Snatches of Dialogue is an observation by Jack Rusher, published here Monday, January 12, 2004. It is part of Objet Trouvé.
The things people say.
I was eating a bowl of Taisho Don in a Japanese restaurant on St. Mark's Place. The bar, to which I was condemned as a solo diner, was crowded. I was wedged between a reserved Japanese couple and a pair of young professional men in official Banana Republic advertisement attire. They were loud and gregarious and I am an ungentlemanly eavesdropper, thus I overheard their conversation. I will now recount their words interspersed with my translations.
“I can’t commit until I’ve been with a woman from each of the Scandinavian nations. And Italy.”
You may not realize this, but I am a complete stud. My status as a single man in New York City should not be taken to mean that I am gay, or having a miserable lonely existence, or that my wretched personality has doomed me to a love life composed entirely of for-pay handjobs.
“You don’t want to get married until you’ve done all that?”
Are you really in any position to make that work?
“Yeah. I mean when you’re rich and successful and extremely good looking, you owe it to yourself to sleep around a lot before you get married because women will, of course, keep throwing themselves at you afterwards and you’ll need to know that you’ve already been there and done that.”
Of course I am, you fool. My virility is so powerful that my penis is chewing a hole through the bottom of the bar right now. No more questions or my insecurities will drive me to greater hyperbole.
I slid my stool closer to hear the rest of the comedy routine that I felt this must be. Sadly, it became evident that he was speaking in complete earnest. His friend, also an idiot, then launched into a tirade about a woman who was staying on his couch:
“She was, like, a model and an actress and, like, totally hot. She knew someone who knew my roommate’s brother and she needed a place to stay, so she came over and crashed on our couch.”
I, too, have experience in the realm of beautiful women.
“It turned out she had to leave the last place she stayed because she had sex with one of the people who lived there and it pissed off the person who had invited her in the first place.”
“She showed me a digital camera with a naked picture of her, but, like, all arty and shit, and said that she really liked to be photographed naked. So I took the camera from her and told her to pose. She did. And then I was like, sexier, more skin, show some nip. We ended up making out on the couch, but I pulled myself up because I’d been warned about her.”
My ineptness as a lover caused her to reject me. Now I must find a way to defame her character.
“Anyway, we all went out later that night and she hooked up with some guy and didn’t come home until the next morning. What a slut!”
For a woman to desire my superb masculine form is a sign of intelligence, taste, and good breeding. However, for a woman to desire another man is a sign of foolishness, scurvy, and debauched virtue.
The other fellow, the one with intercontinental wild oats to sow, echoed these sentiments precisely. I would have been less surprised by the anachronism of a real and present Neanderthal than by the attitudes proffered by these two boys in men’s clothing.