I want one

There’s always the disclaimer, the Reveille to praising his beautiful, sexual dominance: he’s such an misogynistic a**hole. Yes. This may be true. He’s a hypocrite, a womanizer, a man’s man in a man’s world…but that’s part of the strange, animal attraction.

Those who haven’t seen it– you might assume I’m some raving mad hormonal mess (which might be, but is beside the point)– but this is *nature*. It is *natural* to be attracted to Don Draper. A law heavier than gravity. No, seriously: watch him seduce a woman and come home to a loving family. Moral wars and repulsion to such behavior aside– Don Draper somehow pulls it off and still manages to make me fall in deep, angsty lust. Me, and a whole nation of women.,.

When we study gender issues (which is usually addressing females as the marginalized in a patriarchal society), I feel like there’s the Token No theory that presupposes (lack of) sexual consent (or fatal mis-communication during foreplay), but no one discusses that women also have a double standard. Don’t we? Isn’t that why some of us are attracted to “assholes” but love talking about it (and following through, no less)?

Not to say: inequality between genders is so very inconvenient. There are a strange number of daily phrases or vocabulary that are awkward to use with whomever you’re attracted to, and in this case: females to males. I won’t get into it.

So what is this Don Draper effect? It’s as though I excuse his multitude of sinful indiscretions because he’s a charismatic, physically attractive, tremendously masculine man who can have as many and much as he wants, and acts like it. The smell of his vices– cigarettes and liquor– are his eau de seduction. These are all things I clearly feel but don’t agree with.

I don’t want to marry him, but if he asked me, I would probably say yes.

There’s the constant contradiction. I can’t blame this one on pheromones.

Graceee

And of course, we know how serious the past was, it’s funny how we only notice the very serious things, so that history itself seems so dull and boring. But if history books could show you the precise emotion of the Orwell brothers taking their first flight; or the thoughts of Nelson Mandela the morning he was freed from his cell; or even something as private as the first words Paris and the Helen of Troy exchanged (was it coy? was it obvious? was it lust? was it love?n imagine if it were such a cheesy, disappointing pick up line– like: you want to see my big ship?), wouldn’t history be a lot more appealing then a textbook concluded with the blessing of an exam? It’s surprisingly been increasingly difficult to relate to our history and past, I feel.

ANYWAY– I digress.

The point was really to share this saucy love letter of Flaubert’s. What a horndog:

August 15, 1846

Gustave Flaubert, famous French writer, to his wife Louise Colet.

What if you were to write a love letter to an ideologically engineered soulmate? As in, Yes. Write a love letter to the person you will fall in love with. The task requires a certain imaginary mindset– wait– ok— imagine, if there were someone out there for you who was your match in each and every way; you can’t see their faces, maybe (because that would then be creepy and be of someone you likely know) but you can sense your comfort near them– a wisp of hair you’d like to brush from their face, and a smile that invites you towards… contentment? Through these snatches of imagined idealism– please wade through the awkward, cheesy marshes of love-territory– think of a possible love letter you would write to the man or woman or ____ you hope to fall in love with.

Ahem.Oh, I know I’ll laugh at this. I’m no Flaubert…

Dear, __________:

There are so many damn people in the world. I’ve already judged half of them by the time they raise their eyes to meet mine. If it has been pure chance that we have met in the correct conditions, where I haven’t shallowly dismissed you for a slob, a douche, a slacker, or just plain disagreeable, it has been quite a miracle. If we have kept on, and I have managed to overlook tiny, minor annoyances– like the way you sleep, if you are a reasonable morning/tired person, how you react to my inadvertent outbursts of foolish word vomit– well, the miracle is turned upside down and it has blossomed into a terrible destiny.

And I say terrible because it horrifies me; that a person could have infiltrated my crowded solitude with such natural ease, and that we should discover in our union a rupture of space and time,  in which neither exist and we are stuck in sickening bliss.

And I say destiny, not in reference to what we are somehow lead to do and behave or interact, but in reference to the sheer coincidence of finding each other. The precision of circumstances of our lives that happen to click and fit, and then come to eagerly run in the same sequences.

______________________________

Well that’s all I came up with. I really don’t think I’m one for the flourish of emotions on paper.

In fact, this is a horrible love letter. It’s got skepticism stamped all over it, and tries to explain itself too much. In fact, it sounds like the beginning of a wedding vow, of a wedding for a couple who will get a divorce two years later and then discover that they accidentally conceived during breakup sex, but it’s too late for an abortion.

Gracie