my next boyfriend:

• is going to be taller. he doesn't have to be a giant, but he won't be shorter than me either.
  
• will read books on occasion. it doesn't have to be anything earth-shattering or serious, he can be into all tom clancy, all the time, and i will be happy. tucker max is not that funny, not after the first essay or two. to claim he's your favorite writer makes you a douchebag. why didn't i see that sooner?!
  
• will have dark hair. no more redheads!
  
• won't listen to kid rock, limp bizkit or staind. no nü-metal crapola for this girl anymore!
  
• will brush his teeth every morning and every night. no kidding. it's one thing to sort of slack on the oral hygiene when you live on a boat and work 24+ hours at a time; there is no excuse for it on land. do you know how many times i asked him to brush his teeth? i tried nicely, i tried subtle, i tried downright bitchy and nothing worked.
  
• let's add "use deodorant and soap" to the last point. i'm not going to explain it, you're already grossed out.
• won't stash bottles of liquor around the house for later use.
  
• won't honestly believe that the book of revelation is a true story and that the end of times is near so why worry about global warming?
  
• won't be such a loser. promise.
  
• won't, won't, won't have dumbass shamrock tattoos.
  

the list could go on and on. i feel so impossibly retarded for having fallen for such a retard. in my own defense i'd like to blame alaska, and being a fish out of water. in some ways, being there on the boat was the closest i came to doing actual fieldwork. it was a wild ride, i'll give you that, but it probably went on too long. on the other hand, i did not know he was such a drunk out there; an absence of liquor stores floating on the bering sea helped conceal that pretty well. in retrospect i should have taken his family issues more seriously as well. i didn't want to judge him based on them, but it became fairly evident that he thought they were normal and that screaming matches and having the cops called when you have an argument is par for course. he never saw anything wrong with getting belligerent drunk and humiliating me, he would always just shrug and say, "i was drunk." in our final fight he actually said, "what? that's happened two or three times since i've been here?" um, that's about three times too many, don't you think?

i promise not to talk about this much longer. it's weird having him gone, and i am spending a lot of time thinking of how it all went so wrong, what i did wrong, what i'll do next time, wondering if i even want a next time, all that shit. i feel both down about it and totally exhilarated. it's like that moment right before you draw a picture or write a story; there's that sheet of blank paper and it's gorgeous and lovely and clean and you want to use it but not mess it up.