Emo Losers!

Back in high school, one of the toilet stalls in the men's (boy's?) lockerroom bore graffiti with the following injunction (I'm paraphrasing slightly): "You emo fucks should take your dark pussy glasses, your pussy music, and your pussy depression and just go kill yourselves."

While not exactly wishing that emo enthusiasts commit mass-suicide, there was a sentiment there that I agreed with, namely that emo was a shallow exercise in self-love masquerading as a deep and insightful existential angst. For the most part, it seemed to me, guys that dressed emo and carried themselves in the emo way were just taking advantage of feminine gullibility. Well, it turns out, some women are on getting clued in, as this article in the New York Observer suggests. [Sadly, the interviewees are in their late 20's/early 30's, which suggests that it takes women too long to see through the bullshit--ed.]

Anyway, here are a couple of money quotes:

A guy told me during our first date that he had a small penis!" echoed Lorrie, a 35-year-old editor. "Why would you do that? It’s bad enough finding out the natural way, but for the love of God! Then he pulled out a notebook on which he had written questions to think of to ask me, and offered to read me poetry and Marx. Afterward he proceeded to push me via e-mail, so I got absolutely rude to him. It was very clear that he kept thinking he could secure a second date by deconstructing my behavior," she continued. "He may have thought it was clever and charming to think that my emotional boundaries are a crude front that I want him to tear down.

Another cautionary tale of bedding an emo man occurred on last week’s episode of Six Feet Under, when Claire Fisher finally broke out of her shell and invited hottie Jimmy on a date.

"I’ve got a date with the Matthew Barney of LAC-Arts [her art school], even though I’m so not the Björk of LAC-Arts," she tells her brother.

Back at Jimmy’s house, the couple start to make out on his bed. "Tell me what you like," he says, as Claire, on top, nuzzles into his neck.

"I like you," she replies.

"No, tell me what you like me to do," he says.

"Uh, just do whatever you want and I’ll let you know how it works out for me," she huffs.

Jimmy starts to get flustered: "Why won’t you tell me?"

"Look, I don’t have like a checklist I need to go through," she huffs back.

He shifts and hovers over her. "You like to have your nipples played with?"

"Not if we have to talk about it," she says.

"How else am I supposed to know what to do here, Claire?" he pleads.

"You’re telling me you don’t?" she says.

I want to sympathize with these women, but I have a couple of emotional barriers that prevent me doing so. For one thing, women created emo, no two ways about it. Men didn't give a shit about expressing their feelings to women until women made them feel that they should (which is not to say that men never gave a shit about their feelings). For another, what women want, as far as my admittedly limited experience teaches, is some combination of muscles, brains, machismo, sensitivity, neatness and organization, carefree-ness, selfishness, selflessness, interest-in-her, lack-of-interest-in-her, kindness, meanness, self-confidence, self-doubt, humor, seriousness, strength, weakness, generosity, responsibility, commitment, lack-of-commitment, emotional availability, emotional unavailability, treating her well, treating her like shit, protection and intimacy, alone-ness and personal space, and, of course, lots of money, in proportions that fluctuate in perfect harmony with a woman's unending mood swings and illogic. [Now accepting hatemail for that last remark--ed.]