Dear Doolino,
The straight men on campus don’t know how to treat women, much less act around one or ask one out. Can you please give them some advice on how they should do better?
Love,
Heteroman Hater
Dear Heteroman Hater,
Ah, mortal men … I don’t know how you humans live with them. I know there is a slew of assorted philosophy, sociology and political science majors who could passionately reason as to why we can, in fact, live without them, so I digress. You are critiquing some of the slimiest among us, dear reader, which means that you undoubtedly have your work cut out for you — heterosexual men, while painfully easy to understand, are more difficult to instruct than that bumbling other “mascot,” Swoop, on game day. But, if you are insistent on pursuing the personality equivalents of Goodrich C. White Hall, I will attempt to corral them for you with my superb advice.
Hello, heterosexual men: For the sake of conciseness, I will refer to you as He-Men. For you uncultured swines who do not know, this abbreviation references a hyper-masculine comic book character who too many of Emory University’s heterosexual males hope and fail to emulate. If I did not wear my dazzling black cape and top hat impeccably, I would swap them for a pair of khaki shorts and a Bass Pro Shops cap to better relate to you. Although I can pull off most outfits, I do not think that I could stomach the shame of wearing such drab mortal gear. Winter is coming quickly, my admirers, and if you would like to be partnered in the jeering period known as “cuffing season,” you will have to act with haste.
Shocking as it may be, He-Men, women do have interests and needs that differ from your own. Good sirs, hold onto your Coors Lights because this information is true. A woman doesn’t care when you exclaim that Patrick Bateman is “Literally me!” She doesn’t want to hear your hour-long explanation of “The Godfather,” and you definitely do not need to share your unexceptional grade-point average, use the phrase “Well, actually …” or demonstrate the correct way to change a tire. Trust me, the secondhand embarrassment I feel from you wannabe He-Men trying to convince anyone who cannot run away fast enough that Emory would benefit from a football team is discouraging. In my neighborhood, the depths of Hell, women are the ones who do the explaining (as that is every entitled man’s worst nightmare), while men such as yourselves are forced to sit and — brace yourselves — listen to them. Start practicing this now, so you do not have to learn the hard way when you arrive in the pits of Hell.
Instead of asserting your manliness by refusing to subject yourselves to the horror of a conversation about your feelings or regaling her with tales about your summer internship in which you almost touched the same door handle as Mark Zuckerberg, share a moment with the woman you cherish. Ask her to go on a walk in Lullwater Preserve (once the Atlanta heat is marginally cooler than Hell), take an artistically enriching trip to the Michael C. Carlos Museum or recreate the pottery scene from the hit film “Ghost” in the ArtsLab. Treat her like a human being with autonomy and individual interests because, hint, hint, she is.
Finally, to Heteroman Hater, and every other woman seeking an emotionally intelligent straight man on this campus, I have one piece of advice for you: Take matters into your own hands. If men do not know how to ask someone out, then you must channel the unearned confidence that they shoulder every day and lead by example. My hundreds of years on this wretched Earth have taught me that men are like fish: wide-eyed, single-minded and desperately responsive to bait.
If you are interested in a student-athlete, for instance, you can hold out a leathery chicken patty from the Dobbs Common Table and extol its protein-related virtues. If you are looking for a man in finance, my first piece of advice is to stop. But, if you’re insistent, then I would suggest standing alone in the middle of the Goizueta Business School arch, a structure with a larger endowment than any of the men that you are searching for, and simply look confused. Slowly, they will spawn around you, eager to explain why you are managing your earnings, your investments and your life incorrectly — let them.
I would suggest pursuing a male psychology major, but I fear that most of them are too far gone. However, Sigmund Freud did invent the term “superego”— among other things that I will not mention among polite society — so perhaps psychology is relevant to heterosexual men after all. Good luck braving the world of straight Emory men, my friend, and remember that Doolino knows best.
Doolino resides in Atlanta. | Doolino’s origins are yet to be discovered.
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