Dmitri the Stud: A Story of Dark Humour, Hilarity, and Self-Reflection...

After a two-day (My own doing; not any airlines or anything like that) journey to my new home, I check Facebook and find that one of my friends has posted a lovely (in a very dark way) story about a guy who is known colloquially in Toronto as "Dmitri the Stud!"

Long story short, girl goes out to have drinks with friends and is approached by our friend Dmitri. According to said girl, he keeps pestering her about how cute she is, yada yada yada. To get rid of him, she hands him her business card and he goes along his merry way only to call later on and basically hand her his very abstract life story that sounds almost too good to be true (Why do I keep thinking of myself when I'm writing this?). He later issues a very veiled threat to return his call as a way to save face by advertising himself as the catch of the century.

This "stud" should learn some serious lessons, and this comes from experience. In a similar manner, Dmitri reminds me of myself a few years back. I was an insecure person who tried to save face and market himself as the perfect guy. I won't say whether it worked or not since that is the past and we all learn from the mistakes we make or perfect our technique...

Anyhow, here's a few rules for our friend Dmitri:

1. No such thing as a perfect guy. Flaws help to create character. A man without a flaw is a man without a character (Maybe I'm compensating for myself when I say that!). I have my flaws and I'm sure a lot of my friends can name them without thinking! I don't know if my flaws are attractive, and judging by the number of women that approach me... oh wait, next line...

2. NEVER tell a woman how many other women approach you (real or imaginary) per day/week/month/annum as a way to show yourself as a stud. It should be common knowledge but in case it isn't: in our culture, one woman is (read: should be) the world of the man, not "six or seven!" If you're a guy from another culture and want to pick up a woman in the typical western world, don't talk about other women, no matter how real they may be and if you really like her, it is a HUGE turn-off. I'm just saying this from personal observations...

3. Job and money: I don't know why this should be included at all when you meet someone for the first time in an attempt to "pick up" said person. Someone who instantly mentions their job or pay (either numerically or saying that "it pays great") is really insecure about him/herself (I really should take this piece of advice for myself!). We all have our moments of insecurity, don't let it take over you. If you feel insecure, do something that'll make you feel better. Some like to kick back with a few drinks, but I haven't found my groove yet...

4. Implying that the woman has psychological/personal issues as the main reason for not calling back is just plain wrong. I don't think I need to explain this!

5. This is anecdotal, but a woman likes to be told she's pretty to a certain extent. By which I mean that they'd love to be told they're pretty, but they also want to be seen as a person who has achieved something apart from looking pretty. None of my close female friends want to be seen as a sex object. Try the lost art of conversation and get her talking about things she knows and does. You know what? By this point, I should be taking all of this advice for myself too so I'm not going to say "I should really take this piece of advice" anymore!

6. Finally, if she doesn't return your contact, she's not interested. It has happened to me before, and it will happen again. It is just as inevitable as the sun rising. Funny how I write it and realize just how much this last rule hurts but that's my reality.

I wrote these "rules" down because it pisses me off to see a guy act so desperate in his 20's (at least) since I see myself as a teenager and I must say, I don't yearn to go back since I am enjoying my third decade much more. I had my happy moments, the times that I would never forget were there, and I have made friends that last a lifetime so I'm not the least bit upset about being a teenager. Being a teenager was an awkward time of discovery that would sometimes feel humiliating but in hindsight, was no biggie.

A lot of things go through my mind when I write this down. I think about certain people, what I've said to them, and other things. Sometimes I come off too strong, sometimes I don't seem interested enough and sometimes I just ignore them and boast about myself (I'm trying to work on this last one). I've realized that this Dmitri fellow is the man inside us all who yearns for that special someone and when he finds her, can't explain to himself why she won't return his calls so he makes up things to ease the pain of his shortcomings and part of it is blaming her in some manner or another. I have been in that boat and I can't say that I'm off it completely since it wouldn't define me properly.

The only difference between Dmitri and myself is that he expresses it in words to which we all think he is a borderline psychopath and should instead stand in front of the mirror and do certain things to himself that I won't write down since he believes that he is God's gift to women!

Still, I don't have a job that pays great and I don't think that six or seven women approach me every day - unless they're airline stewardesses and asking me if I'd like tea or coffee!

EDIT: I found out that this "Dmitri the Stud" is actually an actor and this is a viral advertising campaign of some sort...

On My 9/11...

I've been inspired to write this blog posting after reading The New York Times earlier today about 'happy' memories on 9/11. These aren't exactly happy memories per se, but they aren't unhappy either.

On my 9/11 I was with my friends and classmates from my entire grade 10 class up north for a weeklong leadership camp. I was only 14 and when looking back through the journal I wrote at the time, I was a child but thought greater of myself - typical teenager mentality. I had my reasons for being so gallant including the fact that I finished one adventure to Iran and the UK which had lasted for over a month that previous summer and here I was on another.

That previous summer, I had seen so much more than before. It wasn't the typical going-to-see-family trip that we had previously, but I saw my ancestral homeland's ancient history, a decent piece of Europe, and now I'm with my school on an adventure that would stay with me. I have been traveling to various places in Europe, Iran and the United States since I was a two-year-old, but these last trips really stuck with me.

Back to 9/11, we had just finished breakfast and were waiting to do the day's activities in each of our groups. It was at that moment that the first plane had hit the WTC Tower but we were clueless of it. There was no internet, no 24-hour news channel to turn to, nothing. We were disconnected from the rest of the world and would soon be going on our activities.

We were innocent yet we were growing up and discovering ourselves at 14 when the world changed.

When the towers fell, my group was lost in the forest. Doing a compass activity, somebody made a typo on the navigation sheet and we ended up going off in the wrong direction! Even the navigation counsellors were puzzled with the new scenery - that definitely was not a good sign!

We finally made it back to the camp right around lunch with not enough time to debrief but I think we all learned something about ourselves in that activity in the midst of being lost. We sensed fear because we were lost but banded together on getting back to the camp based on memory and teamwork.

By this time, I and many others were still blissfully unaware of the fear, terror, paranoia and suffering that was happening just south of us.

Only two days into this experience and all of us were quickly becoming friends, laughing together, and just enjoying ourselves away from home and school - what a different world we were in.

The bad news came from one of the teachers who was chaperoning this trip at around 1 PM. "There has been an attack in the United States today" he says to which I had no idea how to react. "Today, the world has changed," he continued and I look out to my fellow campers since at this point, I don't seem to understand what he's saying. The magnitude of the situation hit me when I saw one of the counsellors welling up. This was serious.

All of a sudden, we learned about airliners hitting buildings in New York, the White House was bombed, loss of life in the tens of thousands and all sorts of other apocalyptic stories. Could this be true or was this a way to bring the campers even closer together?

A lot of questions went through my mind, but the show went on. There was still no way in getting the information and I was a bit of a visual person so hearing or reading about it didn't exactly work for me.

I cannot remember what my group was doing that afternoon, but we had about two hours of free time after the activities before dinner and instead of going for a swim like I always did that week, I stayed and listened to the radio that one of the guys had in his cabin but I lack an imagination so this whole incident was still difficult to comprehend. The best thing to do was to wait it out until we would get home - three days later!

That evening after dinner, there was a campfire where we sang songs, some of the counsellors and campers did skits among other things. There was no talk of what had happened that day, the latest news or anything at all.

We continued to laugh, make jokes, and were back to being normal. The next few days we all spent together were doing more activities, a massive Olympics-like game between all groups, and a dance!

Once this week was over, I had this feeling that we were all more than just friends, that we were a tight-knit family. This feeling went right through high school all the way to graduation when we chose our different paths.

Eight years have gone by since that one week of discovery. Many of us who spent that week together up north are still friends, have moved on to greater things and have embarked on our own amazing journeys. Thanks to technology, we're still in contact but I can't help but wonder if what happened during that week was a contributor to us all being close. The answer may seem obvious to you, but I'm scratching my head...

This blog entry is my last one for a very long time because of what is coming ahead for me so this one is for all the friends made during that one week when the world went mad and we had to depend on each other for strength.

White Pine; September 9-14, 2001.