This Many Boyfriends Club

Maybe it's because I'm in a lull after a midsummer book
binge (I've been wasting my free time trying to design/organize/build a new
website but have pretty much no tech skills and am easily distracted so this
has been going on since December and may take till this December to finally
finish) so Life After Life, and the premise of a life going and ending multiple
ways, depending on small decisions and happenings, still hangs in my memory.

Or maybe it's fall being real now and the early darkness,
cooler air bringing a finality and seriousness with it. I don't think of summer
as being carefree, just hot, sweaty and annoying, but that's the general
consensus.

It could be that I'm really in the middle and will
acknowledge it rather than fight it. If I'm half-done with my life, is the
second half going to be the same or different?

Some people realize finiteness earlier. Every decision
closes off another, changes a course. And then even if you're open and
adaptable and mix things up, you'll still eventually run out of time. You'll
never read all the books, write all the things, make all the money, have all
the fame (or any of it), meet all the people or experience all the love.

* * *

There is this style of being young and female that's
reflected all over the internet I read. On women's blogs, in advice columns that
everyone loves that I'm not fully on board with, where your twenties are this endless
journey of self-finding and learning, which includes an endless supply of
suitors, dating and relationships that may continue into your 30s when you get
more wisdom and then presumably by 40 you're a genius.

It's the relationships that I'm stuck on because that's not
my reality or the reality of anyone I know. Maybe you sleep with a lot of a
guys (or just a few, either way) but the relationships, serious relationships,
don't really come and there aren't weddings every summer weekend to bemoan.

I'm talking in vagaries and am too time-conscious to point out
multiple examples. The most recent example that stirred this up, is this essay
by a young woman that got twittered and linked to a lot by people who are
somebodies (I wrote this a few days ago, and yet I woke up this morning to yet another plug). It takes around three mentions for me to finally click on something
I didn't think I wanted to read.

Essays like this always cause me focus on the parts that
aren't crucial to the story like how do you go from being a supposed small town
nobody to having a literary job in NYC? (I've wanted to start a microblog
documenting these A to C scenarios–I'm guessing education, the right schools,
or a connected family is the missing B. I did start a one-entry-so-far microblog about the erasure of Gen X in online discussions. I've never been able to decide if new categories or single-subject blogs are the answer–I think that my desire for everything to be on one site is old-fashioned, but who on earth is going to follow a million  one-note blogs?) Actually, I was more fixated on her
using the bar Great Lakes in its Brooklyn incarnation as an example of things changing
because Great Lakes was originally in the East Village, not Park Slope, so the
metaphor just emphasized a solipsism and naiveté.  But of course my NYC history only starts in
the late '90s, and that's the reference point I'll always have.

So,  this was a love
story that was big and all-encompassing at the time but only lasted a few years.
Presumably, this happens over and over until  perfection, husband, children? I don't know
this scenario. No one I know does.  You
have some boyfriends over the years, sure, but they are not loves of your life,
and years may pass between them. I used to think that it was that we were wrong
or broken, but I wonder if these relationships I only see conveyed in past
tense, in print, were lesser, not as grand as what's coming across. It also
might really be generational. This crop now approaching 30 domesticates easier.

* * *

Oh, this is not what I meant to talk about at all. So
serious. No, I wanted to speculate on all the boyfriends that you'll never
have. Not because you suck, but because there just isn't time in one life,
you're not going to ever meet all of these guys, and you wouldn't click if you
did.  It's fun to think of the types that
are so not your type and wonder.

This will be a series, not a micro-blog, mostly based on
characters I encounter on TV or other archetypes. As usual, I don't necessarily
mean the actors, themselves, but the role that catches my attention. It's
hyper-specific and totally speculative.

First up, Sam Merlotte.  Why? Because he's the only man in Bon Temps
who is not completely muscle-bound. He's the only main character on True Blood
that I could even entertain going out with. Sure, he's a shape-shifter, which
is stupid, especially since his go to, at least in the older days, was a
beagle. But that's far less drama than dealing with a guy who's a vampire,
werewolf, fairy, brujo, were-panther, whatever. He also has a real job being a
business owner (who cares if he lives in a mobile home) of a roadhouse, not only
bearing his name, but that appears to be the only restaurant in town. That could be annoying because I like to go out to eat and have cocktails and you'd have to hang out at his place of work all the time unless you went another town over (I'm guessing there are other towns nearby?). There is
that annoying salt-and-pepper double-standard at work, but I doubt rural Louisana is progressive about female beauty traditions. I would have to dye my hair back brown to grab his attention (despite all the men in Bon Temps being obsessed with Sookie, including Sam to some degree, he seems to prefe brunettes) which is something I'd grapple with. I think you make consessions when you live in a small town.

He's also the subject of some awesome fan art.