Dear Sars,

You’re the coolest. Seriously. Anyway, my question: I’m in eighth grade, and my friend Lindsay is suffering under the iron fist of a
really crappy math teacher (Mr. K). Though I don’t have him personally, I’ve heard he frequently gives graded assignments over material that hasn’t been covered in class yet, and refuses to answer questions (“If you don’t know this already, it’s not my problem”). Recently, while he was teaching, one person made a snarky comment, and Mr. K said, “Okay, since obviously no one wants to pay attention, you’ll all have to teach this section to yourselves.” Mmm-hmm. A fine example of responsible teaching if ever there was one. Of course, no one really understood the section at all, so now Lindsay and some of her other friends in that class are trying to get everyone to deliberately fail the test over the section they “taught to themselves.”

I know it’s not exactly any of my business, but this really pisses me off (Mr. K’s so-called teaching, that is, not Lindsay and Co. trying to fail the test). Is there anything that Lindsay can do, or are teachers just allowed to behave like asswipes?

Sign me,
I Can’t Believe He’s Not Fired!

Dear Sars,

I’m a 20-year-old girl. I’ve been aware for the last few years that I’m probably bisexual, but I never did anything about it. In fact, after the initial period of discovery, in which I tried to explore the local lesbian scene (and failed to enjoy it), I just pushed the whole thing away, figuring that sticking to men is simpler.

Recently, however, I fell for a woman again, and this time, I don’t feel like ignoring it. She’s a co-worker (although we don’t work too closely together, so the danger of future awkwardness is not an issue), a few years older than I am, wonderfully intelligent, confident, and talkative. We’ve become friends, and I know that she dates men. In addition, she’s quite open and entirely “gay-friendly,” so chances are that if she were bisexual I’d know by now. However, people could say the exact same thing about me, and they would be wrong. Besides, no matter how slim my chances are, I (a) haven’t met anyone this wonderful (male or female) in years, and (b) am totally sick of being passive and denying my emotions.

I need to find out if she’s into women, obviously — but I have no idea how that can be accomplished without letting her know I’m attracted to her. Hitting on her when I don’t even know if she likes girls seems like such a lame thing to do. Not to mention horribly scary, and holding the potential to nip what could be a great friendship in the bud. Isn’t there an alternative? Or should I be logical, admit that the chances are against it, and forget the whole thing?

I’m afraid, and I’m afraid that my fear is clouding my judgment, and/or that my feelings for this girl and my loneliness are clouding my judgment from the opposite direction. I know I can solve this myself eventually, but I’d love to hear your, uh, unclouded opinion.

Never Been Kissed (By A Girl)

Hi, Sars.

I work in an academic library cataloging books. Twice a year, I catalog the
theses of M.A. and M.F.A. candidates. My problem is that, invariably, when I
use the word “theses” in conversation about my work, people begin to laugh.
Yes, yes, it sounds very much like the word “feces.” I get it. Is there some
other word I can use? Is there some way to deter people from snarfing when I
say the word?

Thanks.

Cataloger, not scataloger

Dear Sars —

I have a problem with my closest friend — I’ll call her “J.” Over the
past six months or so, J. has become a totally unbearable drunk. Not
in a drinking-alone, messing-up-her-life, needs-to-go-to-rehab kind
of way. It would actually be an easier problem to solve if that was
the case — we’d stage a little Bev-9er-style intervention and get
her some professional help. No, this is more delicate. What I mean
when I say that she’s become an unbearable drunk is that, lately, she
starts acting like such an IDIOT when she has a few drinks that I
don’t want to be around her. And it’s not that I don’t drink. I do,
and no more or less than she does (maybe five or six drinks when we go out
on a weekend night). But though I’m sure I can be as loud,
semi-obnoxious, and absurd as the next girl who’s had a few, she’s
something completely different…

She starts needing to be the center of attention. She gets really
inappropriately touchy-feely: dancing up against you like a dog
humping your leg, becoming a close talker, and, my favorite, coming
up and breathing on your neck or your cheek in a way that she says is
“like a little kitty” and I say is “like one of the most disturbing
things I’ve ever experienced.” She starts talking in this really bad
little breathy high-pitched voice. She can’t carry on an interesting
conversation (and remember, I’m drunk at this point too! She
wouldn’t have to go too far to get to “interesting”!). Sometimes
she’ll spend the night flirting with other people — strangers or
acquaintances, boys or girls — and ignoring her boyfriend (of three
years, with whom she’s living). On those nights at least she’s not
molesting me, but it’s still disturbing; her boyfriend is a friend of
mine too. Oh, and I almost forgot: She gets super-sensitive and
defensive, and can’t take a joke or any amount of teasing. She’ll do
or say something silly/dumb, me and our other girlfriends will
chide her about it, and she’ll be all, “Oh, ha ha! Very funny!” and
walk away. Sounds like a really fun person to spend an evening with,
huh?

I was hoping that it was just a phase that would right itself, but it
doesn’t seem to be. And then something happened last Friday that made
me go from annoyed/disappointed to pissed off. I was DJing at a
little club downtown, and because it was my “professional debut”
(read: the first time that I was DJing outside of my living room), a
bunch of friends had come in from out of town to be there for me. It
was going great, everybody dancing and having fun, and then halfway
through my set, my friend B. came up and said she was really sorry but
she had to go. I was totally perplexed, but I knew B. must have a
really good reason to have to leave (she’s one of my dearest friends
and always there for me), and I couldn’t really take the time to
figure it out in the middle of spinning, so I said goodbye and
figured I’d talk to her about it later.

B. and I didn’t talk over the
weekend for one reason or another, and then I got an email from her
yesterday saying again that she’s really sorry she had to leave, but
that J. was really annoying the hell out of her and she had to get
out of there. Apparently J. had been pinching B.’s butt, dancing all
over her, cutting in when she was dancing with other people, and
generally being a menace — after ignoring B. for the first hour of
her being there to flirt with a bunch of guys. Then, when B. decided
she needed to pay her tab at the bar and think about leaving because
she wasn’t having a good time anymore, J. followed her to the bar
screaming “B.! B.!”, and then went up, whined about B. leaving, and
tried to kiss her full on the lips, which B. sidestepped. (A note:
It’s not that my friends and I aren’t physically affectionate people.
We are — hugging, kissing on the cheek, dancing with each other in a
non-humping way, leaning on each other on the couch…it’s just
that there are lines, and J. crosses them.) So one of my closest
friends, who came here from out of town not only to support me but
also to have fun with our whole group of friends, had to leave the
party early because of J.’s behavior. And our other friend A., who B.
sent the email to as well, admitted in her reply that sometimes when
she leaves an evening early, it’s because she can’t deal with J. anymore.

So I don’t know what to do. Even before the B. incident, I had been
avoiding going out to have drinks with just J. because I knew I
wouldn’t have fun. This hasn’t ruined our friendship or anything — we
do plenty of things together that don’t involve the demon liquor. But
inevitably we have gone out, and will continue to go out, in a group
of friends for some drinks. In these cases, I’ve just talked to my
other friends — the rest of whom are able to handle drinking without
morphing into total disasters — and found ways of having as little
contact with her as possible. But I’ve been thinking that this isn’t
very fair of me — she’s my closest friend, and if I have a problem
with her, I should talk to her about it rather than just avoiding the
issue, and her. (And, now, talking about it with our other friends.)
But how do you tactfully say to someone, “You act like an idiot when
you drink, and it makes us not want to be around you”?Should I just
bust out and say exactly that? Remember the whole oversensitive issue
(see “Oh, ha ha! Very funny!”, above) — it’s not as bad when she’s
sober, but it does linger a little. I just don’t know if it’s
possible to bring the issue up without causing a big rift in our
friendship.

Help, please.

That Girl’s friend

O wise, wonderful and amusing Sars, goddess who inspires the roaring laughter that emanates from my cubicle and scares the guy across the hall every Tuesday —

I have a two-part roommate problem.My roommate’s a total pill and a featherhead, but I’m moving in under five months, so I can live with that.However, there is one pretty critical matter…

My roommate’s responsible for mailing the rent, but she’s mailed the rent late enough to warrant a grumpy phone call from the landlord a couple of times, and has bounced a couple of rent checks since we’ve lived here as well.(Thank god, we write separate checks…)My name isn’t on the lease, so I haven’t been assertive about it, but I can’t just ignore it anymore.Is the best thing just for me to mail my check entirely separately from hers for the remainder of our lease?How do I bring this up with her (for a third time) without losing my temper?I dread confrontation, and she can be pretty prickly and nasty.

As a related matter, I’ll need the landlord as a reference when I move.Should I discuss the situation with him?I don’t want to seem like a whiny non-adult who blames her problems on others, but if the late/bounced payments are going to come up when a new landlord calls the current one, the current landlord would be a much more credible source of the information regarding the appropriate placement of fault, than, say, me…right?I want to make sure I don’t get blamed unfairly for lateness, but I’m not sure how to approach this.

Basically, I’m concerned with two things: the landlord’s opinion of me, and the potential after-affects of the situation.I guess I probably should’ve taken over mailing the rent, but she assured me that it would never happen again after the last time, and I believed her.Does this make me responsible for what happened, or just stupid?And either way, how do I repair the damage/make sure it doesn’t happen again?You always seem to have the handle on the most adult and effective way to handle stuff like this, and I just haven’t got a clue.

Little Miss Punctuality