Do Nice Guys Really Finish Last?

Today, I was watching one of the the few male members of my Gender Comm. class out of sheer social interest when I realized there was something going on with him that I doubted few other people ever got tipped off about: He's running a tighter game than Mick Vick was this past season, and as an Eagles girl, let me tell you, the only thing tighter than Vick's game is his ass. But back to what was so interesting about my classmate-- He's got a few very good things going for him: He's attractive, fun, extremely easy to talk to, outgoing, bright, and taking a class on gender communications, which, you know, isn't a bad sign at all for someone who worries about being able to clearly communicate and be understood in a relationship. He's also unassuming and self-depreciating-- he knows he's not the "ideal man" type that girls are programmed to go for-- you know, tall, dark and handsome, with suavity like James Bond and an ass like Vick's (oh, wait, I mentioned that already...oh well,)-- but the fact that he's so vocal about this makes you want to prove him wrong. Girls gravitate to him because of all this, so he probably works to further cultivate it. He is, in short, no dumb bunny. "Cause and effect" theory at work, here, as in, "If I play the friendly, slightly geeky guy, girls aren't intimidated by me and want to be friends with me." I've watched his M.O for the past few weeks and seen it at work; I bet he's always got a lot of girls around him, but I also bet he gets friend-zoned a lot when girls meet and then go for a bad-boy type instead. There's the flaw in his game-- I know it, but I wonder, does he?

Take, for example, one of TGIS's best friends. I adore the kid and am very vocal about it-- TGIS knows it; my roommate agrees with me about the fact he's utterly lovable; and I'll talk about how great his friend is equally as much as I talk about how great TGIS is (if not his friend more). He's just the kind of guy who instantly puts women at ease, is really quiet and unassuming, yet knows how to have fun and will make sure to include you in conversation or anything he and the guys are doing. In fact, he's so nice that I often (somewhat) joke around that I'd leave TGIS for his friend in a hot minute just due to niceness, and TGIS is a pretty nice guy of his own accord, too. But one thing makes this a joke, and not something I would ever in a million years actually ever act on: He lacks the je-ne-sais-quoi bad-boy factor that TGIS does have that keeps women (myself included,) enthralled and guessing. And that's the flaw in Gen. Comm. Boy's little scheme-- nice guys never factor in the bad boys. But oh, how they should.

After dating for roughly the last three million years (give or take a century or so), I've dated a lot of guys. Short guys, lots of tall guys, fat guys, thin guys, muscular guys, athletic guys, nerdy guys, smart guys, dumb guys, sweet guys, but the majority of them have been one kind of guy in particular: bad boys. They're kind of a specialty of mine-- slightly fractured, emotionally needy, a little fucked up, and emotionally unattached. After all these eons of observation and the emotional train wrecks they leave behind them, I have come to one conclusion: There is only one kind of guy really worth dating who will ever really keep a woman's attention, especially if she has as short of a dating attention span as I do-- the nice guy with an edge, or, in less flowery terms, a reformed bad boy. Does this mean that he's entirely house- and relationship-trained and won't leave you broken and bleeding at the end? No, but it does mean that he might actually date you properly and take you out instead of just sending you packing the next morning and wait a little bit to have sex with you until he's sure he actually likes you, unlike his previous incarnation. See, he used to be a bad boy, but just like I used to be much more of a maneater than I am now, he too was burned by some of his past choices and reached a higher state of being, mainly called "Nirv-NotBeingACompleteAssholeAnymore," thus making him just about the most illusive and perfect creature a woman could ever track down and wrestle into bed and into dating.

So, in theory, while Gen. Comm. Boy may have his game (mostly) worked out, it's a shame that it really doesn't pay out for him, because when all the chips are down, he's a really nice guy, but we ladies are eternally preoccupied in less green, more shady pastures. We would be smarter if we chose men who liked us more than we liked them, like him, but that's never how it works. And the questioning and the emotional torment that comes with the bad boys, or even with the reformed bad boys sometimes, is the price that we pay for craving a bit of mystery and drama in our love-lives. That's really what it comes down to-- we'd rather not be bored, not that these men are boring, but a little bit of intrigue as toward how someone feels about you is the engine that seems to power our relationships. It's the butterflies-- we always want to have the butterflies. So I guess we have no one to blame but ourselves for our relationship drama and eternal questioning. Go figure. Do I win a Pulitzer for that stunning reveal now?

XOXO

Wild Horses

I've been listening to lots of The Rolling Stones lately; why, I don't know. I guess it was just their time to cycle back into my current playlist. Anyhow, last night after spending about 45 minutes listening to "Wild Horses" over and over again on repeat, it struck me-- undeniably a romantic and heartfelt ballad, and a proclamation of devotion, who was it written for, and what happened to them?

Fast-forward through a bit of research done today, when I could actually think straight enough to formulate a plan of internet trawling attack, and here are some answers: "Wild Horses" was written for the album "Sticky Fingers," which was released in 1971. During this time period, and, we'll assume, the period in which Jagger, Richards, and the band were writing songs for the album from 1966 to 1970, Jagger was in a tumultuous relationship with Marianne Faithfull, who was shrugging the merits of her last name by dallying with Jagger while married to John Dunbar. Nonetheless, she took her son and left her husband to live with Jagger, and the two became nearly permanent fixtures in the hip "Swinging London" scene. Drug use, misuse, overuse, social drama, personal drama, and relationship drama ensued. ("You Can't Always Get What You Want" has also been attributed as being influenced by her, if that's of any sway to your thinking on this matter.) For awhile, Faithfull was his muse, the significant woman in his life, his greatest pride at times, and in others, as when she fell into a drug-induced coma, his biggest mistake. At the end of 4 years, Jagger and Faithfull finally called it quits. Jagger's stated that "Wild Horses" was written while their relationship was "pretty much done," but in the tone and the lyrics, you can still hear the sound of a man who really loved her, even if it was "done."

Jerry Hall, one of Jagger's most well-known ex-wives, has always held that "Wild Horses" is her favorite Stones song, even if it was written about and for another woman.

So, that much time, that much emotion, that much love and devotion, and a song, and it still ended?

We're not exactly living in the time of fairy tales, children. The first time I heard "Wild Horses" was in the movie "Fear" in which a mid-Marky-Mark Wahlberg and a baby Reese Witherspoon play star-crossed lovers...with a murderous twist. In that movie, psychosis was apparently enough to break that devotion. All it leads me to wonder is, where does the love go? After 4 years, lots of living and a life together, when it ends, what really ends? The living arrangements? Seeing them every day? Sharing the coke? But do the emotions themselves end, or is there some part of Jagger that's still the man singing "You know I can't let you slide from my hands/ ...No sweeping exits or off-stage lines/ Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind,/ Wild horses couldn't drag me away" for Faithfull? After all, you can take away the actions, but they will never lose their meaning.

XOXO

Good Morning, Amurika!

I'm really digging off-the-shoulder tops lately. It's a nice way to show a little extra skin, and is so much more unexpected than showing more cleavage or back. If your neck and collarbone are sensitive, it's sure to get some blood rushing.

I bought 3 cheap pre-made o-t-s tees and a regular crew neck Rolling Stones men's tee the other day, brought it home, and DIY-ed it into an off the shoulder with "Can't Get No..." emblazoned across the back. The first thing I ever DIY-ed (we're not counting the misguided attempts at making my own deconstructed/reconstructed clothing held together with more safety pins than sewing when I was a pint-sized punk-rocker in middle school who refused to "conform to The Man" by, I don't know, wearing jeans and clothing that did not have holes in it?) was what was in it's previous life, an XL white Hanes men's crew neck tee. Now, it's an off-the-shoulder tie-dyed tailored shirt-dress with peek-a-boo holes cut down the spine. Hey, who said I got rid of my holey obsession?

I've been partying a lot lately, and unlike the sophomore bitties who go all-out in dresses, heels, hair and full make-up for a house party to only sit on some guy's couch that's still squishy with spilled cheap beer, my formula for parties goes along the lines of fun, functional, funky, comfortable, and easy. Face it ladies, if the party is happening on the roof or in the basement, and you can't get there because you dress doesn't allow some minor acrobatics and your heels and non-functional, you're not going to be have a fun time.

This is a Kirra scoop-neck, loose-sleeve tunic that I tug over my left shoulder and go. It looks very Parisian over skinny black pants, or hipster-chic layered over a tight knee-length shirt, and under a plaid button-up. You can even belt it at the waist to give it some more shape, but as it already tapers, I'm pretty cool with it as is when not under something less form-fitting. Worn best with lots of jewelry, unwashed Cali-girl hair, and a whimsical attitude.

And the hat? Red Stripe. "Don't worry; beer happy."

XOXO

How To Love A Wild Thing

Today was one of those late-sleeping, 4-PM-beer-drinking, lazy days in which I'm still wound for sound at 2 AM, and the only thing left to do for fun and excitement is wash the dishes, pants-less, while listening to Blondie and The Raconteurs, singing along while sudsing. Though we've come a long way from the homemakers of the '50s, I'm hoping that one day, I'll find a member of the opposite sex who appreciates this method of housekeeping more than the former.

Speaking of the '50s, Alli and I started compiling a list of the old movies we have to watch: Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Glass-Bottom Boat, The Maltese Falcon, and Creature From The Black Lagoon.

"I still haven't seen it," I told her. "It's my dad's favorite classic monster movie." Before she could say anything, I cut her off. "And you can lay off the Freud."

"I wasn't going to even touch that one," she told me.

Conversation, as it is apt to, turned then to our hot neighbor, who I'd run into earlier in the afternoon. "You know, he's supposedly really, really smart," Alli told me. "He was working on some genetics thing in Jamaica when he was there. That, and goat farming."

I ask you-- isn't that some sort of excellent? It brought up the question to me-- What sort of man do you want to end up with? If Freud is right and all young women are really just looking for another father figure, I'm going to need to find a jack of all trades, and master of most with a fantastic taste in cinema. If Alli and my not-so-innocent Mr. Roger's Neighborhood crush is any indication of the sort of person who stops us in our tracks, it's going to have to be someone with beautiful eyes. Someone real intelligent. With quirks.

And what about me? Is this smart, savvy, debonair jester

going to want me, singing Blondie at 2

AM as she finally,

finally, FINALLY does the dishes? A girl who names her cat after her favorite Italian waiter and can't say no to a dress in a particular shade of pink? Who stutters "rural" and sasses police officers when drunk? Who will never NOT be able to have an opinion on anything, but hopes her charm and colloquial vocabulary makes up for it? As Holly Golightly said in Capote's novel the movie was based on, "Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell...You can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

This is all I can say definitively on the subject: It ain't gonna work unless he's nocturnal, too.

XOXO

P.S-- If you already haven't, pick up a copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Holly is a true original.