Can we count people we've made eye babies with?
Ogged, this is haram. Shouldn't you be fasting instead of playing decadent Western game?
In college, the accepted definition of Hell was having to spend eternity in a room with everybody you'd slept with, and everybody they had slept with. This seems close enough.
I've met Megan. She would think that's a game.
One of her commenter suggests the great name "Find Patient Zero".
So I don't get it -- at the end of the evening does everybody have sex together? Or what is the point?
Ooh, and to make it more fun, bring along their current wives or girlfriends, who will then be jealous and rude, and then it will be just like going to a wedding!
I object to your gender stereotyping, cala.
I think this game is called "The Ricki Lake Show"
Spontaneous Ricki Lake Show sans moderator. Also, baa watches The Ricki Lake Show.
I find the word "lover" to be comical.
10 -- me too. But everybody else seems to be pretty comfortable with it so I try not to make a scene.
Is there a better unisex term? ('Partner', maybe?) It sounds silly to me too, but I use it occasionally because 'girlfriend or boyfriend' seems equally awkward.
I prefer the honesty of lover, comical be damned. I think our culture's way with language would make any term comical out of shear embarassment; it seems any native speaker of English, from whatever continent, has to battle an inner Beavis.
shear embarassment
IDP has to battle an inner Sausagely.
Is there a better unisex term?
Victim.
The word "lover" is stupid. What if love isn't involved?
7: None of my guy friends turned out to be gay, and their brides have always had a jealous phase where I was anathema for having boobs or something.
Did they have brides when they were your "guy friends"? Because that might explain the jealousy and anathema-vibes.
12: I like G. Farber's use of "sweetie."
17
as I understand it, it's not the having of boobs.
It's the having of boobs *and* being a blogger.
Now you're fair game.
(just ask Jessica).
18: No need for scare quotes. Typical case: friend in college, didn't date him, get invited to his wedding, find out bride pestered him wanting to know what really happened or why we never dated and admits to being jealous of me and I'm thinking, dude, DIDN'T SLEEP WITH HIM, M'KAY?
21: you really do have a perfect ass, don't you?
Confidential to baa:
Ohio State 190
Princeton 0
Wasn't sure how you were using "guy friends," I wasn't scare- but rather actual-quoting.
Ah, okay. They're not boyfriends, is the point. And I'm not hott. I just don't get it, and have concluded that the women my friends are marrying are weird due to bridal stress because pretty much the day you get engaged everyone starts doing their best to drive you crazy.
"Lover" always reads to me as if it should be pronounced "LOV-AH," and that's intolerable. Partner is gay. GF/BF work okay, but then there's not a ton of nuance there. I like S.O. ("second officer").
16: I think "lover" can break either way, so's you don't have to be talking about emotional love per se. For example.
I think girlfriend & boyfriend feel like they don't age well. Can you have a girlfriend if you're both 35?
28: You're drawing the line between 'too old' and 'too young' in the wrong place! On a related note, you kids get offa my lawn.
Someone suggested to me "person", as in, "my person", which is a little bit precious but also a little bit appealing.
I liked Sarah B's thread on the different ways that other languages figure "honey" or "sweetheart".
A friend was approached by a co-worker wanting to set her up, who asked, "So, do you have a steady?"
I don't know. "Lover" is pretty boombastic.
It was only fun because all the hurt feelings were 15 years ago, and now we just remember that we had a lot in common. I was really happy to see Chris' girlfriend-after-me, 'cause she's a super neat person and she's doing neato stuff and I wouldn't have run into her otherwise. Believe me, I would rather eat my heart than see the other lovers of some of my more recent hook-ups. I would hope that people have the consideration to not force that confrontation on anyone who would be hurt by it.
How many in a room at once? Two isn't rare, 'cause I still hang out with my boyfriend from '92 all the time. I think I've been one of three or four people he's slept with in the same room. I think I could get up to three or four at the same time, but it would make me very nervous. And there are combinations I would NEVER impose on people.
I've switched to "lover" because I like that it is casual and accurate and affectionate. There aren't a lot of good alternatives, although I had a roommate who referred to her "gentleman callers".
I wasn't trying to find out how many former lovers I could see in one day. It just happened, and then I went with it.
21: i find that making a point of meeting the gf/bride properly, and having a conversation just with her, showing that you're interested in her too, and then if you normally send your guy friend letters in the mail or postcards (as i do) then occasionally including her name in the greeting, can work wonders. you make really really clear that your attitude is: "anyone that my guy friend likes that much, i ALSO want to get to know well."
not only does it work pretty well, but it can be interesting, and i'm pretty sure the guy friend appreciates it too.
but yeah, it's crappy when brides/gfs react that way. especially if the guy IS your ex, and your current attitude to the him is "what the fuck was i thinking?".
which of course can be offensive to the bride in a whole other way.
woo.
Such a thing would be my worst nightmare. Not least because some of them have a certain lack of clarity about who else is in the club, and it seems better for it to remain unclear. (For instance, there was a woman I made out with a few times during one of the "off-again" periods with my ex. It wasn't a big deal, so I thought it was just better not to bring it up when we got back together. Now it's especially important for this information not to come out, since the woman in question is now my ex's supervisor at work. Not really a "lover," but still.)
"my beau" is sort of okay. affectionate. i've heard it. have also heard "my fella."
besides sounding young and dopey, i don't like "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" because it seems so possessive. bah.
39 - Yeah, that would be horrible. But I assume that not ALL of the combinations would be painful drama. I wasn't proposing that people include everyone they've slept with. Each person only needs one other former lover on pleasant, above-board terms to get a chain started.
My wife was recently pointedly not invited to the wedding of an ex, presumably (goes the theory) at the insistence of his now-wife. Silly, really, since they dated for less than a year in ninth grade and she's now attached. They've had a running joke about their undying love which, I suppose, the now-wife didn't find all that funny.
Cala's remark about a wedding as the paradigmatic awkward situation really rang true for me, btw.
39: What sly game is Adam playing with this especially-sensitive information?
I'm too smart to fall for your subtle trick, Adam.
There's gotta be a way to turn this into a scavenger hunt. Or you could put your names in a hat like Secret Santa, and then find each other's ex's.
then find each other's ex's
Would they have to find all of the parts, or just enough for identification purposes?
I was at a party a while back where both of my ex's exes were present (he married way young). It was his wife who pointed this out, which was weird and also kind of awesome.
I met my ex-wife's ex-husband (before me) once on an elevator. I recognized him but he didn't recognize me. I asked, "Didn't you use to be married to C__ E__?" He said "Yes" just as we reached my floor. "So did I", I said.
50: And he didn't want to talk to you, at all? That seems weird to me; I'd expect at least some exchange beyond that, and I think you did too.
I'd expect at least some exchange beyond that
Fluids, at a minimum.
I once had someone come up to me at a party and ask me: `so how many other people at this party have you slept with', and insisted we count them. I was happy to play along but we both became a little disconcerted to realize the total included everyone I actually knew at the party ...
... the great part was that we'd just been having a conversation about whether or not this town, that I hadn't lived in for long and she had grown up in, was socially inbred. She had offered that this party, which was mostly new people to me, was evidence it wasn't!
I ban myself for those horribly structured sentences.
You're not reading the scene correctly, IDP. Emerson says "So did I" just as he steps off the elevator, thereby perplexing the ex-before-JE. And really, what more is to be said?
51/52 -- I was envisioning that they would head to the bar for a night of drinking and grousing culminating in the first formal statement of the Emersonian celibacy + bestiality ethic.
Loosely related: This is not my child, but I love him as if he were.
This seems like an appropriate thread in which to mention that I'm going to go do some laundry now.
All of this leads me to the depressing thought of how many of my former lovers are dead.
I'm pretty sure I only killed one of them.
I don't think this laundry plan is going to go anywhere.
Drat! You're going to have to talk to people in other places as well. The Internets doesn't count.
You need some discipline, young man. You can wait for B to pop your cherry, or you can do like so. Don't read or post or comment at any blog for one entire week. Get out at least once each day during that week, and while you're out, no matter how horribly embarrassing it will be, chat (for at least 60 seconds) with at least one person, male or female, young or old. Make that your mission.
Some might call it a pwn, I call it aufhebung.
63: Um, what? What makes you think I haven't been going out and talking to people?
You're not going to accept your mission, are you?
No, I'm not. You're acting like I'm a shut-in or something.
I'm scared you're a shut-in, 'cause you're at Unfogged all the time. Then you say that you don't hang out in groups at school and I worry that you are letting a widely dispersed group of Internet smart-asses be your friends instead. They're all clever and funny and they like you, but they aren't real, you know. They're made of pixels, and you can't have sex with pixels.
It's hard to be a shut-in in college, so no, I don't think you're a shut in. But I thought young men liked missions. Jihad, motherfucker. But nevermind. Carry on.
teo's neglecting his studies to hang with us, not his social obligations. we're not leading the boy astray.
Sex with pixels is the wave of the futre.
They're made of pixels
But sometimes I show him my pixelnipple.
you make really really clear that your attitude is: "anyone that my guy friend likes that much, i ALSO want to get to know well."
Part of the problem is distance; I'm just the friend they hear about as part of the college crowd and meet at the wedding or shortly before. + I'm usually at these things solo. It usually defuses eventually once they're married and no longer insane about wedding planning, but for a while it's like, dude, I feel like I musta been the class slut and I didn't even get laid.
Ogged lies. It's easy to be a shut-in in college.
Obviously what we should do is take up a collection to send the English Courtesan to teo.
That's expensive, ben. Let's just send Tim with a Smiths CD.
That's a Talking Heads song, teo.
And, apparently, Hilary Duff, Xzibit, and Oasis, among others.
The deep wisdom of Teo's innermost self is leading him exorably toward the Relationship-Free Life (TM). Ya'll are bringing bad karma on yourselves. Besides, I happen to know that Teo is not a young guy, but a hot horny housewife looking for a threesome.
re: 85
What have you done with my son, you house-wife imposter?
You can wait for B to pop your cherry
Wait, what? Just because I'm offline for a few hours, you're annointing yourself my pimp?