Pop the Questions

I often cite pop culture to bolster a point, but tonight I use it instead as inspiration. After viewing and thoroughly enjoying the new teen comedy Easy A, I find myself pondering the relationship between lying and romance. In the film, Emma Stone’s character lies about losing her virginity, causing a spike in popularity, causing more fake sex, causing Olive to become a faux trollop and genuine outcast. Guy weren’t lining up to jump Olive’s bones before hearing she swiped her V-card, but they weren’t offering to take her out after thinking she earned the platinum rewards card either. SPOILER ALERT (if you’ve never before seen a movie): Olive, of course, still ends up with Gossip Girl’s adorable Penn Badgely, so hers isn’t the proper case to study. But I still find myself regarding this question: how much lying is necessary in the dating game?

There is a set of “Rules” floating around the stratosphere that supposedly inform females on the best way - the only way - to catch a man. And not just any man: the right man, the man worth catching. These rules involve a LOT of lying early on in the relationship.

Say no to a date the next day by telling him you’re busy, even if you aren’t. This is supposed to make you unattainable, irresistible, worthy of his pursuit. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I became worthless the moment I ceased to be busy.

Never show a man the extent of your intelligence. Apparently it intimidates him. So I’m doing this to snag a dude who is scared of my top-tier diploma? That seems counterintuitive.

And please, NEVER be sarcastic. Ok, Rules. First my intellect, and now my sarcasm? If I was Samson, you would have just cut my hair and drained me of my strength and crowning achievements. What else am I supposed to attract them with? My grace and poise? Yeah, that’ll work much better.

To me, these games represent the lies people tell at the beginning of a relationship. He might make his job sound a little more important than it actually is, saying he oversees the organization of the entire office, meaning he answers the phones and gets the coffee. In addition to lying about fake plans that didn’t happen the previous Friday, she pretends to like red wine when he suggests ordering a bottle, and is now disguising the way it burns her throat with seemingly greedy gulps. But she really should have just admitted her true feelings, because chances are he only ordered the wine to impress her and would have favored a Heiniken himself. When does this circle of fibbing stop? Does he deflate the number of women he previously slept with? Does she lie about liking his friends, pushing down the doubt of what that might really mean?

When do the lies you tell your date or partner become the lies you tell yourself?

I hardly think you should give your entire self over to a stranger on a first date - I admit there’s something inherently dangerous in that very notion. But why would hold back when there’s a sarcastic quip in the forefront of your mind, just itching to travel down your neurons and out of your mouth? Am I some sort of idiot savant for not seeing the point of that?

But maybe I’m not looking at the big picture, and maybe Easy A’s romance did teach a larger point. Olive’s long-time love was able to see through the transparent rumors and know who she was at her core. He sifted through the lies and was still able to know her. So maybe that’s the point of all the facade building and efforts to impress: to find someone who can wade through your bullshit - wants to wade through your bullshit - and still comes out clean on the other side.

Like sands through the hourglass...

If I’m being honest with myself, there’s really only one guy I’ve met in my life that I can say I actually connected with. He was completely wrong for me - not in a bad boy way but in a situational way - but I connected with him in all the ways that matter. How do I know? Because when things didn’t work, I wasn’t broken in any way. It seems counterintuitive, but sometimes reality is. The situation never made me question myself. 

Every freshman at Boston College is required to take Freshman Writing Seminar, and being the college virgins that we were, we didn’t know good professor from bad - a Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society from a Jack Black in School of Rock. Luckily, I had the counsel of two seniors through a first semester seminar, and they suggested one particular section. I walked into the first day of class, instantly recognizing the guy I had admired from afar at freshman orientation. No, it wasn’t one of my fellow students ... it was my professor. A young professor, mind you - a 26 year old doctoral student. For the sake of anonymity in case this blog can be linked through Google (doubtful), let’s call him Very Hot Professor, or VHP.

An integral part of Freshman Writing Seminar is the weekly conference with your professor, which meant being one-on-one with VHP, which came to mean spending time with someone who got me. VHP always encouraged personal writing, which opened the door to personal conversations. Everything from his days as a BC undergrad and self-professed awkward wallflower, to my disdain for high school, to our favorite Easter candy. No topic was off-limits. Being a man worthy of the acronym VHP, I was hardly the only female student lining up to talk to him after class. There was one particularly clingy girl who probably saw me as a pain in her ass, the way I would linger longer after class to talk to him. But the important thing is that I beat her, right?

It’s important to note that throughout this whole semester, I wouldn’t say I had a crush on him. I just thought he was a decent guy - perhaps the most decent guy I had met aside from my brother. Was I comfortable with him? Yes. I found myself joking about him  stalking me after seeing him twice in one hour around campus (seemed like a funny idea at the time). I also found myself confiding in him when I was going through some tough family issues. He was there for me in a way I’ll never forget. 

On our last day of class we had a pizza party. The rest of my classmates filed out, leaving Clingy Girl and I to duke it out for ultimate supremacy one last time. I finally decided to give up, not having the energy to fight a woman on a mission such as herself. But I was able to get the last laugh when VHP offered to walk me out. Once we were safely out of ear shot, he turned to me and showed me a prayer necklace. He said it was from the nuns that taught him when he was a kid, and they claimed that as long as you wore it, nothing bad could happen to you. Then he gave me that same necklace to keep, along with a very long hug. And that, my friends, was the moment I officially had a crush on him.

The catch: aside from being my professor, VHP was also finishing his last year at BC, with a plan to move on to Michigan State to complete his doctorate degree. I spent the summer trying to pretend it would be easy to forget him, but needless to say that didn’t go well. I emailed him at the beginning of my sophomore year, and we embarked on a year long internet correspondence, trading long tales of our lives about every other week. 

We got to know each other even more without the constraints of the classroom, including our mutual quests for a meaningful relationship. He was broken after his girlfriend of a couple years cheated on him, and I was ... well, much like where I am now. He continued to extoll my writing, as well as my value as a person. I was getting in pretty deep, and one day I was at my internship at a local paper, reading his email, and I decided I couldn’t be silent anymore. There was no reason he was feeling the same way I was, and yet I knew if I didn’t say anything, this could be the type of thing I held onto far too long. I sent him an email saying I was wondering that despite all the reasons it wouldn’t work - age difference, geographic difference, the fact that he was my professor - did he ever think we could possibly be more than friends? I felt relieved the moment I sent it, knowing whatever the answer, I did what I needed to do. The response was expectedly sweet - that yes, because we met when he was my professor, there would always be a certain quality to our relationship that couldn’t transcend friendship. But it was still a no.

The emailing became more sporadic. After graduation, even less frequent. But he had left his mark - every guy I have met since has suffered in comparison. I’d be lying if I said I never hoped that somehow things would change, but the final nail in the coffin came when a few months ago a friend informed me VHP was getting married. It stung, but   only for a few moments. Because he did what every meaningful relationship (chaste and innocent or otherwise) should do - he taught me something about myself.

Getting my pigeons in a row

I sit thinking in a park for about 15 minutes before work. A pigeon is a few feet away from me - a situation that would normally be cause for concern, but today doesn’t seem to phase me. The pigeon pecks at the remnants of a mostly eaten sandwich, looking perplexed at the best way to eat a scrap of turkey. He picks it up in his beak several times, only to find it bounce out moments later. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever wished I could speak bird. I would tell the sorry sack that the best way to get what he wanted was to leave it alone, strategically wearing it down from the edges.

It would be a stretch to say that my aviary observation led to a sudden epiphany, so suffice to say that finding myself identifying with a species that consistently freaks me out sparked a kernel of...something. I was like that bird, and you may think the piece of turkey represents the race of men, but that’s giving them too much credit. No, the piece of turkey is something much bigger: love.

One night a friend was commiserating on my latest romantic hijinx. He told me that I didn’t do anything wrong. He told me that I just want to fall in love. Intriguing hypothesis, don’t you think?

There are two different notions competing for attention in my mind’s eye when it comes to that abstract notion of love and making it my own. Both philosophies reflect pieces of advice I’ve heard time and again. The way I see it, I could:

1. Relax and wait for love to find me. If I had a dollar for every time tried to console me with the sincere statement, “Love comes when you least expect it,” trust me, I’d be a rich woman. That statement probably sounds snarky, but I promise it’s not meant to be. It’s just that to me, that advice is like giving someone a racket and ball and telling them that’s all they need to play their first game of tennis. If I could stop overanalyzing and ‘expecting,’ I would, so the key is to learn how to look at every guy as a potential friend. Nothing more. Should he decide there’s more to our connection, I’m sure he’ll let me know.
2. Keep putting myself out there. This choice takes guts, something I’m not sure I’ll have much of in the coming weeks but it’s never bad to plan ahead. It falls under the category of “No risk brings no reward,” or whatever the cliche phrasing is. But even cliches are rooted in truth, making this a viable plan of action. The problem is going to be knowing the difference between putting myself out there when it’s right and putting myself out there because I’m grasping at straws.

In the awful Pretty Woman semi-sequel, Runaway Bride, Joan Cusak tells Julia Roberts her wedding to Richard Gere didn’t happen because the ducks made a “V” instead of a “W” for wedding. Joan asserted that it’ll finally happen once Julia has all her ducks in a row, which meant figuring out who she was without a man. Maybe there’s another lesson in that for me. Maybe before choosing which path to take, I should focus on getting my ducks in a row. Or pigeons, as the case may be.