Read The New Rules for Blondes for Free Online

else, it’s a great story—just great material.
    And so my Constantine crush developed as a funny, ironic joke—I’d lure him in, make him fall hopelessly in love with me, then walk away with just a funny story of how I wooed a D-list celebrity, and isn’t that (somehow) funny. It would be a spite relationship, really. The romantic version of how I used to collect New Kids on the Block trading cards as a kid or how I currently listen to Nickelback when I work out. It’s just something that I love to hate—it nauseates me, yet I love it. Plus, romancing a D-list celebrity would make great cocktail banter.
    I could see it now. I’d be at a comedian cocktail party somewhere in Brooklyn—probably on a filthy rooftop in Bushwick. I’d be dressed in a black sheath and red pumps, with my voluminous locks forming a halo of blonde perfection, 12 when the subject of heartless romantic manipulation would come up, as it so often does in polite company (right?).
    “You guys have got to hear Selena’s story about wooing a D-list celebrity and then walking away and ruining him,” Heidi would insist to the assembled literary and comedic heavyweights. “Come on, Selena, tell them the story!” she would press me as I cranked a cocktail straw around my dirty vodka martini, like a tiny boat engine in a miniature pond made of delicious brackish booze.
    “Oh, it’s silly—nobody knows who Constantine Maroulis is—”
    “Constantine Maroulis!? From American Idol and Rock of Ages !” my gay friend would exclaim, rattling off Mr. Maroulis’s résumé for the edification of the party.
    “Oh, it was silly,” I’d respond, pretending to be bashful and unimpressed with my own achievement but secretly hoping they’d pry it out of me because this is exactly why I had done it. This exact moment of cocktail chitchat. This moment, on the dot right here, as Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön would say. 13 And thankfully, the assembled people would push me, so I’d share the funny story.
    “Ha—so yeah, so I lured him in with my amazing hair and we hooked up, then I never called him again. It was just a funny thing. Just for fun. What an idiot, right? Fuck him!” I’d laugh.
    “You think that he is losing sleep over you ?” my no-bullshit, uncouth dude friend would ask. “I mean, that’s every dude’s dream! Especially every celebrity’s dream! You find a hot groupie and you hook up with her, then it’s like, ‘See you in hell,’ ya know? I’m sure he has a million groupies lined up and doesn’t even remember who you are.” He had a point. And suddenly my hilarious story of negging a D-list celebrity didn’t seem quite so jazzy anymore.
    But this flash-forward moment of clarity wasn’t going to stop me. I was going to meet Constantine Maroulis and see his dope hair firsthand, even if it meant traveling from New York City to the wilds of New Jersey.
    I carefully read his tweets every day for months, and then in May 2010, I had another outbreak of Constantine Fever. 14 My supportive friend Heidi, who had accompanied me to the understudy Rock of Ages night (back in the summer of 2009), was willing to act as my wing woman once again. But this time we had to get serious. I did extensive research online (constantinemaroulis.com, twitter.com/ConstantineM) and learned that on his rare nights off, Connie performs in a live music concert called “A Night at the Rock Show” with a band. It’s a concert during which he plays covers of other people’s songs in a minimally rock-and-roll atmosphere. Almost like an Epcot experience of a rock-and-roll concert, where it’s basically a simulated rock concert environment, but without the actual smoke, coke, drunk people, antics, and mayhem of a rock concert. “A Night at the Rock Show” would appeal to people who visit Las Vegas and see the Paris and Venetian hotels so that they’ll never need to actually travel to France or Italy, God forbid. A sterile, simulated version of the real