The Art of Seduction and the Bullshit Game

Let’s offend as many people as we can with one post, that’s my life’s mission.

I’m at home on a Saturday, a Saturday for which I initially had BIG plans like rooftop parties with expats (you say expat, I say future husband. whut whut in the butt?) and book launches featuring my sister.

But that didn’t happen, so I’m at home after a long tiring day of driving to my friends house and then back to mine. Tired. I’m home tired watching a documentary about werewolves because I seriously believe I should arm myself with knowledge. About werewolves. Knowledge about werewolves, that’s what I need in case I’m ever in danger of a werewolf attack. I don’t know anything about werewolves, but I know about wolves, being a single girl who goes on the occasional date. Burn. Damn wolves.

Dating is familiar territory. And by dating I don’t mean dating as a stage of courtship because in this case the two are practically mutually exclusive. Usually it’s just a blink from being friends with someone–friends who do coffee and watch movies then go to their respective homes and talk a lot–to being the devoted girlfriend. That stupid shit you see in movies, with the flowers and the gifts of pastry and other random stuff to impress my mom, is practically alien territory. I feel like a martian when observing courtship rituals. So this is how you human beings go about it? Interesting. Sure, I’ve received flowers, and I still have them, but was it as a function of courtship? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure why I’m even analyzing this.

Here’s a picture of Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes. Just because.

I can’t really complain because it’s not easy to complain about something that’s outside of your experience and yet you’ve done okay without for so long. While I wasn’t courted in the conventional sense, I still spent the last 7 years or so of my life in and out of long-term relationships. That’s still more than I can say for a lot of girls my age.

It’s the “my age” part that clinches the whole courtship statement. Both the “my age” and the “age” part, because at a certain age, we stop behaving like pubescent teens at a soiree and start diving in as “adults”. Adults–we would like to believe–cut the bullshit. Adults have been burned and hold back because they are aware not only of the stakes, but of the impact when it all turns to shit. Adults are supposed to be smart and pragmatic. Problem is the tendency to mistake “smart” and “pragmatic” for mentally stunted and emotionally unavailable. Safe isn’t just a way to play it, it becomes the only way to play it. “I never said that,” is a standard answer when one never says anything, until it becomes the only thing one is capable of saying.

Adulthood does horrible, horrible things to romance because romance does not feed on adulthood, romance feeds on youthful idealism, naivete even. And that’s what makes it so wonderful.

Why does 24 suddenly feel like a bad time to start dating? Why are we talking about our disillusion over what should be a pleasant dinner? I’m not even expecting romance anymore, screw that; maybe it’s too much to expect romance. I’ll settle for pleasant and polite, but pleasant and polite are other things that seem like too much to expect in this day and age (yeah, you see what I did there with the “age” thing? Awesome desu). It’s sickening really. Nice going team internet, now people are inundated with useless information, and “what to expect on a date” can be googled. So can “the art of seduction”. So can “things women do to manipulate you into getting what they want”. Let’s cut the courtship crap and go straight for what we came for, shall we? If it’s a game, winning is a matter of skill, skill is a matter of development.

Seriously though, it’s no one’s game to win. And the only skill you’re sure to develop is in the art of being an asshole.