Modern Love Midlife Crisis Makes Us Nostalgic For The Harvard Rapist
Every week, it seems, the sage minds who operate the Sunday Styles apparatus do their darndest to find a new way to make our tummies churn. Here is how we imagine it going in their minds: "Well, in recent weeks we have troubled readers with the tale of a lady who semi-raped her lover, and with a bizarre defense of a campus rapist by an ex-girlfriend who went into icky detail about his lack of sexual prowess. Where do we go now? What's ickier than rape?"
Luckily, it was at that exact moment that Andy Christie sent in his Mod Luv submission.
Christie begins by detailing a 50th birthday celebration that he felt was inadequate, thrown by his girlfriend "at one of those places where all the vegetables are "baby," if not prenatal, and the waiters aren't much older." At this point, we know two things: a) Christie can't write for shit and b) he is insecure about his oldosity. Both themes are continued in the story that follows, which is about Christie going on basically a date with a much-younger lady named Jonelle. In spite of Christie's relationship with his "wonderful girlfriend I love and with whom I have lived for 13 years," he and Jonelle engage in some lite canoodling — "Soon we're patting each other's hands, and when her phone rings five or six more times, she ignores it . . . she says, "Oh, don't be so cynical," and pokes me in the ribs, and I'm glad she picked the one unflabby stretch of my torso . . . Pretty soon we're punctuating our conversation with more gratuitous rib pokes and pats . . ." But all the poking and patting comes to nothing, ultimately — or rather, it comes to an unexpected conclusion. Christie thinks Jonelle is taking him up to her place, but she's actually taking him to his surprise 50th birthday party — thrown by his long-suffering girlfriend, who, along with the rest of the guests, has been waiting for two hours for Jonelle and Christie to get through patting each other's hands. Christie is seized with shame and contrition, right? Well, no.
My heart is bursting and breaking at the same time. On the one hand, here is everyone I love — everyone who loves me. They did all this: the fake posters, my favorite music, balloons even. And the walls are covered with giant blowups of old family snapshots. Years' worth. Generations' worth. It's a heart gallery. On the other hand, Jonelle was playing with me at the bar, and I can't tell for sure why I get weepy when my son appears and hugs me and whispers: "What happened? How come you're so late? We thought you got lost."
Maybe I did.
We can't even put our finger on what we found so despicable about Andy Christie's story. Maybe it's his utter disregard for his girlfriend's feelings — in his reaction to the surprise, and in his writing about it. Or maybe it's the fact that he took several hundred words to say, in effect, "I may be old and flabby, but young women still want to poke me!" Or maybe it's just the phrase "heart gallery." That's kind of worse than rape in and of itself.
