Illustration by: Allison Cole
What's Your Type?
Issue #31
Grungy bad boys? Graffiti artists? Nerd alerters? Eight ladies fill us in on who they fall for — and why they may or may not be trying to change their ways.
By Venus Zine Staff
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
I’M NOT AS BITTER AS I SOUND. REALLY.
I had a thing for skateboarders in high school. Not to diss skateboarders (they seem much smarter nowadays), but the ones I lusted after tended to be thieving high-school dropouts.
I was particularly attracted to a guy named Alvin, who had the whole innocent-meets-bad-boy thing down to a science. We dated the summer after my senior year of high school. He told me that he had broken up with his long-term girlfriend, but six months into our relationship, I got a call from the “ex,” and she told me otherwise. Dude had been dating her all along. After breaking up with him, I was so heartbroken by the whole thing that I hardly dated during my college career. Come senior year, I was curious about his whereabouts, so I looked him up. He told me that during the previous four years, he’d moved from small-town Michigan to San Francisco, gotten hooked on heroin, and impregnated someone. “We got married, had a baby, and now we’re separated,” he said. “Wanna hang out?” Still entranced by his ways, I said yes. Soon we started seeing each other every weekend for about eight months. To make a long story short, I found out through the grapevine that he was still married. Luckily I had some dignity and called it off for good.
After the Alvin thing, I entertained myself with “I-don’t-like-to-commit-I-just-go-with-the-flow” hipsters and a couple of self-centered artists. Unfulfilled with those experiences, I made a complete switch and went for a really nice, athletic engineer. Because opposites attract, and we were exactly that (I despise math and, at the time, smoked a pack a day), we dated for three years and lived together for almost two of them. Unfortunately, the courtship eventually fizzled out.
So what’s my type now? I have no idea. My friend suggests I work the geek scene. “They love to commit and have sex,” she said. I’d be willing to date geeks — or the characters John Cusack tends to play in romantic comedies. Let me do some more digging and I’ll get back to you. — Lady A
I REALIZED I WAS FALLING FOR AN AESTHETIC
Until recently I had never thought about what type of person I “go for.” I had criteria: college degree, politically savvy, able to hold conversations, career-oriented, self-sufficient.
But after my three-year relationship buckled last summer, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “What were you thinking? You were complete opposites.” Me: the neat freak, flamboyant, controlled, only child (read: brat). Her: the could-care-less-what-the-apartment-looks-like rebel, chaotic, confused, silent soul. I like my music loud and with waning guitar riffs; she likes hers quiet and heavy on the electric synth. I prefer the movie theater; she loves the bar. So for all those years, we hid under falsity until the dam broke, and our lives leaked out. Her chaos spilled into my control. End of story.
But I couldn’t stop questioning what it was that attracted me to her in the first place.
I’ve dated the theater kids, I’ve tried my hand at the rebels and the sweethearts. How about fashionistas? History buffs? Music lovers? Indie-rock girls? Then it hit me — I’d been falling for the aesthetic.
I’m now dating a girl who originally would have been the opposite of everything I once believed was necessary for a “successful” relationship. She’s going to cosmetology school (no college degree), lives with her parents, and works at a chain bookstore. But man! Can she make me laugh. She has passion, opinions, and isn’t afraid to tell me when I need to shut up or step up.
I’m in love. And she breaks every rule I had put in place for myself. Are we as humans confined to “types”? Possibly. But those types morph as we get older, and we come to realize that our self-imposed standards should be nixed.
After all, at the end of the day, a degree isn’t going to make me laugh. — Lindsey K. Anderson
IS IT SO BAD TO CRUSH ON CELEBRITIES?
The funny thing is, it’s been more than 10 years and I can remember all of their names: Adam, Sebastian, Luke, Matt (two of those), Scott, Mike. All of them were intense, intensely slight boys with longish hair. Most of them played the bass. None of them became my boyfriend. Before I graduated high school, I never smooched a boy to whom I was attracted. The boys that deigned to kiss me were hearty and loud. They did not sit for hours pondering the gorgeous dissonance of Sonic Youth’s “The Sprawl” as I did, and as I imagined Adam, Sebastian, et all did, too. Gary Shteyngart, Beck Hansen, Martin Donovan, Stephen Malkmus: such is my type now. Benicio Del Toro in Basquiat, when he was wiry and raw and his hair overpowered his head. Jean Paul Belmondo in Breathless — to be that cigarette splayed against his bottom lip! The Mark Ruffalo of You Can Count on Me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, XX/XY, and We Don’t Live Here Anymore — the gyrations of his adorable ass pinioning Naomi Watts’ against a tree, or, alternately, rocking a tweed coat with leather patches on the elbows. All of these men send me into a girlish, starry-eyed reverie. I am eternally grateful that they exist, even if I’ve only met two of them in person.
I suspect the reason I still have the hots for celebrities is because I never frenched anyone cute before college. Sometimes I feel like my taste in guys outs me as a permanent adolescent, and anyone who has seen the way I act at shows can attest to the truth of this assessment. In real adult life, I get butterflies around foodies and brooders, record geeks and guys who read difficult things. I was plagued by an intense crush on a certain academic (who had a girlfriend, mind you) simply because of his virulent hatred of book reviews. In all honesty, it’s impossible to pinpoint my type these days, but not settling on one is definitely the best parts about being single.
— Eugenia Williamson
MAKING THE SWITCH FROM MYSTERY MAN TO MR. NICE GUY
My “type” has definitely changed with the times. In high school, I dug grungy bad boys like Jordan Catalano. I had a major crush on a senior named Brian Espinoza, a garage-band dude who (like Jordan) had been held back, twice, and I loved the way he leaned. In college I kept falling for the chain-smoking, skinnier-than-me indie rockers, but I never felt “cool” enough (or skinny enough) to keep up with them. But recently, when I found myself sympathizing more with the goofy and well-meaning Ben Stiller character in Reality Bites (on what was probably my 100th viewing) over Ethan Hawke’s sarcastic slacker, I finally realized that in my 20s my tastes have shifted to the more ... practical? Then again, I still find dark and mysterious rebels totally alluring; I’ve just learned better than to fall for them when there’s a funny sweetheart I could be with instead.
And, as an aside, I also dated like 15 Protestants, one or two Catholics, and some Texans (OK, not a religion, but definitely another culture) before I finally found true love with a Jew! — Liz in Brooklyn
LUSTING FOR THOSE WE CANNOT HAVE
In high school, sexuality was for me a series of images, a pastiche of anything that has ever been pleasurable, and the rules of my attraction were equally vague and widespread. I had one girlfriend, one boyfriend, and almost no sex, yet I remember that era as being highly sexual: charged by the feeling of muscular warmth through the thin cotton of a T-shirt, the taste of pu erh tea in a café where the waitress was so attractive that I dropped my glass while trying to speak to her. The girls I loved were darkly beautiful and the boys sarcastic — a strain in my tastes that carried over to my college romances, when I fell in love with my ex-boyfriend’s best friend in a very Le Roi est mort! Vive Le Roi! second act of my original adolescent disaster. He had a girlfriend, so I spent all night with him only in chaste exercises — drilling him on his lines for a play and watching a movie together while he traced the lines of my then-electric right hand.
That moment of pleasure, our never-talked-about mini-sin, opened up to me the erotic world of keeping secrets, and I very unfortunately continued to fall for boys who were just a little too distant to be available. What I took away from that near-miss and the other, more spectacular failures was not, however, permanent damage. Instead, my initial high-school instinct had been in some sense correct. There are stronger objects and images of desire than blond, dark, sarcastic, elusive, or even male/female. Now I can look at my lover and be attracted to the large palms of his heat-lamp hands; I can be drawn to a thousand people and find their best and most exotic secrets in just one. — Adrienne Celt
I’M DONE WITH THE DUDE IN THE BAND
My first boyfriend was a raging Guns n’ Roses fan. When he dumped me for a more developed 15-year-old, he explained, “She’s Sweet Child O’ Mine. You’re November Rain. It’s over.” True quote, verbatim. Those words marked the beginning of my fascination with band boys and the inevitable heartbreak that comes with the package. Band boys are the type who spend hours making mix tapes, play bass in mediocre bands, and work minimum-wage jobs that allow them to “focus on the music.” There was the rudeboy who wore a dirty Clash T-shirt, the college boyfriend whose emo band opened for Braid, the closet CCR fan who lived in a punk rock house and head-banged all night when Avail played a show in his basement.
My longest band-boy relationship was with a bass player in a little-known Chicago punk band. I hit the jackpot when he wrote “my” song, though he never dedicated it to me at shows for fear of looking like a wuss. I don’t know why I was drawn to band boys, but I do know why I left them behind.
I married someone outside my type. He’s not a band boy. He has a full-time, salaried job and assures me he won’t ever ditch me for a record deal. But he does make killer mix tapes. — Sarah Coffey
I HAVE A THING FOR GRAFFITI ARTISTS
My girls are baffled. In the past several years I’ve managed to date three graffiti artists, turn down four aerosol suitors, and marry (and divorce) another.
Some might accuse me of being a groupie, but I’ve met these guys through friends or randomly. I don’t hang out by abandoned buildings in the middle of the night, in shit-talking chatrooms, nor the few hardware stores that still sell spray paint. If there is a graffiti artist in the room, there’s a good chance he might think I’m cute.
I fell in love with the first one at age 24. His tales of this subculture intrigued me. After the ensuing mess, I swore them off. Graffiti artists, to generalize, can be a curious handful. By nature they don’t play by the rules. Eventually my will softened.
The backgrounds of my street-artist purveyors vary. Spanning ages 24 to 44, Latino, Black, and white, master’s degrees, and high-school dropouts, they all had that edge, combining sensitivity with street sense.
What gets me is that scruffy dignity. They pay attention to detail. They like jazz, books, art films, and cringe when people write them off as rogue hip-hop bombers. If they’re old-school, they scoff at angry new-generation toys. After a while, they don’t want to sneak out to paint but get paid by someone to make big, beautiful murals, sculptures, or sneakers.
And when they write your name on a wall in flowing bulbous script and draw the contours of your face with quick graceful strokes, your heart will flutter.
Though I’ve said it before, much to my girls’ relief, I think I’m really done. The last graffiti guy was as romantic and seasoned as they come — until one day a commission took him indefinitely to South America. All that was left was the writing on the wall, me holding the pen. — Tamara Warren
FIRST THING FIRST. LET ME FIGURE OUT WHO I AM.
I don’t have a type, really. Someday I will, but I don’t yet. I’ve had plenty of relationships, ranging from two years of Nietzsche, pasta, and fencing jargon to 20 minutes of smashed kisses behind Chicago’s Beat Kitchen. I miss the fencer, but honestly I’ve never felt whole-er than age 80, when Ben taught me to dance and reminded me to eat; I listened to his poems and helped him walk in a skirt. But Ben dates boys, so he’s not my type in this particular sense.
I’ve been happy in and out of relationships, but I still don’t have a type because I’m not yet one myself. (I am, however, a philosophy student, and the first thing you learn is that you can’t define B without A.) I’m still learning my desires and satisfactions. I’m like Sheri’s ice cream sundaes, which are great, but Denny’s has hot fudge so you’re going there next time.
So it frustrates me to hear my friends (or myself) say, “S/z/he wasn’t my type” because it’s so passive — a cop-out, even. It’s easy to say, “he doesn’t understand me” when really I wasn’t brave enough to tell him, or try to, or figure it out myself. It’s even easier to say I wasn’t satisfied when really I’m still learning to let my guard down, to be OK with someone wanting me or my body. Plus, it’s super hard to learn these lessons when you grew up screaming “Suck my left one!” with Bikini Kill, then cutting the ties from your hoodies so you won’t be strangled, ever, like Mia Zapata was.
It’s hard, and until I’m closer to fine I don’t dare point fingers at my exes (which is different than defining type, still: A before B). But I’m hopeful, feeling pretty, and trying just a little bit harder, and in the meantime here are two books that helped me like coffee on an all-night drive: Ian Kerner’s She Comes First and bell hooks’ Communion. — Mairead Case
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more