People who know me know that one of my biggest hates is the weird viral stories that I suspect are
A) Not entirely true in terms of the described events and
B) Entirely UNTRUE in that I think that rather than describing author sentiment, they attempt to write what people want to hear. Which doesn’t sound so bad…let me put it this way: They are not written FOR you. They are written AT you.
Today, I present one that made the rounds just a bit ago that regards not dating women who read. Let’s dive in. Original post in italics.
“You Should Date an Illiterate Girl”, by Charles Warnke
Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly.
I love this. Already, girls who read don’t drink, or certainly not until they’re drunk. Certainly not until they are vomiting all over a sidewalk somewhere. They also don’t live in the midwest. They also don’t smile. So rather than marrying a drinking buddy, I can marry an unsmiling teetotaler who lives in New York or LA. Seems like a slam dunk.
And this whole pickup line thing? Are people really doing that? And if so, isn’t it mostly that you saw someone across the room and sort of hoped he would come talk to you? If I was attracted to a woman and she swooped in with a pickup line, I’d be 100% fine with that. If not, then it probably wouldn’t help much. And what’s the alternative? Hi, I’m a total stranger. Let’s talk about your feelings regarding the way you were raised by your parents?
Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.
Um. This might be unromantic. Or maybe it’s more romantic. I don’t know. But I think that people can love AND fuck. There’s a time and a place. Let’s not get too gross somehow…OKAY! I like a nice hamburger. A $12.99, delicious, grass-fed beef burger. However, sometimes I settle for Wendy’s, and on occasion, sometimes I PREFER Wendy’s. It’s dirty and greasy and sometimes that’s just what I’m hungry for. Damn, that got gross. Or it will the next time I’m wondering about my own arousal at the Wendy’s drive-thru.
Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music.
Is it just me, or are people picking on sushi these days? I feel like people assume that no one actually enjoys sushi and only eat it to be cool. The last time I ate sushi was alone in the car, while driving, eating with my hands. This was a gigantic mess and extremely uncool. And it was goddamn delicious. But a quick piece of advice, if you eat sushi in the car, have an excuse ready when someone asks why there’s rice all over. Because saying you were eating rolled sushi by hand impresses no one.
Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
There are a lot of easy solutions to the big problems presented here. I’d suggest using a fabric shower curtain with a curtain liner on the inside. It’ll mold up, then you can either wash it or buy a new one, meanwhile you’re actual shower curtain stays pretty much pristine.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.
“Oscillate”? Ahem. Mr. Reader Man, the definition of oscillate:
“move or swing back and forth at a regular speed”
That $5-dollar word is worth about a buck-fifty if you ask me. Because it doesn’t really mean what you think it means, and you’re using it to hide the fact that you’re using the idea of heartbeats to describe love, which is the oldest trick in the book.
And by the way, so far I’m not sure what this has to do with reading. Basically it sounds like someone resigning himself to dating the walking dead. The Walking Dead season 2, which is a buncha bullshit, ya’ll!
Do those things, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.
That’s one of the most ridiculous paragraphs I’ve ever read. Who the fuck talks like that? “Oh, you know what I love about my wife? Her vocabulary makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.”
Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.
Does she? Because she read a book about a bunch of asshole kids falling into a broom closet that holds a magical land? Because of that she’s prepared for an adult relationship?
Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
So date a girl who reads because it’ll be easier to break up with her? It’s a sad, sad day when you start picking out dates based on who it would be easy to break up with.
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.
Okay. So a real outpouring of sorts here. But I have to say, I think the premise is flawed. Here’s why.
I’ve dated an average number of women. All of them read. Not a one I dated didn’t read, even the ones I dated at times when I myself didn’t read whatsoever.
To put them in a category, readers and non-readers, really wouldn’t be useful because their reading was not the primary difference between them.
Here’s why this little post is bullshit.
If you really cared about this crap, this sentimental nonsense, then shouldn’t you, instead of seeking out a girl who reads, JUST READ YOURSELF? And don’t men probably need to be told to read? Actually, let me take that back. Because I know for a fact that women, in general, read more than men. So why are we telling men to find a girl who reads instead of telling them to goddamn read? That’s like telling a guy who can’t cook that he’d better marry someone who does instead of telling him that he better goddamn figure it out.
And do you really deserve this well-read girl if you yourself aren’t doing any reading?
What bothers me about this post? It’s not written for the men it speaks to in the text. It’s written for the women who are meant to feel honored by it. The women who read. It’s a total ploy. It plays into the idea that men are scared of and intimidated by smart women. And hey, I’m sure some guys are. But some guys also drink Monster Energy Drink at 7 AM. I don’t really endorse the choices made by men, in general.
Don’t be fooled, readers.
Oh, and by the way. I try to date WOMEN.