If I Dated Ryan Gosling

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I know everyone says this, but I saw Ryan Gosling first. Little-known fact about Nico Lang: Ryan Gosling was the first same-gender crush of tiny, photo-bisexual Nico — back in his days of tights and luminous Nick Carter hair on Young Hercules. I loved the Gos when he was a Mickey Mouse Club member and his body was not yet ripped enough to support such a long head, and it looked like a pencil eraser up there. I’ve followed him through his brief appearances in Flash Forward (with fellow future hottie Ben Foster), Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Remember the Titans. I stuck by him through playing neo-Nazis, serial killers and dating Sandra Bullock, which I imagine is like being murdered. However, he’s nice about it, just like he’s nice about all of his exes. He refers to himself as the luckiest guy in the world for getting to date such gorgeous women and thanks them for everything he taught them. Because he is a love unicorn.

Throughout his romances with Sandra, Eva Mendez and Rachel McAdams (who he should be with, if not me), I’ve often wondered what it would be like to finally consummate our decades-spanning pining fest — to finally know the love that has eluded us for so long. I know that like my love for Rachel Maddow, it can never work, and we’re doomed to be star-crossed, just as I’m doomed to watch Rachel go be with other people while effortlessly making me fall in love with her. (It’s that smile! I’m only human.) Thus, I’m doomed to let the nation vicariously be with Ryan Gosling through internet memes and wet dreams, but today, I get to be the one who lives vicariously. I get to know what it’s like for the Gos to say “Hey Girl.” I get to be that girl, to get the job a million girls wanted. I’m fucking Ryan Gosling.

If we dated, RyRy and I wouldn’t be able to help but finish each others’ sentences. I would bring up something I read in Judith Butler or my staunch stance on prison abolition, and he’d know exactly what I would say before I said it. He would tell me that it was like I was reading his heart, and his heart wants to dissolve the prison-industrial complex and smash patriarchy — but in a sexy way. Of course, this will be what I think he’s saying — because he Marlon Brando mumbles a lot and I’m slightly hard of hearing. So, he’ll be like, “Mumble mumble mumble patriarchy mumble oppression mumble bell hooks.” And I’ll be all, “Glerg flerg merg MARRY ME.” And like Drive proved, the Gos doesn’t even have to say anything at all to show you he cares. He just has to bash some mobster’s head in and throw on that 80s-synth-heavy soundtrack while the two of you languidly drive around the streets of L.A. That’s what love is. Love is violence set to music.

Besides, have you seen him in that jacket? What more do you need to know?

But when Ryan and I finally know true love, it won’t be purely physical — although for those who have seen Crazy, Stupid, Love, it’ll be plenty physical. Trust me. It’ll be physical in every room of my house in positions not even Cirque du Soleil and Olivia Newton-John knew existed. However, it’ll be much more than that — because under that stoic exterior is a man of limitless emotions, who can make endless kissing in the rain look attractive and non-hypothermic. He’s not a Mr. Darcy type who shows you they care by being a total dick to you. Ryan Gosling will lie down in a street for you, battle society and your family to prove his love for you and then write you a letter every day for a year. He will fix up a house and wait for you until you return — because he knew you were meant to be together. When the Gos loves you, he loves you for life. When you’re old, ravaged from Alzheimers and incontinent, he’s still there with you, ready to hold you when you die in his arms.

I can’t wait to grow old and poop myself with him.

Luckily, I have my whole life to die in his arms. Until then, we’ll spend that time cooking quinoa together, trying that new vegan smoothie place down the street and sharing secrets. He’ll finally tell me who made him so sad (I’m guessing Fergie got to him in his Mickey Mouse Club days) and explain to me what was going on in Stay (because it either made no sense or I was too stupid for it). We’ll trade gossip about Michelle Williams, George Clooney and Terrence Malick — who I imagine is a vampire, actually Jesus H. Christ risen, totally out of his mind, into some really kinky sex shit (see: Badlands) or all of the above. I’ll share the deepest, darkest parts of myself and he’ll listen to me. He won’t try to talk over me or just wait for his turn to speak. And when I come home from a long day and want to complain about my problems, he’ll remember and follow up on them. Ryan Gosling remembers. Ryan Gosling gets you.

If we ever break up — so he can go forth and spread his love with others — our purely hypothetical split would be difficult for alternate universe me (or as Fringe would call me: “Fonico”) to get over, but I could do it. I would take what I learned from Ryan Gosling — that the Oscars suck and you never do just one movie with Nicolas Windig Refn — and I would use it to grow. Fonico would move onto Rashida Jones or Anderson Cooper, or if this is the best of all possible worlds, imprint myself onto the genetically perfect spawn of Rashida and Coop. (Could you imagine his eyes on her skintone? Heavenly.) My heart could go on, knowing that the world is better for having Ryan Goslings in it, and knowing that, no matter what, our subjunctive romance must’ve been better than Sandra Bullock. Because seriously.

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