The Boyfriend Malaise

Misleading title alert - before you get your horses, I don't know, unheld(?), note: no, I do not have a boyfriend. No, indeed, if a woman's relationship status can be accurately gauged by the kinds of movies she watches when she's alone - which is an intricate science being developed at the University of Wisconsin, I'll have you know - I have already whipped past uplifting MTV biopics, psychological thrillers and pathetic rom-coms and have settled in nicely on the Resident Evil franchise. That's right gentlemen - this sassy young lady has traded her hopes of romantic escapades for Mila Jovovich snapping zombies necks with her thighs. Zombies.

But I have noted an alarming trend as of late amongst my female compadres/compatriots/coconspirators. I am friends with some truly fabulous (young) women (when does one drop that clarification? I feel like it probably is when you have some lasting/meaningful/relevant relationship. With a person. And not a cat. Or when you're truly old I guess...). I have friends who are really smart. BAs, MAs, Law-degrees-in-progress. But those amalgams of letters do not exhaust the font of awesome that are my friends. They are also, for the most part, athletes, or at the very least take care of their bodies and their health. Add to this a general care for appearance - my friends are stylin' bitches! Some are funny, some are fabulous conversationalists, some are established rapstresses, some have phenomenal boobs. They are all, in my humble opinion, fucking awesome people to be around.

And yet.

Yet.

Of an rough estimate of ten close girlfriends (what? How many legitimate close friends do you have? What. Ever) three- read that, THREE - of them have boyfriends. And though I don't know if this is to their credit or to my general annoyance, they are all long-term relationships. I'm going to credit it to my annoyance, simply because what I find so infuriating lately is that my sexy, accomplished, smart friends are not being asked out. As you may recall, my prior experiences dating men since moving to Montreal resulted in creepy carny hands and an offer of vitamin sales. This leads me to ask the inevitable question: quesque fuck?

I find it baffling, yes, but also alarming. When this trend has been discussed amongst ourselves, over beers and wine, as we do, we comfort ourselves with varying bullshit:

men these days just seem to like stupid insecure girls

we are really just very intimidating - when they grow up, they will stop slut-hopping

I don't want to be with anyone who actually thinks I have my shit together. If someone thinks this is the pinnacle, they are deeply distrubed

etcetera, etcetera etcetera.

Is it bullshit? Is it He's Just Not That Into You incarnate (ok, I did get at least one pathetic rom-com in)? We make ourselves feel better about being single by blaming the cowardliness of guys, their lack of standards or, on the inverse, their standards being too high for batcases like us. By doing this, do we displace our own agency in the situation? Do we need to filter through the Usana salesmen and circus freakshows if we expect to stop our bitching and moaning?

The alarming corollary is that many of these women also find themselves pining over men they've already been with. In a world where new men don't appear to exist, girls look back over their past boyfriends and think "wow...maybe that was as good as I will do?" or some much more optimistic "love-of-my-life" reiteration of same. This seems even more depressing than the possibility that I have the endeavour through a bunch of awful dates. This seems to imply begging for forgiveness, if the ex-revival is actually possible, or just escapist, nostalgic fantasizing. Lets just eat a plate of petite madeleines with Proust and put ourselves out of our misery.

I mostly rant about this with no conclusions. I think women in their early twenties shouldn't have to worry about relationships or lack there of. But then again, I don't know much about reproductive biology, and my cultural guide being reruns of Friends leads me to the conclusion that everyone will just end up with someone perfect in the end. Except Joey.

But what if we are Joey? And the stupid girls who put out and did coke in high school are Rachel? What if, rather than establishing cool varied groups of friends with great 9-s hairstyles, the self-fulfilling prophecy of "like attracts like" has been realized, and my friends and I are a bunch of Joeys, never to see a fulfilling relationship that wasn't one-sided and heartbreaking, to be perpetually throwing prosthetic limbs into proverbial fires. Ok. I don't know what that means. But my point stands - maybe we don't all get a fairytale romance. Maybe good vampires and sexy werewolves aren't going to battle for my heart.

To be clear. I really do not feel bad about being single. I know my rants give that illusion, but I'm of the third of my examples' school of thought: when I have my shit together, then I'll worry about why men aren't falling at my feet. Until then, well, there are two days of unwashed dishes in my sink and job opportunities I should be perusing. What is frustrating is that the option would be nice. And not just for me - I'm no diva - but for these fabulous women I know.

And yeah, cuddling is nice.

Dirty Dancing: the Untold Tale of Unrequited Love

I have been so blessed lately to have had two - count 'em, TWO - opportunities in the past 2 weeks to watch 80s classic and girls-night-in staple Dirty Dancing, in the past two weeks. What a treat.

So I was feeling particularly perceptive, if not entirely sane, the inaugural rewatch; today, while I was getting my nails done with Yule, I thought back on my more ridiculous statements, and found one of them to in fact be hilariously well founded.

Question: How does Baby even meet Johnny?

At that party with all the dirty dancing! But how does she get there? She carries a watermelon - she says so herself. But wait...who was that guy carrying the other watermelons? That kinda gingery kid who is Johnny's cousin? Do you have any idea who I'm talking about?

this guy

 If you were like, "Uh, Billy Kostecki, obviously!" then you must have eaten some of the brownies I ate before viewing Dirty Dancing, because to the rest of the world he is "idiot who tried to carry three watermelons."

I think there would be room for an excellent spin-off dramatization about Billy, who is present throughout the whole movie (he ends up dancing with Lisa, Baby's ludicrously large chested idiot sister in the final dance sequence, in fact). And that drama would in fact be a tragic love story.

Seriously. Think about it. If you sat down and watched the first 20 minutes of Dirty Dancing and were somehow unfamiliar with the plot and had the cover hidden from you and are blasphemously unfamiliar with Patrick Swayze's canon of work AND missed the title of the film - should all these stars align, you could be expecting a story of romance between Jennifer Grey and Neal Jones (don't recognize the actor's name - well, it came after a character named Tito Suarez in the final credits [whothefuck?] and the character's most recent work was portraying a serial killer on Criminal Minds...so don't sweat it...).

Where was I? Oh yes, film's opening. In the first 5 minutes of the movie, Baby and Billy meet, and it looks something like this:

"Hey! Thanks! You want a job here?"

does that face say a job occupation is what she wants.

Then we get to see a dance class, Baby gets insight into the classist hierarchy and sexism of the 1960s hotel industry, we see Johnny and Penny dance and then - oh and then - our iconic staff quarters dance party scene. Usually we just view the watermelon business as a mean to get Baby closer to Johnny, but let's break this down:

Baby runs up, eager to help poor, idiot Billy with his ludicrous mound of watermelons (who brings watermelons to a debauched dance party, precisely?). He tells her to go back to the main house where he says he's seen her "dancing with the little boss man." So, we can fairly say that he's been keeping an eye on young Baby, sizing up his competition. He then risks his job, and later his watermelons, to gallantly bring her up to the party.

yeah, you really seem to be in the best position to be opening doors for ladies. Got to woo her somehow though I guess. Access to all the watermelons a girl could want doesn't quite have the appeal it may have in, say, the 1930s.

 If you watch the movie closely, you will realize that Johnny isn't even remotely nice to Baby until after their dance together at the other resort (or, more accurately, after he creeps her in his rearview mirror as she changes in the back seat on the way back from their dance). Billy proudly explains to Johnny, who dickishly implies why she's at the party; "She came with me. [with pride and disbelieving laughter] She's with me." It is actually so endearing (and kind of heartbreaking) that you'd better check it out yourself (3:45).

From there on - when Johnny blatantly cockblocks his younger cousin (who, if you look closely, actually tosses his arms up as she walks away) - Billy becomes a rather background figure. He is credited after Emily Gilmore Kelly Bishop, Baby's mother, who has approximately six lines. This is a tragedy, and our attention has been unduly directed at the creepy, kind of pedaphilic Johnny-Baby romance, and the botched abortion story line, and we do give far too much of a fuck about Robbie.

Rewatch Dirty Dancing, paying attention to Billy; the plot could not be furthered without him, yet we give no voice or credence to his obvious heartache.

Billy Kostecki : a regular Oedipus Rex

Icey Roads and Breaking Hearts

It looks like winter is finally hitting Montreal.

I managed to drag myself out of bed at 5:45 this morning to get myself to the early morning yoga class. The class is at 7:00, and doesn't really justify such an early wake up, but my yoga partner, Cristyn, lives further away and has to get up earlier, and so I feel like it's only fair that I wake up when she does.

Also, I have made the mistake of going to yoga after just having downed a bowl of Raisin Bran, and that is not an experience I would like to relive. The fear of vomiting partially digested bran onto my super absorbent yoga towel has never struck my heart quite as palpably as it does when one does floor bow. Dhanurasana actually sounds like the perfect onomatopoeia to accompany vomiting...

So yes, digesting time is key when one intends to wake up for early morning yoga.



So, in addition to the dangers implicit in waking up so early in the morning - ie. homicidal urges - I had the joy of discovering what it means for winter to finally strike one of Canada's supposedly most frigid cities. It means that freezing rain creates a slick and precarious coating over my entire street, turning the 1 minute walk to St. Laurent into a 5 minute midway funhouse reincarnation. Without the fun.

As if that were not an indication in and of itself of what this day was likely to turn into, it was my last conference as a T.A. for American History. While I am wildly impressed that I managed to pull off the semester teaching a subject for which I am not even remotely qualified with few slips, I am pretty sad to end my tenure with these kids. I actually pretty sincerely liked a bunch of them, and would have been very content to facebook friend them, but, alas, I was just their T.A.

Not to mention that I think I was in love with at least 4 boys in my Friday tutorial. Each has a special place in my heart. There was V., who was simply beautiful; wavy chestnut hair that he was always pushing out of his eyes, a crooked smile, and just an indy adorable. And N., who was just so earnest and goofy, enthusiastic, but often wrong; he reminded me of my brain dead golden retriever, and when he lamented that he "just wants to know how to improve from his mistakes, because he honestly does the readings and goes to every class" I confessed that he was breaking my heart. J. I could never make extended eye contact with, because I was certain I would blush. The looks he gave me every class made me feel like he and I had an inside joke that no one else had the privilege of being in on, and I always wanted to talk with him longer after class, but he was infallible, so there was no reason to. Sigh. And, of course, M., my favourite skinny asian homosexual, who loved feminist theory and Betty Friedan in particular, and would walk with my after class, going out of his way to keep chatting about anything on his mind.

I don't think I have the heart to actually be a teacher. I want to much to be loved. I am Woodrow Wilson.



ps- when choosing a "label" for this post, "Going to Die Alone" appeared, unbidden, as one of them. I don't know what I'm supposed to make of that cruel serendipity. Is Mary Kay Latourno alone?

Dream Phone Date, epilogue

So the debate over whether the invite to dinner last week was a date or not has been settled. It was actually pretty obvious that night that the Boy from Class was just extending a friendly invite. But as of 3 minutes ago, Boy from Class' intentions became clear.
While I was over, he made this whole thing about taking some vitamins with dinner. His brother made fun of him and everything. I mentioned that I just started taking supplements again because I chose not to risk any sort of contamination that could result from taking vitamins and get me in trouble if we got drug tested. Whatever. Small talk bullshit that you make with people you don't really know.

Well, he sent me an e-mail a couple days later, sending me some information about the brand he uses, which he swears by.

I thought this was weird, but when I mentioned it to my gym buddy, she thought it was sweet that he had thought about me and made the effort to get in touch again. So, I politely e-mailed him back thanking him for dinner and the information, which I did not look at, teased him for being a good salesman and asked him where one could even buy the stuff.

Oh. That was the point.

He sells the shit.

So, while I had been thinking that, at the least I had been making friends with someone and at the most went on a date with a very socially awkward, shy individual, I had not even considered that I had been singled out because of my small talk about rugby and my knee injury as someone who might be interested in becoming a "personal client" of a supplement company's sales associate.

My love life has just hit bottom.

I hope.