| Kisses and Sparklers |
[May. 12th, 2008|09:23 am] |
When I was little, I wanted to date Han Solo, Ponch, and Starbuck. Notice a certain trend? Never the good one, never the quiet one -- I always liked the smokers, the drinkers, and the womanizers. I even preferred the Doctor on The Love Boat to Gopher. Leif Garrett over Sean Cassidy because, come on, Leif wore leather pants -- he was no Hardy boy.
It wasn't until a college class that touched briefly on feminist literary criticism that I realized I didn't really want to date those guys. Let's face it, they all chose girls I could never be anyway -- the overly noble Princess Leia, the vaguely slutty and simpering Cassiopeia. The heart of the matter is that I want to be those guys**.
I want to drink and smoke and womanize.*** I want to be dark, complicated and driven by unknowable things.
Check, check, check, check, check. I've got it all except for the manizing**** because while that could have worked ok in the 70's, it was all over by 1981 or so.
My problem has been that I've let myself remain convinced that I needed to be with someone who shared some of this propensity towards darkness in the hopes that they'd understand it. That's all bullshit of course; there can be no understanding. If I understood why I feel compelled to gulp from the whiskey bottle and demand the Eagles, I'd probably be able to stop doing it -- or at least knock it off before I wind up jogging for sobriety at three o'clock in the morning. If I can't suss it out, there's no way some guy who's just as bad as me is going to be able to.
Instead, the situation usually winds up getting flipped on its head. As the relationship starts out, we are both equally mental and all over the bad decision making. As time goes on, my practical working class background starts to come out. There's a reason why even though I have a tendency to drink too much, spend too much and brood too much, I still have a house, a 401K, a savings account, and all the rest. During the week I dry myself out and eat salads. I pay the bills when the cash hits my account so I don't have a chance to burn it. I force myself to get the chores done before I throw away the night on video games and/or moping.
For as bad as I can be, there's something in me that doesn't quite want to wind up dead or on the streets.
Suddenly I'm the one saying, "put down the bottle and put out the fire," and I'm the one making chicken dinners and coming up with cash to pay the tow truck. The relationship never runs up against my anxiety, neurosis or inability to commit, because we never get past his. Men, these men anyway, seem to be so much better at pushing their problems to the front and ignoring their partners' issues. Before I know it, I've become the nag and the nester -- roles that are really completely unnatural to me -- and the relationship has become essentially unlivable.
No more.
Thanks to some gentle nudging from good friends, I've realized that I need my own Princess Leia, or Cassiopeia. To use the modern version of BSG, I need a Lee Adama, Sam Anders, or Leoben. Or maybe all three. At the same time. One for history and truth-telling, one for unconditional love and one for spiritual inspiration and stabbing. And I'll still need the rest of the flight group for getting hammered on Friday nights.
I'm no longer going to date someone with issues and the ability to inflate those issues into something bigger than me and mine. It's my turn to be the dark, moody, conflicted, self-obsessed bastard and I need someone who will gently pry the whiskey bottle from my hand while distracting me with kisses and sparklers.
Now, how do I post that job description on Nerve?
**Thank you, thank you Sci-Fi channel for making my dreams come true. ***I've certainly heard "womanize" a million times, but I've never heard "manize". Is there another word for it? Is it assumed that woman are incapable of it? Or is it just that it's referred to as being "slutty" -- a description that puts the negative action back on the female and takes it away from the untouchable male? ****Wait. Now I think that word just doesn’t work because it's too close to sounding like "mayonnaise" and I really hate mayonnaise. |
|
|