7 Thing I Miss about French Men

Typecasting · by Marina Khorosh

“Do you miss Paris?” This is a question I hear approximately every week. (For those of you who are new to this marvel of a blog, I moved back from Paris to New York five months ago.) My internal defense mechanism immediately triggers a flashback to my former Parisian HSBC teller, a human allergen of a man who used to take his sweet time finishing his goûter (afternoon snack), before reluctantly buzzing me in and then taking another twenty minutes to deposit my check, a process that required more signatures than an identity change – a vision that causes me to quickly shake my head and sing an ode to American customer service.

Confessions of an Attention Junkie

Musings of the Mind · by Marina Khorosh

One, two, three, four. These are the guys I have messaging me at the moment. One is a long-term friend with occasional six-whiskey-deep-when-the-full-moon-strikes-benefits. Two is cool, but is currently far away in Moscow, providing daydream material for daydreams of a Great Escape. Three and four, who are more unsaved numbers in my phone than actual identifiable human beings, are guys I’m not really interested in, but text back and forth with, just because.

Just because what? Just because I enjoy texting random half-strangers updates about my day? Not really. Just because I think that, one day, some miracle will happen and will make me view them in a new light? Most likely not. While no shrink has been consulted on this grave issue, I have a secret suspicion that the real reason I may be keeping this mini Raya army around is because I’m nurturing some underlying insecurity with constant male attention.

Sunday Kind of Love: Ajiri Aki and Thomas Buchwalder

Sunday Kind of Love · by Marina Khorosh

Ajiri and Thomas at their Nigerian wedding ceremony, October 2011

As most of you know, Dbag Dating is far from a Mommy Blog. While I’m sure the occasional mother lands on this URL in pursuit of some fun-tertainment á la “This is what I don’t miss”, the majority of us here are still figuring life out. That said, ever so often, I will meet a woman who appears to have attained that covetable personal and professional tandem, evoking a spark of curiosity within me: How does she do it? Was it always this way? What can I – and you guys, consecutively – learn from her? One such woman happens to be my dear friend Ajiri Aki, a Parisian expat who’s list of accomplishments is endless: Wife, mother, author of bestselling coffee table book “Where’s Karl”, and creator of the Parisian expat’s guide to mommyhood, Manna Paris, just to name a few! Annoyed with her mere existence? I would be too, if it wasn’t for the fact that she is also an exceptionally cool human being. During my last trip to Paris, Ajiri took a few hours out of her crazy schedule to sit down over a bottle of wine and share her personal trajectory, touching on everything, from former Dbag flames, to the experience of meeting her husband, Thomas, to the challenges of expat motherhood, for our latest all-girl edition of Sunday Kind of Love!

Best Date Looks From NYFW

Typecasting · by Marina Khorosh

Today marks the end of NYFW, the week-long party for your Instagram feed that allows you to mentally transport yourself out of winter hibernation mode and into a dynamic time and place where life happens – and, if you are a warm-weather dater like me, where dating happens! To incite some much-needed excitement for the foreseeable future when we are no longer walking human glaciers, your Love Life Guru has curated some of the best date looks spotted on the runways, targeted towards the gentleman of your choosing!

The Story of Papi Mezcal

I Know How To Pick'Em · by Marina Khorosh

Illustration by the amazingly talented Kelcey Vossen.

Going on a sober date is difficult enough.

Going on a sober date with a 45 year-old artist who is chugging down Mezcal like he’s on his first Cancun Spring Break while projecting the sins of his Russian ex-wife on you, is difficult on an entirely new level. Let’s just call it Dante’s Malebolge of dating.

Papi Mezcal and I met as a result of a fleeting experimental mood in which I temporarily tampered with my Raya age settings, one of those momentary lapses of judgment that come from looking at too much Birkin-Gainsbourg paraphernalia. To my credit, he was a young-looking 47, with a punchy slideshow that advertised his numerous tattoos, globetrotting adventures, and overall affinity for all things cool and hip.

Numbers were exchanged, and, by some technological glitch that I have yet to comprehend, he suddenly appeared on my Snapchat feed. This is when I discovered that Papi Mezcal was a true Snapchat wunderkind way beyond (or, in this case, below) his years. Think slow motion videos of ample-bodied security officers walking backwards through airports, holding emoji donuts while simultaneously releasing emoji turds – Gen Z levels of creative genius, really.

How To Get a Valentine in 10 Days

Those Who Can't Do, Teach · by Marina Khorosh

If you live in the Hallmark States of America, as I have the (dubious) fortune of doing these days, chances are that you can’t swing a box of tampons without stumbling across what looks like the rose-toned projectile vomit of a cheap chocolate factory, masquerading as a manifesto of undying love.

(Wow, how bitter did that come out?!)

The truth is that, like most people past the age of sixteen, I could give two loads about Valentine’s Day. (Pardon my soon-to-be-forgotten French.) For the couples, said fête implies obligatory relationship checkmarks in the form of last-minute dinner reservations and overpriced bouquets; for singles, it simply offers an excuse for an extra glass of wine or an extra Gucci splurge or whatever else Hallmark Holidays evoke in those who do not fall under their mass target range. Don’t even get me started on the quadrillion-dollar Valentine’s Day industry, annually serving up processed sugar and poorly-copywritten bullshit without a hint of remorse.

(But, seriously, how angry do I sound?! I am the ANTI-establishment! Like Rihanna!)