Since I was old enough to understand exactly what I was doing, I’ve been faking asthma attacks to get out of doing things that I didn’t want to do. I can recall three times in recent memory where I was pulled over for speeding and subsequently feigned respiratory distress. You’d be surprised how panicked an officer of the law will get when a 22-year-old gay male turns blue and starts freaking out. “Ineed my—inhaler—and Ijustneed to get to myhouse, [big inhale this time] officer.”
In addition to speeding tickets, I’ve used asthma attacks to get out of wrestling practice, school projects, sexual intercourse, and this one time where I really didn’t want to cut the grass.
The only thing that I’ve done that’s more reckless than faking an asthma attack to avoid buying my grandmother a birthday present is my perpetual disregard for red flags. If I think a guy is attractive and/or the least bit into me, I’m pretty much oblivious to his flaws from jump. Don’t try to tell me that he stabbed his father with a box cutter or that he’s actually two midgets stacked on top of one another, because I won’t hear you. And the cuter the guy is, the less I’ll care or notice.
Sometimes I’ll write a little memo to myself if the guy takes a call at the dinner table or doesn’t open the door for me, but otherwise, I let the hot guy slide. It isn’t until things really start to go awry that I notice the bouquet of red flags he’s been holding behind his back the whole time.
Muffin’s red flag was her disability. She was female. McBougie’s red flags were all over the place: violent outbursts, eating candy on the toilet, chatting with other guys on Yahoo! Messenger like it’s 2002. But, being the upstanding citizen that he wasn't, Wit’s End’s red flags were probably the most disturbing.
He told me over lunch one day that he used to be engaged to this girl named Ashely. And in my head, a small little red flag popped up. Still trying to wrap my mind around this homosexual’s engagement to a woman, I asked why they’d split up. He told me that he’d cheated on her and that she’d done some snooping and found out about it. And then a second little red flag popped up. When I asked him to explain the cheating, he told me that when he worked for the airport, he’d taken a flight to Dallas one weekend to stay with a “friend.” According to Wit’s End, this friend of his had a boyfriend, and over the course of 3 days, Wit’s End had slept with both of them, together and separately, multiple times. And then my head exploded and tiny red flags flew out and landed in sushi rolls and glasses of iced tea.
The worst part: He narrated the story without any remorse or shame. It was all very matter-of-fact. “Oh, yeah, my female fiancé found out that I was having gay threesomes out of town, and dumped my ass. Can you pass the soy sauce?”
Even worse than that: I continued to date this guy! What a catch, right? I bought his “I’m glad it happened, because now I know how damaging infidelity can be” mumbo jumbo. Because he had a cute face, I looked past the flashing red siren on top of his head that said “DON’T DATE ME! I LIKE NASCAR AND I’LL SLEEP WITH ANYTHING THAT RESPONDS TO MY AD ON CRAIGSLIST!”
And alas, the joke was on me.
But having dealt with boyfriends with mental illness, sexual dysfunction, and an alarming amount of daddy issues, I’ve learned to spot red flags from a mile away. The cute guy with the Twilight quote on his profile page won’t get past security anymore!
And if one more douchebag pulls out his phone during the first date or tries to tell me about how much his ex-boyfriend makes him want to “kill himself,” I’m faking the most dramatic asthma attack possible and sprinting out the front door. Deuces.
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