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else will realize she s pretty. And she ll melt when she sees his re-
cord collection because it s just like hers, and she ll swoon when
he plays her the song he wrote on the guitar, and she ll never
want to go out to a party for which he ll be forced to comb
his hair, or buy grown-up shoes or tie a tie, or demonstrate a
hearty handshake, or make eye contact, or relate to people who
work in different fields, or to basically act like a man.
Remember when men and women could be different,
though? And women being different wasn t a burden, but sort
of a turn-on? Because really, men and women aren t that differ-
ent. One likes astrology more than car chases for some reason,
but we re ultimately all looking for the same thing to be loved
and understood.We re all insecure; we re all imperfect and we
have the empathy that makes us try not to be too mean to one
another.We all like being respected and challenged and having
fun and eating delicious snacks. But to some guys, the ways
girls are different than boys is the beast under the bed; the pussy
with teeth.The horrors of having to make conversation with a
woman who s never seen Transformers or doesn t care how the
Knicks are doing this season is the stuff of their nightmares. It s
like they just want themselves with a vagina.
The trick is to realize that the boys who talk so much about
being rejected that it seems like they re proud of it aren t neces-
sarily sweeter or more sensitive than the Bababooey-spouting
frat bullies who line up at clubs like SkyBar to run game on
girls they want to date rape. There are plenty of nerds who
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fear women and aren t sensitive, despite their marketing; they
just dislike women in a new, exciting way. Timid racists aren t
sensitive because they lock their car doors when they see a
black person on the street.They re just too scared to get out of
the car and shout the N word.
Fear can be the result of admiration, or it can be a symptom
of contempt.When I see squeamish guys passing over qualified
women when they re hiring for a job, or becoming tongue-
tied when a girl crashes their all-boy conversation at a party, I
don t credit them for being awestruck.They re reacting to the
intimidating female as an intruder, an alien, and somebody they
can t relate to. It s not a compliment to be made invisible.
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star wars is a kids movie
:
ob was the kind of guy who d come on like a roll of
Charmin Ultra when you were unavailable; strong and
Rsensitive, dripping with Aloe lotion. Then, once you d
cleared your heart s calendar for his penis, he d be wadded up
in the corner, stuck to the medicine cabinet, sopping with tears
and of no use to anyone.
When Rob and I met, I was seeing somebody else, which
didn t faze him a bit. He was an actor, so his area of expertise was
believing he was awesome and working hard to charm people
into thinking so too. So when we met, and he decided he wanted
me, flirty e-mails flowed out of him like taffy from the business
end of a wide-gauge candy pipe; cloying and consistent. When
we d get together, he d use my name in conversation a lot, a suc-
cessful manipulation technique for narcissists like me who are eas-
ily hypnotized by the sound of their own names.And it worked.
I DON T CARE about YOUR BAND
Let s get dinner, Julie.
Duh, OK.
We went to a glorified diner called Bendix, and it wasn t a
date, because I had a boyfriend. Rob wasn t initially attractive to
me, but because he was so gooey and determined, I grew fond
of him quickly. I think there s something beyond the grass being
greener that fuels one s attraction to men who exist outside of
a relationship you re in. It permits you to twist the reality of
meeting what s merely a self-centered guy who wants what he
can t have into a self-congratulatory progress tale.You think to
yourself, Well, I m different now I m girlfriend material so, of
course he wants to be with me. If only I weren t in this dumb
relationship with a guy who s already proven he wants to be my
boyfriend, I d be in the throes of what is an oyster-like world
of pearl-paved streets. Dumb Guy Who Loves Me! Doesn t he
realize how explosively the universe has changed since I ve been
cooped up being loved within the confines of reality?
After Bendix, and its ensuing meatloaf, Rob walked me
home and kissed me. And as soon as he did, I felt every last
cell in my body rush with guilt. I am too inherently neurotic
to ever cheat on somebody without treating myself to a con-
current crucifixion, so the day after I was kissed, I broke it off
with the guy I was dating so I could begin to legitimately fall
for Rob. I was positive that he, liberal gusher of my own name
during seduction, was a sure thing. I couldn t wait to tell Rob
I was newly single; he was going to pounce on me like I was a
Beggin Strip.
Hahahaha! When people are wrong, it s funny.
MY ON-THE-MARKETNESS was like an unsolicited homework
assignment for the guy who, twenty-four-hours earlier, was
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. . . and other atrocities
falling over himself to charm me with compliments lavished
over too-expensive loaves of meat. I saw his behavior flip a bitch.
Clearly, Rob was freaked out that I d actually gone through
with the steps I had to take in order to date him with a clear
conscience, and now he felt responsible for my being available.
After that, we would get together for what I suppose are
technically dates to a twenty-two-year-old, which is how old
I was at the time, but since he was thirty-one, I can t really call
what we were doing dating. We were hanging out and hook-
ing up, which is what girls in their twenties expect and men
at any age want, because it preserves the ambiguity of an affair
and absolves guys from any responsibility when somebody gets
hurt. By the time the sex began, we weren t on a level playing
field.
After we started sleeping together, I began showing red
flag signs of wanting not just sex but all its trimmings (inti-
macy, brunch, etc), and Rob started showing more and more
signs of Get Out of My Roomism. That s what I call the
disease that comes from the boyhood instinct to yell at one s
little sister when she gets her chocolaty fingers on a rare issue
of MAD magazine, or at one s mom when she wants to use the
bathroom and you re still in the tub, playing with yourself. It s
only when a guy passes thirty and still wants girls to leave him
alone and stay away from his stuff does that behavior become
disconcerting.
When Rob and I were hooking up, we would always sleep
at my apartment. He was superprotective of his space, and also,
as it turned out, paranoid about being seen with me around his
friends, because, he explained, he was concerned they would
gossip. That s a double-threat of sorry-ass. It was quickly be-
coming clear, even to a self-congratulatory progress tale in her
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I DON T CARE about YOUR BAND
early twenties, that there was no fucking way in the world
Rob wanted to be my boyfriend. He d invite me to see one
of his shows, then he d have me meet him a block away once
he got offstage, so nobody would see us leaving the the-
ater together and speculate that we were an item. It wasn t
because he was cheating on anybody; he was just sort of a
dick.
I d never had the experience of being anyone s secret lover
the girl who hides in the garbage can or shows up wearing a
false mustache. Dating Rob was the closest I d come to being
with a guy who cared more about what his friends thought
than how the girl he was screwing felt. I didn t get that at all.
Why didn t he just fuck his friends? If he was that concerned
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