New York Times Modern Love: Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That

"Why do you think Jenna left me?"

Ah, if only most essays could get off to a great rolling start like that.

Brian Goedde becomes this week's subject of observation as he searches the world around him for an answer within. What's funny about this essay for me is that I was completely mislead by the apparent subject of the essay until the very end, at which point the true moral of this story is delivered in a nice, neat package. No, the essay isn't about Jenna, who broke off her long-term relationship with our protagonist suddenly and unexpectedly over the phone. (That bitch!) The essay is, instead, a look at how people interact with others and how they view themselves.

The entire trip is a little dizzying, but I wouldn't consider it a fault of the essay. While it all boils down to how Brian views himself and how other people view him as well (we really never do figure out how Jenna and Brian can appropriately reconcile), there is an additional layer of depth added by the complications of his non-romantic relations with others: the rebound-sex friend; the mutual friend of the couple; the close relative of the estranged partner, with whom Brian will end up estranged as well; and the mother who abandoned him. The twist is that he learns something about his relationship with each of these people as well along the way.

Unfortunately, he learns nothing about himself. And neither do we.

My tendency toward cynicism leads me to the possibility that we're dealing here with a classic case of the unreliable narrator. That is, Brian is not being honest with himself and cannot be honest to us or anyone. This dark theory is only strengthened by the fact that he cannot seem to get support or a straight answer out of people who are close to him.

That said, I want to believe him. I do think that he's somewhat narcissistic for taking on this project, but I don't see him as overflowing with arrogance. I think that, had he been given a helpful answer from someone, anyone (even Jenna, who seemingly gave him a very lame send-off), he might have been able to find what he was looking for. I also have a tendency to trust him because he's not trying to find a way to force his will or viewpoint; he's just trying to get a clue. I wouldn't hold it against him that he's clueless here; having been in a long-term relationship that came to an abrupt end, he never had much to work with from the start.

Still, this is all about his relationships with the others. Of those, he fares best with Cynthea, the "mutual friend". She gives him some very honest and useful factual information that Jenna was unwilling to provide. (As I read this essay, I found myself growing more distaste for this flaky Jenna character with each passing paragragh - did you not? How do you sympathize with someone who completely abandons a 10-year partner for apparently no good reason? But that's it's own topic.) Brian's emotional fragility becomes slightly visible when she takes one of Cynthea's statements to be a comparative insult, but otherwise he gets away pretty cleanly.

He does not do so well with his rebound friend. She sits high on her stool, smokes her Marlboro, and tells Brian:

Over time she developed needs and desires, needs that maybe she didn't even know she was having. And whether or not she told you about these needs, you weren't fulfilling them.

Brian took this a little too much to heart, but give the guy a break, he's been given a bad blow by his ex. For someone who didn't seem to really know what the hell was going on, this just sounds like some sort of feminist ranting about women's emotional needs. You can already tell I'm unsympathetic and unimpressed. "Whether or not she told you about these needs?" Fuck you.

Next is the Stepdad-in-law-was-to-be. (*untying my tongue*) Apparently, this guy is all wisdom and no facts. That in itself is forgivable - at no point does Brian pretend that he's not asking for much with these questions - but this turns quickly into a tale of disassociation. Both of us Brians (reader and writer) were pretty saddened by the sound of the wind rushing out of the relationship between writer-Brian and Stepdad-in-law-was-to-be. Pretty common phenomenon, actually; stop dating the girl for any reason, and none of the friends and family want to even know you any more. (Best personal anecdote: my ex's friends talked some loud shit behind my back after our breakup... you know, after she cheated on me, then cheated on me again, and then lied that she was raped by a guy who she really cheated with. But they were right, I was such a dick for calling it off. And no, I'm not bitter about it.)

Finally, we have Mom. She's obviously a douchebag, and there's really no way around this fact. But Brian's experience with her lead to an important (if cold) lesson about Modern Love: anyone and everyone can be a douchebag, and sometimes (many times) you need to deal with your emotions on your own.

As much as Brian's whiny emotional questions invoked my gag reflex up until this point, I was pleased to see that he finally decided that he was going to deal with this on his own. No half-baked "personal journey" was going to help him with anything, save for his clips. He realizes this, he becomes his own man, and writes it artfully. Then he takes his half-baked personal journey and gets it published in the Times. Bravo.