…doesn’t ‘elite’ mean ‘good’?
- Jon Stewart.
writing a blog a day sounds like a really fantastic decision for the first twenty minutes after you come up with it. but on the second day, when you haven’t really slept well and there’s no food in the house and you’re mad at your job and you haven’t had a proper deserving target for your unspecified anger all god-damned day, you do not really feel like writing much of anything about anything. you would like to finish your beer and then maybe watch Donnie Yen beat the living bejesus out of six dozen people for no good reason at all over the next ninety minutes and probably have another beer. but I am going to try very hard, for at least a couple of minutes, to keep my word - and only for you do I do this, gentle readers. unfortunately, I am still in a bit of a bad mood, so I will commence to complain for a minute or six about how hard it is to be me. (cliff notes version: it’s hard. compared to what you think is hard, it’s really hard.)
see what I mean? that’s just how it’s going to be today.
the illustrious Moira Phillips recently blogged about the various difficulties of dating people that don’t suck (which you should go read here, because she wrote it and I read it and you can only hope and pray that you might actually become a little cooler via osmosis. you’re welcome, gentle readers.) after reading this fine piece of literature, I thought to myself, ‘son of a bitch, it really is difficult to have standards. perhaps she and I should flee into the countryside only to return with a telekinetic brood that will dominate the planet in our names in theatres this Christmas. she can even name the first one Huckleberry if she’s really set on that, because fuck it, he’s telekinetic. if you mock him on the playground, he can explode your head. in theatres, this Christmas, so give us ten bucks to watch it.’
…but I digress again.
the point I was originally intending to make was that I do empathize with her and with anyone that has ever looked at a member of the opposite sex and thought to themselves very quietly, “I guess this is going to have to do.” it dawned on me some time ago that every relationship I have ever been involved in - anything that was even vaguely relationship-like, in fact - required me to compromise things that really, really should have been held inviolate no matter what (any of my exes that read that sentence will probably take offense to the suggestion that I even understand the meaning of the word ‘compromise’, but they’re always wrong about everything, so I don’t suppose it matters much.) the premise of said compromises has traditionally been that my standards are impossibly high and that there is no way they are ever getting met and I probably will not find any joy in other humans unless I can bring myself to lower the bar.
in retrospect, I am comfortable saying that this was a fucking terrible idea on my part.
I can’t really lower my standards because I want what I damn well want; all I can really do is neglect to mention the majority of them. lowering my standards in pursuit of some nebulous ideal happiness really means that I am still unhappy, but now I am engaged in a variety of conversations slash arguments that are truly madly deeply boring and occasionally having what rapidly degrades into incredibly mediocre sex. at which point I appear to get very angry with the woman in question, but I am actually very angry at myself for attempting yet again to date my preferred version of a girl I had no business being with in the first place.
(unfortunately for said girls, I never seem to remember to mention that last part when all the shouting starts. imagine that!)
so, having tired of this cycle of utter failure, I have taken the past couple of years off from relationships that start with a capital ‘r’ to enjoy the sky blue sky that is my single life and to reaffirm the ultimate value of my god-damn standards. unlike the illustrious Moira Phillips, however, I do not have a psychologically satisfying way to tie off the internal standards debate. I have also tried the waiting without waiting approach and it does not seem to work so well for a dude - yet another ugly act in the farce that is feminism, I think (which will have to wait for its own entry for me to yell at it properly. it may even necessitate a two-parter, because boy does it annoy the hell out of me all the time. goddamn crazy feminists!) by my line of reasoning, if a woman cannot overcome the relatively mild social convention of being the asked instead of the asker in these oh so fucking enlightened times we live in, I would doubt that she is capable of understanding, much less agreeing, with any thoughts I have about pretty much anything important.
but then again, this could (hypothetically, now) produce a situation in which my standards are actually mostly totally met, but said woman is not being as forward as she could possibly be, and maybe I’ve decided to be obstinate about that beyond all reason or sense - nevermind the numerous other objections I can think of that are infinitely more practical and probably very valid. I’ll work all that out later, fuck that. the real trouble is that a girl who meets my impossibly high standards is not falling all over herself to grab my attention.
…that would sound ridiculous if I didn’t already know that I’m right all the time.
so, yes.
in conclusion, being me is really hard.
(nobody go ‘till the god say so:)
No comments:
Post a Comment