Paint me Like One of Your Русские девушки.

Now that you all know how much a very single, very undateable heartbreaker I am, I’d love to tell you how I came to star in a blog. The year was 2014. I had just made the poor life decision of moving to Moscow, Russia in the same month that the Russians stole Crimea from The Ukraine. The exchange rate was 35 rubles to the dollar and I was about to be Scrooge McDucking it into bed, because that’s where I would discretely hide all of my money, of course. I stayed in Russia through an onslaught of sanctions that kept grocery store shelves void of any real semblance of cheese, and watched as the exchange rate crushed all of our hopes and dreams; 90 rubles to the dollar. My money was basically only good for buying up railroads and paying off jailers who wear top hats and monocles all before screaming fuck this game and flipping a table.

I decided fairly early on that I would fight the dairy withdrawals to avoid eating cheese made mostly of paper and soap, save up my rubles and live in an odd sense of comfortable discomfort. I was strangely content with staying in Russia, possibly because it didn’t involve living in the walk-in closet of my mom’s one-bedroom condo anymore. The problem that I then had to face was how I was to make friends, date, and get out of the suburban hell in which I had been placed. The usual, really.

When I accepted the job, they offered to set me up with an apartment shared by the current French teacher, not very far from the city center. Sweet. When I arrived, I was escorted to that not very far away apartment by a driver named Andrey in a large black SUV, missing some amount of his fingers. Okay. As we wound our way through identical apartment blocks and packs of wild dogs, I wondered where the city actually was? We finally arrived at a tall, nondescript apartment building and packed ourselves into the scariest elevator car I’ve ever been in. The overhead lights flickered on and off, each wall was covered in grimy graffiti and the doors rattled as we made our way up to the 20th floor. This is how I die, surely. I think that way too often.

I very quickly came to realize that I was at the tippity-top of one of the subway lines, meaning that I was tippity-fucking-far from the actual center of Moscow. My new roommate assured me that we would be moving in two days, and told me not to unpack. I was excited for the 5 seconds that I took me to realize we were moving two stops closer to the city center, and would still be a whopping one hour ride from Red Square (hence the impromptu sleepover with an old British man per a previous post).

Not long after getting settled into that ‘burb life, my BFF talked me into reviving the OkCupid profile that she had written for me when we lived in Korea. She wanted to meet someone back in the states, so I can only assume the dramedy that would ensue from me having an online dating profile comforted her through the process. That lucky bish went on a date with the first person she matched with, and the rest is history. Get it, girl.

The experience that I got out of the deal was far different. I matched with a Canadian expat whose decent banter talked me into a date. Lucky for you all, I’ve retrieved another Note from my phone that breaks down what happened next:

Preface: this was written while getting drunk an exile at the “bar” of a Mexican restaurant in Gdansk. They refused to seat me at a table and ignored me at the bar because I was eating alone. Don’t eat at Pueblo in Gdansk.

[Alright, it gets good reviews so maybe try it if you’re ever in Gdansk and dare get sick of being in pierogi heaven.]

Get talked into online dating again by the devil AKA my BFF.

Talk to the first seemingly attractive non-creeper.

Meet at cupcakerie, eat cupcakes.

Proceed to eat bottomless tacos at a bar — HARD SHELL. HARD TO DO.

Drink some beers.

Trust him probz too much.

Go on a walk along the river in the snow.

He is cheesy and asks: if you could do anything right now what would it be? Or something like that. I have horrible short term memory. So I just kissed him like I’m living in some damn romcom. If I had T Swift skills I would sing about it.

I have to pee so we burst onto a barge bar.

It’s fucking cold.

He thinks it’s funny to start a snowball fight and my engraved ring flies off of my finger.

He is chivalrous and searches for it, but it’s probably in the river.

Am I secretly the old lady from the end of Titanic?

I play it off like I don’t care, but I CARE.

He wrote a blog about me that I pretend I haven’t read that says he’ll never see me again yet he still texts me everyday and I love it.

Date 2: his friend’s acoustic set. Actually pretty cool but awkward to meet friends on the 2nd date. Find out my friend slept with his friend once and couldn’t figure out how to get out of his apartment.

Date 3: his place on a Monday night. Making out on a Victorian sofa (paint me like one of your French girls blah blah blah). He cock blocked himself. Ouch.

Date 4: I didn’t even ask where we were going. Met he and three guys at a Metro stop, took a little van-bus to the middle of nowhere and ate the most amazing Vietnamese food ever. Took too many shots of Beluga vodka and got nostalgic peeing in an authentic squat toilet with a stranger. Went to the mystery bar Holly and I went to on accident with funny middle aged Irish men and got face controlled* for being too loud in line. Went to a lumberjack bar instead! Rapped in the taxi. Learned he was an Avril Lavigne fan and screamed lyrics to Sk8r Boi at him while dancing down the street. Drank more.

Am I still alive?

*Face Control: when a Russian bouncer deems you too drunk and/or too ugly and refuses you entrance to da club.

That worked out so well for me. It’s possible that I continued to date him because he was still interested after watching me wash 5+ hard shell tacos down with Baltika on our first date, or because I literally just had nothing better to do and winter in Russia is so long. Either way, good times were had until really dramatic things like a late night meeting on a bridge and him inviting me out and then showing up with another girl and me sleeping with his friend after his friend had slept with my friend happened. But that’s neither here nor there.

Despite him waiting 10 dates to try to make any semblance of a real move on me and then pulling that douchebagerie in a bar full of people, we stayed pretty good friends. He was the platonic BF I never knew I needed; we went on friend dates to Curry Club, AKA all-you-can-eat-Indian-food and baked giant birthday cakes from Buzzfeed Tasty videos. One time his new girlfriend came home to us deep frying in a giant vat of oil, drunk. He even did me the solid of awkwardly trying to hook me up with his roommate from Oregon, and I forever gained a friend to chain smoke on a-definitely-not-up-to-code balcony and pretend we both had short term memory loss with. He also did me the not so solid of trying to hook me up with his best friend, which led me to walk-of-shame into parent teacher conferences wearing very short shorts.

While spending 5 hours trying to make a gigantic chocolate cake for no reason is up there on my list of fond Russia memories, our trip to the medieval village and home of Медовуха or mead, is the real winner. Even though getting there required five hours in the car with a Ukrainian who had no basic concept of traffic laws or speed limits, and breathing in the toxic smell of old whiskey oozing from my friend’s pores, we made it to Suzdal unscathed.

My life is a movie
Bull ridin’ and boobies
Cowboy hat from Gucci

As the mead floweth, we took advantage of the private sauna behind our дача. It seemed more of less like any old sauna you would find in the states, with a couple of differences. First, when you exit the sauna to cool off, you tug on a cord to overturn a bucket full of freezing cold water onto yourself. From there, you go outside until your skin stops steaming, or you die of hypothermia, whichever comes first. This would be the point where men drink and chain smoke, and women eat snacks. Since that’s pretty sexist, I hid a bottle of mead behind the curtains to fight the patriarchy. Secondly, you keep a cold bucket of water inside of the sauna itself. This is where the birch branch soaks, waiting. The Ukrainian, clad in only a sweaty pair of tighty whities, volunteered to preform the age old ritual of beating me with said branch, and there in the heat of the sauna in medieval Suzdal, a hot (literally) Ukrainian smacked me very thoroughly from head to toe with a cold, wet birch branch. For my health. I probably owe him my life – after all, the sheer amount of mead that I drank that weekend should have sent me spiraling into a diabetic coma Wilford Brimley style. спасибо большое, мой друг.

A few days later, with a few bottles of mead in my checked luggage for good measure, I peaced the fuck out of Russia and like all good fictional love stories handwritten in German, another quality adventure had to come to an end.

Hosen Tauschen, Bitte.

While we’re on the subject of being undateable and welcoming unwelcome suitors, boy do I have a story for you! We’re going to take the tone of this blog from somewhere around my life is a mess but it’s funny and IDGAF if you laugh at me to #missedopportunity #imnotaniceperson #actuallysorrythistime. I hope to someday include the following in a memoir of my escapades entitled I Like Soup: And Other Pickup Lines. I might have to rework the title a little.

It all started at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany circa 2006. A few short months earlier I had moved to Lyon, France to “study” abroad – AKA binge drink with Americans, throw up Beaujolais Nouveau in my shower and recite my kebab order in French. Needing to take a break from the acidity of bottom shelf red wine, I jetsetted my way to Munchen to fulfill a lifelong dream of drinking steins of beer bigger than my head. A couple of my friends happened to be studying in Germany at the time, and one of their German cousins offered to tour-guide our way through the debaucherous Bavarian celebration.

I had you at German cousin, didn’t I? It’s like they can sense the medieval currywurst of my ancestors coursing through my veins and are magnetically drawn to the delicious, delicious smell. I had never met this cousin prior to our trip, but was under strict orders to stay the fuck away from him like I was some sort of 19 year old black widow. I never have much liked following orders. As I walked through the gates of the Frankfurt International Airport, I saw the familiar faces of my friends, two liters of what I knew to be rum and Coke in either of their hands. Next to them was a very tall, slim German with funny little glasses and blonde hair buzzed short against his pink scalp. While not conventionally handsome, my heart skipped a beat and within 15 minutes I was licking melted Toblerone off of his fingers in the S-Bahn. We were all fucked.

Our first night of singing Sweet Caroline at the tops of our lungs on repeat and making dick jokes anytime someone ate a wurst, we all share the vivid memory of kissing the same guy, though our descriptions all vary slightly. In the days before smartphones, you only had your God given, substance abused brain to count on. One of us remembers this man having lost part of one of his arms, cut off at the elbow. Another remembers that he had just one full arm; the other cut off at the shoulder. In my memory, this man had neither his left nor right arm, and a kind friend held up the heavy steins of beer so that he could drink. What happened to his arms?! Everything was a blur, but nobody cared.

So, in the dank heat of the beer tent, I kissed the German, too. This is around the time that I should have realized that looks aren’t everything, because I forgot to pack shampoo and couldn’t wash my bangs for a total of four days and thought that wearing a headband would make it better? Unrelated; German toilets are equipped with what I understand to be a poop shelf, or a platform for your poop to land on inside of the bowl so that you can get a good look before praying to any number of Gods that the low flow will completely flush it.

#neverforget that you can wash your bangs in the sink with hand soap in a pinch.

On our last night in Munich, away from the hustle and bustle of the big tops in a cozy countryside B&B, my friend became drunkenly aware of the not-so-secret love affair with her cousin and trudged onto the hotel balcony, scratchy blanketing in tow, refusing to come inside until morning. I tried going after her but subsequently tripped and sliced my arm open on the door slide. Unaware that I was bleeding, the German took my arm tenderly, and slowly licked the bright red blood from the length of my forearm. So, that was weird.

Despite the vampire warning signs, the German and I kept in touch after I got back to France. I was on the outs with my shitbag American boyfriend, so I was really appreciative of any genuine attention. I gladly accepted international packages full of chocolates, tiny champagnes, knockoff handbags from Milan and handwritten notes on what can only be described as high quality parchment. They were always beautiful written words in large, flowing cursive about how he hopes I’m happy and living my life to the fullest. That whole YOLO thing is not just an obnoxious millennial trend that I adopted 10 years too late. It’s real!

I had constant invitations to visit him in Berlin, a city that I wouldn’t make it to for another 10 years. Trying my hand at being polite, I extended an open invitation for him to visit me in Lyon instead, which he immediately accepted. The weekend of Mardi Gras, that German boy sat on a 16 hour bus one way to spend approximately 48 hours with me. Contrary to the advice my best bro was giving me of well you have to sleep with him now, I treated him like trash the entire weekend. All I wanted to do was drink imported Corona with my friends at a club in Vieux Lyon, eat my kebab harissa que des oignons and pass out like every other weekend. I’m a creature of habit, what can I say?

After I made a point to sleep on the couch the entire weekend, I doubted that I’d ever see the German again, but a music festival took me back to Germany a month later where I was to spend a damp weekend camped outside of the Nurburgring drinking vodka Cokes for breakfast, and snacking on tinned bratwurst and curry ketchup on white bread.

It was great that the German was pleased with my being there, but was painfully obvious that he was trying way too hard. So my friend and I, with dirty bangs and nothing but vodka in our tums, basically tried to ice him out. This backfired when we were waiting for Papa Roach to come on stage, and my friend began hyperventilating under her plastic poncho. I tugged on his sleeve to ask for help, and was met with the same cold shoulder that we’d been giving him all weekend. My friend’s breathing became more and more erratic and she had no choice but to bolt through the crowd in search of a toilet. Naively thinking that we had just averted a crisis, we made our way back to the campsite to detox for a minute.

“I need the bathroom again,” I could hear the urgency in her voice.

“What? Now? We’re almost back to the campsite, can you hold it?” I asked, looking down the winding road ahead of us that led to the field of tents.

“I CAN’T HOLD IT. MAKE SURE NOBODY IS COMING.”

I looked around, and gave the all clear, only to turn back just in time to see her shitting up against a chain link fence on the side of the road. We were close, but is anyone really that close? I quickly looked away, only to notice a group of festival goers coming around the bend. Well shit.

The time finally came to go back to France. I thought that these were the last moments I’d spend in Bavaria, and as we drove through the winding countryside to avoid traffic, I stared out the window in complete awe of how I got to this place, with these people, and how I hadn’t yet died of alcohol poisoning.

We made it to the Frankfurt airport with time to spare and we all said our awkward goodbyes. I thanked the German for the festival making a conscious effort to avoid eye contact. This is the moment that he chose, lanky arm outstretched, to present me with an ornately leather-bound book.

“This is for you,” he said before walking away, not looking back. He definitely stole my dramatic thunder, I’ll give him that.

“Oh my God, this better not be his diary,” I laughed as we walked to our terminal, turning the book over in my hands. As you do when you arrive at the airport far too early, we headed to the nearest Irish Pub, ordered a couple of pints, and stared at the book in the middle of the round table. “I can’t open it. You do it.”

My friend snatched it greedily up from the table, “I hope it’s his diary,” she said, before quickly lifting the book’s flap. The first page read, Als der Wind die Sonne davontrug. 2006/2007. When the Wind Blew Away the Sun. YOU GUYS.

The next page was a dedication, entirely in German. As we thumbed through the pages, we could see that this wasn’t a diary at all. Instead, it appeared to be sixty-seven painstakingly beautiful handwritten story pages. As a French speaker, I never had high hopes for understanding German in its entirety. That day in the Irish Pub, over pre-flight beers, my friend clumsily poured over the words, trying to translate chunks of text into English. From what we gathered, this was the fictional story of my future with the German. I can neither confirm nor deny that it ends with us looking down at Earth from our moon house, grateful that we found happiness in each other.

I was appalled to the point of embarrassment. I didn’t want to have a book written about my life with someone I had only ever met three times. Thinking back on it now, that’s the fucking dream. I can’t even get a guy to respond to a text in emojis let alone dedicate an entire book to me. The sadness of letting that European citizenship slip through my fingers is unfounded.

Over the years, it somehow never occurred to me to make use of Google Translate, so here’s what you’ve all been waiting for:

This story comes from pure fiction, and is dedicated to one person only. Fanning thoughts of this wistful young lady and my love for her have inspired me to write my pen swiftly. Although she speaks only a few, few words of German, I deliberately wrote this story in German. I hope that she will read this book and understand it someday. In thanks and love to the person with whom every moment is precious – Magaly Lynn.

Did I ugly cry into my phone after fat fingering all of that German? None of your business. Wow. I almost regret telling him how weird it is to write a book for someone you barely know via MSN Messenger, or whatever antiquated chat system we had 15 years ago. Almost.

A couple of years ago, I found myself back in Germany on vacation. I can’t seem to stay away. The disapproving cousin had mentioned that the German was living in Munich for work, and that he was still pining for me after all of this time. I found that rather hard to believe, but was still tempted by the idea. When I arrived in Munich, I shot him a message to try my luck at finding plans for New Years Eve, and possibly securing another ride to the majestic countryside castle of Neuschwanstein. After a little back and forth, it was decided that we’d meet for Bavarian brunch under the gate at the head of Neuhauser Strasse. Such romance.

As I nervously climbed the escalators out of Karlsplatz, I searched the crowd for that puerile, lanky guy with glasses from a decade before. My eyes scanned left and right, and as I got closer to the gate, I spotted him. Damn, he had grownnnn. As I approached, I noticed that he wasn’t alone. I don’t know what I had expected really? Surely there was no world in which he loved me so much that he had spent the last eight years pining for me all the way from Germany. He had every right to move on from whatever the hell that was, but I was still a little bummed that my the fairytale I suddenly made up didn’t pan out. That EU passport is my white whale. Damnit.

After a Bavarian brunch of weisswurst and weissbier with the German and his now wife, we strolled the streets of Munchen together one last time. I was on my best behavior and didn’t even once ask his fiancée if she had received her own personal love book. See, I’m not all bad!

… bet she didn’t tho.

I’m Old Style, You’re Just Old.

My spidey senses tingled, telling me to cancel any chance to live off of pierogis for the rest of my life. Something about texting me nonstop for the two days leading up to our date romantic prose like, “A nice drinks and maybe some kissing would definitely be nice ;)” really gives me murder vibes, don’t ask me why. Back and forth banter about pagers, Ikea furniture and dive bars, on the other hand, is exactly what I’m looking for. So while Friday night was spent squished onto a slippery leather sofa binge watching Veep with my three male roommates under 25, Saturday night I almost made a fake beeper, realized it was too much work, and then walked the few blocks to meet a man for a can (or 3) of Strohs at my favorite neighborhood dive bar. He ordered PBR and the rest is history, really 😍

Betting is now open for how many dates I’ll get before he ghosts.

A friend once told me that I’m undateable; and then she told everyone else. She even went so far as to suggest that I meet with her other single female friend of a certain age so that we could discuss what exactly we’re doing wrong. What about all the old men that have tried to date me over the years? Hmm? If that was my thing, I’d be rolling in some kind of foreign currency drinking endless Magners’ while watching non-stop rugby so that I could shamelessly oggle some super fine ass while my better half took his afternoon nap by now.

Let’s take a look at one such missed opportunity via a Note I recently found in my phone.

May 5, 2014 2:31am

Kimchi Restaurant

Serpuhovskaya Metro or Oktobr

26 Stremyanny Pereulok

[RIP]

TO DO: WEAR CANADIAN TUXEDO* TO FIT IN

Lady in Canadian tuxedo on metro with animal carrier. Petting dog or cat and looked like it was the most happy moment of her life. Content, heartwarming, the little things in life.

Everlast and Johnny Cash Folsom Prison Blues mashup at Hard Rock. WTF? Worse than Nickelback and Robby Williams Millenium in a short sleeved turtleneck waving his arms in the air like it’s 1999… because it probably was. I hope.

I assume that the song sounded a little like this #sorrynotsorry

Old Italian lady wearing black sweatband on wrist dancing to It’s my Life by Bon Jovi [that’s my jam, girl!] as she eats her burger with a fork and knife.

British paratrooper diplomat

Ladyaalde hats rock

Welshe love only Scottish wiskey

Brought whiskey to secure land deals during some war in the 90s.

Harrodshore…

Been to Africa, will be stationed in Egypt and not afraid, Zimbabwe, went to falls and gave eq. One month salary to guide because u can

“I have to go to the loo then we can dance only if it’s foo fighteres or mochlrback…. [Scream – are we having fun yet, yeeeet, yeeeeet, yeeeeeet, no no]”

Nutty yank dancer with beautiful hair [it me!] – according to 45 year old British foreign affairs diplomat with the British Embassy. Small hands, worn out skin, odd body proportions, getting tattoo of military regiment insignia lasered off. Now it’s just a light teal blob on his forearm that looks like a hammer and sickle outline. Wears cargo pants and Keens [what it is, from the Pacific Northwest?]. Needing reading glasses to write down his name, number and email address for me. Walk of shame to metro with my grandfather felt unclean. He didn’t know who Hugh Jackman was. Clammy metro ride, cold sweats, no public restrooms in case of need to vomit like the day after St Paddy’s in Seoul, coming home walk of shame over an hour away. Had to exit subway to vomit in horrible public toilets [wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last].

*Canadian Tuxedo: wearing denim jeans with a denim shirt and/or denim jacket of the same wash. Outfit may also be comprised of a mini jean skirt or jorts. Bonus points for jean accessories such as cowboy hats or knee-high sandals.

When you look good, you feel good.
(Photo by Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)

Did you follow that? Good, because neither did I and I was allegedly present. The events leading up to that mess of a memory were as follows: I was craving a bowl of mandu-guk and Google searched for Korean restaurants around Moscow before I made the hour long trek into the city to play tourist. I jotted down the address and followed Google Maps to the location of said restaurant only to find a sad Kimchi sign hanging on the outside of a gutted brick building. There would be no soup for me, as the saying goes.

In a hangry panic, the only reliable restaurant I could think of was the Hard Rock Café at the end of the major tourist street of Arbatskaya. My sugar bloods had dropped too low to concentrate on a Cyrillic menu, so away I went to gorge myself on overpriced Long Island Iced Teas and a big ol’ cheeseburger. I was seated at a hightop in the bar in between two tables with other sad, solo foreigners; mirror images of myself. As I asked the waitress for another drink, she suggested that perhaps I mingle with an older man at the table next to mine, as he was also an English speaker. At this point, what did I really have to lose aside from a few useless organs and what little dignity I had left by age 27? I scootched on over and met my new friend the British paratrooper, aged 45 [or what a 45 year old might have looked like before turning into a mummy].

Since the above Notes do a piss poor job of painting a picture of the evening, my shoddy memory will have to do. We chatted about what we were doing in Moscow, and, learning that I was new in town, he offered to show me an Irish Pub around the corner. Even though it was getting later, I didn’t yet know my way home, and I learned all about stranger danger in elementary school, I obliged. The amateur that I was, I still had a fear of being murdered if I tried to take an unmarked taxi home; besides, I didn’t know my own address. I asked and asked and double asked how late the subway ran, and he assured me that I could get home at any hour. I was later assured by a waitress that I had missed the last train by hours. Not today, you James Bond wannabe.

Beer in my belly and Nickelback to dance to, there was little that I could do at that point other than try to make as much room for Jesus between 007 and myself as we boogied our way to 5am back at Hard Rock Café. I feel like it’s important for everyone to know that after hours it turns into one of the saddest excuses for a club that I’ve ever seen. At an hour when the sun should be rising but doesn’t because Russia, Closing Time played in my head as I begrudgingly followed my new friend home to British Embassy housing in an apartment block not far from da club. I slept fully clothed on top of the covers on the edgity-edge of the bed, and hopefully recited some protection spell I learned from The Craft when I was 12.

In the early afternoon hours, with a mouth tasting of what can only be described as spoiled milk, triple sec and hot garbage, we awoke from our slumber and my friend looked around for his reading glasses before writing his personal information down for me so that we could keep in touch. Aw, bless. He walked me to the nearest subway station and then at the very last minute tried to jump the friend zone fence by saying, “Give us a kiss,” and leaning right in. He is very lucky that I didn’t projectile vomit all over him, and I’m lucky that my reflexes worked well enough to dodge the smooch. I made it out alive! Aside from the whole, you know, loss of dignity thing that we talked about.

I used to be terrified of old people for no apparent reason, yet to this day I am far too trusting of older men. Whether I’m throwing back a few pints with them over a rugby match in Cyprus, accepting bowls of makgeolli from them at a back alley Korean BBQ joint, or taking them up on a free ticket to a Cubs game here in Chicago, I like to think that I make them feel young again, and that makes me feel young again. I almost forget about the midlife crisis I had at 25, and the fact that nobody under the age of 60 is willing to take me on a proper date.

I do, however, know that unless you’re the mummy, or rich enough to cryogenically freeze yourself and wake up in a future where all restaurants are Taco Bell, we only have one life to live so we damn well better Live Más.

American Horror Story But Real

For all you Americans out there, I hope that you had a fantastically drunken Memorial Day Weekend! Ah, what better way to honor fallen soldiers than enduring endless traffic just so that you can drunk drive a boat with your nearest and dearests. Besides the blatant insensitivity that comes with drinking your way through a holiday dedicated to actual human people that fought and died for your freedoms (if you’re a man… lol), the fact is that the majority of Americans work their asses off for those tequila shots chased with Natty Ice. Or, if they’re like me, they act like keyboard cat whenever someone walks past their cubicle because they still have no idea what their job is. Regardless of questionable work ethic, did you know that Americans only average 8 federal holidays per year? Let that sink in, and then pass me a beer. Then pass one to our mates across the pond because the only Independence Day they’ll ever get off includes Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom, which, let’s be honest seems a lot more fulfilling than burnt hot dogs and a lame firework show…

Unfortunately I didn’t plan ahead to find a Tinder Bro with a boat for the long weekend, but fret not, dear readers, because last night I did go on my first ever big city Tinder date. Before you get too excited – 10/10 would not date again. The guy put little to no effort into any form of banter and got straight to the point: did I want to get coffee sometime? Normally I would say no because a) coffee dates are boring b) I hate paying $5 for a black coffee and c) unless you’re in Russia, most cafés won’t serve you booze. Against my better judgement I agreed to coffee. Against his better judgement, he proceeded to suggest and make reservations for a swanky restaurant in Boystown a short 10 minute walk from my house. I couldn’t argue with the convenience and was excited by the fact that the restaurant surely had to serve the booze I would need to make this date less awkward.

So there I was, just a 🎵pretty woman walking down the street… right behind my soon to be date for approximately 5 blocks. I tried to walk slowly so I wouldn’t awkwardly catch up with him, but the Douglas Fir tree trunks I call legs betrayed me. Thank God for those 5:30pm on a Wednesday reservations, otherwise we may never have had our pick of tables in an empty restaurant. Since putting you to sleep is not entirely what I’m going for, I’ll go ahead and fast forward through the parts where he didn’t order a drink, so I felt like I shouldn’t order a drink even though I absolutely needed to for the carnage that was him eating a plate full of polenta cakes and ever last morsel of the garnish in less than 5 minutes while I politely tried not to splash bolognese on myself.

Right now if you’re thinking to yourself, okay cool, so the date only lasted 5 minutes, that doesn’t seem so bad, you’re sorely mistaken. We continued to sit on the empty patio surrounded by construction for what felt like an eternity, but was more likely only an hour. As I detailed the oddities of my humble abode, he finally piqued my interest with the mention of H.H. Holmes and his Murder Castle in reference to what probably went down in our house before we moved in. So as interested as you may be with the details of a sober date with a grown man in a kangol, we’re going to move on to a brief history of Mr. Holmes of Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

Let me break it down for you: in 1861 our friend was born Herman Webster Mudgett, which was likely the reason he took to serial killing in the first place. In 1886 at the ripe young age of 25, Herman moved to Chi-Town and started working at a drugstore in Englewood. He eventually bought the store from the owners, the Holtens, and moved on to purchase an empty lot just across the way. At 25 I was drunk on the street somewhere in South Korea, so kudos to you, sir. He envisioned the building to be a mixed use space compete with retail, apartments, and even a new drugstore meaning that he was likely a time traveler from Portland, OR by way of Williamsburg before it was cool > Machu Pichu #forthegram > The Bay circa 2018. In 1892 he decided to add a third floor to his [not yet murder] castle and told investors and suppliers that it was to be used as a hotel for the 1893 World’s Fair celebrating the 400th anniversary of another bag of dicks better known as Christopher Columbus’s new world arrival.

Surprise, surprise, that rascal Herman was lying. What’s more, he was hiding all the shit he refused to pay suppliers for down his weird ass maze hallways. You can only yell bitch better have my money before you become really concerned about the sound proofed rooms outfitted with chutes straight down to a basement filled with vats of acid and quicklime before you decide it ain’t worth it. If you’ve ever seen American Horror Story: Hotel, Murder Castle was basically that minus Lady Gaga as a vampire queen. I think it’s safe to assume the ghost shenanigans were spot on, though. Long story short, H.H., lacking hotel guests, began killing off innocent female employees who he may or may not have also been banging. His entrepreneurial spirit continued to shine through when he started going around selling skeletons to labs and schools; waste not want not my friends.

H.H. Holmes was eventually captured, tried and convicted, but not for any of the crazy murder shit that went down in the Englewood castle. Nah, thanks to the acid vats and an arsonist with impeccable timing, investigators could never find solid evidence of what may have really gone down there. Instead, the murder of his business partner Benjamin Pitezel is what got him in the end. Karma is most certainly a bitch. This guy Pitezel agreed to trust Holmes with his life in what was supposed to be a $10,000 insurance fraud scheme for his family (roughly $291,984 in 2019 monies – or enough to buy 1/4 of a home in Portland). The deal was for Holmes to find a cadaver to use, but at the last minute he went rogue, said fuck it and set his friend on fire, taking the $10,000 for himself and then somehow taking on the role of daddy to all of the Pitezel womenfolk. Sadly enough, he carried out this entire double life and murdered all three of the Pitezel daughters unbeknownst to his third wife.

When all was said and done, bodies began cropping up in cellars and chimneys and H.H. was arrested on an outstanding warrant for a horse theft in Texas. His creepy vibes made authorities wise to his previous endeavors and future plans to flee to Canada to evade conviction, and he eventually confessed to the murders of 27 people across the midwest and Canada. He was paid a ton of money to tell his story to a newspaper, but I assume that as soon as he said “I’m possessed by the devil,” they were like #thanksbutnothanks and peaced out before the evil spirits could jump bodies. H.H. Holmes was hanged in Pennsylvania in 1896, but skeptics will tell you that he escaped his own execution. Since we are apparently a nut-job-believing-country these days, the allegations led to the super creepy exhumation of Holmes’ body in 2017. His flesh was obviously gone, but there were reports of an intact mustache sitting right there on his skull. Whoever dug that guy up, I’m sorry but you’re haunted now. May the odds be ever in your favor.

I guess the good news is that someone just as crazy as Holmes went on in and tried to burn the Murder Castle down in 1895. The bad news is that they fucked up their one job and there was enough building left to turn it over to the United States Postal Service to be used as a post office until 1938. As if postal workers don’t already have enough to be dicks about, now you have them working in haunted houses?!

Moral of the story: be wary of Tinder dates because they may invite you to expensive restaurants and then not even half offer to pay, or they may be a killer living as a doting husband, skeleton salesman and/or murder hotelier. Stay tuned for my second attempt at Tindering where I head to a hip barcade to meet a Polish man for pinball and, if I’m lucky, his grandmother’s pierogi recipe 🤞🏻.

Oh la la, you bougie.

Well, well, well, look who remembered to write another blog post. Thursday seems like the perfect day to blog; I ran out of work to do yesterday morning so it’s really all that’s keeping me from banging my head against my cubicle walls every time someone in the office says “Happy Friday Eve!” to me. Just get through the day and go enjoy Thirsty Thursday like the rest of us you Office Space robot. I cannot stress enough how much my life has suddenly become Office Space but with less Jennifer Aniston and her flare and more Bob in IT quietly sneaking up on me to ask me about some annual reports while I’m trying to Tinder in peace.

Moving on, since I don’t have any good Chicago Tinder horror stories (yet). Moving away does not equate to running away. Don’t let the haters apply negative arbitrary motive to your life choices. One major thing that I finally realized in high school is that the world really can be your oyster, and it’s awesome. Enter: humble brag about my first ever trip overseas.

To make a long story short, my parents divorced when I was two and there was a lot of 90’s middle class living going on, but not a lot of money to fund lavish trips to wherever it is rich people went decades ago. While I may not have had the opportunity to enjoy the comforts of pre-9/11 international air travel, our dad did take us on our fair share of road trips. He once told us that it was illegal to listen to any rap music in the state of Montana because he was sick of hearing Sir Mix-a-Lot, but he let me eat my weight in Funyuns so we’re even. He always took us to exotic places like the Mall of America and the Canadian Mint in Saskatchewan. Are you jealous? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

My mom remarried when I was 11 or 12, and it opened up a lot of doors for us. Unfortunately some of those open doors led me straight to Lake Oswego, an affluent suburb of Portland where middle class was poor and I got bullied by some skinny bitch named Risa for having braces and fluffy hair. Despite my lingering hatred for Risa and Abercrombie & Fitch by association, one of my fondest memories was of a summer exchange program to France and Spain. Here’s how it worked: the French and Spanish teachers, presumably both in their 20’s and recently broken up (from each other) took 15ish French and Spanish students overseas by themselves. We were to spend a few days in Paris before heading to the Southwest of France and Spain’s Basque Country in the Northwest to be offloaded to host families by language. After two weeks, we would reconvene in a place maybe even more magical than Paris; the sheep dotted hills of Zumaia. As soon as we caught the teachers canoodling on the plane, the world really did become our oyster.

Our first stop was Paris. Ah, the city of love. Or is it the city of lights? Either way, it’s the city of something that is so magical that it’s hard to explain. I remember very little of the cultural outings besides an epic ascent from the second platform of the Eiffel Tower and an overly zealous mime on top of Montemarte. What I do remember is night out at a three-story discotheque. Yeah, you read that right; a pack of unaccompanied minors spent an evening throwing back sickly sweet mojitos while trying to figure out which of the endless rooms was blasting Dragostina so that they could grind up on some foreign ass. It was paradise.

Then came the host family portion of the trip. Mine was a family of four that owned a kitschy t-shirt printing company that they ran out of a small cottage in the woods of Côte d’Argent, in the quaint village of Seignosse. At this point in my life I couldn’t speak French for merde, so I’d sit alone in my room with a little dictionary (y’all, it was 2004) and try to figure out how to ask if I might please take a shower because it was going on Day 3 of taking hobo showers in the sink in the middle of July. Who needs a douche when you’ve got la plage at your doorstep? Despite my lingual inadequacies, Seignosse is where I first saw old men getting their boule on in the park, changed into my swimsuit in the middle of a public beach (against my prudish will), and where I was bullied into learning how to properly use cutlery after trying to blame that fact that I couldn’t on being left handed. We ate al fresco every night with tiny geckos while la mère chain smoked over la fromage. If I’m being honest, this family was kind of high maintenance, but they did introduce me to tortilla de patatas (Spanish omelette) so they probably weren’t all bad.

After dinner I would write in my dear diary about how much I missed my boyfriend. Laying in bed watching lightening flash through the closed shutters, I didn’t care that I was in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. All that I cared about was that my bb was not. But hey, he was my first real boyfriend and the first time we kissed our braces didn’t get stuck together, so I figured I was probably in love. But this is already getting way too long, and that’s a story for a different day. Have I lost you yet? I hope not, because I am sharing the most emo-ass digital camera selfie of me and my boyfriend’s trucker hat taken in my French bedroom.

Now that you know how much of a cute and dedicated girlfriend I can be, tell all of your eligible male friends.

Now for our last stop; Spain. Zumaia is not a bad place to gaze out the window of a train and fall in love with the verdant hills and fluffy sheep doting the sleep horizon. It may, however, be a bad place to take a pack of American teenagers with no adult supervision. As an added bonus, one of the girls in the group was 18 and legally procured alcohol for us. This led to a lot of teenage shenanigans which included but were not limited to:

An American flag speedo fashion show.
Co-ed truth or dare (how risqué!)
“Accidentally” flashing our boobs out of the hotel room window.
Flashing our boobs a second time, but this time our teacher was on the street. That time really was an accident, I swear!
Seeing said teacher’s naked, hairy chest when he answered his hotel room door in the middle of what we could only assume was banging madamoiselle la French teacher.
Getting screamed at by neighboring hotel rooms to shut the fuck up and go play in the street, which we gladly did into the early morning hours.

Wherever you all may be in life, France/Spain Crew 2004, I’m sorry that I told my mom how drunk we got and she complained to the exchange program and ruined it for literally everyone because she’s a narc. I obviously got it from her. I owe y’all a beer.

Okay, so I think that my initial point was that you never know how or when staying with a bougie French family or immersing yourself in the suburbs of Moscow, Russia might change your life, and you’ll never find out unless you just go for it #YOLO. When you stop caring early on about where people think you should be at X point your life, you can breathe a little easier (but not that easy because you have debilitating allergies and a deviated septum).

So I’m taking my move to Chicago like any other move I’ve gone through, which isn’t for everyone. And you know what? That is just fine. It’s the same old story as it was before moving to New York City, San Diego, Seoul, or Moscow. I moved to all four of those cities with a kind of preparation that can only be described as “there is an impending natural disaster and Dwayne The Rock Johnson just told me to evacuate before a tsunami-hurricane-earthquake controlled by aliens hits the target (aka just my residence)” and I give zero shits if that doesn’t work for you. But in the wise words of my man Bon Jovi, it’s my life and it’s now or never, I ain’t gonna live forever, I just want to live while I’m alive (it’s my life).

Welcome to Chicago! Now fuck off.

Hello, bongiorno, bienvenue, and спасибо for coming. Is this basically a 2019 version of Livejournal? Only time will tell.

I think that it’s safe to say that the 1-10 of you reading this are all close friends who know me all too well due to the onslaught of oversharing that I have rained down upon you since the day that we were forced into friendship (shoutout to my old coworkers, you know who you are). In any case, for those of you who aren’t lucky enough to know me, or have drank too much over the course of our friendship to remember, let me break it down for you.

My name is Magaly. Not Maggie, not Magdalene, Marge or surprisingly Hagaly. I was born and raised in Portland, OR and thanks to that beautiful 2008 recession I spent the better part of a decade sleeping on couches and traveling the world in search of enough money to fund my pizza addiction.

Taking half of a cheese pizza, deep frying it and then dousing it in salt and vinegar? Glasgow’s pizza game is something, to say the least. That stuffed crust pepperoni from Pizza School in Seoul, South Korea, though? The look of horror and sadness that the ajumas give you when they realize you’re going to eat the whole thing yourself is totally worth the extra $2.

The recession first took me to a small town of 30,000ish en Bretagne in the northwest of France. This is where I learned to love raw egg on pizza. From there my brother’s couch in Brooklyn, NY called my name and I became okay with folding my slices. Charlevoix, MI has a pretty good pizza buffet. I then lived in very close proximity to a Little Caesar’s in San Diego, and my since my boyfriend at the time and I both lacked basic communication skills, we’d more often than not each bring home an order of pizza and crazy bread. Who needs communication when you can have double pizza?? After all that Pizza Pizza, I jet setted my way into teaching English in Seoul where my brother and I once ate a Costco sized pepperoni pizza in one sitting before going out binge drinking. No indigestion, minimal hangover. Those were the days 🍕

Fast forward a few years to Moscow, Russia where I learned about a little something called business lunch at мир пицца (Pizza World). I even briefly had a blog that you can peep here. I was also featured in a blog, but that’s a story for a different day.

When I left Moscow, I made the last minute decision to plant myself back in Portland. This gave me the opportunity to gain some marketable adult skills that involved more than best practices for navigating international airports and timing your Ruble exchanges accordingly. Portland allowed me to step into the world of startup culture, human feces all over the street, hypodermic needles on the daily and most importantly, it allowed me to help raise my super cute niece to love pizza as much as the rest of her family. It’s her birthright after all.

But after spending years living and traveling all over the place, I very quickly started to outgrow Portland. I also became increasingly more ill due to pollen and grass allergies, diesel pollution, mold and stress. It’s such a strange feeling being able to breathe when you wake up in the morning; it’s like when you put on a new pair of glasses and wonder if this is how regular people see the world every day. It’s a whole new world (a new fantastic point of view 🔱🎼)!

So where is it that I’m able to breathe so freely, you ask? Chicago! Chi-Town, The Windy City, Hot Dog Heaven, Deep Dish Dream… okay, I may have made some of those up.

Within the span of 2 weeks I applied for a job in Chicago, phone interviewed, video interviewed, accepted the job, quit my (then) current job, found an extremely easy living situation in Lakeview, signed a lease, broke my (then) current lease, sold all of my furniture and packed the remaining belongings into three suitcases and about five boxes. And this was all on top of not sleeping more than 4 hours a night due to some of the most insane, stressful, panic-attack inducing drama I’ve ever had to go through. My only respite was binge-watching all nine seasons of Baywatch. Something about Hasselhoff is just so soothing.

So now, despite my weird apartment with an odd lock to key ratio, bathroom ants and roommates consisting of twenty-something boys, I feel like I’m where I belong. After all, I can see three pizza places from our front windows. I’ll update that sentiment after my first polar vortex, don’t worry.

Until next time, friends (and mom). If you have any suggestions for blog content, let me know in the comments!