Monday, September 14, 2009

#22 I Want Everything Girls


Kurt Vonnegut said he was always amazed by the fervor with which women fought for the right to put themselves in impossible and sometimes dangerous situations. He meant by this things like “Take Back The Night” marches on college campuses where like 95% of the reported sexual assaults occurred at either the lacrosse and football fraternity house. If you’re lying alone in your fourth floor dorm bed, marcher shouts bouncing off your four dark walls, you can help but think, “Won’t it save everyone a lot of effort and emotion just to avoid those two fraternities?” and you also can’t help, like Vonnegut, but be impressed by how balsy a tactic it is, the basic message being: “Hey, you! I don’t want to hang out with you, you’re a dweeb, instead I want to hang out with Them - Them is SO dreamy - but Them often mistreats me, verbally and physically, so I want you - a person of no social significance - to force Them to be nice to me. Come on!”


For reasons that do not require much analysis the more educated and moneyed a girl gets - the more access or at least exposure she has to life’s myriad and multitudinous possibilities - the more likely she is to want Everything, in all its forms, together at once, and the more she demands that the world bend to her will. The more, in truth, the world WILL bend to her will. This is why Vonnegut thought female insistence for finding good even in evil astonishing or at least daring, since it’s essentially predicated on a borderline insane and sort of childish belief in the perfectabilty of man, a belief that in tiny increments in certain specific situations actually kind of works.


San Francisco has more I Want Everything Girls than anywhere on the planet. SF women say they don’t expect much, just a guy who is smart, funny, confident, humble, charming, brave, narcissistic and giving, such as the Rock if he was Ryan Gosling in The Notebook.


In San Francisco the I Want Everything Girls put special focus on a requirement that guys be cute around the edges. SF women want a Democrat who dresses well, who is sensitive to the needs of others. The guy with a trendy hair cut, tailored pants and two pockets of flattery.


And there ARE straight guys like that. It’s a perfectly plausible aspiration. Guys can drink green tea and take Jack Russell Terriers for walks. But having all those characteristics means lacking others. It means, for instance, they aren’t tough guys. It means they aren’t Humphrey Bogart grabbing you tightly and kissing you with cigarette breath. The human condition just happens to be that way. We have to make choices. A guy can choose to be a muscle-bound bouncer who takes notes on his reps or an i-banker who runs triathlons or a vegan artist who weighs 145 pounds, but if he is to be any good at what he does, he can only be one. The smooth talkers are lotharios and the charmless awkward men (that girls avoid at parties) are loyal. That’s how life works out - and, more importantly, the way it should work out - not just with respect to boyfriends but to jobs, vacations, pets, and dinners at a Vegas buffet. You can’t choose to have everything because, in the end, that’s choosing nothing. And this is what makes life interesting, it’s why there’s mystery and why it matters. As Epstein says in Biloxi Blues,You have to get in the middle of it. You have to take sides. [Pick your] fight. The one you believe in.”

17 comments:

  1. I'm in the minority. I really just want a guy who won't treat me bad and showers 3 times a week.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How are you always so right?? Samuel - are you really a woman? This (and previous posts)so perfectly describes my girlfriends!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Disappointing post. Nothing remotely SFcentric about this phenomenon. Women (and men) like this exist everywhere. You're starting to sound like like "whywomendontwantME.blogspot.com".

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hmm sounds like the SF women I know going apartment hunting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I cant wait for Advenuresauraus girl to chime in. Wonder what nonsense she's gonna pull out of her ass to justify her rationale this time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Why shouldn't women want everything? Men want everything! Don't you men want an incredibly hot girl who has brains, can make you laugh, and might even be able to throw a nice meal together? "Everything" is too broad, it's more of a top 10/20 must have list. Guys, don't throw stones, you do the same thing.

    Orenthal Jay: You would like that wouldn't you? Go ahead and dream about it, I know you do.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You know what ruins this place and gives it the bad rap that it does? Transplants and yuppies like you. I just realized after reading your blog that San Francisco doesn't suck, YOU DO. This is what you get expecting to come out here after a 3 day stay some years ago and thought you could bag yourself a nice investment banker, Marina living, Stanford yup. GTFO of here and go back to whatever rat hole you came out of.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I take offense to your comment because it's mainly just ALL Americans that suck. You have such a narrow perception of reality. Secondly, just because you were randomly born in California, don't be delusional and think that you actually own the place(narrow view of things). People from other states (or countries) can move to California or any other state if they desire to. There are millions of people in California (and perfect weather) which is an attraction for many people until they actually get there and are exposed to more than just a few of people sharing your same colors--it can be frightening at first.

      Delete
  8. i love this site so far. kudos.

    i'm a philadelphian, so no comments on the san franness of this, but i have to make one point.

    there is plenty of evolutionary psych behind this so-called phenomenon. females have a much greater stake in breeding and have always been far pickier. their lifetime reproductive potential hangs more precariously on each hookup and, as a result, have for the last several thousand years, sought a Best Case Scenario mate, rather than Good Enough Since I Can Go Knock Up Another Chick Later Today mate.

    this is neither new nor an indictment of either gender. it's in our programming.

    ReplyDelete
  9. it's cool, I hate women too.

    ReplyDelete
  10. it's not that i want everything. it's just that i'm looking for a boy that can keep up with ME. and if i'm a schizophrentic hipster / socialite / bread-lovin' / bohemian / hula hooper...then he's gotta be pretty diverse too.

    ReplyDelete
  11. In the end they'll just pick the side of the jerk with the most cocaine.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ok im a pretty descent looking guy who makes OK money, and this is how it works, you meet a girl, get her number and take her to have drinks. Women have built in attraction switches that are triggered by certain personalty types. All you can do is be yourself, stay cool, don't act or seem needy and if you hit those switches you're in if not move on to next one.

    It's just a numbers game. Most girls you meet and take out for drinks won't be into you and that's why you just have to play the numbers fellas. You'll have anywhere from a 5-10% success rate. So you may need to go out with 20 girls for drinks before actually hooking finding one that's into you. It gets a little discouraging after meeting 6-8 girls and not finding someone but you have to keep at it. By 20 I'm sure you'll find something.

    And guys if you're in your mid 20's or 30's and up acting like the guys who are posting the comments above then you don't deserve I nice attractive woman because obviously you don't "get" them.

    ReplyDelete
  14. You know I had this exact same revelation the other day.






    Therefore, YOU ROCK!

    ReplyDelete
  15. "And guys if you're in your mid 20's or 30's and up acting like the guys who are posting the comments above then you don't deserve I nice attractive woman because obviously you don't "get" them."

    You are the best. I hope you have a wonderful life.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Men do not want everything, they just want more. That is not much or is it?

    ReplyDelete