John Denver Said it Better: Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
I have always been the kind of girl who says she is not a romantic.
I’ve been known to swear to God that I would be fine with dinner at McDonald’s.
I claim I don’t need jewelry - you could give me homemade potholders as a gift and I’d be just as happy.
I am a simple, low-maintenance, carefree woman of the millennium - I’ve told my men - and in most ways that is the truth.
However, any well practiced participant of this particular art (you know who you are, ladies) knows that each and every one of those statements is a lie.
“I am not a romantic” is the bullshit that we feed our men to take the pressure off of them. It’s a mask we put on in order to de-stress our gents, a costume we don which allows them more fresh air and freedom. Freedom that they should use (we figure) to come up with something doubly brilliant and inspiring with which to eventually impress us.
I am not a romantic.
I could go without candlelit dinners or moonlit walks.
I honestly do not care about diamonds or pearls.
Except for that I totally care.
It is the torturous cross that women must bare from the time of, say, prom, until the day we die. It makes no sense. But the best of men, the ones we are most fond of, the ones we find ourselves following to the ends of the earth, are the men who understand this irony of our existence. The men we prefer are the ones who allow us to blather on about how wonderfully easy going we are, about how little concern we have for earthly possessions, about how our one and only real and true desire is for them to be happy, but then still choose to turn around and surprise us with a trip to Rome.
This portion of the story would be advice to men everywhere except for that I’ve been around a few years and - let’s be honest - there are like…zero men reading this story.
Maybe there are one or two men reading this story, at most.
Three, possibly, but that’s pushing it. Guys? Are you out there? Anybody? Hello?
Bueller?
Right. So, for the two of you men who are reading let me repeat that the men who recognize the ladies’ lie for the necessary guilt-assuager that it is and let it live on while ignoring it completely are the men we fawn over and fall for.
Be one of those men, boys.
If you need a reference, Barney Stinson has it down to a science.
There are other men in this story who have also mastered this particular art, but we must take one step at a time, after all, so as my late Aunt Marge would tell me when I reached prematurely for the cookie jar: cool your jets.
Barney Stinson was sure to do every little thing right when we were dating. He let me complain incessantly when the mood struck me to do so. He gently persuaded me to order the most expensive sort of wine on the menu. He winked at me in amused refusal when I insisted we simply stay home, eat mac and cheese, and watch TV. He got me tickets to the ballet, or to the opera, or to a Mets game, or a Broadway play, always escorting me dressed in three piece suits and understated cologne. He planned walks through Central Park and boat rides in the harbor and it was all of the things we non-romantics secretly hope for.
Eventually about a month and a half into our seeing each other (I know, I know, A MONTH AND A HALF?! Yes. A month and a half,) I called him out on it, leaning over the table in a Mediterranean restaurant, drawn in like so many other women before me by the twinkle in his eye.
“You sure know how to woo a girl, Barney Stinson,” I commented.
He cleared his throat and chuckled at the same time, reaching up to adjust his tie - a move which I found predictably distracting considering we’d been sleeping together for about a month or so and I was completely in lust with him. In Lust, let’s say. Capital L and everything.
I continued, in order to distract myself: “The restaurants, the outings, the hand holding. It’s all very impressive.” Especially, I added silently, since Ann-Who-Walks-Dogs considers herself to be a very plain and ordinary sort of girl.
Ann-Who-Walks-Dogs is not a romantic.
“The science of wooing a woman, Ann, is a delicate balance of well-hidden secrets that I do not plan to divulge. The wooers union would take away my membership,” he assured me and I laughed quietly, hushed and cozy in the corner of the restaurant.
I was smitten, officially.
I was lured in by the mystery of him, the intrigue, the skill and the boyish charm.
The man, at this point, could do practically no wrong. I was ready to leave the dogs behind and follow him to Timbuktu, not that he would ever leave Manhattan to go there. He’d leave Manhattan only to go someplace awesome, and I’m not really sure Timbuktu qualifies. I’ve never been there.
Feeling flirty and confident and a little bit bold, I found myself doing the thing that all women of my particular brand consistently do.
We take that opportunity to ruin everything.
“The science of wooing a woman, huh?” I questioned, “Did Robin teach you how to do this?”
Right.
I know.
Mistake.
HORRIBLE mistake.
An abomination, really.
If we had been in Times Square I am still convinced the electronic billboards would have stopped their advertising to announce it in neon lights:
HUGE MISTAKE.
Why, I wonder, when a man has been nothing but charming - when he has played every card right, when he has yet to disappoint, when he makes that little chill of oh my god ease all the way down a woman’s spine - why, I wonder, must she insist on poking at the one possible weakness she has found?
Ladies?
Any thoughts on this conundrum?
Is this a Garden of Eden thing? Is it a When Harry Met Sally thing? Is it a Jane Austen’s Book Club kind of thing?
Hello?
Anybody?
Bueller?
I have no idea, still to this day, why, but I did this thing that we women sometimes do, and I mentioned Robin’s name and I watched his facial expression twitch. Not enough to draw any firm conclusions, but enough to make me squint at him in consideration.
Enough to make me wonder why we women do this particular kind of thing to ourselves.
“A true talent needs no teacher,” he responded, his eyes on the wine glass in front of him.
A true talent needs no teacher.
I thought it was poignant and witty and ultimately entirely dissatisfying.
And so, I continued: “You mean she was never your girlfriend?”
Yes, this is what we ladies do. We push on. Inisisting, for some reason, to torture everybody involved and make things as awkward as humanly possible. Good things cannot survive under the watchful eye of my brand of female. I just have to pick at all good things until I find something rotten in the State of Denmark.
Again, I watched his facial expression twitch, just a little.
I was riveted and waiting with bated breath.
I was fascinated, frozen, hoping something about his hunched over posture or his downturned eyes or his pulled-too-tight lips would loosen and smile at me. I was waiting, like a moron, for something to happen that might reassure me and my pesky but ever-present insecurities.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” he stated and I felt my eyes squint even further as I watched him, “Robin and I dated for a very brief period of time. But it was a while ago, and it was…um,” he shook his head and I felt my stomach tighten with the feeling that I might vomit at any moment, “a mistake,” he finished quietly, all the while refusing to make eye contact.
At this point if we’d been in Times Square I think the electronic billboards would have stopped their advertising to say “RUN, YOU IDIOT.”
Run.
This man is in love with another woman.
Hit the road and don’t look back.
That’s what my mother would have said also, if she’d been there to see him in that moment.
But, ladies, back me up on this.
That is not what we do.
At least it’s never what I have ever done. I am a highly skilled masochist who doesn’t know heartache until it hits her square in the chest. I chose to hear what he said instead of what he didn’t say and I carried on, swooning at his charm and falling for his wit, not realizing that he never really looked at me the way he looked at her.
You know what I mean?
The man looked at Robin Scherbatsky.
He looked into her.
Under her skin.
Down deep, to her bones.
Staring like she might turn his world upside down with a sneeze.
Our mothers tell us this kind of thing from a young age - like ten or twelve - that we should wait for the man with stars in his eyes. He’ll treat us well. He’ll stay beside us until the day we die. She’d go on and on about the stars in the eyes, my mother.
But she forgot to tell me that if you’ve never seen it, you won’t know what the hell it looks like, and there are piles of things that are close. Lust. Affection. Interest. Amusement. None of these things, though, are star-inducing.
I thought, at the time, that we were a Love Story.
Me and Barney Stinson.
He treated me well.
He understood the duality of my “I am not a romantic” existence.
He was patient and compassionate and doted on me and treated me like a member of the fucking royal family.
But the stars weren’t there when he looked at me - not really, and I had no idea.
It’s painful when you have no idea.
It took a third party to haul me out of my self-created blindness.
An adorable, considerate, and selfishly-motivated third party.
Barney and I went to McLaren’s after paying the bill at that Mediterranean restaurant and the whole gang was there - Robin included, and I found myself studying her intently, comparing myself to her stunning good looks and sharp intelligence, wondering what it was exactly that ended things between her and Barney and whether I was doomed to repeat it.
Luckily Lily and Ted distracted me with questions about the dogs I’d been walking and I forgot to obsess for about an hour or so.
For about an hour I forgot all about the possibility that I should feel threatened and less than and totally insecure.
Then Robin told some mindless joke and Barney laughed a little too hard and it was back with a vengeance.
And the obsessing continued for about two weeks - at which point the previously mentioned unusual events numbered 1 and 2 were revealed to me accidentally.
Then, everything changed.
Chapter 5: The chapter in which elephants enter the room.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
I have always been the kind of girl who says she is not a romantic.
I’ve been known to swear to God that I would be fine with dinner at McDonald’s.
I claim I don’t need jewelry - you could give me homemade potholders as a gift and I’d be just as happy.
I am a simple, low-maintenance, carefree woman of the millennium - I’ve told my men - and in most ways that is the truth.
However, any well practiced participant of this particular art (you know who you are, ladies) knows that each and every one of those statements is a lie.
“I am not a romantic” is the bullshit that we feed our men to take the pressure off of them. It’s a mask we put on in order to de-stress our gents, a costume we don which allows them more fresh air and freedom. Freedom that they should use (we figure) to come up with something doubly brilliant and inspiring with which to eventually impress us.
I am not a romantic.
I could go without candlelit dinners or moonlit walks.
I honestly do not care about diamonds or pearls.
Except for that I totally care.
It is the torturous cross that women must bare from the time of, say, prom, until the day we die. It makes no sense. But the best of men, the ones we are most fond of, the ones we find ourselves following to the ends of the earth, are the men who understand this irony of our existence. The men we prefer are the ones who allow us to blather on about how wonderfully easy going we are, about how little concern we have for earthly possessions, about how our one and only real and true desire is for them to be happy, but then still choose to turn around and surprise us with a trip to Rome.
This portion of the story would be advice to men everywhere except for that I’ve been around a few years and - let’s be honest - there are like…zero men reading this story.
Maybe there are one or two men reading this story, at most.
Three, possibly, but that’s pushing it. Guys? Are you out there? Anybody? Hello?
Bueller?
Right. So, for the two of you men who are reading let me repeat that the men who recognize the ladies’ lie for the necessary guilt-assuager that it is and let it live on while ignoring it completely are the men we fawn over and fall for.
Be one of those men, boys.
If you need a reference, Barney Stinson has it down to a science.
There are other men in this story who have also mastered this particular art, but we must take one step at a time, after all, so as my late Aunt Marge would tell me when I reached prematurely for the cookie jar: cool your jets.
Barney Stinson was sure to do every little thing right when we were dating. He let me complain incessantly when the mood struck me to do so. He gently persuaded me to order the most expensive sort of wine on the menu. He winked at me in amused refusal when I insisted we simply stay home, eat mac and cheese, and watch TV. He got me tickets to the ballet, or to the opera, or to a Mets game, or a Broadway play, always escorting me dressed in three piece suits and understated cologne. He planned walks through Central Park and boat rides in the harbor and it was all of the things we non-romantics secretly hope for.
Eventually about a month and a half into our seeing each other (I know, I know, A MONTH AND A HALF?! Yes. A month and a half,) I called him out on it, leaning over the table in a Mediterranean restaurant, drawn in like so many other women before me by the twinkle in his eye.
“You sure know how to woo a girl, Barney Stinson,” I commented.
He cleared his throat and chuckled at the same time, reaching up to adjust his tie - a move which I found predictably distracting considering we’d been sleeping together for about a month or so and I was completely in lust with him. In Lust, let’s say. Capital L and everything.
I continued, in order to distract myself: “The restaurants, the outings, the hand holding. It’s all very impressive.” Especially, I added silently, since Ann-Who-Walks-Dogs considers herself to be a very plain and ordinary sort of girl.
Ann-Who-Walks-Dogs is not a romantic.
“The science of wooing a woman, Ann, is a delicate balance of well-hidden secrets that I do not plan to divulge. The wooers union would take away my membership,” he assured me and I laughed quietly, hushed and cozy in the corner of the restaurant.
I was smitten, officially.
I was lured in by the mystery of him, the intrigue, the skill and the boyish charm.
The man, at this point, could do practically no wrong. I was ready to leave the dogs behind and follow him to Timbuktu, not that he would ever leave Manhattan to go there. He’d leave Manhattan only to go someplace awesome, and I’m not really sure Timbuktu qualifies. I’ve never been there.
Feeling flirty and confident and a little bit bold, I found myself doing the thing that all women of my particular brand consistently do.
We take that opportunity to ruin everything.
“The science of wooing a woman, huh?” I questioned, “Did Robin teach you how to do this?”
Right.
I know.
Mistake.
HORRIBLE mistake.
An abomination, really.
If we had been in Times Square I am still convinced the electronic billboards would have stopped their advertising to announce it in neon lights:
HUGE MISTAKE.
Why, I wonder, when a man has been nothing but charming - when he has played every card right, when he has yet to disappoint, when he makes that little chill of oh my god ease all the way down a woman’s spine - why, I wonder, must she insist on poking at the one possible weakness she has found?
Ladies?
Any thoughts on this conundrum?
Is this a Garden of Eden thing? Is it a When Harry Met Sally thing? Is it a Jane Austen’s Book Club kind of thing?
Hello?
Anybody?
Bueller?
I have no idea, still to this day, why, but I did this thing that we women sometimes do, and I mentioned Robin’s name and I watched his facial expression twitch. Not enough to draw any firm conclusions, but enough to make me squint at him in consideration.
Enough to make me wonder why we women do this particular kind of thing to ourselves.
“A true talent needs no teacher,” he responded, his eyes on the wine glass in front of him.
A true talent needs no teacher.
I thought it was poignant and witty and ultimately entirely dissatisfying.
And so, I continued: “You mean she was never your girlfriend?”
Yes, this is what we ladies do. We push on. Inisisting, for some reason, to torture everybody involved and make things as awkward as humanly possible. Good things cannot survive under the watchful eye of my brand of female. I just have to pick at all good things until I find something rotten in the State of Denmark.
Again, I watched his facial expression twitch, just a little.
I was riveted and waiting with bated breath.
I was fascinated, frozen, hoping something about his hunched over posture or his downturned eyes or his pulled-too-tight lips would loosen and smile at me. I was waiting, like a moron, for something to happen that might reassure me and my pesky but ever-present insecurities.
“I don’t want to lie to you,” he stated and I felt my eyes squint even further as I watched him, “Robin and I dated for a very brief period of time. But it was a while ago, and it was…um,” he shook his head and I felt my stomach tighten with the feeling that I might vomit at any moment, “a mistake,” he finished quietly, all the while refusing to make eye contact.
At this point if we’d been in Times Square I think the electronic billboards would have stopped their advertising to say “RUN, YOU IDIOT.”
Run.
This man is in love with another woman.
Hit the road and don’t look back.
That’s what my mother would have said also, if she’d been there to see him in that moment.
But, ladies, back me up on this.
That is not what we do.
At least it’s never what I have ever done. I am a highly skilled masochist who doesn’t know heartache until it hits her square in the chest. I chose to hear what he said instead of what he didn’t say and I carried on, swooning at his charm and falling for his wit, not realizing that he never really looked at me the way he looked at her.
You know what I mean?
The man looked at Robin Scherbatsky.
He looked into her.
Under her skin.
Down deep, to her bones.
Staring like she might turn his world upside down with a sneeze.
Our mothers tell us this kind of thing from a young age - like ten or twelve - that we should wait for the man with stars in his eyes. He’ll treat us well. He’ll stay beside us until the day we die. She’d go on and on about the stars in the eyes, my mother.
But she forgot to tell me that if you’ve never seen it, you won’t know what the hell it looks like, and there are piles of things that are close. Lust. Affection. Interest. Amusement. None of these things, though, are star-inducing.
I thought, at the time, that we were a Love Story.
Me and Barney Stinson.
He treated me well.
He understood the duality of my “I am not a romantic” existence.
He was patient and compassionate and doted on me and treated me like a member of the fucking royal family.
But the stars weren’t there when he looked at me - not really, and I had no idea.
It’s painful when you have no idea.
It took a third party to haul me out of my self-created blindness.
An adorable, considerate, and selfishly-motivated third party.
Barney and I went to McLaren’s after paying the bill at that Mediterranean restaurant and the whole gang was there - Robin included, and I found myself studying her intently, comparing myself to her stunning good looks and sharp intelligence, wondering what it was exactly that ended things between her and Barney and whether I was doomed to repeat it.
Luckily Lily and Ted distracted me with questions about the dogs I’d been walking and I forgot to obsess for about an hour or so.
For about an hour I forgot all about the possibility that I should feel threatened and less than and totally insecure.
Then Robin told some mindless joke and Barney laughed a little too hard and it was back with a vengeance.
And the obsessing continued for about two weeks - at which point the previously mentioned unusual events numbered 1 and 2 were revealed to me accidentally.
Then, everything changed.
Chapter 5: The chapter in which elephants enter the room.