Hello all, exciting news: I lay at your readerly feet another installment of the “Types to Avoid Dating.” This one, I must confess, is more sombre than the last, and also more sober. But I think that you’ll find it enjoyable anyway. Please add on, refute, engage, disorient! Here goes:
I have always been a person with a low threshold for consumer options. If I walk into a supermarket and see three types of jam, that’s fine. Seven or more produces a sort of dazed clenching-up in my muscles, as my brain starts to flat-line and reaches an inevitable asymptote, shutting down my capacity to choose. This often results in my selection of none of the above: I just can’t handle the sheer variety. At my very best, I prefer that others whose judgment I trust – the philosopher-kings (and queens) of the fashion/connoisseurship world – choose for me, and I’ll plunk down the cash.
In love and dating, my life has of late been following the same trajectory as the jam example. Sad to say, the world of human interaction is becoming more and more a vast supermarket, with people flashing you a little leg and throwing their “selling points” in your face, leaving the slimy stuff under their rocks well submerged until the fifth date. I don’t know if there’s a concise saying that would encapsulate the following sentiment, but lately the more new people I’ve been meeting, the more painfully cauterized my romantic organs are becoming – a sort of emotional constipation reaching the point of near-impaction – as I come to understand that there are so many hues and aromas in the infinite marimba of human emotio-sexual insanity and desire only to turn away to the quietude of my virginal bower, sleeping between pristine butter-yellow sheets. It’s as if the more I see, the more I DON’T want. Being in the world and encountering a round of new faces has seemingly exposed me to more types of romantically hazardous materials than I’d lately desire, to possibly culminate in a sort of conspiracy-theorist celibacy that I’m trying to ward off, a crazed “Army of One” sort of thing, wherein my pelvis is encased in an amalgam of chastity belt and machine gun. No, but seriously, I sometimes feel like a boat buffeted on all sides by crazies who are wanting to get in my pants. And if there’s anything worse than an irritating, infuriatingly crazy person, it’s one who wants to involve him/herself in some kind of romantic entanglement with you. Here I would quote Grace Jones: “Your private life drama, baby, leave me out.”
Meanwhile, there are people whose pants I want to get into, and they probably think that I’m one of the aforementioned crazies. Which I may well be – the whole Jacob’s ladder of angel-punching sex/dating is lately throwing my forces of judgment into doubt. I wish that I could bring potential suitors before a panel of disinterested judges, so they’d evaluate the person’s credentials, prod his/her head with calipers, and the like, giving me concrete wisdom and insurance against foreclosures of the heart. Shadowed by my mistrust of my own instincts and reasoning capabilities, I increasingly opt to disengage from the fleshly ruckus, gather my wits, and write my goddamned dissertation. But shutting out the noise, especially when my body is acting fecund and feral like something out of a Bjork video (circa 1998) – think unfurling, animated maroon tentacles that turn into flowers with claws – is difficult.
I remember taking a road trip to Romulus, Michigan during my sophomore year of college with a friend and some guy who really wanted to date her but was clearly not worthy. She thought that he was irksome to begin with, but his romantic overtures soon began to crescendo, reaching a crisis-point after about the hundredth mile. As we rocketed down I-90 in our crammed little hatchback, she began to roll her eyes and kind of moo like a frustrated ruminant, bellowing, “annoyed!” at various intervals. The message was loud but also subtle, and I don’t think it ever penetrated his frenzied scrim of lust. Lately, I’ve also been lowing and rumbling with this phrase, an homage to her private-public howl of anguish in the face of banal, unwavering, loving miscommunication. Because that’s all that these untimely affections are, at base – misdirected vectors of impossible futures, blueprints for edifices that can and will never be built, romances being the closest that capitalism can come to a utopian arc of social constructivism.
And now, after that lengthy prolegomena, for the types:
-1. The Crazy Train: You know this type well. This is the person to whose life you’d love to adjoin yours, except that he or she happens to be permanently wedded/welded to some sort of crazy vision for which you don’t have a great deal of patience, time, or respect. You meet this person incidentally, perhaps, and the two of you click – until she points out that her life goal has been to live in the Arizona desert and build cybernetic dolphins out of scrap metals and use them to communicate with the moon and create alternative energies through the constant vacillating of their dorsal fins. Don’t you want to go to Oracle, AZ with her and do this? Well?
Sometimes the “crazy idea” that makes this person’s eyes shine is present from the beginning of your engagement with him/her, and you think, “oh, soon enough this person will come to his/her senses and forget about that batshit-insane plan to XYZ in the ABC for all eternity.” Other times, the moon mission/radical vision comes creeping out over time like an insidious worm, because the other person has sensed that you might not be wild about the idea and is introducing you to it slowly. In still other cases, you might sort of like the idea at first – “okay, planting trees in the ghettoes of Michigan sounds like a good idea to me” – but then become sick of it, because it wasn’t your idea to begin with: it was your partner’s, and now it has become a sacred quest for a holy grail that to you feels like cheap Styrofoam, which you would have tossed out long ago. But you feel bad disrespecting your lover’s dreams, and so you try to uphold them and even start to be convinced by your own Goffmanesque performance. Whatever the case, you must soon consign yourself to the role of “tag-along sex partner” or even “Sherpa guide” as you truck through the desert/mountains/oceans/cities/restaurants with your other, hoping to dine on some crumbs from his/her table of joy. You wish that you could steadfastly follow an idea to its demise in that way, but you were not built for such things. But (sigh of resignation) you have to admit that you were built to carry a roll-up sleeping bag, some snorkel gear, and a few energy bars.
Warning to potential lovers: I am becoming increasingly convinced that I am this type. Is Katie the Crazy Train? The wild ride that leaves you dizzy and begging for more even while you acknowledge that less IS more? Discuss!
-2. The Moses, or the Jewish Homesteader: sorry to duck into ethnic enclaves here, but I am a culturally Jewish woman, and this identity permeates my being in some way that I am always still exploring. Non-religious – although I like the songs a lot – I nevertheless feel implicated in the social/political/cultural morass that is the “Jewish identity” in this current day and age. I also wouldn’t preclude myself from some sort of spirituality, because I don’t watch TV anyway, so what else is there to do.
Anyhow, but I would characterize the social aspects of my Jewishness via the following metaphor: until the age of 20 or so, I felt myself sublimely floating in a calm and tepid sea, the water the same temperature as the air, producing an unreflective feeling of contentment. Then my parents and I had an earth-shattering conversation at a Chinese restaurant, the Szechuan House, in Milwaukee. (Why is Jewish life punctuated by epiphanies at Chinese restaurants? This should be the subject of a dissertation.) This created the undertow that forever left me questioning my very bathwater.
They sat me down and simply said that, in their individual and collective experience, people tended to settle into things – habits, ideas, and ways – by the age of roughly 23. They acknowledged that I was a late bloomer and asked me about my future plans. They told me that, from their perspective, I had a few years yet to figure things out for myself. I was stunned, and I believe that a few green beans fell off my fork as I pondered an answer. They told me that I didn’t have to respond right away. It was Bastille Day, I recall, and they were seated in a bloc opposite me in the red vinyl booth of the S.H., to which we had gone because of its spectacular (and reasonable!) lunch buffet.
Anyhow, so at the time this moment just filled me with unadulterated fear, like God Himself was wielding a gun and telling me to stand up straight. But for some reason, the eerie conversation lingered and has continued to inform my thinking. Late bloomer? 23? Settled? Bullshit! Nonetheless, there was something about it that produced a sort of current, the aforementioned undertow, making me aware of the water in which I had been floating: that in its temperate sameness, it was structuring my existence in ways that I could not possibly control. Nothing was arbitrary; I could not be absolved of culpability; the matrix of power-knowledge was fast closing around me and spreading its sandy tentacles into the seams of my bathing suit. It’s not incidental that I was reading a lot of Foucault at this time.
Another lengthy rumination! But so at this point, I started to truly understand the perils of Dating Jewish (DJ). Because dating, marriage, and child-rearing are major points on the normative Jewish roadmap to adulthood, and clearly I was engaged in none of these things. So I started to think about my relationship to Jewish men, around which I had always grown up but which I had not really thought about in a serious way, being somewhat repelled (albeit amused) by them. I started to think about Jewish men as potential objects of sexual attraction and desire. I also started to think about what Jewish men wanted in a Jewish woman, and I entered into some self-loathing identity complexes – not to mention the very present queerness factor, which I’ll touch upon in a second – and started to develop a particularly fierce aversion to what I’ll call the “Moses,” the type of Jewish man who is secular but seems to hold a lot of commanding authority in his arching nose and furry eyebrows, his denouncements and holdings-forth ringing with the knowledge of the ancients. There is something about the Mosaic Jew that attracts me, but I am ultimately afraid that he’ll raise his hand and produce a hail of locusts (emotionally speaking) or something like that, after having parted the Red Sea (heh heh). Because Moses was pretty belligerent, you know, and at times he could lay down the Law. I could go further with this half-baked hamentaschen, but I’m going to leave you here, with flour on your hands.
Why did I not consider Jewish women at this juncture? I can’t say, but I can tell you that I have later come around to Jewish women. Whereas my early interactions with Jewish women produced a sort of frustration and anxiety, I have, in later life, begun to really enjoy and value my friendships with JW’s. In fact, there are many Jewish women with whom I feel affinities in fundamental ways, and I could definitely see myself dating a Jewish woman, baking challah, wearing whimsical caftans, and sharing “life moments” while dancing the hora. Jewish Moseses, however, continue to intimidate me with their protocols, shaggy salt-and-pepper manes, brooding brows, and their commanding words. And of course the way that lightning zigzags over their heads when they talk to God. In sum, I’ll say that I am still open to Dating Jewish, but the Moses is always looking for his little Gertrude, or whatever (? Did Moses have a lady friend? Or was he too thunderous for such petty things? Can’t recall), and so probably wouldn’t make it to my Promised Land.
-3. The Parent Trap: Who among you remembers the Unmothered Mother-Wanter in Disguise, or the Happily Untrammeled Wilderness, of previous blog post fame? To refresh your memory: the bumbling child in need of parental guidance and a reintroduction to the womb? Well, the Parent Trap is the exact opposite, residing at the chilly heights of the spectrum’s other end. The Parent Trap provides you, the (ostensibly) malleable and infantile figure, with a precious and seemingly unlimited quantity of “helpful,” “inspiring,” “encouraging,” and “productive” judgmental criticism, wielding his or her moral compass as the ultimate sex toy. Where the former type (and the Manchild) needed you to apply your superego to their orifices, the Parent Trap has a little too much in the way of superego but is only too happy to furnish said superego on your behalf, you eager and puppyish acolyte. You are initially drawn to this superego – the clear-eyed rational faculties of this person who seems so much more mature than you, able to see far into the distance and understand human nature in ways that will forever elide you. This is all bullshit, of course, but you are touched by the PT’s willingness to martyr him/herself to your cause and exert some effort to help you help yourself. But when the superego goes to work, you feel yourself immersed in an acrid, burning asepsis that has dissolved the structures of your very being.
I have to say that I am VERY susceptible to this type and have come under its sway frequently in my past dating experience. I’ve come to certain points in my life in which I just wanted my sexual/romantic partner to clean up my messes and show me the way forward. But then his/her critical faculties become too much, closing in on my source of light, as all of the things that I consider sacred come under the piercing scrutiny of one with a Superior Vision and are shown to be tawdry and flighty, ephemeral and indulgent.
You can only take so much of that treatment – and so soon enough, I would flee from the constant revelation of my flaws in the public square. I would typically follow a cleansing stint in the arms of the Parent Trap with a romp through the Untrammeled Wilderness, in which no one was scrutinizing nothin’, and my libido could run free and dirty, like water tainted with giardia. Then back to the Parent Trap with a hangdog expression (and a hangover).
But the PT will inevitably tire of these abusive ablutions, feeling his/her trust to be ever more egregiously strained and wondering why he/she became interested in you in the first place. The PT will, in other words, almost feel pushed to the brink of moral compromise and turn YOU into a figure of Satanic temptations. Readers, I can say this with certitude: one day, she/he will not invite you back. The ultimate moral rejection, branding the heart in ways that constant negative reinforcement never could! The superego’s threshold of tolerance will have been reached, and in the face of your repeated comings and goings, all patience with the patient will be lost. You don’t want to let things get to this point. Stay away, and let the PT pursue his/her vision of world order without the complication of your morally ambiguous presence.
-4. The Blood Type: There are people who enter into relationships thinking in terms of “Alpha” and “Beta,” of A and B. Their constant exertion of energy in trying to figure out who has the natural upper-hand in the relationship, and whether there is the possibility for ‘upward mobility’ (by which the Beta turns into the Alpha, forcing the Alpha into the submissive Beta position), begins to produce poisonous strains of manipulative passive-aggression that eventually make things extremely sour while obscuring the social order of their dating life even more. They start to make wolf moves, dominating and forcing you down, while also dodging and feinting around you like some kind of post-Parkinson’s Muhammad Ali passive-aggressive shadow boxer. All of this, you eventually feel, is a mere smoke screen for their insecurities, and you find that you need to flee before they abscond with your emotional diamonds.
I’m sure that you’ve thought about the alpha/beta thing at some point – or maybe you haven’t, and you’re a lot less venal than I am. So let me spell it out for those of you who still believe that America is a classless society: in any social situation, you’ll encounter people who you feel are out of your dating league and people who you feel are below you, dating-wise. This doesn’t need to do with class, race, sex, age, weight, or any of the above – or those could be factors. As a sapiosexual, for example, I often instinctively dismiss candidates who I feel are not smart. That’s mean and prejudiced and blah blah blah – and there you have it. At the same time, I also routinely dismiss candidates who are only smart – nerdy but lacking in a skillfully calibrated sense of humor, for example, or an openness to some of popular culture’s lesser evils. This is a recipe for eternal solitude, I know.
But back to the main point: sometimes people start dating and, while in the process of beginning a relationship, try to assess where they and their partner stand vis-à-vis this alpha-beta thing: who is the top dog, who the underdog. Now, there are people who spend about a second on this question – and then there are people who obsess about it continually throughout the entire relationship, to the point that it ultimately causes the undoing of the partnership in question, along with an outpouring of substantial resentment, guilt, insecurity, and scars that remain to trickle into (sorry, mixing metaphors there) other, future unions once the malignant boil that was your relationship has been lanced. The Blood Type is this: constantly trying to figure out if you or she is the A or B, and reining you in with her insecurities like some kind of Medusa figure. Usually, she envisions herself as the Beta and spends substantial time building a shrine to you, the supposed Alpha, and worshiping your presence/stating her luckiness to be with one as special and desirable as you, and otherwise building you into a formidable figure, the one with the power. In the meantime, she is undercutting that very power and making you a slave to her affections through the very application of those affections – all of this flattery is going to your head and making it swell like a balloon, but one with a minute hole in it, through which tiny amounts of air are imperceptibly leaking. This is a pretty Hegelian type, it occurs to me. Maybe you have never considered yourself the Alpha before – in fact, maybe you have never even thought in those terms before. But now you’re in the matrix, and you find that you increasingly rely on her recognition of your greatness to believe in this supposed greatness.
In the best case scenario, you’ll become wise to her jive early on and get the hell out of that manipulative coven. In the worst case, you’ll eventually BECOME the Beta, as you’re sucked under by her manipulative praise and support, so that the withdrawal of that affirmation will make you crave it. Bad voodoo!
-5. The Cosmopolitan: This person is not actually a cocktail but probably has spent a lot of time drinking these sweet-and-sour concoctions at fancy bars throughout the metropoles of the world. For a while now, I’ve been searching for structural embodiments of our current epoch, and I think that the Cosmopolitan, and perhaps the Hedge Fund (see below), are it. The Cosmopolitan is that person who has lived in so many places and traveled around so much that his/her sense of self is entirely distorted, if not obliterated. Often a well-dressed loner reveling in shades of heather grey and soft wools, the Cosmopolitan possesses no real center – in fact, prides him/herself on this point – and is the personification of an airport, albeit a fancy airport, with luxury stores and decent food. S/he is always passing through, leaving well-cut gems of wisdom or thought in your presence, but soon having to leave on the next flight to the up-and-up. This person is born of privilege and alienation, overexposure to high-class people and things without the sense that s/he has actually possessed those things: the postmodern flâneur, endlessly window-shopping. His/her constant desire for greatness of sorts- whether this be in terms of epicurean experiences, aesthetic beauty, intellectual development, or career ambition – leads him/her to continual heights of study, travel, and consumerism that push the limits of his/her human relationships and leave you, the would-be interlocutor, feeling like you’re engaging in a monologue while witnessing a juggernaut on a high-speed train through multiple layers of tempered glass. Some part of you knows that the Cosmopolitan values you as a person – because s/he is not completely vapid – but another part of you is well aware that you can never satisfy his/her craving for more, better, newer, and sleeker. At an extreme, you feel like you might remind him/her of death (though he/she would quickly refute this idea), and somehow you know that your very presence is abhorrent to him/her through no fault of your own. Nothing produces existential, mediated, resounding loneliness like being with a Cosmopolitan. Stay away, get your fingers into the earth.
-6. The Hedge Fund/The Rover: this person is the socially apt equivalent of the Cosmopolitan. For him/her, you are but a pixel in an ever-turning color wheel of faces and experiences, a chip migrating down the intestines of the world’s pachinko parlor and dropping into this slot, or that. Eventually, inevitably, s/he will tire and move on to the next. Of course, this person will also end in existential loneliness, but because s/he resembles a beautiful animal not entirely in control of its motor functions, you feel the fleeting need to entrap it and make it yours. Possession of the unpossessable – that is the driving force here. Whereas the Cosmopolitan gives you flashes of coldness when you come near, the Hedge Fund/Rover is an essentially warm, inviting creature excited by any and all possibilities of human interaction, in ways that may even strike you as dangerously egalitarian. Unlike the Blood Type, this person has long ago thrown out any notion of Alpha or Beta, or maybe his/her understanding of it has been through the washing machine one too many times and is fuzzy beyond legibility. Aphra Behn spoke of this person – a fleshly outcropping of the Will, or one who is in perpetual social motion and often sleeps with a lot of other people, giving you the feeling that somewhere s/he is marking down numbers or checks in a little book or trying to remember your name (as distinct from the Katie with whom s/he slept with last week). Despite the enticing nature of this sexual animal, you are left with a sense of vampirism: in being rejuvenated by new encounters with heretofore unencountered people, the Hedge Fund/Rover is sucking the very life out of you, hedging his/her bets, accumulating numbers, playing trick cards, trying to strategize around you, making excuses not to see you, up to no good when you’re not around, ingratiating when you are. You are a rock, and this person pools around you like liquid, sidling up and offering sexual solace but then ebbing without warning. Beware of the Hedge Fund, as interest rates run high and leave substantial debts.
