I love you; you disgust me

I consider my boyfriend candidate one of the funniest guys I know. And intelligent. It’s a hard combo to find. There are some notable exceptions, but most of the time I find the funny guys are hiding their stupid behind their funny.

Nevertheless, my guy crosses the line a lot into vulgar and disgusting. Lately I’ve noticed it crossing over into disrespectful and unwelcome. I went to his house last night. He bumped into a neighbor who had been sailing that afternoon. Basically, my guy said, “How was it? You got any women with you on that boat? Serving you drinks or anything else?” I audibly groaned. In front of me and a guy who is a total stranger to me. Later, I said something about a hair’s breadth away from something. He then chimed in with a story about units of measurements in aerospace engineering. He heard these presumably respectable engineers, say something was as narrow as a gnat’s eyebrow or a c**t hair. He thought this was hysterical. I had no need for that to be in my brain. I was disgusted with them and with him. Am I a guy in the locker room? Did he think we were bonding over cognac and stogies? That’s when I told him that anecdotes like that only served to reduce my opinion of him.

This is the larger issue. And I think it’s one everybody faces whether they’ve got a salty guy in their lives or not. He should feel free to say whatever, to disclose and dream. I want him to share his unspoken ambitions and dark sexual fantasies. But I don’t want him to cross that line into grossing me out. And where is that line? I can’t say I just know it’s there. So we talked about it. He thought it was an interesting dilemma. He definitely didn’t want me to be disgusted by him so he would try to self censor a little more.

Two hours later. We’re at a bar chatting it up with the cute, young bartender who is going to cosmetology school and is a hair stylist. She said there was a lot of money to be made in simple blow outs and in Brazilian blowouts. I bristled. I knew it was coming. She said “Brazilian”. My guy couldn’t stop himself. Loud enough for all to hear: “Hey, I didn’t think there was any hair in a Brazilian!” Our girl looked like she was going to throw up and quickly walked away. I put my head down on the bar. No one was laughing. “Hey, what’d I say? I thought it was funny.” He’s working on it. We’ve got a ways to go.