Politics of Personals

I was looking through craigslist for personals. I don’t know if people respond to personals a lot, but there seems to be 2 or 3 every day.

There was this personal which I responded to it immediately. I didn’t copy and paste it and I regret that because it’s been taken down and I’ve belatedly realized that it was one of the best personals that I’ve read.

1. The title reads “for madmen only”.

Now, this conveys passion. The author is not somebody who’s too stupid to be a good lover. There’s this vague promise of something exciting. She demands an exciting person and she probably is an exciting person herself.

2. Allusions to “Steppenwolf” by Hesse.

She mentioned Hermine and Harry Haller. I googled it. It was about a jaded but sensitive middle aged man given a new lease of life after meeting a younger woman.

It reminded me of codfish. In one of our earlier conversations, she mentioned Hesse. Then Lolita was one of her favourite novels. That has always stuck me as being creepy. Why do women enjoy reading “Lolita”? Do some of them, deep inside relish the thought of themselves being 13 again and lusted over by an older pervert? She is clearly looking for an older man.

It’s not such a coincidence in hindsight, that another person would mention these two novels. But it’s creepy. In fact, if it was really codfish, I can imagine why it was taken down so soon after I sent her an email. But it doesn’t sound like codfish. But what do I know, it’s been more than 3 years since I last talked to her.

3. References to her looks.

She said that she was cute rather than beautiful. That is modesty. You don’t want to be bragging about your looks, even if you do look like Heidi Klum, but if you say that you are good looking, not that good looking, it conveys the perfect impression.

4. Stuff she likes to do.

“Buttermilk over chocolate. Books over movies. Loves sitting in cafes sketching and reading”

Appealing enough. But the very irritating thing is that she also wrote “preferably European”. That’s what you get on craigslist, a lot of SPG wannabes.

I was half expecting her to write back, until I realized that in these sort of personals, you probably only get 1 shot. Either she calls you immediately, and then she sets up something with you, or she doesn’t call. The alternative is that she writes back after a few weeks, in which case she’s blatantly telling you, “you were my second choice. The first didn’t work out”.

That was also when I realized that it was probably a really well written one, that would appeal to people. I like to think that she was being considerate to myself and whoever else wrote back within 1 day, to signal “position filled”.

I’m still learning the game of how to write personals. A book that I am reading right now, “The Political Brain” by Drew Westen, is not a book that comes across as being particularly relevant to dating and personals, but being a political candidate and trying to sell yourself to a potential mate is quite similar.

One of the main points made in the book is that voters think and vote with their hearts, not their brains. Campaigning to the people is a matter of winning their hearts first, and then their minds. They will trust their gut feelings about a party, then the candidate, before they rigorously and logically think through the specific policies that people are putting up. Political arguments should be framed in the form of a story. I had to tell a story that was compelling. I looked back at the email reply that I wrote to that personal and it sounded like a list of points, hardly something to inspire your passions.

What the original personal had was a story. You had this girl who’s a little crazy, a bit of a dreamer, looking for an older guy, just like that one in Steppenwolf. We could do AAA or BBB together. The guy would be experienced but jaded. The girl would still be full of life, and ready to inspire something wonderful in him. That was a story.

And, take note: the “I’m a slightly crazy artistic type” is something that appeals to certain demographics of guys as much as the magical combination of nice legs, nice tits and a sailor school uniform would appeal to others.

Or maybe I should relate the story that codfish sells (rather what I heard): I’m a slightly helpless damsel in distress, you can help me. I’m your student, I’ll listen to you, I’m willing to learn. I’m also extremely hot. I’m evolving into something even better and I’d like you to take that trip with me. For me, a very compelling story, and one that tempted me to take a chance, even though I knew it would be a disaster.

OK so far, but later on, the downside: She can be mean, she doesn’t have control over her life, not very useful, not very disciplined, spoilt, worst of all, unfaithful.

Anyway, that’s their story. What’s my story going to be like? I’m not an easy person to tell a story about. My English teacher once tried to tell a coherent narrative about me. I’m the typical maths geek. I shy away from people and I seek solace in my maths. It resonated. People look at this story and they recognise it immediately. It makes sense and it’s internally consistent. But it’s not true. As good as I was in maths at that point in time, it was not a hobby for me. I was just good at it. I never believed that it was that important, to the extent that 1 or 2 others in my office did. My hobby was music, not maths. I wasn’t aspiring to be a great mathematician, I was aspiring to be a playwright. This was true, regardless of how little I cared for her lit classes, and how sloppy my lit grades were.

What’s heartening, though, are the personals that you get on craigslist for men seeking women. They are crap. They are often variants on “I want somebody to fuck. Like, right now.” The translation: I am selfish, I am self centred. I don’t mention any emotional connection with you, but I have money to spend on you and I am advertising it.

When I looked at the reasons why I stayed single, for a while there I thought to myself, “I could have started this dating stuff a long time ago. It would have been possible 2 or 3 years ago.” I can’t remember why I held back. I wasn’t that shy anymore. But then my enthusiasm about anything varies a lot. I can be totally into something one day and a few hours, be totally bored.

There was a bit of premeditation on my part: Did I want my 30s to be something like, "gee, you've had your fun and it's going to be downhill from here, taking care of little brats and all that shit"? Or did I want it to be what my late 20s were supposed to be like, the days of wine and roses?

When I told myself that dating was a full package and it involved a lifestyle change, I guess I wasn’t giving myself excuses. It is true. When I’m treading water, when I’m living a eat / sleep / work / library lifestyle, even if I were to not find it boring I cannot expect other people to feel the same way. I need to get out of my comfort zone.

There were some things that I thought about doing to increase my chances, but somewhere in my head there is a self-censorship mechanism, which says, “forget about all the things you said, and put your head back up your backside where it belongs”. This is quite unfortunate.

If I remember correctly, I could have gone into music making. I could have had a more interesting life. I could have put my books away and not clung to them. I could have gone for meetings, gatherings. I could have gotten myself a new set of clothes, tried to be more good looking. I haven’t pulled out all the stops.

Actually this happens a lot: I would sometimes start calendar years thinking, “this year I’m finally going to (this this this, that that that) and a few days later, I start clinging on to the old routines again.

Well last few days I also tried to convince myself that women are beautiful, wondrous creatures, and to that length, I have been surfing massive amounts of soft porn. It’s really good that I found a way to download massive numbers of jpgs without having to click on every single picture: This is easy, so long as you know the URLs of every picture you’re going to download. Then you can just publish a blog entry with all the jpgs, and the browser will do all the hard work of downloading all the pictures for you. Save as a complete web page, and everything is done. (warning: after you download too much porn, it gets very very boring.)