So, last night, Allen and I went out to Bar Deville (which is a swell place, and what they lack in cranberry juice they make up for in baroque couches and being around the corner from my apartment) and I ended up on this rant about the totally weird West Side Story-ish/ Greasers vs. Soc's reactions my the guys I know socially have towards the guys I date.
See, while I joke about the drummers, for the most part, I've always been more partial to regs. This could be for a couple of reasons having to do with me:
1. My parents. My dad is a total square, and my mom is... well, pretty much exactly like me.
2. I have an oppositional personality. Tell me to jump and I'll hold a sit-in. It's just the way I've always been. It's pathological.
But a lot of it is that, ironically, I've always found that the writers, the activists, the musicians, the artists, what-have-you, have been way more misogynistic (I think this is because they consider themselves exempt because they're not "meat-heads"), and WAY more concerned with bourgie social mores, and have way more hang-ups about the virgin-whore dichotomy than any reg guy I've ever known. They tend to be overly concerned with what they are "supposed" to be doing, and how things look to other people in their particular scene. I find that icky.
The thing that always bugs me though, is that I get a lot of "that guy couldn't possibly understahhhnd you!" But the thing is... I really do feel like if you think you "understand" somebody before really getting to know them, you never will. I mean, you can read every book that I've ever read, seen every movie I've ever seen, agree with me politically on every stance, listen to every song I've ever listened to... and still have no understanding of me and what is important to me at all. Because no person is just some mesh of opinions and preferences, and if I wanted to talk to someone who had the same ones I do, I'd talk to myself. Which, ya know, I sometimes do.
The thing is though, is that whenever I went anywhere with this guy I dated for a couple years, I'd suffer a hailstorm of snarky comments from other dudes insinuating that he was stupid and that I was dating him for shallow reasons (my favorite: "Why are you with that guy? Upper body strength?"), and I simply told them to fuck off and stop being jealous. And, in my experience, the artsy fartsy guys I've dated have never had the balls to do that on my behalf. Which is why they never last too long with me.
God, for a man who solicits insurance!
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