On literature and first glances
posted 4-21-2006

 
Now that spring has shown and the saps are flowing (who, me — slam lovesick swains? Na-a-a-ahh.), it’s time to reconsider dating. Having recovered from Seasonal Affective Disorder and crawled out from under my overburdened life like a chipmunk emerging from hibernation, I’ve been scouting out flirty little flouncy dresses and pastel pumps with which to bewitch, replenishing my make-up, and trying new scents with abandon, like a good little girl answering Nature’s call.

But my brain, as usual, has taken a step back from both this and reading the newspapers, trolling for something succulent to write about, and rethought what it really means to be dating. Or, for that matter, writing while dating (it is an unseemly fact that writers, being well able to pen glorious love letters themselves, vainly hope to receive same from the various targets of their affections; and this almost never happens, disgustingly).

When of all things, the movie channels on cable intervened, drawing me to an inescapable conclusion: I am jealous — of both people who have someone appreciative to whom they can write magnificent love letters, and those who receive such. The cool, perfect, sunlit day today merely intensifies this.

Damn the French! They know how to write belles lettres when it suits them.

I turned on the weather channel to get the forecast for this afternoon, channel surfed for a few seconds, and stopped at Gerard Depardieu playing Cyrano de Bergerac. Of course I’ve seen this version before, but not lately. A good one. Roxane is just reading Christian’s first note penned by Cyrano. And he writes: if words were kisses, you could read my letter with your lips … Damn, what woman wouldn’t swoon, at least for a few seconds, upon receiving words like that? What woman wouldn’t want to receive them, at least once?? And they survive translation well. Unfortunate that the prancing pup is so unworthy a beneficiary of the poet’s work; but there is no other outlet for Cyrano, knowing that Roxane sees only beauty and mistakes it for merit. And because she will not ‘see’ her cousin any further than his remarkable nose, despite her fraternal feelings for him, her absence of either wisdom or insight damns all three of them.

Merde! But this is a costly ruse
To ghost for someone so obtuse …

My words, not Cyrano’s; but it will cost him, and we already know it ends badly. Christian is a poseur and a fool. Roxane discovers her cousin’s authorship only as he lay dying. Too late, you twit. Cyrano the Gascon spends his life writing, fighting, and dying slowly inside, even while living larger than life, and dies without the love of the woman he’s treasured, having wasted his time ‘subbing for a lesser man to make her happy in what way he can’: i.e., giving her the man she thinks she wants. Someone else.

I am reminded by Roxane and Christian of something else I reread lately, something each of us knows in his heart but conveniently forgets once the hormones start flowing: chemistry between people is not an infallible guide to human happiness or compatibility — it is rather nature’s plotting writ large, a ruse to get two biologically compatible people (in terms of genetics, nothing more) to make good babies for the propogation of the species. It has nothing to do with romantic, emotional, or intellectual compatibility, let alone happiness, because Nature the blind watchmaker DOESN’T CARE about the welfare or happiness of individuals: Nature only cares about the survival of the species. As long as that happens and biologically compatible individuals keep making babies, Nature doesn’t give a damn whether all of us remain terminally UNhappy. Just as long as we keep on screwing.

Only human beings can thwart this and act for their own happiness. Only human beings, capable of self-awareness, forethought, sufficient reasoning, are capable of co-opting Nature’s purposes for their own. Which means, in the end, that we have the ability to overcome our outdated instinctual programming and readjust our behavior to keep on surviving in the face of changed conditions like, say, the presence of 6-plus billion people on the planet straining at available resources, or a world that could easily end in nuclear holocaust, and say ‘enough is enough — no more indiscriminate baby-making; we’ll concentrate on happier human relationships instead, because that has more survival value right now.’

Yet who besides me thinks about this when it comes to dating?? Everybody’s still hung up on the 'instant chemistry' thing, blindly letting Nature lead them around by their dicks and twats without realizing that you can have incredible up-front chemistry with a person who is horribly psychologically and emotionally BAD for you. Most of us have had that kind of run-in at least once in our lives. Thank heavens mine’s long over, although it was hard to persuade myself of it at the time. Hormones are powerfully resistant to reason, it seems, especially when the man’s handsome.

Instant chemistry is overrated. I like chemistry as much as the next person, and sex probably more than most; but I’ll wait to get to know a person to see if there’s any intellectual/emotional chemistry, thank you, before my clothes come off — and that takes more than three dates, folks. Figure an average of 3 to 4 hours per date, and you’ve known that person, what, maybe 12 hours? Half a day, in actual fact?? And this is supposed to be a reasonable time period before stripping and grappling in the dark? I don't think so.

Is it any wonder so many people are disappointed by and have such low expectations of the first time they get laid by a new romantic interest? Or that such occasions can become so emotionally ‘loaded’ in the absence of knowing enough actual facts about each other? A good romp in the hay after such cursory acquaintance (pure chance, that) suddenly takes on enormously disproportionate, illusory importance as a result, seeming far more significant than it really is. One begins to understand why really good supposed one-night stands are so hard to let go of when both of you knew in advance the interlude was supposed to be a short, quick one without any ties or expectations (that is, of course, why they don't really work and should be avoided; that, and the public health risks).

It is part of human nature, however, to have hopes and expectations — which, it turns out, in the absence of facts one might know about the other person therefore take on so much greater symbolic importance than they should. And the hormones are right there, egging you on to do exactly that and turn off your reason. Nature is interested in survival in general, not yours in particular, psychological or otherwise; your survival in particular comes from understanding Nature’s agenda and either using it, circumventing it, or bending it to your own will. And this you can only do with Nature’s other gift to you: reason. You use reason and your own personal survival instinct to overcome the biological imperative and make it your tool, not your puppetmaster, and you just might have a chance of acting for your own happiness.

Had Roxane known this, Cyrano would have had a longer, happier life with his cousin, Christian would have died quickly in battle and never passed on his blindly, adolescently stupid genes, and Roxane would have had less beautiful, possibly big-nosed babies — but ones that could write like the devil and charm to make their way in the world, blessed with an abundance of wit. Who might have even grown up to counsel (or perhaps outthink and outcompete) Cardinal Richielieu and his ilk. And French literature would be short one more masterful but depressing story.

Sunday the 23rd is Shakespeare’s birthday. I really prefer his work to that of the French; yet even in his plays, his heroines had to settle for generally lesser men, as bardologist Harold Bloom so aptly observed. But it’s in Shakespeare’s poetry that we find length and breadth of ardor, its sorrows and joys, succinctly framed — so I will find time on his birthday, as I usually do, to sit under a tree in the warm spring sunlight and reread the sonnets. And remind myself of how lucky we are when we find someone worthy of receiving such sentiments, and renew the hope that this may yet happen to me as well.

My pen itches for the opportunity.