The point of this post is that Justin Wehr is smart and funny

People talk up “awareness” and “curiosity” – which I think are similar enough concepts that I will lump them into one category and call it “awariosity” – like it is some sort of universal antidote to all our ills. (“And no side effects!”) I strongly disagree.

Of all the many desirable traits that make me a cherished cult figure in the blogosphere, it is perhaps my blistering awariosity that people seem to admire the most. It’s a trait handed down by the gods to deserving writerly folk like myself. But I want to express my down-to-earth humility by telling you that I am not special, really. You can have awariosity, too. All you need to do is blow some wind up their heavenly skirts and they will inject some of that good stuff straight into your buttocks.

But before you do that, I should warn you: Awariosity is not all it’s cracked up to be.

It can be distracting to the point of debilitating. When I write these posts, I have awariosity seething inside my skull. I’m not just thinking about the topic of this post but also about why I choose to write about it and what the eff I’m doing with my mess of a life. I am awarious that, at some level, the point of this post and all other posts is that Justin Wehr is smart and funny. In other words, the point is: Ladies, I’ll give you clever babies!

And I am awarious how absurd that is. To advertise my cleverness via Blogspot.com is, to put it mildly… inefficient. It’d be like a peacock flashing his tailfeathers from the balcony at JC Penny’s. (Ooo, clever analogy.)

This makes blogging challenging because, on the one hand, I have this absurd drive to flash my tailfeathers, and, on the other hand, I wince whenever I catch myself doing it, which is pretty much all the time.

And it gets worse. Even if I moved my displays to a more appropriate medium – say the balcony of Nordstrom – I still have, uh, issues. Issues stemming from awariosity.

I am awarious, for example, that a not insignificant portion of my attraction to a lady can be explained by my perception that she is attracted to me. In other words, I like she who might like me. I’ve written about this before. I don’t think this kind of conditional attraction is unusual, but it still makes me feel grimy. And I’ve learned that potential mates aren’t too keen on hearing it, either. It’s like telling them, “You’re okay, but I really just want to be liked.”

Studying economics can do similarly disastrous things to your romantic success. I think the main thing that studying economics does to your thinking is that it leads you to conceptualize every behavior and every decision, from as grand as “whom should I sleep with for the next 30 years?” to as mundane as “should I tell her that she smells a little funny?,” as one of effort and reward, costs and benefits, weighing expected future and present NET gains against time values in some sort of perverted internal calculus.

It can be a downright bleak way of viewing the universe. An economist might think that I am with my partner and she is with me not because of any silly, naïve notion like “love,” but because, right now, the benefits outweigh the costs relative to our next best alternative. What looks at the surface like selfless sacrifice and loyalty to another is really just two people engaged in what closely resembles a retail transaction.

You can imagine what that does to one’s libido.

Maybe the best evidence I can give for why you shouldn’t be eager to amp up “the richness of your mental life” (or whatever) is a little anecdote of what happened when I got rejected by a girl. Because this post is already longish, I am putting it below the fold, in the form of a letter to Carolyn Hax.

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Carolyn,

As a writer, and especially as an advice writer on the subject of romance, do you have, shall we say, “issues” with keeping yourself, shall we say, “immersed”?

That sounds dirtier than it should. I am really just wondering if you often find yourself as something of a detached observer in your relationships rather than an active participant.

I know you don’t want to talk about you, so let’s talk about me.

I’m no writer. I just blog a bit, and I have an armchair appreciation of those who use language well. But something happened that was both amusing and disturbing because it made me think, “oh gawd, I’m turning into a writer.”

A girl I’ve gone on a few dates with sent me an electronic message that was the romantic equivalent of “we’ll keep your resume on file but have decided to pursue other candidates at this time.” If I’m present in my body, I should feel something resembling a stinger, right?

But here’s the thing, Carolyn, my reaction to the rejection was this:

“Wow, her language is so delicate.”

Hear me out.

She managed to write a rejection paragraph without using a single “but” or “not interested” or any synonym thereof! And she turned it at the end to make it seem like I had some leverage in the decision!!

I’d like to copy and paste the paragraph in here so you could admire it with me, but that would be more than a little unsavory. Plus, her writing delicacy is beside the point. The point is that I was admiring her writing style rather than nursing what should have been my injured ego. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it can’t be good. It’s at least as bad as Hollywood producers who say “that’s funny” instead of laughing.

It feels weird to complain about an absence of pain, but it feels less weird than admiring the construction of a rejection letter.

I like having the writer’s perspective when I want it, but I need to be able to turn it off when it’s uncalled for. Is that possible? How do you do that?

-- Anxiously Awaiting Your Writer’s Perspective