In third grade, I was really popular. It was a fluke, of course. I was not popular in second grade and I was not popular in fourth grade. But in third, I was a princess. I could do no wrong, which was lucky since I wore turquoise stirrup leggings, giant T-shirts, and star-sparklies in my fluffed-up hair to school every day. I guess that was supposed to be hot in 1993. What else must have been hot?
Knowing my multiplication tables faster than anyone else in class, saying the answers too quietly to be heard by anyone other than the linoleum.
Doing real gymnastics on the bars in the playground, even mid-winter, and ignoring everyone else.
Having two best friends who constantly fought over me and wrote notes like: "You are my best friend. Am I your best friend? Check yes or no. Be honest and you can't say maybe I don't know or anything like that."
Not being able to run the mile, or even walk it, to be honest, even though I could do about a hundred cartwheels or backbends on command.
Being really, really tall and skinny and knobbly and pale and awkward.

The point of all this is to say that nobody has any idea what the hell is supposed to be hot at any given time, least of all me. Usually, I am routinely taken in as a human being by other human beings, and either discarded or given more thought. In Indonesia, everybody gave me more thought. I was a bule, and that merited LOTS of thought. I was probably the only one they were going to see for a few years. So, okay. I understand that.

But occasionally I am in the States, looking the same as always, acting the same as always, gangling awkwardly around town and talking really quietly and unassumingly acting rude just by having an expressionless face, and people suddenly start being really interested in me. All at the same time. People start asking me out. And having asked me out, they immediately attempt to make out with me.

I find this situation extremely uncomfortable. I expect that girls who somehow manage to be attractive to people all the time, and not just randomly placed occasional times, know how to deal with this smoothly and effectively, and escape the situation still friends with the attempted maker-outer. I do not. As sexually liberal as I think I am, I just hardly ever particularly want to make out with strangers I just met, and, even worse, I find it amusing as hell when they try, and I have to escape, snickering like some kind of overgrown mutant 7-year-old and making impossible all possible future contact in the process.

This isn't entirely true. I probably would be more receptive to strangers if I thought that they had even the slightest interest in my personality. Who in the world has ever succeeded in impressing a girl by greeting every story she has to tell, everything she has to say, with a prolonged silence and then either a 'this happened to ME' or a 'Hey, do you wanna make out?' Has anyone ever succeeded by doing this? If so, I'd like to hear about it. Do other girls just get magically more and more receptive the more ways you underhandedly try to make out with them without possessing any conversational skills - or any sort of communicative skills, unspoken or otherwise - or any sort of PERSONALITY - whatsoever? No, I want to know. Perhaps they just give up trying to fight the onslaught.

Yes, I'm fully aware that I'm raving, and that I'm likely just suffering from American-dating-practices-culture shock or something. But sometimes I wish I were dumber, and couldn't see through people as well. How do those girls who are in-demand all the time handle knowing that everyone is plotting anything - anything! - to get them into bed? It's a very fucking disconcerting feeling!

Soon, though, I will randomly become not-hot again, through no effort or realization on my part, and this will cease.