Friday, Jul 4, 2008
You've done it to someone. And somebody's done it to you. It's the deal breaker, and it's the pettiest way to weed people out.
Sep 24, 2003 | I had this thing happen once with this woman I'd met at a Brooklyn bar back in '95. Call her Joanna. I called her ideal. She worked at a local alternative paper, wore glasses, drank Guinness. She liked Liz Phair and Jim Jarmusch and Paul Auster -- at 23, this impressed me -- but she didn't prattle on about these topics, which I liked. She was from one of the liberal B-towns (Berkeley or Boulder or Brookline, I can't remember), and she didn't prattle on about that either, which was refreshing. So we were at her place one night doing the intermittent smooch-talk-change-the-CD routine, when I stepped aside for a bathroom break. Bad idea. There I was, lifting the lid to have a pee and discovering, by sight and by scent, a waterless bowl with not one, not two, but many, many days -- even weeks! -- worth of, well, stuff that definitely wasn't meant for my eyes and nose. Simultaneously, there was she: remembering the cloggage, yelling desperately from the living room, "No! Don't use the toilet!"
I felt sorry for Joanna, so I tried to spare her the embarrassment by acting as if I hadn't seen her less-than-sexy side. "I was just washing my hands," I said, weakly. But she knew otherwise and pleaded with me about how her landlord sucked and the super was lazy and the 99-cent store was out of plungers. I understood. I empathized. I changed the subject. But I couldn't put the poop out of my mind. That sort of thing, that early in the game, spelled "deal breaker."
It's a shallow practice, deal breaking. I'm not talking about legitimate reasons to cut and run, like when a date refuses to tip or makes misogynistic jokes or kicks puppies. And I'm not talking about irreconcilable differences between long-term couples, or a relationship that simply runs its course. I'm talking about the nuanced stuff, the petty, early-date stuff. Which brings me to theory No. 1 about deal breakers: They are culturally learned. This theory contends that the marketing and TV wizards have sold us a rigid template for perfection, which has made us totally vacuous and unforgiving. By this account, dating has become an exercise in trite scrutiny, a Seinfeldian drill in which the pettiest quirk or remark or opinion can kill everything, and may as well be followed by a funky bass line.
My friend Lauren, 37, an illustrator, for example, met an architect at a party in Los Angeles. He seemed nice enough, so they made plans for dinner. But when he picked her up, he was 1) driving a brand-new red Porsche and 2) said to her, in his best Snoop Dogg imitation, "Let's go get our dizz-ninner on." "I should have jumped out of the car at the first red light," says Lauren. "I know I shouldn't judge people by what they drive. And he was just being silly with the gangsta talk. But a line like that only works with people you know well. He was just instantly lame to me, and that was that, shallow as it is."
Rick, a 32-year-old Los Angeles schoolteacher whom I -- and others -- value for his great depth and compassion, once knew a deal was broken when his date gave a 20-minute monologue on the cinematic merits of "Mr. Holland's Opus" and the on-screen charm of Richard Dreyfuss. "I can't stand Richard Dreyfuss," says Rick. "He's such a noodge. He's like a Jewish mother who'd tell you to go to the bathroom before a long drive. But I tried to work with her. I said I liked 'Jaws' and 'Down and Out in Beverly Hills,' and all that." Rick explained that it wasn't the opinion that turned him off, it was the delivery. "If someone else made the case for that crappy movie or that schlump of an actor, I'd have laughed it off. But she was sold on the whole thing, like a real sucker. It was just so unattractive to me, and I couldn't give her the benefit of the doubt."
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