Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (and what it says about relationships)

Or a dog.

 

It's remarkable how many short relationships are centered around a man and a woman in a would-be story.

 

Speaking as someone who is currently trying to date in this age, it's all fucked up. Tinder is supposed to be the app where you find random hookups. Instead, I went out on a few dates with a few different women and nothing happened. Then I got on a more "serious" dating app and met a single mom who was about six years younger than me. We met for beers, got drunk, made out for a while, agreed to a second date, went to dinner a few nights later, went back to my place for a little bouncy bouncy, texted back and forth the next day then, suddenly, it just stopped. We never spoke or texted again. Mutual ghosting. Wasn't sad about it, though. Certainly didn't feel compelled to call her a whore. Felt like we both got what we wanted out of it. ... I can empathize with the idea of the older guy being sensitive about his image when a younger woman is involved. I'm sure as hell never going to be in the shape I was in during my 20s again unless I decide to quit drinking beer (lol).

This is a long-winded way of saying that this piece of fiction spoke to me in a way where I could empathize with both characters.

 

Is it? Seems to me that's sort of the basic dynamic of all human existence.

 

Re-skimming the story, it seems like the turning point is when he asks her if she's a virgin. She laughs, he's embarrassed. Until that point, she's pretty turned on. I'm not sure if that's supposed to show she's fickle or what it's supposed to show. But it's interesting that that's the turning point in their courtship.

 

Didn't he shove his tongue down her throat like a rabid animal well before that? That's when she started getting the vapors about him.

 

There's quite a bit in there about how shitty she thinks he is at ... things.

 

The funniest part (and funniest isn't the right word) but the funniest part was during the descriptive sex and I thought, Wow, the New Yorker is hawking cheap porn these days?

 

One of the reasons I think the story is great is the writer doesn't make Robert someone who wants a cheap hook up with a hot college girl that he's going to ghost, he actually wants a quasi-relationship with her and is like "Can you tell me what I did wrong?" He never calls her a whore if she handles the parting like an adult bit here is the thing — she's not quite an adult emotionally. (Neither is he!)

 

And, again, not only does she practically ghost him, but then when he shows up at the bar (which is a fairly stalkerish move, I admit), her friends circle around her and whisk her out of the place. That couldn't have sat well.

 

Spoiler: The story is nonfiction and Robert is Ryan Lizza.

 

I was hoping more would come out about that today.