I’m a romantic fool. Think about that short statement. Now flush out any mental image you have of me, because that’s exactly what I’m not. I’m a more literal romantic fool, in which I am completely ignorant and foolish in romantic situations, despite my very best intentions. While normal romantic fools surrender to their emotions and passions, my logic, emotions and physical desires all stumble blindly towards each other in my mind like some demented 3-way mating ritual of frenzied mountain goats with ear infections. As you can imagine, this is extremely inconvenient for all parties involved. While my feelings are throwing proverbial house-bricks at each other, minor social pleasantries and civilities (like talking, for example) are brought to a halt until the dispute has been resolved. Too much of this and the partner in question feels that they’re wasting their time and leaves to find someone more suitably ‘cool’ and ‘manly’, by which time I’ve already freaked out completely and started thinking about Tomato juice.
But being the massive coward I am, rather than acknowledge that I’m entirely responsible for my failure in romance, it’s far more appropriate to blame all of you and the rest of society for your illogical romance customs. And yes, it’s entirely YOUR fault, and not the hundreds of thousands of years in human evolution and social interaction.
If any of you have read my old blog, you’d probably know how I feel about cinemas. I’m a bit of a social anomaly as I’ve always been so incorrectly under the impression that cinemas were designed for watching movies. I never kiss while at a cinema, and the one time I tried, somebody got bruised. Going to the cinema as a date makes absolutely no sense anyway. If you’re dating someone, presumably you want to get to know them. If you’re in a cinema, presumably you want to get to know a movie. It’s very difficult to fully enjoy a film with another patron stuck to your face. It’s also quite difficult to get to know someone when you’re not allowed to talk in a very low visibility environment after chipping a tooth on a poorly thrown Jaffa. Clubbing makes courting difficult for similar reasons. Why bother trying to talk nice, look nice, and play getting-to-know-you games if you can’t see them for the smoke or hear them over the terrible music (though it’s been a while since I’ve been to a club. Is Hanson still in?)? Sometimes you can’t even move at a club. Last time I was there, I was just about ready to leave when my shoe was fused to the floor by what appeared to be a combination of blu-tack, jelly slice and jungle chews. I really hope those were the actual components. This makes absolutely no sense! In a world where things aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll never get anywhere. Do people really think that the LHC was designed in the hopes that young couples would make out against the control panels? Did Ferdinand Verbiest really design the first Shaggin’ Wagon? Perhaps.
So it would appear that for a person to be successful in society today, meaningless events like picnics and beach walks have to be swapped out by loud, smelly, sweaty, uncomfortable places that have nothing to do with the interaction in question. Why has the world insisted that romance needs to go hand-in-hand with chaotic situations for true validation? It’s a paradox of sorts. You’re only supposed to kiss in kitchens, churches, cinemas, banks, supermarkets and the like, and only because you’re not supposed to kiss there. Kissing anywhere else is a faux-pas. You’re not meant to kiss at those places, and you’re supposed to kiss at the places you’re not supposed to kiss at, even though you’re expected to kiss, and those places you can kiss at, you can’t. And even I, with my unshakable knowledge of these rules, get consistently confused. So why not make a big change for the better? Think of how wonderful and simple the world would be if we all just reserved these functional places for the events they were designed to hold. We can all watch movies at cinemas, go shopping in shops and listen to music in clubs without anybody expecting you to do something you shouldn’t be doing.
Which you should.
Precisely because you shouldn’t.
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