I have a friend, who for the purposes of this article we will just call Fluffles. Fluffles has been defying basic societal conventions for about as long as I’ve known him. He’s a great guy, even better friend, and a handsome gent; however, as we barrel rolled our way through high school into college, he always found a way to end up getting to that “point of no return” whenever we went out. It wasn’t that he couldn’t hold his alcohol – he just became the equivalent of a human breathalyzer. My friends and I labeled it Fluffles World; a magical place of complete bliss where Fluffles is always in the right, extremely friendly, starving and most likely to hold the entirety of his conversation with one eye closed.
That’s not why Fluffles is so remarkable. Everyone has a friend, or at least knows someone, that reminds you of Fluffles. (Note – if you lose or break more than 5 phones a month OR have a crappy replacement phone because you cant handle the responsibility of a smartphone, this is you). No, what makes my friend so unique is while consistently getting to this point every time in our night, a certain, mystical, well – witnessed, rarely understood, occurrence happens that I call: the X-Factor (or Fluffles Factor). Simply meaning, at the end of the night Fluffles always ends up with a girl.
It doesn’t matter if Fluffles walks out from the bathroom with his pants at his ankles, rolling around the carpet making rug angels, or takes a quick yack break outside the bar – though I’ve seen it all happen more than once – he ends up with a girl. A pretty girl, at that. It’s like some maternal instinctive epiphany that comes over a woman every time they see him struggling to tie his shoes or type in the code on his phone. They stop and comfort him, help him, and blatantly throw themselves at him when he’s in this most manipulative of states. A collective “Awww” comes the spellbound group of girls surrounding my good friend, similar to the reaction a girl has when she watches newborn puppies play or Ryan Gosling in The Notebook (see?)
My friends and I are still to this day bewildered by Fluffles’ powers and have just chalked it up to one of the mysteries in life we aren’t supposed to know. Fluffles has a charm that cannot be duplicated and we’ve accepted and nourished that fact for years now.
Girls, it’s the equivalent of that one girlfriend you have that guys are just obsessed with for no reason. Yes, you love her and think she’s “really nice and super pretty!” but don’t understand why there is always a different guy in every group always chasing after her. A certain brainwashing that you have to hear about farther into the night, when the guy in particular is confessing his love for her to you. Her boyfriend’s are always too good to her and you navigate through all her Facebook photos with your “real” friends making your own catty captions for each one.
I’ve thought about the X-Factor, and quite a few other perplexing topics, while I slaved through finals week in a daze that has left me quite exhausted. So if you’re still with me, and prematurely experiencing that mid-break boredom, here are a couple issues from a guy’s perspective that have me currently, well – confounded.
That Friend From Class
It doesn’t matter if it’s outside the gas station, Sunday morning brunch, a barn dance or semiformal, you both catch each other’s eyes for a second and then turn away refusing to acknowledge a whole ruthless semester of academic misery. I just don’t get it. I always get up to go say hello or at least some sort of wave. There’s always that one person that will determinedly go out of their way to avoid that moment, as if you didn’t see them twice a week recently for the past 3 months.
Look, as a guy, we would like nothing more than to use this common time spent together as an excuse to come talk to you. We’ve definitely already thought about having sex with you at least two times every class period (Don’t act like you don’t get to class the first day and immediately rank every guy’s cuteness. No one likes a liar.) Why don’t you just entertain us for a couple minutes? We could be a completely different and intriguing person outside of class. We could also be a huge waste of space. Either way you know if you got a winner or a catch and can move on with your life.
Pinterest
OK I’m not confused on this one. I know what Pinterest is. It’s a collective movement of woman discussing fantasy weddings, overpriced clothing, incredibly intense arts and crafts, and countless calorie laden food recipes. It’s like a combination of Reddit and StumbleUpon with a Cosmopolitan theme. Even down to the snobby exclusive facet of the site that requires a special invitation to fully enjoy all of the feminine digital phenomenon it has to offer. I don’t care if the creators say it’s for everyone – and maybe I’m embracing a whole new level of male egotism – but if any one of my guy friends ever posted a link to their favorite recipe of chocolate éclairs, I’d hit them in the fleshy patch where there manhood used to be. I understand, I do. Betches love this. Just next time he tells you he spent the past 12 hours watching porn and reading ESPN don’t be slightly freaked out because it’s the equivalent of you telling him you just spent half the day planning the interior decorations of your future dream home.
Pinterest has many real world benefits and an interactive organizational infrastructure that allows, and requires, a very enthusiastic and active community. It’s like Facebook, connecting you to different ideas and people, just more flamboyantly tailored so. As a guy, we’re jealous. We wish there was a place with all the best sports highlights, instructions on how to brew your own beer, the freshest gear, and funny pictures and YouTube videos of people hurting themselves or blowing stuff up. It will never happen though. Why would we spend our time collecting all this digital significance when we could just go to the bar and tell all our friends? We’re not that organized. So I say, good for you ladies. Good for you.
Coats
Tonight’s Forecast: High 24°/ Low 3° and 70% chance of snow, mild winds
It’s almost 2012. A black man is president. My iPhone can talk back to me. This dog can fetch me a beer. If you can’t figure out that as it gets colder out you’re going to need to wear a winter jacket, then you are officially single handedly letting down each one of your ancestors.
“But I don’t want to have my jacket at the bar!”
I don’t want to wear pants 7 days out of the week, but I do it because it’ll stop me from obtaining a comfortable spot on the repeat sex offenders’ list. If you don’t wear a coat downtown in the winter, after he constantly advises you to before walking out the door, and then proceed to complain to him about how cold you are and that you think you are sick the next day, don’t be surprised at his complete lack of sympathy.
I’m a stark believer in 21st century chivalry, I am. I’ll give my coat to a girl freezing her tits off on the sidewalk because I feel morally obligated to. However, that doesn’t mean you have to wear the least amount of clothing possible, even if you do look incredibly sexy in that dress. Ask the bartender if you can put your coat somewhere. Con an innocent guy into holding your jacket. Make your boyfriend buy you all the hand warmers at the gas station. Just keep the layers. You’ll probably be taking them off soon enough as it is.
Texting Your Friends in the Same Room
You’re right. He won’t notice your fleeting ear-to-ear grin and pass of a cell phone. The coinciding laughter that follows from your friend across the room isn’t noticeable either. I don’t care if it’s not about me, but nothing is more annoying to guys than this type of primitive and adolescent act. It doesn’t matter if it’s some stupid inside joke, we’re insecure and somewhere innately a little narcissistic so we’ll automatically think it has something to do with us. I mean, it has to, right?
If you really need to text your friend to remind of her that one time you were walking through Dominicks late at night to get cupcake mix and you fell and knocked down the whole shelf of plastic cups, just get up and go tell her. If he’s being such a prick that you can’t take it, tell him to go find the bottom of the nearest cliff and start hitting on his best friend. Either way, the texting is just driving us farther into this millennial realm of dating driven by technological and digital emotional manifestation. Besides, don’t you want to just see how mad he gets when you hit on his best friend?
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