Guide to Lying

Everybody lies. Sorry, but it’s true. I don’t care if you’re Johnny Upright, and you’re one hundred percent honest all the time or else you don’t even say anything. At some point somebody is going to force you to lie to them.

They will say, with their eyes, “I am a sad person and I’m taking this bullshit thing very seriously. Please please tell me you agree with me on this. I need you to agree with me on this for some reason. I know deep in my heart whatever I need you to say is not true. I just need you to help me lie to myself about it so I can move on with my crazy delusional life. Just lie to me about this one thing and I will leave you alone, I promise. Even just a side lie, where I ask you what you honestly think and you say, ‘It’s not really my thing;’ can you muster that? At least just feign ignorance, for my sake. Just a tiny lie. I’ve had a rough couple of months/years/entire life and I need to hear a lie or two right now. That’s not so hard, is it?” Of course they’re saying all of this with their eyes. What they’re saying with their mouths is something along the lines of, “isn’t [some thing] just… the best?”

Of course you’re gonna break down and lie in that situation. There are degrees of lying, and the utility of telling somebody you barely know that you like their pencil drawing of a fetus in order to end the conversation and more quickly not have to talk to them ever again is just too high to ignore. But: it’s still a lie. Forced or not. And lying is trouble.

Technically the better thing to do is say that you don’t like it, in fact you very much don’t like it, and you can’t figure out why they did it, and more importantly you can’t figure out why they would do such a thing if a stranger’s opinion about it is going to be so important later that they’d want to pressure that stranger into lying about it. And, oddly, isn’t a publicly displayed pencil drawing of a fetus supposed to be kind of a “fuck you?” Am I even supposed to like it? Honestly, I don’t like it as either a thing or as a “fuck you.” It’s an incredibly clumsy “fuck you.” I’m not impressed by it in any way. Let me be clear about this: whichever response will mean less conversation with you about art, or really anything, that’s what I’m looking to give you. This fetus drawing is fantastically mediocre. It provokes no particular response, other than a desire to laugh at it briefly through my nose and then move on forever. I cannot believe I have thought about it for this long. Goodbye.

Technically that’s better. Because that’s honest.

But in a way the more honest thing to do is to say “it’s really good,” and then avoid eye contact and get the Hell out of there. Because that’s at least emotionally honest. That’s a between-the-lines way of saying, “Hey, I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to get into it with you about this pencil-drawing fetus. I just want to go to dinner and laugh about it with my girlfriend for like 4 seconds until we start talking about something else.”

The real lie going on there is the original lie. The lie of the artist to himself about whether or not he’s pulling it off with this pencil-drawing-of-a-fetus stuff.

Art is weird. It’s almost completely subjective to say what’s good and what’s not. You can describe some qualities that most people would objectively consider to be general qualities of good art. “Provocative” is one of those qualities. But of course “provocative” is just a word. It gets used so much in so many different ways that it doesn’t really describe anything until you add more words to it. And you’ve got a lot of weird people doing art, some of whom won’t understand that making something that’s “provocative” isn’t the same thing as making good art, because you can’t make good anything if that thing only has one value and that value is as flimsy as “provocative.” Some of these people don’t even understand what they’re “provoking” when they’re being intentionally “provocative.” They’re probably not aiming for strong, resolute, and immediate indifference as a provoked response. But they don’t understand that, some of these weird people who would have you think they “do art.”

And one of those people is currently standing next to a pencil drawing of a fetus, glaring at you like they know something you don’t when in fact it’s the other way around. You know their fetus drawing isn’t good by any measure. And to that end, you also know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Like out of the gallery and, thankfully, on to the next thing in your life that’s not a pencil drawing of a fetus.

Of course if you’re 19, you might not know that about irony yet. You might laugh in that guy’s face about his fetus drawing and tell him that you love it, and then realize that you hurt his feelings a little by assuming he’s in on the joke, and then laugh at the fact that he was serious, and then go over to the wine table and steal a bottle of Trader Joe’s Merlot, and then continue your party of a life through a never ending series of laughing at things you think are dumb and doing stupid shit until you realize life is pretty long and at the end of it, one day, you’re going to die. And then, usually somewhere around age 24-26, you’ll know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Sometimes, though, it gets you pretty far. It’s not totally worthless, thank God.

Anyhow, lying is trouble. But if you’re going to use the above example, the worst lie you can tell is a lie to yourself that you believe. Lies of this nature include, “Yeah man, people don’t know how to handle my fetus drawing art, I’m great.” And, “Oh man, I’m so great I get to laugh at the fetus drawing guy’s face because I did a few things that are better than a fetus drawing.” Neither one of those self-lies really hurt anybody but the person they’re an issue for, but unless that person tries to get rid of them, they’re just going to stay there and reverberate through the years until they grow into the lie-based assumptions for genuine neuroses. In both of these cases we’d be talking about narcissism. But there are other common self-lies that turn into other things, like how “I know what I’m doing” can turn into OCD after a while, or “I can do anything I want” can turn into a dude who does anything he wants, like hard drugs and homemade porn even though he’s got kids. You’ve got to nip those self-lies in the bud.

I’ve got a few. There’s “I’m interesting.” “I’m special.” “I’m talented at some things.” “I’m smart.” “I’m funny.” “I know what I’m doing.” “I can do anything I want.” “I deserve to be happy.” “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that.” “I’m meant for better things than sitting in an office all day and/or ever doing the dishes when I’m home.” “I can laugh at that guy’s fetus drawing because I’ve done things that are objectively better than a fetus drawing.” “I could probably pull off a fetus drawing.” “I kind of want to make a t-shirt that says ‘I heart fetus drawings.’”

Most of those I know I’ve got to nip in the bud, because if I don’t it will eventually be a mountain of trouble collapsing on you instead of a kind of pain in the ass thing you should probably deal with. It’s kind of like smoking. Oh yeah, “I can smoke without ever dying because of it.” That’s a good self-lie. And it’s a good demonstration of what self-lies do. It’s like smoking all your life and then when you get cancer being like, “Oshitoshitoshit! I quit! I’m out!” Not happening, Jack. Not happening. That cancer was coming for you for your whole life. You started it. And you failed to stop it in time.

Take the “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that lie” I tell myself. You know where that ends up? That ends up at a reception desk for a company that brokers the sale of self-storage properties, and convincing yourself you actually like being there. It’s voluntarily hanging out with a bunch of dudes who want nothing in the world more than to make some deals happen in the self-storage industry because to them it is an exciting and complex marketplace full of unique challenges. Did you know that self-storage is a retail business model within an industrial zoning plan? You will. Eventually you will if you just do whatever’s easiest. And you’ll find that doing whatever’s easiest eventually leads you to the hardest fucking thing you’ve ever done in your life, which is feigning interest in the self-storage industry.

Maybe it turns out to be so easy that you are tempted to take classes that will make you know more about the self-storage industry so that you can continue to take even more money from doing things with it. Maybe you will also put a down payment on a condo and move into it with your girlfriend. And you’ll write articles for self-storage industry trade magazines and convince yourself that it’s somehow creatively fulfilling to you. And you’ll raise a family, and you will enjoy that family, and you will feed that family by making a bunch of deals in the self storage industry, and it will all be incredibly easy until one day you realize that what you really want to do is anything else, and you have some ridiculous midlife crisis that involves going to tantric sex workshops with some spaced out idiot half-your-age yoga instructor with a Daddy complex. Which is not the real you either, so much as an overreaction to a lifetime of self-storage dealmaking.

Not that self-storage is an inherently bad way to make a living. It’s just not for everyone. Oddly enough, “it’s not for everyone” does not seem to be a prevalent assumption among practitioners in the self-storage industry. They’re more the type of crowd that’s like, “Of course you’d want to make a killing in self-storage, isn’t that what everybody wants?” That’s one of the things that makes it so easy. They’re just shy of chanting “join us” like Sirens on the rocks. Hideous, hideous Sirens. That want you to lie to yourself about everything.

Yes, self-lies are the worst kind of lie there is. I don’t want to get all Randian about it, but let’s look out for those. They’re the kind of lies that you can lose control over pretty easily. So be on the lookout for them. Also be on the lookout for dudes who want you to tell them how much you like their fetus drawing. It’s not technically lying if you get the fuck out of there before they can get a word in. Sprinting in the opposite direction is an acceptable honest reaction.

Guide to Figuring Out Everything That Is Wrong With You on Wikipedia

So slate.com has a piece on Narcissistic Personality Disorder this week, and reading it has thrown me down a wormhole of self-doubt. The good news is the fact that I can even feel self-doubt excludes me from the rolls of the clinically narcissistic. The bad news is the more links you follow on Wikipedia about personality disorder, the more likely you are to find out that you’re nothing but a diagnosable series of symptoms with very direct causes and very predictable effects. The whole rubric of your life and, indeed, all of human experience, is reductive to a linked series of community-edited theorems of varying credibility.

I hate Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, it turns out that I have qualities that could reasonably qualify me, on a bad day, for five out of a possible ten diagnosable personality disorders. Basically the ones where you don’t like or understand people or the bullshit rules they make and follow. I’m not too worried about myself falling prey to the disorders where you make too many rules and/or are afraid of everything all the time.

Mostly I’m worried that my whole life is based on one of these “fixed fantasies” that they’re talking about on Wikipedia, which is probably accurate. I don’t know. I mean, I put up a pretty strong front here, but who knows? I don’t really buy it. Plus, part of these personality disorders is you can’t qualify for them if it’s a result of being drunk, and I think that’s why I get drunk so often. I’d rather qualify for alcoholism if it means the fact that I got really shitfaced and molested some dude’s balls as a joke that one time is not anything to worry too much about. I don’t typically ballmolest sober. And I get more of a comedy kick out of it than a sexual kick anyway. I’m not to blame here. That much I’m certain of.

Oh shit.

I just slid back into Narcissism again. This thing is a real tightrope walk. Wikipedia won’t even let you be a little bit weird. I tried to look up “a little bit weird” in Wikipedia and nothing came up. Fuck you, Wikipedia. I’m just a little bit weird. I forgive myself for it, and I try to rein it in. I’m a normal redblooded American weird dude who is probably not even all that weird.

Also: who is Wikipedia to tell me I’m Narcissistic or Histrionic or anything else? Wikipedia is a bunch of people who get a kick out of writing down what they know into a viewable database and then obsessively policing that database. I hereby diagnose Wikipedia with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, which Wikipedia, I assume, is correct in distinguishing from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is the one where you count everybody’s syllables or you have to touch things five times or you’re super afraid of germs and have to shower for 2 hours a day and scrub until you bleed because you “did it wrong” the first time.

Point is, Wikipedia itself is borderline batshit crazy, so I’m not going to rely on it for information as to whether or not I’m batshit crazy. I refuse to accept that. I’m not batshit crazy. I’m just regular crazy, hold the batshit.

I guess I could go on further refuting the Slate article by asserting that Narcissism is an appropriate response to the meteoric rise in our culture of the primacy of the individual spurred by exponential increases in the illusion of choice (the old “500 channels and nothing on” saw) and increasingly targeted demographic research which seeks to flatter every individual consumer as a master of their own specific subset of preferences. But that would be Narcissistic. Actually, that would be normal, because everybody’s a baby these days. This is just my blog.

Guide to Skinny Jeans.

Skinny jeans are idiotic. So are big jeans, though. Also idiotic: low-rise jeans. And: high-waisted jeans. Plus: boot-cut. And: straight-leg. And also: tapered. Also pretty bad: pleated, creased, acid-washed, pre-stressed, torn, old, new, dark blue, light blue, non-blue, and perfect. All jeans are pretty dumb, except for that one pair of your Dad’s that you wore every day of 11^th grade. Right? Those were the best, and all others before and since are imitators. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page as far as jeans go.

But: I can understand the need for skinny jeans. I can.

I developed a very simple and still unbreakable men’s fashion theory in my early 20’s giveashits. It states: the best way to look is like a male equivalent of the kind of girl you’d most want to have sex with.

Say what you will, but it is ironclad. You figure out who your targets are, and then you look like them and it encourages them to talk and/or be comfortable around you. So if you like super put-together ladies, you’ve got to wear nice suits. If you like sarcastic tomboys who like smoking weed, wear a lot of ironic/vintage stuff. If you want an art-damaged fashion maven who knows where all the best parties are, wear clothes that were prominent 15-18 years ago (I’m thinking this means jackets with an elastic waist cinch-due everywhere in 2014) and get some kind of extremely unemployable hairdo. If you want a tough girl who’s a total softie on the inside, get a neck tattoo. If you want one of those beerdrinking dependable semioutdoorsy women who never changes, wear a Michigan State sweatshirt, peacoat, corduroys, and chucks and call it a decade (also: you should have some kind of a retrieving dog).

And then when the girl equivalent of what you look like will be more apt to talk to you, whether you have your shit together enough to talk to her or not. That’s a whole different issue. But at least you can meet her halfway with your clothing signals. It makes your job easier.

Anyway: the rule is ironclad. Your clothes say who you want to have sex with.

And I think skinny jeans are stupid because I have no interest in having sex with 19 year old skate punks or self-important Vice Magazine art opening divas in garish costume jewelry. Maybe that’s harsh. I have some interest in having sex with those types. Let’s be honest. But not so much that I want to go overboard and look like them. I don’t have the time or the money for that. Actually: that’s why I don’t really want to have sex with them all that much. I don’t have the time or the money for that. And also: they’re usually boring. To me. I find them to be that way. Most times.

Anyhow, I’m not mad at you if you’re so into this one type of lady that you don’t mind prancing around like Count Peter Pan of Faggotton in your skinny jeans. We all do stupid shit to get laid sometimes. The fact that I consider skinny jeans to be “stupid shit” shouldn’t stop you from wearing them if you’re really looking to get busy over at the International Academy of Art and Design. It’s not your fault you’re not a grown up yet.

Skinny jeans are what made me realize I’ve become a grown up in the thingwearing category. I needed a pair of pants recently, and I went into American Apparel and tried on a pair of their tiny little jeans. Looking down at myself in the stretch-denim sausage casings they call pants, I said, “Nope. This is where I get off of this crazy rollercoaster. If this is looking good, I want to look bad. Get me out of this overpriced Pedophile’s Wetdream Store. I’d rather shop at the Docker’s Outlet. At least they’re honest about their aspirations over there. I’m no longer interested in paying this much money for in-joke clothes that make fun of the idea of wearing clothes.” And then I went to The Gap Outlet and bought some cheap jeans that I’m comfortable in even though they’re probably “so 2005.” 2005 was a decent enough year. I don’t mind being frozen there if it means having enough room between my legs and my pants to be able to wear underwear in July.

But that just indicates that my taste in women is changing. Now I’m more into the type of girl who looks nice but doesn’t give too much of a fuck about me noticing her. That’s why I got rid of all my dayglo sweaters and vintage tracksuit jackets, and why all my collared shirts have buttons on the collar now, and why I wear those collared shirts because I like them and not because I have to, and why I don’t buy sneakers anymore unless they’re a color that occurs in nature. I just don’t have the mustard for skinny jeans and high tops and t-shirts with some kind of word-design on them that I know are going to look stupid in two months when the new trend is something else. Sorry. It’s the clothing equivalent of sipping the expensive stuff instead of guzzling the cheap stuff.

But if that’s not you, by all means wear your skinny jeans. Something skinny-jeans like is coming for you, though. I just want to get you ready for it. In 2013 there will be a new thing that you’ll think is just too far to go, like, I don’t know, jackets with side zippers or something. And you’ll find yourself in some dressing room thinking about whether or not you’re actually going to spend $150 on this fucking thing, and you’ll look in the mirror and decide that, no, you are not going to buy this fucking thing. Not for $150 and probably not even for free. Nor will you buy anything else like it that ever comes along. Because it will no longer be worth it to you to send the “I’m not sure what I want, but this looks good” signal to potential mates. It’s part of being a grown up.

That’s what your Dad did, and that’s why you loved his jeans so much in the 11^th grade. They were a little oasis of don’tgiveafuck in a desert of 11^th grade needingitbad.

Guide to Sexual Demands.

Guys can get pretty greedy. Greedy is maybe not the word. Greed itself is a symptom of some other guy thing that guys can get a lot of. Juvenile, maybe. Petulant. Something like that. Guys can get pretty self-indulgent. I guess girls can, too, in their different way.

One of the ways guys can get most… like that… is with sex. I hate it when people reduce some kind of a point they’re making about gender differences to some cock-eyed basis in evolution, but: there’s a basis for this in evolution.

It’s caveman times. Cavedudes want sex. Cavegirls want to prevent sex from happening unless it’s from a caveguy who is likely to help with the resultant cavekids. The cavewomen sit around and say “I want a sensitive caveman who will help with the cavekids and not just bother me for sex all the time, and also he is not afraid to cry or watch ‘The Notebook’ with me.” And sometimes they get one. And sometimes a stronger, less sensitive caveman comes along and hits the sensitive caveman on the head with a rock. Sometimes that gets the cavewoman all turned on because by now she’s bored of hearing about the sensitive caveman’s neurotic struggles with his own expectations all the time. So she has sex with the stronger, meaner caveman.

After the pregnant cavegirl has a cavebaby, the strong mean caveman gets mad because the cavegirl doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore because she’s got this new cavebaby to take care of. But there's really nothing he can do about it except for rape and that's not because A. it's not as much fun as notrape sex, and B. the cavewoman might get mad and hit him in the head with a rock in his sleep. So he either turns into a sensitive cavedude and stays or he leaves and hits some other sensitive cavedude on the head with a rock. If he leaves, the cavegirl is more or less fine with that because they’re better off not having kids with a dude who’s gonna be a leaver anyway, but not having a cavedude around makes life harder because cavedudes are pretty good at killing mastodons and fixing the hot water heater. So in order to calm down their strong, mean cavedudes and make them stick around and kill mastodons and fix the hot water heater, the caveladies capitulate and invent blowjobs. And that takes us to present day.

The idea that people invented blowjobs in the 50’s is astounding to me. No way. Cavemen and cavewomen invented blowjobs as a last-ditch form of mediation to prevent cavedudes from leaving cavegirls and cavebabies right before winter hit. Dudes have been annoyingly pressing their sexual agenda ever since. I don’t know this, I’m just guessing like anybody else. But: historically, and as a result of millions of years of evolution, dudes are whiney little bitches when it comes to sex. Based on no facts. Based on me just saying it.

Of course you don’t have to be a whiney little bitch when it comes to your sexual needs. You can just repress them one hundred percent forever since childhood until your sexual needs turn into some kind of a weird diaper-wearing thing. Or you can be a rapist. Let me be clear: I don’t advocate either one of these scenarios. I actually advocate being a whiney little bitch about your sexual needs. It’s better than the alternatives.

Once you realize you've got no choice but to be a whiney little bitch about things (i.e. talking them out instead of just running around with a boner and some "really great" sex ideas), you've got to learn how to express and address your sexual needs honestly without being passive aggressive. Like you’ll say, “Hey, cavelady, I think you’re great and all, but I will tell you right now that I’m going to need at least monthly bj’s and some minimal degree of playfulness or else this is eventually not going to work. In exchange I will gladly do whatever it is you want me to do, including just leaving you alone whenever you want.” If you just say the first part, you’re being a dickhead. If you just say the second part, it’s implied that you’re some closeted diaper-wearer who just wants to be dominated, which is fine, but you should probably mention that too, like "I will gladly do whatever it is you want me to do, including just leaving you alone whenever you want, because that's what I get off on. Also: please please please ask me to hold your purse in public.”

You've got to say what you need (sexual and otherwise) and assure that you're going to make sure to meet her needs (sexual and otherwise), and you've got to really mean both of those things. And then you follow through. That's how you earn whatever it is you’re demanding. In general terms. It's a pain in the ass but it's better than sitting around with a huge boner hoping she'll read your mind about what incredibly specific thing (hints: peanut butter, spatula, ceiling fan) you want done to it, and then getting all pissy when it doesn't happen exactly right.

But that's the tricky part. Sometimes you don't know you want something until it pops in there. Like, “Tonight is the night I really really want to fuck over by the kitchen sink for some reason, and I’ve just been thinking about it a ton, and that’s what I want to do tonight. A lot. I am just feeling super kitchen sinky right now. Maybe this idea also involves an apron. I’m not sure yet. I just want to try something with the kitchen sink. Right now. Tonight.”

That’s bullshit, of course. There’s no way in hell you’re going to get kitchen sink sex the second the thought pops into your head. Unless you have talked and talked and talked about how important it is to you to be in an "extremely accepting of my immediate sexual urges without exception or any need for discussion" relationship, which I'm not sure exists. What are you, a baby? It can wait.

Just try and spring that kitchen sink scenario on somebody unannounced and see what happens. Nothing good. No, what you get is a, “What? Leave me alone, dude. I have my own sexual fantasy and it’s you listening to my description of what happened to me today at work and then inferring from that information that I’m not in the mood for impromptu fucking on or near the kitchen sick. And I’m damn sure not wearing an apron.”

So you kind of have to leave those urges on the caveroom floor sometimes. Which sucks, because it’s disappointing when you feel like you’ve done a really good job with killing mastodons and fixing the hot water heater recently, and really you just want this one thing and it doesn’t seem like too much to ask, especially considering it’s supposed to be fun. But: she's pretty much constantly denying her urges to slap your entire face off over the dumb things you say and your constant unrepentant farting, so it balances out.

That nagging disappointment is shitty, but it's the result of your failure to mention that this is the type of thing you need. Not in a “we’ve got to have sex on or near the kitchen sink once a week or else I’m out of here” kind of a way, unless you’re so super into kitchen sink sex that you really feel that way, but you have to be like, “I need spontaneity and maybe a little bit of weirdness, for example: sex on or near the kitchen sink, perhaps with an apron being involved, sex in the vestibule while we’re still wearing our coats, that type of thing, etc.”

A good time to mention these things is right after you’ve just had sex, and then that way you won’t be too forceful about how much you’d like it because your penis is incapable of bossing you around for those 20 minutes, and she’ll be receptive to the idea because women usually get really horny after sex because they are relentless and because that’s when they think the real intimacy happens (we think intimacy happens in the “I will agree to wear this stupid fucking apron and have uncomfortable sex on or near the kitchen sink” portion of the evening).

But even if you’re a super adulty communicator about it and you set up all kinds of parameters of trust and you talk the thing half to death before you even get a chance to try it, there’s no guarantee that she’ll go for it. There could be a lengthy debate about how that’s degrading and misogynistic. That debate is good. That’s a lot better than “No way, end of discussion.” Have the debate. Talk about why that idea turns you on. Cite Wikipedia or something. Most of all, assure the person that you really care about them and you wouldn’t mention this fantasy to them in the first place if you didn’t trust them completely. That’s a good one to use, the trust card. It’s good to use because it’s true.

If it’s not true and you don’t really give a shit about this person, and you just want to fuck them over a sink because you actually are a misogynist who wants to degrade random women, you should probably check yourself into some therapy and deal with that. And also you should cut this one loose and go find a woman who wants to be actually degraded instead of fake pretend fantasy degraded. They exist, and they're super weird (but also kind of great for a while until you realize that's not actually what you want).

In either case, you should definitely go back to the drawing board and think about why you like this fantasy so much. Just in general. Even if she’s totally into it. It’s good to know why you’re into this specific thing.

If she’s not feelin’ it after a long adulty discussion over it, then you have to decide if that’s a big deal or not. It probably is. I’m just saying, once you drop one of these things, it’s not going to stop. You will have to drop others. If that’s ok with you, by all means continue on the course you’re on, which is begging and pleading for a blowjob and kissing ass and crossing your fingers that she’ll get your subliminal mental signals. Don’t get me wrong, a little of that is fine, even necessary, but keep in mind there’s no guarantee that there won’t be a stronger, meaner caveman out there with a rock who will totally undo all the work you did. So it’s best to bend without breaking. Or at least, in any case, it’s best to be honest about them if you have certain blowjob/kitchensex requirements.

You might get on your own back a little bit like, “What have I done to deserve these blowjobs and kitchen fuckings? It’s not like I’m rich or famous or something.” But if you genuinely need a certain amount of blowjobs and kitchenfucks to be happy, then you deserve them because everybody deserves to be happy. That’s really the whole thing behind being a douchebag. Everybody deserves to be happy. Helping other people and being honest with other people makes you happy, and so does helping yourself and being honest with yourself. Kum Bah Yah, M’Lord. Amen.

Now could you please just put on the stupid apron and at least pretend to be into this? PLEASE? I don’t want to have to leave the cavebabies, but I will. I swear to God, I will.

Guide to Couples Doing Couple Things

People get twice as stupid when you put them together and send them out into the world.

I have no information to back this up, but I’m pretty sure it’s true. That’s why huge mobs of people are so stupid. They’ve had their intelligence halved by a factor of however many people there are and now they’re dumb enough to stand in the rain in order to see a big screen version of Kanye West singing his robot songs (the real Kanye West is too far away to see). One person is usually smart enough to know that it’s better to sit somewhere that’s not raining and not watch anything that involves Kanye West.

So couples out doing couple things maybe aren’t all that stupid in the scheme of things, but they certainly are half as stupid as just a dude.

Think about how you do things when you’re alone. Let’s say you’re going for a walk. You walk and you stop to look at things that you find interesting, and you see a street you’ve never been down before and you choose to take a turn and go down it, and then maybe you get hungry and decide to go get something to eat, and then you get tired and go home. All of those decisions just happened in your brain. You didn’t have to run them by this whole other person. When you’re walking alone, it’s easy.

When you’re with somebody else it’s, “hey doyouwanna go forawalk? Hey lookatthat. Nevermind. I thoughtit wasabird butit’snot. What? Yeah, yeah that ad on thebus does lookphotoshopped. Ohyeah totally. Jennifer Anniston is way tooskinny. Hey you wanna go downthisway? I dunno, just never been downthatway. No? Okcool, yeah I’m hungrytoo. Whaddya want? Sultan’s? No? Sushi? You want sushi? Ok, I guess we can get sushi. Hey can I just go into this comicbookstore real quick? I’ll be real quick. I promise I’ll be real quick. I will take as little time as I possibly can hanging out in this comicbookstore even though I really just want to hang out in this comicbookstore for like an hour. Uh… yeah. No. No thanks. I mean, why don’t you go over to the shoestore and I’ll stay here in this comicbookstore, and then when one of us is done, we’ll go get the other one because I want to hang out in the shoestore about as much as you want to hang out in the comicbookstore, which is to say zero minutes ever.”

You get half as much done, it takes twice as much work, and you were only really happy when you finally get left alone in the comic book store. And it’s a walk. You had no goals for this walk. And yet all of your walk-based interesting thingdoing opportunities have been thwarted. All except one: to spend time with this person. So in that way, it’s a successful walk. It’s even more successful if by the end of it you’re not feeling totally bitchy about how you didn’t get to walk down that one street or how you paid like 15 bucks for sushi instead of a 4 dollar falafel at Sultan’s and you ended up hanging out at the shoestore for like 30 minutes because the comicbookstore really didn’t take you that long because you blew your potential comicbookstore budget on sushi you didn’t really want even though it was pretty good. And she’s probably too tired and dehydrated from all that shoe shopping and Miso soup to have sex with you. But still: quality time.

If it sounds like I’m resentful of this, I’m not. Sushi and a little shoe shopping is a fine way to spend a day. Especially if it’s with somebody you like being around. So it’s actually a positive. A huge positive. And also: you're so precious that you have to get what you want all the time? Really? You can just go for a self-walk later when you feel like walking down a new street to get to Sultan's and then read some comic books without a girlfriend in sight (there's a defacto "no girlfriends allowed" policy at the comicbookstore). A couplewalk is great too for different reasons. There was probably some good joking and goofaroonie time in there, some nice affection, and even if she is exhausted from the shoe shopping, at the end of your walk you still have a better chance of having sex than you would have if you were just out walking alone. That’s a nice day.

But: stupid. Right? I mean look at the amount of discussion you have to partake in just to walk around casually and eat sushi and look at shoes in some place that’s playing downtempo house. Look at the number of opinions you’re sharing, and notice how little you care about those opinions. Watch in horror as the simple problem of “I’m hungry” turns into what seems to you to be a logistical nightmare. Observe yourself groping for discussion topics over sushi instead of just reading a newspaper. See how careful you are to take her feelings into account when working your way around such existential quandaries as “should we get ice cream,” when she probably doesn’t give a shit either (except she sometimes does seem to get really emotional about ice cream—so you can’t be too careful, maybe it really is the powderkeg you think it is). Yes, it’s true: you’re behaving like a stupid person. And so is she, probably. Because: there are two of you.

Take this and multiply whenever there’s a couple-y gathering. Double dates are fine, but once you add that third couple in, it turns into a freeforall. I think there’s some mathematical rule that says three or more of any one gender in one place makes it hard for members of the other gender to enjoy themselves. That’s why you sit around for an awkward half hour as the girlfriends talk to each other with increasing fervor, and the dudes gradually get fewer words in edgewise due to not caring about what’s being discussed enough to want to, until some dude mentions he’s got a sports thing to show you and you and the other dudes, and you get out of there and talk about the sports thing or else just stand around the grill drinking beers and goofing around while the ladies excitedly talk about Michelle Obama, and you’re like “how’d I end up in 1958?”

That’s what couple-y gatherings always feel like to me. It’s like some agreed upon level of banality which gradually relaxes away enough to allow for gender stereotypes to affirm themselves, and the whole pattern resets itself and the banality becomes gender-based until you run out of dude things to talk about, and then you wait out the rest of it by moving from the cooler to the buffet to the bathroom to the couch to wherever your girlfriend is, and along the way you get to drink beer and eat somebody’s homemade cole slaw that your girlfriend wants the recipe to. And then in the card ride home you have to agree to the rundown of who’s doing what and who’s got a lot of nerve, and you agree that you should probably try something like that yoga class that Wendy and Steve are doing (fuck off, Steve, I can’t believe you caved on that yoga thing, now I’ve got to do it). Call me Johnny Nofun, but I’d rather stay home and watch History channel. Except it’s good to get out of the house every once in a while, if only to reaffirm why you never feel like leaving it in the first place.

Oh: also there’s babies. It’s always spooky when your girlfriend is excited about babies.

Again, I’m sounding more harsh than I want to about this. Couple-y gatherings (as opposed to just a regular “party”—which is always more fun because nobody’s trying to be too adult about things and it’s ok to puke) are good because they show you what being in a relationship essentially means as far as your interactions with the world at large. You’re essentially saying to the rest of the world, “I’m good. I’ve got this person to hang out with. So, you know, that’s what I’m up to these days.” Right? And good for you, by the way. You’ve found the person you like hanging out with so much you don’t mind being stupid about where to eat or standing around a grill awkwardly discussing sports with some dudes you don’t know all that well. I think it’s a good thing. Congratulations.

If you're single and things get couple-y, then you should shove as much food and booze into your mouth as you possibly can without seeming like you're being a dickhead about it, and get out of there. You've got other, better things to do with your time than share banalities while holding a baby, like reading comicbooks alone and partying until you puke. Hell, even if you've got a girlfriend you can still take yourself out for a self-date and do those things if you want. They're always available. Make sure you do that stuff enough that you're actually relieved when it's time to be adult-y "just two microbrews and a conversation about the stimulus package" about social gatherings. They're designed to be painless. The avoidance of pain is the main motivating factor of a healthy(?) relationship. I don't know this for a fact, but I feel its truth whenever I find myself complimenting a stranger on their endive hors d'oeuvres.