What you see here is a collection of rants I have put together over the last year or so that describe my relationships with ex-girlfriends. Granted, my recollections of these events are biased. I don't care. I've written these as much for me, than for you (the reader), if not more. The names of the cunties have been abbreviated to protect their dignity -- if they have any left after dating me.

The first four rants herein tell the stories of my "serious" relationships leading up to meeting my fiancee. I have also filled out the page with "Crappy Ex- Flame" rants, which tell of my past fleeting relationships, flings and unrequited loves.

So, without further delay...

7/31/00 -- Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #1

"A." I met A. during my senior year in high school at, of all places, a high school team trivia show. Canadians may recognize this as Reach For The Top, a show that has existed on the CBC and cable-access channel semi-continuously for over 20 years. We were competing in a regional (read: non-televised) tournament. She said she liked me because I was arrogant -- and indeed I was back then...but not for any particular reason.

I liked her because she was tall, big-chested and intelligent. Either way, we dated for a few months in late 1991 until I dumped her. We resumed dating the next March for a few more months before I dumped her again. The irony in this is that I originally broke up with her because I wasn't as emotionally involved as she was, and feared hurting her in the long run. After our second dating period, I broke up with her because she wasn't as emotionally involved as I was (which led to her being unfaithful...bitch).

In the waning weeks of our relationship, a fight led to me writing her a beleaguered and, if memory serves me correctly, suitably sappy for a broken-hearted 17-year old, letter and walking about 18 km across the freaking city to deliver it. The trip was for naught, except for the odd pleasure of sitting in her grandmother's living room at 5:30 a.m. eating toasted ham sandwiches and drinking Extra Old Stock.

In retrospect, I learned that she was a manipulative twat and I was a fop-haired twit. Oh well, at least there was the Arsenio carpet sex.

8/14/00 -- Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #2.

"H." I attribute the fact that I dated (and foolishly fell in love with) H. to my own ignorance. At this point in my life (winter of 1992-93), I was convinced that I wanted to be with strong, opinionated women. The same stands now, save that I try to filter out the self-involved bitches. H. was completely self-involved. She seemed infinitely proud that she had the guts to leave her parents (a traditional and perhaps overly-strict East Indian family) when they refused to let her transfer schools. She was more than aware that she was beautiful and had a amazing figure. She probably over-estimated the potency of her charm and intellect. She even flaunted the fact that she was stripping professionally while still in high school, a fact that even made the Winnipeg Free Press. However, I numbly went forth.

What upset me most was Christmas. Being the dutiful boyfriend, I asked her what she wanted for her present...Chanel No. 5. When asked in return, I stated something like "Surprise me." My mistake. What did I get in return for my dutiful purchase of $50 perfume? Oversized neon pink/green polka-dotted boxer shorts and a Marilyn Monroe calendar. The boxers were to alert me to her dismay that I had put on 5 or 10 pounds during a growth spurt. I still cannot explain the calendar. I'm bitter to this day.

In the end, she dumped me on the weekend of Valentine's Day. She wasn't worth the trouble she put me through. She did, however, teach me how to spot a pampered twat from a mile away.

10/10/00 -- Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #3.

"M." Some people consider that a relationship that is destined to fail is among the most tragic and traumatic events that may befall a person. I disagree. Couplings that are doomed from the start offer, at the least, the impression that fate has spoken and, as a direct result, the safe harbour of emotional walls and the comfort of "I guess I knew it was going to happen..."

What I consider to be exponentially worse is a relationship that offers infinite promise, only to spiral into dismal, catastrophic failure. Such relationships offer no safety, as the lovestruck commit the lion's share of their resources into the development and sustenance of the relationship. When the relationship sours, as many do to varying degrees, this emotional commitment slowly becomes all-consuming. That's what happened with M.

I met M. at a political luncheon during the provincial election in 1995. We were working for Tory candidates in adjacent ridings at the time, and wound up together in the BBQ line. We were struck by each other -- while I cannot explain why she fancied me, I was intrigued by her dark blue eyes and her apparent innocence. We met two days later at the election victory party. We talked...I met her drunken parents...I ran away to hide...we talked again...she assured me her parents were not trying to marry her off to the first bidder...we exchanged phone numbers.

A date was set, which went well (save for her father beating down my door at 6 a.m. the next morning) and we became a couple. While she lived in the city, life was good; we'd talk most nights and the sex was frequent and fufilling. After six weeks of contentment, she moved to her parents' cottage, some four hours from Winnipeg. The relationship was still working well, as I would make clandestine visits to the cottage when her parents were in the city. Eventually, the phone bills, loneliness and hundreds of miles of sepaation began to take their toll on her. We began to see other people -- she fucked hers, but I didn't fuck mine -- and the downward spiral began.

The situation became untenable when she moved to Brandon to go to university. Her stepfather's insistence that she reduce her phone bills and concentrate on her flagging studies, added with the plying of a hopeful suitor ("Mr. G."), all became (in my eyes) a direct assault on our relationship. In time, my armour began to crack, leading to a tearful breakdown and subsequent dumping of her on our mutual birthday. Things were patched up on her pledge to "put more into the relationship," but quickly degraded further. Finally, I decided to hitchhike to Brandon to put an end to the sorry struggle. Elapsed time: seven months, to the day.

Many things about this relationship bothered me greatly then, but have now shrunk to mere perturbances:

• Firstly, I missed out on an opportunity to date an attractive woman who had an honest and consistent interest in me. Stupid loyalty.
• Secondly, many of the details of the relationship were obscured (and later twisted/ manipulated/reworked by Mr. G.) after a coma and bout of amnesia related to a rare urogenital condition from which she suffers. I shit you not.
• Finally, we had many additional rendezvous in the ten months following the break-up, all of which prolonged my regret and unhappiness.

In the end, she married Mr. G. -- assuming that their engagement ran to completion -- and I wound up falling in love with my Karen Kay. As much as I may loathe M., I must admit that she helped raise the bar for me when choosing a lifemate.

3/19/01 -- Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #4.

"E." ("D." on IRC) E. was my last serious GF prior to meeting Karen Kay, my fiancee. We dated for a few months during the late spring and summer of 1997. We met through IRC (Internet Relay Chat); her and her friend recognized me from my column in The Manitoban.

We decided to meet and hit it off. At that point in my life, I was given the pleasure of having the choice between one of two girls I knew through IRC: E. and another girl, A. (unrelated to the A. mentioned below). As my friend and fraternity brother Chris put it at the time, I was given the choice between the girl with the nicer body and the girl with the prettier face. I chose the one with the body (read: "huge titties") and, what I thought at the time, the better personality. In retrospect (read: "after seeing both of them naked"), A. had the better body.

The first month or two went well -- frequent, satisfying sex, a number of common friends with whom we spent a great deal of time, etc. -- save for a few moments of emotional unavailability (on her part) and tension (mostly my fault).

After a while, I noticed two major problems. Usually in a relationship, a graph of sexual enjoyment vs. time would show a steady curve, at least for the first few months. Our graph plateaued after the third or so time. I got off, we got off...but there was no variety, little spontanaeity and, eventually stagnantation. The other problem was her personality. E. was immature in many ways; at first I thought her acting/talking like a six-year old was cute. After a few weeks, it became grating. I found it difficult to hold conversations. To illustrate, she was offended and upset when her parents told her that she had to get a part time job to help them put her through university. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Either way, not having any mature lines of communication put me in an awkward position. Instead of confronting her like a considerate, loving BF, what do you think I did? Yup, I went and nearly had a threesome with two of our female mutual friends.

Word eventually got out, we fought (finally having a mature conversation), I broke up with her, made up with her a few days later out of guilt, remorse and love/fondness /realization that I just dumped a reliable source of sex. I even took her to the U2 concert that summer (U-freakin'-2!). She dumped me a few days later, but not until after helping friends (the same two friends from before) move.

Of all the serious GFs I've had and lost, this one messed me up the least. Maybe that's because I deserved to get dumped. Maybe it was because, by the time we met, I was sufficiently jaded and bitter not to care as much. Or maybe it was because I just didn't like her as much.

3/26/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #1.

"R." To this day, I consider R. to be the first girl that I've loved. I'm not talking aching, panicy romance novel love, but 16 year-old training wheels love. We met at the bus stop each morning as we went to school. At first, we were friends -- she'd tell me about how her recent BF (who I, at the time, idolized) took her virginity and dumped her. I listened.

At first, I was attracted to her cuter, blonder friend. That changed on Hallowe'en night, 1990. Me and the cute, blonde friend went trick-or-treating, and met R. afterwards. Me and R. sat on the boulevard afterwards talking. I told her how I liked her eyes and she didn't tell me to stop.

The next night, I bought a case of beer (I looked older than 16) and the three of us drank. The cute, blonde friend cornered me and asked if I liked R. After a moment of reflection on the earlier night, I responded "Yes." That night, while the cute, blonde friend was on phone with the vaguely effeminate boy she was pining for, R. and I kissed. It wasn't a fleeting peck, nor was it a gnashing tongue brawl. It was a soft, inviting kiss. And my first.

A few days later, I realized that the cute, blonde friend had stabbed me in the back and pushed R. towards dating her mullet-headed, dopey locker-partner. I learned then that the cute, blonde friend was actually an evil, festering cunt -- a hypothesis that would pass its acid test in time.

Besides those all-too brief kisses in the friend's basement, nothing ever happened. R. and I remained friends, but were never terribly close after that night. And the festering cunt? She shows up later.

3/30/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #2.

"C." Wow. C. was/is a weird one. I was riding the bus, on my way to visit my friend Devon, who lived in St. Vital. This girl approached me, asking for directions -- a perfectly normal thing to do. Besides an acne problem, she was cute-ish (not full-fledged cute, but close...she had an odd cropped hairstyle and was wearing one of those plasticy rain jackets that were never quite in style, but I digress). I gave her vaguely-correct directions, and then exchanged phone numbers with her.

We made a date to see a movie... Awakenings with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, playing at either the Towne or the Garrick (ten years dulls the memory). Being the hormone-driven 16 year old that I was, I first held her hand, then we kissed, then we KISSED, then I had my hand up her red Sesame Street (?!? Don't ask me!) t-shirt. The movie wasn't half over before we were trying to find a more...intimate place.

After passing on the bushes behind the Air Canada building, she took me to the underground parking lot by the Centennial Library. We found a dark corner and made a miserable attempt at having...well, parking lot sex. Eventually we gave up and took our respective buses home.

I started to realize what kind of nutjob this girl was afterwards. She showed up unannounced at my workplace (I was a gas jockey at a stinky, ramshackle station at the time). She would call me and ramble on and on about her social worker-this, her medication-that and other semi-sensical babblings. I started to freak out and broke things off.

Then, for the next while, I would get phone calls every six months or so from C. They would go something like this:

C: Hi, it's C.
G: (pausing) Uh...hi.
C: How are you?
G: Okay...you?
C: Good. My doctors have me on (insert medication name) now.
(long awkward pause)
C: Seen any good movies lately?
G: I'm going to go see (insert movie name) this weekend with my girlfriend, (insert name of crappy girlfriend).
C: Oh. Read any good books lately?
...

You get the picture. Maybe she was lonely and just wanted someone to listen to her. Or maybe she had etchings of my image carved into the inside of her thigh. One can't tell these days.

This pattern went on until sometime during my senior year of high school, when she transferred in. Now the phone calls' frequency increased tenfold. Hell, she even joined the high school choir (probably more out of a need for an easy credit or for the love of singing than to have an excuse to stalk me further) that I had to take drastic action...I slept with her again, this time on a mattress on the floor in the middle of her filthy apartment. Oh yeah, then I moved away from home.

I see her (and I'm sure she sees me) on occasion -- at the university or when I make the mistake of shopping at the grocery store where she works. Thank Jesus I have a common last name, else the phone calls may start again...

And to this day, I have no idea what Awakenings is about.

4/11/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #3.

"K." I met K. at a fair in St. Vital during the spring of 1991. I had taken the bus down to visit my friend Devon, and we went to the fair. Several beers later, me and K. were stumbling drunkedly across a field, stopping every few hundred yards for clumsy groping sessions.

My major complaint about K. was a lack of communication. That June, we had a fight prior to going to the annual Red River Ex (Winnipeg's closest equivalent to a state fair). I figured we would go as a couple... so you can understand why I was pissed when she showed up two hours late with three friends in tow. Eventually, those big, saggy tits (or maybe it was the rap on the noggin we got while trying to kiss on The Zipper) got to me and we made up. We adjourned to Garbage Hill (a landfill cum family park in West End Winnipeg) and made out amidst clouds of mosquitoes.

Eventually, our petty arguements got the best of us, and she dumped me in the most unceremonious fashion...she left my high school letterman's jacket hanging on the doorknob to my front door. Very subtle.

I think I saw her again a few years later on the bus. I was looking pretty scummy, as I was on my way to a snow rugby practice and she was looking...well...pretty fat. I can only imagine how saggy those titties are now. Pretty damn saggy, I bet.

6/12/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #4.

"F." After graduating from high school in the summer of 1992, I was at a loss. I knew subconsciously that I was a bit immature for university, and I most certainly didn't want to work for a living yet. After a short examination of my situation, I decided that another year of high school may be in order. Not an orthodox decision, to say the least, but it had its advantages. I could live at home (my grandmother's house), work part-time, still hang out with many of my friends who were a year younger than me, take some additional classes (like Grade 10 typing) and play high school football and rugby another year.

It also let me troll the dating waters of a large (~1200 students) high school for an extended period. One of my first dating experiences of that year was with F. F. was actually a year older than me, but had spent the last year visiting relatives in Portugal. We met through a common friend in the library; apparently I had impressed her with my knowledge of the October Revolution of 1917 and shown that I wasn't "just a dumb jock."

F. was pretty in that Mediterranean way -- short, curvaceous, olive-skinned, nice smile. I decided to give it a shot. Weighing in my favour (and likely against me, as well), was the fact that I was rather close friends with her ex-boyfriend of three years. As they had split less than amicably, he was more than willing to offer me inside information to help me "get in there."

Alas, I didn't get in there. I didn't get very close...maybe within a stone's throw. A small, well-rounded stone. Thrown by a major league outfielder. Okay, I didn't get very close at all. There was the problem with her Old World parents not liking the prospect of her dating an unabashedly New World (and un-Portuguese) guy. Thus, the two or three dates we had were shrouded in secrecy -- apparently "the library" was moved to a semi-secluded hillside at The Forks where teenagers grope each other. There, F. taught me that female body hair is not a good thing.

In time, I got bored and something-or-other broke us up. Two months later, this would prove somewhat awkward during the production of the high school musical, as we both had supporting parts. A tense confrontation or two later, I had moved on and F. was just a hairy-stomached thing of my past.

9/28/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #5.

"N." I met N. while I was dating H. (see Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #2, above), in December 1992. I had a part -- thankfully not a bit part, as I had two solos -- in the school musical. N. came to see us, well she came to see her friend T., who was one of the leads, on closing night. She stayed for the cast party, which was held the next afternoon. We hit it off, but as I was attached at the time, nothing could be made of the apparent chemistry.

H. dumped me in dramatic fashion serendipitously a few weeks before I joined the Manitoba Youth Honour for its weekend schmozz. For a weekend in February, high school students from across the province converge in Winnipeg to learn a set of songs culminating in a Sunday evening performance. As I recall, we sang 'Zadok the Priest,' 'Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind,' 'Ching-A-Ring-Chaw,' and one or two others. I knew that N. would be coming to Winnipeg from Steinbach for the weekend, and I most certainly looked forward to seeing her again.

As expected, we got along famously and were a nascent couple by the performance's start.

Three obstacles quickly emerged in our relationship:

1. The distance. She lived in Steinbach and I lived in Winnipeg, separated by over an hour's drive . And me without a car.
2. Our ages. When we met, I was a bit turned off by the fact she was 14 (I had just turned 18). By the time of the choir weekend, she had turned 15.
3. Her parents. Her parents expected her to bring home a nice boy as her first boyfriend. A nice boy much like their nice daughter: 15 years old, blonde, blue- eyed, Mennonite. Instead, they got 18-year old, beer-drinkin', rugby-playin', non- Mennonite (notable considering that Mennonites historically are pacifists and I was in the army reserves at the time) Gord.

Her high school was putting on a production of 'Bye Bye Birdie,' so I took the Grey Goose bus out to Steinbach to visit her. Her parents made me stay in a shitty hotel at the edge of town, making sure to tell the hotel clerk to disconnect my phone. Needless to say, little of anything took place that weekend. I think I jerked off in my shitty hotel room, but that's beside the point.

A few weeks later, her parents brought her into the city, as they were attending a conference. Being the teenaged horndogs we were, we absconded to their hotel room where she gave me a very pleasurable blowjob with those soft, sweet lips of hers. And I got to play with her tits. Oh those tits! Those titty-tit-TITS! Magnificent, firm with youth, round, small strawberry pink nipples. Her breasts rank in the top three of all the women with whom I have ever had relations (both in the Bill Clinton- defined sense and not).

But, those three factors weighed heavy on our shoulders. Her parents, disapproving of me in general (as would I, had I been in their shoes) restricted her long distance phone privileges. She, before letting me "stamp her card," wanted a long-term committment. I balked, she dumped. On my answering machine. With H., that was two relationships in a row that ended in such a cursory, staticy way.

As an epilogue of sorts, I ran into her at the Red River Ex (see Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #3 for an explanation of "The Ex") a year or so later. I had learned from one of my mates in the army reserve, whose friend dated her after me, that N. had become a rampant nympho. When I saw her, I was eager to test the veracity of this new information. We made plans to get together, but I was thwarted by her mother when I phoned. Little do they know that I had already done my damage (insert evil laugh here).

Did I mention those tits?

11/30/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #6.

"C. (#2)" Shortly after I broke up with (this) C., I subconsciously made an unwritten rule: never pursue women who are sullen and depressed about recent break-ups with ex-boyfriends. Sure, that may seem obvious now, but to a hormone- fueled 19-year old, such things are far from rote. Especially when he's lusting after huge chubby-girl tits.

It was the end of Fall 1993, and I was happily living in an apartment in River Heights with a friend of mine from the Army Reserves, Matt, earning far below the poverty line. Much of my social life consisted of going to the bar with my friends Devon, Bryan (later to be annointed "Spanky" in our fraternity), Bryan's brother Dale and Dale's friend Kurt. People often identify a bar, pub or nightclub as theirs, and we did with Club Soda. It was an unassuming bar attached to the Windsor Park Inn, in southeastern Winnipeg. The beer (esp. the happy hour $1 domestic bottled beer) was cheap and the music -- though predictable, considering they used the same mix tapes every night -- was great.

I think it was late September, and we had found a table suitably far enough from the dance floor and suitably close enough to the back bar. This time, however, Bryan had brought his cousin, Chrissy (or Chrissie, I can't really remember). Although she was mopey and seemingly had no desire to carry on a conversation, I persisted and traded phone numbers with her.

Maybe if I thought long enough, or looked through some old newspapers, I could remember one or two of the movies we saw together. What does remain scarred on my memory are the two trips to a karaoke bar on Grant Ave. we undertook with her obese friend Shannon ('The Shannon') and Shannon's hairy, meek boyfriend Adam.

For a girl who supposedly was easy, the sex was infrequent, and in odd places. My loveseat. My bathroom floor. My roommate's waterbed. But never my bed, which was verboten, as it sat directly on my bedroom floor. That was unacceptable, but the pee-stained bathroom tile wasn't, for fuck's sake.

As with most of the other storied relationships on this page, the doomed nature of this coupling hinged on a certain event; in this case it was my assignment to a winter warfare exercise with 3 PPCLI in the Yukon at the end of that October. Although I never made it to the Yukon (I passed out and shit my shorts at the end of a five-mile run, suffering from heat exhaustion, dehydration, a hangover and generally being out of shape), a certain tension racked our happy relationship. While in Victoria, I (barely) resisted the advances of a hot Quebecoise woman married to an out-of-port sailor. C., to my chagrin, started dating some DJ at a French-language radio station.

After we broke up, I had found out that she was pining for her huge-cocked fuck- friend Paul and was semi-involved with another mutual friend. Eventually, she cheered up and skinnied-up considerably, and got married a few months before I did. Bully for her.

12/4/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #7.

"J." or "The Slims" People always have interesting, sweet stories regarding how they met their spouse/life partner/significant other. Well, most people do; they tell of the elaborate tales of chance encounters, instances of serendipity and silly snippets of life that brought them together. Sometimes, these stories are perfectly valid. Other times, they're embellished or completely falsified, usually in order to conceal the fact that their lifelong relationship was built on a foundation of drunkenly stumbling home together following a night at some cheesy college bar.

That being said, it should be known that I met J. at Scandals (now known as "The Beach")...a cheesy college bar. I was there with my friend Bryan (Spanky, see above), my then-roommate Matt and a mutual friend, Willie, in early 1994. As I recall, the four of us hit the dance floor to join a mutual friend of mine. There, we merged into a group of young ladies, in the big city from Winkler (another Mennonite bastion) for a night on the town. Introductions were made, and our combined host adjourned to Perkins after last call.

Two of us wound up paired off with three of the Winkler girls: me with J., and Willie with her best friend, "D.". Phone numbers were exchanged and follow-up dates were planned. Afterwards, Bryan questioned me, asking why I had gone after the fattest, ugliest girl of the group. Maybe it was the bad light in the bar (not a reasonable explanation, considering that Perkins was well-lit) or maybe it was because I had been drinking. Regardless, I decided to pursue the relationship...

Oops.

My initial assessment (funny, outgoing, sweet...essentially a skinny girl stuck in a fat chick's body) of J. was largely accurate, but flawed. She turned out to be clingy (girls tend to do that if you deflower them) and ever-increasingly annoying. In certain circumstances, I would be willing to overlook these apparent flaws. However, two things prevented me from doing this. Firstly, I began to notice certain tendencies to meddle in my affairs. Granted, she *was* my girlfriend at the time, but I took this to be an affront. Secondly, she had no concept or clue of how to "be intimate."

Maybe it was my fault for taking advantage of a repressed Mennonite girl's willingness to be corrupted, but it's not like I twisted her arm. For a chubby girl, she had remarkably small, malformed boobies. She had to remove her dental plate before giving blowjobs. She refered to the act of ejaculation as "goobering." All told, I wasn't exactly enticed to go to the well more than two or three times. When I did, I had to will myself into orgasm.

The cusp of the relationship came one day that April. As a token of her lasting affection for me, she gave me a margarine container with a handful of tiny mollusc fossils and a pussy willow taped to a piece of paper crudely painted blue with watercolor paints. She asked me if I knew what the shells symbolized. I, not wanting to think as I had just awoke, and certainly not wanting to consider the deeper levels to our floundering relationship replied "Um...they're dead?" Not my most clever moment...

I left the city shortly afterwards to go work in northern Manitoba at a treeplanting camp for the summer. I didn't tell her I was leaving, nor did I figure it mattered much.

Oddly enough, we remained friends afterwards. I was invited to a hottub party that fall, where she drunkenly attempted to seduce me. I drank myself into a vomiting, incoherent mess. The next January, she invited me to her new apartment, apparently to help christen it. This time, I submitted to her advances, not knowing that the same trick was also used on a close friend. Laughably, neither of us could achieve orgasm, me because she repulsed me and him because she repulsed him and because she was my ex.

That winter, she met and started dating a very close friend of mine, Drew. A guy from my fraternity who knew J. told her that I had told him that she cheated on Drew with me (which I hadn't). An arguement between J. and me ensued and we ceased to remain friends. Through the transitive property of relationships, Drew also ceased to be my friend.

Eventually, Drew and I resumed talking and I learned that his engagement with J. fell apart because of her meddling and annoying nature. I'm sure that if she had been skinny, neither of us would've ditched her so fast.

12/21/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #8.

"M. (#2)" I met M., or should I say M. met me one Sunday in early 1993. I was in the army reserves and she was in my regiment's cadet corps. (Relax, the age difference was only two years.) That day, while on the way to the annual regimental church parade, I received a note hastily scrawled on a piece of loose-leaf paper, stating that one of the female cadets had a crush on me and wanted to meet me. At first, I was concerned, as I thought it was one of the dumpy girls. I was pleasantly surprised. M. was tall, with wavy red hair and full lips.

M. and I talked on a regular basis for the next two months. The only thing close to a date was a "party" she talked me going to. It wasn't much of a party, just three people including myself sitting an apartment across the street from [Winnipeg's] Central Park -- a haven for intravenous drug users and dealers alike. After a trip to Mac's for Jolt Cola, M. and I adjourned to the staircase for brief, unproductive kissing.

Then she disappeared.

During the summer of 1995, she reappeared. M. called me upon her return and we met for coffee. At the time, I was dating M. #1, but the relationship was beginning to lose its lustre. During coffee, M. (#2, the redheaded one) told me of her travels to Alberta to flee her crappy parents, her involvement with an officer at her new Army regiment and the sexual awakening that went with it. She told me of how she thought of me while she was gone, how she regretted leaving without saying goodbye and how she wanted to resume seeing me.

That would've been fine and dandy, had it not been for the other M. (see above). That M. had recently asked me if I wanted to see other people, and I originally rebuffed the idea. Now M. #2 came back, and I had cause to rethink my decision. Morality and loyalty, however, compelled me to resist M. #2's advances. What a fucking idiot I was...and it didn't take long for me to figure this out. The problem was the M. #2 had changed her mind.

On the other hand, she did take in one of my fraternity brothers, Karl. Although I was jealous, I figured both of them needed to get schtupped. M. and I remained friends, but never seemed to be mutually available. She wound up dating some guy who claimed to be in a top-secret military espionage unit, but was actually feeding her a steady conveyor belt of bullshit.

After some three years of banging our paired heads against the wall, we did hook up all of once. I, however, was deathly ill with the flu and hardly performed. Soon afterwards, she met, dated and moved in with this guy who treated her decently. In Fall 1996, they invited me to their apartment for her birthday. I couldn't help being happy for her and her new-found domesticity, but I just as was jealous at the same time. Strangely enough, my 11th grade locker partner was there...with his boyfriend. I had to balance my contentment and envy with a little bit of an odd discomfort and a healthy amount of bemusement at the antics of my now-flaming former classmate. Hell, as long as he's happy too...it's just that everybody there was happy except me.

Sigh.

12/13/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #9.

"L." I met L. at the end of 1995, while toiling as a volunteer news writer at The Manitoban. I had started writing my column "Duh, Okay Knuckles" about two months earlier. It, combined with a few of the humour features I had written, were earning me a reputation as a writer with at least some modicrum of wit. So when the editors of the newspaper were approached by L. -- who ran the students' union-run campus advertising agency -- to procure a writer to bang out some ad copy for the new campus bar, I got the call.

L. was a pleasant-looking young woman, some year or two my senior. She was cute, flirtacious and, in what proved to be a turn-on and the clinching factor in my decision to pursue the matter, now officially my boss. As I was a flirt in my own right, sexual tension quickly developed, and we started seeing each other.

L. invited me to join her at an apartment she and her sister were housesitting, under the presumption of watching Absolutely Fabulous. She then produced a reefer, which we shared. Apparently, she needed something to help her relax. I didn't care much...it just made my lips numb. After getting (her) sufficiently "relaxed," we adjourned to the bedroom where we fooled around.

So far, so good...right? Well, one might think. I mean, aside from a few sexual hang-ups that were directly attributable to a lack of positive experiences (much of any experience for that matter) on her part, she was normal. Smart, witty, fairly adventurous, a good kisser, Jewish. Ah, yes...Jewish. This was my first real experience with inter-faith dating (except for F., above, who was Roman Catholic, but that hardly played into things), and I didn't know what to expect. L. didn't seem to care much...we were hardly considering marriage at this point. I jokingly remarked that I was "the goyfriend." The first indication that our faiths (well, her Jewishness and my ambiguous identification with the Anglican Church) could be a problem that I noticed was when, on my only visit to her house. Okay...her driveway. It's not that I wasn't Jewish enough to enter the house, I just wasn't Jewish enough to meet her parents. Oy.

(Note: Don't construe that last paragraph as extreme bitterness or anti-Semitism. I have nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for the religion, history and society surrounding Judaism. I have many Jewish friends and, considering the next installment of the Crappy Ex-Flame Rants, left this relationship harbouring no ill will towards pretty Jewish girls.)

That spring, L. went to visit friends and family in New York. I was sensing that something was amiss, especially after she returned home. During her trip, she celebrated a traditional Sabbath dinner. Apparently, this awoke some spiritual side within her, and she deemed me too un-kosher to date.

I did know that something was wrong, so it wasn't much of a letdown. I had already started looking for my "rebound" relationship. It didn't take me long.

12/29/01 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #10.

"L. (#2)" Of all the Crappy Ex-Flames, L. probably deserves the title the least. In fact, she was nothing but sweet and giving to me. Then why include her with the other twats, trollops and tramps on this page? Two reasons -- for continuity's sake and because parts of the story are touching...and others are rather funny.

Oddly enough, L. was my second consecutive Jewish girlfriend. We had met on New Year's Eve, 1996. I had been invited to join a small party held by Pam and Lisa, two sisters I'd met through IRC, at their house in The Maples. L. was there, but left before we'd gotten the chance to really talk. Nonetheless, she'd caught my eye.

We met again during Celebration, an annual February festival put on the the U of M students' union. We ran into each other in one of the computer labs and both talked about going to see the Celebration seminar held by Ernie Coombs, TV's Mr. Dressup. Instead, we talked with each other.

Working at the student newspaper had some perks, one of which being access to schwag like movie premiere passes. I called L. up and invited her to see Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead premiere. We went, won a copy of the soundtrack, and generally had a good time.

On Valentine's Day, L. invited me for a very romantic dinner. This would have turned out much, much better had I not been as sick as the proverbial dog. It was replete with candles, roses and lovely company. I felt horrible -- partly because I was ill and partly because being ill made it difficult to enjoy the meal or get suitably drunk to...well, um...you know.

Things progressed well for almost two weeks. We'd watch Friends in her basement, then fool around a little. Nothing too heavy, but nonetheless enjoyable. Problems developed when L.'s ex-boyfriend (whom she'd dated several years and with whom she'd broken up a month or two prior to dating me) rethought his decision to be apart from her. It's hard to compare 11 days with 2+ years, and it started to weigh heavily on her. Surprisingly enough (especially to readers of this page), I did the most honourable thing I could do, and broke up with her. I didn't want a repeat of C. (above), but I also didn't want to keep L. from being happy. The last I heard, they were contemplating marriage.

This L. was henceforth known amongst my friends as the "11-Day Girlfriend." Those who hadn't taked to me thise 2 weeks knew her as "You had a girlfriend?"

2/26/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #11.

"G." The first time I remember noticing G. was at a fraternity function -- a "Greek Night" held by the now-defunct Winnipeg Jets during the winter of 1994-95. The fraternities and sororities from the U of M, along with Delta Tau Delta and Delta Delta Delta from the University of North Dakota, were invited to a Jets game, followed by a party at the DKE house. I attended with several of my brothers. We had an extra ticket, so we dragged along an alumnus from the class of 1950, making us the only frat to bring our own senior citizen. At the party, I first set my gaze upon G., who was in the process of becoming friendly with some American Delt -- I had my own appreciably cute Tri Delt (who spent the bulk of the third period of the hockey game on my lap), but I was growing tired of her because she belonged to some freaky God-cult, greatly reducing my chances of having "intimate international relations" that night, but I digress. I was immediately taken by G., but did nothing about it.

G. became my "back-burner" crush. We'd see each other at fraternity/sorority events: exchanges, meetings, socials, formals and the like. I never failed to notice her beauty -- not necessarily Maxim magazine beauty, but a harmony of a pleasing countenance, grace, self-assuredness and the intelligence one should associate with a promising medical student.

In the early part of 1996, my unrequited affection became...well, requited. At the conclusion of a social, I explained my long-standing crush to her, leading us to conclude the night by making love in the spare bedroom of her crazy sorority sister's apartment. Strangely enough, I would have sex with a different Crappy Ex-Girlfriend, E. (see above) in the same apartment a year later, but that's beside the point.

I was encouraged by these developments, however my optimism was misplaced. School began to take up much of G.'s time, and, besides the sporadic e-mail or two, we drifted apart. I wish I still had these e-mails, just to see how immature and pathetic they sounded. I'm sure I sounded oh-so worldly quoting The Tragically Hip lyrics. Lessons learned, I guess... The most frustrating thing about this time, is that I had an opportunity to pursue another woman from the same sorority.This woman, however, seemed to reciprocate my cursory advances. Oh the fool was I.

I spent that summer planting trees in British Columbia, spending much of the time longing for G. Eventually, I came to the realization that it wasn't to be. Just when my demon-crush had been banished to it's home plane, it reared it's head again that October, when we enjoyed a prolonged groping session in my bedroom as a party raged outside. Again, as with the previous spring, I abandoned a prospective relationship with another woman to bark at G.'s heels.

What I took from this relationship was the knowledge that I could attain what (or who) I desired, simply by letting my wishes be heard. It also served to dispel much of the "she's too good for me" myth, for a while at least.

1/3/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #12.

"S." A few people have been waiting for me to tackle this Crappy Ex-Flame. I hope this is suitably savage...

S. was one of those intellectually-tortured types...or at least she thought she was (and probably still does). We met during my first attempt at finishing the sophomore year of my degree at the U of M, during the fall of 1996. I joined the Geology Club -- yes, it sounds incalculably geeky, but it wasn't that bad -- and began making myself comfortable S. happened to be in several of my classes, so we became friends. She was pale, lanky and had a bad complexion, but wasn't unattractive. She came across as witty and undersexed, both of which are green lights in the civil engineering of my sex drive. I pulled a string or two and got her a carrel near mine in the Geology Club study room.

I forget the exact details surrounding how our first liason took place, but it started as a bet on who would claim the higher score on a Mineralogy test. We took turns upping the ante to the point where she invited me to an empty classroom. I called her bluff, and she backed down...only to suggest we adjourn to my room at the fraternity house, conveniently located 770-some-odd paces from the Wallace (Geosciences) Building. (I counted once.) She didn't back down from my advances this time. She spent the night, then was carted home by her parents in the morning (déjà vu, see Crappy Ex-GF Rant #1, above). I learned later that, prior to being picked-up by mom, she fooled around with my roommate/fraternity brother (who shall remain unnamed, but is similarly lanky and pale, but with a better complexion). I backed off, realizing that my relationship with S. thusfar was a trifle, and acknowledging that my roommate needed to get laid much more than I did at the time.

My roommate, as per his style at the time, dropped the ball and didn't follow up on his initial success. Ah...sloppy seconds.

A few weeks later, I decided to give S. another go-around. By now, we had grown closer, becoming friends and study partners. Once I put the effort in, our friendship quickly devolved into sex. I named her breasts -- more out of self amusement than anything else -- "Jimmy" and "Sean," after Jimmy Stewart and Sean Connery. I would make them have mock conversations, pairing my well-practised Connery impression with a hackneyed Stewart. Maturity...that's *my* picture beside the dictionary entry, Theodore.

Things with S. progressed with spurts; she would help me study for our classes and I would listen to her rant about her varied insecurities. Eventually, she told me that I was the best friend she had. In turn, she helped me pay my tuition that year without a second thought. Every time I grew to have stronger feelings for her, however, something happened. Usually, she would amaze me with some exasperating bout of indecisiveness, obstinance or sheer absence of logic.

By the end of the year, I was growing weary of many things: school, my family, my finances. I was falling into a deep depression, and my relationship with S. offered no solace. My fraternity held a New Year's Eve party, during which she fooled around with one fraternity brother and accosted another unsuccessfully. At this point, I broke things off.

We had one more liason the next month, when she was sick with mononucleosis. We spooned on her parents' couch, taking care not to kiss. Fine with me... She had a pregnancy scare, but I was confident that it was a case of nerves...which it was. S. was/is slightly more high-strung than say...the Georgia Dome. My extracirricular problems eventually led me to drop out that spring, distancing us further.

The next fall, we wound up working together at The Manitoban, me as the Features Editor and her as the Features Writer. This made me her immediate superior. I think she lasted two months. One night, I mentioned my on-going sexual relationship with a friend of mine who lived in the dorms on campus. I made the off-hand remark that I was trading sexual favours for free dormitory food (which I was, but it certainly wasn't the focal point of my relationship). This enraged her to no end. I found it funny that she could slut herself around with my fraternity brothers -- some of whom lived with me -- without a thought, but if I was bold enough to pursue a monogamous (but temporary) relationship with a friend months after I stopped dating S., then that was a crime. My dorm food remark only gave her tenuous moral ground on which she could stand.

I returned to the Geology Club in September 1998, much to S.'s chagrin. She had progressed to the presidency of the Geology Club, and was ruling the club with an iron fist. I took ceaseless pleasure in driving her insane, primarily by going as far out of my way as I could to be pleasant to her. She wound up being my T.A. for my Geochemistry course, further complicating her dilemna. If she was overtly mean to me, I could easily appeal any grade I received on the basis that she was bias. So, against her will, she was surficially nice to me. It drove her crazy, and helped me sleep soundly at night.

And now? She was accepted to Stanford University as a graduate student. And she's still pale as a linen sheet.

3/26/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #13.

"T." My relationship with T. was one of those that I stubmbled into. I was in the Machray Hall computer lab (one of my usual haunts at the U of M) late one night in the early months of 1997, chatting on IRC. We started talking (er...typing), then flirting. I asked her what she considered to be her best feature, to which she responded "my breasts." I took this to be a good sign.

We went to a bar a few nights later, and ran into one of my Crappy Ex-GFs. This, combined with the handful of drinks that had been spilled on me, prompted me and T. to leave the bar early. We adjourned to the fraternity house (and my bedroom) and proceeded to have the clumsy sex that inebriated people have when they're half- attracted to each other.

The relationship then adopted a comfortable, yet peculiar, pattern. After spending an evening at the Toban pretending to be a journalist, I would make the cross- campus walk to T.'s dorm, where I'd join her and her floormates for free dormitory cafeteria food. We'd watch the X-Files and/or the Chris Rock Show, then we'd retire to her room for more awkward sex.

T. wasn't very sexually experienced...or driven...or innovative...or adept. As the semester wore on, the intensity (though initially only mediocre) of the relationship waned. Oddly enough, as she became more attached to me, I became increasingly attracted to her floormates. More on that later, true believers.

Summer came and she returned home to northern Manitoba. I spent the summer humping sandbags, and dreamt of humping someone who would wind up being the subject of the next Crappy Ex-Flame Rant.

Ah, the whorishness of my youth.

4/2/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #14.

"J.(#2)" or as she preferred "G." In the spring of 1997, Winnipeg -- and the whole of the Red River Valley in Manitoba, Minnesota and North Dakota) was struck by the "Flood of the Century." Due in part to the foresight of former Premier Duff Roblin, who mandated the construction of the Red River Floodway, and to the efforts of volunteer sandbaggers, most of the city was spared.

After the waters receded, all of the sandbags used to save the city's houses and neighborhoods needed to be disposed of. Thus, I was hired that May to supervise a clean-up crew of college and (later) high school students. When these high school students joined our ranks, I noticed a buxom girl with long, red hair, wearing a Tim Hortons t-shirt. Over the next two months, I learned what I could about her and orchestrated a few passing conversations with her. Due to my position as one of her superiors, and due to a slight age difference (3 1/2 years), I couldn't act on my instincts.

At the end of August, when the project came to a close, a number of my crew members and I celebrated at the Pemby. I took the opportunity to invite J. along. Once inside of the bar, I decided to try a new tactic. Before I shamelessly began to hit on J., I asked her permission. Thankfully, she had no objections. By the time we'd sucked back a few beers, we'd learned that we shared a passion for journalism. I gave her a ride home, and was rewarded by an encouraging peck on the cheek.

We saw each other semi-regularly for the next few weeks, but I almost dropped the ball after sleeping with a long-time friend. Thankfully J. forgave me, and let me taste her sweet fruit in the sauna of the fraternity house a few weeks later. Sex with J. was envigorating, passionate (she loved to bite) and extremely erotic. During one lovemaking session atop my loft, I looked down as she rode me and became entranced by the swinging motion of her pert, rounded, freckled breasts. I climaxed immediately.

She celebrated my birthday by baking me a chocolate cake (complete with dinosaur candies), and bringing me a heart-shaped basket containing a bottle of wine and two glasses. This, however, was our last date. A friend of hers had been biding his time, waiting for J. to rid herself of her previous boyfriend, only to be shouldered out of the way by me. After a while, he tired of waiting and declared his affection for her. This, combined with her newfound ability to barhop, drew her away from me. I will never forget the sex we had, though.

It wasn't long before I had climbed back in the saddle, though...

4/29/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #15.

"J.(#3)" I met this J. when I was seeing T. As stated earlier, I spent a great deal of time visiting the girls of that dormitory floor during the time I was sleeping with T., and some time afterwards. During these visits, I made several friends whom I would visit regularly. During the autumn of 1997, I went to the birthday party of one of these friends. Among those who attended was J.

J. has one of those "fatally-flawed" faces, meaning that she would certainly qualify as being cute or pretty if not for one feature. In her case, it was her nose. A bit too large for her face, and a bit too crooked. She wasn't in Tim Hunter (a former Calgary Flames player) territory, but it wasn't a good beak by any means.

I always took J. to be one of those shy, small-town girls who didn't say much in groups, but turned out to be perfectly nice (and covertly erotic) people after you got them into a one-on-one environment. I decided to find out by teasing her incessantly during the party, trying to provoke a reaction. I wasn't sure that I wanted to hit on her at that point, but I decided to give it a shot once we returned to the dorm. We slunk off to her room, made awkward small talk and then proceeded to shag.

The sex was pretty decent. It turned out that my initial assessment of J. was half-correct, as she did have a deeply buried erotic side. With little grooming, she was open to a variety of positions and techniques, including a unrealized willingness to "leave her backdoor unlocked." I was turned off, however, by her breasts. I was spoiled by my previous ex (see Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #14), who had magnificent tits. J., on the other hand had handful-sized breasts that fell halfway to her belly once you removed her bra. I found the image disturbing enough to ask her once to keep her sweater on during one lovemaking session just to hide them, although I told her it was to satisfy some schoolgirl fetish I had.

Aside from pretty good sex, there wasn't much to our relationship. As with T., I would visit during the evenings to take advantage of the free dorm food (which J. preferred to take back to the dorm floor lounge to eat). Again, we'd watch T.V. with her floormates, then retire to her room to fuck. There was little talk going on -- I would attempt to start conversations in vain nearly every time, even resorting to asking her about her Greek Mythology homework. Nothing. She would phone me at work to tell me how much she missed me, then would sit silently on the phone. It began to verge on the creepy.

After a month or two, I became tired of the lack of intellectual stimulation and began to look elsewhere. I struck out with some girl I met while working at 7-Eleven, then hooked up with a girl I'd met that summer, then contracted chlamydia from a the psychotic ex-GF of a high school acquaintance (she'll show up in the next installment). All told, it made for an interesting break-up speech. I played the part of the asshole well back in the day...

6/10/02 -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #16.

"T.(#2)" I can't say I wasn't warned. T. was one of those girls who seems to be ubiquitous, you'd see her everywhere. She bagged groceries at the local Safeway. She'd turn up at the convenience store where I worked. I had this sneaking suspicion that I knew her, I just couldn't place where.

T. was more cute than pretty. If not for a pronounced overbite, she'd be both. Besides the need for orthodontia, her only other evident physical flaw was that her hair was a bit mousy. T. had a petite, lithe frame with beautiful b-cup breasts and small, pert nipples.

One winter evening when she turned up at my work, I seized the opportunity and exchanged phone numbers. I related the encounter to my close friend, fraternity brother and then-roommate Spanky. It was then I learned where I knew T. from -- she dated a common friend of ours in high school. Spanky warned me that T. was borderline psychotic, but I decided to venture forth. I'm a dumbass.

I never went on a date with T. The one time we hooked up was when I visited her at her crappy apartment and helped her clean. She showed me a clipping of an article I wrote for the Manitoban two years earlier that she had stored in her desk drawer. Creepy, but it gave me something to work with. Insulting her hamster Ragamuffin, however, lost me ground. Eventually, after some sucking up and massaging, I lured her to the bedroom where we had disparately enthusiastic (although brief) sex.

At the same time, T. was making passes at another of my friends/roommates/fraternity brothers. I started having funny feelings -- not those of jealousy or of love. No, this wasn't the problem at all. It hurt when I peed. And my cock oozed. T. gave me The Clap. The next few days were a blur of Arab men scraping my urethra, antibiotics and T.'s denial of having an infested cunt.

By this point, T. had stopped dating me and had latched onto my roommate. Poor bastard didn't know what was coming. T. started acting more and more oddly, eventually claiming she bore my roommate's love child after he tried to dump her. T. would call and leave cryptic, ranting messages which are fun to listen to now, but were pretty unsettling at the time.

That could've been me.

Who? -- blandscotsman@hotmail.com

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