I got a date.
And then another. And another.
A noun (date n.) became a verb (dating v.) and there are a multitude of adjectives to describe this unexpected turn of events.
***
This is not the only reason why I've been offline of late. Things have been generally going well at work - I have been the anaesthetic resident for the last six weeks which makes me like a third nipple - unnecessary and obtrusive. There is intrinsically something more interesting about struggle, of which I've been doing very little of recently, and besides, it seems unfair to brag about how good work is for me now, when it isn't for many others.
Still, work turns up some gems. Yesterday my anaesthetic boss started waxing nostalgically about mediterranean romance and just as we were all heading to a warm, fuzzy, sun-soaked, beach-lined, soft-focus Danielle Steele place he promptly nuzzled his face into the imaginary bosom of a well-endowed imaginary Italian lady.
"When I was travelling through there I didn't have much money so I had to settle for big mama," lamented he.
Before you judge him, remember that he plays with gases for a living.
***
Sometimes when I think about the recent unexpected turn of events I recall the opening monologue to Woody Allen's Annie Hall, where he paraphrases Groucho Marx and Freud. "I'd never want to be part of a club that would have me as one of its members," he quips, in relation to his woes with women.
I don't know how I'm dating this girl. She's bright, sparkly, self-assured and cute. I'm slow, slightly dull, have insecurities you can park battleships next to and usually ony get told I'm handsome by demented people in hospital (not always patients!). I'm not sure what she sees in it.
I think, interestingly, that outwardly she's probably not the obsessively artsy-fartsy muse that I think and people think I've been chasing for years either.
But before you think I'm going to get all Woody Allen (or, Moses forbid, Jerry Seinfeld) on you and let my neuroses implode this situation, I'm going to flip it on you.
Check it, coz I'm easy, easy like Sunday morning.
(Maybe we'll take that back, because that song is actually about a break-up. Did you realize that?)
***
There's that old chestnut that states that you can only love others if you love yourself. It's got another permutation that more or less says that other people can't complete you if you're incomplete to start with.
I, being a naive romantic, have had problems with this idea for a long time. I liked the idea, sadistic as it may be, that someone else out there might have something so special that the absence of it in your life made life suck. Hard.
The idea that you ought to be complete without others seemed to imply to me that you really ought not to need or want anything from anyone else. The counterpoint clearly then was also, frighteningly, that they ought not need or want anything from you. They are complete themselves too, no? Let's look at some examples of famous people outgrowing their 'significant others' -
Diana didn't need the Supremes, Beyonce didn't need Destiny's Child and Justin didn't need Nsync (although he might need Timbaland). DeNiro didn't need Scorsese to get his Oscar and Scorsese didn't need DeNiro to *finally* get his (although he did have Mark "F*ckin*" Wahlberg). And George Bush certainly doesn't need Tony Blair, John Howard or Iraq to look like an idiot, but sure enough he's got them.
Where is the romance in a land of well-adjusted people?
Might Romeo and Juliet have been more tragic if, at the end, Juliet, upon finding her beloved deceased, thought to herself, "Well, I'm an independent woman clever enough to stage my own death and maybe I don't need skinny pre-The Departed Leonardo DiCaprio. I might as well retire to an anonymous Fijian island and release posthumous rap albums"?
Certainly Jerry Maguire wouldn't've been the same.
TOM CRUISE
"You complete...me."RENEE ZELWEGER
"Well, actually, I'm doing fine over here, I've got my kid and he's alive and well fed, I've got my sister and her group of girlfriends, so why don't you go and take your Scientology someplace else?"And what of marriage and monogamy in a world where people are complete?
***
Stay tuned for part 2, where I'll hypothetically massacre more Western institutions for the sake of spirited discussion and a few laughs!
(I might even get to the point)
