I Wanted to Put It On Him, but He Was Like, Naaaaah, I'm Good.

As a general rule, I don't date comics.

Why?

Because comics are sick, broken human beings who can bring nothing but pain to everything and everyone around them.

​However, when I was younger, I did date a comic. Long distance, no less. We were both suicidal drunks with an enthusiasm for coke every now and then, and an inability to communicate productively. But we really dug each other. I mean, he dug other people too, mostly ones he wouldn't remember later, and eventually my best friend, but I was committed to making it work. After all, I was the crazy one, and I had a penchant for running when feelings got involved. So I was trying to be better, trying to work it out, trying to go visit him without sitting in the empty bathtub in the middle of the afternoon in a black lace teddy, thigh highs, and stilettos, drinking warm whiskey straight from the bottle just waiting for him to get home from work so we could fuck in his studio apartment. 

I guess, when you think about it, it was a pretty typical 20-something relationship. 

On one particular trip to visit him in LA, I brought my then best friend. On the drive, we were listening to some Ja Rule, and I was getting seriously excited about being able to put it on my man in a matter of mere hours. She was perplexed by this term: Put it on me. She had no clue what it meant, nor the ability to make use of the context clues provided in the rest of the lyrics, apparently. I guess I couldn't blame her really; she had FOX News as her homepage, so she was obviously allowing the dust to settle in the creases of her brain. Being the type of person that I am though, this only made me want to use this term more regularly, to the point of being absolutely annoying, and make it a theme for our entire weekend and for god knows how long after our return.

In fact, it became this whole fucking thing for me where I reversed the tables; I liked the idea of him putting it on me. And I wanted to tell the world. So our first night in LA, in some shitty but now hip bar in Echo Park or Silverlake or some such place, some bar fabled to have had Bukowski resting his feet on the rail many nights, I began a new commitment to sharing this with the rest of the world through bathroom graffiti. I brought a Sharpie with me everywhere I went and scribed: SO-AND-SO PUT IT ON ME on every bathroom that I entered. Yes. At this point in my life, I thought the best way to communicate my feelings to the object of my affection was to write about him on every single bathroom wall I came in contact with in both LA and Phoenix, until the novelty wore off some months later . . . coinciding with the fact that my then best friend was now putting it on him, though she still wasn't sure what she was doing.

Honestly, there's really no earth-shattering point to this story. I suppose you could say it's just another illustration of my bad dating patterns, or my weird, obsessive habits, but ultimately, it's a celebration of Ja Rule and the role he sometimes plays in our lives. And as I revisit this song on Ja Rule Day, this desire to put it on someone -- and have them put it on me -- still burns deep inside.

​Because, after all, I'm tired of being lonely. So baby boy, put it on me. 

#JaRule
#JaRuleDay
​#PutItOnMe