Things That Don't Matter

So I said I was going to do another lighthearted conversational thing like The Proposal, and I did, though I’m not so sure I’d call it lighthearted. The Proposal was a piece that posed some questions without necessarily providing answers, this is the answer, or at least a debate over the answer.

The Proposal Part 2

“So then, what have we learned from this whole… ordeal?”

“I don’t know, girls are bitches.”

“I would go a step further there and say that girls are soulless automatons put here on earth to suck dry our wallets and all too rarely anything else, but that’s just common knowledge. You have learned a lesson.”

“What?”

“Well, if women have taught me anything, it’s that they don’t need me, and that is something that you have just learned for yourself.”

“I don’t think that’s true, women need men, just like we need them.”

“Well, first you’re wrong, the only thing women really need men for is reproduction and you can do that artificially these days. And second did I say ‘men’? No, I said ‘me’. I am a man without much of anything to offer, not particularly good looking, not loaded, and therefore not in any way desirable. You are in a fairly similar situation, and you have just come to realize what all of us eventually have to, if we sleep with anyone it is quite literally getting lucky.”

“Oh come on, that is so cynical.”

“Yeah, I’m cynical, what did you expect? Cynical is accurate. If I listened to the part of me that’s always saying, ‘That’s not going to work out,’ I would be right 100% of the time.”

“Girls don’t care so much about looks, personality is a much more influential factor for them.”

“Oh that is such a lie, just like anything any girl ever tells you. If personality is a factor at all it’s personality as determined by how much money you’re either willing or able to spend on them.”

“No, they want guys that will listen to them and stuff like that.”

“That’s bullshit, they have friends who do that. Their interest in guys is limited to money and muscles, and if you don’t have enough of either you’re screwed, or rather you’re not, which is the problem.”

“That’s not true at all. Love doesn’t rely on any of that. Just look at the book we’re reading in English, The Ballad of the Sad Café, that Marvin guy who could have had any woman fell in love with Miss Amelia who was considered in no way attractive. And Miss Amelia fell in love with that hunchback guy, there’s no reasoning behind it, it just happens.”

“Did you really just use The Ballad of the Sad Café, the book with the most cynical opinion on love that I have ever heard, to support your argument? The book that says in every relationship there is a lover and a beloved, and… here just a second I have the book in my backpack and the quote is just too perfect.”

Damien rooted around in his backpack until his hand prized upon the book he searched for. The book opened right to the page he wanted, as a book that has been held open on the same page for an extended period of time is wont to do.

“Okay here it is, ‘And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.’”

“Yeah but that doesn’t support your original argument that women are heartless. Love can happen between anyone.”

“But why would you want it to? It hurts everyone.”

“That’s like saying why get a dog when it’s just going to die someday and make you sad? The time you have in the middle makes it worth it.”

“Then why is it so hard for us to get girlfriends? If love was blind and everyone wanted it, we’d all be paired up, but we’re not are we? Which means that there’s criteria, and we don’t meet it.”

“We just haven’t come across the right people yet.”

“But when you walked over there just a minute ago, wasn’t it because you thought she was the right person? And she shot you down.”

“I thought that she might be, but the fact that she didn’t want me means that she’s not.”

“But do you still want her?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then that right person crap has nothing to do with it, you want her but you’re just not good enough.”

“Oh thanks, that’s always nice to hear from a friend.”

“I do my best.”

“I think you can want someone without them being the right person, the right person is just the one who wants you back, and finding that, it’s hard.”

“Yeah, hard for us, because we’re not wanted.”

“No, everyone suffers the same problem. Those who are desired may have a hard time finding someone they desire, it’s not just the unattractive who suffer.”

“I think on average they suffer more, someone attractive can just go out and hook up with anyone if they feel like it, we can’t do that.”

“Yes but now you’re talking about something else, hooking up with someone isn’t having a loving relationship, it’s a satisfaction of earthly desires with just anyone who fits the bill of being a member of the sex you’re interested in.”

“But we don’t get to do that either.”

“Yeah but that’s just because we don’t go to the right parties, which is a problem we have not because of our attractiveness to the opposite sex but our social abilities in general.”

“Screw people.”

“Exactly. You just proved my point.”

“Whatever. In any case what it comes down to is that your viewpoint is really just as bleak as mine. I say we’re doomed to be lonely because we’re not rich or especially good looking, and you say we’re doomed to be lonely because we have to seek out that right person from a sea of billions.”

“Yeah, it pretty much just sucks.”

“I’ll say.”

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a truly fantastic novella, if you haven’t read it you should. It’s comforting, in a really depressing sort of way.