Romantically Challenged

by Sami Lukis

  Sadly, mixtapes have become a lost art. But back in the day, they really were the ultimate expression of love. First, they involved a considerable degree of time and effort to compile. You’d have to cue up the song and hit record on the casette player at the exact moment the song began. It usually took a bunch of tries to get it just right. You wouldn’t waste time doing that for just anyone. A mixtape also allowed you to express your private thoughts and deepest desires through the lyrics of each song. Giving someone a mixtape was basically like giving them a little piece of your soul.

  I knew exactly what my man was thinking as I listened to nineties boy band Silk telling me how they wanted to lick me up and down til I said stop . . . But one day, as I lay there listening to his latest compilation and staring lovingly at an especially alluring shirtless photo he’d sent me from his most recent jungle boot camp, I couldn’t help noticing a large, reddish-purple shape on his neck. It was a hickey.

  A big, fat, filthy, fucking love bite. Which he didn’t get from me. I hadn’t seen my marine in months.

  It suddenly dawned on me that while I’d returned to my boring old life as a uni student back in boring old Brissie, pathetically pining over my sexy marine, listening to his mixtapes and drooling like a bloodhound over his shirtless photos, he wasn’t missing me at all. He was running around Okinawa having loads of fun receiving random hickeys from who knows who.

  I was devastated. Plus, I was a bit repulsed.

  I know some people think hickeys are hot, but I don’t get it. There was a brief period in my late twenties where a boyfriend and I agreed to ‘hickey Sundays’ in an effort to understand the appeal of sucking on skin for the sole purpose of leaving a bruise. We’d give each other hickeys – but only on Sunday mornings and only in spots that wouldn’t be visible to anyone else. We thought it was hilarious, mainly because it was our own little private stupid joke. But also because I was hosting a respectable kids TV show at the time. We gave up after a few weeks when I decided I didn’t enjoy the taste of blood.

  But I digress.

  I despaired for days over that hickey-pic until I was able to get my marine on the phone.

  Of course he told me it wasn’t a hickey. He said it must have been a burn from where a gun had recoiled on his neck.

  Well, I’d never dated anyone who specialised in military combat before, so I had no idea what a burn from an M40 might look like. Therefore, technically, I guess his explanation could have been true.

  And even though every fibre of my being (along with a small piece of photographic evidence) told me that my boyfriend had recently received a love bite from another woman, I chose to believe his gun-recoil explanation. And we carried on.

  But the relationship was never the same after that. My marine didn’t send me any more photos or mixtapes. The letters became less frequent too. Until they eventually stopped altogether. Distance proved the downfall in the end. And I never saw or spoke to my sexy marine again.

  But the hickey certainly left its mark. I’ve had a few long-distance relationships since then, and they’ve all failed dismally. Trust issues were always a factor.

  I blame the marine and that questionable hick-pic.

  Some cheaters are especially good at manipulating their way out of potentially tricky situations. I’m actually impressed by some of the creative excuses I’ve heard from men in desperate efforts to deny their infidelity. It’s quite a skill to be able to think up a cunningly convenient, alternative scenario right there on the spot and then lie through your ball sack to avoid confessing that your pecker has, in fact, been playing elsewhere.

  I especially enjoyed the ‘playful pussy’ explanation presented by my dear friend Belinda’s boyfriend. She’d suspected him of cheating for months but finally called him out after she discovered a woman’s hair elastic on his bedside table. It wasn’t her hairband. And it wasn’t his. He was not, nor had he ever been, a man-bun kind of guy.

  Now, even if this hasn’t ever happened to you, I’m sure you can appreciate how the sight of another woman’s hair accessory in the vicinity of your boyfriend’s bed would make your heart sink. And your hair stand on end. And yet, when confronted about the sudden appearance of the incriminating hair elastic, he very calmly told Belinda to stop being dramatic because there was a perfect simple explanation.

  It was one of his cat’s favourite toys.

  And that’s how he explained the presence of the foreign hairband.

  Bel had never seen his cat toying with the elastic during their nine months of dating, so she had to wonder: did he really have a playful pussy with a fondness for hair accessories? Or did he just have a playful imagination?

  Put any emotions aside and, yes – like a neck burn from a loaded M40 – the story technically could have been true.

  After days of gut-wrenching deliberations and self-doubt, Belinda accepted his explanation because, in the end, she decided it was so ridiculously random it simply had to be true.

  She dumped him a few months later, when she discovered a stream of sexy texts to another woman on his phone. I think we can all safely assume that woman might be missing a hairband or two.

  I’m glad Belinda finally dumped the dickhead, but she could have saved herself some serious heartache if she’d simply listened to her gut after finding another woman’s hairband on his bedside table.

  The fact is, there’s no pleasant way to find out your partner is cheating on you. And your loved ones can sometimes be hiding all kinds of secrets.

  I heard a story about a woman who was enjoying lunch with the girls when she recognised the pretty blue and white Country Road maxi dress on a lady crossing the street outside the café. She’d bought that exact same dress only a couple of weeks before.

  And then something else caught her eye. As she glanced up, she noticed that the woman wearing the dress looked, strangely, a bit like her husband. ‘Wowser, that’s one masculine looking woman,’ she chuckled quietly.

  But then she stopped breathing, when she realised, Wait a minute. That is my husband.

  Wearing a dress.

  Wearing my dress!

  FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.

  And there he was, walking down the street without a care in the world, while her universe came crashing down around her as she suddenly discovered that her husband was a cross-dresser.

  I’ve often wondered if this story is one of those juicy urban myths, but if it’s true, well, that sure is one helluva way to find out.

  One the greatest romances of my life is travel. I feel an urge, actually a longing, to pack my bags, get on a plane and explore someplace new as often as I possibly can. I’d visit every single country in this lifetime, if time and money allowed. Blame it on my wandering soul.

  And possibly the fact that I find it much easier to get laid overseas. I’ve become quite the expert at the old ‘holiday fling’. They really are truckloads of fun. Social media has made it much easier for us to keep in touch with our holiday flings these days but I always think the best way to enjoy an overseas rendezvous with a hot foreigner is to remember the golden rule, which is simply to ‘enjoy it for what it is’. (I had to learn this the hard way with my American marine.)

  What happens on holiday really is best left on holiday.

  I’ve had quite a few memorable interactions abroad, like that time I unknowingly slept with an armed robber in Honolulu. I place the blame for this, quite firmly, on Gusband Tim. Who willingly let me do it. Aloha!

  Bizarre things happen to Tim and me in Hawaii. The first time we holidayed on the island of Oahu, we noticed that people were looking at us strangely everywhere we went. Strolling down the main drag of Waikiki, stuffing our faces at the Cheesecake Factory, or sipping mai tais at the RumFire bar during happy hour. It didn’t matter where we were. People would clock us, stare intently at Tim for a moment, glance across at me, then back to Tim, before looking away awkwardly. As if they’d looked at something that might scar them for life if they stared at it for too long.


  At first, I assumed they were just trying to work out if Tim and I were a couple, as folks often do. But this was different. Rather than just acknowledging the lucky cougar and her aesthetically pleasing toy boy, these folks appeared to be so stunned by the age gap that they had to look away in embarrassment, like it was some kind of reverse Anna Nicole Smith situation. I was quite offended, to be honest. Sure, I’m thirteen years older than Gusband, but I swear to god I don’t look it.

  The mystery was solved on day three, when some random guy at happy hour told us he was blown away by how much Tim looked like a famous American athlete named Tom Brady. ‘I swear you’re his Awwzzie twin,’ the guy shouted at Tim before shouting us another round of drinks.

  Tom Brady is a household name in America. He’s a star quarter-back superbowl champion and one of the best footballers in the country. Oh, and he also happens to be married to the she’s-so-freakin’-gorgeous-it-hurts-to-look-at-her supermodel Gisele Bündchen.

  We googled the guy immediately and realised that Gusband does, in fact, bear an uncanny resemblance to Tom Brady. I, on the other hand, couldn’t pass as Gisele’s distant cousin’s mother. Even on my best day. So all those folks staring at us thought they’d spotted the champ Tom Brady and his model wife. Until they looked across at me and thought, Wait up. She ain’t no supermodel.

  This revelation set the tone for a holiday that scored us several rounds of free drinks and had us crying tears of laughter, all day, every day. It was also the holiday when we refined our brother-sister cover act. We worked out that pretending to be siblings gives us the best chance of getting lucky. Whenever we meet new people, we make a point of dropping into conversation (as quickly as possible) that we’re big sis and little bro. Which immediately alerts them to the fact that we’re not a couple. And more importantly, it gives any interested fella the green light to go ahead and flirt up a storm with his preferred sibling, depending on sexuality.

  The brother-sister cover act has always worked a treat, except for one night on our Hawaiian vacay, when we were both drawn to the same ruggedly handsome guy. We were both captivated by his cheeky personality but we couldn’t tell if he was straight or gay. The situation only became more ambiguous when we found out he was in the Navy.

  Well, Navy definitely seemed more focused on Gusband than me for most of the night, so I just assumed he was gay. But then, after drinks, dinner and more drinks, we all ended up at a nightclub and as soon as we hit the dancefloor, Navy walked straight over to me, put his hands on my hips and started grinding up on me like nobody’s business. He pulled out a range of other dubious dance moves that pretty much confirmed he was straight.

  Gusband was gracious in defeat.

  The next morning, Tim and I assumed our regular sun lounge hangover-recovery positions on the beach and I provided a blow-by-blow account of my sexy little rendezvous (which is standard ‘morning after’ procedure with a best gay/gusband). I was describing Navy’s extensive body art – all the basic nautical-style tattoos you’d expect to find on Popeye and one scary-looking tatt that stretched all the way across his collarbone – when Gusband chimed in with ‘Oh, that must be his old gang symbol.’

  Um, come again?

  Apparently Navy had told Gusband the night before that he was once a member of a notorious gang back home in Seattle. They were in the ‘break and enter’ game, apparently. Armed with shotguns, apparently. He told Tim he only joined the military to clean up his act, avoid criminal prosecution and an inevitable life in jail.

  So. That.

  And despite knowing all of that, Gusband still quite happily let me toddle off to my hotel room with the armed robber in tow. He even encouraged the liaison, if I remember correctly. And at no stage did he think it necessary to give me a heads-up that I was about to sleep with a gangster. Not even just a cheeky little warning to keep an eye on my jewellery.

  Gusband said he was ‘pretty sure’ I had nothing to worry about. After all, we’d spent hours with Navy and we both thought he was a bloody good bloke. (Sorry, did I mention that the guy used to be an armed robber?)

  Well, the tough military rehabilitation must have worked, because I had around $10 000 worth of jewellery sitting on my bedside table within arm’s reach of the former gangster all night while I was fast asleep beside him, and it was all still there when he left the next morning. So it was a gentle reminder for me to never judge a book by its criminal, gangster-related, shotgun-wielding cover.

  The famous American ski resort of Aspen is a great place to meet men, considering two thirds of the population there, at any given time, is male. But be warned, single ladies, the local lasses have a saying about the blokes who live in or frequent their town: ‘The odds are good. But the goods are odd.’

  Ironically, I first visited Aspen on a romantic winter holiday with a boyfriend in my mid-thirties. I fell madly in love with the town and deeply out of love with the boyfriend soon after. And my love affair with Aspen has been going strong ever since.

  The skiing is spectacular. The après is even better. I mean, for a start you’re bound to run into a celeb or six while you’re there. I’ve shopped alongside Heidi Klum and Seal (pre-divorce) at Ralph Lauren. I’ve tried on $3000 ski jackets I had no intention of buying in the Moncler change rooms next to Kate Hudson. I’ve danced in the wee hours at the ridiculously exclusive Caribou Club beside Paris Hilton (she’s much prettier in person). And I once shared a ski lift with Antonio Banderas, who, incidentally, looks even more mackable with a couple of icicles dangling from his sexy salt-and-pepper beard.

  Sadly, Antonio did not ask for my number. But I have had quite a few eventful Aspen encounters.

  Like the time I was set up with Kevin Costner’s bodyguard. Correct. The Bodyguard’s bodyguard.

  Plenty of celebs have holiday homes in Aspen. Kevvie owns a massive ranch about ten minutes out of town. Aspen is a small village, where everyone knows everyone and I’ve become friendly with some of the locals. So when one of my mates discovered I had a thing for tall men, he decided that a fellow local (who also happened to be one of Kev’s longtime bodyguards) would be perfect for me. We were both invited to a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend, where hopefully sparks would fly.

  Well, I’m pretty sure I gasped out loud when the bodyguard first walked in. There’s tall, and then there’s towering – like this guy, who was about six foot nine. He was inconveniently, uncomfortably tall. The guy wasn’t fat but he was certainly big-boned, in an unnaturally gargantuan kind of way. Which made him an awkwardly tall, extraordinarily enormous human being. You might even call the guy a giant.

  I was shocked by the sheer enormity of this man. Even in my six-inch heels, my eyeline sat somewhere around his nipples. Thankfully, we spent most of the night sitting down.

  I wish I had some elaborate story to share with you about how I embarked on a glamorous whirlwind international love affair with Kevin Costner’s bodyguard. But I do not. Sadly, old mate wasn’t a big talker. In fact, he hardly spoke at all. This was especially disappointing because I’d assumed the celebrity bodyguard would have some cracking yarns up his sleeve about Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston and private planes and all kinds of fabulous and/or sordid celebrity encounters, and what really goes on in those movie-star trailers. He could have been the best dinner companion/boyfriend ever! But, unfortunately, he just wasn’t a great conversationalist.

  I tried really hard to keep the chat going over dinner, but at times I felt like I was at work, interviewing an especially tough subject. Eventually, the lack of conversation became exhausting, so I gave up. Between the obvious communication challenges and the awkward nipple-eyeline issue, it was clear this wasn’t going to work out.

  To be fair, a bodyguard was probably never going to be a suitable match for me anyway. He’s the guy who’s trained to blend into the background and not say much. He’s a professional observer. While I, on the other hand, am a professional communicator. I love a chat. And I need a guy I c
an talk with, not just at.

  I’d also quite like someone with better manners. Turns out the bodyguard had given our hostess a box of chocolate-covered strawberries when he arrived that night. A lovely gesture from a seemingly appreciative dinner guest. Well, I guess he could tell our romance was definitely not budding, so he was also one of the first to leave, just before dessert. And on his way out, he popped into the kitchen, grabbed the unopened box of strawberries and reclaimed his gift.

  Maybe he had another party to go to, or another hostess to impress? Or maybe he just decided my company wasn’t even worth the price of the choccie berries.

  As hilariously inappropriate as it was, it was also kind of fitting. Because if life is like a box of chocolates, I would have to say my dating life is like a box of chocolate-covered strawberries.

  I love chocolate as much as the next person. But I have a tragic, on-off allergy to strawberries. I adore biting into a big, beautiful, sweet, juicy strawberry. But, every now and then, they give me hives. Big, red, blotchy, hideously itchy hives. Still, I can’t help myself, can I? I keep going back – time after time, having another crack at yet another chocolate-covered strawberry – even though I know I’ll probably regret it.

  It’s the same with love, right? Sometimes it can be sweet and beautiful and that just makes you want more, more, more. And sometimes, it just irritates the shit out of you.

  I once met Jesus in Aspen. And it wasn’t after a nasty ski accident, where I temporarily crossed over to the other side.

  I was enjoying a pinot grigio at the uber-fabulous 39 Degrees Lounge after an awesome day on the slopes, when I found myself chatting to a cute Mexican fellow who told me his name was Jesus. I’ve spent enough time in the States to know that it’s a fairly common Spanish name and it’s usually pronounced ‘Hay-soos’. But this guy insisted that his name was ‘Gee-zus’.