Reason Why I’m Single #131- 50 Shades of Grey
Okay. So I think it’s time me and the women of the world…at least the literary world had a talk. A real one. Like apart from the dialogues they have with themselves in these 600-pages books of crap. I’ve never read any of the Twilight books so perhaps I have no business speaking about them but as person with a vagina, I feel obligated to at least point a few things out. So it’s come to my attention as of late that a new genre of books is emerging, one that relies heavily of female lead characters who are spineless, habitually disparaging, and gladly let their worlds revolve around the men they choose to love blindly as they claim to be half frightened, half-turned on by glorified bad boys who they can only describe as “mysterious and complicated.”
First off, let’s just address the fact the main character of this book’s name is Anastasia freakin’ Steele, I mean really, what other destiny did she have to be the star of a poorly crafted literotic romance? With a name like that, not much of what she consents to sexually in this book is surprising to me. Okay, now that that’s squared away, let’s get to the real issues of the books, of which I’ve read two.
Never have I ever hated a fictional character in a book more than I abhor Anastasia Steele. She is willingly naive, bland, dependent, and frustratingly pathetic. Everything she says completely revolves around her love interest, Christian Grey, and it is painfully repetitive. “He’s so mercurial, enigmatic, complicated, broken.” Which, by the way, name one 22-year old who has ever used the word “mercurial?”
Which leads me to my sidebar: It is so painfully obvious E.L. James has no grasp on how the modern 22-year-old functions in society. The language she chooses for Anastasia Steele makes absolutely no sense. As a 22-year-old, I can assure you that none of us are going around saying things like, “Oh, it’s so lovely to see you!” and “Shall I make you a cup of tea?” and “I wordlessly conveyed to the receptionist that I was in deep doo-doo.” I’m sorry, but the same kinds of 22-year-olds saying things like, “deep doo-doo” instead of “deep shit” are just not the ones getting hot and heavy with kinky sadists with “mommy/control/attachment/any other kind of issue you could possibly thinking of” issues. So if it wasn’t the fact that this Christian Grey apparently makes $100,000 per hour, or the sub-plot of a suicidal ex-submissive, or the the fact that he has a virtual Megaplexxx in his Seattle apartment that you couldn’t find believable, there’s also the fact that 22-year-old Anastasia has the vernacular of a khaki-panted, shock-absorbing tennis shoe-wearing, 80-something year old British cat lady.
More than anything I think that what really angers about this kind of writing is that this completely dependent girl is being described as “strong.” Female leads like this willingly accept the emotions of the men they think they love as their own, as they say things like, “He’s the master of my universe,” and “I’ll have what he’s having.” Sure, it’s just fiction and probably not meant to be taken as seriously as I have taken it, but more and more there is an emergence and even the acceptance of female characters who are perfectly happy to submit to the wishes of a man simply because they perceive him as “brooding and complicated.” I mean could it ever just be that this guy is a fucking asshole with serious baggage? Does there always have to be this sort of “I have to fix him” complex?
My other major problem with this series is the excessive and mutual need for this couple to claim each other as their own, not in a sweet and sincere way but in a threatening and territorial way. Every other page in the second book takes turns between Grey and Steele begging the other one to never leave them. Every time one of them asks the other to never leave the I just want to scream, “You’re both young, healthy, and attached at the hip! It’s not like one of you has a fucking chronic and fatal illness! No one is going freaking dying and you both rarely ever leave the house! Where exactly have you convinced yourself the other person is going to go? WHERE, GOD DAMNIT?”
So, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, if you hate the book and everything it stands for so much, why are you reading it?” Well, I guess, my answer isn’t as dignified. I guess I just want to see how stupid this Anastasia Steele really is…so maybe I’m no better than her.
Back From My Extreme Vacation Bro.
Ah! I’m finally back from my Costa Rican vacation, which I decided not to blast out on my social media outlets/on this website on account of the deep fear that my incessant Criminal Minds watching has impressed upon me that serial killers are clamoring and fighting for the chance to stalk my comings and goings. Ah yes, but that’s another story of yet another one of my irrational fears, perhaps for another day or a little later after you finish reading this post.
But perhaps the worst part of coming home from vacation for a recent journalism grad is not the realization that you have to go back to the grind of the real world’s terribly discouraging version of everyday life, but instead that you must come to terms that you are now officially unemployed. Ah yes, the pride of all my undergraduate accomplishments has officially faded and now I get to look forward to my questionable future of being a professional, unpaid intern. My shopping addiction is not going to be happy about this. No, not at all. My body is summer vacation mode while my head is just like, “Yo, remember that whole ‘it’s called alcoholism after you graduate’ thing? Yeah, the same goes for the whole not having a job thing. Apparently, it’s only okay when you’re like in school and stuff…”
Costa Rica was still great though. It was my family’s first vacation together in almost six years, which was very apparent by the second day when we had already had our first fight after being confined to our hotel room thanks to the whole rainforest insisting on raining thing. I mean, I know it’s called the rainforest and all, but how was I to know that it would rain almost every day we were there? Granted, it was still beautiful and while we did not spend anytime at the beach, instead opting for the more adventurous rainforest regions, it was also a vacation full of firsts. Notably, the first day I realized that my hair was really only suited for the dry and frustratingly hot climate of Austin, as it literally refused to comply to any kind of taming in muggy, humid air of Costa Rica. A couple other firsts? Winning a tree-climbing contest, ziplining upside down in the rainforest canopies, waterfall rappelling down heights of nearly 100 feet and tarzan-style swinging above rainforest canyons. It was by far the most extreme vacation I’ve ever had. And now all I want to do is take a shower and dump the entire bottle of conditioner in my hair and sit for hours under the water pressure I took for granted before the trip.
Much more to come. Swear. You guys have no idea…but really…
Audio Post
Take it from a girl who has a track record for managing to get herself deeply involved with men bound to circumstances that keep them everywhere but here, there’s not much about a long-distance relationship that soothes like a Chicken Soup for the Soul book might have you believe. Love is great, but it’s not a free pass to torture yourself in the name of all things Nicholas Sparks and chocolate-covered strawberries and let me tell you why, just in case you’ve gone ahead and gotten yourself into a position where you might actually be considering one.
- Every day is a struggle. Not all day, every day. But without fail, each day, there will be a moment that you want your person around simply because you know you cant have them. So everyday you create something to miss them for, even if it’s something that never reminded you of your person ever before. It’s like when you’re running the most mundane errands, like getting your car’s oil changed and you’re perfectly happy reading the six-month old issue of People in the waiting room until you look up and see some couple laughing with each other about something probably really stupid, and you suddenly remember that normal people drag their boyfriends and girlfriends along to these kinds of things so they don’t have to resort to reading the sad six-month old People that you were totally satisfied with just a couple minutes ago. And for that, all I have to say is, Damn you normal couples for ruining yet another Lindsay Lohan breakdown for me.
- It’s like taking the “wanting something you cant have” cliché and putting it on steroids. Not to mention, it’s worse because you’ve invested all the work in making something yours and now you cant even hold it in your hands. It’s exactly like online shopping. You’ve found the perfect pair of shoes, put down your credit card information, and then have to wait 5-7 business days before you can actually have them in front of you. The normal shopping high is totally empty now when you wonder how you’re going to fill your next 5-7 business days in such a way that you wont just think about how bad you want those shoes in front of you immediately. Sure enough, you get through the 5-7 business days, probably living your life as you usually do, but there’s sort of a looming feeling like something is missing from your life…or maybe I’m just a little too invested in my footwear. Like something you signed up for and were really excited about, and then it got postponed but it feels like it got cancelled.
- Your obligatory date person is nonexistent and therefore not able to protect you from continually having to explain to others that your dating life isn’t as pathetic as it looks. It’s supposed to be okay, the long-distance thing is supposed to be your get-out-of-happy-hour-jail-free card and yet, there’s nothing like watching someone’s face fall between the phrases, “Oh, no, actually I have a boyfriend,” and “But he lives in Seattle.” It’s like this hopeful, bright-eyed, “Congratulations on finding someone to put up with your not-even-kind-of-charming antics,” and then it quickly turns to a confused tilted head and pursed lips that silently scream, “Nevermind!” Wait a minute. I was under the impression that this whole long-distance thing would get me out of those exact kinds of looks but as it turns out, I think people are taking it worse than me just being flat-out single.
- Airports are no place for lovers. No really. In my first long-distance relationship, I spent more time in the airport than actually with my boyfriend. And let me tell you, there is nothing wonderful about the Philadelphia airport. Not one thing. Not the $8 items on the McDonald’s “value” menu and not the token old woman who asks why you cant land “a real man” as she offers you a piece of toffee. Look lady, just because he doesn’t live in the same state as me doesn’t mean he’s not real! “He’s real,” I try to convince her as I pull up photos on my camera phone. “Oh, he looks just like my oldest granddaughter!” she exclaims happily as I try my hardest not to scream and throw her bag of toffee circa-1998 across the terminal. The airport is like the DMV but with overpriced fast food.
- Trust is something you might have taken for granted when it wasn’t really an issue but when you’re in a long-distance relationship, trust is all you have. Without trust, there is no long-distance relationship, and it quickly turns into one of those relationships where the two of you see how much you can psychologically damage the other person. And as much fun as it is to scream over the phone, “I will personally shatter you,” maybe that’s not your idea of a good relationship…though the me circa 2010 would maybe beg to differ. While the Internet has blessed the world of long-distance dating, it has also filled it with more paranoia that you ever thought possible. I’d be lying if I said I never once fell for the powers of a Facebook photo uploaded by another girl on a long-distance boyfriend’s profile. God, it’s a cruel cruel form of shame when you and your best friend are hovered over the computer screen on a Friday night as you extensively stalk said girl’s photos all the way back to her high school prom, only saying horrible things about her how prom dress looked like it came from the Caché outlet while The Wedding Date plays in the background. It’s moments like those when you start to wonder if you’re a terrible human being and yet, there’s some slight masochistic satisfaction in letting your mind believe that your boyfriend is cheating on you with a girl who still wears white eye-shadow and scrunchies. Don’t you judge me. It’s not like you’ve never done it. Thanks to Facebook, we’ve all said horrible things about people we’ve never met.
Even after saying all of this, I can’t say that i didn’t learn a lot from dating long-distance. And I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, if you hate it s much, why did you do it?” But the truth is I don’t hate long-distance relationships; I just would never recommend them to anyone. Of course, it all depends on how much you like or love the person. I mean, obviously that’s the reason you’ve ever get into a long-distance in the first place.
But I think that a lot of people get into them knowing that it’s going to be difficult but they rarely expect so much of it to be so difficult. It’s like you forget the little things you normally take for granted. Like in a normal relationship even if you’re not coming home to someone because they aren’t home yet, you’re at least coming home to their shoes at the door, or their horrible Willie Nelson cd in the cd player. You’re coming home to traces of them, traces that remind you that they’ll be back. When you’re long-distance, the traces of a person are mostly memories—the way they slept in your bed, the way he made coffee for you in the morning, the stray sock left behind after a weekend trip—and they only make you happy after they’ve made you sad for a little while.
I used to think long-distance relationships were the best of both worlds, and to some extent I still believe it because I actually really enjoy being alone. Sure it’s all well and good a couple months in, while you still hold the hope that you’ll be together one day in the back of your pocket like something to fall back on. But as time goes on, there’ll be no doubt be a point when you get frustrated with being frustrated and you’ll wonder how much longer you can live on a half-time sort of love. It’s not all terrible. The boyfriends I’ve been closest to, had the best communication with, and loved the most were long-distance. It’s funny how you can feel more open to being yourself when you’re not directly in front of someone. There’s something magical about a phone line that can give you the courage to be more of who you are than ever before. But as kind of spectacular as that is, I’d still never wish a long-distance relationship on anyone I even slightly care about. Because people who have done long-distance dating are all a part of this little secret club that knows it’s never as glamorous as romance novelists would have you believe it is, and that the only reason you go through something you hate so much is for someone you love.
Reason Why I’m Single #130 – Reasonably Unreasonable
Is it really so much to ask that I find a future job listing that includes but is not limited to the following description:
- Having the rap from Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” memorized, including the British accent (sidebar: I’m not sure you can legally call my British accent an actual British accent, because unlike the rest of the world, it seems I picked up my knowledge of the British accent from Chicken Run, though I should warn you that the fact that my British accent is terrible and borderline offensive does not seem to stop me from continuing to speak with one.)
- The ability to send incredibly witty and clever text messages without the use of emoticons (unless of course, when used ironically).
- A deep and intense love for all National Treasure movies and a subsequent love for Nicolas Cage. (And yes, I’ve heard of Ghostrider, but I stand by my man and his creepy haircut.)
Or are these qualities just not valued as much as they once were?
(Perhaps by a society that only exists in my mind…)
I guess there will just always be a part of me that is unreasonable, like the irritation I feel when I see another girl with the same iPhone case as me, despite the fact that I’m aware that the case is a result of mass production, is sold pretty much everywhere, and does not make me an individual despite having convinced myself it would upon the act of purchasing it. It’s sort of like when girls with semi-unusual names get upset when they meet someone with the same name (Like when a Stella meets another Stella), except that since I’m a girl with an an actually unusual name, when I meet someone with the same name as me, I’m like, “See guys! I told you my name was like ‘the Ashley of India!’” Unreasonable, like the fact that I sometimes find myself physically incapable of waiting for my three-minute ramen noodles to fully cook, as I prematurely drain, mix in practically illegal amounts of sodium, and eat the half-cooked noodles that make me hate myself with each crunch. Unreasonable, like the amount of time I spent in the shower singing Glee versions of songs I didn’t know existed until I saw them on Glee. Unreasonable, like when I see a pie, there’s this inherent urge inside of me that wants to smash it into someone’s face. Unreasonable, like creating an elaborate and color-coded flowchart when faced with a relationship problem you’re not sure you can figure out with mere thoughts that seem to confuse you more when they only live in the confines of your mind—a mind, that somehow finds reason in completely unreasonable things.
As the depressing life of being a recent college graduate begins to sink in and infiltrate my own life, I’m beginning to realize that my dreams are just going to have to take a detour for a while. Because when you spend your 9-to-5 days creating a fake life for the secretary in the law office space next to your own company’s office space (sidebar: I’ve named her Chelsea and by the looks of the all the texting she was doing this morning, she got into a fight with her live-in boyfriend Paul who always forgets to turn the lights off when he leaves to go to work at some coffee shop on the east side and will be home late tonight because he’s got band practice.) and you look forward to the end of the workday just so you can get in your car and listen to your Best of Spice Girls disc set and wonder if you should be that girl who cries in her car or not, things can get a little bleak. 
Yeah, that’s sort of where my life is at. I blame the middle/high school version of me for not seeing this coming and instead choosing to fill my spongey brain up with disillusions of being a widely popular writer a la Carrie freakin’ Bradshaw. Isn’t it depressing to think of how many girls watch Sex and the City and think they’re going to grow up to be a dating columnist who doesn’t eat and can magically afford to spend over $500 on a pair of shoes? Yeah, I can say that because I was (/am sort of still) one.
Sometimes your life faces you with the most difficult revelations to deal with, like realizing that you have run out of greek yogurt right before you’re supposed to be leaving for work, or realizing that every relationship that you’ve had in the last three years has led to you to a dead-end so miserable you consider throwing up and then sort of feel grateful that you didn’t have that yogurt after all…because that’d just be a waste of $1.50.
It’s like that miserable moment when it takes you reliving something bad to know it’s actually bad for you and then all you want to do is curse yourself for not realizing it in the seemingly blissful in-between periods. Like when you realize that every serious relationship you’ve had in the last four years has been a product of long-distance situations where no matter what it always seems like the guy has the upper hand. The harsh reality sinks in that as it turns out you haven’t been living your own life after all; that instead you’ve been following a clueless dreamer who promises things he doesn’t even believe in. So you wait around, convincing yourself that it was all a compromise, that you wanting in was enough to say you were in this together. But there’s no such thing as “together” when one person gave up a year of their life and the other just dropped in to say hello every now and then.
It’s the most discouraging feeling in the world. The uncharacteristic paranoia, the helplessness from a girl whose never needed anyone else’s help, all from someone who once had to be cajoled into love and now the fool who chased it into foreign territories, literally. Even at the end of all of it, what are you left with? When people ask how it all started, you get the honor of saying you waited around like a complete fool for a year and somehow it’s all supposed to be this wonderful story? There’s nothing wonderful about realizing that you’ve lived your life on the terms of somebody else’s dreams. Even if you lived your own life along the way, there’s this horrible residue left behind knowing that one of the two of you made a decision that could affect both people, while you settled for making the one that would be nothing short of compliant. More and more I’m starting to learn that best intentions have nothing on being a genuinely devoted and good person.
Then there’s always the lingering question that hurts too much to ask but hurts even more not to know the answer to: will you love me enough to make up for the fact that you really had me going for a year, entranced by things that apparently didn’t even really exist the whole time? And even so, what kind of relationship is it if you never feel fully appreciated for all you gave up, secretly never forgiving them for an offense they didn’t even know they were committing? Either way, it seems it always comes back to you. Even if you were the one who gave it all up, chased the stupid idea of love that Taylor Swift and the rest of the world promised you would be worth it, and especially if you were always the one doing all the forgiving in the relationship. Chances are if you were the part of the couple that rarely ever committed a relationship crime, you’ll be the one whose left with the majority of the damage, because everyone knows that the cynic has it bad, but the dreamer has it worst.
Last Day Ramblings
There really are few painfully ironic things as being a senior journalism major an essay away from graduating and having to make an appointment at the university’s Undergraduate Writing Center. Additionally concerning the writing center, you know they should really ahead of time that they don’t run through your paper and copy edit it…I mean like when I actually call to make the appointment. My UWC tutor decided it would be a great reason to kick off our session with the disclaimer that she probably wouldn’t even really look at my paper and as she said it I couldn’t help but think to myself, “So wait, then why am I here?” I mean it wasn’t like I was asking her to write it for me, because it was already done! If you cant get a UWC tutor to give your rough draft an overview, who exactly does that leave? Nobody. NOBODY. So I sat there for the next 30 minutes hating life and when the session ended, I said “thank you,” and walked out the door and muttered to myself, “for making me glad I’ll never have to do this again for the rest of my life.”
Oh wait…I’m a writer. So…I guess there’s a chance I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life after all. Ugh.
So I grabbed my coffee cup that reads “Angie” (What? It’s just easier to give a fake name because really, name one barista who really cares enough to get your name right on a cup overpriced coffee. Um, yeah, didn’t think so. Plus, I mean it’s not a total lie, right, I mean it’s just a version of my name that I just happen to not go by at all.) and decided it best to call my losses, not just in time but also dignity, and immediately have visions of going back to my new favorite hobby of being a lazyass and attempting to watch the entire Netflix television catalog.
Thanks to Netflix, every show that people have ever been cult about, I’ve watched. Workaholics. Mad Men. Yeah, I been there. Parks and Rec. The Office. 30 Rock. Uh duh. ABC Family’s Greek. Shamefully…yes. What?! Look, there was a reason it was the only ABC Family original to ever make it past two seasons! It’s surprisingly clever in that “low expectations” sort of way. Definitely dipped my toes in Breaking Bad, Louie, and Archer. Now I’ve made it to United States of Tara and could not have been more pleased with the selection. Witty, clever and insightful take on modern crazy bitches.
So now that I’m done with that whole school thing, I’ll be blogging a lot more on this site. I’m not sure if you should be excited, but I am nonetheless. Like a wise person once said, “Anj, it seems like you write about dating a lot more than you actually date” and I said you know what, “you’re goddamn right I do.”
