Man-Child by Michael Jenkins
When it comes to me and dating, I always tend to think of the recliner I will sit in during my twilight years. I fantasize about that future recliner frequently when I meet someone new, and if I’m on a date in a restaurant having a conversation, I will think to myself, “Will I be able to tolerate this person in the recliner adjacent to me?” Because in the end, after the kids have moved out, after your illustrious career is over, after your sex drive has abandoned you, all you have left is your recliner and cable television to get you by. To me, that’s what it all comes down to: that damn recliner and who will be sitting next to you for your remaining days on this earth.
My friends love to mock me for my pickiness when it comes to dating. I have trouble telling them about my recliner scenario, so I just try to defend myself as the accusations come at me. “How come you’re not going on a second date with Laurie,” they would ask.
“She snaps her gum. Like she’s 14 years old; just snap, snap snap.”
“And what about that girl at the party? She gave you her number. She was cute.”
“C’mon,” I’d say through gritted teeth. “She bedazzled her shoes!”
“Who cares if she bedazzled her shoes?”
I imagined looking up from my recliner and seeing a future of bedazzled shoes, bedazzled ties that get mocked at work, bedazzled throw-pillows you can’t rest your head on, the obligatory bedazzled Christmas sweaters I would have to wear for the rest of the holiday, bedazzled picture frames of our children…
“No. No, it…it would have never worked.”
I don’t date very often because of my frequent hang-ups with people. I realize it is a flaw of mine to overanalyze certain traits in another person, but I just amplify them in my head, and wonder how badly something as simple as a girl blowing hair away from her eyes will bother me 40 years down the line. Initially, another person’s habits don’t irritate me too much, but I know they will eventually. But what am I supposed to do?
“So how is your steak? Good? Good. I think you’re wonderful. I really do. Oh, and by the way, if you scrape your teeth against the fork when you take a bite 146,000 more times over the course of our life, I am just going to lose my shit. Just so you know. Care to do this again sometime?”
I recall one date in particular with a girl named Sharon. I had met her at my friend’s party a week earlier, only I kept calling her Shelly. I had a bit too much to drink that evening, but somehow emitted an air of sophistication and charm about me that led me to her house a week later to take her to the movies.
She got into my beat up sedan, and I tried to keep our conversation simple by asking about where she was going to school.
“Um, I am going to community college for a while, then I’m going to transfer to Drexel. We talked about this last week.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, for like an hour.” She said.
“Oh, well, I started out at community college too,” I said, trying to find some common ground.
“Yes, you told me already.”
“Right…”
It was a rocky start, and the date wasn’t about to be improved at all. Besides blacking out for most of our initial encounter, I also had to repeat in my head, “Her name is not Shelly; it’s Sharon. Sharon Sharon Sharon Sharon Sharon…”
Since I didn’t remember what we had discussed for over 2 hours a week before, I tried to let her steer the conversation, but she was coming up short. It was getting quite awkward, so I asked her about her family. She told me of her 3 younger siblings, and I told her that I had an older brother, to which she said,
“Yeah, you told me already.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, and he makes four times the amount of money you do, and is always reminding you of it.”
“Right…”
I began speeding toward the movie theater, where sitting in silence would be a rule rather than an awkward lack of conversation. There I was, back at the recliner wearing tube socks, watching cable television with Sharon in the other recliner talking about anything, and I’m just rocking back and forth going, “Really? Right…”
The theater wasn’t too crowded, at least for the movie we were going to see. I tried to lighten the mood a bit by playing some of the on-screen movie trivia before the movie came on, and that seemed to pass the time by appropriately. When the previews started, there wasn’t too much to notice except when a preview for “The Bill Engvall Show” on TBS appeared on the screen, and much to my dismay, once Bill let out one of his well-below-mediocre jokes, I heard a chuckle come from my immediate right. I looked at Sharon and said,
“Really?”
“What? He’s kinda funny,” she responded.
“And Larry the Cable Guy, and that whole ‘Blue Collar Comedy’ scene…?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty funny sometimes. What, you don’t like them?”
The date was over.
Without any consideration for Sharon or her sense of humor, I just went on this huge diatribe about Blue Collar Comedy, and how I considered it the death of intelligent humor. Speaking in hushed tones, I told her about their simple jokes, their idiotic fan base who would laugh at anything those guys say, how their punch lines are seen coming miles down the road, and that muttering unintelligibly in a southern accent does not even make a joke, let alone a good one. Those guys wouldn’t know a good joke if it sat on their faces, I remember saying.
I didn’t even realize that I had been talking for so long that we were halfway through the opening credits of the movie. I had plenty more to say, but finally came to my senses and just sat back and looked straight ahead at the screen.
If you ask me what the movie was about, I couldn’t tell you. I think Ray Liotta was solving a murder, but I can’t be too sure. All that I thought about was my recliner with my tube socks, and Sharon hobbling over to our antiquated alphabetized DVD collection, and as she stopped on the “B” section she said,
“I could go for a laugh…” And I would gently stroke the barrel of the rifle next to me, and ponder how it would taste in my mouth.
I think we both knew that we didn’t hit it off, and the night ended with a polite kiss on the cheek, and I was happy that it was over even though I never apologized for insulting her sense of humor and intelligence so terribly.
That date really got me thinking about what I could do to make me more patient with what I consider to be the faults of others, and how big of a pompous ass I must look like when I criticize others. Maybe I should try--really try--to see another person’s viewpoint and learn to be more tolerant of others, perhaps even find that what makes them different from me is what I will eventually love about them. Maybe that’s the trick, I thought. To be tolerant and learn to love the one you’re with. Maybe love isn’t instantaneous for me, maybe it needs to be nurtured and brought out from my overtly critical inner self. Maybe the hostility I feel towards someone when I first meet them does not mean that I will feel the same way on the recliner years from now. That recliner next to mine can’t be empty. I have to change. I have to grow in order to not be alone the rest of my life, to fill that other recliner with happiness and joy and unconditional love. I must change.
Or I could just get a dog. But what kind of dog? I am not really a fan of short-hair dogs, for they are too rough when you try to pet them. Long hairs are nice, but it must be a real bitch to clean up all their shed hair. Chows are nice and fluffy dogs, but I heard that they are not easily trained, while a golden retriever is easily trained but I never found them very appealing. Smaller dogs don’t seem like much fun, and their barks are really high-pitched and annoying, while a dog like a Basset Hound is even worse, but their ears are funny…
Contents
The Rabbit’s Hole
My friends love to mock me for my pickiness when it comes to dating. I have trouble telling them about my recliner scenario, so I just try to defend myself as the accusations come at me. “How come you’re not going on a second date with Laurie,” they would ask.
“She snaps her gum. Like she’s 14 years old; just snap, snap snap.”
“And what about that girl at the party? She gave you her number. She was cute.”
“C’mon,” I’d say through gritted teeth. “She bedazzled her shoes!”
“Who cares if she bedazzled her shoes?”
I imagined looking up from my recliner and seeing a future of bedazzled shoes, bedazzled ties that get mocked at work, bedazzled throw-pillows you can’t rest your head on, the obligatory bedazzled Christmas sweaters I would have to wear for the rest of the holiday, bedazzled picture frames of our children…
“No. No, it…it would have never worked.”
I don’t date very often because of my frequent hang-ups with people. I realize it is a flaw of mine to overanalyze certain traits in another person, but I just amplify them in my head, and wonder how badly something as simple as a girl blowing hair away from her eyes will bother me 40 years down the line. Initially, another person’s habits don’t irritate me too much, but I know they will eventually. But what am I supposed to do?
“So how is your steak? Good? Good. I think you’re wonderful. I really do. Oh, and by the way, if you scrape your teeth against the fork when you take a bite 146,000 more times over the course of our life, I am just going to lose my shit. Just so you know. Care to do this again sometime?”
I recall one date in particular with a girl named Sharon. I had met her at my friend’s party a week earlier, only I kept calling her Shelly. I had a bit too much to drink that evening, but somehow emitted an air of sophistication and charm about me that led me to her house a week later to take her to the movies.
She got into my beat up sedan, and I tried to keep our conversation simple by asking about where she was going to school.
“Um, I am going to community college for a while, then I’m going to transfer to Drexel. We talked about this last week.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, for like an hour.” She said.
“Oh, well, I started out at community college too,” I said, trying to find some common ground.
“Yes, you told me already.”
“Right…”
It was a rocky start, and the date wasn’t about to be improved at all. Besides blacking out for most of our initial encounter, I also had to repeat in my head, “Her name is not Shelly; it’s Sharon. Sharon Sharon Sharon Sharon Sharon…”
Since I didn’t remember what we had discussed for over 2 hours a week before, I tried to let her steer the conversation, but she was coming up short. It was getting quite awkward, so I asked her about her family. She told me of her 3 younger siblings, and I told her that I had an older brother, to which she said,
“Yeah, you told me already.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, and he makes four times the amount of money you do, and is always reminding you of it.”
“Right…”
I began speeding toward the movie theater, where sitting in silence would be a rule rather than an awkward lack of conversation. There I was, back at the recliner wearing tube socks, watching cable television with Sharon in the other recliner talking about anything, and I’m just rocking back and forth going, “Really? Right…”
The theater wasn’t too crowded, at least for the movie we were going to see. I tried to lighten the mood a bit by playing some of the on-screen movie trivia before the movie came on, and that seemed to pass the time by appropriately. When the previews started, there wasn’t too much to notice except when a preview for “The Bill Engvall Show” on TBS appeared on the screen, and much to my dismay, once Bill let out one of his well-below-mediocre jokes, I heard a chuckle come from my immediate right. I looked at Sharon and said,
“Really?”
“What? He’s kinda funny,” she responded.
“And Larry the Cable Guy, and that whole ‘Blue Collar Comedy’ scene…?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty funny sometimes. What, you don’t like them?”
The date was over.
Without any consideration for Sharon or her sense of humor, I just went on this huge diatribe about Blue Collar Comedy, and how I considered it the death of intelligent humor. Speaking in hushed tones, I told her about their simple jokes, their idiotic fan base who would laugh at anything those guys say, how their punch lines are seen coming miles down the road, and that muttering unintelligibly in a southern accent does not even make a joke, let alone a good one. Those guys wouldn’t know a good joke if it sat on their faces, I remember saying.
I didn’t even realize that I had been talking for so long that we were halfway through the opening credits of the movie. I had plenty more to say, but finally came to my senses and just sat back and looked straight ahead at the screen.
If you ask me what the movie was about, I couldn’t tell you. I think Ray Liotta was solving a murder, but I can’t be too sure. All that I thought about was my recliner with my tube socks, and Sharon hobbling over to our antiquated alphabetized DVD collection, and as she stopped on the “B” section she said,
“I could go for a laugh…” And I would gently stroke the barrel of the rifle next to me, and ponder how it would taste in my mouth.
I think we both knew that we didn’t hit it off, and the night ended with a polite kiss on the cheek, and I was happy that it was over even though I never apologized for insulting her sense of humor and intelligence so terribly.
That date really got me thinking about what I could do to make me more patient with what I consider to be the faults of others, and how big of a pompous ass I must look like when I criticize others. Maybe I should try--really try--to see another person’s viewpoint and learn to be more tolerant of others, perhaps even find that what makes them different from me is what I will eventually love about them. Maybe that’s the trick, I thought. To be tolerant and learn to love the one you’re with. Maybe love isn’t instantaneous for me, maybe it needs to be nurtured and brought out from my overtly critical inner self. Maybe the hostility I feel towards someone when I first meet them does not mean that I will feel the same way on the recliner years from now. That recliner next to mine can’t be empty. I have to change. I have to grow in order to not be alone the rest of my life, to fill that other recliner with happiness and joy and unconditional love. I must change.
Or I could just get a dog. But what kind of dog? I am not really a fan of short-hair dogs, for they are too rough when you try to pet them. Long hairs are nice, but it must be a real bitch to clean up all their shed hair. Chows are nice and fluffy dogs, but I heard that they are not easily trained, while a golden retriever is easily trained but I never found them very appealing. Smaller dogs don’t seem like much fun, and their barks are really high-pitched and annoying, while a dog like a Basset Hound is even worse, but their ears are funny…
Contents
The Rabbit’s Hole