I Don't Care About Your Band (11 page)

Jazz Matt fizzled out during our pitiful Gil-Scott-Heron- fueled make-out session, so he couldn’t throw his jazz hat into the ring for the boyfriend position I was interviewing intensively for. But something was coming together for me around this time that was new. I didn’t sweat J-Matt, and I didn’t stalk or fume once my crush had petered out its torque. Maybe my hormones had finally learned to shut the hell up for a minute, or maybe I’d shed some of the ego- fueled “how dare
he
not love
me
” vitriol that was conjoined like an evil twin to the star-crossed circumstances of every guy that didn’t come through. Either way, around that time, I began to get a little better at letting go. And there were plenty of guys around whom I walked away from before they even had time to express interest—the defecating neighbor comes to mind.

Then, right before I turned twenty-one, I met my first real boyfriend.

 

DAVID WAS
just a year older than me, and his intelligence was visible from across the room. He was a particular kind of quiet, and there are different kinds—there’s shy/socially phobic quiet, angry and plotting quiet, blissful Zen quiet, illiterate farmhand quiet. David’s quiet was patient and smart—the kind you need to get through a ton of books. I wondered if I seemed too frivolous for him; I had pink leopard prints pasted all over my dorm room walls, and Spice Girls posters hanging alongside framed photos of John Waters.

But David liked me, and soon enough we got together. I loved falling in love. I loved the whole incubation period: all the lazing about in bed staring into each other’s faces, the midsummer hangouts on his fire escape, the activity of the night being listening to a record or taking a walk. I was having the time of my life being loved as what I gleaned was an adult. I would say to people, “I have a
boyfriend
. This is my
boyfriend
.” And after my mint-condom-sucking, Jazz Matt-chasing college days, I was ripe and delighted in the sensation of being courted in a proper way, by a boy who didn’t just think I was sexy. David thought I was adorable.

We went to Montauk together. We drank Mike’s Hard Lemonade in a motel room and read
Penthouse
to each other in the rental car back to the city. I let him take my picture without any makeup, on the beach. Around David, I felt cherubic and endearing.

It didn’t work out.

There were differences—the kind that have nothing to do with him liking that band the Mountain Goats when you feel like hearing that guy’s singing voice is like being stabbed in the eye with a shrimp fork over and over again. He loved me, but I also think he was infatuated with somebody in me I wasn’t so crazy about. If Nate was the one who saw Kate Pierson underneath my grubby disaffect when we met, David tried to strip away all of Kate’s lovely lashes and wigs and iridescent outfits to reveal what he was confident was the mousy, wide-eyed ragamuffin little girl that he wanted to love me as, and who he wanted me to be. It would come out in little things, like how he told me how pretty I looked in a T-shirt when I let my hair go into its natural wave, or in acts of faith in my talent, like when we’d try to collaborate and he’d write me a part that was more in his voice than mine.

After we split, David went on to reach his goal of becoming a successful television comedy writer, which was never a surprise given his talent and work ethic, and one day, I came into his office to interview for an on-air/writing position on the show he worked on. After the meeting, I stopped by his desk to say hello.

I wore what I always wear to interviews: a suit, with heels and makeup. I did not wear a ball gown and a beehive.

David asked how my meeting with his boss went, then did that thing he always does where he smiles and cringes at the same time. It’s sweet, but it also makes you feel a little awkward, so you’re compelled to counter it with false stoicism or cool. And when the neurotic Jew is the cool one, well.

Then David lowered his voice a bit. “Let me give you a bit of advice,” he told me, on his turf. And I listened for his tip because I wanted that job.

“When you’re around an office like this one,” he continued, “Well . . . you might want to turn down the glamour.”

I can’t pile on when it comes to David. He was a great boyfriend at a time when I needed a great boyfriend more than anything, and
I
broke up with
him
, then displayed a novice’s ignorance when insisting that we still be friends, unaware of the rule that the person who initiates a breakup has no say about what the relationship then becomes.

But that advice coming from him to “turn down the glamour” gave me a bedrock
Legally Blonde
moment that propelled me into sweet, revenge-fueled action. It is what has motivated me to succeed in my field. Because as frequently or insistently as nerdy, quiet guys may claim that they are outcasts, the reality is that once high school is over, they are the ones who get the jobs. And those jobs include but are not limited to writing for television, art direction, graphic design, songwriting, blogging, video editing, copywriting, filmmaking, working for public radio, and so on and so on, and whatever job you do can probably go here too. Right now, in the places where I live and work and date, the timid, geeky guy prevails. And the only way to pass in their world if you’re a girl is to play the game and blend into the herd. David illuminated something about the way things are that made me furious, despite what his intentions were when he gave me his two cents. And no, I didn’t get that job.

What I have since learned is that the girls who thrive in Boytown, professionally and personally, are the mousy ones. The ones who don’t know how to walk in heels or do their own eyeliner. The girls who don’t know how to play hostess to a good party or that they need to write a thank-you note and bring a gift when visiting someone’s home. They wear their “nice” New Balance sneakers when they go out at night, and a clean T-shirt when they go to work. They blend in with the guys they scare; the ones who hate them for not chasing them in high school.

“You wear too much makeup,” David would tell me when we were together. Like I had any business taking advice from a guy who’d wear a T-shirt with a Chinese-food restaurant menu printed on it to a dinner date. You can’t throw the first stone when you dole out what you assume are compliments, but what is really just backhanded armchair criticism from somebody looking to create the ideal girl.

I’M FASCINATED
by what men think is the perfect woman. Cameron Diaz in
There’s Something About Mary
is just one of many man-made dream girls. Remember? Mary was a sports surgeon, a beer-swilling football enthusiast, and a golfer, but she was also feminine, leggy, lithe, and blond, with a bottomless well of compassion for her retarded brother. She was basically a guy with a woman’s big heart, wrapped up in a “tight little package.” She wasn’t funny, but she had a great laugh, which is perfect for making funny guys feel appreciated.

Scarlett Johansson’s “Cristina,” in
Vicky Cristina Barcelona,
is another creature constructed in a lab by a male mind. Cristina is sprung from Woody Allen’s dirty old ’mangination—a fabrication, really, of qualities attractive to him that no real girl has in one spot. Her lack of focus in tandem with her raw creative talent just crying out to be shaped by an elder. Her freespiritedness on matters of hooking up with women, men, or both at once. Her ridiculously full lips and tits evoking Marilyn Monroe, who, even off-camera, lived—or tried to—in a fable as America’s most beloved dumb slut. Marilyn was funny, too, by the way. But nobody noticed.

And then there’s Pam.

The archetype of the perfect girl for guys I see all around me is, I think, best understood by taking a look at the character of Pam from NBC’s
The Office
.

Pam started out on that show as a wry receptionist with a conspiratorial half-smile and wavy hair the color of milk chocolate that looks like it was wet when she left her place, and air-dried on her way to work. She’s portrayed by the gorgeous and funny actress Jenna Fischer, who puts herself in the hands of makeup and wardrobe people who are responsible for making her look like less of a knockout than she is. And indeed Pam is not supposed to be the kind of beauty that turns heads in a room.

She is bright, but not ambitious. She has a crap job, but she takes it in stride: It’s good enough for Pam, for now. As a romantic pursuit, she’s a slow burn: the kind of girl who will only sleep with you after months or even years of wearing down with flirty jokes and one-of-the-boys-style teasing. The men in her office—most of them—pretend she’s sexually invisible. Her boss puts her down as a frump, an underdog.

Pam’s equivalent from the British version of
The Office
, Dawn, was a different kind of girl entirely. Dawn was also shy, but a bit slatternly and hyperfeminine; she was always trying to be something she wasn’t, quite. Her ample bust would strain the abilities of a button-down shirt, which she’d have to take in a size up or suffer cleavage. She was a little soft; like Baby-Fat Spice. Lucy Davis, who played Dawn, had those extra ten pounds of lager weight that’s somehow still acceptable on beautiful television stars across the Atlantic. And, like Pam, Dawn was the romantic lead of the series.

Both could land a joke. Both could melt the camera with a small smile. But Pam is bland, unassuming; faded wallpaper. And Dawn was a coquette in corporate casual. If Dawn was Ginger, Pam was Mary-Ann’s
cousin
—the one who can’t even get her hair into pigtails, so she just lets it hang.

I’ve met a lot of guys my age who have crushes on Pam that are so intense, it says more about what they want than who this character is supposed to be. They don’t just like her; they relate to her. They’re underdogs too. And what they want is who they are.

Pam is not intimidating, like one of those women who wears makeup and tailored clothes, and has a good job that she enjoys, and confidence, and an adult woman’s sexuality. There’s nothing scary about Pam, because there’s no mystery: she’s just like the boys who like her; mousy and shy. The ultimate emoboy fantasy is to meet a nerdy, cute girl just like him, and
nobody else will realize she’s pretty
. And she’ll melt when she sees his record 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
different. 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 necessarily 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 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.

 

 

 

R
ob was the kind of guy who’d come on like a roll of

Charmin Ultra when you were unavailable; strong and sensitive, 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 successful manipulation technique for narcissists like me who are easily hypnotized by the sound of their own names. And it worked.