The things we do for love

How far will we go for love? I think some guys are willing to work a lot harder for it than others. In particular, if you look like this

(that was for you, bam) you're likely to expend far less time and effort snagging this

than if you look like this

.

Before you howl, "But Rick Moranis is cuuuute!" let me say: I'm one hell of a lot cuter than Rick Moranis, and I've had two, count 'em two women in my life (no, I'm not counting my mom), and it hasn't been for lack of trying. Matter of fact, I got pretty good at trying. I've already written ad nauseum about my courtship with Karen. Nuff said already. Thinking about today's theme, it occurred to me that I haven't told you much about my first girlfriend, GFv1.0*. GFv1.0 never put me through much grief, not in our courtship phase. No, she let her parents do it for her. They liked having me over for dinner for a game I liked to call, "Torment the Howlie." Or was it, Torment the Gwailo? Can't remember what slang we used for whitey in those days. Anyway, GF's mom would feed me yummy stuff like fish stomach. Grinning madly, she'd say, "SO? How do you like?" Then GF's dad would make me drink Chinese tea that smelled like tobacco and kept me up for days. I realize now they were being nice, accepting me into the fold. GFv1.0 has since told me that they actually really liked me. But at the time, I saw it all as an awful test. Black mushroom: that's the one I failed. GFv1.0 couldn't understand why I didn't like black mushroom. It upset her. It was worse than, say, hating chocolate. Oh, how we fought over black mushroom. Nowadays, of course, I crave the stuff. Would you believe that for love of GFv1.0, I once watched a chick flick from the first row of the movie theater and then raved about it afterwards? Well, of course I did. I'll bet lots of high school guys do that, especially those of us who hung out at the Rick Moranis end of the gene pool. We saw The Turning Point, with Shirley MacLaine (*shiver*), Anne Bancroft, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But I didn't care that I was watching a chick flick and getting a whopping case of neck strain. Why? I'll tell you why. We'd had dinner at a nearby pizza parlor, and then we decided to fit in some necking time before the movie. This was mighty early in the relationship; open-mouth kissing resembled Mr. and Ms. Pac Man trying to eat each other's faces. It was a messy affair, with much gnashing of teeth and bruising of lips, because, you know, they just don't teach this stuff in school. At one point, she reached over and patted the lump in my crotch and said, "What is that thing?" That's how I managed to get through The Turning Point with a grin plastered all over my face. Granted, there were Levis in the way, but she'd actually touched it. Something just occurred to me. Given the fact that Mikhail Baryshnikov spends most of that movie in tights, I don't think GFv1.0 would have asked me that question after the movie. D. *Who shall remain nameless. There's a distant chance she may visit the blog one day. If so, my only chance of survival will be the fact that I haven't spread her name to hell and back.