Arrive at realizations that everyone else has already reached, crude truisms you’d idealistically dismissed or ignored. Money is power, pretty is good, sexism is the status quo. Adults don’t know what they’re doing, most mistakes matter, and you will never be cool.
And it’s not just that the characters find themselves in depressing situation after depressing situation (well, they kind of do), it’s the fact that the scope of the novel makes every depressing instance so much more tragic because you’re highly familiar with what lead each character to the sad place they’re in currently.
The recent recession has done a great job of disguising the deadbeats — making them at first glance indistinguishable from the ambitious, driven young men merely fighting off the symptoms of economic collapse – and so the women who haven’t given up altogether often won’t know what kind of guy they’ve got until they’ve wrinkled their ‘first date dress’ and wasted a night.
The woman who wont drive 45 minutes to the only open McDonalds in her town at 5am when her stomach threatens to suicide over an unrequited love affair with a cheeseburger is not to be trusted. Having the willpower to overcome her instincts would make her a formidable opponent in both war and sex games.
“Scott,” he says. “I know Bill has been playing every single minute for us for the past year-and-a-half, since right after that fall formal, you know, when he came up to me at the punch bowl and started rubbing my back and said, ‘Why don’t you give me a shot at the title, coach?’ But you know what? You’re going in there the second half. Thing is, though, you can’t tell Bill.”
In the beginning of every relationship, you essentially try to be the best version of yourself. You pretend you dress to the nines every single day (“Oh, this little number? I just threw it together in five….hours”), do fun-filled activities, and never fart, burp, poop or experience any other human action that could be perceived as gross.
I can hardly even go outside with a hangover anymore without feeling like if I don’t take off my clothes and get into sweats, lie down, cover myself with blankets and start watching a sci-fi/ fantasy epic from the mid ‘80s, I’ll start projectile vomiting on the next person who passes me on the sidewalk.
I’ve thought a lot about whether or not to have sex on the first date, and a lot of people have told me that I ought to take things a little slower. I’ve given that advice careful consideration, and with that careful consideration, I’ve decided that it’s not advice I want to follow. If sex presents itself on a first date and it seems appealing, the reasons to go for it are plentiful, and the reasons not to, insignificant.