Got game?
Women, men, flirting, sex, relationships, clubs, dating. It is too often just a bullshit game. Oh, I suppose on some level it can't all be bullshit if it is the main focus of our genes, but so often it really is just a bullshit game. Which doesn't mean I never want to play.
But consider people our age for a minute. So often the whole dating/hooking-up game can be described as:
(1) go to a location (party/mall/club/bar/class/quad/etc.).
(2) check out the crowd of opposite sex (or same if you swing that way) while they check you out.
(3) attempt to initiate social interaction with target person (talking/dancing/game-playing/drinking/etc.).
(4) attempt to impress them and determine odds of getting together with them (for another date/for sex/for making out/etc. depending on your goals)
(5) if odds are good, attempt to achieve goal from (4).
(6) repeat as necessary.
At this point I can just hear the protests going up from readers about the oversimplification. Yes, I hear you, cool your jets for a moment. Yes, this is a caricature of a particular type of stereotypical interaction. What about dating or relationships beyond the pick-up-in-[location] you ask? Yes, that exists too. But I think in many ways you can tweak the formula and add time and steps and achieve a similar model. What is my point? I guess it all just feel so fake.
Today in the airport I was perusing books at the terminal bookstore and I read the first chapter of a book called Are Men Necessary by Maureen Dowd, a fellow Washingtonian. Among other things, her first chapter discussed how the sexual revolution had largely failed to dispense with the coy game of courtship. She talked all about how her friends were now coming back to her dated 1950s copy of a book about how to win men and keep them. Essentially it described a version of courtship that was full of innuendo, deception, and playing-hard-to-get.
Then in the Style section of today's Washington Post there was an article from the male perspective on the subject of wingmen. A wingman is the guy who accompanies his buddy and basically helps him win the girl by running interference on other guys and drawing away the target's girlfriends. This is of course not a new concept by any means, to me or to the world in general. But the way this article also described the game part of courtship in a similar way to the Dowd chapter and it just got me thinking. From the article: "The women they approach know exactly what's going on, Jentz says. 'But they like to play dumb about the whole situation. They want to think this is more classy than it seems.' Lauren Faust, who is finishing up at GW this summer, agrees that on one level, women know when they're being scammed. 'But in context it's harder to spot. I'm sure I've been wingmanned and not picked up on it. I can be completely self-absorbed.'"
I was left with a sour taste in my mouth and a desire to transcend the "game." I want something that isn't about putting on airs, bluff and bravado. Or perhaps more accurately, I want to want something more. Because there is definitely a part of me that wants to play too and hopefully get some play in the bargain. Maybe the point is that the game is half the fun. But as someone who just came out a relationship with someone who I think is very much into the game of it while I became interested in just her and not the game, I think I would prefer something more transparent. Even given what I learned in human nature this year about most interactions being all about the survival of genes and whatnot, I think that it is possible to cut through the game. At least is appears to be possible given some rewarding and decidedly real relationships I have observed among my friends and my own wonderful relationship with Steph. It just pains me to see that so much of our human interaction seems so (for lack of a better word) base.