when my hands were choking you last night
First of all, we have a couch that reeks of Courtni's boss's ass. The girls got it last fall and Febrezed it all the time but it still stinks, and I soaked it in Febreze on Sunday when we got it and now there is this fetid cloying fat guy ass and Fresh Rain smell that just kind of hovers in a humid shit-cloud. Mediacom took away the $163 back balance and charged us twice for our actual services instead, and I have no food. I should have just slept at work.
And. One of the people on my Friends list (you know who you are!) recently told a story about how he surprised his new girlfriend with a carpet picnic--candles, wine, all the stops. My first reaction was, oh, vomit. This caught be by surprise, and I decided this reaction was worth some reflection. I asked my friends, "Would you like it if you came home after work to a candle-lit home-cooked dinner?" (I chose not to confound my results with the lesbian contingent--women who love each other in any sense do very kind things for one another as a matter of course, and that is why we rule the world.) One after another giggled and blushed and thought about what she would name their 2.8 children. So I had to ask myself, why does being treated what most people consider "like a princess" repel me so? What does that say? And more importantly, what does that mean? What follows is my resulting defense of the non-romantic women in the world, and my explanation for why we'll probably all come out okay in the end.
Romantic gestures are just that--gestures. They are not usually meaningful actions and they are most definitely not promises. Romantic gestures, like any kindness, show that someone is thinking about us and wants to make us feel good. It isn't exclusive to any particular kind of relationship, and it does not substitute for more substantial displays of affection. (These include, but are not limited to: treating you with respect on a day-to-day basis, listening, and acting the same in public or around friends as when you are alone.) Without these things, gestures mean dick. I would rather wake up to find a brown bag on the counter with turkey and cheese with lettuce and tomato on wheat sliced diagonally and an orange and a diet coke once in awhile than come home to a candle-lit dinner every single night. Someone who knows what I like and takes care of me and lets me return the favor? That is a keeper.
I suspect that romantic egalitarianism correlates with financial and emotional independence. Women who want to be lavished with romantic gestures also, by definition, want to be lavished with attention and, to an extent, money. I know the girls I asked well enough to know that the ones who most enthusiastically desire to be treated like princesses are the ones who are least likely to respond in kind--it is a very one-sided fantasy, a fantasy of being rescued from a tower that beats us over the heads from the moment we're born. If I ever believed in it, it must have stopped when I was about four, because the idea of being doted on like a toy poodle makes me uncomfortable as hell. Or maybe because I don't know a single adult relationship that has survived without a good deal of work. My father is the farthest thing from a romantic, and my mother loves him anyway. She loves him because of the person he is, not the husband he is, and because she knows that on the rare occasion he says something like "I couldn't breathe if you left," it is absolutely profoundly real. Flowers just don't cut it, and they are not even the palest substitute for genuine things.
We want to paint men into two camps--romantics and jerks. I don't think so. I think there are real guys who want to be treated just as well as any girl does. Love is about two people, not one. But if I have learned anything, I know that all you really need is you. And the rest is just the spaces between.
And. One of the people on my Friends list (you know who you are!) recently told a story about how he surprised his new girlfriend with a carpet picnic--candles, wine, all the stops. My first reaction was, oh, vomit. This caught be by surprise, and I decided this reaction was worth some reflection. I asked my friends, "Would you like it if you came home after work to a candle-lit home-cooked dinner?" (I chose not to confound my results with the lesbian contingent--women who love each other in any sense do very kind things for one another as a matter of course, and that is why we rule the world.) One after another giggled and blushed and thought about what she would name their 2.8 children. So I had to ask myself, why does being treated what most people consider "like a princess" repel me so? What does that say? And more importantly, what does that mean? What follows is my resulting defense of the non-romantic women in the world, and my explanation for why we'll probably all come out okay in the end.
Romantic gestures are just that--gestures. They are not usually meaningful actions and they are most definitely not promises. Romantic gestures, like any kindness, show that someone is thinking about us and wants to make us feel good. It isn't exclusive to any particular kind of relationship, and it does not substitute for more substantial displays of affection. (These include, but are not limited to: treating you with respect on a day-to-day basis, listening, and acting the same in public or around friends as when you are alone.) Without these things, gestures mean dick. I would rather wake up to find a brown bag on the counter with turkey and cheese with lettuce and tomato on wheat sliced diagonally and an orange and a diet coke once in awhile than come home to a candle-lit dinner every single night. Someone who knows what I like and takes care of me and lets me return the favor? That is a keeper.
I suspect that romantic egalitarianism correlates with financial and emotional independence. Women who want to be lavished with romantic gestures also, by definition, want to be lavished with attention and, to an extent, money. I know the girls I asked well enough to know that the ones who most enthusiastically desire to be treated like princesses are the ones who are least likely to respond in kind--it is a very one-sided fantasy, a fantasy of being rescued from a tower that beats us over the heads from the moment we're born. If I ever believed in it, it must have stopped when I was about four, because the idea of being doted on like a toy poodle makes me uncomfortable as hell. Or maybe because I don't know a single adult relationship that has survived without a good deal of work. My father is the farthest thing from a romantic, and my mother loves him anyway. She loves him because of the person he is, not the husband he is, and because she knows that on the rare occasion he says something like "I couldn't breathe if you left," it is absolutely profoundly real. Flowers just don't cut it, and they are not even the palest substitute for genuine things.
We want to paint men into two camps--romantics and jerks. I don't think so. I think there are real guys who want to be treated just as well as any girl does. Love is about two people, not one. But if I have learned anything, I know that all you really need is you. And the rest is just the spaces between.