I'd Settle For 60 Out Of 100

Because of all the things my friends and I have gone through in recent years, I have decided the best way to either end up with the perfect man or guarantee my singleness forever is to come up with the most complicated and impossible list of qualities for one person to possess that it would be impossible for it to ever happen, and to not wavier in my expectations of said qualities.

I take a strange sense of accomplishment and pride in my list, in the same odd way I do when as I finish a container of something and remember to write it down on my grocery list...I don’t know...it makes me feel like a grown-up...

In writing my list I was inspired by two things: one, an article I read in O Magazine—that’s O for Oprah—and an article I read in Elle about the history of marriage from medieval times to the Protestant Reformation. The O article was about a woman who was prompted by a psychic to write a list ‘telling the universe’ one hundred things she wanted in a partner. So she did. And several years later, she got 97 out of the 100. Awww, neat. The Elle article, continuing on my previous blog, (see "The Untitled Love Letter") theorized that marriage was a business transaction throughout most of history, until Americans brought love into in. Yup, Americans ruined marriage. We’re such jerks. Wait, did we ruin marriage or love? I need to read the book that the article was based on, even though the author sounded like a nut job, obviously....

So, did I come up with 100 things? Yes, and no. I realized that in the effort to write 100 things it is almost impossible to remember what you’ve written in 1-48 when you’re on 98. So there are plenty of repeats. But the repeats seem to be the really important ones. The ones that aren’t that important are the ones that I keep rereading and scribbling over and rephrasing, like the technicality of the language is going to somehow screw me over and get me stuck with someone terrible.

And, surprisingly, I also realized that there were some things that even though I swore I’d never go back to, when I really thought about it, a girl just doesn’t change her spots. Of course I’m going to still date musicians. I’m never going to date someone shorter than 6’2". I’m never going out with someone who isn’t funny, or who isn't tattooed, or doesn't know who Lou Reed is, or minds that I can’t cook, or isn't beautiful, or is a big homophobic jerk. That’s always been my m.o., and always will be. So sue me.