Cutting the Cord

So I’ve been thinking a lot in the past 24 hours about conflicting signals.

The “fall of Baghdad” has come with one of the largest asterisks in recent history, so far as I can tell. For all the 72 point font headlines declaring the city to be liberated, we have as many stories underneath which rightly point out that while much has been gained, much still needs to be gained. The White House is correctly playing this; no bravado, a sense of accomplishment, but also a continued sense of purpose. I’ve been pretty much down the middle on the entire issue, which you can read here and here, and it’s nice to not see Bush play into the “John Wayne” archetype than I imagine many liberals feared. The Boston Globe features pictures of Iraqis dancing in the streets on the front page, yet on the inside pages shows pictures of Marines under heavy fire. The juxtaposition is striking. There’s a synaptic break between the headline and the reality.

Speaking of juxtapositions, y’all women can get jiggy with the conflicting signals as well.

(Oooh, is he comparing warfare to relationships? Hey, love is a battlefield. You want warblogging, I’d suggest another site.)

The Commander mentioned below of his attendance at the worst rock show ever: a performance by Ripcord. I regret to inform everyone that it is entirely my fault that Tim attended that showw. And it’s really a girl’s fault that I was there in the first place. Tim had a car, I didn’t, so I begged him to take me to impress this girl.

Why would I want to impress this girl? Well, she was cute, worked on my floor, and she invited me to go. I had been single at this point for about a year, and while I never usually minded being single, about once a month, I became moody and annoyed about my inability to land a date. Dating PMS, I guess.

So boom, I get the invite, I get the Commander, we hope in his Saturn for some shady bar straight out of “The Accused”. Now, the band featured this girl, another 20-something female singer, and four old white dudes. Both females featured excellent pipes, and the girl in question also featured some insanely hot leather pants. Unfortunately, the boys in Ripcord fancied themselves singers as well, and unleashed a sonic assault the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the last Yoko Ono album.

Anyways, cut to the chase, in between sets I finally get up the courage to ask her out. I was leaving my job in a week or so, so we wouldn’t be working together anymore. No potential awkwardness there. Plus, I had driven (OK, Tim had driven me) 30 minutes just to see her, so I was in prime “oh, I’ll take pity on this poor boy” mode. The timing was perfect, and lo, she said yes, she’d love to go out sometime.

I email her about 3 days later (per the “Swingers” rule), see if the tone of our emails would change, and lo, they hadn’t. Good sign. Finally I try to set a date, for that Friday. She emails me back, “Oh, this weekend isn’t good, I’m hanging out with my boyfriend.”

HUH?

I’d love to say this was an isolated incident, but it wasn’t---had about 3-4 women around this time say they’d like to go on a date, but when pressed for an actual, well, DATE, they invented some excuse to not go. The girl above had a boyfriend, another had about 5 grandmothers die, another joined the Peace Corps and, last time I check, was installing wells in Ghana. Just odd.

Again with the "HUH?"

Now, I understand it’s not easy to flat out reject someone, especially face to face. However, I’d love to offer these few perspectives:

• It’s hard enough to get up the guts to ask someone out on a date, but usually, these boys ain’t smitten to the point of having floral arrangements picked out before they’ve asked you. In each of the cases mentioned above, I met a girl, something in me said, “Hmm, I’d like to see if this could go somewhere,” and I asked them. Rejection isn’t easy, but...
• …Get over yourself! In a nice way, of course, but your capacity to crush us by saying no to our dating proposal is usually limited. Unless of course we as men are psychos in which case by all means you should be saying no.
• Leading us on, however, is an excellent way to take our psyches and twist them around like a lower intestine. If you’d like to baffle and confuse, however, by all means go for it.

A simple “That’s really sweet, but no,” will generally do the trick. We won't like it, but (hopefully) respect it. It clears the air. No ambiguity=a good thing. I know Ghana needs clean water as much as any other country, but really, we men will be OK. It’s like the philosopher Sporty Spice said: “Tell me whatcha want, whatcha really really want.”

To sum up---we men don’t do well with juxtaposition. We’re not mentally equipped to deal with it. We’re very used to a one-to-one relationship of words and actions. It’s not easy to make the leap from the text of “Yes, I’d love to go out with you” to the subtext of “Just…can’t…think…of good way…to escape this…”

We're but a simple race. Handle with care.

Posted by Ryan McGee at April 10, 2003 11:00 AM