“Learn To Imitate a Bowl of Water”: PF’s Advice on Dating

I spend my free time in the company of 3 other young guys. Although they are all older than me, our circumstances share some similarities. We’re all quite smart and good-looking and know what we’re about. One of my friends is unemployed, and studied Forestry, which cannot get someone a job in today’s market, so he wears that like a lead weight around his feet. Another one of my friends is approaching 30 and is trying to take some cautious steps toward adulthood.

Recently I discovered Buddhism and have withdrawn into my work, because I find it makes a good shield, protecting one from the emotional vagaries of personal life. Buddhism teaches you not to identify with your emotions: simply to acknowledge them in passing: like clouds in the sky, register them and watch them pass by. There really is something to this: above all the sense of being sovereign over oneself, of not being a pinball tossed on the flipper-paddles of desire. It’s particularly good for breaking the excitement-disappointment-despair cycle which happens when dating or any kind of similar activity is foremost in your mind. Letting these things become background processes seems essential to maintaining personal tranquility and getting your groove on generally.

My friends have yet to discover the inner peace that comes with this remove into professionalism, or maybe they don’t want to. At any rate, having myself just emerged from the trenches, I can easily tell you the reality on the ground: PF, the Petraeus of the nightclub barstool.

It’s hell: we are fighting an insurgency on multiple fronts, with no clear indication of who our friends or enemies are. A trusted contact can become an enemy, a neutral situation can turn ‘hot’ without warning, once thriving communities can be reduced to ghost-towns in a moment: there are no guarantees in this game.

My best friend, who I will mysteriously designate as RS-5, is in a precarious situation: K. has just proposed in terms of utter passion that they have a serious relationship, although he doesn’t really care for her; A. and L. are question marks which confront him at every visit to his home town, they could blow up at any minute; S. threatens to visit from overseas; all the while he is being strafed by text-messages from X., a young polish art student who isn’t sure if she wants it or does not. He’s encircled, but I can’t give him succor because I am fighting in a different town, on a completely different front.

But camaraderie lives in the exchange of war stories: which takes place through phone calls, over beers, in text-messages, emails, and often enough, in the midst of a new deployment, on the way to some loud alcoholic hell-hole where the struggle begins anew.

But anyway, as little as I know about this game, I am forced to constantly give dating advice. Why do I have to give dating advice? Because my friends care about my opinions, and don’t know what to do. But I am as confused and clueless as they are, so I have no idea what advice to give. Luckily, though, I realize that it doesn’t really matter. Almost regardless of what I say, the relationship disintegrates anyway. It is similar to what I noticed in my life: regardless of what I do, the relationship disintegrates of it’s own accord.

I have come to view this as a kind of natural law. Abandoning all hope of permanence, like disinterested scientists we observe the rate of decay and make a judgment as to the half-life of the arrangement: a half-life of 3 dates or a half-life of 1/2 date? Is our bond strong enough to survive another volley of text-messages? A misplaced text message will bring an already weakened structure crashing to the ground, to the delight or dismay of the scientist of personal chemistry. Deleting her number from your cell phone with a sigh, the wistful ache of the denouement lingers on, it’s incontrovertible finality echoed and underscored by the haunting tone: BEEP!

Another friend, OW-5, just wrote me and asked me if he should introduce himself to a 21-year-old girl online as being his real age, which is 30, or 25. I have seen this buddy try to get to know about 100 girls online and it never works, or they just have an affair and then its over. He is always writing to girls online, which I think is a poor approach since you cannot communicate your natural ‘essence’ in a text-box.

So I am literally having flash-backs of all the conversations we have had about this or that new girl, and the ultimate futility of all this talk-talk strikes me pointedly. Talk, talk, talk, you never capture the level of nuance needed to describe a real dynamic relationship, and beyond a few maxims everybody is on their own in this regard.

Over the years my advice to him has varied wildly, a year ago I would have advised him to use trickery:

Yes! Every word should be a lie! Introduce yourself as Zorro, and invent a really cool occupation for yourself! You can borrow my black cape!

and then, after we actually had some misadventures in the role of calabreros, the pendulum swings back, and with earnest faces we assured one another demurely on Sunday morning:

Only true love will stand the test of time. It doesn’t matter how you act, things will take their course and it will either work or it won’t work.

and then, one month later, once more full of energy (and vodka):

Yes, yes. You’re Zorro and I’m ... I’m the son of the town Mayor!

and the next month, il penseroso:

Honesty is everything in a relationship, you have to build on a granite foundation.

So when he asked me for advice the thousandth time today, this is the advice I gave him. I thought it sounded clever and maybe it has some truth. At any rate it is sufficiently obscure to cover my lack of knowledge with the rhetorical flourish typical of Asiatic parable-mongering:

I think lying wont work, to this young girl. Not a good idea. Who cares, ***** is not worth having. If she doesn’t want to be with you just leave her alone. Try to act like a bowl of water. Then you will be sexy.

Does a bowl of water ever apply pressure to someone to make them like it? No. Does a bowl of water force itself on people? No, but a thirsty person who has been dying of thirst in the desert would drink that bowl eagerly and rejoice!
You just need to keep waiting for someone who has lived in the desert.

I didn’t want any people in our position who might be readers of Majority Rights to miss out on that gem of advice: Learn to imitate a bowl of water.

Posted by Potential Frolic on Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 12:20 AM in
Comments (4) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Next entry: Don’t Rob a Bank When the Police are Watching

Previous entry: Staying Alive