When a One-Night Stand Gets Real
The pillow talk turns into existential jabs meant to dissect your personality.
*during sex*
Him: “I want you to hurt me.”
Her: “Techno is the same beat over and over again.”
Him: “Wai-”
Her: “All you techno snobs and thots think you’re so superior because you wear all black and do cocaine in public while listening to the same thing over and over again for eight hours.”
Him: “Please stop.”
Her: “Techno is just music for people on drugs.”
Him: “Yes.”
Her: “I just can’t get into techno. It sounds like a Shop-Vac sodomizing a Transformer.”
*recalls her passive mentioning of her Taylor Swift obsession at happy hour, and decides to quit keeping his cis male opinions to himself*
Him: “Oh yeah... well, Taylor Swift sucks. Her music is dull and her songs are overwritten despite the lack of any sort of poetry to them. In fact, if you’re in the top 5% of Taylor Swift listeners, it’s because you’re an aggressive normie wannabe girlboss who’s musically unadventurous and lives in a state of perpetual adolescence and prone to parasocial relationships. You’re a certain kind of comfortable, incurious, upper-middle-class person who is secure in the notion that your beliefs about the world are correct because the largest number of people agree with you. I bet you’re also a Disney adult, read YA novels despite being well north of 25, and still laugh at SNL ‘covfefe’ jokes.”
Her: “Yeah, so what if I do? What’s wrong with liking things that are popular?”
Him: “Bleak… Imagine doing anything but languidly paging through a Joan Didion book while lying on the floor of your 400-square-foot studio apartment.”
Her: “Wow… How 2009 Williamsburg of you. I will not be shamed for indulging in some YA once in a while.”
Him: “I think there’s a much more psychic spiritual deconstruction going on here. Wages are stagnating, free time is decreasing, and stressors are increasing. You are faced with this plus the existential dread of living as a PMC, which is actually what I’d diagnose as ‘imposter syndrome.’ You know your life and this capitalistic system don’t make sense but you have tacitly adopted the ideology to cope, and this leaves you feeling fraudulent and hollow. You are mentally exhausted from the drudgery of your fake email job, and you can only enjoy shit meant for babies. Meanwhile, YA endings are uniformly satisfying, whether that satisfaction comes through your weeping or cheering. When the emotional and moral ambiguity of the real world is too much to bear, you opt for things to be wrapped up neatly, your protagonists married or dead or happily grasping hands, looking to the future. But this shit is unbearable. Literally every YA novel is like: Twinkwilliam felt the cold of the metal in his closed fist. He unsheathed the sword with one fluid motion, the now-empty scabbard limp at his waist. Could this truly be the sword of Prontonocles?”
Her: “Alright, you mansplaining pretentious douche. You feel like you’re crushing your 2023 reading goals so far because you digested 200 context-free Baudrillard screenshots on Twitter, name-checked five American poets during a dating app convo, read some meta-meta-Substack piece criticizing a New Yorker piece criticizing Jia Tolentino, and mainlined YouTube book talks at 2x speed at 3:30 AM while hitting your Juul.”
Him: “Excuse you. I read Houellebecq.”
Her: “I’m sure you do. You view yourself as so edgy and above it, but if you ever got married, you’d leave your wife for a 6-out-of-10 NYU undergrad in a heartbeat.”
Him: “That’s a bit of an oversimplification…”
Her: “You’re just a bitter mid-millennial who’s watching your decade-long attempt to be cool slowly drift away in the rearview mirror. You’ve now found yourself getting too old for a lifestyle you had once figured out, and your snark and ironic detachment is a byproduct of your inability to navigate the interstices of young adult life and proper adulting. Your friends are taking out mortgages with new partners who either wear New Balances with 11-inch inseam shorts, or they’re decked out in high-end athleisure. Your friends with children are dropping off the radar unless you’re free during nap time. The camaraderie of your college friendships is fully dead, as everyone’s life paths shot you all in different directions—some of whom are wildly successful, and others, now, fat and lower-middle-class.”
Him: “What a banal and self-evident observation about the shared condition of millennials and our fading cultural relevance as represented by our individuated circumstances. I’ll one up your sorry analysis by stating that, if anything, Pitchfork’s evolution is the story of the evolution of what 20- and 30-something urbanites in this country found cool over the last 20 years. Interesting and challenging, if far too self-satisfied. Smug and contrarian in the early stages, then gradually ditching any and all of these impulses in exchange for a patronizing and somewhat paternalistic polemic of ‘protecting the vulnerable from bad people’ that everyone else including Vice has adopted for some time now. This does come with more honesty and sincerity and a less contrived outlook on the world, but that’s about where any flattering statements end. Anyways, you wouldn’t understand this because you’re basic as fuck…”
Her: “I’m not basic. Why do I come across as basic??”
Him: “Because you’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror.”
*she bursts into tears, locks herself in the bathroom, and develops a permanent identity crisis*
Him: “She ain’t worth it if this is what she thinks…”
*snorts a line*
People say marriage is bad, but marriage is fantastic. Marriage saves you from this bullshit.
Kids on the other hand...
New parents disappearing is very real. It's called the "Baby cave," and they generally won't reemerge for 2-3 years. I laughed when someone called it that. Then we had a kid, and well...