Implementing the Wine-Bib

Recently enjoying a Lord of the Rings film marathon with my friend Helena, reclined in contacts-out, glasses-on mode before the television, and wielding a very full glass of wine, I found myself so unwilling to sit up in order to bring the wine to my lips that my t-shirt was soon doused in seven-dollar chardonnay. Helena suggested that I drape a paper towel over my chest in order to circumvent the necessity of sitting upright. Tucking the corners of a couple of Bounty squares into my bra straps, I settled in and went back to wondering if there were anyone I knew who might resemble Aragorn in even the most vague way as long as we only made out after I had my glasses off. Helena took a picture of me sporting my new wine-bib on her cell phone and sent it off to another friend with the caption: "this is the face of celibacy."

Of course, it's only one face of celibacy, and certainly not the ugliest. A few less attractive moments I may have been a part of recently:

1. Two and a half hours into a solitary Boston Legal fest, I find myself squinting at the formless paunch that has overcome James Spader's once sleek midriff and chins, thinking maybe I should have gone to law school so that I might be so lucky as to be innappropriately groped by a guy like this.

2. Hanging out too late at a neighborhood bar I have been known to swear off as a sweaty and depressing land of broken dreams, drinking whiskey that tastes like lighter fluid, in order to flirt with the scenester dj, when I suddenly realize that all of these girls ten years younger than me in napkin-sized dresses who are pretending to befriend me are really just trying to figure out if I'm a possible rival for aforementioned dj's attentions, or maybe just his really hip aunt.

3. A friend tells me about a burgeoning psychological study in which a male psychologist plans to select a woman from a number of applicants and see if they can make themselves fall in love with each other by performing a certain series of activities together designed to encourage bonding and intimacy, and I go home later to google "love study--application?" because there's just something about this guy that sounds sweet to me. In a Spock-y kind of way.

But on the subject of this study---of course you can make yourself fall in love with someone. That's what we always do. You know the moment when you have to overcome that panicky nausea in order to kiss someone for the first time? Well, that's just your desire for connection deliberately overcoming your instinctive urge to get the fuck out of there. Then the little series of concessions you make along the way, convincing yourself that, no, really you think it's sexy how he lounges around in your bathrobe all day after you've gone to work, really you do, that its all a part of his boyish charm, that his devil-may-care attitude toward work and financial stability are good for you because you've been taking yourself too seriously all your life and what you have really needed this whole time is someone who can't be bothered to dress himself, you know, in order to remind you about the fleeting and mercurial nature of life itself, and how absolutely healthy and adorable it is that he loves your much-too-small-for-him black polyester kimono so much that it's the only thing he puts on all day, your laptop poised upon his parted knees, as he idly browses the Best of Craig's List and Post Secret, and how great it is that he'll be waiting there for you when you get home, sweaty and irritated, from your waitressing job, to so wholly, so visually, impress upon you the delights of not giving a fuck.

That's how you make yourself fall in love. And it can be with anybody, at any moment--I think all you really have to do is decide. I think this psychologist is full of it, really, and this is just a rather transparent way for him to increase his dating pool. In fact, I may take a page out of his book--not because I want to fall in love (or, to name the process more accurately, find a breathing homo sapien upon whom I can project all of my most tragically unmet needs for approval from my father), but because I live in a town where you cannot throw a PBR cap without hitting someone who you absolutely must not get involved with because he has already been an asshole to one of your friends, or was already an asshole to you a few years ago and it doesn't look like things have changed much, or is actually a nice guy but one of your good friends did or does already like him, or has that sort of carefree yet poetic face upon which it is clearly written "if you take me home once, I will soon be living in your apartment, wearing your kimono, and using your computer all day while you're at work to pursue my artistic endeavors--which I will euphemistically refer to as 'making music' or 'writing a novel'--but which is really just a process that consists of one part typing first sentences out in various experimental fonts, and nine parts internet porn."

And he will expect you to bring him dinner.