Personal Ad Tease #8: Lawz

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When you read this, you may think that Lawz should be categorized as a Friend Zone. However, I can't really say she was much of a friend and she was kind of responsible for messing some stuff up in my life and I'm certain she knew she was messing stuff up. A real friend wouldn't do that.

I met Lawz through a personal ad that ran in the Penny Saver. I found I preferred it over the San Diego Reader because there weren't so many listings to go through. And they had a tendency to be women who were likely less picky about how they go about choosing prospective boyfriends. (Those women in the Reader were only interested in READING!)

I can't recall what Lawz' ad said, except that she was 29 years old. She called me back and we talked for awhile. She was currently unemployed and living with her mother. One of her past jobs was working for a dating service that used telemarketing to get their clients. The employees would receive a pile of leads each night and they had to try to sell memberships to their services. They got their leads by sending out surveys to people who were looking to date. But it was a high-pressure situation. The big problem was that if a client met someone through the service, they wouldn't use it anymore. If they had problems not meeting anyone, they would stop subscribing. But these people would still show up in the pile of leads. (I may have been desperate to meet someone, but not so desperate that I would send some company money every month to go through a series of date failures.)

Even though we had a good time talking on the phone together, I was having a difficult time getting her to agree to meet in person. She seemed interested in me, but kept shooting down any suggestion for getting something to eat, see some live music or just pick a place and time see each other face to face. But at one point during a conversation, she said something to the effect that she'd always wanted to see the Rob Lowe sex tape that had been circulating around (without the internet) in 1990. Guess what? I actually had a copy! All of a sudden, it was no problem for her to figure out a time and place to meet me.

We agreed to meet at some restaurant that had a happy hour. We saw each other in the parking lot and knew right away by our descriptions of ourselves. What did she look like? Well, if you've ever heard the song "1985" by Bowling for Soup, you'd swear it was about her. She was skinny, had blonde hair that she styled into a widow's peak. She looked like she saw no need to change anything about her appearance in the previous decade. And that was where her brain was stuck as well. She was all into the 80s hair bands and didn't care much for the more recent grunge music.

We quickly hugged and went inside the restaurant. We ate and drank the happy hour offerings while we talked. She actually liked my long hair, but it was so hard to read whether she liked me. We sat on opposite sides of a round booth the whole time. We did visit for about an hour before she said she had to go and asked for the tape. (I knew ahead of time we weren't going to be watching it together.) We would make arrangements to meet again so I could get the tape back.

We talked on the phone a few times after that. She was very funny and engaging on the phone, but I still couldn't get her to go out and do anything. She'd rather sit at home on a Saturday night and watch HBO with her mother than go out and do something that probably wouldn't cost any money. (I'd figured out how to do this for several months.) We did meet again so she could return the tape. Later conversations with her revealed that she was talking to other guys from the ad, but I was the only one she met twice. Apparently, they weren't getting anywhere with her, either.

I learned a lot about her during our phone conversations. One thing that ticked me off was that she would never admit when she was wrong. If she said something that wasn't factual and I provided the facts, she would say, "That's not the way I understand (or heard) it." I'd be willing to bet that she was capable of becoming an anti-vaxxer and responding to evidence by saying, "That's not what Jenny McCarthy said!" She's probably posting inaccurate memes on Facebook now and counters comments providing the truth with, "That's not what I was told!"

Another odd thing about her was that she appeared to be into bisexual men, or men who appeared to be bi-sexual. She once asked me, "Did you know there's a movie in which Hugh Grant kisses another guy?" I said, "Yeah, it's 'Maurice.' I've seen it before." "You know, that was such a big turn-on for me, seeing two guys kissing." Within the next couple of weeks, I had seen "Nine Months." I told her, "Hugh Grant kisses a guy in his new film!" "Really?" "Yeah, it's Tom Arnold!" "Oh, that really doesn't do it for me!"

Something else is that she was on Level 6 of Sexual Discreetness. She told me about how she had sex once with this guy just to see what it was like to be with someone that large. And she went into a lot of detail about the experience, almost enough for me to create a Level 6.5, but that's already covered in the other categories.

She told me that while she had sexual relations with several men, there was only one man she was ever really sexually attracted to. He was a 40-year-old musician. He and his band still had dreams of becoming successful and continued to pursue those dreams. They had an on-again, off-again relationship. I guess he liked the way she acted like a groupie, but something would happen and they would break up, only to get back together again later on. However, he had another girlfriend in the same sort of situation, so he kept bouncing back and forth between these two women.

She said she had written him a letter to try to renew the relationship and was on pins and needles wondering if he had received it and if he was going to call her. I think that he did get in contact with her, but she couldn't get things to happen. (Now she knows how all the guys who responded to her ad feel.)

A couple of months later, I got an actual girlfriend, who moved in with me. (More about her in the future!) I continued to talk to Lawz and she would call up and talk to my girlfriend when I wasn't at home. This led to some major issues when that relationship had its big first falling out. I got mad at Lawz for instigating some of it and didn't want to talk to her anymore. (However, I have to acknowledge that the same problems would have arisen without her involvement.)

Several months later, my girlfriend told me that Lawz had called and wanted to talk to me. She gave me the number. I called Lawz, but she said she didn't call me. (It turned out that my girlfriend had been listening to old messages on my answering machine and heard one from Lawz, thinking it was new.) However, Lawz updated me on what had happened to her recently. She had met some guy and they were about to get married. She said that she had taken him to a performance of a certain well-known bisexual performer and had actually gotten her fiance to kiss that performer on the lips.

I wished her luck with everything and figured I wasn't going to talk to her again. The very next day, I was at Fashion Valley and I ran into her. She was surprised by the coincidence. She was with her fiance. He was at about my level of attractiveness and sort of nerdy. He wore glasses and his hair was much shorter than mine, but I couldn't see that bisexual celebrity having any real desire to kiss him. Again, I wished the two of them the best of luck and went about my business.

I never had contact with Lawz again. I don't recall her last name, so I'm unable to locate her on the Internet. I have a feeling that she never had kids, but I'm certain she still wears her hair the same way.

Looking back, I realized I should have done things a lot differently with Lawz. If I could re-live that first phone conversation, I would just hang up on her once I wasn't able to get her to commit to meet in person, even without the Rob Lowe tape. But I was desperate for a girlfriend. If I was single today, I would definitely know when something was a lost cause.

I know what you've been wondering this whole time: How did I get my hands on the Rob Lowe tape? In 1990, Landmark Theatres in Denver was preparing for its annual Christmas party. Both the Mayan and Esquire were going to produce videos to show at the party. Our team had slapped something together, but we still needed to record an audio track for it. We didn't get it ready in time. Thinking that the Esquire was going to have something to show, the Mayan House Manager got a copy of the Rob Lowe tape and said he was going to present it as our video that we supposedly put together. Yes, he was going to show porn, and there were a couple of employees under 18.

The Esquire never did a video, either, and we never showed any videos at the party. But I took possession of the tape. I didn't watch it until three years later, when my brother Loyd came for a visit. The quality was cruddy, but you could tell what was going on. At the end of the tape, the Manager had edited in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Lawz watched the tape with a male friend and they about died of laughter when it came on. Later, my girlfriend accidentally came across the tape and labeled it "Rob Lowe f***ing Bugs Bunny." However, she somehow wrecked the tape so it wouldn't play anymore.

I miss that tape more than I miss Lawz.