The Almost Threesome

Writer’s block is finally gone!  Enjoy!

—

One night in Vegas I almost had a threesome.

But it wasn’t the right kind of threesome.  If you know what I mean.

Alright, perhaps I should explain.  My buddy Tripod and I were at this bar off The Strip called The Beach.  The Beach was my favorite spot in Vegas until it closed down a few years ago.  It was a solid mix of tourists and locals, so it wasn’t a total tourist trap but there were still enough young out-of-town girls looking to make some poor decisions.  The staff at The Beach were all bikini-clad girls and board shorts-clad guys, so there was eye candy for all.  It had a giant dance floor right in the middle, with the entire upper level surrounding and overlooking the floor so you could ogle the girls if you didn’t feel like wading in.

The dance floor itself was hot and steamy, with a constant supply of bar napkins being hurled into the air and fluttering down upon the crowd.  The bikini girls behind the bar and working the beer tubs were also available for “body shots,” which consisted of them spraying dabs of whipped cream on their ass, stomach and cleavage, followed by a test tube full of weak liquor between their boobs.  It was nothing short of a hedonistic delight.

(On my first-ever trip to The Beach I was so drunk from drinking triple gin and tonics –known to the rest of the world as gin on the rocks– that when they announced a limbo contest on the dance floor I immediately volunteered.  I made it through the first round because I’m pretty sure the bar was still higher than my head.  The second round though, with the bar around my nose, I was so hammered that when I tried to lower myself six inches I somehow managed to fall flat on my face.  And so began my love affair with this magical place.)

On this night, Tripod and I were already well sauced when we got to The Beach around 9.  Like most Vegas bars, it really didn’t get busy until after 11, so for two hours we didn’t do much but drink and stare at the bikini girls.  But soon the place started filling up, and we quickly found out that there was a big NASCAR race in town that weekend.  I’m not a NASCAR fan myself, I have too many teeth to be accepted into that club, but surprisingly we found a couple of NASCAR girls that weren’t bad looking at all.  There were two of them, both blonde, and Tripod pounced upon them as only he can.  Unfortunately, we discovered they were there with two guys.  Two very NASCAR-y guys.  Shirts, hats, chew in the back pocket of their Wranglers, the works.  These guys couldn’t have been older than mid-20’s, but they were well on their way to being the stereotypical middle-aged NASCAR redneck.

Tripod was undaunted though.  He waded into the fray, chumming it up with the guys (I’m fairly certain neither of them had ever spoken with a Mexican before, and absolutely certain they’d never done shots with a 4’4”, 240-pound Mexican).  In short order Tripod discovered that one of the girls was indeed dating one of the guys, but the other (the hotter one) was single, although it was pretty clear that the second guy was very interested in her.  Retreating for a quick strategy session, it was determined that I should run interference on the guy while Tripod tried to work on the single girl.

And I tried.  Swear to God, I really tried.  But I could barely understand what these guys were saying.  Now, I’m no snob, I grew up in the Midwest, and I’m proud to say I’m a product of the “flyover states.”  But these guys were at a whole ‘nother level of redneckedness.  They said things like “fixin’” and “You better don’t.”  And they were utterly clueless when it came to football, which was really my only hope of distracting them.  (I had been looking forward to a heated debate of SEC versus Big 10 football.)

Eventually I realized I had little hope of distracting him, so I moved to Plan B.  Acting like I was stupid drunk (not much of a stretch) I stood between where Tripod and the girl were sitting and where the NASCAR guy was sitting.  Then I swayed and staggered, shifting from side to side in order to block his view while Tripod worked his game on the girl.  The guy would lean to one side to try and look around me, I’d pretend to drunkenly stagger a step or two in that direction to block his vision.  It was fun.  And effective.

But at some point the alcohol got the better of me and I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, because the next thing I knew Tripod was telling me the four NASCAR people were heading to a strip club and he was going to tag along with them.  “I think I can nail her,” he said.

I may have been shitfaced, but I knew this was a bad idea.

“Dude, you can’t go off with them, you may never come back.”

Tripod assured me it was cool, the girl wanted him to come with them.  I told him that was irrelevant, the jealous guy and his friend may just decide to beat his ass and leave him in the desert.  But Tripod was adamant.  Details are sketchy, but I think I refused to go in hopes it would deter Tripod from going.  But that failed miserably and soon I was all by myself at the bar while Tripod was off in a cab to the strip club.

Alone at the best bar in Vegas, I proceeded to drink even more and stumble around the place to check out the girls.  And did I mention I kept drinking?

It was sometime after 3 in the morning when I met a girl at the main bar, nursing a drink by herself.  She wasn’t anything special, skinny but without much shape, brunette with a cute face but a bad set of teeth.  But she had a couple tattoos poking out of her black tank top, which I always take as a sign of sluttiness.  I bought her a drink and we chatted for a while.  I discovered she was a stripper at a place I had never heard of in Vegas (which is to say, not one of the better strip clubs), but as I had never banged a stripper before I thought this would be a great opportunity.  I mean, twenty years down the road when I tell people “I banged a Las Vegas stripper,”  people aren’t going to interrogate me on how hot she was, they’re just going to be in awe of my prowess.

At last call I felt like things were still going well, and being in Vegas (where there are no rules) and being utterly hammered, I just went right in for the kill.  “So, you wanna go back to your place?”

“Maybe,” she answered.  I thought she was just being coy.

But then she dropped the bomb.

“I just have to check with my boyfriend first.”

A long, drunken pause as my mind tried to process this.  “Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah, he’s the DJ here, I’m waiting for him to get off.”

The look on my face must have been more confusion than disappointment.  She elaborated, “It’s cool, we have an open relationship.  I just need to see what he’s up to tonight, but I’m sure you can come back with us.”

Now, there aren’t many moments in my life where I regret drinking as much as I do (other than the hangovers), but this is definitely one of them.  My gin-soaked mind simply couldn’t process where exactly this was heading.

Does she want me to fuck her in front of her boyfriend?  Does she want him to join us?  Does she want to be double teamed?  Or does she want to double team me?

Had I been less hammered or had she been more hot I might have explored this further, asked the questions to ascertain what exactly was on the table.  But I wasn’t sober and she wasn’t that hot, so I quickly extricated from the situation.

And just as I was walking for the door, I got a call from Tripod.  He was in a cab, by himself, and so drunk he couldn’t remember what hotel we were staying at.  I told him, but then he admitted he also had no money to pay the cabbie.  “Well,” I sighed, “just have him come here and pick me up and I’ll cover it.”

A perfect end to a perfect night.  Tripod struck out, I struck out, and we went to bed alone.

Not all Vegas stories have happy endings.

An Easy Girl

Her name was Hailee.  She had a great body, long legs, nice ass, toned stomach and great breasts.  Unfortunately, Hailee had a face that could stop traffic.  She was in her mid-20’s but she had acne like the worst 16-year-old you’ve ever seen.  It wasn’t pretty.

I hooked up with Hailee one very drunken night when we all wound up at her place after the bar closed.  There were about a dozen people in her tiny studio apartment, playing drinking games until the wee hours of the morning.  Details are extremely hazy because I was drunker than three Indians on payday, but somehow as I was getting ready to leave I found myself making out with her.  (I think I made the first move but I honestly don’t remember.)  I took a step back into her apartment and kicked the door shut on my friends (the international sign for “get lost”) and we stumbled to her bed.

Once in bed I got her top off and discovered that her breasts were even better than they appeared under her shirt.  They were above average size for someone as skinny as she was, and so perfectly shaped I couldn’t be completely certain they were real.  (I consider myself a connoisseur of the breast augmentation business and can usually tell the difference with ease.)  And to top it all off, she had these spectacular eraser tip nipples that stuck out nearly a full inch.

I was so mesmerized by her rack that I was ready to forget about her unfortunate face and dive in… until my hand crept down inside her panties and found a string hanging out.

Sonuvabitch.

Well that sucks.  So we made out a little more, I played with her boobs a lot more.  I tried to get her to blow me but she wasn’t having any of it.  So I tried to get her to jerk me off but she was as inept at it as most girls.  So I passed out for a couple hours on her tiny bed before making the mile-plus walk of shame with no coat in the middle of December.

It might have been the coldest walk of my life.

—

But the story doesn’t end there.  A few weeks later a man named Blackout moved to town.  Blackout and I immediately hit it off and became drinking partners.  A few weeks into his arrival in Utah we were shitfaced at a bar and he was lamenting the lack of available females in this godforsaken wasteland we call home.

“You want some ass tonight?” I asked.  “I can deliver it to your door!”

Blackout hadn’t known me for very long, but it was long enough to know I’m no ladies man.  So he was skeptical.  But as we were piling into our designated driver’s car I pulled out my phone and shot a text to Hailee.  It took about two minutes and three texts to have her lined up.  Our sober driver swung by her place, picked her up, and dropped the three of us off at Blackout’s apartment.

Once there, I helped myself to a beer and hung out for about five minutes, just long enough to make sure everything was going smoothly.  Then I feigned like I needed to get something at my place (I lived in the same complex about a hundred yards away), said I’d be right back, and went home to bed.

The next day I asked Blackout how it went.  “Good, I think.  I don’t really remember.  Don’t think I fucked her, but you’re right, she has a great rack.”

—

But the story still isn’t over.

A couple weeks after that we once again found ourselves at Blackout’s apartment after a long night of drinking.  This night was an absolute trainwreck; I don’t remember where we were, who we were with, or how we wound up at home with Hailee in tow.

Here’s what I do remember.  Blackout was sitting in his recliner chair, chugging a beer.  I was on the couch chugging a beer.  Hailee was on the end of the couch, between us, chugging a beer.  It was cold out and she had on this long sweater that was almost like a dress, hanging down so low it practically covered her ass.  She had some kind of black tights on that probably would have shown off her ass quite nicely were it not for that sweater.  After the three of us had chilled for awhile, Hailee got up and went to the bathroom.  And when she came back she wasn’t wearing her tights!

I was bewildered.  Hammered and bewildered.  She slid past me on her way back to her spot on the couch, and as she did I could just see under her long sweater that she wasn’t wearing anything else.  Just a bare ass and an uncaged beaver.

So… what do you do in a situation like this?  She didn’t say a word, just sat back down between us and started drinking her beer and staring straight ahead at the TV.

Is this what you're looking for?

A million thoughts were racing through my drunken head.  What the fuck is going on?  Does she want us to take turns on her?  Does she want to get tag teamed?  Is she just totally fucked in the head???

I wanted desperately to confer with Blackout about this situation, but obviously that couldn’t be done with her sitting there.  Even worse, he was so fucked up he wasn’t even aware that she was now sitting in his living room with no pants on.  I was frantically trying to get his attention without alerting Hailee, leaning back in the couch and trying to make eye contact behind her back.

'Cause this ain't happenin'!

Now, I’m not going to say that I was down with the idea of having the wrong kind of threesome.  But I will say that I would have loved to have that conversation.  “So… you want me and Blackout to both fuck you?  At the same time?  Exactly how would you like this to work, which hole do I get?  Oh, and by the way, are you completely out of your fucking mind?!?”

But, alas, Blackout was totally out of it.  Short of me standing up and boldly announcing that there was a pants-less, classless, respect-less whore in his living room, nothing else was going to get his attention.  (In retrospect that’s exactly what I should have done.)

After what seemed like an ungodly length of time (it might have been just 5 minutes, but in my state time doesn’t have much meaning) Hailee huffed angrily, got up and stormed back into the bathroom.  The moment the door shut I whispered, “Dude!  That crazy bitch isn’t wearing any pants!  I think she wants us to run a train on her!’

Blackout stirred the tiniest bit, as if deciding whether this interested him, but then he slouched back in the chair and told me I could have her.  About that time Hailee came out of the bathroom, but instead of re-joining us in the living room she just helped herself to Blackout’s bed and passed out.

“Dude!” I whispered again, “She’s in your bed!  I think that means she wants to fuck you!”

Again, a half-stir out of Blackout, but then he shrugged and curled up in the recliner chair.  “You go for it.  I’m just gonna sleep here tonight.”

Now my bewilderment was making my head spin more than the booze.  “You want me to fuck her?  In your bed?”

“Sure.  I’ll clean the sheets tomorrow.”

To my great shame and embarrassment, I must admit I actually contemplated this.  I stood up, walked into the bedroom, as if to assess the situation.  I might have even called out to see if she was awake, I don’t remember.  But she didn’t stir, certainly didn’t say, “Oh, Single White Alcoholic, come fuck me in Blackout’s bed!”  So I decided the best course of action was to go home to bed.

—

The next day Blackout had no memory whatsoever of the incident.  When I recapped it for him he was just as intrigued as I had been.  “Do you think she wanted us to gangbang her?  Dude, that chick is nuts!  We should probably avoid putting anything inside her.”

“Agreed!”

The Mormon Stalker

I have a stalker.  A Mormon stalker.  How I get myself into shit like this is truly beyond me.  Back in my younger days I used to joke with friends whenever they’d talk about girls that were obsessed with them, I’d say things like, “Man, I wish I had a stalker, I’d never turn her away.  If you want to come over and fuck me that bad, who am I to turn it down?”  Man have I learned my lesson on that front.

I won’t bore you with all the details of how I met her (for the sake of this story I’ll refer to her as Momo), how she decided I would be the target of her full-on crazy, etc.  I’ll just jump right to the heart of the story.  After about two months of her throwing herself at me with reckless abandon and me making excuses why I wasn’t interested (“I’m not looking for a relationship,” “I’m still hung up on my (imaginary) ex,” “I’m an emotional cripple,” etc. etc.) I finally broke down when she texted me on my birthday and told me she wanted to give me my birthday present.

So I invited her over.  I sat her down on my couch and re-iterated that I was not interested in a relationship; I did not want any emotional entanglements, this would be nothing more than a booty call.  She said she understood.  “I’m going to need you to say it,” I said very firmly, and then proceeded to make her repeat after me, “This isn’t going anywhere.  It is just a booty call.”

And then I titty fucked her.

She had big sloppy D-cup breasts that weren’t much to look at (I’m a shape guy, size is completely secondary to firmness for me) but they felt pretty good wrapped around my cock, though not enough to get me off.  She refused to give me head, said she’d never done that before (damn Mormon girls), and her handjob skills were inadequate too.  The best thing about her, though, was that I could make her orgasm in about two minutes by going down on her.  Tongue, fingers, combination, whatever, she would shake and lose total control with almost zero effort on my part.  It was quite an ego boost; I felt pretty damn proud of myself turning this innocent, inexperienced Mormon girl into a quivering orgasmic mess.

Over the next couple weeks I worked hard to keep it casual, to make sure she still understood that this was not going anywhere.  I kept the frequency of our hookups low and refused to do anything that could be construed as a “date” with her.  I made up a story that I couldn’t sleep in a bed with another person, so she had to leave every night and couldn’t try to cuddle.

Eventually, I decided it was time to hit paydirt and we had sex.  Just like with the oral, she could orgasm with almost no effort, and I was feeling like quite the stud.

And that’s when it all started to unravel.

Glenn Close, the original psycho stalker

All of a sudden she claimed she was looking for a new place to live, and before I even knew what had happened she had moved into my apartment complex.  She now lived in the building directly between my apartment and my buddy Blackout’s; it had been a great situation beforehand, both Blackout and I enjoyed the benefits of living alone, but we were also less than 100 yards away whenever we wanted to get drunk.  But now she was right in the middle, and I felt like she was watching out her window to see when I was coming or going.  I started taking the long way around the complex to get drunk at Blackout’s place.

Meanwhile, she kept talking about this friend of hers who was so fun and so cute and I’d like her so much.  She wanted the three of us to all hang out.  I was confused.  Was she offering me a threesome?  It seemed almost impossible but I had to give it a shot, right?  And her friend (who you all know now as BJ, author of Wordplayforeplay) was indeed much more fun than Momo, much hotter than Momo, and she could take the wrappers off of Starbusrts with just her tongue.  Indeed, one of the biggest regrets of my life is that, after convincing the girls to play a game of strip poker, BJ (who I don’t think had ever played poker in her life) utterly destroyed us and only took her shirt off out of pity once Momo and I were down to just our unmentionables.  Needless to say, the threesome never materialized; BJ went home and I ended up banging Momo again.  In retrospect, I’m pretty sure that was her plan all along.

The next weekend she wanted to hang out on a Saturday night.  I wanted to get hammered with my friends.  Guess who won?  That’s right, alcohol and the guys.  And as I was laying in my bed Sunday morning, hung over as all hell and swearing I would never drink again, she sent me this text:

“Just thought you should know that I’m late.”

Now, the rational part of my brain new this was just a ploy.  She was on the pill (at least she claimed to be), and we used a condom anyway, so the odds were somewhere around 1 in 5000 that she could actually be pregnant.  But, of course, pregnancy isn’t something one can really think about rationally.  Especially not with a clingy Mormon girl that you’re pretty sure is mentally unbalanced.

Thus began three of the longest days of my life.  To this day I still don’t know if she was making the whole thing up, or if she really was late.  And if she was, was she really panicking, or was she fully aware that girls are occasionally late on their period and figured a dumb boy wouldn’t know the difference, so why not make the bastard sweat for standing her up on a Saturday night?

After that incident I told her we couldn’t have sex anymore.  I was a little shell-shocked by the whole ordeal, but more than anything I just thought it made a good excuse to withdraw a little bit on the relationship.

And it was just about that time, oddly enough, that she decided she wanted to try her hand at giving blow jobs.  No woman has ever been able to make me cum just from head, but I still enjoy it immensely, and she showed a great eagerness to learn to give great head and be the first to get me off.  Her enthusiasm for cocksucking, combined with the turn on of her multiple orgasms whenever I’d go down on her, and it wasn’t too long before I broke down and fucked her again.

It was a truly dysfunctional situation.  We’d hook up for awhile until she started to get too close and start pressing for more than just a booty call relationship, I’d break it off, and then in a couple weeks either she’d come crawling back with a text along the lines of “I want to come over and suck you off,” or I’d get rip-roaring hammered and drunk text her something along the lines of, “I want you to come over and suck me off.”  Wash, rinse, repeat.

The final straw came the last time we had sex.  The condom broke.  Now, considering she still claimed to be on the pill I didn’t think this was that big of a deal.  But she flipped the fuck out.  Practically had a nervous breakdown right in my bed.  She was trembling and nearly in tears, rambling incoherently about having to go to Planned Parenthood the next day to get the morning-after pill.

I was leaving town the next day for a vacation, but she wanted me to go with her before I left for the airport.  Now, I’ve never been to a Planned Parenthood before, so I don’t know what they’re like in other, more civilized parts of the United States.  But in End Of The World, Utah, it’s located in the basement of a strip mall.  We sat in the waiting area watching the dregs of society pass through, the meth-heads and illegals, the pregnant teens and the toothless trailer trash.  The whole time she insisted on holding my hand like we were some old married couple.  Once again, the rational part of my brain knew full well that this was just another one of her ploys.  The pill is 99% effective, so even with a broken condom the odds of her being pregnant were miniscule.  But sitting in that house of horrors with a crazy girl clutching my hand, rational thought all but flew out the window and my stomach began to churn at the idea that I might soon be a father.  I started wondering how she felt about abortion; although she was Mormon, she clearly wasn’t very devout (after all, she was fucking a Heathen).  But considering she was in love with me, might she try to keep the kid just to keep me in her life?  I started formulating my strategy in my head.  “Look, there’s either going to be an abortion or a suicide here, because I would rather kill myself than spend the next 18 years attached to you.”

About that time I happened to glance up at the wall where the magazine rack was located.  In a moment of irony I will never forget, I noticed the latest Newsweek with a picture of Sarah Palin on the cover and the bold headline “Saint Sarah.”  Personally, I found this quite amusing.  Can you imagine if you actually were pregnant, wrestling with your conscience and emotions of whether to get an abortion, and as you sit in the waiting room you see Saint Sarah staring down unapprovingly at you?  Seems like poor planning by Planned Parenthood, don’t you think?

So, long story short, she took the morning after pill, and I bolted out of town for about a week, during which time I had to endure daily text messages from her about how nervous she was, how she wished I was there to hold her, how she needed me, etc. etc.  I kept telling her to go take a home pregnancy test but she refused, said she was too scared.  At that point I knew 100% she was just trying to latch onto me, that it was all just so much crazy bullshit.

When I got back to Utah I drug her to the store, bought a home pregnancy test and made her take it.  Negative.  Of course.  We had now had sex five times total and had managed two “pregnancy scares.”  This girl was crazy as a shithouse rat.  It was time to extricate myself from the situation.  But that was easier said than done.  She lived practically next door to me, and she had made it clear before that she was fully capable of wandering outside my apartment to see if my lights were on.  And although we didn’t exactly work together, we were on the same campus and she worked with people I worked with, so she constantly seemed to be lurking in the shadows.

I went to a wedding in Nashville over Labor Day and when I came back I told her I had met a girl and we were going to try a long distance relationship.  (Thanks, Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress, for being my imaginary girlfriend!)  She tried to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal, she even said she had started going back to church and so couldn’t hook up anymore anyways.  But even that didn’t stop her completely.  She would text occasionally, saying she missed me and asking how things were going with my new girlfriend.  Depending on my mood (or how drunk I was), I would make something up, building my cover story with highs and lows, good times and fights.

Meanwhile, her friend BJ had moved across country to New York, and we were texting on a semi-regular basis.  As I promised in an earlier post, someday I will tell you the story of how I taught her to deepthroat when she came home for the holidays.  It’s a story with a much happier ending than this one!  But BJ, whose friendship with Momo has more or less faded away, informed me that Momo is a certified sex addict; she’s been in counseling for it!  So all that shit about never having given a blow job, not being experienced?  Yeah, all bullshit.  The girl is fucking Looney Tunes!

I had one final relapse sometime around November or December.  I hadn’t had any action in awhile, and it gets fucking cold here in Utah, so when she texted me one night I said I had broken up with my imaginary girlfriend and asked if she wanted to come over.  She was at my door instantly and within minutes was naked on my bed giving me a blow job.  But by now I knew it was a huge mistake, and after she failed to make me cum again I sent her home and started ignoring her texts.

Now that I have a real-life girlfriend I donn’t even have to lie.  I told her I had moved on and she needed to as well.  The messages still haven’t stopped, but they are becoming less frequent, and I think as long as I don’t wake the bear she will eventually move on.

Or maybe she’ll cut off my penis in my sleep…

Anyone for a Threesome??

Well, my blog is almost three months old and I’m sad to report that I am not yet as popular as Tucker Max.  My 50-60 hits a day barely register as a blip on the blogging landscape.  My buddy Gotham has been tutoring me on the fine art of Twitter and using it to drive traffic, but so far response has been pretty soft.  (Please refer to my very first blog for my true feelings on Twitter.)

But I am slowly learning.  For instance, I’ve been tracking how people are finding my site.  Outside of friends, family and my loyal subscribers (all 3 of you), I’m getting the majority of my hits from search engines.  And over 80% of those hits have come from one search word…

Threesome.

I made one off-hand, joking reference to threesomes in my Free Agents of Love blog.  And that one word is responsible for nearly all of my hits from strangers.

So, obviously, what America really wants to read about is threesomes.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any stories of my own about threesomes (much to my chagrin), so I guess I’ll have to do the next best thing.  I’ll just throw in the word “threesome” as many times as possible in all my future posts.

In other news, the first weekend of the NCAA tournament was entertaining as always.  I picked Kansas to win it all, and although Illinois gave them a good run Sunday, their threesome of Markieff Morris, Marcus Morris and Tyshawn Taylor were just too much.

In hockey, my beloved Buffalo Sabres looked unbeatable Saturday night in dismantling Atlanta 8-2.  And they were cruising to another victory Sunday against Nashville, leading 3-1, when they gave up a threesome of goals in the final 2:27 of regulation and then overtime.  The Sabres should still make the playoffs but expecting them to make any noise in the first round is probably wishful thinking.  It will be another short-lived playoff beard for me this year.

Free Agents of Love

I have always contended that being in a relationship is akin to being a Restricted Free Agent.  The problem with this argument is 1) Most women don’t know what the hell a RFA is, and 2) Even most people who understand the NFL’s CBA can’t quite grasp the concept of someone in a committed relationship being a “free agent.”  So, for the sake of both women who don’t understand free agency and men who don’t understand relationships, here is the definitive comparison of relationships to the world of professional sports contract negotiations.

#1) When you’re single, you’re an Unrestricted Free Agent (duh).  This is the most obvious analogy.  When you’re single you’re free to pursue any team (i.e. piece of tail) you want to fall in the sack with.  Whether that team is interested in you is a different matter.  Occasionally a truly coveted asset will find themselves a UFA (at the end of a long contract, or due to a parting of ways with your old team), but usually if you’re an Unrestricted Free Agent it’s because nobody thinks you’re worth a whole helluva lot.

#2) When you enter into a relationship you become a Restricted Free Agent.  Although you are technically with someone, you are free to explore other options, you just can’t act upon them without giving fair warning to your partner.  In other words, the person you are dating has “right of first refusal.”  Although you are not locked into anything (you can be free as a bird with one simple break up conversation), societal norms and common decency demand that you inform your current partner of any outside offers and give them the chance to match that offer.

“Matching” an offer can take many different forms.  Maybe your partner isn’t fulfilling your needs– mentally, emotionally or sexually.  Maybe you have a chance with someone so ridiculously hot and out of your league that this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  Or maybe you’ve been offered a chance at a threesome.  These are all perfectly legitimate reasons to consider signing up with another team.  But remember, you have to give your current team a chance to match the offer.  And who knows, maybe your girlfriend will surprise you and match your threesome just to keep you under contract!

#3) Sometimes, after a lengthy courtship and months or even years of dating, there comes a point where you have to make a drastic decision on the course of your future.  It’s put up or shut up time.  You either have to walk away from the relationship or move to the next level.  That next level, of course, is getting engaged.  This is the equivalent of the Franchise Tag.  In football, teams can slap the Franchise Tag on a player and lock them up for one more year, during which time the player gets paid very handsomely (the average of the top 5 players at his position), and they are unable to look elsewhere or even talk to another team for that year.

The only difference between getting engaged and the Franchise Tag is that both parties have a say in getting engaged.  One person proposes, the other either accepts or denies.  With the Franchise Tag a team applies it to a player and there’s nothing they can do about it for one year.  But other than that they’re identical.  When you’re Franchised or engaged, there’s really no way out.  Breaking an engagement can be done, but it’s a long and painful process.  It will require alienating not just your partner but all of his/her family, all your mutual friends, everyone that bought you an engagement gift, etc. etc.  In other words, the “fans.”  For all intents and purposes you’re locked in for about a year.

If you’re happy with this arrangement, great.  This is just the first step to a long term deal.  If you prove your worth to your mate, then you’re ready for the next step…

#4) Marriage is the proverbial Long Term Contract.  Unless you’re a celebrity or you were drunk in Vegas, there’s no quick and easy way out of marriage.  Even if everything goes to total shit within two weeks of getting hitched, you can count on a couple years of pain and suffering before you can finally break out of that multi-year deal.  Basically, you’re stuck.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound too terrible.  Most marriages, like most Long Term Contracts, are mutually beneficial to both sides, make both parties extremely happy, and bring years of joy to not just both parties involved but their “fans” too.  But the fact remains that you’re locked in.  Don’t even think about looking to greener pastures.  To do so will only harm your relationship irrevocably and damage what should be the best years of your playing career.

#5) The Long Term Contract is important for another reason too.  Most all athletes will at some point suffer a serious injury that threatens their career.  A long term deal gives you security that you won’t be left without a team, alone and penniless.

In the Game of Life, pregnancy is that serious injury.  It’s a season-ending and possibly career-threatening injury.  How’s that, you ask?  Simple.  For women it’s fairly obvious: pregnancy ravages your body for at least 9 months, and some women just never recover their looks period.  On top of that, emotionally it makes you a wreck.  And lastly, having a kid is like tying a ball and chain round your ankle; any man who isn’t the father is going to view that excess baggage with a wary eye before jumping into any sort of Long Term Contract.  Not saying it can’t happen, but the deck is stacked against you.

For men, the damage to your body isn’t as severe (although who doesn’t know a man that let his workouts go to shit as soon as he was a daddy?), but the emotional component and the baggage of being a single dad are just as prevalent for a man as a woman.

So there you have it.  Everything in sports is a life analogy.  Or, more precisely, everything in life is a sports analogy.  Now get out there and find your Long Term Contract!

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Edit: It’s been brought to my attention that the final line of my post (the “get out there and find your LTC.”) could be construed as gushy, sappy and I-want-to-fall-in-love-ish.  That was not my intent at all.  Remember, this is the guy who’s been single for over 98% of his life.  I’m not good at relationships, and what’s more, I do not believe AT ALL in trying to force one.  When it happens it happens.  That last line was just my normal, typical smart ass sense of humor.  I apologize if I made anyone feel like I was pimping for Hallmark.