"Yeah, cows are great."

Ally and I sip iced lattes in the grass under a tree in the quad at Arizona State University for two hours and we see nary a good looking fella. “I’m thinking about lowering my standards,” I say casually from my position in the grass. I pluck a few blades out and twist them around my fingers. We look super cute today in our spring sundresses and we’ve both kicked off our shoes and were resisting the urge to spin around like Maria in the beginning of The Sound of Music. It was proving difficult.

Ally looks appalled at my comment and sits up a little, leaning on her elbow to face me. “You’re kidding, right?”

No, not really. It’d been a while since I’d had a date since I kept ignoring the calls from the smokers, coke heads, and guy with the lazy eye and the spoon fetish. “Maybe my standards are just too high?” I question, “I mean, it seems that all the guys I like are either gay or in love with either some blonde skinny thing or some Asian skinny thing or themselves.”
“Fuck them,” Ally replies instinctively, “Who needs them?”
“Well,” I say, “I kind of do. I’m thinking about letting Daniel take me out.”
Ally’s face doesn’t change, but she simply notes, “Ew.” She doesn’t need to say anything else. A million concerns are voiced in the single reply.
“I know,” I say, “But he called me cute once.”
“He was drunk, wasn’t he?” she asks.
I pretend to think, “Maybe, probably, definitely, yes.”
“He’s also not great looking,” she counters.
“If you squint,” I say, “He sort of looks like Jason Schwartzman.”
“If you squint and you’re drunk and high and a little retarded.”
“He asked me out!”
“He’ll rape you.”
“It’s not rape if you’re willing,” I joke.
Ally flicks a fallen tree leaf at me, “Way to steal my line.”

When Robyn and I go to Target to do a little unnecessary spring-time shopping, she seems enchanted by the idea of me lowering my standards to date our friend Daniel. “I think that’s kind of a good idea!” she says as we peruse plaid shorts.
I shoot her a look, “Wait, really?”
“Yeah! Why not!” Robyn hops along from t-shirt rack to t-shirt rack like the Energizer bunny. “You should just, like, fuck all! You know?” Robyn yells over the heads of little pre-teens shopping in the same section, “Like, whatever. Just have fun! Oh my gawd Stefi! Just. Have. Fun.”
In her perky mood, Robyn is slightly louder than usual, the side effects of having a new boyfriend. Lucky for me, Robyn, unaware of her Wily Robyn Charm, believes I had a hand in setting her up with our mutual friend Brian. Basically, all I did was a little persuading, but this leads Robyn into insisting she owes me a boyfriend now, too.
“In fact,” she says, “Brian and I were totally discussing it last night. We are going to find you a boyfriend!”
“Oh God…” I lag behind her down a shoe isle, slightly embarrassed.
“No, oh man, Stefi!” Robyn shakes her head sending a mass of brown curls in every direction, “Its totally cool! Like, I just said, he’d have to be totally smart, because you’re totally smart-”
I interrupt Robyn, “I’m not that smart,” I say. “I’m like, the worst at math.”
“Stefi, you’re like, brilliant!” Robyn pipes up and everyone in Target stares, but I am OK with that because she’s calling me brilliant.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Yeah, totally, and he’d have to act like Ira Glass but look like Jason Schwartzman and basically, he’d just have to have a good sense of humor and enjoy pop culture!”
“Also,” I add, “He’d have to have good teeth.”
“That’s a given,” Robyn waves me off, “But you’re so freakin’ rad that we have to find you someone awesome!” ‘Freakin’ rad’ is new to Robyn’s vocabulary. This is actually a phrase Brian uses frequently. It’s been three days of New Boyfriend Bliss and she’s kind of already become his proxy, which I think is adorable. “However, like, if you want to date Daniel then I mean, well, its not my first choice, but, you know.” Robyn and Daniel aren't exactly BFFs, so I knew she’d react this way.
“You mean you’ll sign my permission slip?” I joke.
“Stefi, oh my God!” Robyn puts down an espadrille and turns to me, “How funny would it be if I actually did make you a permission slip? And then you could give it to him?”
“Hilarious,” I say.
“Oh man,” Robyn puts her hand to her face and adjusts her glasses, “It’d be freakin’ rad!”

Hearing Robyn say “freakin’ rad” again in her state of glee makes me laugh and almost makes me take back saying I’d lower my standards since Robyn is so happy and she didn’t have to lower hers. ...But then I think about how many free coffees I’m missing out on and all the bad, awkward, pre-make out conversation I could be having and I decide against a retraction. Something had to give. I'm in college, its Spring, and since about the first of March I've been living with The Pussycat Doll's "Buttons" perpetually playing in my head like its my theme song.

"Sometimes, I don't even think you're human," my friend Sam tells me over coffee, except actually I'm the only one drinking coffee, he's just drinking cranberry juice. "Did you order that for your vagina?" I ask him when I see the juice bottle.
"Fuck. You," he answers.

"I am human!" I defend myself.
"You never make out with any of your girlfriends though," he questions.
"Because I'm not a pseudo lesbian," I explain to him.
"And you never like, go out and just make out with guys," he finishes off his juice container.
"I just haven't really been attracted to anyone enough to do that," I shrug.
Sam pretends to be hurt and I scrunch up my face in mock embarrassment, "Oh whatever," I say, "You're just a horny bastard who didn't pay for my latte this morning."
"I'm broke!" he defends himself, then adds, "Maybe just have fun. Maybe just date anyone."


Sam is probably right. So, here's the deal, for a limited time only I will reduce the amount of necessary attributes required to get me on a date. Stalker? Sure! Blonde? Sounds good! Haven’t showered in three days? That’s OK with me! Midget? Whatever. No clean shirts? No shoes other than Crocs? No problem! Are you my professor? Then we shook hook up. We’re pulling out all the stops here. W seeking M. Fatties can even apply today. I mean, what have I got to lose? I lost all of my dignity in high school anyway.

"That's one stupid hat."

When I tell the cute Mormon kid that the reason I didn’t usually see him when he was working late at Starbucks on Thursday nights was because usually, when its not Spring Break(kkk), I am half asleep on my couch at nine in the evening watching a TiVoed anything, I am not lying. I’m being brutally honest, and he laughs. “I wish,” he says, “I wish I could do that.” For this I give him my number.

He won’t call. They never do, unless they’re drunk or coke heads. I’ve learned my lesson.

“Can I call you sometime?” This Coke Head asks me in front of about seven other people I am talking with at a super hero themed party. I keep calling him Mark when I know his name is actually Bryce, but whatever. I feel bad, he took such a risk and he’s standing there with his eyes big, round, and tinted red from the weed he’s been alternating with booze.
“Uh,” I glance over to Ally who shakes her head slightly, no, but everyone else is staring at me like I’m the chick on the big screen being proposed to at a baseball game. “Sure?” I up-talk. It is more of a question.
His shaky hand offers me a business card, “Um, this isn’t my business card, and uh, I need it back, but can you just put your number on it for me?”
Brian is drunk and laughing in a corner. As I reach into my bag for a pen, I knock over a child’s Batman backpack filled with Miller Light cans. “Sorry,” Bryce picks up the empty cans and throws them back into the backpack, “That’s mine.” Then he remembers his manners, “Oh, do you want one?” He begins to rummage for an unopened can, but I answer, no, thank you. “I might actually call you,” he notes as he tucks the business card with my number on it in his pocket.
“Really?” I say, “Fantastic.”

I don’t understand why he asked me, except for that whole being intoxicated and thus believing I look like a pre-pregnant Jessica Alba thing. Girls are walking around me in gold lamae hot pants, cut off shirts, and legs for days. Is this a super hero party or a super model party? I turn and look helplessly to Ally, the Goose to my Maverick, as we do a quick evaluation of the fete to see what we’re working with here. In her fedora and garters, Ally looks, for lack of a better word, fierce. She went as Super Liza Minelli from Cabaret. I went as Super Sweet Sixteen, a costume, consisting of Tiffany jewelry, good hair, and boots, which seemed like a good idea until this very moment.
“I’m wearing far too many clothes,” I panic. “Too many clothes! Everyone is staring at me!”
“That’s because your cape is pink,” Ally assures me, “and beautiful.” Also, it was hemmed, lined, and fabulous. But, I’m not one to brag.

“You should give Bryce-"
"Mark," I interrupt Brian.
"Mark? I thought he said? Whatever, give the dude a chance!” Brian encourages me later at a diner, and Ally and I exchange looks of utter dismay. She knows I am more into guys who are in school and not addicted to anything stronger than bubble gum. Brian is drunk, so I humor him.
“Yeah, possibly!” I say encouragingly.
“Awesome, man!” he pats me on the shoulder, “Very cool!”

Later, when I go home to watch Make Me a Supermodel and check my Facebook, I wonder if I should be with the half of Arizona State University in Mexico, letting some wasted frat boy simulate anal sex with me on the d.a.n.c.e floor. The more I think about it though, the more I should be out drinking with my top off. I’m twenty-years-old for Colbert’s sake and my favorite thing to do on any given night is sit around discussing that night’s rerun of Project Runway while at Barnes and Noble picking up sixty year old men who think they’re thirty year old men. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it just doesn’t make for the best writing. Turns out, sixty year old men are boring and the only thing I have in common with them is that we both like prunes, but for entirely different reasons.

“Should we be doing something else?” I ask Ally as we sip our coffee later, the night I met the Mormon kid, at Barnes and Noble and stare at the Stalin biography cover for the millionth time, neither of us being able to get over how gosh darn handsome he was.
“Probably,” she shrugs. “What should we do?”
I think for a moment about how downright dull Phoenix is when you’re twenty and don’t do drugs. “Well,” I say, “You’re twenty-one so I could drop you off at a bar, you could meet people, have sex with them, and then I could pick you up and drop you back at your house. Also,” I point to the cover of Obama’s book next to Stalin’s on the shelf, “If Stalin and Obama were both running for president and I was voting based on looks alone, I’d totally vote for Stalin.”
“That’d be a grave mistake,” Ally notes and I nod.
“Just fact,” I answer.
“Thanks all the same, though,” Ally gets back to the subject at hand while leafing through an Audrey Hepburn biography to see if Warren Beatty is mentioned anywhere in the index, “but I hate everybody, anyway.”
I stare at her, hard for an instant and give her my best stink eye. She doesn’t even look up, “Except for you,” she annuls. “Except for you.”
“Ok this,” I point to her and then to myself, “is why we can’t get dates. We’re platonically dating each other.”
Ally nods and says nonchalantly, “Stop being so cool. Make your hair less awesome. Stop buying me things.”
“Can’t. Won’t.” I say.
“Fine,” she shrugs.
“Whatever,” I say, “Who needs men?” as a tall, handsome, man walks by gripping a Time Magazine. Ally and I both stare unapologetically while he passes. “Just kidding.” I whisper.
“That’s what I thought,” Ally concedes. “That’s what I thought.”