David Jett Explains Red Flags
Yeah, I'm talking about you.
Years ago, I was invited to a lavish Christmas party hosted by a giant media company (tv, radio.) A beautiful woman caught my eye, and I worked my way over to her and started chatting her up. My hair was a lot longer than it is now, and she complimented me on it. She said she would like to grow her hair out long, but it grew slowly due to the number of anti-depressants she was on. Let me state that I have no problem with people taking anti-depressants, or any medication that improves their quality of life. However, maybe this is not something you bring up to a person you have known for 30 seconds. If she told me this right off, what were the secrets she was holding back? Geez, charm me a little first before we jump right into that.
Another time I was at a dance club. I found myself next to a cute woman. We started talking and she told me her cousin from Atlanta was in town visiting and they were out for drinks and dancing. I mentioned that I had travelled many times to Atlanta for both work and personal reasons. She said, “yeah, Atlanta is ok. Except for all the ******’s.” I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what racial slur she used. She was not only racist, but because I’m white, assumed I was, too. As soon as that came out of her mouth, and without saying a further thing to her, I turned and rudely walked away from her. As far as red flags go, being openly racist is right up there. That’s also the same reason no decent woman should date Hulk Hogan.
The term “red flag” is used in racing to announce, “EXTREME DANGER, STOP IMMEDIATELY” This past year saw a Formula 1 event in which driver George Russell had a dramatic crash late in the race. Russell was relatively unharmed, but his car was close to a turn in the track. He desperately called for a red flag on the radio to alert other drivers to stop immediately. Russell didn’t want to be obliterated by high-speed cars crashing into him. Instead of calling a red flag, race officials, in a controversial move, used the yellow flag which means reduce speed and be prepared to change direction. Russell was in a position where he needed drivers to immediately stop.
Russell said afterwards: “It’s not a pleasant place to be in the middle of a high-speed corner on the racing line… It doesn't sound like a lot but you can have three cars coming around the corner in the space of 10 seconds. When you're doing 250km/h in a corner and there's a car in the middle of the road, I was really quite worried.”
“Red Flag” is also a term commonly used by people in potential relationships. It means that the person you are interested in may have some qualities that could derail the relationship at best, or end up with you in jail at worst. You see someone you want to date, that person says or does something that calls for a red flag. It’s a sign you may want to stop immediately.
Red Flags are often obvious. So why do so many people ignore these signs and plow full steam ahead around the corner, possibly crashing into another driver? Why do so many people call for a yellow flag instead of a red flag?
I went out on a first date with a woman. We had only met one time before and it was a chance meeting at a bar. The night was pleasant enough. We went out for drinks and then back to her place. We were hanging out and she began talking about making an appointment with a plastic surgeon. Seems there was some stuff she wanted done to her face (there was nothing wrong with her face and she was quite pretty, but whatevs.) Then she launches into a story. Seems she had been hit in the nose by a beer bottle (don’t ask) and that it left a scar that would require plastic surgery. Prior to getting her nose fixed, she had been at a bar and said that two younger women were staring and laughing at her. As she’s telling me this story, she’s now in the middle of a drunk, ugly-crying jag. The girls had called her “Scarface!” (I could not see a scar on her nose. I guess she got it fixed.) Then, and get ready for this, as she’s still bawling her brains out, she says “them calling me Scarface has traumatized me ever since it happened…11 years ago!” What the actual fuck?! This was enough of a red flag for me that I knew I wasn’t asking her out again. (Full disclosure: she also said she thought I was very handsome but didn’t think I was particularly funny. I was done with her right then regardless of the Scarface story.)
Sometimes you date someone you may not have much in common with outside of having fun together. But then sometimes you meet someone who has so much in common with you, it’s like the opposite of a red flag. It’s a green flag! All engines go!! And then, fuck, the red flags come out. I was a manager at Tower Records many years ago. There was a customer, a woman my approximate age, who was into all the same cool music as me. I don’t think I had ever dated anyone who liked all of the music I liked. Our tastes aligned so perfectly. I went out on a first (and only) date with her. I decided that in order to make a good first impression, I wouldn’t drink or smoke as much as I might normally.
I prefer getting to know someone in casual conversation. She started in on me like it was an interrogation. “Do you dogs or cats?” “What’s your favorite cereal?” “Do you like peanut butter?” “Do you like movies?” Not a certain type of movie, just “movies.” My head was about to explode. “Do you prefer unicorns or fairies?” Bitch, I don’t know! Quit asking me questions! About 15 minutes into this date I was doing shots and lighting cigs like I was Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.
On top of investigating me like she was on Law & Order SVU, she told me she was afraid and anxious over any kind of public display of affection, including kissing. She had been married previously and told me she spent days in turmoil before the wedding because she didn’t see how she could kiss her new husband in front of all those people. Let me state that again. She was afraid to kiss her new husband during the fucking wedding ceremony. I can’t even with this shit. That was our only date.
Here's a big red flag that I knew about but completely ignored: a girl I dated and eventually lived with at one point was an ex-stripper. Let’s all guess how that turned out. But she was fun, as you would imagine. One night we were out for a concert held downtown and afterwards we went to eat at a bistro in a fancy hotel. Long pickles came with our sandwiches. She seductively ate hers like she was giving it a blow job. I hate pickles so she ate mine in the same way. It became obvious that the kitchen staff (and probably everyone within a 3 mile radius) was eagerly watching this entire show because when she finished my pickle, they brought her a whole plate of them. Obviously, she was fun, but with such a big red flag, why did I get involved with her? I was young and she was an ex-stripper. Duh. But there’s another reason. I’ll get into that later.
She did have a thing I later called “stripper mentality.” It was a complete obsession with things or people which could change at a moment’s notice due to something inconsequential. It was an ability to do anything with anyone, especially things of a sexual nature, no matter what the consequences. She would justify any decision she made, right or wrong, by placing the blame for that decision on another person. She was just living her life and if she somehow hurt you, that was your fault, not hers. If she felt guilty, it wasn’t that she did something wrong or hurtful, it was that someone else was making her feel that way. If you try to break up with her, she will say “I will do anything you want me to do!” This is such a red flag, and I knew it. If anyone says, “I will do anything you want me to do,” run. They don’t mean it. That phrase is used by someone who wants to keep the status quo for the time being, generally until they get involved with someone else. There’s only one other woman I’ve dated that I thought had “stripper mentality” and she wasn’t a stripper, ex or otherwise.
I was older at the point I met this next woman. In her life, she ricocheted from one obsession to the next. She spent a lot of her time in high school drinking, smoking weed, and passing guys around with her girlfriends. On several occasions, she had casual sex with a guy in a room full of other people. This was followed by a complete change of course in which she became super religious, attending church and Christian rallies and concerts on the regular. Eventually, she had an affair with a married man from her church. His wife found out and they were all called in to speak to the pastor. The wife stayed with her husband but was so upset that she forced her cheating guy to sell their house, and they moved to a different area. (I assume some of the fornication had taken place in their house.)
At the time that I met her, she had a boyfriend. After I had known her for a couple of years she started telling me private things about him. She complained about him constantly and would even tell me when he would come over to her house to have sex with her. Details of how sex was initiated, how she had to be in a certain position to orgasm because he wasn’t that well endowed. How she wasn’t in the mood for him but just gave in to it cause ultimately, she “needed some dick.”
She said she wanted to break up with him. Then, things started to get flirty between us. She would lie to her boyfriend, who had picked up that something was off. She would tell him she had stuff to do when what she was really doing was sitting around her house, drinking, texting with me, and sending me risqué pics. I ended things between us on two different occasions because I didn’t want to be involved with someone with a boyfriend. She eventually broke up with him and we picked back up and started really fooling around. Several months later, she started being dishonest and outright lying to me. I could tell because I knew her playbook. It made me think that she may have been lying to me from the start. We eventually stopped seeing each other and she got back together with the original boyfriend. I would assume she is still lying to him to this day about things that happened the first time they were together.
It’s no surprise she eventually (or immediately) lied to me, it’s her thing. But knowing this about her, why did I get involved with her? Am I an idiot? Probably. I’m somewhat embarrassed I let her into my life in any way in the first place, even as a friend. But that’s not the reason I ignored her red flags. I’ll get into the real reason later.
Not everything is a red flag to everyone. Maybe a red flag to me might seem minor to you. The character Seinfeld once broke up with a woman because he didn’t like the way she ate peas. But here are the TOP TEN RED FLAGS EVERYONE SHOULD AVOID:
1. If your date tries to run you over with her car.
2. Your date says she may or may not have murdered someone and it’s none of your business.
3. A guy reveals that he is not into porn, except for “animal stuff.”
4. A potential date tells you about his new business idea and describes it as “an Uber service for girls aged 10-16.”
5. A potential date has been to 23 concerts by the band Phish.
6. A guy you met has bragged that he has never read an entire book in his life.
7. He’s really not that close to his mom except when they take showers together.
8. Watches documentaries on World War 2 and roots for Hitler.
9. They have a TikTok video of themselves dancing pinned to the top of their Linked In profile.
10. He owns one or more tight satin shirts with images of snakes and wolves and shit.
So, you might ask, if people see red flags in other people, why are these people still hooking up? Well, some people are just idiots. Or some people may have more red flags than the other person (a couple needs to be balanced in their red flags.) For most people, though, the answer is simple, and you already know it. You just really enjoy spending time with that person. You hear them say stuff like “I was really young then,” or “I’ve matured the last few years,” or “I’ve changed and I’m not that person anymore.” Guess what? They are still that person.
The truth is when you find someone who makes you feel happy, you will ignore a lot of shit. Instead of calling for a red flag for EXTREME DANGER, STOP IMMEDIATELY, you call for a yellow flag to PROCEED WITH CAUTION and hope you can survive the car wreck.
Red flags can really tell you a lot about a person. And if you get involved, and it ends, you miss the person you thought they had become, not the person the red flags pointed them to still being. At least that’s what I read on some chick’s Instagram.
POSTSCRIPT: if you read my essay about AI, you know I’ve been playing around with an AI music and lyric generator app called Donna. I decided to do one for this post. I fed a few phrases and descriptions into a text prompt box and within 2 minutes it came up with a song, including lyrics. Here’s the deal: I thought it would be funny. It really wasn’t. It’s actually a little harsh. I instructed the AI to do a country song. It sounded really good. By that I mean, it sounded like a bad country song that would be played on the radio. Maybe some Post Malone country thing. Again, it wasn’t good, but it sounded real. At that point, I had a decision to make. What if a woman I wrote about in this essay somehow heard it? That’s not likely. I’m not exactly Taylor Swift doing songs about her ex’s. But what if it happened. And even though I only put in a few phrases and AI just came up with 80% of it, would I want a woman to think that this song is indicative of what I think about her now? My answer ended up being, “yes, that’s what I think now.” So, here’s the song!