A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Jonestar and I sat on her roofdeck discussing the 2005 Pride and Prejudice and decided that it fully encapsulates the full spectrum of men in the world that a woman encounters in her life, in which there exist exactly four categories.

• You have your Mr. Bingleys, who are attractive and perfectly nice but are just not for you, but you’d be perfectly ecstatic to have your friend end up with one.
• You have your Mr. Collinses, those men who approach you, but whose sheer undesirability makes you seriously question your own desirability to the opposite sex.
• There are the Mr. Wickhams, morally flexible little heartbreakers whose utter wrongness you never realize until it’s too late.
• And then you have, of course, your Mr. Darcys.  You have to go through a lot of Mr. Wickhams and Mr. Collinses before you recognize the value of a Darcy.

Which category do you fall in?

Memory #2: Washington Square

Walking home from Chinatown on a Tuesday night in June with my new old roommate and our friend.  We’re drunk on life but mostly drunk on wine and Chinese food.  At first it is drizzling; by the time we reach Washington Square it is pouring, and our shouts compete valiantly with the sound of the pounding rain.  My dress, before so smooth and swingy, is now plastered to my form, a sopping clump swirled with red and purple.  The park is dark, it is empty, it is glittering with rain, and it is all ours.

Someone–maybe me–gets the idea to run through the fountain.  My flip flops tug at my feet each time I raise a foot from the water.  We all jump in the shallow black pool, splashing up and down and running around on its stone rim.  We howl and shriek with laughter, our faces warm and flushed from within with wine but our skin cold and wet.  It seems like the right kind of thing for giddy twentysomethings to do, who do not want to grow up and say goodbye and move away.  And all of a sudden, through the veil of alcohol, I get an idea of the kinds of things I should have been doing all these past two years in Philly, the sorts of things I should have been doing my whole life, and the things I should have been doing with you.