Never Walked In High Heels

Being single and someone who professes a Christian faith is indeed very strange, particularly if you’re willing to open the doors of your life to let in so called “church people” and all of the aggravations that they bring about. For a majority of such people, they assume that when two individuals of the opposite sex get together all they wanna’ do is jump one another like rabbits. Over and over I’ve been given lectures on keeping the door open when there’s a man in my home, not pursuing the company of boys when its late at night. All of which I have found exceptionally demeaning as well as harmful, for one thing, friendships between the sexes become extremely limited.

This is especially true if a woman who follows Christ seeks to be friends with a male who is not a Christian. Church people too often quote the famous passage, “What does the righteous have to do with the wicked?” Swearing up and down that such friendships, no matter how innocent they may seem to me can only lead to trouble. But, in all of this well intentioned advice given by ministers, lay people, friends who accompany me to church, and even some people that stick their nose into my business without invitation, I can’t help but ask…What do you do when a person who swears there is no God, proves themselves (perhaps over the course of years) to be more faithful and Christ-like than the boys at church. Ideally, of course, as they answer, the conditions shouldn’t be this way. Men who follow God should be the best of the best because they are following the best. Ideally the church would take care of its own, but most of us, myself included, stop looking for ideals when we realize that we don’t operate in an ideal world.

Since moving to London I’ve had declared communists take me to black tie dinners, an atheist adapt my bathroom to suit my needs, agnostics build me ramps and cook me meals and my tires pumped and rotated by men who swear up and down that God is dead. I even went through a phase where my laundry was done by a nihilist (fortunately he believed in clean clothes if nothing else). I have yet to run into Christians who dedicate themselves to making sure that I am happy and things in my home are running adequately as these men have. In fact it is hard to remember ever seeing a man from the church, who swears up and down to be a Christian showing any level of commitment and protectiveness as that I’ve seen from those outside of the church over the past few years.

It may perhaps do the church some good to realize that God’s family is as dysfunctional as the rest of the world. People who disagree are either in denial to themselves or flat out deceitful. Religious organizations teach that there are two kinds of people… The good (those that believe in God), and the bad (those that don’t). I can name at least ten women, now older, who thought that they were marrying the ideal Christian since their fiance was accepted to seminary and who wanted to be a pastor or a Christian counselor only to discover that the man they married was limp-wristed and did little except depend on the stability of their soon to be wife. Even though all faiths and views choose to fence themselves in with false perceptions saying, “If we are with likeminded people, everything will be much easier.” The truth is, we are no better than anyone else because of who we are, but because somebody bothered to love us when we were unlovable.

I have a difficult time encouraging the young women I mentor, or anyone else for that matter, to pursue any form of exclusive relationship. This is especially true when I am treated so well by people who the church teaches should be considered “them” and not “us.” It is these people who routinely show me a bigger God than any man who resides within the four walls of a religious establishment has yet to do. The relationship with such friends remind me that if the creator that I believe in is all powerful, he should be able to show His glory through all people. Not just those that we deem as “tolerable.”

One of the earlier Sunday school lessons I remember ever being taught, was the story of the good Samaritan. The point of the story is not that this man stopped to help someone who was suffering on the side of the road when two other people refused to do so. The point of the story is actually that this man was not a man of faith and was not obligated by his religion to do so. Above all else, God loves to scandalize and to teach us that our ways and the boxes that we think the world ought to operate within, don’t fit within His view of the world. Thus, even the person who is the most atheistic in his focus can prove to be an invaluable friend. A great person, and an unexpected hand in meeting our needs when those whose should rise to the occasion, refuse to do so.

I know we love each other because we can scream at each other without worrying that it will ruin our friendship. Despite anything we say or might disagree about, or no matter how deep the issue runs, before the sun sets it will all be fine. Secure love, the best kind of friendship there is, can survive through rough waters even when going through dangerous territory is self induced. It has taken me several years to come to this conclusion, but in fact the people who you love the most are the ones you can allow to see you at your worst. Anything short of that and the relationship is built on very unstable ground.

There is of course a cliché that any couple doubtlessly believe when they first get together, and that is the idea that “we will never fight.” We hear this particularly as girls in our infancy seeing Disney movies and countless happily ever afters. All of this is infinitely harmful to our idea of what love is. More often than not, young women (and probably men, although I can’t speak from first hand experience on this one) will do anything to avoid conflict just for the sake of living up to hopelessly high expectations. Not only do they change small preferences such as what items they would normally order off a menu in order to seemingly agree with their date, but eventually it reaches into other areas as well. What they say, what movies they prefer, what books they read, and eventually what ideals they hold. All of this to be able to give the illusion that indeed, together with their mate, the two are the perfect couple.

Our idea has changed from the notion that love conquers all except for conflict and disagreement or, better yet, love can conquer anything except pure honesty. What this does is shatter our expectations of what love is. If an honest opinion is something that love won’t stand, what hope does love have to conquer any struggle?

Too often I have witnessed my female friends trying to soften the blow of truth when a situation is particularly sticky. They wind up selling half truths and reinventing the situation for someone who they are attracted to in order not to shock their potential soul mate or at the very least, to coax their lover into agreeing with their own opinions. If you have to do this, then your problem is not breaking news to someone, your problem is the entire relationship being on unsteady ground.

During one of my favorite moments in the film “Juno”, the father states “In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly who you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is going to think the sun shines out your ass. That’s the kind of person worth sticking with.” His statement doesn’t sound romantic at all, but it’s true. Every relationship is going to go through periods of conflict and that is the basis for sharpening each other, making each other better, more loving, and more human than the two of you could be on your own. This is the beauty of a relationship that works.

I’ve often heard it said that lover’s quarrels are the worst kind of verbal fights around, and in many ways, true. That’s how they should be. After all, if you can’t really fight with the person you love the most while understanding that the freedom that tomorrow is another day with new challenges and testing new boundaries of your love for each other, there’s really not much hope of any relationship surviving.

I have learned in recent years that there are many hazards of not having a diamond ring. However, this was one that I never expected.

I was in a coffee shop the other day when a young man asked if he could sit next to me. Instantly suspicious, I stupidly nodded even though my past judgment has told me that individuals who wish to sit next to me usually want to talk to me, and such individuals who want to talk to me usually prevent me at the very least from getting my work done. However, this particular man illustrated that not only would he hold me back from work, but I would proceed to a conversation which even my best etiquette teachers would be at an absolute loss to navigate. The young man proceeded to tell me his name and states that he has been abducted to the planet Zorbon, and what I am actually seeing is his hologram android.

At first I think, he must be joking in order to seem more bizarre than he actually is, and then he proceeds to tell me that he is serious, using his laptop to pull up star charts, databases, and other information regarding the great planet of Zorbon which, forgive me if I’m mistaken, seems as if no one on earth has ever heard of.

This of course is not the first time I have found myself in a conversation which made me question whether or not I had slipped into an alternate universe. I seem to attract weirdos from every tribe, nation, and planet. This is a gene I am convinced that I have inherited from my father. My father has the remarkable ability to attract cult leaders, religious fanatics and shall we say, oddities of all sorts. Evidently during their early dating lives, these convergent flocks would hound my mother and father; making it impossible for them to go on a simple date. So I seem to have inherited this gene and although it seems to be recessive in most people, I have a pheromone that somehow attracts very bizarre people.

On the whole, I think that I am pretty tolerant of different individuals’ world views. My own views are fierce in their own right, which may be as strange to some as hailing from Zorbon. Among my friends, there are many Jews, Catholics, Hindu’s, Muslims, basically an entire diversified population which would make the BBC diversity department howl with envy. However, there is only so much a woman can take and being introduced to a hologram android is pushing the limits. The only appropriate response I could garner was, “Buddy, you’re bloody insane.”

I’m not exactly sure what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe being from the planet Zorbon is supposed to be particularly sexy. Perhaps in the style of, I’ll let you see my hologram if you let me see yours. But in my book, this is not a particularly pleasant way to start a romance let alone a conversation.

I have often been told in my life to be kind and tolerant to everyone and to love them exactly as they are, giving every guy a chance before I reject him as a potential suitor. These days, coffee shops are the place to meet your soulmate; and so I do my best to smile and look inviting, even when I’m only there to get a little work done. I don’t know if these rules of dating extend to people who have been abducted and replaced by androids, but after about fifteen minutes of supposed conversation, I found it best to take my work and make an exit.

It was as if he would panic and the world would stop. My friend would constantly worry about everything to the point that he would find it difficult to breathe and the plans we had for that evening were inevitably discarded. Constantly, he was obsessed about his health, about his bank account, about what would happen to him in the future. Every single cough he had was a sign of pneumonia. Every purchase at the store was draining his bank account and every missed opportunity that he felt he rightly deserved was just another symptom of the world oppressing him so that he was convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he had no future. I’m not speaking about anxiety attacks. While most people learn to control them, they are inexplicably horrible and a documented medical condition which has puzzled scientists and led doctors to take constant action; prescribing medication to correct such a health issue. Panic attacks are certainly not to be dismissed. But my friend was a person who constantly had anxiety in the form of worry and ultimately it developed into a severe form of narcissism. I never put the words narcissistic and worry together. To me they always seemed to complete opposites. After all, a narcissist thinks he can do no wrong, so why would he worry? But if you think about it, worry is the narcissistic insistence that life goes your way, that troubles don’t come because you shouldn’t have to handle them and that if they do come, such trouble ought to be brought to a swift and immediate end as quickly and with the least amount of inconvenience as possible. Constant worry means that the world must operate within your frame of perception; and there is not room in life for any sort of deviation.

As if this wasn’t enough, worry has to spread. One rarely keeps his worries to himself, instead expressing them with the hope of burdening others and invoking sympathy is a common activity for those who insist on worrying about everything. The listener therefore either begins to worry about the same thing or worries about the friend. Therefore, more burdens are introduced into the relationship. It’s like importing troubles to another mans conscience when all of those troubles ultimately serve you.

And as a result, in the case of my friend and I at least, it killed our relationship. My plans were constantly put on hold due to his anxiety attacks and consistent insistence that we stay home because he was worried about what might happen if we were to go into the outside world. Worry ultimately shrinks the safety zone in which anyone is able to operate. It kills life, limiting the deeds that we can accomplish without fear and the useless attempt of self-preservation. If someone constantly and without good reason is worrying that he might someday be hit by a car, he will first avoid busy streets and intersections, only operating on side roads, and then ultimately only operating on roads that are rarely visited by any form of vehicle until finally he is unable to be on a road at all. Fearing even the sidewalks. His world shrinks, and thus he limits himself and the immense joy that comes with experiencing a full and risk inherent life.

Worry is, of course, natural within all of us. When I first moved to London, I was one of those individuals that would worry about everything. All of a sudden I had graduated college and I was 22 meeting a metropolis on my own for the very first time. The pit of worry in my stomach was constantly deepening. A good friend pointed out that, while worry is natural, it comes with the realization that we are taking part in a tiny corner of the world But then he said something else. In his letter to me he added “But don’t worry, you were supporting the world long before you were ever aware of it?” Worry is a form of narcissism specifically because it puts you at the center of the universe rather than letting the universe unfold naturally and through the winding roads of life, finding your appropriate place within it.

Last night I watched on a whim a film titled, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Which recreates the tale of a modern man who was forced to play it safe in the name of family. But still, given his preternatural instincts, wishes to go out and continue to steal chickens from the coup.

I see the entire movie as a badly needed commentary on masculinity in our current society. I remember once my father saying: “women marry men thinking that they’ll change, men marry women hoping that they never will.” And in truth, both expectations are unrealistic. People do change but maybe not in the areas that we desire to see that change. I remember being woken up by a newly engaged friend of mine one morning in college. She came to my room later than usual and when I enquired about this she explained that she was up all night cleaning her fiancé’s dorm room. I was a bit shocked. She was the most independent young woman that I had met up to that point. Her dream was to go live in huts in Africa, and yet here she was confessing she had lost sleep by doing something her able bodied fiancé could have accomplished entirely by himself.

“Don’t worry, when we get married things will change.” Why would she say that? Why would she insist this when there is evidence to the contrary, that all of a sudden with a wedding band on his finger and a double income in the bank account he would ever change? Right there, still lying in bed in my dorm at the age of twenty, I could see that my father was absolutely right. People will often marry others absolutely convinced that after the wedding, everything will change.

Mr. Fox was by nature a chicken hunter. Simple. People often have in their very nature habits that aren’t particularly pleasant. My friend’s fiancé was not particularly neat. That was a characteristic about him that as far as I see evidence right now, has yet to change. By saying “Oh, he’ll change”, wasn’t my friend ultimately saying, “I would like to change him”? And if you love someone, do you want to change them? Can those two philosophies ever come together? Can you love someone while still wanting to alter any aspect of their character?

Mrs. Fox said it best when later in the movie she admits: “I love you, but I never should have married you.” It is a plague on modern masculinity that we seek to change it in the name of safety and security. Taming the modern man to live under a mortgage and go to the same place of work day after day after day is ultimately conditioning men everywhere to be afraid of freedom. I look at the male friends I have in my area of London. A large percentage of them are single, substantially older, and of course they live on boats or carry out some other form of adventurous life.

I love my friends dearly, even though I have my scuffles with them. The point is I can’t imagine altering any of them a fraction. They are warm and friendly and they carry out there lives for the most part exactly as they intend to. That doesn’t mean not living in safety simply because that isn’t what they want. It means weeks on boats waking up in the wee morning hours because the boat next door is on fire. It means not having a plan and living comfortably with the idea that at any moment life can change. I think about them and all I wish is if their lives unexpectedly change, tragedy or great joy, they aren’t forced to change who they are for any reason. Unless of course, they become more like themselves.

For some time now, my friends have been begging me to join one of those internet dating sites. “You are a busy woman, you can’t waste time going to bars and looking for the ideal match.” “Things aren’t like how they used to be, everybody is super busy and that’s OK. We need more direction in looking for romance. It’s completely normal to have a profile on one of those sites.” It seemed for a while that no matter where I was there was a Match.com advertisement promising a match in six months or my money back. This of course, I thought, meant that my money would at some point have to end up in their bank account rather than stay in my own. How wrong I was.

So finally, on a cold evening when I wasn’t feeling in the best moods about myself, I decided to give the advice of my friends a go and signed up for a service which will as always when I have to use proper nouns, remain nameless. I signed up, filled in my birthday, my gender, my age, my email address and hit “OK”. Only to be faced with a form of over two hundred absurd questions. What did I think about Smoking (Strong dislike, moderate dislike, dislike, like, moderate like, strong like, no preference)? Religion (Strong dislike, moderate dislike, dislike, like, moderate like, strong like, no preference)? Performing arts? Financial planning? Dogs? Cats? Small rodents?

And to be honest, some of these questions I had no idea how to answer. After all, how can any woman in my position ever tell if her dislike of, lets say, naked sacrifices of chickens is something I am “moderately” opposed to or “strongly” opposed to? What constitutes a moderate support as opposed to simple support? I was about to give up when I finally reached the holy grail of dating sites, that is, the end screen. I waited for the little rainbow pinwheel to stop spinning on my computer in eager expectation as they calculated my matches and results. My credit card was ready for the six month money-back guarantee. I had it all planned out, I would go into a coffee shop to meet with the guy and my girlfriend would be in disguise at the next table. That way, if he wound up trying to kidnap me she could take action in her little five foot two inch, 110-pound sort of way.

“We’re sorry, we feel that it would be inappropriate to use our services given that your results fall outside of the standard deviation of a majority of men who register with us. Thank you for trying our dating site.”

So, apparently there are standard deviations in online dating. I immediately went back to my junior year stats class where we talked about standard deviations and Z factors for a review of what this could possibly mean. Take your typical Bell curve: Ninety-nine point nine percent of the individuals must fit within the bell. The other point one percent are just out of luck when it comes to looking to romance it turns out. I, with my answers of strong likes and moderate dislikes, am a member of that point one percent where it is apparently so statistically impossible to find me a match that they won’t even bother to take my credit card number.

Beyond the entire absurdity of the whole situation (I am apparently unmatchable) begs the question, can human emotions ever be broken down into standard deviations and mathematical equations? At the risk of sounding too much like an excerpt from Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex and the City”, I don’t think there is a standard deviation when it comes to romance.

I have had friends who are absolutely driven to pure militancy when it comes to finding a boyfriend. Why? There is one individual I met who told me that she was determined through one of these online dating sites to be married within the year. Her strategy was simple, she would go out and meet a guy at Starbucks, and if in ten minutes they didn’t click she would immediately say “I don’t think this is working out”, offer to pay for his coffee and then leave. Within nine months she was engaged, and I guess her clear-cut organization and decisiveness coupled with on the spot thinking worked to her advantage.

But it always seemed to me that half the fun of dating is not knowing what will happen next, like any adventure in life. If a guy walked into where I was sitting with a big neon sign above his head that said “I am the one”, then I might be giddy for a moment but then that excitement would completely disappear and I suspect I would feel completely shackled.

Scientists have struggled and eventually discovered a massive amount of hormones and chemical reactions that go into establishing a good relationship, but there are some aspects of human interaction that science is anywhere near explaining such as true self-sacrificial love. Where is the evolutionary self-preservation in that? If there is any, I’m not sure I would want to find it. There are some wonderful things out there that have been going on for centuries which scientists can’t even begin to explain. These are omens, interactions, and emotions that should be celebrated because they all help create the adventure inherent in the unexpected. After all, as Dr. House indeed said “If the wonder disappears when the answer is gone, there is never any wonder to begin with.”

Being an individualist is not terribly popular these days. There’s a lot of talk about what someone can do for society, how to help the faceless “others” who are less fortunate than you or even how to help charities of this nature by making a tax deductible donation to X. Theses are all good actions worthy of some (albeit often minimal) praise on some level. But even with the best of efforts to move towards utopia, something insidious almost always creeps in, and here is no exception.

Perhaps I simply see this because I am an American living in London. But recently it seems as though there is more attention given to the ‘toiling masses’ rather than the individuals who are either in need of help or those who can help. The power and the preciousness of the single human being has been replaced by concern for a faceless mass who seems to always be in need of help and never getting any. Charity has become an impersonal act of the bank account rather than requiring eye contact.

But the ‘faceless mass’ way of thinking has done more damage than simply disguising taxes as alms. We have forgotten that each of use are created and not generated. This fact has little to do with any sort of deity and more to do with just how many fingerprints and events it takes to form a constantly evolving person. Our current popular views on biology and society, taken to the next logical step, teach not only that life is random but also that each of us are not particularly unique. If we are nothing more than cells and labels, existing for eighty years or so, then the value our impact for the history of man is small, we can do little to change the world, and there is a vast amount of feebleness in any of our actions. Often when I talk to people is seems as if they refuse to hold their own sprit, the part of them which has yet to be defined by any scientist, dearly. The willingness to compromise to things which insult the soul for the security of feeling others standing beside us is rampant within ourselves.

If we stop recognizing the value of the individual and his unique spirit, we cease to acknowledge the most powerful natural resource in existence. It is not enough to try and help in order to ‘do good’ in the world, like everything else ‘doing good’ can quickly become yet another form of legalism. But when you look the individual, be he servant or the one in need, you begin to value that person until it is impossible to generalize a person back into a faceless mob. Looking at a person means understanding them, their conditions, and valuing him for it, rather than expecting him to relate in predetermined way which ultimately casts him back into obscurity.

Less and less people want to live forever. This is not to say they don’t want to die, they just want to go on surviving as a biological entity rather than being themselves to the greatest of their ability. A group of such people no doubt make a homogeneous mass which is easy to define and then dismiss. It is the unique individual who understands that he is fearfully and wonderfully made which makes the conditions of society better; it has never been the other way around. Most people who cannot acknowledge their own value, simply as people who will never again exist are content to live simply at the status quo. If you look at every civil rights movement in history and think of where it would be without the individuals associated with leading it, it doesn’t take long to see the value of the human spirit who sees people living rather than a group surviving.

Each person has value because man is an end unto himself. He needs to be nothing but himself to the best of his ability. Even if you don’t believe a part of you lives on forever, your own individual uniqueness acts as a form of accountability simply because you will never exist again. In some way, a person by being himself has value because he is one, and with that single man, he can only reach people by seeing what each person is.

“He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.” ~Ben Franklin

One of my favorite things about living where I do is that I get to see men who have yet to give up their sense of adventure. Some of them have passed forty and still live on boats with no wives or children. Their homes sometimes seem like an adult version of a tree house as I pass them. They stick their heads out and greet me, asking if I need help with anything today. These are the friends I call when I am stuck in central London with a dead battery or suddenly find myself in a sticky situation. They are unshaven, unabashed, and all together untamed.

In the circles I was raised, men like this are pretty much nonexistent. The males we have are like old circus bears who perform a few ticks on command, but are old and have been declawed. The bars placed on the circus cages are to give a feeling that the beast is unsafe despite how aged he actually is. Although I have my theories, I’m not sure whose ‘fault’ it actually is. What I am sure of is that these men, somehow or another, have entered into a safe world of suits and status quos where they often married before they knew who they were, to avoid some unknown darkness. They have become tamed because the world around them requires it. All opportunity for adventure disappears when people demand that men play it ‘safe.’

My point is not that we should encourage men to be reckless or even brutish. Real men possess self control as much as they do power. But what I am emphasizing is that on insisting on safe lives, perfect homes, and taming passion, we trade away our freedoms. And in doing so, we (for lack of a better word) castrate our men. Then we wonder ‘where have all the men gone?’

The men around here are still often feral even on their best behavior. Most of them are far from having a stable life, but by my count I don’t expect them to. In keeping their company, they don’t expect me to stay in my ‘place’ either. They don’t comment about how I shouldn’t be out in inaccessible places or calling them when I need to get out during a snow storm. They are the first to offer help but the last to enforce limits. I know that each of us are fully functional individuals who treasure our freedom. Because we know we are each independent, there is a community where each of us is valued. Watching them be the fullest men they can be, raising sails and rebuilding their boats with calloused hands and amazing stamina, helps me to realize what it means to be a better woman than I thought I could be.

So I’m at a bar in London. It’s one of those weird meetings where it might be considered a first date or it might be just a friend get together. I’m watching for signs very carefully. We sit down. We order. Then he immediately rips into my country, starts shredding issues of the day, utterly destroying certain individuals, and I disagree with him 100%. Within exactly 7 minutes of taking our seats he is permanently off my list of potential partners.

It’s a massive open female pitfall that women everywhere are facing—well, women with open minds. The problem is not that he disagrees with my opinions; my best friends and I disagree all the time—that keeps the relationship interesting. No, the problem is that I have now sat here for some time and he doesn’t even ask my opinion. He just assumes that I agree with him, and with that given, he can make the boldest, most blatant statements without any encouragement from me.

It’s now 20 minutes and I think I’ve spoken a total of 15 seconds. This is not a good way to start an evening, let alone a potential romantic relationship.

Here’s something that guys need to understand. Perhaps it is only this way in my little mind, but it is important nonetheless. When you offer to go out on a date with me, you have centuries full of chauvinist pigs dragging your tail backwards. I just think of all the women over the centuries and generations who got married only to discover that her opinion didn’t matter to their spouses. The polite disagreements eventually turned to sirens when she learned after 15 or 20 years that what she thought didn’t matter. I’m not saying that every long-term relationship ends up like this, but several of them did and still do, and I don’t want to fall victim to that. So I am going to watch you on first dates, and on subsequent outings to see if you do care about my opinion and if you can tolerate disagreements. I know that in any long-term relationship people change, but each person must feel like they married the better individual. Without even asking if I have an opinion, you’ve proven to me that I don’t matter.

Sadly, I think it’s becoming more and more common on the dating field. Especially with the political expectations being what they are, everyone suddenly has an opinion, and the dinner table has become and appropriate place to spout it out. Maybe it’s because I’m often slow to speak, but in the past 2 months I’ve ruled out 5 guys that I could have liked because they never asked me what I thought. Are you interested in yourself or me? I can handle disagreement—that actually means more to me than you agreeing with me all the time. I can’t be comfortable though, in a relationship where there needs to be 100% assumed agreement—where I’m always walking on eggshells, and where I’m not free to be myself. I actually feel more paralyzed when I regularly agree with you than I do when we go our separate ways and can each then turn to the other at the end of the evening and say, you’re nuts but I love you for it.

The evening admittedly lasted longer than I should have let it. He is a good friend, and I wanted to catch up with his life, not on the British opinion of Washington politics. I kept the conversation going hoping to get the former, but all I got was the latter. At the end of the night, we pushed in our chairs and agreed to meet with a group of friends in the following week. He is a great companion, followed by dear inspiration and creative spirit, when he isn’t spouting off politically, and I keep him around for those qualities. Not because I agree with him, or he agrees with me. All I could tell is that for a long-term romantic relationship, this wasn’t going to work. As we came to the door we noted that it was raining outside. He offered me his coat, and I told him “No thank you, I always carry and umbrella in my handbag.”

Two days later I had managed to scrape myself off the bathroom floor and get some work done, but as soon as my roommate left I collasped into a mess. Finally I took the dress out of my closet and shoved it fiercely into the plastic bag it came in.

I began to think I was completely out of line for asking my friend to dress in formal wear. My judgment waved between being furious and opening the phone to call him back.

“I think I may have my first broken heart,” I told a friend while explaining the situation. She wanted to know who the seventh rejection came from and I told her.

“Well, of course he refused to wear a tuxedo, he’s proper British isn’t he? Look, it’s got nothing to do with you, that’s the first thing you need to get through your head. I promise, it isn’t because you’re disabled or any stupid reason. Well, if you ask me it is a stupid reason but that’s just because he’s English.” My friend who was, of course half French, did her best to make a madwoman see reason. For some of our friends, wearing a tuxedo can be a declaration of class rather than the starting point for an evening out.

In England, the fairy tales require more magic. For many, putting on a tux is an action for men of the upper classes, never something for an average Joe to put on. And to do so, for some, is to be seen as not only attempting to rise above your station, but also commit treason towards the class you came from. I never imagined it was a bold statement for certain friends to even consider going to a black tie affair let alone dress for it. So many farm girls all across America went to prom, even if it meant buying a dress at a Goodwill store. And they were still puffy and pink, the stuff it took to become a princess for one night. Immediately I wondered if little girls played dress up there. Did they get to have tea parties with other princesses, or were the only items in their play boxes indicative of  more practical lifetime occupations?

That night I called my friend Ché. His parents named him after Ché Guevera and his politics became even more proletariat from there. If anyone hated the bourgeoisie uniform of the tuxedo it would be him. I hoped he could make me more sympathetic towards the toiling masses.

“If someone asked you to a black tie event, would you be willing to wear a tux?”

“They’re a little itchy, but sure, of course I would.” This was not the answer I was expecting from a man named Ché.

“You would?”

“It’d be rude not to meet the dress code. Why? Where are we going that we need to get so dressed up for?”

“Would you go with me to-“

“Absolutely,” he said before I could finish the question.

It took a man who loathed the class system and economic inequality to remain unrestricted by it. Seven days later he was waiting for me as I got off the train in the red evening gown, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and his tux suiting him perfectly. Putting aside his politics to help me for an evening made him more of a gentleman than I ever dreamed of having. On our way inside I could not help but smile. Sometimes, if you put a black tie on a red commie he can behave with more class than any blue blood.

The preceding is an essay from Athena’s new book The Perfect Sole due out this winter.