I Have The Worst Taste In Guys
As I begin this article, I picture myself in some kind of rehab clinic, rising out of my chair, taking a deep breath, and addressing the assembled support group. I have a confession to make: My name is William Burch, and I am attracted to douche bags. I have the absolute worst taste in men and for as long as I can remember, this inclination has been my deepest source of intellectual shame. Forgive me, but I find bro-types really attractive. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but if you look like you loved high school, frequently quote Charlie Sheen, and dress as Quailman every Halloween, I’ll probably be willing to put out. Other jackasses more than welcome to apply. My standards can usually be stretched to accommodate all kinds of terrible people (sports fanatics, music snobs, pretentious pre-med students, porn stars with hearts of gold). Here, I’ve provided some loose guidelines for evaluating my attraction to a newly encountered stranger, in the hopes of mapping the contours of my terrible, terrible taste:
1. Are you an asshole? Do you regularly get ejected from bars for starting fights? Do you look like maybe sometimes you yell at people, completely unprovoked? Or possibly that you’d forget my name and refuse to kick in for post-coitus cab fare? Because if you are mean and unjustifiably confident, I’m probably going to have elaborate fantasies about our honeymoon.
2. Are you an idiot? Is I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell the only book you’ve ever read? Do you watch Dane Cook comedy specials without a hint of irony? It’s also possible that your speech patterns make it sound as though you might have had an undiagnosed stroke at some point in your life. Or maybe you can’t understand why Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson don’t have their own respective religions. At any rate, here’s my number. Call me sometime.
3. Did you used to play lacrosse, did you call it lax, and did you do it while wearing three or four brightly colored polo shirts? Worse, does the resulting collar-cleavage make you look like a dog that’s just had surgery and has to be stopped from chewing on its own crotch? Maybe we could make out later.
4. My final criterion is maybe a horrifying rehab confession in its own right: Do you smell terrible? In the same way that the average gold digger enjoys the imminent-death smell of a West Hollywood nursing home, I find Axe products desirable. Let me be clear, it absolutely isn’t a pleasant smell. But I like Axe because, if I follow my nose, it’s a safe bet that I’ll find what I’m looking for. Other acceptable odors include stale beer, cigarettes, gasoline, and possibly sweat. Anything that might immediately flag you as a fraternity bro or an avid hockey fan.
See, I wasn’t kidding. I am a monster.
The real kicker is, I know that the guy I’ve just described (probably some mix between Tucker Max and that one guy from Jersey Shore, with the tiniest bit of Johnny Knoxville thrown in) is absolutely awful, and I almost certainly couldn’t hang out with him for any extended period of time. But boy would we have some filthy, filthy sex, with only a standard number of regrets. I’ll admit I often find myself in a distressing state of cognitive dissonance, where the people I find attractive and the people I think are cool are at complete opposite ends of the personality spectrum, but am I alone in finding that attractive and cool are usually mutually exclusive categories? Maybe this thought is further evidence of my damaged erotic sensibility, but isn’t it one of life’s cruel jokes that the people we want to have sex with are almost never the people we want to talk to?
I can’t really decide where to assign blame for this borderline-criminal erotic sensibility (I’m sure the psychologists among you have some ideas). It could be my douche-ridden private school upbringing. Or possibly the fact that my father is, on occasion, a preppy-type surfer bro who loves to drink beer and scotch. Maybe it’s the fact that early morning Saved by the Bell reruns and Total Gym infomercials were my earliest forms of pornography (which would also explain my weird feelings about Christie Brinkley). For sanity’s sake, I probably shouldn’t over-think this. Mostly, I wanted to confess my sins and beg for absolution. In the totally justifiable event that you find yourselves unable to forgive, I just wanted to ask if anyone knows a really fratty Matthew McConaughey look-alike who is possibly a little mean and might be open to some sexual experimentation.