Then what's the point? (not refined, please take this with a grain of salt)

Remember earlier when I wondered what it's like for guys? I found out more than I wanted.

I'm still trying to process all of the information I soaked up today. To follow up on a previous conversation, keeping with the somber tone of our rehearsal, I asked Harry what exactly he meant by being able to "really relate" to Guy in our show.

I should begin this discussion with a preface of my relationship to Harry. It is fashioned entirely off of (a) casual run-ins, (b) mutual friends who give rave reviews, (c) our fantastic work on Monday, which included (d) Melissa praising our great chemistry, which (e) also reads in our Laura-Harry interaction, and, lastly, (f) subsequent intense conversations.

Today, Harry and I had a crap rehearsal. Something was off. We were in a new room and the acoustics were weird, or it was the first time we were supposed to know our blocking, or the setup was different, or our director was sitting somewhere else, or Harry had been working his lines all day, or I had been up since six this morning, or I was just reeling from a test, or coming off of a caffeine ride, or we were hoping Monday's magic would just manifest itself, no problem. Or any combination of the above circumstances.

Either way, after our time was up, we went downstairs for some food to run our lines again, which turned into a heart-to-heart. On Monday after rehearsal we bonded over our relationships to our characters; I vaguely but, according to Harry, sincerely, related my Bobbi-like experiences. After really listening to what I was saying, Harry casually mentioned he can relate to Guy.

Topics I must expound upon:

1. Harry paints himself, like guy, as "not an evil guy." Harry sincerely believes in this character that Neil LaBute has fashioned, and has expounded it upon himself, fashioned his own space within this grander narrative of what I will call the Everyman predicament. In shaping the play around this seemingly jerky and relatively spineless Guy, who is kind of a douchebag until you remember that somehow he cared for and hurt each of the women in the play, LaBute first makes you think the focus is on the women.
2. What it means that the focus is on the women.
3. But with Guy's explosive realization of his love for Bobbi, and awkward manifestation of these feelings, it becomes clear that this is, no matter how it appears, a masturbatory effort on LaBute's part to excuse male behavior with relation to women. "Hurting" becomes a consequence of essentially being a guy. As if they're hard-wired to screw up. That is the end of the story. As a woman who has felt personally wronged by at least one of the male species in her recent past, I am personally offended that LaBute makes us think the play is about how all these women are actual people, regardless of where they fell within his spectrum, and then reveals that Guy's apologetic sentiments are all calculated and most of them insincere. I don't deny that guys have had the same effect on me - lasting - but putting it in a play and having Guy take advantage of the hurt he's caused, then painfully repenting, then ultimately returning to it means LaBute is saying this behavior is inevitable. Excusable. Does it mean he will forever regret everything he's done? What a burden. To know you've hurt so many women. Oh, no. Not like the being hurt feels great.
4. Harry mentioned that he, like guy, isn't one to fuck around. He believes he's one of those guys who does take things seriously, who, by his very nature, fosters a sense of importance in his relationships, and often things end up being more serious than they probably should have been. To be a little less respectful, girls fall for him pretty hard. He says he and Guy share this quality, which is probably true.
5. He chronicles his relationship history for me, as it eerily parallels Guy's most important escapades.
6. What I glean from his revelations is sad to me.

No matter how strong the connection, how good of people we are, how fantastic, stellar, or pig-of-happiness-life-altering we are to these menfolk we worry ourselves with, our entire relationship will most likely be structured and reliant upon the strategic placement of our relationship in the grander scheme of the MALE'S relationship spectrum.

The play explores what Harry explains to me is a relatively typical progression: the high school sweetheart whose life you "can just see," the fling afterwards, the college girlfriend who was probably wife material but just came too early in his life, the kinky girl he left the college girlfriend for, the subsequent mess-ups, and the eventual safe girl who is just Really Great.

Currently, Kristine and I are learning to stop taking things "as they come," as we learn that it is NOT true that

Any Relationship > No Relationship

and learning how to deal with the unnecessary stress that often results from such dealings and worries.

Why is it that the limiting sex is the one that always wants to push, when it is so much harder for us to access what we want, which tends to be commitment or something similar?

In the mindset of wanting Something over Nothing, does it mean we are just victims of circumstance, as far as where we begin to appear on the spectrum of any particular guy in which we are interested?

Because I am "wife material," I have to wait around until my peers are all ready to Get Serious?


Harry and I also talked about how things seem to be serious. I gave him my conclusions, and he said they were probably correct: that we know ourselves pretty well, and at this point, are tired of trying to prove things to ourselves by entering into, really, anything that comes along, either as a challenge or ultimately as a learning experience. Instead, it has to feel easier, a little more stress-free, in order to be worth it. Which makes the relationships last longer in the first place.

How many people do you know whose parents met in college?
Hm. I wonder how much of this is right, at all.