Tchotchkes

I want to believe that prince-like things still exist in this age of doomed chivalry and philandering father figures—that terrifying Austrian man who kept his daughter locked in a cellar for 24 years being an extreme example.

It is hard to find the right type of romance, that makes your heart beat faster—but not so fast that you have a coronary. In the French movie Priceless, the pretty Parisian poupée, Audrey Tautou, plays the emotionally bankrupt girl who wants nothing more than to marry a pimpish elderly creepazoid. But the penniless young bartender/bellman manages to steal her heart, and they ride barefoot across the sunny Côte d'Azur on his scooter.

My friend's boyfriend had to move to the UK just as they started dating. Two weeks into their relationship, he flew back and surprised her for a visit. She is a poet, and he is an impoverished graduate student, but princes find ways to cross oceans, even when they're paupers.

A Man Named Gerald

"Spring Fling." Such telling words? During the sultry early-summer day I contemplated the issue of virginity. If you are a girl about to graduate from university, and you have not had that first 'struggle between the sheets' with a mimbo, wanker, pimp, or ever-elusive prince, then should you keep waiting? Should you hold out for the ideal romantic scenario to emerge? Or should you merely turn to a guy friend, or the local man at the wine shop, and move from virginity to...well, post-virginity?

"To lose one's virginity" has always struck me as a problematic expression. What is lost? For me, the only thing that was lost when I lost my virginity was the battery on my boyfriend's parents' Volvo. There is an irrational sense that this event is a "rite of passage." But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a Bat Mitzvah is just an awkward thirteen-year-old girl receiving too many over-priced Tiffany heart tag necklaces. And sometimes even Volvos run out of batteries.

Living in a dorm room at 33?

Finally finished with university, a land of prestige-seekers and Type A goons, I have been dropped in the most undesirable of places: 'the job market.' My first irritating duty while residing in this locale is to craft those dreaded documents called 'cover letters.'

Gauche things to say in a cover letter:

1. "I am writing to express my interest in filling the opening."

2. "I am willing to assume any position necessary."

3. "I've always wanted to work under you, but I'm also willing to rise to the top."

4. "I'm at my best when things get hard."

5. "I'm very flexible under pressure."

6. "Although one of my faults is a tendency not to create long-term commitments, I do inspire people to quick—even 'seat of the pants'—decisions."

Memory Stick: Rediscovery of the gothic

At a video/performance show for the art school's MFA students, one artist chatted with a plywood box for 20 minutes, and then sat down next to it and drank a juice box. Then a girl danced awkwardly with a cloth-covered phallus/boom-box-on-wheels.

Next thing I knew I was at the Yale undergraduate art exhibit, staring at a chocolate-topped café table. The artist claimed that he wanted to "confront the interface of edible and inedible objects." He rambled on about how "it is fascinating that you can have a piece of chicken, and a book, and a cell phone, and gold (as in jewelry), all on a table together in the same space," and "what would it be like if they melted into the plane?" I could not for the life of me understand anything that came out of his mouth, but he used the term "interface" in rare abundance.

Another young artist spent months using two scanners to "scan each other," in the creation of seductive digital images that she makes into sleek little books and large reflective glass-plated prints. I am obsessed by her "Scan Scan" project and hope to become her agent.

It mystifies me how the art world can induce such pretensions, such idiocy, and such brilliance, all in the space of 24 hours. But it's never hard to know if it's the chocolate, the phallus, or the scanner that emits beauty.

"An Urban Moment"

There is a thrill to perusing the internet for a range of opportunities, from career prospects, to temporary housing arrangements, to more intimate social networking. But my virtual obsession has been called into question by the recent atrocity of the "Craigslist Killer." His story is reminiscent of the classic Bret Easton Ellis novel and the resultant Christian Bale film, American Psycho: a 1980s Manhattan investment banker whose problems with megalomania take the form of hiring and murdering prostitutes. Wanker of the Week seems like a gauche term to apportion to the likes of Patrick Bateman, but I can't help but make the obvious allusion.

In the case of the "Craigslist Killer" the culprit would respond to veiled prostitution ads on Craigslist. Once in the hotel room with the woman, he would bind her with "zip ties" (used as plastic handcuffs) and then try to rob her. His first attack took place at the Westin Hotel in Boston with a woman in her late twenties who had advertised as an exotic dancer. His behavior rapidly devolved into a frenzied shooting of another woman who struggled back. The suspected killer is a 22-year-old med student who is engaged to be married. He's on Facebook.

Kindred.

I was recently lurking in a corner of Manhattan with a friend from good old New England. In boarding school we played squash together and both wrote the type of short stories typical of teenage girls (that is to say: involving a sexual awakening, an intrigue with a male teacher, an allusion to masochistic behavior, and/or a distressing incident with the mother character). Now I am still churning out those "lost girl" stories, and she is living the post-college life in Manhattan. Unfortunately, due to the current hiring freeze, she is also getting a taste for the unemployed life. As a delightful, creative, well-educated girl, who just so happens to look like a Ralph Lauren model, one would think that the sin city would be obsessed by her...

So she braved the waters of waitressing, at one of those painfully hip downtown cafés that serves strong espressos and food that is vaguely Moroccan, in a Cuban diner-inspired interior, to an artist/celeb clientele. And that's how she met her very first NYC Wanker of the Week. So there she was: the down-to-earth New England girl turned struggling waitress on a first date with Hollywood pretty boy Matt Dillon.

He was a mimbo-wanker combination, with an almost embarrassing penchant for dirty talk. She was fired from the hip downtown café job. The more experienced waitress-slash-models were vicious towards her. Maybe they were just jealous that Matt Dillon asked her out instead of them. Incidentally, I met him once at an over-priced vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side. He was wearing a puffy orange parka and oversized (women's?) sunglasses. I vaguely recall that he tried to pick me up. And so it goes.

Throwaway Culture

This morning at the New Haven corner coffee shop a middle-aged woman sat next to me eating her raspberry scone and writing repeatedly on a pad of paper: "Please God give Brendan strength/Please God give Brendan strength..." And just like that for pages and pages. Meanwhile, across the street, there was quite a sizable security brigade forming in front of the museum. Everyone in the coffee shop turned to stare out the windows and gawk. Apparently, there was a "special guest" visiting the Yale Center for British Art today, and "no one knows who." There was a proliferation of Chinese flags and well-dressed Asians carrying large bouquets. My guess is it was a noted Chinese pop singer along the lines of Miley Cyrus. Perhaps the recession has forced Yale to sell off some of its fine art assets, and the young lovely is looking to cover her bubblegum-colored loft in a glorious George Stubbs tableau.

According to a textual message drifting around campus, the mystery guest was far less of a trendy tween icon than I had anticipated: "it was liu yandong the only female member of the politburo and the highest ranking female in china." Well, I got the gender right at least.

"bold in print"

The tradition of love letter writing is dead and gone. Or maybe the inundation of new forms of technological contact is giving the love letter its renaissance. A dashing Argentinean artist has been sending me long, flourishing, and lyrical poem-letter-odes, ever since I met him on my last evening in Buenos Aires. It's mischievous, to say the least. But it is lovely to see people using Facebook for reasons other than to "Poke" each other.

"Poking"—in case you are unfamiliar with the term—is an unfortunately named function on the ever-expanding social networking website, Facebook. "Poking" symbolizes a regression to the kindergarten boy-girl antics of: "I kinda like you, but girls have germs, so I'm just going to poke you instead." Alternatively, poking is a way for wankers and mimbos in their twenties (and below and beyond) to flirt with girls, or to laugh at the fact that they just "poked" someone. Which brings me to my last point:

Gauche things to do to someone you hope to date:

1. Poking them on Facebook.

2. Poking them, literally. Wait. This whole discussion just became too euphemistic, even for my taste.

Fuzzy Bunny Poodle Pumpkin

Easter Sunday is gloomy. Especially all the eggs everywhere. It reminds me of theories on the evolution of human sexuality, and the way that a woman's finite reserve of eggs can mark her behaviors in love and marriage. It's the old story: given that men seem to have an endless supply of sperm, each of their mates does not symbolize a tremendous investment in the grand scheme of their reproductive banking. For women, it is a different story. And that story might even last nine months long.

Or maybe the whole evolution and human sexuality connection is archaic. We have cell phones, Twitter, and Match.com nowadays. Nature does not even factor into it. A woman's apparently innate 'selectiveness' is so confused that she will not just date one, but two, Wanker of the Week. And a mimbo as well. And maybe even a pimp, just to round out the experience. Moral of this Easter Sunday story: men and women are doomed—eggs, no eggs, long-term love, short-term affair, internet dating, happenstance rendezvous, old flame, new email love letter correspondent. Take a deep breath and maybe a walk in the woods.

In a Lab Coat

The Dostoevsky novella Notes from Underground was adapted into a play that I watched last night at The Yale Rep. It was quite romantic to sit by myself in a packed theatre, mesmerized by the bits of falling snow on the sparse-and-skanky set of the Underground Man's apartment, with its stacks of filing boxes and makeshift chairs made from parcel delivery containers. Though it was 120 minutes of an older man at his wit's end and on a rant, I couldn't take my eyes off the performance. I never even thought to glance at my Blackberry or my watch.

The production used video camera footage projected onto the wall, so that the audience could simultaneously watch the Underground Man's body on stage and his hyper-mediated face blown up while he documented himself. The white walls of his cell-like lodgings were transformed by enormous moving images: Bauhaus apartments flashing by in black and white, neon lights and highway stripes, and even male party guests wearing tuxedos and sipping champagne like bobbleheads. The distorted movements—from the bulbous and sweaty Underground Man, to his gamine twenty-year-old prostitute—made for exquisite unease. During the final rape scene the audience was breathless.

It reminded me of the endurance of any period of over-consciousness or self-reflection in one's life: painful, even torturous, but always cinematic.

Repair Black Watch/Wallflower

I was fortunate enough to partake in the festivities of Passover with a good old non-denominational New Haven Seder that devolved very quickly into flourless chocolate cake. I love this wheat-less and unleavened thing...

Gauche Things to do while Wine-Shopping:

1. Upon entering the store, dashing straight over to the impromptu wine tasting event without hesitation.

2. Asking the person attending you, "Does this Chambord come in a family size?"

3. Buying those mini champagne bottles and then asking the cashier, "Do you sell extra-long straws?"

4. Exclaiming things like: "This bottle looks smaller than this one," or, "This one just doesn't have a high enough alcohol content for my taste."

5. Ogling vodka bottles based on the decorative aesthetic of their labels. Then choosing the one that has a picture of a lemon on it, because it reminds you of the Serge Gainsbourg song. (This is not so much gauche as just plain deranged.)

6. When asked to present your ID, handing the cashier your Pennsylvania driver's license and then saying, "OH wait, that's the wrong one... here you go." And then pulling out your other ID (the one from Mississippi).

7. Buying Baileys.

All about Temptation

Images of a very commercially successful, somewhat teen-oriented, film have been distracting me. I recently saw the cult-phenomenon movie about vampires, Twilight. It was directed by a woman (Catherine Hardwicke), written by a woman, and based on a book by a woman, which is a thing hard to come by in the film industry.

The darkly erotic stylization of the low-brow high school drama was mesmerizing, especially when set against the spectacular grey-green landscape of Washington state. It is a story all about temptation: the pretty/angsty/fragile teenage girl dealing with divorced parents becomes obsessed by her sexy classmate, who is actually a much older man (a 107-year-old vampire). He cannot resist her but is terrified of being near her, because the temptation of sucking her blood is too great. So instead he tries to take care of her, protect her, and restrain himself from going too far and allowing it to become carnal.

Twilight is all about delay and anticipation. There's not enough of that in this day and age. With the wankers of the world, it's all about now now now. In Twilight the girl is willing to risk everything for her vampire-lover. She's even willing to become a vampire herself, which would mean forsaking her life and turning into a social pariah, an outcast, and a demon. It is a loaded metaphor for many romantic relationships: two lovers cannot be together for certain fundamental reasons (circumstantial, emotional, developmental, intellectual, financial, geographical, racial, ethical, all of the above), but they cannot resist their innate, undying, and inexplicable attraction to one another. I don't tend to like the fantasy genre, but when it's this close to reality, and when it involves a beautiful modern glass house, I can't get enough.

Ultimately

I have been beleaguering all of my friends and family about the issue of whether or not I should invest in graduate school. In one moment it seems like a natural progression, a golden opportunity, an ideal way to evolve intellectually in these less-than-ideal times. Plus, it is good to be in a haven of smart people, many of whom care about things other than sex and money, which is a rarity in the dense area of Manhattan.

When I emailed my thesis adviser about my dilemma (mixed in with an apology for my lack of a finished draft), he responded with refreshing succinctness:

"too soon to flip out. save that for middle age, since it will happen anyway."

The Diamond Fell Out

Tonight I attended Theatre of Desire, a Yale undergraduate drama debauchery that takes place sporadically, in a ballroom, with donuts, coffee, and Deb Margolin, the famous feminist performance artist and playwright. I usually shudder at the sight of the overly enthusiastic theatre kid, but tonight I was feeling particularly low and needed a collaborative distraction involving cold readings of unfinished plays and outbursts of emotion that would rival my own current state of existential distress.

I witnessed a scene from a play about a girl, her lucid dreams, her therapist, and her best friend's imaginary boyfriend. The lead, Mia, pleads with her friend, Flora, to break up with the imaginary boyfriend, Clark, saying, "Flora, you have to find something real!"

But is Mia right? Do we have to find something real? What is so abominable about an imaginary boyfriend? I suppose it is considered "settling" to date someone who only exists in your fantasy life, but absurdism can go a long way in making reality more bearable. The above picture of champagne glasses also signifies something that can go a long way in making reality more bearable.

La Dolce Vita

On a rainy afternoon I watched the new film from French director, Pierre Morel film, Taken. I had heard that it would shock me out of ever wanting to travel waywardly abroad again. The plot: two innocent and spoiled 17-year-old Los Angeles girls are desperate to frolic about Europe seeing U2 concerts and staying in luxury hotels. Due to the proliferation of jet setting rich kids in boarding school and university, this scenario is more familiar to me than I would like to admit.

The two young lovelies arrive in Paris and within minutes they meet a pseudo-French Wanker of the Week character, who effortlessly charms them into attending a party with him that evening. But, instead of picking them up at their auntie's apartment at 9pm as planned, he and his brood of perverted Croatian men break in and abduct the naïve young lovelies. It is a frighteningly near-realistic story of a network of sex traffickers who kidnap innocent female foreigners and force them into a cycle of heroin dependence and prostitution. Some of the girls—the prettiest, most virginal ones—are even sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars to become sex slaves to greasy Middle Eastern princes and the like.

Maybe this film should be mandatory viewing for all high school Freshmen. I can count on one hand the number of girls for whom this story wouldn't have come true. When traveling as a young woman, evil lurks at every corner, but somehow a wink and a sexy accent can mask any sense of impending doom.

You & Me Solo

On the cover of today's Yale Daily News there is a photo of a beaming young couple, two Yale seniors (both Catholics and on the crew team) who are engaged to be married upon graduation. It all began when they met on the steps of the New Haven post office, and they sealed the deal (not literally I'm sure, since they are devout Catholics) when he proposed to her last year on those very steps. What a whirlwind tale of tidy romance.

Marriage before the age of 23 is uncommon these days, and the figures are dropping in recent years: apparently only about 25 percent of women and 16 percent of men choose this path of an early yoke and bypass the lovely exploratory period of the 20s dating scene. The Yale Daily News reported that less than 40 percent of young marriages end in divorce, which is less than the overall 50 percent divorce rate.

My guess is that it's all a matter of luck. Destiny could have it that you meet the man, or woman, of your dreams while studying for final exams, under the harsh fluorescent glow of the library reading room, at age 19. For some women, their destiny seems to be meeting a series of mixed characters until the right one comes in, maybe late in life. And then, oops, that one wasn't the right one either—just a regular old mimbo/wanker conglomerate.