ah, thank you, that makes a lot of sense.

Everything you say about the 'given' that characterizes the dating world sounds right.

I want to say that I think there is hope for the two characters, but that that hope is contingent on... a lot of things. So, like: Margot clearly gets the rules, and gets how they work. I think you were right to say that she is a character who is probably capable of attracting more socially savvy suitors. I think Robert is probably capable of a relationship too, but is too enamored of cute movie stand girls (yes they flirt and all that, but didn't you know, deep down, Robert, that this, like, 10-year younger girl, probably wasn't going to be a long-term thing?)

Both of them are chasing their own personal somethings, and both of their chases are probably overall unhealthy or unsatisfying, but they aligned just enough for one bad i've-always-wanted-to-fuck-a-girl-with-nice-tits/he's-so-attracted-to-my-perfect-skin date.

I feel like they just both need a date where they feel comfortable to express their mutual anxiety, and that would probably mean a different partner (for both of them.) A different type of guideline-ness.

But then also , if open-endedness is too much, then - and I don't mean this flippantly - there's also a robust guideline-centric community when it comes to casual sex - the sadomasochism community. S&M gets a lot of caricatur-y bad press (and I'll admit that I have trouble seeing it as a final resting point, relationship-wise) but it seems like a potentially healthy way to unambiguously structure the otherwise-confusing power dynamics of sex and romance.

I’m not familiar with what you’ve said on the given - it may have been in a thread i missed. I feel like i might have a sense what youre talking about, but if you’re down, I’d be curious to hear you unpack it.

He's really good and fun (lots of juicy historical details that he tells entertainingly) - tho, if you've read Sam[]zdat's 'Uruk Machines' series, you probably know all the central points already. But still worth it for the little things. (I would love to do a post on The Last Psychiatrist/Sam[]zdat/Hotel Concierge, if there were enough posters here who were familiar. I'm very much enamored of their approach and style: (see [ self-referential]). But there's something hard and mean and uncompromising that doesn't sit right with me. I guess they do something with cleverness that parallels what nihilism does with concepts. They take it all the way to the edge, which is great, but then something has to fill that gap.

The oates story kinda reminds me, thematically, of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, but in a very different setting and register.

I.
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.


II.
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,


III.
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

y/n?

(One big difference would be that Childe Roland acquiesces, then, only at the end, has the earth-shattering experience. The order's reversed in the Oates.)

@Baden So I read the Oates at work, which was a bad idea, because I got a kind of minor Stendhal Syndrome thing from the end. Less pretentiously: got a little light-headed, sweaty, had to take a quick break. It was beautiful but....that's a deeply weird story, man. It felt a lot like almost remembering something I'd almost forgotten. I do agree with both @Moliere & @StreetlightX that its a different sort of thing than Cat Person, more 'magical' (in a demonic way), so I have trouble comparing the two. I mean I'd say, no question, that it's very clearly a better story, aesthetically. But then also - tho i guess this is a beaten horse now - the appeal of Cat Person, to me, is its social significance (how it makes use of contemporary conversation etc, how it is itself inserted in that conversation and what that means, what it means the new yorker published this etc etc.)

Halfway through, but enjoying it so far. Very curious to see how he wraps things up.

Btw, I've had Pricksongs and Descants kicking around on my shelves for years, but had only ever read the first story up to now. I know this a heavily anthologized story, so I'm not sure if you read it in Pricksongs, but that collection opens with two quotes, which seem to apply very much to The Babysitter.

He thrusts, she heaves — John Cleland, Fanny Hill

They therefore set me this problem of the equality of appearance and numbers. — Paul Valery, Variations on the Eclogues

Will report back when finished.

Needs a bit of an edit here and there in my view, but it's a lot better than "Cat Person"

Well, the first draft ended with him texting the cat 'ur a sult' but I've grown a lot in the past four years. Now it's just implied that he thinks the cat is a sult (which he is.) Thanks for the feedback, and interpretation. It's funny - I wrote story about 4 years ago on a lazy day off work, drinking coffee and scrolling facebook. I've always been kind of fascinated by the 'flatness' of older's people facebook presence. Of course that's probably just attributable to their lack of familiarity with social media, but I thought it would be fun to do a story in the voice of someone who really was that flat (" 'all the hits,' i thought'' etc.) But then as I kept writing, it became a little stream of conscious-y and ---- I think your interpretation is dead on. It's basically a unintentional 'schizoid' self-portrait.

Creation is one of my all times favorites. it’s fantastic - but its also about how ruling classes are able to indulge in leisurely speculation while ignoring what lets them do that - there are a lot of frankly awful things that some of the elites do in creation, but the authorly tone is one of ironic and sympathetic “sure, but.” Vidal knows what “elite” means - its access to power, and the kind of do-what-you-need vibes that come with it. Only he never quite seems, himself, to be sure he’s reached that point. Only lowly courtiers write popular novels, I mean.

bullshit, three saddest words to Gore Vidal are: "Not Quite Elite."

@StreetlightX Have you read any James C Scott? Interestingly, he's referenced Deleuze in a few more recent books, though his approach is generally sober academic history re: the history of the State (tho motivated, clearly, by a particular passion.). I wish I had the passage at hand, but he talks about state control in one Asian country (I wanna say Indonesia but not sure) and the way he discusses it (plainly, directly) - I was like, oh shit, this is exactly smooth versus striated space + apparatus of capture. My hunch is that this was before he encountered Deleuze too, but I can't be sure.

I’m with you on friendship. Almost all of my long-term relationships have begun from within a group of friends, with someone I’ve known for a while. To be honest, I’ve never dated-dated so I’m scared to death of the prospect. But now as you get older there’s fewer opportunities for this kind of thing (for me and a lot of people at least. There’s work but I’ve seen the aftermath of work-romance breakups and they suck.)

I’m also with you on the exasperation thing. I’ve been on both sides. There’s a point where you’re like jesus christ [person]. There’s also the insidious thing of instinctively realizing you can play on sympathy for infinite free passes. One way to put this: I don’t think Margot should have had another date even if she sympathizes with Robert. She could say something like: ok so this is why, but I’m not gonna be the one to stick around while you fix it. I think thats a good response. This takes away the possibility of “playing good” to avoid change, while still communicating what went wrong. And then I guess it comes down to whether Robert takes that to heart, or plays good for the next person. What the friends text precludes is a way for Robert to reflect and make sense of what he’s doing.

(Also, lest it seem like I’m venting vicariously about my ex. She’s much closer, in this regard, to the helpful non-shame response. We still live together for the next few months and, tho we both know we’re going our separate ways, and the sex is done, we still talk about this stuff - at least when we're not awkwardly getting ready for separate evenings in the same space.)

The thread about Cat Person reminded me I wrote my own (very) short story about a Cat Person a few years ago. Figured I'd share it here

Cat Story

At noon, I paused. I turned and took a picture of my cat. I let the cat out, then uploaded the picture to my laptop. My desktop wallpaper was an older picture, of a different cat. I opened up the new picture and changed the tone to sepia. It made the picture feel old-timey. I imagined my cat as a gunslinger in the wild west and laughed.


From next door came the muffled sound of a classic rock station. All the hits, I thought. Gifts from our fathers, I thought.


Cold light came through the kitchen window. There was still frost on the ground. A million frosted blades of grass. I imagined that I was the size of a bug and that I was walking through the lawn.


I coughed once, held my breath, then coughed twice more in quick succession.


The world is getting old, I thought. The temples have all crumbled. I imagined my cat as a scavenger and myself as a wizened druid, forgotten, squatting among toppled masonry. I imagined that my cat felt guilty because he was a scavenger. I imagined myself rising slowly, from behind a great stone block, and walking to him, offering him absolution.


I poured some coffee and sat at the kitchen table, staring out the window. I could hear the neighbors arguing. After a while, the neighbors’ kids appeared in the lawn and began playing a halfhearted game of catch.


I imagined that the neighbors’ kids were old eskimos and that my cat had put them on an ice floe and pushed them out to sea. The air would be cold and salty all at once. I imagined the salt clinging to their eyelashes as their bodies grew cold and their minds slowly evaporated into the icy air. Maybe, in their senility, they would imagine that they were their parents and begin arguing. I imagined them dying that way, arguing, as my cat stoically mushed his sleddogs back inland.


I began to leaf through the pile of unopened mail on the kitchen table. A bill, a bill, some coupons, a letter from my brother. A postcard. The neon nightscape of Reno on one side, my brother’s sprawling handwriting on the other. He was getting married, he said. I know it’s weird to tell you in a postcard, he said, but I thought you would like the picture. She’s thirty-five, he said, and she’s been married once before. She says everyone has two great loves in them, he said, and that the second one is the truest. She studied theology, he said, but she is not a priest.


I imagined that my brother was in AA and that my cat was his sponsor. I imagined them playing scrabble in a diner at night, drinking coffee and talking about how you have to take it one day a time.


The neighbors kids had stopped playing catch and appeared to be trying to pick the lock of the apartment next door. By now the frost had melted. The older one, the girl, appeared to be frustrated with her brother. Her eyes were big and she was gesturing violently. I watched with satisfaction as my cat appeared from around the corner of the building and walked coolly past them.

The vessels have all broken, I imagined my cat saying, and I alone persist.

I did a ctrl-f on the story for “fear” to try to find a passage. The word fear comes up four times. Twice in reference to Margot’s fears, twice in reference to Robert’s. What’s most missing, in this story (in a lot of irl dating) is a way to express fear without an additional fear of being rendered pitiful for doing so.

Anger’s usually a secondary emotion, as we all know. In a lot of ways - and here I agree with @aporiap - Robert’s misogynistic outburst is a cover for his inability to process the date, which is, unequivocally, both his and Margot’s fault. The way he handled it was undeniably shitty, but I think we’ve all been beset by ugly thoughts that come suddenly upon us - I condemn the action, but understand what let up to it. The abruptness of Margot’s friends text is equally violent, and frankly hateful. Ugly emotions are part and parcel of actual romance. Obviously there are helpful and unhelpful ways of dealing with these emotions, and robert opted for the latter. But the way cat person functions, as part of the broader conversation around #metoo etc, is to pinpoint an evil core, and then retroactively make all the ambiguity of the date symptoms of that core.

In that sense it exacerbates the problem its trying to illustrate. As I mentioned in my response to Bitter Crank above, the natural progression is this: Same scenario, but now both participants have read Cat Story.

I’ve never called a woman a whore, but I am prone to emotional outbursts (cf my post history) which I usually feel ashamed of after the fact. I think the only way to deal with this kind of pattern is to take responsibility for it, which means something like: I could have chosen not to do what I did, but I still did it anyway, and that’s on me. The next step is to figure out why (the real reasons why) you fall prey to those patterns and then address the problem from there. But the ability to take responsibility means shifting from shame to guilt.

Shame means “I’’m essentially bad at my core.” Guilt means “I’m flawed, both good and bad, and that means its my responsibility to act in a way consonant with my values.” Cat Person, imo, is shame through and through - it really wants someone or something to be all bad. But when you uses this tactic, you don’t fix the problem, you just drive it underground. If bad behavior is seen as symptoms of an unalterable core badness, then those who recognize themselves in that behavior aren’t going to try to change at all. They can’t, after all, if the shame narrative is right. But they, like almost everyone, still deeply need intimacy, so even if they internalize that theyre bad, theyll wind up eventually, dating - except concealing their flaws, rather than have worked through them. So you get a sort of antibody/virus dialectic for red flags.

I’m just just out of a three year relationship and my therapist asked me if I’m thinking of trying to date again anytime soon. I told him I want to, in a bit, but I can’t figure out how to balance appearing dateable while not simply hiding my emotional baggage, because it'll just make stuff off from the beginning. He said something like: well you know just be up front that you're sensitive. My immediate, reflexive reaction, was like whoa guy, you don’t understand what “sensitive guy” connotes these days. I feel like what I'm looking for is something between a red flag and a flawless facade. Some way to communicate: this is what I struggle with, this is how I'm working on it, what are you struggling with, how are you working on it - and will these two struggles and ways of working through them fit together? But I have no idea how you would do this, unless you trust that the other person is cool with doing that too, and it seems like people are getting less and less cool with doing that.

I think this is the heart of my fascination with the story (how the particular way it tries to discuss a problem ends up perpetuating it.) I also find it troubling that the New Yorker published this - less for aesthetic reasons, than that it uses Kitsch (as @Baden put it) in a moral way, and in a way that kind of puts it a new yorker story on the same level as any other hot-take. It seems to exemplify a broader flattening.

So its pretty clear this a personal topic for me. Does any of this make sense to others or sound more like rationalization? This stuff has been knocking around in my head the past month.

In some ways, I think Cat Person has the function of a gun pointed to produce displays of goodness, and so kind of perpetuates the cycle of fear and facade its talking about. Like, Robert seems like the type of guy who would probably encounter Cat Person, so you can imagine this same scenario only now both of them have read Cat Person (maybe they even discuss it) so Robert’s savvy enough to conceal himself even better, at least until the next such story reveals him once more. I think the internet kind of speeds up this process - whereas before people exchanged samizdat about red flags in private circles (slowly until things finally crystallized in, something like say, Fatal Attraction) now everything’s in public, so theres barely time to catch your breath.

Thinking some more about this: I think the formula of the story is Mumblecore + texting/internet + Nice Guy Cautionary Tale/Affirmed Beast.

If you take out the fear-of-being-murdered aspect (which is, I admit, a pretty big thing to take out) the awkward and uncomfortable conversation in Cat Person kinda reminds me of this kinda atmosphere, just with the gender roles swapped:

The whole thing is just Age Gap Romance twisted with subverted Beast and Beauty by finally affirming the monstrosity of the beast (Robert). Add a pinch of subverted Single Woman Seeks Good Man by making it an explicitly internalised motivating narrative for Margot, in contrast to what she actually wants, and you're done — fdrake

I agree that the ending turns in into something like this, but I think, before that, it does something more interesting - all those tropes are there, floating around, but there's a lot more of them too (there's a weird class dynamic going on, there's a mutal drawing from the manic-pixie quirk well etc.) but they're all bumping around in a kind of incoherent way. I think the story is good in that, until the end, it doesn't commit to any one of these tropes definitively. They're more like a mental environment, or half-conscious background, that's both part of the date, and also a frantic attempt to make sense of the date. You could say, I think, that the collection of tropes present is incompossible, so both Margot & Robert are just kind of tossed around from one to another ( I think you're right, that if we saw Robert's point of view, something similar would be going on)
I think this is the point that @StreetlightX was making:

Or rather, we play games that we don't even know that we're playing; Or, we have these hazy outlines, absorbed through a mishmash of observation, gossip, some mixed experiences, and we do - or think we do - what we're 'supposed to', and you commit yourself to this network of expectations you (or your partner) didn't even quite know you've bought into. And normally this is fine (life is like that) except no one wants to talk about this stuff because sex is still treated as this weird and dirty thing that you can only whisper about, even as we're meant to be this sexually liberated society - which ends up confusing things even more — Street

I think both Robert and Margot know the game, but are both utterly clueless about the meta-game: the motions are right, and there are real consequences of those motions, but the meta-game is incredibly fuzzy for both of them ('Do I want what it is I'm supposed to want? Do they?' - Margot to her credit, asks this question, even though she doesn't quite act on it; Robert remains oblivious). At the story level, one thing that's striking is the lack of any real, motivated 'decisional' action, I think. The whole relationship - with maybe the exception of the initial asking out - is built off reactions. Both are consistently unsure about what the other is thinking, and you consistently have this weird retroactive confirmation of motivation where each acts decisively only ever based on some expression of vulnerability in the other (with the vulnerability evoked by the other to begin with). — Street

Margot's central motivation seems to be the boredom that comes from having no clear motivation. LIke, fuck it, why not, he's got a tattoo at least. Not that she doesn't want to hae motivation, I think, but she just truly doesn't know how. (Though I agree that the disgust/narcissistic fantasy that springs up probably goes a little deeper than some of her other ones.)

[regarding the class subcurrent - this line, in particular, irked me.

For some reason, he’d chosen a movie with subtitles, — Story

This 'for some reason' is a lie (or at least it's something that would be said to her imagined future boyfriend.) Because, earlier:

She wondered if perhaps he’d been trying to impress her by suggesting the Holocaust movie, because he didn’t understand that a Holocaust movie was the wrong kind of “serious” movie with which to impress the type of person who worked at an artsy movie theatre, the type of person he probably assumed she was[...]

[...]He kept coming back to her initial dismissal of the movie, making jokes that glanced off it and watching her closely to see how she responded. He teased her about her highbrow taste, and said how hard it was to impress her because of all the film classes she’d taken, even though he knew she’d taken only one summer class in film. He joked about how she and the other employees at the artsy theatre probably sat around and made fun of the people who went to the mainstream theatre, where they didn’t even serve wine, and some of the movies were in imax 3-D. — story

So, she knows the reason very well. "For some reason" really means "look at this: weird, if not pathetic, right?"

But the thing is this 'for some reason', in the story, isn't addressed to the imaginary boyfriend. It appears to be addressed to the reader (though maybe, in the end, the whole point of writing this story is that your readership gets to be the imaginary boyfriend, who otherwise would 'never exist.'

But, then again, maybe it was more personal than the story lets on - like it happened to the writer or a friend of the writer. — Moliere

I read an interview with the author and she did say the inspiration was a real bad date that began with text-flirting. No hints about whether something like the story’s end happaned tho

Though to preserve ambiguity I'd say that Robert would have to not show up at her bar, too. That already shows the lie.

Good point, I forgot the detail that Robert indicates he doesn’t go the bars in this area himself. Maybe the idea is that him drinking despondently alone is an intentionally constructed tableau he hopes she’ll see. (I’ve actually done this, younger)

:up:

Right now for me:
Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashbery (really really good)
& just starting: Against the Grain: a deep history of the earliest states James C Scott

Gonna give the carol oates a read once I’m back home

(1) youre a monster (2) I agree that it fails aesthetically, tho I’m torn on the quality of the writing. I think its quite in good in places. I think the style and voice goes well with the material. Also, i read along listening to the author read, and her (literal voice) is a familiar one. Its a faintly sexualized simplicity of
speech that I associate with english or art majors from good schools, especially ones into poetry. Simple because it knows it has the background not to have to prove itself. Faintly sexualized because it has a bored and ironc stance toward the texture of normal life, so it needs to make a kind of game out of it. Like the beginning where margot is flirting, like for tips, even tho its a tipless job.

I think what i find interesting in the story is less its aesthetic value than yeah that it it reflects particularly well a bunch of problems with How Millenials Date - and then, also, that the material actually gets away from the author despite her attempt to control it (I think the consensus is the ending is really bad, and I think we’re all saying, in different ways, that this is why). So in that sense the story is both the story (here comes the meta again) and an interesting artifact brilliantly - if unintentionally - showcasing one way how the substance of the uncomfortable parts of romance are becoming scrubbed away through simple narrative. And how (since the new yorker published this) its becoming more and more socially sanctified to do this kind of rewriting without any pushback(Have more to say but I’m typing from a small and broken phone and it sucks)

Yeah, I do think she intended to portray Robert like that from the start, and I think you're right that Robert ties rejection and clumsiness (like when he's mad at himself trying to get the keys in the door.) One thing that's weird, though, is that there's a pattern where Margot gets turned on by his clumsiness.

I think I understand maybe what's going on with Margot (since I've been the Margot once or twice irl) and I suspect the author does too (which makes the ending even more frustrating, but also might explain the temptation to end it that way).

Some quotes, all in a row, to highlight part of where I think Margot's coming from, in relation to Robert's clumsiness:

It was a terrible kiss, shockingly bad; Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing. It seemed awful, yet somehow it also gave her that tender feeling toward him again, the sense that even though he was older than her, she knew something he didn’t. — story

She was starting to think that she understood him—how sensitive he was, how easily he could be wounded—and that made her feel closer to him, and also powerful, because once she knew how to hurt him she also knew how he could be soothed. — story

By her third beer, she was thinking about what it would be like to have sex with Robert. Probably it would be like that bad kiss, clumsy and excessive, but imagining how excited he would be, how hungry and eager to impress her, she felt a twinge of desire pluck at her belly, as distinct and painful as the snap of an elastic band against her skin. — story

She pushed her body against his, feeling tiny beside him, and he let out a great shuddering sigh, as if she were something too bright and painful to look at, and that was sexy, too, being made to feel like a kind of irresistible temptation. — story

and finally

As they kissed, she found herself carried away by a fantasy of such pure ego that she could hardly admit even to herself that she was having it. Look at this beautiful girl, she imagined him thinking. She’s so perfect, her body is perfect, everything about her is perfect, she’s only twenty years old, her skin is flawless, I want her so badly, I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anyone else, I want her so bad I might die.

The more she imagined his arousal, the more turned-on she got

Every time Margot has a spike of sexual interest*, its tied to having power over Robert - he wants her more than she wants him and so she's more self-possessed and poised than him. The clumsier he is, the more desirable she feels by contrast. The problem with this kind of arousal is that its almost pure fantasy, and prone to evaporate at any moment. Will definitely evaporate after the sex. And what you're left with, invariably, is a really shitty feeling, that is hard to come to grips with, especially because of course now the other person feels close to you, and you feel more distant than ever. You wanted to get off to them wanting you ---perhaps because you know, deep down, that you yourself are liable to be a Robert to someone else's Margot, frustrated and scared with the keys, and that hurts, and you don't want to think about it, and this lets you pretend you won't ever have to have that happen. So you want to get off to them wanting you. You don't want to want one another together. That wasn't the point, and now you have to face the fact that you led to other person to think it was.

I don't think this fully explains Margot. There's clearly a bunch of different things going on with her. The author's really good here. Margot has a lot going on, and she herself can't quite make coherent all the things going on, and thats just how it is with this stuff. But this particular aspect of her is the one that dominates most from the bar on to the sex. As it subsides, she feels like shit.

I think that's why the ending is bad, and also why you can see why the author might be tempted to use it - its pure fantasy (even if endings like that really do happen)The void that the fantasy covers up: I feel really bad and confused and uncomfortable about what happened and I don't know to what extent I was indulging certain drives I'm not comfortable with seeing as part of myself. Robert being a monster is a convenient way to solve all of this.

It's frustrating though, because the author seems very self-aware of what Margot is doing, and to interrogate both characters masterfully. Up until the end.


*importantly: this is very different than the 'crush' feeling she sometimes gets. The way she sees Robert and relates to him is very different at those moments

The story effectively ended at the end of the first paragraph below. The second paragraph begins the redefinition of the older (32) male character in the story who had previously been only an unsuccessful date. By the end of the piece, not many words later, he has been recast as something menacing.

Yes, I think you're right. My first thought was that it ended when she left the bar, but the bar scene itself is superfluous, and is just a set up for the texts. plus: '...and maybe lie about having cats, although probably they had just been in another room" is a killer ending, just aesthetically.

Sounds like Robert's probably the one doing the schedules over there. Good luck & thanks for reading it.

One of the common memes or tropes or zeitgeisty thing you see floating around a lot (one which I think has a lot of truth to it) is that the quintessential 'nice guy', who caters to what he believes a woman wants and appears soft and emotional and understanding - that this sort of guy is often sitting atop a volcano of misogynistic rage. The idea is that the 'nice guy' isn't really 'nice', but has this idea that if you do the right things, then you deserve sex and affection. When their routine fails, and they don't get what they think they've earned, the true self emerges. (See also: the moral valence of the term 'Friendzoning')

The way this plays out on social media is that examples of this kind of behavior in texts, on tinder, etc are posted and so a character emerges: The Evil "nice" guy. The story makes implicit use of this cultural awareness in order to communicate to its knowing readership what sort of thing Robert actually is. I I think its true what Robert does in the end is good evidence he's a pretty shitty dude, and the reader should lose any lingering sympathy they might have. But I also feel like the author is 'sealing' off the story in a certain way, by making Robert fit into this stereotypical figure. There's so much going on in the story, it seems like the end basically gives license to not think too much about what's going on.

Does that make sense?

Curious as to how you experienced the ending when you read it? I believe its intended to allow an absolute moral condemnation. i’m wondering if that intent is legible across generational lines

It's really real right? I've been on both sides of this kind of scenario, and its eerie. But having been on both sides, the story feels a little false to me. Still trying to articulate exactly why.

There's a lot of very subtle but very very observant details that I think pertain specifically to 'millennial' dating (as well as millennial ideas floating around about men and women, and dating, and then those ideas are part of the date as well, though background.) The end in particular is a (imo way too obvious) play on the 'nice guy' trope, which is a huge part of gender politics rn. (I mean it goes back, at least, to Freud and the madonna/whore, but the way its presented here smacks of a particular internet-savvy sensibility.)

I have a theory about the title. So, a big part of their courting thing is text-jokes. And one of them is that jokey imagined scenario about his cats. But

She remembered that he’d talked a lot about his cats and yet she hadn’t seen any cats in the house, and she wondered if he’d made them up. — story

If i have it right, 'cat person' is basically 'bullshit, but socially recognizable, identification' which is what's covering up what he actually is which is [ bad thing]. Honestly, I thought they were both kind of bad, in different ways. I feel like him calling her a whore, at the end, is a cheap narrative trick to drain all the ambiguity and frustration and moral failings that they both feel- so that you can sigh and go 'ok, phew, in the end all it meant was that he was bad.' So like: what if the story just ends when she leaves the bar? What if he didn't call her a whore? It changes the entire thing.

There is no such thing as religion, it is socially constructed and as there is something static in beliefs, the only belief one should hold is the somewhat Cartesian dualism; in your own existence and God, the latter being a representation of our goal toward moral perfection, that is, to be loving. Love itself to me is merely moral consciousness, you become conscious of yourself, of your responses and begin to feel empathy through this shared experience.

Love is a choice, an application, a way of thinking and not some spontaneous given. In my opinion, is authenticity, motivating us to be honest and since our will is what drives everything about us, the mechanics of our cognitive states driven by moral consciousness teaches us to rethink our decisions and mirror values and ideas, to think twice. We can then contrast ourselves with something that enables us to self reflective practice.

You've made a good point on this thread, a few times - the point that references Foucault. I understood your point to be something like: though a thing may not have some substantial material core, it can nevertheless really exist, by being realized by the people through whom it exists. There's a theological tradition that deals with the Holy Spirit in similar terms. There may be no such thing as religion, I mean, but still there is such thing as religion when its understood, if you like, in Foucauldian terms.

But I feel like this is in stark contrast to this

the only belief one should hold is the somewhat Cartesian dualism; in your own existence and God, the latter being a representation of our goal toward moral perfection, that is, to be loving. — Timeline

& plus you then say:

Love itself to me is merely moral consciousness, you become conscious of yourself, of your responses and begin to feel empathy through this shared experience.

But this is confusing, because there is nothing in what you've said, in that paragraph, to which 'shared experience' could refer back to. Everything you'd just been talking about was a single person and that person's representations. I am all on board with the idea of God qua a way of opening up a space for the infinite within the finite (ala Descartes), a way of self-bettering....but it feels like what you're talking about, at least provisionally here, is something like Grace. & Grace requires community.

But, then, I'm not sure if you really are talking about Grace, or if, instead, you're maybe just tailoring your response to mine, for rhetorical effect, or deflect.

For instance:

When you say this

Love is a choice, an application, a way of thinking and not some spontaneous given — TimeLine

& this

since our will is what drives everything about us, the mechanics of our cognitive states driven by moral consciousness teaches us to rethink our decisions and mirror values and ideas, to think twice. We can then contrast ourselves with something that enables us to self reflective practice. — TimeLine

but then also say:

If you fall in love with a girl that has all the wrong qualities and that everyone you know thinks is wrong for you and appears to be an all round wrong person, but yet you feel she is right, you trust that above all else. — TimeLine

To me it feels like you're using love to mean two very different things. Not that there's not a potential for some kind of synthesis here.


One thing the comes to mind is: if you really feel badly about the world (Society etc.) and the way it impinges upon people, and damages them, and blocks them from communicating, or being with who they should be with, then there's the danger that that gut voice, the one that would lead you infallibly in matters of romance, may also smuggle with it a kind of romanticized self-destructive impulse. This is one the quintessential romantic themes, right? ( From Tristan and Isolde to Sorrows of Young Werther to Kierkegaard up to Blue Oyster Cult & Thelma and Louise & Love In A Hopeless Place) or this song and video (below) which lyrically seems to say a lot of the things you're saying while visually, saying something else. But I think they're maybe saying the same thing, and in some ways the imagery is conveying the unspoken truth of the lyrics :

[



[Verse 1]
I don't know
Where this world is going
For all this life is showing
Breaks through
The paper chains that hold you
They hold me
You know I try and stay sober
But the feeling is over
Life in this coma
It's hard to stay sober
In this life
Alone, the struggle seems wholly worthless
So find your friend
In defiance, show we are no longer helpless

[Chorus]
You made me forget myself
Until the moment I found I was something else
My heart is good
But believe me I could
Watch these heads go blow
I am so alive I can barely feel fear
And I won't let go
Of this life I'm going to free myself
I don't want to know what your baby say
I will pull the trigger come judgement day
And I don't hear what your baby say
I'll bust this head for a funny game

[Verse 2]
I have no apology for these words
And understand that I can't escape
I have no more love for this world
If you hear me then let's break away
So people come on, people come on
The world that held you now has gone
Together the wolves will lay together
Alone, the wolves will play

[Chorus]

[Bridge] (x8)
To the powers of old, to the powers that be
You have fucked up this world but you won't fuck with me

[Outro]
"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his own ruler, they will conduct themselves in such a way that the behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."

]

There's a raw and overwhelming power to this sort of thing, sometimes, but the sheer power of it can blind you temporarily to what that power is leading you to do. So: Self, God, but also a third thing - which is community (grace, holy spirit) & my hunch is maybe when you talk about mobilization you're not really talking about community. But I'm still not totally clear on what you mean by mobilization.

I ran a village shop for a few years, back in the day, and my life was filled from 8AM to 6PM with endless pleasantries. For years afterwards, people would greet me as if I was their best friend; as if the automated patter was intimate conversation

I’ve had a similar experience, tho probably lesser in degree, working as a dispatcher.. I’m usually totally checked out when I call towing companies, thinking about other stuff, but I have a kind of auto-pilot laid-back approach, mechanically making jokes and laughing at their jokes, and keeping the vibe nice (especially if I’m trying to sell a job that isnt really worth their time.) There’s been a few moments where its become clear that a driver thinks we’re pals and it usually makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Another, more uncomfortable, version of this is I have a thing where I’ll find myself in a room with someone I’d only met a few times and they seem to have some kind of bond with me that takes me aback. I’m only starting to understand whats going on (I think.) My default position is usually a severe “I’m not ok” which means anxiety and not wanting to be “seen.” At some point I realized, instinctively, that getting people to talk about themselves, and just ask directing questions, takes the focus off of you. So i’d do that, and people would open up, and since I’m playing kind of neutral sounding-board - i think given the oppurtinity to open up they’ll project onto you whatever they need you to be, and usually, if theyre actually opening up, that means they’re projecting something very personal. Meanwhile I’m just over here only thinking about how nervous i am. I’ve started to understand this better and not do it so much, but old habits die hard.

This is too fatalistic for my taste, it concedes into a state of 'oh well' like someone who admits 'yep, I am a coward!' when they are proven to be wearing a mask. Why or why did I not take the blue pill? You can get through the fear. How? There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. — TimeLine

It does sound fatalistic, but its just meant to sketch the fear itself, which includes the fear that the trap of fear is perfectly constructed, and so inescapable. I'm an optimist, usually, but a very beleaguered one. Part of the beleaguered thing is a wariness of solutions. Solutions have a structure like this: If you do this, or change your way of thinking thusly; then the problem will go away. I think this structure is broken, but I keep returning back to it, as if in spite of myself. My guess is Un wasn't actually suggesting something like this, but I read it that way - I've become so wary of solutions my ears prick up when I sense one lurking.

Perfect love - well it sounds like a 'solution,' in the sense I'm talking about. Of course your quote is about religious love. I think that's a good thing to hold onto on a personal, spiritual level. The ideal of an absolute unconditional love is, imo, a crucial ingredient for getting you through the really hard times. But locating this sort of love in something (or someone) worldly can make things worse, I think. For the simple reason that there's basically no such thing as perfect love on earth. Especially, perfect love meant to drive away fear. Because with this sort of [worldly x exemplifies perfect love] the fear hasn't been driven out, really. Instead, its been tamed, temporarily, by the presence of something (or someone) we've imaginatively endowed with the omnipotent ability to ever-tame it. So when a shadow of a doubt about the love's perfection emerges (which it will) all the fears come rushing back.

My feeling, right now, is that staying with the fear might help more. The more you can stay with it, the more you see that it passes. It shouts and shakes and screams and rattles and [much worse things that can't be put into words] but it always passes. It's temporary. It's just such a good shaker and screamer, its hard sometimes to remember, in the moment, that its temporary. I try to think of my fear like a rhino stamping and snorting and running around, a dumb rhino that will do its ground-trembling thing for a while, and then eventually retreat.

If there is something that approximates 'perfect love', I think it can only come about when each participant in that love has learned to weather their fears, rather than seek a force to drive it away.

The threat itself is overcome through society; when a person is told that they are wrong, they immediately go on the defensive to this 'threat' and usually try to mobilise other people to take their side. It comforts them, takes away that insecurity and heals them from the terror that the collapse of their own narcissism would cause. Someone like you would distrust what I say since what I say hits home in a very uncomfortable way. So, I must be wrong.

But here you've done a thing where you've already identified any disagreement I might give as due, essentially, to my own shortcomings. It feels like you suspect I'll disagree but want to control that disagreement before hand, by giving a pre-narrative about what any disagreement must consist of. (I have irl friends - as surly and erratic as I seem on here, I'm not as isolated as I think you might think) But you are right that I have narcissistic defenses - everyone does, to some degree. I probably have them stronger (but I'mm not npd, just as much I'm not bpd. I'm another cousin, and even then that diagnosis is just one (very young) doctor's tentative diagnosis. DSM is embryonic, still, and has its gaps.

Aside:

[ bpd, for instance, is still very much a 'garbage bin' diagnosis. Its what you diagnose when the way the patient presents doesnt fit snugly with the easier diagnoses (depression, anxiety, bipolar etc.) Especially (alas) if the patient is female. In many ways its a: 'too strong emotions, wont work with us in the right way, so:" diagnosis. Doesn't mean it doesn't accurately sketch the contours. Its a good x-ray, oftentimes. But it can only identify very specific aspects of that which troubles, and very specific habits of avoiding those troubles ( tho I do think the idealization/devaluation thing really *is* a common denominator.) but, in any case: it leaves a *lot* out. It's like a mental health placeholder that forgot it was a placeholder. Which I find tragic. So many people get labeled with bpd (or other personality disorder x) and told its a life-sentence with no cure, maybe dbt if youre lucky. I don't believe it. ]

What I wanted to say was something like this: the 'threat' [kardashians, the rock - i.e. hyperidealized whatevers] is much less threatening than it seems to be. No doubt there are communities in which the failure to live up to an ideal equals ostracism. I was playing with Society (capital S) and society (lowercase) to try to point out that there is no such thing as Society. There's a billion little communities comprised of people who form real connections, even without living up to those ideals. They still value, and dont abandon, one another. But its hard to integrate yourself into a community like this if the threat is looming in your mind. (i.e. don't these people, too, ultimately value the Society values? are they lying to themselves? What if someone with Society values came into the room. Wouldn't they think I'm worth nothing?)

Once more:

The threat itself is overcome through society; when a person is told that they are wrong, they immediately go on the defensive to this 'threat' and usually try to mobilise other people to take their side. It comforts them, takes away that insecurity and heals them from the terror that the collapse of their own narcissism would cause

I'm not sure if you're valorizing or denigrating this kind of mobilization. Community helps, every time. Mobilizing people to defend against the threat is maybe something different. It depends on what you mean, and I'm not sure what you mean.

It's not how I usually use conversation, except when I want to be manipulative.

I don't think that's quite what he meant, though a certain kind of manipulation -
I think what you're talking about - can definitely be an outgrowth of that. I think it would be expressed better like this: a conversation is a way of two people trying to be ok in one another's presence. He included silence in that as well, so maybe its a loose meaning of conversation. Trying to be ok was probably the wrong way to put it because it also includes just being ok. But naturally there are unpleasant ways this kind of dynamic can play out as well.

i had a much-needed very rare good day with an old friend recently. Uncharacteristically at ease. at some point he said : almost all of conversation is just a way to try to be ok with being in the presence of the other person. Normally that would strike me as a platitude, but in the context of our conversation, and the day, it struck me as incredibly profound. I like the quaker metaphor. I think one of the central games people play - and one i play a lot - is trying to prevent people from being able to name the emotion. Bc an emotion is usually tied to a need - and its hard to know what needs are ok to express. Theres no way to know in advance, so its always a gamble.

The concern i had in response to un’s post - one i voiced a little too flippantly - was something like: self-consciousness coupled with a desire for authenticity makes all the world a game - and its a game thats like a trap, and the sorrow of it is that probably not everyones fallen prey to it, so that anything you can do to try to connect, from within the trap, to people outside it, will be expressed from within it, and pass silently by the people you want most to hear it.

[un’s approach is authentic inauthenticity. I get it but dont buy it is the thing]

That means there is something of value out there, so you cant make the “game” part of the human condition, and allay anxiety that way. To say ‘everyones in the same boat, masks among masks’ - i dont think so. Some people are just living it. Or, at least, they are capable of donning the masks only as long as the situation requires. The trap comes only when you never can take of the mask. Masks are everywhere; only certain types of people (including me) cant take em off.

You wont ever get through, is the fear. The mask is plastered forever. You fell in the trap and others havent and theres no way to think yourself out of that state of affairs. More than anything it was a post that said: im sad, and i think you get why, im pretty sure, but im skeptical that what youre selling helps.

I still feel that way.

I understand your response to start by saying something like this: this aloneness is the human condition and its very painful and thats why we have to talk in cautious symbolic speech.

The bpd ‘parable’ or ‘game’ was a good choice (more on that later.) You began by saying ‘pretend you have...[etc] which fits this snugly within the parable frame you introduced. Its plausible, at this point, that youre simply illustrating a point rather than directly communicating something. Ensues the description of what this pretend scenario would entail.

Here’s the tell:

but I can use my awareness of your condition to try to work within the game to enable you to understand these responses. It is a tool to communicate.

The game and its object have been conflated. You’re using what game to tell me of what condition? The bpd game to explain my bpd? The levels collapse here: youre saying, simply, i think you have bpd and this is what that means.

And thats ok, but own it, or at least hide the tells.

I dont have bpd but i have something close enough. (You picked up on good/bad talk yes?)

Society and all the rest - makeuped girls, testosteroned men - thats all part of the same self talk that characterizes bpd and its cousins. Kardashians and The Rock - theyre the [vague threat] which has to be defended against (against abandonment.) the bigger you make the threat, the larger abandonment looms and the more you play the same game (while decrying it elsewhere.) society is much less monolithic than Society, especially a personally inflected Society.

Eh, your problem, not mine.

What is the nature of a problem?

I guess, at least, I've got one. I understand the OP very well. I'm not sure how well university discourse does. Well.. books on 'problems' proliferate like platelets. I think it does understand, in some ways.

[long anti-radical-leftist-theory-heads rant that I stand by but have deleted so I can articulate it better at another time]

I think, though, that I did deal with the issue at hand, not editing. I'm quite sure I did. And then you directed me to your intentions and how i ought to have handled the post, based on those intentions (which were concealed because they weren't relevant.)

the most interesting problems always demand more from their solutions than what can be already found in the problem to begin with. What does this mean? — sx

Do you think that though? What if some kind of solution crept away from the op in some forum line-of-flight? What if you couldn't anticipate a response and bring it back, delicately? Isn't the point rather, that the responses are predetermined by the post, the answers already waiting, needing the appropriate 'no buts' to allow them to spring and bring things back?

what a weird weird use of deleuze, right?

Good. That's the point - a well posed problem/issue shouldn't need some sort of journalistic fluff around it like [personal anecdote-serious stuff-cute story-feel good moral]. I don't care about that stuff and more importantly I don't want to have to waste time talking about that stuff. The issue should stand on it's own, be objected to/engaged with on its own terms, and the more I can make it seem like it does, the better. If it doesn't catch because I don't appeal to some human storytelling imperative then so be it, sucks for me, but man, I've put something into words that I think is coherent and helps me think things through and that's cool for me.

That's all good. But remember I didn't bring this up, out of the blue, to suggest that you ought to personalize your approach. Everything I said was in response to your suggestion that I wasn't taking into consideration that you were working through this stuff yourself, as much in the muck as the next guy. You accused me of missing the personal part; now you're accusing me of asking that you make it personal....

so: 'journalistic fluff' -its an anonymous internet forum man! That you thought of this, reading Aristotle, in relation to Deleuze - how is that 'journalistic fluff'? It's just an easy way of setting the scene. If you think posters should consider that - as you suggested - an easy way to do that would be to tell them.

Like, I think you think I just bang this stuff out like it's second nature - except I don't (sorry to disappoint?). I mean, yeah, 'course you can be 'forgiven' for missing that, but people generally don't give AF enough to care - which I like.

I don't think you do at all, you're talking to someone else. I'm well-aware that your posts are hand-wringed over. As a fellow hand-wringer it's very clear. But I think the tone of your post is clearly intended to suggest that kind of authority, even if unintentionally. Its manicured declarations all the way down. It's well-shorn. If you don't care at all about how your posts are received, I'm not sure why you always present them in this thoroughly 'defluffed' way. I don't believe that you don't care how people perceive your tone, at all. I think this is pure rhetorical expediency. (maybe you don't consciously think about the tone. but you expect people to react to it in a certain way. In that case, you have an implicit awareness of tone.)

Also, university discourse I can deal with. I'm on an internet forum, talking smack. Hardly under any illusions of Grand Revolutionary Transference of The Real.

As they say in creative writing - show, don't say.

Subject-supposed-to-know, for a long time, yeah. Now I think it's closer to exemplar of [a very specific niche] of University Discourse (on some threads). Equally reductive, granted, but slightly different. Fair? Maybe or maybe not.

I mean, I think i'm 95% sure I do 'see' it, if you mean the point of the op. I wouldn't have jumped in like this if the thread were alive and kicking, I'm not trying to derail something else to do my own thing.

I think the aristotle example is good - I guess I'm wondering like: If it was a mini-lightbulb connecting this idea to that idea, why the tenor of the op? Why start with "What is the nature of a problem?" or just: why is it written so formally, all the way through - as though to impart something understood ('it is known') to those who haven't yet understood it? It doesn't feel like you're talking about a connection you've made, or stuff you're working through. I could be forgiven, I think, for misunderstanding the essayistic status of this post, given it style. Its authoritative and declarative, the style, not tentative and probing.

So, yeah, this is a different game than the one the OP set up (which was itself a game, just a different one) but, idk, this one seems more interesting to me. (Most threads you start are, imo, more interesting on their own terms. imo, this one isnt)

Unsurprisingly, I end up lost in the game, and perhaps it is tempting to conclude that the person is the persona, and there is nothing behind the mask, nothing playing the game but the game characters.

Because even if I play the game of not playing the game, I am still playing the game; it is just another persona. And yet the sense that I am not the mask I wear, the game I play, persists - it is an experience, but it is unanalysable.

Let's make a rule - one that is unbreakable: whereof one cannot analyse, thereof one must not analyse.
Call it 'the mystical', and allow that though it cannot be defined it can be manifested, (manifested through the relations of masks in the game, as the unsaid indications 'between the lines').

I like the rule, it's a good one, and I agree to adhere. But as soon as I set to implementing the rule, I confront this: 'whereof one cannot analyse' - & then I'm not sure. If I can't analyze, then I won't, because I can't. If I can analyze, then I can, so it doesn't break the rule.

I'm right where I began.

But this is approaching the rule in bad faith, and if i approach it this way I'm basically just acting like a too-clever teenager. I know what it means and am acting like I don't. Where we speak from, what we speak out of - that can't be itself spoken. It remains [beneath, outside of, permeating, within etc].

What gets me scared, or sad is: I don't think a lot of people are playing the game, or at least playing it to the point that they would immediately agree, like I did, that not playing the game is itself a way of playing the game.

short, tightly, tensely wrapped sentences that don't flow so much as skip: one to the other
like a rock skipping across water - the first undermines the second which undermines the third and that's the point, and the point is there's no point, or it would be if that wasn't a point too.

but i feel like the syntax or style is doing the work we once wanted the semantics to do, before we lost faith in its capacity to do so. Now the syntax (grammatical and conceptual) is
what's pronouncing the truth, or what is. And yeah, maybe now its showing, instead of pronouncing. but stilll: what did @syntax say? its a conch, its a [this is how and I'm the one who hold it]. I'm conching now. Let's conch at each other

I agree with that, in terms of day-in day-out relationship stuff. I guess I just want to flip the poles. It's not that real sex fail to live up to the idealizations. It's that the idealizations fail to live up to very good sex. Most actual sex isn't all that mindblowing, especially in the context of a long relationship, but the few good times are. [and of course its way more complicated than all this, but this is what i got for now]

@fart beat me to it

edit: actually, nvm, i think hes saying something different