So my butch, Ace, has been dating me and my now-boyfriend Mercury for a hot minute. We have had a running gag for about the duration of our collective relationship that one of us is Ace's "smart boyfriend", and the other is his "hot boyfriend". This mostly started out as a snarky jab on Ace's part, calling the MS in Marine Science boyfriend the hot one, but once we established that this was a Dichotomy in which only one of us could hold a title at a time, me and Merc both started gunning for Hot Boyfriend. And it's been a deeply silly back and forth ever since.

Usually, the title swaps off when one of us does something sufficiently foolish, though we've also had rare occasions where someone has earned the Smart title, like when Mercury figured out a hands-free way to use a heating pad on his shoulder for important pain relief. Well-deserved. However, we've recently come into a problem - I've done a three-for-three combo of Dumb Shit that's so powerful, I may have ruined the game.

To wit, in the past two weeks, I have:

1) Touched Quinn with my bare unwashed hands after handling an actively moldering potato
2) Exploded a plate in the microwave by overheating it (I was following directions for chicken tenders, but neglected to adjust the time for a single tender instead of the recommended 3-4)
3) Bit one of my cat's toy strings when Quinn dangled it in front of my face for a laugh

With a performance like that, it would take a borderline-catastrophic incident on Mercury's part to put him back in the running for Hot Boyfriend. And that is too dangerous a condition to stand. So we've now called a brief moratorium on the hot boyfriend/smart boyfriend game, until the statue of limitations on my November-fuckery has elapsed and we can start with a clean slate once more. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my extremely dubious crown, and hoping for a slightly less batshit December. Or maybe January. A guy can dream.