. I’m kidding, of course, but that is the way it seems if you spend any time perusing the self-help books Judy sent me. (And don’t look at me like that! Of course I at least peeked at them.)
Dave Barry said, “A person who is nice to you but not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.” I believe it and think of that every time I’m out to eat with someone. I also believe there’s truth in the saying, “A person who is nice to you but not nice to the Dungeon Master is not a nice person.” The DM is essentially your host. You wouldn’t be playing D&D without him or her. That reason alone warrants at least a thank you, not to mention a six-pack and a pizza.
The same goes for how the Dungeon Master treats his or her players. You don’t want to play a game w
ith someone who uses it as an outlet for their control issues.
“Ahh, the dragon rolled 119 damage! You all die horrible, flaming deaths! Good-bye and get out of my house!”
Ladies? Don’t date that guy. And guys? Don’t ask that girl if it’s that time of the month. In fact, don’t ever ask that stupid question. Even if it isn’t she’ll lie and say it is so when she smacks you upside the head she’ll have a good defense.
I don’t know what’s happening in your home or work life but none of that that should ever make its way to the playmat. I’m not the one who deleted the series finale of Lost from your DVR (although I would have if I could have; why did everyone love that show?). Don’t punish my poor little adventurer by throwing her down a trap door with nothing to cushion her fall but a throng of bugbears. She’s just trying to make a living here!
Sadly, there is no end to the amount of books geared toward fixing the lovelorn. And what’s up with all the titles—they always have YOU in big letters. How to Find the Love YOU Lost. How to Stop YOURSELF from Falling for Another Loser. Why She Chose Him and Not YOU. It’s like YOU have gone out there and made a big, fat, lonely mess of YOUR life and now these little paperback martyrs have to go out there and clean up after YOU. Can’t YOU just hear their passive-aggressive little paper sighs? “Oh, fine, I was relaxing here on this shelf checking out that molten chocolate cake on the cover of 1,000 Chocolate Delicacies, but okay, I’ll take care of you. Again. Good job, mate. Nicely done. Need a paperback to fight all your battles?”
Had I only known the key to unlocking my inner half of a happy couple was to buy some dice and roll up a character, I could have saved Judy thousands of dollars. Dollars she could have sunk into slot machines or Omaha Steaks or providing nutritious food for a child in Honduras. If there’s one stereotype about D&D that is true it’s the one that implies only guys play it. Well, sort of true, anyway. A lot of guys play it. Oh sure, women play, too, but your odds of being the only girl in the room are great (and not in a creepy, bad-judgment sort of way that Lifetime movies are made of).
Oh sure, I give my Dungeon Master(s) a hard time during the game, but I know they can handle it. It’s all in good fun. It’s kind of like yelling at the ref during a hockey game when he makes a bad call. Actually, I take that back. I’ve seen how some people treat refs during a hockey game and I’m not that bad. For instance, I’ve never thrown meat at my Dungeon Master. It’s more like how I treat my trainer when he tells me to do pushups.
“Quit telling me what to do!” I say this knowing full well that telling me what to do is exactly what I pay him for.
When my group gets out of hand with the “you’re cheating!” and “Nope, thirty-four doesn’t hit my level five armor class,” our Dungeon Master lets us know. No matter what happens in the game I always make sure to thank him, tell him that it was fun, and offer to carry his minis back to his desk. He usually lets me, too. Sucking up is just one of the many ways to make your DM feel appreciated.
There are tons of stories out there about couples meeting each other around the D&D table. “He was a shifty rogue,” “She healed me,” “He was my Dungeon Master” (the latter of which I’m assuming is a reference to D&D maybe not). This hypothesis is just itching to be tested. That’s where Jodi comes in.
She’s the perfect accomplice to test my theory. She just embarked on a new career in aesthetics, which she loves (and is really, really good at; if you need someone to tend to your skin care needs, let me know). She’s smart, funny, outgoing, and beautiful. Most important she’s now the official friend none of us can believe is single. At the risk of sounding like Judy, what is wrong with the guys around here?
Over a delicious dinner of vegetarian Sloppy Joes and a bottle of Riesling, I told Jodi how I thought D&D was great for couples and potential couples.
“If more people knew about D&D and its matchmaking wonders, Dr. Phil would be out of a day job,” I said.
“That’s some good motivation to get the word out,” she offered. “I’ll join that cause.”
While much subtler, Jodi’s mom has been known to quote Dr. Philisms. Single women hate Dr. Phil. (Remind me to talk to R&D about creating a Dr. Phil-inspired monster.)
“You and Bart could be the poster children for how D&D brings people together,” Jodi added.
It’s true, D&D brought Bart and me together, or more specifically our jobs working on D&D brought us together. I thought he was a perfectly nice guy and liked him right away in that co-workers-I-wouldn’t-hate-having-lunch-with sort of way. According to him he liked me, liked me the first time we met.
“You were nice, even if you were a little too chatty,” he said.
“Well, you were nice, too,” I said. “Even if your glasses were from 1987.”
It didn’t matter how we felt about each other then because I had a boyfriend. But I still classified Bart as someone with definite potential, so I dropped him into slot A and set out to fix him up right away. My friend Des had a friend named Bethany whom I had never met but Des gave a glowing review.
“She likes reading and camping and is superfunny and cute.”
“Hmm, camping?” Bart asked, when I told him about my prospect. “The reason I have a job is so I don’t have to sleep outside.”
But he overlooked Bethany’s affinity for sleeping on dirt and agreed to meet her for a blind date. While they had drinks at a bar in Queen Anne, Des and I texted back and forth, trying to pinpoint the exact moment they fell blissfully in love. I went to Bart’s desk before my own the next morning.
“Well?” I asked. “Are you heading to REI to buy a sleeping bag, Wilderness Jack?”
“I hate you. And you owe me two hours and $29.”
What? How could this be? Des had nothing but positive adjectives reserved for her friend. And all of my fix-ups have always resulted in at least a third date. Judy was right! There was something wrong with the guys around here!
“There’s a reason that girl is single,” he continued. “I had more fun counting the salt specks on my French fries.”
“But Des said she was funny and smart …”
“Would it have killed her to use some inflection while telling me about her days as an intern with an actuary?”
“And cute …”
Bart informed me that when a woman describes her friend as “cute” it’s usually a sign she’s … well, not. (I don’t believe this. I have plenty of friends who are across-the-board cute. But just in case he’s for real, please note I have described Jodi as beautiful.)
Bethany was actually surprised that Bart didn’t call for a second date. Surprised and disappointed. I had to make up some story to Des about Bart not being over his ex-girlfriend and therefore not ready to date after all rather than explain her friend is about as interesting as a rice cake. We still talk about Bethany when we’re stuck doing less than scintillating tasks like caulking the bathtub or facing cans of tomato soup when we volunteer at a food bank.
“Would you rather be stuck in a submarine, listening to Bethany lecture about the proper way to lick a stamp, or in a small, dank supply closet organizing cans of soup based on their sodium content?”
Much to Bart’s delight, I didn’t try to fix him up again.
For years our timing was never quite right for dating. By the time I broke up with the guy I was seeing, Bart was dating someone else. But over the course of five years we became the kind of great friends men and women can be if you’re sure they’ll never see you in your birthday suit. Bart was my workout buddy, drinking pal, and confidant. I made him study the huge zits erupting on my chin, I could belch him under the table, I told him about my penchant for Saturday afternoon Hallmark Channel movies. You know, the stuff you tell your best guy friend when you have no intention of actually dating him.
But then Bart’s relationship ended, and he moved to my neighborhood. We were working out, drinking, confiding, and carpooling together. And for the first time we were single at the same time.
“I’ll give you half of my Mediterranean wrap when we get to the top,” he promised. “And homemade butterscotch cookies. You just have to get there.”
“Go without me. Save yourself! Your cookies can’t help me now!”
Four million switchbacks later we made it. Sarah was nearly done with her sandwich by the time I face-planted on a boulder.
“You did it, Buddy,” Bart said. “Not bad for your first hike.”
“Please insert cookies into the slot on my face,” I said. “My limbs have forsaken me.”
We were exhausted by the time we returned home but managed to rally for Chinese food, several pints of beer, Sex and the City trivia, and a bottle of Trader Joe’s Tempranillo on Bart’s front porch. I was hoping he could help decipher the mixed signals I was getting from an Argentinian rugby player.
“I can’t figure the guy out,” I said. “He asks me to do stuff all the time. Just us. Date-like things. But then when we’re out, he treats me like a kid sister. I think there’s chemistry. What’s his deal?”
“The deal is the guy is an idiot,” Bart said. And then he kissed me.
I’d like to say “and the rest was history,” but it wasn’t.
“Don’t forget the couple of months I spent wooing you,” Bart likes to add when we tell the story. “You put me through the wringer.”
It’s true. But only because I thought the idea of us as a couple was worse than the dreaded reverse-bob hairstyle. Why?
“Because it will ruin our friendship,” I insisted. Yep. What would Dr. Phil say about that? I’ll tell you, as channeled through Judy.
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons Page 7