The Invention of Love
I used to believe I’d be dead before I made it to 30.
I awoke at 7 on Sunday, my 30th birthday, and was not dead. Running on four hours’ sleep, I was not very much alive either. Flügtag was as fun a way as any to spend the first day of the rest of my life. Watching flightless contraptions plunge into the Hudson, I thought of how pointless our grand projects are and took some comfort in this. Towers go up and then collapse. Civilizations conquer and then fall into disarray. Men set foot on the moon and then retreat. Species dominate the planet and then die out. But so what? We find beauty amidst the chaos and we go on. We poke fun at ourselves.
My parents were in town and over Sunday brunch I listened to my father pontificate, as he often does, about how times are a changin’. He’s prone to grandiloquent tirades that cast conventional wisdom into doubt.
“Dating didn’t exist when I was growing up,” he said.
I screwed up my face in a mock grimace. “That’s so much bullshit. You have to go on dates. How else do you get to know someone?”
“Back then you didn’t date a woman, you courted her.”
I pictured men in stockings and powdered wigs. “What do you mean by that?”
“You found someone in your circle of friends and acquaintances and pursued her until she gave in. You took a risk. You already knew she was worth it. You proved your worth by showing you truly desired her. Dating was an invention of the fifties; it’s what white kids in the suburbs started doing, along with the Jitterbug and all that. People stopped courting and started playing games.”
“Yeah, it’s the opposite mentality I guess. Like how Seinfeld was always looking for the fatal flaw in his babe of the week. Dating is so defensive. It’s shopping around with an impossibly rigid list of criteria in your head, kicking the tires and trying not to get screwed over.”
“You waste time trying to force a relationship with people you don’t know and don’t even like. This is why people are so unhappy.”
That evening Leslie and I went to see Lost in Translation, and the film left me with warm, hazy remembrances of my own trips to Japan. I am, incidentally, in love with Scarlett Johansson. If I ever meet her I’ll invite her to come live with us on a commune somewhere. We’ll all dress like post-millennial hippies.
Later that night I collapsed into bed, pulling Leslie close to me. The conversation with my father echoed in my brain. “I’ve been thinking about what my father said about courtship,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it too.”
“That’s what I did with you. I knew I wanted you from the moment I saw you. We never went on a date.”
“You courted me, didn’t you?”
“For a whole year. I think I’ve been missing something. Not that I haven’t had fun over the past couple of years but, god, I got so cynical about it. All those dates in 2001. I saw how the game was played and I was determined to play it better than anyone else. Every time I got burned I held it against the next person; it was like this poison building up in my system. It started innocently enough and soon I was notching bedposts. The sad thing is my cynicism worked. I don’t want to be that person.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
“I know. I wasn’t listening. I thought you were nuts because I was superficially rational about everything, but now I see how deranged I really was. I had my guard up and wanted to keep my feelings out of it. Bond Girl once told me we were the only people she was seeing and I sort of mentally brushed it off. It never occurred to me that she might have been hurt before and it must have taken a lot for her to get close to us. And J, well, she was just a kid. It was all about getting something from these women before they screwed me over somehow.”
“We were both pretty harsh sometimes. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone.”
We lay silent in the darkness for a moment. I ran my hand over Leslie’s thigh. “You know, I’d trade every casual affair I’ve ever had for that one kiss at the end of the movie. A genuine moment with someone. I have you—I don’t need anyone else. We’ve already seen and done so much. If we meet someone we’re both thrilled about we’ll let it develop naturally. And if it never progresses beyond simply enjoying her company I’m happy with that.”
“We shouldn’t settle for some woman just because she’s available. There’s one thing I forgot to tell you about last night. Emma said her hesitation has nothing to do with the way she feels about each of us. She likes being around us.”
“I know she’s not toying with us. I don’t want to toy with her either. This whole time I’ve been thinking about when we’d get the opportunity to seduce her, you know, falling back on my old playbook. But I’d rather just show her we’re good people and let it grow into something, or not. We’ll spend time with her either way. Jack-n-Jill have a good attitude, I think. Doesn’t matter to them if all we do is hang out and talk.”
A couple days later I came across this article about online dating and the re-emergence of casual sex. It’s really no surprise to those of us who’ve experienced the online grind. The new sexual consumerism has, indeed, sucked the soul out of relationships and spawned an entire generation of people who are socially dysfunctional around the opposite sex. Post a hip little profile. Meet someone. Play it cool. Keep your guard up. Fuck. Get bored a few weeks later. Whine to your friends. Do it all over again.
Screw this. Authenticity is hot. Who’s with me?
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