An interesting model

The past few weeks, I’ve been agonizing about my romantic life and doing a grotesque amount of belly-aching with friends (and readers). In response to my constant whining/obsessing/waffling, two friends have come forward with helpful suggestions. One morning, I noticed a book on my desk. The book was called Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't. As you may have gathered, this is a self-help book. My colleague thinks I need to read a self-help book.

But then, another friend independently suggested that I read The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman’s Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships. This is also a self-help book. Elly thinks I need to read a self-help book.

So I take the hint and head to the Personal Growth section of the bookstore. I search for “The Dance of Intimacy,” which is inexplicably lodged between The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and The Ultimate Guide to Fellacio. (Interestingly enough, the anal sex guide is a solid 200 pages, which leads me to believe that finding out what brown can do for you is a lot more involved than I thought.) While I am tempted to flip through these tomes and pick up a few pointers, there are two guys skulking around Personal Growth, undoubtedly scoping out all the other perverts and head cases.

You should know that The Dance of Intimacy is a supremely ugly book. It’s difficult to describe how objectionable the cover is – bad font, awful lavender color, cheesy 70s dancing nymphs. But then, when you open it, you realize that the paper is flimsy and the overall appearance is appallingly shabby. It’s depressing enough to read a self-help book, but the idea of reading an ugly self-help book makes me want to open a vein all over the cheap D-grade pulp paper.

As I walk to the check-out, I am suddenly mortified that the 20 year-old checkout boy is going to know that I have intimacy issues, which he will surely share with all of his little friends in the stock room during their sex break. Fuckers! So I pull a common drugstore maneuver – I throw in a box of Fiddle Faddle with my condoms. Except in this case, I pick up a copy of Mansfield Park, I book I already own, to assure the check-out boy that I am a literate person with intimacy issues. Surely, I have no time for intimacy because I am too busy deconstructing Jane Austen’s limpid prose. The little whippersnapper, I must note, makes a big show of putting The Dance of Intimacy on the top, just so that everyone in line can see.

So I read the book, underlining various passages with “YES!” and “SO, TRUE, SO TRUE” on the sidebar. But then I grow bored and turn to the New Yorker. I read Elizabeth Kolbert’s article “Stung” in the August 6th issue and have an epic revelation:

When the queen lays an egg, she is able to choose its sex. Males, known as drones, perform no useful function except to mate. They are loutish and filthy, and the workers – sterile females – tolerate their presence for a few months a year, then systematically murder them.

This would certainly simplify matters. A lot.

Sigh.