PublicHouse
girl to know. The mystery of intimacy, of the process by which two people know each other, is gone. Our brains no longer get boners when we relate to this seemingly alien creature in front of us. The first time I approached a random girl, I was 13-years-old. To this day I could tell you everything about that interaction. Not just what we said, but what I was feeling, infinitesimal moment to infinitesimal moment. I approached a girl yesterday and, in order to make the interaction more exciting for me, I had to effectively put on a show for the people who were listening in. I don’ t even get girls’ phone numbers anymore because I know I will never call or text them. Either I give them my number, or we make plans to meet somewhere. As I’ m walking or taking the subway to meet her, there’ s a part of me that sincerely hopes she flakes. Sometimes, when I’ m out with a girl, my brain will hit a wall of boredom, and I’ ll be obnoxious as a way to stimulate my brain. It’ s not uncommon for me to make a good rape joke when on a date, and by‘ good’ I mean‘ unfunny’. Last weekend, one such rape joke caused a girl to look at me in total horror, and then she stormed out on me. There’ s some fodder for her women’ s studies elective. These scenarios represent a challenge I, and many of my peers, face. How do we stave off boredom when meeting somebody new? You can do it for a while, but eventually, one girl runs into the next. I don’ t even try to remember dates I’ ve been on as early as even a few weeks ago. It’ s as excruciating as trying to remember all the buildings you passed on your walk today. It feels grim, but in this emotional numbness is a lesson to learn about relationships, and how to make them not only healthy, but exciting. It’ s a lesson only the most advanced relationships integrate, and so I believe this is an opportunity to evolve relationships to a higher order. The mistake we, as a race of social creatures, have been making in relationships is to base the mystery of the relationship on each other. The mystery, up until now, has been experiencing the other person. We treat the other person as if they’ re a time bomb, waiting to blow up in an explosion of boredom. So if we talk too much and spend too much time together, the mystery is gone, and so is our interest. Eventually, we come to know our girlfriends and relationships like a savant knows a Rubik’ s cube. It’ s as easy as it is boring. The natural endgame of such relationships is jogging pants and Netflix. Girls will date guys like Chris Brown if it means a little excitement. And guys will incorporate a little Chris Brown because boredom easily snaps into hate. You probably would never kill your girlfriend, but if she died in a car accident maybe that wouldn’ t be so bad. The real mystery, I’ m beginning to learn, is to experience life with each other, and to experience the mysteries of life through each other. It’ s not only a relationship between you and her, but a relationship between you and your life and her, and her and her life and you, and you and her and every new thing you do. The world, and everybody and everything in the world, is now a part of your relationship. It’ s a spiritual orgy, always challenging yourself with the new, to make the relationship exciting by way of making your life exciting. This requires a level of excitability yet seriousness that most people never cultivate, but we’ re a generation that, on first dates, talks about how our parent’ s alcoholism informs the kind of people we’ re attracted to, so I think we’ re up to the challenge. Conclusion I’ ve sung the praises of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo before, but here we go again. That novel is not only original in its story, but the themes it deals with have never since been dealt with in quite the same way. Hugo only wrote TMWL, I would argue, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. At that time, he had all the success and fame he could want. Naturally, he was bored and depressed, so he wrote The Man Who Laughs to keep himself alive. Hugo was an author of the people, but The Man Who Laughs was a product of total self-indulgence. The millennials born of hookup culture are in a similar position. We’ re not like our parents. There was rarely a need to challenge themselves in relationships because simply being in a relationship was something cool for them. But we have to make relationships a fun and exciting thing. We have to. Otherwise, we will continue to be as miserable as is our repute, and all the psychosocial insights in the world won’ t make a damned bit of difference. But when we combine our sentience and strife with the relationship, the very concept of the relationship, and how people relate in general, will evolve into a completely new organism.
Mark Derian
@ animusempire
Illustration by Bambi Goodman
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