About Flirting and Continuation
Post 585:
I wrote a novel a few years back called The Laws of Space that takes place in a controlled future where people are taught from birth to hate each other for reasons that make sense if you actually read it. It’s one of those semi-satirical sniveling social commentaries that plays a strange idea straight. It’s about the whole spectrum of human emotion and pretty much wrote itself, except when I ran into a problem in the story when I had to figure out procreation. I decided to make it a peremptory thing. A duty and nothing else. It was called Continuation by the members of that fictional society.
Sounds weird, but it’s science fiction and things always sound weird until they’re not. Stories.
By now you probably know that I’m a super-romantic guy that is all about sonnets and flowers. Look me up on all my dating website profiles that don’t exist and you’ll see I lie about all kinds of sensitive things that I don’t do.
Kidding. Mostly. I say mostly because sometimes flirting and romance and love is a frigging drag. Even if you’re cloud-nine-ing with your significant, chances are you had to go through courtships and flirting and hookups that sucked. Guys are mostly inept at game, and guys that really work on their game are mostly creepy. It means they’re not working on man things. They’re working on their game. Eh. This is not a paradox, but it’s a paradox. Which I think is another paradox.
Still. Meeting people. Necessities. Part of life. We don’t all just bump into the person of our dreams as we turn the street corner. You know. The one where we both have coffee and smash into each other and we spill it on each other but nobody gets burned, because that would preclude us from falling in a deep love-trance that never wears off, even after death.
I don’t know, though. That might happen. Where else would Nicholas Sparks get his incredible plots?
Love you Nick.
But let me bring up another writer and a little section about romance and love. Kurt Vonnegut time. Go ahead and make an annoyed face, but come on. You can literally close your eyes and put your finger down on any random page. You’ll get gold or at least some commentary that is noteworthy or hilarious or profound. At the very least, some well-crafted profanity.
There’s an excerpt from a novel called Jailbird where he’s talking about love with someone he’s trying to hook it up with. In two or three pages he stacks ninety levels of sarcasm and snark on top of each other. The money line ends with a woman questioning, “What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?”
If you think about that little question the irony will make your head spin. The phrasing and content compliment each other to create a bitter, tedious pill.
Obviously, this is not a good attitude. It’s not productive. Nihilistic. Glass half empty. Pessimistic. Probably not the best way to live, but it’s hilarious if it’s how you feel for a couple minutes.
Yes. I believe it’s okay to have a horrible attitude in small doses. Hilarity could ensue.
Another thing from earlier on the same page from Jailbird. This same speaker goes full Rust Cohle from True Detective Season One and Agent Smith from the Matrix. People “only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren’t nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they meant to do. We were a disease, she said, which had evolved on one tiny cinder in the universe, but could spread and spread.”
No, this doesn’t sound like hilarity at first, but keep in mind he’s smitten with this woman and her “lively take” on things. Satire was a thing in a former millennium.
My point is that the whole coffee thing on the corner might end up with you getting hit in the face with a purse, and a poor attitude toward a undeserved nosebleed is completely natural. Just don’t dwell.
While I’ve done no research, Kurt Vonnegut probably was a flirty dude and easy to acquiesce to romance. That’s after he wrote all the horrifically sardonic things banging around his giant brain.
So in closing, Laws of Space by me, Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut, and maybe scream into a pillow and then get back out there. Things must Continue. Well… you know what I mean. Cheers and see you after.
