An Open Letter To Bad Boys
By Liz Owen
Dear Bad Boy,
I want to take a moment to thank you for the solid sense of consistency that you provide in my everyday life. Things are so uncertain lately: there’s a satellite hurtling towards Earth, Wall Street is occupied, and there was a moving truck spotted outside Ashton and Demi’s home. The current state of affairs is definitely unsettling. Yet, I always know what I’m going to get with you, and for that, I’m full of gratitude.
You never text me back in any prompt or polite fashion (if at all). I never have to worry about interrupting my workday with a rapid-fire thumb conversation via smartphone. I’m never distracted while driving and I always sleep soundly given your blatant lack of response to the friendly things I say. There is no blinking red light or text alert bell to disturb me during an important conversation with a friend; I am always present. In fact, I’m largely able to go about my day as if I didn’t know you at all given the compassionate way in which you choose not to waste my time with silly, meaningless banter.
You ignore me while out with our crowd. I never have to worry about irritating my girlfriends by hanging all over you instead of socializing with them because you so kindly remove yourself from my side each and every time we go out. And you empower me by only buying drinks for yourself: I’m a twenty-first century woman! If you didn’t swiftly tuck your Visa away after calling out an order for your Jack and Coke, I might have forgotten that I have my own bank account and certainly don’t need any favors from a man.
You never help to clarify the nature of our relationship. Words and labels can really bog a person down and you know better than to burden me with that conversation. In fact, you keep things fresh and intriguing by refusing to let me know how you’re feeling. It’s a fun little game we play and I can only imagine it’s a hell of a lot more exciting than the stability our overly-articulate friends suffer through.
Come to think of it, what I so consistently love about you is the inconsistency with which you treat me every day. The unpredictability of our affair is so delightfully predictable that I feel perfectly at home with the notion that you will run hot and cold at the drop of a dime. While this fluctuation might make other less confident women uncomfortable, I find that your large periods of absence cultivate my own sense of autonomy. How can our friends not see that this is the ideal relationship? Two completely separate individuals who may or may not talk on any given day, give each other ample space when out in public, and never ever participate in any stressful dialogue that attempts to shackle or restrain the other.
So, thank you again, Bad Boy, for being some of the only normalcy in my life. I change my hair, my clothes, my job, but I know that you will always be a constant, someone that I can rely on to keep me endlessly guessing. And if our love affair ends in some explosive fashion tomorrow, that’s OK… because I’d totally expect if from you. It’s Good Guy that us ladies really have to watch out for anyway; when he does you dirty, you never see it coming.
Always Yours,
Liz