(Various Shades of) Blonde Nonsense

I really do have to start the laundry now–I’m well past when I was supposed to begin doing it, actually, and, this being me, of course, it’s a frack of a lotta laundry.

Take note if you’re going to be reading me, I am notorious about not doing laundry.  Laundry is absolutely my least favorite household chore.  I have written whole psychoanalytic blogs on relationships just to get out of laundry.

Okay, today I’m not psychoanalyzing.  I’m not even putting on my best John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) mask (yes, I do have one–you get them at the local party store during Halloween Costume season).  Nope, this one is coming straight off the cuff, very little basic thought thrown in ahead of time.  Note that I never submit a statement without some evidentiary experience to back it up.  Thus I have peppered each subcategory below–the list of men every woman has in her hope–or dashed hopes–chest–with specific examples from my own life.  Personally I like “Dear John” the best–if only because of the age at which I encountered him.

Yes, it is possible to run into tritely jr. high school circumstances well beyond 16, or even 36.

Moving on, here’s the list.  Feel free to comment with any I’ve left off…

“The Huh? What Was I Thinking?” Boyfriend
You start with this one. This is the guy who you were crazy about. He’s the one you thought you would marry, or spend at least a good chunk of your life with. This is the guy you stared up at with mooney eyes filled with so many stars they blinded you. You couldn’t quite see what he really was until he left, at which point you stared at the door (when he slammed it shut) and thought — you guessed it. If not see blog title. You are aggravated, or sad, and so you find excuses that make him bad, that make you wonder, “what was I thinking?”

Really he was just human–occasionally a jerk, maybe he lied, or cheated or some such nonsense–probably not. In time, you come to the realization that he was just a guy you dated, and things didn’t work out, so you both moved on. Innocuous enough.

I met “huh, what was I thinking” in the William Paterson Library. He was gone by the time I wrapped my first year of teaching. A few years later I met him again. Same story. No harm, no foul. Just how it worked out.

Psycho
He’s dangerous–and not in the dark, tragic way that “The One Needs Saving” (see below) is. I mean, he’s really dangerous. You don’t realize that when you start dating him. It comes to you gradually as time goes by. He’s jealous and tries to isolate you from your friends. He’s verbally manipulative. He breaks up with you, but gets upset when you actually leave. He doesn’t believe a word you say. When you finally do break free, he trashes you to anyone who’s listening. Every once in awhile you think you see him in a crowd and recoil. Take this guy one or two steps further and you’ve got the stuff bad teenie slasher movies are made of.

I got this out of my system pretty quick and at a fairly young age. He was a Russian Jew. I was still semi-seriously Roman Catholic. He asked me, in all seriousness, what I’d do if all the Christians rose up against the Jews one day.

I told him honestly, “I’d laugh my arse off because that’d be insane.”

He didn’t believe me. Exit Vladimir.
Yes, Vladimir. I dated a Vladimir. I should have been warned off by the name, perhaps?

I also have a good male friend named Damien.

Go figure.

The “Great in Bed and That’s Why I Kept It Going” Guy
He was a dolt. The sex was phenomenal. You kept him around for the latter, and eventually got rid of him for the former. I’m trying to remember which guy this was for me… Ok, even if I remembered I wouldn’t write it here. Suppose he’s reading? I mean, he’s probably not but justincase (yes, one word) I wouldn’t want to insult him by calling him a dolt and admitting I only kept him around for the sex bit. Then again, he’s enough of a dolt not to realize I’m calling him that but I don’t want to inflate his ego by calling him by name so he knows how great in bed he was, either.

“Goddawful in Bed but His Intellect Made Him Sexy” Guy
This is the one you kept around for exactly the opposite reasons you kept the dolt about. Intelligence is sexy. It’s the hottest thing a guy can have, if you ask me. That doesn’t mean the guy does rocket science for a living. It just means he’s brainy, and in every syllable of every word, you hear it. He stimulates your mind. Your cerebral cortex folds a few more times each time you sit for coffee. But oh dear do you end up faking it a lot!

Once again, I’m not naming. I think he knows he wasn’t sterling in bed, but I don’t want him to get a huge ego reading how I actually gave him credit for having a brain. That wouldn’t serve me well, either.

The Soulmate
You meet this guy and it’s a thunderclap. You know this is the one. You have never felt so connected to another person so quickly. He feels it too. You can complete each other’s sentences. You know each other’s thoughts. You go from zero to 60 in less than a heartbeat but that’s okay, because you know. You just know, this is the guy. You become “The Golden Couple” for however long that lasts: you have everything. People think of you as amazing. You fit together. Maybe you get married. Maybe you stay together forever. Maybe you don’t. Either way you end up friends, sharing in-jokes with each other in front of the significant others you move on to for years to come…

The Player/Bad Boy
This one came and went pretty quick–before I finished my sophomore year of college, actually. He was fun in bed. You liked being on his arm. You thought you were in love, became his groupie, or one of them, and when he got bored with you, in a tragic, 1980’s music video moment, you broke up. Years later you think of him, and even though he was a lothario, you can’t be mad because, well, it was a chintzy ’80s music video, after all.

The One You May Have Turned
There’s one who wasn’t interested, even if you were standing stark in front of him. You always wondered…years later you get the news he’s gotten married in San Francisco where that’s legal now. You don’t know what to think.

I’m still waiting for the long distance call from the west coast. It’s unlikely I’d escape this one. I’ve had all the others. It’s inevitable. That call is coming.

“Dear John”
This guy is strange. He hits on something he can’t accept about you. You think things are going along ok. Then he disappears in the middle of the night with no word, or if there is one, it’s a “Dear John” letter. My “Dear John” letter came from a guy named, LOL, no seriously, I’m laughing, ah…John…

Oh well. It still isn’t the call from the west coast. I take solace in that.

The Best Friend Who’s In Love With You
Remember “Duckie”? John Cryer’s character in “Pretty in Pink”? That’s him. He’s in love with you, and you’re in love with someone else–or you go through a string of bad boyfriends that you cry on his shoulder about. He eventually works up the nerve to tell you how he feels, you give him what my friend Will called the “7 Deadly Words” (I Like You Only As A Friend) and break his heart.

Eventually he meets someone, and moves on. You think about him from time to time and wonder. Years later you run into him. You’re both married with children. You’ve got houses, and mortgages, SUVs and bills. You say hello and after he leaves there’s a momentary flicker. It’s kinda like when you go to the eye doctor and he puts a set of lenses over your eyes, turns one over in front of your eye as you stare through that heavy metal “vision testing” device and asks “Which is better, 1 or 2?” You ask “can I see one again?”

“To Sir With Love“
You’re younger, naive, callow. He’s older, worldly, mature. He shows you a new way based on his breadth of experience. You’re still playing with crayons (thanks, Lulu) when you stumble upon him. You discuss the big “Y’s”: spirituality, philosophy, sociology, history, things literary, etc. By the time he leaves, you’ve gone to perfume (again, thanks to the lyricist of that song). You don’t really miss this one. He’s not meant to be a permanent fixture. You know that. Fate has made him cross your path for one reason and one reason only–crayons make lousy lipstick.

Heya Neil, if you’re reading, you were right about the crayons…

The One Who Needs Saving
This is the tragic, misunderstood, highly dramatic one who needs saving from himself. You think you’re the one for the job. You will be the one who makes him change. You’ll mend his broken heart. He’ll give up the bottle for you. You can make him better.

You can’t, give it up.

The One Who Got Away
He’s the only guy who understands you–except for your best friend, but that doesn’t count because he’s in love with you. He doesn’t bat an eye when you stumble into him at the A&P checkout with female unmentionables. He likes that you trip over yourself. He challenges your mind and makes you laugh. You go out on one date. You know there’s chemistry. You just don’t know what to make of it all, or your head is stuck on one of the other’s–the One Who Needs Saving, perhaps. The Playboy more like. Either way, you’re out of your head, because you let him, well, get away.

This is another of those “years later” guys. Except, of course, when you run into him, he’s with his gorgeous wife, and you’re standing in the middle of ShopRite in pajama bottoms, no makeup and day-old hair clipped randomly up on your head.

The One You End Up With
This is the guy that after you go through all the others, you end up with. He is your best friend. Mentally, he’s stable. Jealous he’s not. He’s got a brain, but you’re not faking it. You’re smart enough not to let him get away and the only thing you have to save him from accidentally going off to work without dinner. He’s saved himself. Actually, he saves you. He tells you “there is no breaking up” and you don’t freak out, you just accept it.

I’m still waiting on this guy. I know he’ll turn up. I cared notta thing for Sex and The City in it’s later years. I’ll take a huge pass on the movie. I do absolutely adore Chris Noth, and–I saw bits and pieces of the final episode–breathed a huge sigh of relief when Carrie ([?] Is that Sarah Jessica Parker’s character’s name?) came to her senses about “Mr Big.”

That’s what you go through all the others to get to. I do believe you get there.
I’d better get rolling on the laundry…

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