Important Scientific Research

Fatalism. I have a lot to say about dating, I have words to yell and punch and absorb. And I have to tell you about it. This isn’t a diary because I have to tell you about it, I need you to breathe this same air and be as confused.
I just finished Muriel Barbery’s book The Elegance of the Hedgehog this morning; this is a book about small beauty and people looking for connection and loneliness. It’s really lovely and I recommend you read it. That’s one.
But mostly, this weekend starting Thursday, I’ve been running a kind of experiment -- its genesis comes from watching way too much Sex and the City and spending time looking for truth in that fiction. I tried to blitzkrieg my skin, certain habits, postures and attitudes, facial expressions and quirks. I went out on three different nights imitating another kind of girl (the kind on Sex and the City) because there is a limited amount of external locus rationale that can satisfy an intelligent single woman. I wore a red dress, and later a hickey, and later a green dress, and I nodded and smiled and let myself float on tides and act real un-classy in a few different places I can probably never return to again.
Did no one ever tell you that dating is bizarre? That hooking up in bars is bizarre? There is nothing natural at all about either experience. Let's switch, you'll see. Go.

You’re on a date. You’re trying to hold on to your person, I mean your purse, it’s an uphill battle. You think you know what the other brain-attached-to-mouth is thinking but are far too afraid to suggest this with your own face. People hand you things in cans and bottles and slowly the walls erode and the worl blurs, becomes a painting of rain. And here you stand on an opened continent with what could be an open heart -- do you remember from before? Did it feel like this?
He doesn’t touch you until all the cliché cornerstones have been covered (do you want to come back to my place for a while? Do you want to hang out in my room?). The points of contact are not quite electric, contain no seismic charge, but they’re nice. It’s a surprise that being with someone else can just be nice. It seems like it ought to be both more and less amazing at the same time; the gentle mediocrity is a bracing reminder that you’re a) no angel and b) no prototype.
Sleeping is the best. Never mind what you tell the girls later. He’s a good sleeper, and he seems to like exploring you gently even if he says nothing and you very rarely find your eyes touching. It’s another surprise that this part, the timid tiptoe towards dawn, is unwelcome in a way. It’s not so awkward to be watched putting underwear on, it’s not so vile to kiss someone else with morning mouth, it’s best to be asked “are you sure you have to leave right now?” And nice, nice, nice, like sweet white silk, like little old ladies, like smiles across space -- this has been nice. No one’s earth is shattered, maybe gently rocked. It’s easy to be brave.
Of course it’s also easy to start wishing, even as early as Chambers Street, that this had been more than nice. This is no epiphany and it’s not a loss, but there’s work ahead, you see. Love is rare. And it must be real, if only because the word ‘nice’ exists.
But how fine to simmer in a magnificent You, a WOMAN capable of self-preservation and contact and very low-stakes smalltalk. Walk that walk of shame, sashay that walk of shame, giggle and titter at You, misunderstand You, marvel at You. Bat away small longing for an idea of a mother you’ve never known -- not because the real thing isn’t fabulous, but because you’re up to imagining. Fight off impulses to braid your hair in pigtails and rewind whole reams of years like the Willy Wonka VHS we needed to replace twice. Brush your teeth instead. Live instead. If you don’t live like this, you’ll die like that, and while that’s not OBJECTIVELY the worst case scenario no one wants to do the subtraction.
And in bed, now, you, me, sit with a cell phone very close because you never know who you’ll have reeled in for keeps. Maybe the GUY FROM THE BAR (and yet, how laughable. People don't MEET people in BARS, do they??) who left a mark on your neck but called you to make sure you were home safe, said he liked you, said he ‘had a good feeling about you’, even told you he loved you (drunk) and walked you all the way up to the train doors closing. Maybe the smiley gentleman who bought you a fine dinner and made for fine conversation but bid you goodbye in the rain anyways, an hour later, anyways. Archetypes. Maybe the boy who’s arms you woke up in, who seemed sort of humorless but liked all the same books, who kissed you very gently.
To demonstrate a metaphor, please understand me: we can be close and cold, we can be brave and foolish, it can all be hilariously easy or wildly complicated. Try to tell your own stories to your own friends. Nod at one another so it’s clear you understand. But no one understands (I mean, people rarely understand) because there is air between even the cells in your own body. And I begin to wonder if understanding is the point, if fulfillment of a supposed want is the point, if there is a point, what is the point. You looking for skin? Can be done. You want dinner, you want Rolodex names? Cake. You looking for an earth shaker? Seems you could wait and fare just the same, that is if ‘settling’ for you is one of the first two. And of course ‘settling’ becomes compounded by stakes. Could you die alone? Would you? It won’t be your choice in an obvious way, but…you know.
And it takes a very specific kind of person to even consider the prospect of dying alone before they turn twenty-six, it does, John Cusack, I hear ya. It takes a very specific kind of person to consider why we think this prospect is so scary. It takes specific people to believe in love and enjoy blind dates and read certain authors and drink certain drinks -- there’s your argument for the six billion. We’re not the same, none of us, we don't even want the same things. That's a grapple. That's a bitch. So what am I doing with you? What do I want from you? Why should I wait for you?