Well, the other day was interesting, wasn’t it?
Been hard to think of a follow-up. Not necessarily a sequel, but something sequential. Big difference. Have to think of it like a big, literary mix-tape. Well, you don’t HAVE to, I don’t run an autocracy here (in the kitchen, tho, HOO BOY, watch yo’ self). But still, you can’t go and spill your guts one day and simply make fun of Britney “My Mom Loved My Lesbian Kiss” Spears the next. Sorta like putting Metallica and Amy Grant back to back on a tape. Just a bad idea. Too jarring.
A lot of what I talked about had been discussed before, both here and elsewhere. Different only in the specifics. The theme’s always the same. And the fact that we always come back around to the same problems intrigues me. Not in the way that Shrinky Dinks intrigue me, mind you. More in that “Man, if I could figure out even one of the 15 or so Great Problems Facing Interpersonal Relationship, I could make some serious coin and ALWAYS get a Biggie size Diet Coke.”
So I turned to Nick Hornby, as I often do, to explain the basic scenario for me. His economy irks me. Says the things I think in simple prose that cuts through the rambling BS that I own a patent on. He writes in “High Fidelity”:
“It would be nice to think that as I’ve got older times have changes, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, reactions sharper, instincts more developed.”
Well, as Thom Yorke would retort, “Nice dream.”
Well, we can interchange “males” with “females” in the above quote and have it work just as nicely. Anyways, in this passage, the first-person narrator is bemoaning the fact that his life, and more precisely, the rules of engagement between the sexes, and somehow fixed in stone around the age of 11, right around the time when slugging someone silly was a sign you wanted to “go steady” with them. No one quite knew what “going steady” was, but right around 5th grade, everyone became occupied with it. Sort of a game of cultural chicken where everyone tried to glean clues off one another without tipping their hand. No one could admit they didn’t know what was going on, and no one could help anyone else understand. It was like a younger version of the U.S. Congress.
What I remember most clearly about 5th grade, and the ensuing, oh, 16 years since, is acutely sensing the dichotomy between myself and “cool”. Some people are born with blonde hair. Others with brown eyes. And yet others have “cool”. In 5th grade, as know, the line between “cool” and “arrogant bastard” is a thin, slippery one. But then, as now, it’s all a tacit, implicit agreement between a certain social circle as to what the pecking order of that particular circle is. No one questions the validity of the circle itself, just as no one bothered to find out what was such a big deal out of “going steady”. You wanted to go steady; you wanted to be cool. The gene to be cool is on the 13th chromosome. The gene that tells you that your 13th chromosome’s taking the short social bus is on the 14th. (That’s one of Crick and Watson’s lesser known discoveries.)
I remember vividly that there were roughly 10 “cool” boys and 10 “cool” girls, and within each a Top Ten ranking system not unlike a Casey Kasem countdown. “And this week, number 6 with a bullet after scoring three touchdowns in the afterschool pickup game on Tuesday, Jeremy!” Shows like “Survivor” are such big hits because we’ve all lived and died by the notion of being voted out of a tribe. The only thing you feared more than not being in the cool circle was being kicked out of the cool circle. I knew kids who would have shot their birth mother in the face with a shotgun that not get invited to one of the “cool” parties.
Navigating the dual world was, to say the least, a challenge. You had to be in with the guys to be in the girls. We still didn’t quite know what to do with the girls, other than act like even bigger morons than we were. To boot, I was at best a Top 20 single. Hardly a smash hit. The easiest way to get cool was to, for all intents and purposes, emulate and ape though determined to be the “My Heart Will Go On” smashes of the group.
Flash forward to high school…college…and while the size and scope of the circles change, the basic tenets still remain. The in strive to stay in, and we on the outside strive to get in. It’s like a low-brow version of “Behind the Music”: everyone strives for that which we can’t possibly know until we’re there, and then, once “there”, we find that we’re really nowhere different at all; it’s just that everyone else looks at us differently.
It’s a slant of outside perception; that’s all it is. I can go get an extreme makeover, gussy up my apartment all “Queer Eye” style, and any new reaction will simply be a reaction to the external. And yes, there’s something to be said about improving the outside to improve the inside, but that only holds any water if you yourself feel the change. If getting a facial makes you feel good about yourself, rock on; if it makes someone simply like you more, well, than it’s the emperor’s new facial, hunny bunny.
To be “popular” or “cool” is merely to have the label placed upon said person It’s, to the never-ending frustration of those assigned such labels, completely out their hands. As such, they must seek constant reassurance from the outside world of their status. Maybe that’s why we take such delight in taking down those people on reality shows; what are these contestants but the very worst attention-seeking kid in our junior high? Who wouldn’t like to see these people get their comeuppance? Back in the day, you couldn’t speak out against them, since it was akin to telling Don Corleone he had man-boobs. Bad. Idea. Now, from the security of your couch or your water cooler, you can exact some sort of vicarious revenge, decades after the fact.
How this all ties into the Hornby quote: dating, from the time the fateful words “going steady” through “reaching second base” through “unhooking her bra” into “three-way in the barn with your substitute teacher”, is just another facet of external assignments getting in the way of two people trying to figure out if they wanna cuddle on a couch on a Friday night. If I meet a girl I like, my first instinct is to completely mold myself into the person I feel she wants to date, figuring I’ll eventually let the real me grow on her like a fungus until she's too annoyed from scratching and lets “me” stick around. In the meantime, of course, I’ll play the game. “Oooh, an Ann Coulter book signing! Fun!” “Yes, I’d love to watch the Cooking Network!” “Yanni! Sweet!”
I never stop to think if they are playing the same game. I don’t, because I automatically place myself in the lower rung, needing to ascend to their level. Figure it’s me who needs to improve to keep them interested. I’m always seemingly “too much” of X, “not enough” of Y. I’m like a soup that’s consistently making Emeril shout words that aren’t “BAM”. More like “DAMN”. I need more salt. Bit of parsley. But the last girl liked salt; this one likes parsley. And I switched the recipe at the wrong time.
Couldn’t let the basic ingredients just present themselves. Most of us can’t. Easier to get rejected for something you’re not that to be shot down for who you are.
It’s only natural to feel inadequate around someone you like. We desire that which we lack, and quite often, the people we’re attracted t have qualities we wish ourselves to possess. Since we don’t, we wish to surround ourselves with those who do. But we can never really “have” them, and as such, we feel ashamed, inadequate, and thus convinced this person will want nothing to with us. I’ve gone through dozens of relationships and breakups with women who had no idea of the path we had taken…in my mind. You go through the whole course: the courtship, the honeymoon, that first twinge of discord, the first fight, the self-doubt, the “I guess I really didn’t know you after all”, and soon she’s moved in with a layer/kung fu black belt who also plays electric guitar. You know, that old song and dance.
Here’s a more earthbound example: I work in downtown Boston, in the heart of the business district. See people in their three-piece suits. Going to power lunches. Women in smart skirts, pressed shirts. Carrying their cell-phones, carrying the aura of importance, of maturity. Of confidence. Me? I walk past them in my denim shorts and flannel shirt over an Olympia Sports T-shirt.
I’m a jeans and t-shirt guy. Always have been, always will be. Every once in a while I catch a beautiful women walk past me in her business best and wish I didn’t look so schlubby at that moment. But most of the time, I feel pretty comfortable in my own skin and my own looks. I’d rather get a laugh from a “Star Wars” joke than a look for my pleated pants. Course, that means I’m meeting far fewer people than the average Joe Trousers, but that’s not me. I’m not too interested in meeting lots of new people.
And there’s the thing. It’s about, for me, not feeling like I have since the 5th grade. About stepping into my own skin more often. About recognizing that while my life current is far from peaches and cream, it’s hardly terrible, in the grand scheme. Some would call it bull-headedness; I’d call it independence.
I don’t have everything I want right now. And I’m not supposed to. Tough lesson to swallow, but it’s always there, staring me in the face. I’m sipping a glass of red wine, listening to “From the Choirgirl Hotel” in a pretty well-furnished apartment in the most expensive apartment market in the country. I maybe shouldn’t be dating right now. It would be impossible for a girl to get to know me right now. I’m just getting to know myself.
Soon enough, though. It need not be a complete breakthrough on my part. Just a bit. Day by day. I get it more than a did last week, which is more than I understood a month ago, and certainly leap years beyond the confusion of last New Year’s Eve. I maybe even know a thing or two I want. Just have to be patient. It might come to me. Might not. In a way, it’s sort of irrelevant.
I started down a path in March. Wasn’t aware of a path, let alone a destination. The latter is unclear still, but the path’s fairly delineated. Edges out towards the horizon. This is what I meant a few weeks ago by “propulsive apathy”. Moving forward, unclear of the destination, but intuitively knowing I’m on my way towards something better.
Currently I’m alone. People have been hopping and on and off. I’ve sometimes strayed, and had to find my way back. All part of the journey. The end might be a new job. A new city. New relationship. Hard to tell. Impossible to tell. Not worth guessing. Spent almost twenty years trying to place assignments of worth of external objects. Have to take a bit more time assigning my own worth.
Hey, if you think I’m cool, I won’t disagree. If you don’t think that, it’s all good. And if you wanna go steady, well, tell me what the hell that means and I'll think about it, OK?
Posted by Ryan McGee at September 09, 2003 10:36 PM