Playin' Themselves Like Parker Brothers

A friend of mine wants to set me up with a guy she knows. After asking permission to give him my email, she exited the situation, and he appeared in my inbox (let's call him Clive). We go back and forth for a week or so, and surprisingly, Clive hasn't said anything stupid yet. He sounds smart, ambitious, funny and (thankfully) well-raised. In fact, I realized that I might be more of a goon than him; he has that refined, gentlemanly swag... more GQ than XXL. (Not that I'm superthug or anything, but superthug does swim in my personality's pond - along with hippy, nerd, savage, mystic, princess...) The matchmaker pulled me aside to let me know all this too - ("He's not really, umm, 'hood'... at all") - but I'm no dummy and had already figured that out. While I appreciated the FYI, her apologetic tone was unnecessary: I like to LOOK AT Jim Jones, but I wouldn't date him... goons are trouble and I don't need the nonsense! I know why she did it though...

I love words; and like I am with anything else, I don't discriminate; I'll play with them all. Urban jargon is used frequently, and although it's flagrantly silly and positioned on purpose, Clive may not know that about me. And since he and I haven't spoken on the phone or in-person yet, all he has to go on is the words I type in e-mails, IMs and this hurr blog. It might be a generalization to say this (because admittedly, I don't know him very well either), but now I'm thinking that maybe the impression I gave him isn't exactly what his "type" would like. Too casual, perhaps? The joke, of course, is that I can write my ass off for academic purposes, but amongst peers, it's blasé, slang-ridden speech all day.

After my conversation with her, I started thinking about how girls in my situation might tone it down and mold their personalities around the guy, catering it to his more mature tastes. If I wanted to play that game, I could totally do it - and win. But that's just not my style. I'm driven to fully be myself with guys because (1) I am what I am and (2) if they're going to love it or hate it, at least I'm not playing myself. Dumbing it down is for suckers. And besides, men are like having a car in the city: it would be nice to have one in certain situations, but you don't need it for survival (and there's always the subway, nah'mean?!) But hopefully Clive understands LaceZilla's savage tendencies and thinks they're endearing. I guess we'll see.

And in game-related news...

"The country's second-largest toy maker is embarking on a six-year, four-picture deal with Universal Pictures based on its top-selling board games such as "Monopoly" (the world's top-selling board game, with more than 200 million copies sold) as well as 'Candy Land,' 'Clue,' 'Ouija,' 'Battleship' and 'Stretch Armstrong.'"

Thanks to Rory for the article and for inspiring this blog with his own rhetorical introspection.