Prescriptions for Successful Lives

Marcus and Jeanne lay next to each other in Jeanne’s dormitory bed. It had been a particularly good romp for both of them. They were just beginning to recognize the more peculiar and specific sexual desires that the other held. Their communication in the midst of the act had advanced to the comfort zone where formerly embarrassing requests and apologies had been understood and overcome through the effort of an uncompromising zeal in the other person. No longer did issues of condom restrictiveness dispel the vicissitudes of pleasure.
Unfortunately, while they may have understood how to bring the other’s pleasure to its maximum, in moments of pain, they exacerbated the other’s feelings. If one was feeling worse than the other, they would have to be brought down to that same level of despair before proceeding through a reification of hope and goodwill that would render them capable of stepping out into the world of reality beyond the bedroom. Jeanne, this particular day, was wrestling with the concept of how to appear satisfied as one-half of a couple.
She asked Marcus, “How long do you think we’ll be together?”
“Forever,” Marcus said.
“You don’t think this relationship will run its course before the end of the school year?” “That’s like six more months. I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and then.”
“Don’t you think you’ve reached the stage where life is pretty much predictable now, that you can pretty much tell how everything in your own subjective life is going to fall into place?”
“I still don’t know what I want to do with my life, so no, I don’t consider it predictable,” Marcus answered.
“Everybody I’ve ever been with has moved on after going with me for a little while,” Jeanne deadpan lamented.
“Maybe you’ve just met all the wrong guys,” Marcus reassured.
“Maybe they just get sick of me and I just end up repeating myself all the time because I’m just trying to please them?”
“Do you think that’s the pattern it falls into?”
“I don’t know what kind of pattern to call it, but I don’t know who I’m ever going to meet that I would end up staying with forever. It’s always going to be weird for me, opening up to another person.”
“Why is opening up weird?” “Because they wouldn’t accept me.”
“Nobody could ever reject you.”
“Right, I’m sure it’s impossible for me to get rejected.”
“You’re beautiful—you’re allowed to be weird. You can get away with it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“As a guy, I am not allowed to be weird. I’m not allowed to call myself ‘beautiful’ without sounding like some kind of new-age freak. My interests have to completely fall in line with that of other typical males otherwise girls get suspicious. However, guys do not get suspicious about girls, because we do not strictly analyze the behavioral tendencies of them across and in comparison to their gender and traditional images and concepts of femininity. Femininity permits weirdness; masculinity acts as an innocent bystander to weirdness.”
“Weirdness is not justified by femininity. Girls are even more aware of weirdness than guys because there’s such a pressure to be the coolest and the cutest and the happiest. We know what weirdness translates to in these categories—their logical opposites. If I am weird, I will not be cool. If I am weird, I will not be cute. Thus it follows, if I am weird, I will not be happy.”
“You just want the whole world to accept you. And that’s not going to happen. You can’t keep thinking about what everybody thinks of you. No matter what you do, no matter how uncontroversial you are about what you say, someone is always going to think you’re weird for one reason or another. If you feel like you’re acting the way you’re made to, and the way you logistically feel you should, then there’s no shame in it. When you start realizing you truly are the only one that feels this way about something, then you know you’re alone. But we’re not alone, now are we?”
“No, but I think we will both be alone again.”
“See, here’s one area where you’re differing from my conception of femininity.”
“What’s that?”
“You have a bleak outlook.”
“You think all girls think everything’s going to turn out just great?”
“I think girls don’t put the pressure on themselves to make everything great.”
The first domino fell at this opinion.
“We put enormous pressure on ourselves. It’s the guys that don’t appreciate what we do that make me pessimistic.”
“Well, what is it you do?”
“We do everything men can do, but we give birth on top of it.”
“That’s unfair,” Marcus said, “I can’t say ‘I do everything a woman can do, and I make birth possible on top of it.’”
“You could say it if you wanted to, but you don’t want to define yourself in relation to a woman.”
“I love to define myself in relation to a woman!”
“But you don’t have the same standards. You say you have the same standards, but when it comes down to putting them into practice, you veer off into what you think is best and you totally discount compromise, because all you want is pleasure for yourself.”
“I will compromise whatever you want me to compromise, Jeanne.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes, if it’s okay with you.”
“I don’t want you to be obsessed with me, but I do appreciate being listened to.”
“I will always listen to you.”
“Stop talking like that, you sound so serious.”
At this, Marcus pulled the sheet over their heads.