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EVALUATING WOMEN

Posted by Erik Frey Wed, 24 Sep 2003 05:08:00 GMT

i had a friend in highschool named lindsay. we called him moose, because he was from canada, and he called his mom “mummy”.

moose invited me to the bahamas once for spring break. we spent the days out on rose key, island-hopping in kayaks, playing volleyball, and occasionally being beach-hands for moose’s dad’s tour company. at night we slept in a boat, and we’d stay up to watch late-night cinemax (yeah) and talk about gina longo, the prettiest girl in 10th grade. just so it’s clear, i totally knew her before he did.

moose’s mom was a slender columbian woman who had a giant beachfront house in north miami and never worked a day in her life, which moose’s friends always found curious. none of us ever asked, by which i mean, no one except me ever asked, because i had a big(ger) mouth back then, and moose always told me to mind my own business, so i did, and now i digress.

what i’m thinking about, right now, is a conversation i had with moose in that boat, late one night, after stuffing ourselves with fried snapper. in the years i’d known him at school, he’d never once expressed interest in a girl, up until gina came along. but gina was the prettiest girl in 10th grade, and while no one was questioning moose’s sexuality, everyone felt he may as well be spearfishing in idaho. at our age, being in high school, with our stature (mainly, the nerdy stature), we were not in the position to pick and choose, and our teenage fumblings gave rise to stories worthy of a porky’s sequel. but moose walked on water. i mean, he didn’t walk on water, because it was too wet, or his feet would get cold, or he had to walk his dog or mow his lawn, hell if i know. so i asked him that night, while we stared up at wood panelling in the dark, and the world sloshed back and forth:

“so what’s up with you and girls, man?”

“huh,” (moose always had this really canadian way of saying ‘huh’. if you know any canadians, you know what i mean) “what do you mean?”

“name one hot girl that goes to pace.”

“gina longo.”

“ok ok… name one OTHER hot girl that goes to pace.”

“um…”

i gave him some time to think – i really wanted some gristle.

“ms. vasquez, the spirituality teacher is kinda pretty…”

“aw MAN, she is SO HOT,” and we talked about ms. vasquez for a while, but that’s beyond the scope of this journal entry. suffice to say, she was really hot. after a while, i came back to my interrogation:

“so of all the girls at pace, you’d only go for two? or one? what are you looking for in a girl?”

“well, i want her to be like, gorgeous. like, supermodel gorgeous.”, and he started listing off his qualities, with this strangely animated voice, as he concocted this woman in his head, like weird science.

“supermodel gorgeous, and really smart, like smarter than me,” (moose was pretty smart), “and she has to like quake, but not be a nerd, and know how to cook, and…” and he really went on for a while. i could tell he’d thought about this a lot, because he listed the traits off like clockwork. and i could see this woman in my head. i think most guys can, because it’s the woman that doesn’t exist. or if she does, it’s on some tropical island somewhere, and she has a twin who looks just like danny devito.

“so what if you never meet this girl, or, what if you meet a girl who’s got like, 8 out of 10 of those qualities?”

“oh that’s easy. i’ll stay single.”

“9 out of 10?”

“um… single…”

“never get married?”

“yup.”

“damn dude, are you crazy?”, because at that age, and with my cultural background, the idea of not getting married was crazy. it was scary to me, and i remember the uncomfortable taste of this idea rolling around in my head, of, actually, remaining single. i couldn’t relate at all. i had this understanding of the nature of the universe, that dictated that every soul finds another soul, just like every stray dog will be getting out of the pound any minute now… any day now…

any week now…

moose never dated anyone in his four years of high school, even though he was a friendly, smart, fairly good looking guy. he went off to a college in vancouver, and none of us ever heard from him again, even though we all tried to get in touch with him. i guess we never measured up to his standards, either.

leah (my ex) has this theory about social classes. i suppose it’s like the ladder theory but not as involved. she thinks that whenever a guy meets a girl, or vice-versa, he automatically assigns her to a social class that’s above, below, or on the same level as his. it’s like india except we don’t admit to or talk about it. we may not do it consciously, but it’s still there, and it’s a judgement we make astonishingly quickly. the ladder can tell us if the other person is dating material, and we follow the protocols from there, accordingly.

i used to disagree with her vehemently on that subject, back in my ‘we are all precious snowflakes’ days. nowadays i’m not so sure. but it doesn’t matter. i’ve dismantled my ladder for a while, and i’ll tell you, it’s an easy cop-out. i wonder if that’s why moose behaved that way, too, more out of fear of rejection than some kind of true fairy tale expectation. it was probably a little of both. wherever he is, i hope he found his renee zellweger nuclear physicist. show me the money.