Chelsea Fagan

So, though they may be a bit cumbersome, I propose a few new terms that more succinctly get to the heart of the matter. This, my friends, is true love.

If you are the kind of man who, on his way out for a night on the town or an afternoon with friends, decides to finish his otherwise respectable outfit of decent jeans and a well-cut shirt with a pair of scuffed New Balances, ugh.

We all know that no one is more of a model for your own future knight-in-shining-armor than a good, old-fashioned Disney Prince.

There are bridges I have burned out of necessity. Yours was simply abandoned, left untended for years until weeds grew through it and the railing fell apart and it became something you might take a black-and-white picture of, but you could never cross again.

Here, a primer for when your future children want to know what the hell you were doing with your boxy, multicolored electronics.

I’m pretty convinced now that everything in the fashion world has been “done,” and now the designers are just blindfolding themselves and throwing darts at a chart with different clothing items on it.

Perhaps in a childish, roller-coaster-thrill kind of way we like people who don’t treat us very well, but when we think about who is really worth our time and our love, it is not that kind of person. At least, it shouldn’t be.

Especially when we look around us and see the rough, often devastating ends that young love can meet when it commits too quickly, the idea of acknowledging you met your life partner at 22 is terrifying.

Your Disney film of choice says more than just what VHS was worn to tatters from merciless overuse when you were eight; it says which 1 hour and 30 minutes contained your tiny little dreams. So put on your Tinkerbell costume (you know you still have it), get out your stuffed Boo doll, and settle in for a little trip down One Day My Prince Will Come Lane.

R&B is such a truly wonderful genre of music. The sheer, blinding earnestness of so many people trying not only to market sex itself, but how sexy they are as individuals, is something to be admired. It’s strange, almost surreal, watching so many grown men declare, insist, that they are incredible at the act of lovemaking…

I’m sorry, but no amount of love, no Leo and Kate or Jim and Pam or Carrie and Big love, could ever justify the unimaginable bullshit that is eating dinner on the same side of a cramped table.

You learn the procedures, you become familiar with how the different coffee tastes and what it mixes well with. It’s not some magical set of spells and incantations that you learn over high-moon ceremonies as you sacrifice a chicken with your shift manager–it’s making god damn espresso.

Apparently there’s this part of my brain, lodged uncomfortably somewhere between the temporal lobe and the cerebellum, that drives me against my will to start aimless conversations while drunk. No matter how unengaged the interlocutor, how uncomfortable the scenario, how forced the interaction–I’ll do it.

Actually, forget that. Let’s not waste our time with meaningless pleasantries. Our acquaintanceship was as much out of necessity and courtesy as any could ever be. I loved her, and you moved yourself into her life practically overnight and settled your belongings, like a neighbor the co-op board barely approved of.

Ladies, we all know men are hard to figure out. They are a constantly shifting puzzle, 10,000 pieces, all sky. Perpetually finding new ways to obfuscate their thoughts and subvert their emotions into complicated interpretive dance–it is left to us to pick up the scraps and rearrange them in a pattern we can understand.

Hearing snippets of anecdotes about beer-bonging jungle juice or sleeping with two girls in the same night, one unbeknown to the other, confirmed to me that the American Pie-style high school experience did, in fact, exist – just not for me or anyone I knew. There was fun to be had here, I just wasn’t invited to it.

I was sitting in a cafe today and was about to order a coffee, and I saw these two girls a few tables over, laughing and smiling and touching each other’s shoulders when they said something particularly witty. I thought of you, and I ordered a tea instead.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about many men that I haven’t personally browbeaten into submission, it’s that they don’t seem to care that much about what they wear. And the only reason I have moved to Europe is that I’m willing to sacrifice men’s charming command of my mother tongue for their ability to pair a scarf with a button-down.