On the first day of school when I went to my PE class, I met this cute guy and as time passed, I developed a huge massive crush on him. Then just two months ago, one of my friend heard him talking to his friend about me as a pretty cute girl in his PE class. A month later, the same friend heard my crush talking to his another friend about me as a sweet girl and was repeating my name over and over.

Well, just today I went over to this guy's house with two girls and a boy to finish our history homework. While we were working on it, he came up to me when we were alone and said, "Do you like anybody?" All I could answer was this, "Uh...um..." Then after everybody went home and I was waiting for my mom to pick me up at his house, we started talking for about like 30 minutes. While we were talking, his brother came in the room where we were and when he noticed that we were talking, he just said, "Uh...sorry," and left. Few minutes later his older brother came and looked at us for like a nanosecond and just said, "Hi." After about three minutes, his mom came and said "What are you doing?" so he answered, "Talking." His mother left and then his father came and looked at us for like few seconds and then left.

My problem is that when this guy and I talked, my heart was thumping a little faster than usual, but not too fast. But when I go near this guy from my PE class, I get hot and nervous. Now I am all confused about who do I like. What should I do and how do I figure who do I truly like?

Signed,
Tiffany

Dearest Dilemmant Tiffany,

As I understand your dilemma, Tiffany, there are two potential mates in your environment at this time, and you seek to determine which is best. "Best" in this case being clearly a highly subjective term. Is he who has greater genetic potential for your mates best? Or is it he who will protect and care for you when your back is turned to the hungry dark? Perhaps it is he who "makes the bank" who is best, for is money not what makes the world go round after all?

Matters of the female heart were once known to me. It was as if I stared into a still and clear pool. All within that pool, every nuance of motion, was obvious. There was no mystery, but rather perfect beautiful science.

Then came Hazel. My great and true love. My great and true love that came undone on the banks of the Great Lakes . . .

I have a secret for you, miss Tiffany: there are strict rules against mentioning this name, this Hazel name, in my presence. But the Super Tuesday Primary Electioneering Coverage on the news channels and within the Tubes of the Interweb have made me maudlin. My guard, she is relaxed.

Molly was here this eventide, in our Entertainment Room, watching network coverage of the race with Rob. On a bet with Rob she was imbibing one ounce of the whiskeyéd spirits (colloquially: "getting shot") on every occasion that the major news channels disrespected of Barack O'Bama — a bold move, considering the vast, drunken, fighting Irish clan he must command.

As I gazed across the expanse of my lab, and through the arch of the Entertainment Room, watching this pair watch the unfolding coverage, the shifting pixels in variegated saturations of red and blue following the flow and ebb of the electorate's fancy, I thought upon my dear Hazel. In my many years and many lines of work, a great many humans have had the crush upon me. We have exchanged the mails electronique, the tender notes, the sweetmeats and nosegays, and even met "in the person." At that stage, more often than not, there has been the very unpleasantness, when it comes to be shown that they are much balder, or hairier, or older, or the chubbier than their picture indicated, and that I am exactly as much a Giant Squid as my picture indicated. Then there is the terror and the screaming and the headlong fleeing, without concern for accepted laws of pedestrian and traffic interaction. Occasionally, there is death. Very, very, very occasionally there is an unhealthy arousal, about which the less said, the better for all.

On a very, very few occasions we have come together as equals, in a platonic ideal of trust and co-dependance. My Hazel was just such an occasion, and did slip through my grasp, to haunt the Great Lakes, harrowing sailors, crippling ships, and supping upon the recumbent forms of lakeside lovers in the warm summer nights. I can not say why these few occasions occurred, and why they took a path so tragically different from the usual regret, fear, and madness of my "blinded dates."

Finally, as Missouri flipped and then flopped between the more and less masculine runner, I presented unto Molly — now quite intoxicated — your query. I found need to repeat it in successively truncated forms, but when she did finally grasp the question, she did so with gusto.

"What she should do," Molly slurred, tapping a greasy finger upon the intercom's button, "what she should do is this: have sex with some of them — both of them — and stay with whoever . . . whomever? . . . is the best at ringing her bell." On the television, O'Bama's eloquent speech was cut after one minute to show an automobile commercial. Molly groaned and tipped back another tiny glass of Mr. Jameson's Finest Cask-Aged Polar Solvent. "That's my answer: bone them both. A bone-off. It's how everything is decided in this country: By fucking someone."

Rob was then returning from the Men's Room of Elimination, and I pulled him aside. He had heard the tail of her answer, correctly surmised its totality, and shrugged.

"I guess," he said, "That's OK advice. It sounds right. I never had the problem of, you know, like picking between chicks. She could probably just get with whichever whenever she feels like; it's high school. That shit will all come out in the wash. Or the guys will beat the shit out of each other."

Molly shouted incoherently at the televisiual screen, then flopped onto the sofa's couch. Her bottle clattered to the floor and rolled some distance. I asked Rob why he had engaged in a drinking competition with Molly, reminding him in the first that his high tolerance for intoxicants lent an unfair advantage, and reminding him of her woeful history with intoxicating beverage and decision making, such as when she drank of the Schnaps's during a Yuletide passed alone in her home, and then purchased the full set of katana, wakizashi, daito, and tachi from QVC's Home Shopping Network.

"Yeah . . ." he said, face drawn and eyes downturned, "I . . . I thought that she'd maybe, you know, get her swerve on and loosen up, and maybe we'd get together but, she just got really mopey and angry," he looked over his shoulder to where Molly slumped in the easiness of the chair, muttering angrily to herself. "And drunk. Gross drunk. I guess I could feel her up or something . . . Like, she sorta seems like she might be in the mood for an angry fuck but," Rob sighed, "I dunno. I ain't feelin' it, is all."

Anne of the Coulters gamboled and jigged upon the large screen, speaking of the American wisdom and favor for Sir. Hilarity Clin-Ton. Molly snarled and hurled her tiny glass at the screen so that it might shatter to splinters upon the wall four feet starboard of the unit's frame edge. She then demanded that the Coulter perform upon her a sexual act patently impossible in nature.

Rob shrugged. "Yeah, so I'm out. I'm gonna take the tires of her Honda. I'll put 'em back on when I come in, and she can sleep it off in the Boom Room till then. Besides, we paid Art Van for the super-stainmaster coating on that sofa, so if she loses control, it won't be such a big thing. Doubt her bed at home got that."

I suggested that it might be less labor to simply take from her denim pants' pocket the keys to her conveyance. Rob looked over to where Molly snored and grumbled, then shrugged again, "I said I wasn't feelin' it, and so I'm not. Feelin' it."

As for your query, Tiffany. The advice to engage in sexual acts with both mates and to stay with he who is most pleasing in the sack is the advice of the fruit fly. It is shortsighted and hedonistic. Ignore it and Molly, as we all do as she retches her Irish Poison upon the sofa. Approach the choosing of the mate as would you approach any major decision: slowly and with great preparation. Make lists of the qualities both pleasing and displeasing. Make attempts to "hang out" in group situations with both boys. You may even go on short, non-committed outings alone with each sweating teenager, before choosing. Your cards should be kept close to your chest, and your words should be hooded. Play this game carefully, Tiffany, and perhaps your love will not flee to the lakebottom as mine once did.

I Remain,
Your Giant Squid
Editor-in-Chief