Case The Promised Land

Date up. Date down. Just as long as you date all around. I gotta admit, I love the glorious muck of the gender fuss that's been created in the wake of Sex In The City, simply the best show ever put on (cable) TV. I miss it every Sunday, in the way I miss John-John and Diana. I just do. It's a generational thing. You wouldn't understand.

But I bet plenty of Dear Readers can relate to this article from today's New York Observer. Here's an excerpt:

J. Courtney Sullivan, a 24-year-old assistant editor at Allure magazine, has written a book called Dating Up: The Ultimate Guide to Finding the Man You Deserve, which will be published by Warner in February 2006. “My friend and I couldn’t get over how every great woman we know from college—great, smart, accomplished women—date these total schlubs: guys with no money, no ambition, no redeeming qualities and no clue,” she said. The book, however, is not your standard gold-digging manual. “It’s not like, ‘Run off and marry a banker,’” she said. “At the end of day, the most important thing is to be with someone who treats you well.”

For Ms. Sullivan, dating down, while appealing, has its limits. She referred to her own relationship history, with a series of starving-artist types. “For me, it was almost an escape,” she said. “I could leave the office after a stressful week on Friday and relax with one of those guys, bumming around drinking margaritas at Tres Aztecas, listening to him drone on about the one time his band played CBGB’s or whatever, and basking in his no-pressure lifestyle. It was like a little glimpse down the path not taken or something. Of course, eventually this always became entirely maddening and ended in a screaming ‘Why don’t you grow the fuck up?’ fight.”

Full story here.

"Treat you well" crap. Huh? Women still need to buy into that tired 'ole bill of goods? That's what passes for literature these days? No, that's what passes for life these days: security-ridden bullshit. Something to pass needy, predicatable time with for utter sellouts with not an ounce of passion or romance left in their frozen reality, just PTA-induced rivalries, pasted-on smiles and magazine-induced fantasies all poofed-up and overly worked-out for the benefit of McMansioned friends and mothers once or twice a year at the alledgedly picture-perfect, family values holiday dinner.

Frankly, all this gender stress is Springsteen's fault. He told us thirty years that men were glorious chrome and fire angels just waiting for wild American beauties, as we all are at heart, to "case the promise land" with on an urban wonder fest of passion and desire and mutually-held dreams.

Bruce didn't say nothin' 'bout no mutual funds, and thirty years later I'm still a working girl still listening to Thunder Road still waiting at the house, albeit my own now, for that low rumble along the... driveway.

Goddamn you Bruce. Goddamn rock & roll.

Tags: Springsteen, Music, Dating