Brilliant … But Bouncy

I Was Looking For Someone Smart.

All women do not desire the same kind of person as a partner. Sure, everyone thinks certain symmetrical superstars are good looking, but even that is subjective.

I often refer to Gary from ThirtySomething as my ideal man, because he checked so many of the boxes. Someone who appreciated literature and actually tried to save the world. Of course, he was fictitious – which means that my “ideal” man simply never existed. But my ideals were fairly consistent over my lifetime.

In my youth, I liked guys with long unruly hair who were tall and thin. The hair was the important thing.

As I got older, I quickly determined that what I wanted most was a man who saw the world as I did, with the ability to laugh at its ridiculousness. I wanted someone with a sense of humor, who appreciated the irony that I saw everywhere. If a man didn’t think my jokes were funny – as they were often too dry to notice they were jokes – then it was unlikely they’d truly appreciate me.

Then I learned that the people who understood my jokes were, more likely than not, intelligent. This didn’t mean that I was intelligent, but the people who understood me – and the people who made me laugh – frequently seemed to be much smarter than me. [Side note: I married such a man and he is definitely more intelligent than I am.]

Someone who appreciated music, literature and the art of making movies, and someone who cared about saving the world … well, that would have been an added bonus.

So as a drunk, I was looking for someone smart, someone funny, and someone with long hair. Again: Gary from ThirtySomething. (And he wasn’t even a concept at the time.)

What I found in Larry was someone with long hair. And to be honest, his hair wasn’t all that long. It did stick out of the back of his helmet, so that intrigued me.

But as I was going to learn the hard way, Larry was not quite the level of brilliance that I wanted, and his sense of humor and mine were wildly divergent.

This doesn’t mean that everyone wouldn’t have wanted to date Larry. After all, Larry believed that anyone would be lucky to have him. And there is someone for everyone; I truly believe that.

I just also believe that his idea of “funny” and “okay” were unlike any of my ideas of “funny” and “okay.”

Larry did not make me laugh. He did not understand my jokes. He did not get me. And the more I got to know Larry, the less I liked him.

But I had nowhere to go, nowhere else to live. College wasn’t going to last forever, and I didn’t want to crawl back to my parents. Plus, I could drink freely with Larry.

And I was incredibly interested in his world, in the biker lifestyle, in the culture. I found biker life to be absolutely fascinating. I wanted to be free, which Larry promised, from all the angst caused by whatever was causing the angst. Larry assured me that the angst was caused by authority – the government especially – and that we would be “free” because we didn’t need to care about anything except being free.

He was also deathly afraid of being arrested, so he became friends with all the local police and tried not to do anything illegal. Well, except drugs.

And I had no idea at the time that the angst was actually caused by me.

And that the “man” I was seeking was actually myself.