Sunday, December 30, 2007

He Just Needs an Understanding Girlfriend To Teach Him How to Read.

My new boyfriend, Tim Riggins, is everything I look for in a paramour. Firstly, he’s 17 years old. And he has a severe alcohol problem. Also he’s a huge asshole. Also #2 he’s fictional. What more could a girl want? But what you can’t immediately see during a cursory viewing of Friday Night Lights is that when you really get to know Tim (which, believe me, I have because we are in a very serious relationship) you find that under the hot hot muscles and the stench of cheap beer he is a tortured soul. Tim loves Lila but she can’t get over being a pretentious stuck up bitch and see his true self. Tim is secretly super smart but his daddy never loved him enough and so he hides his smarts behind the pain! Tim has layers. Tim needs an older woman with an acute appreciation for pouty lips to show him what love is. Obviously I am his perfect match.

Those of you who see me as a smart mature young woman with a future might be shocked by my love for a juvenile hall bound high school football player but it's really quite predictable. Sure, outside of my couch potato fantasies I date nice boys. They may not regularly brush their hair and they might often have to cancel dates due to the demands of their guild but they have respectable jobs and button down shirts and 401K plans. They hardly ever do keg stands. But when snuggled up in front of the flickering TV light I turn into one of those girl who can see the good in the drunkard, the promise in the idiot and mostly, the hot ass hidden beneath the layers of clothing the FCC insists my dreams be draped in.

My TV boy trouble started with My So-Called Life. Brian was acing calculus; Jordan (literally) couldn’t read. Brian valiantly helped Angela pass math class; Jordan helped her to appreciate the romance of losing one’s virginity on a stained mattress inside of an abandoned house to a boy who most likely does not know your last name. Brian wrote Angela a heartfelt moving love letter (granted he signed it, “Jordan” because Brian has no self esteem); Jordan (after overcoming illiteracy – see? He has so much promise!) wrote a song for his car. Were this story unfolding in reality I’d have spent Saturday nights playing Risk with Brian (cause one look at that boy's mop and you could smell the love in the air) but since the tale is confined to inside of the cathode tube I was ordering a big plate full of Catalano (extra sauce!).

There have been exceptions to the bad boy rule. I was never a Dylan McKay girl, choosing instead to swoon over Brandon though I mostly blame this on the fact that when I took an honest look at my life in 1992 I had no choice but to recognize that in the 90210 universe I was obviously Andrea Zuckerman (Even if I wasn’t 45 years old.) and part of accepting the nerdy, not rich enough, fashion challenged part of myself was having a crush on the midwestern boy newspaper editor instead of the tortured surfer. (Though seriously that picture on the left is making me wonder if Brandon wasn't actually a girl, which would make sense -- that Emily chick always had a little lesbian vibe going on). Maybe my love for the geeky boys is isolated to California fantasy dramas since I also own a pair of underwear baring the message, “I’m a Seth Girl.” And I am. The comic book geek from the O.C. might be my perfect man. He makes wry comments about pop culture. He generally can’t hold a conversation with a female. He has somewhat ridiculous hair.

Brandon and Seth aside TV generally inspires the unhealthy Jerry Springer ready white trash in me. I was the only watcher in the Buffyverse to cheer on the Spike years. I mean sure he was a little rough around the edges with the drugs and the living in a crypt and the being a blood sucking killer but he LOVED Buffy! He loved her in a pathetic doe eyed sort of way (when he wasn’t loving her in a tossing her around, pulling her hair, sexing up The Slayer sort of way). He had spent 500 some years as a villain and Buffy turned him into a puppy! Post college I devoted Tuesday nights to Gilmore Girls where I was a Jess fan from way back and was never happier than when practical proper boring Rory cheated on nice floppy haired Dean with my favorite high school drop out.

Does this all mean that somewhere deep down I want to trade in my be-cowlicked video game playing nice boys for an illiterate hunk in a leather jacket and beer goggles? Maybe. But real world bad boys never seems to have any substance. They’re genuinely screwed up, not just using screwed up as a cover for sensitive. And since I rarely find myself attracted to high school boys in real life I’m left with 30 year old losers who are, lucky for me, much less tolerable.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

okay
seth > ryan, yes
but pizz > logan.

I usually see the inner hunk in the nerd boy instead of the inner sweet in the bad boy. Although James Franco or whatever his name is was pretty dreamy in Freaks and Geeks.

Gillian said...

I also loved the Spike years on Buffy. That was some hot hot lovin'. Spike > Angel FO SHIZ