This morning I woke up earlier than I wanted to. After trying in vain to fall back asleep (damn day job!), I gave up, got out of bed, and spent a few hours straightening up the disgusting hellhole I like to refer to as “my apartment.”

I cleaned the kitchen to a mix CD an ex-boyfriend gave me, one I hadn’t listened to in ages, mainly because the guy was a tool. Well, I had forgotten just how REALLY GOOD a CD it was. I used to use it for getting ready to go out dancing, but I have discovered that it’s equally good at cleaning the stove to. Maybe that’s a good rule of thumb: If it’s good for dancing, it’s good for cleaning.

This is a rundown of the excellent CD:

Pulp, Disco 2000
Electric Six, Danger! High Voltage
The Smiths, How Soon is Now?
Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Murder on the Dancefloor
Andrew W.K., Party Hard
Daft Punk, Da Funk
KC & the Sunshine Band, Get Down Tonight
Kylie Minogue, Can’t Get You out of My Head
Thelma Houston, Don’t Leave Me This Way
Michael Jackson, Don’t Stop til you Get Enough
No Doubt, Hella Good

Well, I love all these songs. How in HELL did he manage to make a mix I like so much? Lord only knows, because the whole problem with him was that he didn’t pay attention to one damn thing I ever said.

Seriously, this guy…this was not my kind of guy. I disliked him from our very first date, so one might wonder, sensibly, why I went on to date him for two more months. Well. Since you care, I’m sure, the reasons were threefold.

In descending order of importance:

1) I had just come back to DC from London when I immediately started a pretty serious (albeit long-distance) thing with a guy who lived in Michigan. He and I had been really close telephone friends for five years, ever since we met through family friends when I was 17 and he was about 21. Finally, we were both single and living in the same country (and I was legal - bonus!), so we could have our long-awaited Relationship.

I was deliriously happy with him. Then one day, out of nowhere, he dumped me over the telephone and disappeared into thin air. Neither I nor our family friends have heard a word from him since, and this happened in 2002. I was, how can I put this?, slightly depressed when all this went down. So when the mix-CD-making, self-absorbed guy came along shortly afterwards, I was like, “Okay, between being your girlfriend and becoming a bitter, morose shell of my former self and dying alone, I’ll take…you.”

2) A high school friend set the two of us up, and she swore that he was “a good guy.”

3) On our first date he told me I looked like Ashley Judd.

(What? I’m a shallow person; sue me.)

But dude, when I look back on it, he was AN ASS. For example, our first date. It was a blind date, so the first thing we talked about in earnest was how he had recently moved here from Detroit. I did that thing where I asked him drawing-out questions and made interested “Oh?” and “Really?” comments, so that he would tell his stories. Usually in a conversation between two or more people, you take turns doing this FOR EACH OTHER, right? Well, this guy had missed the day they taught “taking turns” in Kindergarten, because he never changed the subject from Detroit the entire night (except for right at the end, when he made that Ashley Judd comment).

Detroit while walking from the metro to the restaurant. Detroit at the restaurant. Detroit while walking to the bar; Detroit IN the bar. Detroit while walking back to the metro. (Detroit in my nightmares that night.)

When I eventually realized that he was never going to ask me any questions back, I tried just changing the subject myself, but it was useless. At one point, he was talking about the layout of that-city-whose-name-I’m-sure-you-can-guess, and I said something like, “Totally. I know that when I was in London, one of my favorite things was exploring all the twisty-turny little alleys,” and there was a long beat of silence, and then he said, “Yes. Well, as I was saying, the thing about Detroit is that –”

It was at that moment that I realized I was on a date with the most self-absorbed person in recorded history. Yet I continued to see him for two more months, mainly because of the aforementioned three reasons, but let’s not forget a final one: I WAS AN IDIOT.

I like to think that I have since learned to follow my instincts when it comes to relationships. I am now secure enough that I will never settle for a boyfriend whose company is less appealing than, for example, the prospect of having my face flicked with rubber bands. Unfortunately, this is one of those lessons that one has to learn the hard way.

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(Oh! And vis a vis my last post, I didn’t get a chance to talk to my boss about the paintings yesterday; we were too crazed and busy. I will do it next week for sure, unless I chicken out, in which case I will never do it.)