Adam Dorsey.com

The Problem with Women

The problem with women is that they’re all so fucking different. You can keep trying to fit them into boxes, and cram them into stereotypes, but in the end it’s fucking hopeless—They’re always going to surprise you. You can take what you learn from one woman and try to apply it to the next, but it rarely works out that way. Instead of finding yourself with just another woman, you find yourself with a whole other woman, and she’s all different, and you’re just at square one again.

You have a couple of choices, even if you don’t really get to choose. A.) You can fall for them all at once, or B.) It can build inside you until it bursts like a dam, and then you can fall, which is maybe easier because then you’re falling into water, but maybe it’s harder because I mean there was like a town down there called “Friendship” and now the water from the dam bursting has washed it all away, and if this doesn’t work out, can that town be rebuilt, you guys? I mean, damn it, maybe the problem was building this dam here in the first place, so close to this other stuff.

And you can let her change you, you can let her make you better. But then what happens if you break up? Then do you just go back to being the lesser version of you? What happens if you don’t break up and you just wake up one day and you love her because you love her, and because you love her you let her change you into her, but now maybe you don’t like you anymore. I don’t know.

You can even begin to feel comfortable in your “type,” in the sort of girl you find yourself attracted to. You can chase the girls that look like the celebrity you were into when you were twelve, you can continue to clamber over the girls who remind you of college seminars and Radiohead listening parties, you can swoon over the girl who reminds you of all your exes, and you can shrug off the girl who’s “just not your type.” You can do all of that, but then in an instant the girl who’s just not your type can flash you a smile in a new way, or tell a joke in a funnier way, or reveal a piece of herself that matches a piece of yourself and it’s like I DON’T EVEN HAVE A TYPE ANYMORE, WHERE AM I, WHY IS THIS GRASS SO TALL, WHERE DID ALL THESE WEEDS COME FROM, ETC, MOTHERFUCKING, SOFTWARE ETC.

Why can’t they—THE WOMEN—why can’t they all be the same? I did this before, I can do this again—I mean, I could do this again if they were all the same. But instead they’re all new puzzles—or worse—they’re not even puzzles, or objects, but actual human beings, with individual experiences and personalities so that they can’t be boiled down in generalities or won over by practicing the rules to a game you read in a book by a douchebag. At the least, they’re a girl version of you—a slightly softer, slightly more fuller-chested version of you—AND FUCK, MAN, you’re just starting to even have the slightest grasp on understanding you. How are you supposed to begin to understand something that’s like you, only slightly more delicate, slightly more complicated, and infinitely better at everything, besides maybe lifting a couch?

In the end, they’re people. Women are people, just like men, only more interesting. And probably you can’t ever really get a real good grasp on them, but maybe that’s the fun part. Or maybe that’s my downfall, I don’t know, it’s still a little too early to tell.

Corrections: January 9th

Editor’s Note: In a chat on Monday, January 9th at 1:35pm, we posted an emoticon that was a happy face. That emoticon was an error. It should have been a sad face. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

An Open Letter to Jim Halpert

Hi, Jim. I don’t know if you know me, but I’ve been watching you for a while now. You seem like an okay dude, but you also seem like you could use a wake-up call. Consider this to be that.

I’ve been waiting. I’ve been waiting for you to realize that pulling pranks on Dwight and your other co-workers was fun and cute six years ago, but now you’re a fucking adult with a wife and a kid and another kid on the way, and I mean is anyone really falling for the “this is how I stay youthful” crap?

I’ve been waiting for you to realize that pulling pranks doesn’t keep you youthful, it keeps you an asshole. And you like to pretend like you’re a nerdy/geeky guy, even though you spend an hour every morning in front of the mirror trying to make your hair look like you just rolled out of bed, but you know what, Jim? The people who pulled pranks in high school weren’t the nerdy/geeky guys, they were the jocks, either pulling pranks on the nerds because they were bullies or pulling pranks on their pre-frat friends because they couldn’t handle their obviously homoerotic feelings for each other. So either you’re a jock in disguise, or you were so damaged by the jocks in high school that now you’re a thirty-something geek who is fixated on pulling pranks everyday, because that’s the only way you think someone can be cool.

I mean, what if you just stopped, Jim? I mean what if you just started doing your job and raising your kids and loving your wife and put away these idiotic pranks? Are you afraid that you’d see how empty your life is? How unfulfilling your career and your marriage is? Are you afraid you’d see that you are a just a cog in a machine, and not even a cog in a worthwhile machine, but a cog in a paper distribution machine? You’re in a dying industry, Jim, and goddamn I hope it can hold its death rattle long enough for you to raise your kids and retire unfulfilled.

Maybe you’re afraid your wife won’t love you anymore if you start being honest with yourself. Did she only fall for you because of your pranks? Maybe she did, and if you stop then she’ll stop, and then you’ll be alone again. God, Jim, your marriage is such a sham. Two people don’t have to be that cute all the time. It’s so fucking forced. If you really loved each other, every once and a while you could just chill out and fucking be with each other. Enjoy each other’s company. If you can’t let your charm guard down in front of your wife, then what’s the fucking reason for the partnership? The point you stop insisting your relationship have all the tropes of a Seinfeld episode is the point where you can honestly start loving each other. Only what if you realize then that you never really did love each other? Ah, there’s the rub.

Because you had such a healthier relationship with that Parks and Rec girl. You did. It wasn’t some cutesy co-dependent bullshit, it was a fucking relationship, Jim. And that scared the shit out of you, and you retreated to the safety of your “youth” and your pranks and your flirty office romance that represents all of the regrets in your life. At least Dwight knows what he wants, at least Dwight is honest with himself and the world. You hide behind engineered hairdos and pranks and self-aware goofy stares at cameras.

Do you think that makes you better than everyone else? That you can look at a camera and with one expression you can judge everyone else? If you’re always looking at the cameras and you’re never looking at yourself, then you’re never gonna be more than what you are now, Jim.

At least Michael Scott got out. You always looked at him as a fool, you constantly judged him for stumbling through life, but you know what you call stumbling? The rest of us call living. By making those mistakes week-in and week-out, Michael Scott might have become the butt of your jokes, but he also became a better man. He found love, and he got real meaning from his job and his friends and his life, and then he knew when to move on to the next thing. Jim, you’re not going to know when to move on. You’re still acting like you’re twelve, and not in a pranky-fun way, but in a way that is just going to get sadder and sadder. You’re going to start taking it out on your wife, because she is the closest person in your life—which is doubly sad because you never even really let her in, did you? And then you’re going to start taking it out on your kids, insisting they play the sports you never did, they pull the pranks you never did, they live the life you never lived.

But in the end Jim, when you’re too old to play pranks, and everyone else has moved on, you’re gonna give one last sarcastic look at that camera, and maybe you’ll feel like you had the last laugh. But in reality? You died alone.

—Adam Dorsey

P.S.: I liked you better when your name was Tim and you were British.