Le Petit Man

So my blog hasn’t had the usual excitement that keeps you entertained. No stories featuring me vomiting on a guy’s genitalia. I haven’t met freaks off of craigslist since December. And my drinking for the last four months has involved: me, the couch, and maybe an older married man but only if my friends were in town. Hell, I didn’t even write about my foray into the underbelly of professional BDSM. Evidently boobs and narrow hips are a hit with guys who like their junk tied up and slapped. Who knew?

Anyway, so I know you guys come here to read about my drunken navigation of the quarter-life crisis. To witness “someone who has it all” fall from grace multiple times but somehow land on her feet unscathed by reality. I know this because my only honest friend Corn told me, “Shan, to be perfectly honest, I don’t bother reading the not funny ones” when I asked her about yesterday’s introspective post.

So, in an effort to keep you entertained because I cannot deal with dwindling site meter numbers, this week’s theme: what I have learned about dating in the last 24 years. Considering that I have never had a serious relationship built upon common interests and mutual respect, surprisingly my observations are fucking dead-on.

Today’s specimen: Le Petit Man

Standing at a strapping 5’3-5’6 with a wallet that weighs more than him, typically Jewish or Italian you find him working at a hedge fund or an investment banking company such as Lehman Brothers wearing his expertly tailored clothes. It’s a common misconception that he does it because his six figure salary allows for those indulgences. This is not the case--his clothes wouldn’t fit his petite frame otherwise.

His Napoleon complex fuels his professional success and to the gold digging NYC woman, his job gives an additional foot of metaphorical height. She’ll tower over him in the Manolos he bought. I know this because I’ve contemplated dating a Le Petit Man.

And I have no problem with Le Petit Man, contrary to my playful poke at him. Growing up on the North Shore of Long Island, many Le Petit Man are my friends and have even dated some Asian friends of mine. Hell, if I wasn’t so insecure with my own self, maybe I could allow myself to fall in love with someone whose imperfection is so blatant.

What I do have a problem with, however, is when Le Petit Man applies the same professional ambition to finding a girlfriend. And we all know that the business world is filled with some unscrupulous characters. I mean, it’s how we get ahead, capitalizing on our competition’s weakness.

Dating off of the internet is always a gamble. Especially Craigslist. Now I know it’s one of the sketchiest sites out there but, being a creative type who believes how people write and present themselves is a window into their very fiber, I enjoy the unmediated posts in the M4W section. I mean, I even sound fucking normal on match.com! So how could I take that site seriously. There is no personal judgment screening process. On Match.com if you are too much of a freak, you could always check the box to describe your ideal date, and save that revelation for the in person meeting. And from personal experience, that is what happens quite often.

I answered an ad on Craigslist posted by a guy who claimed that he was 5’10, Jewish, PhD candidate. He was smart, funny…too much of a total package. I’ve learned with dating in this city, much like a business proposition if it is too good to be true, it motherfuckingly is. I wrote about how I met him and he came up to my chest in my heels that make me 5’10. I also said how he was thinner than me, how he almost gave me an eating disorder because I cannot date a man who has a smaller waist line than me. His was 24 inches. Laying next to him was like sleeping next to a dying, emaciated kitten that escaped from Auschwitz and found its way into my bed.

It got even weirder when we were hooking up. If a guy is on top of me trying to be all sexy and pin me down as he ravishes me with kisses and bites, it is so much more fun when there is an allusion of helplessness. Not if I can throw him off with one hand, as I did with this one because I wanted to see if I could. I felt like I was hooking up with a girl, honestly. Actually, I think he is thinner than my friends too...he couldn't be more than 130 pounds.

But that is Le Petit Man, treating dating like a business deal. Wooing you with the high interest (like the pun?!), and then you finally see the small print and call off the deal. What got me was how he alluded to trying to fuck as many women as possible, after I made it abundantly clear that, “eh” he just didn’t do it for me. Trying to entice me with false competition is sad. Trying to make me feel like I was a number of his wannabe harem made him pathetic.

He uses the internet to his advantage, trying to make you fall for "his inner beauty". Hoping you could look past your own "superficialness" and see him for the man he is.

It’s something I just don’t get with internet dating. There is the concept of “the other shoe dropping” but sometimes the first date isn’t appropriate for me to realize that I am not getting what I bargained for. I mean, I at least want to get dinner out my troubles of the hair dyeing, the brazillians, and the manicures—move past the requisite drinks date at some point. There is something soul satisfying about having a harmless crush, checking your voicemail to see if he called. The crush acting like a distraction from reality.

Which is why I have sworn off internet dating for the time being. Going back to old fashioned methods of meeting people. Getting blinded drunk, dancing on a bar, and having an intoxicated make-out in a dark corner of the bar.

Too bad I have sworn off alcohol in the meantime. You know, trying to drop the 15 pounds of seasonal depression weight I put on before I head out over to London in the next few weeks.