When Supergirl met Batman

Among the upsides of a world that keeps getting smaller is that it’s now okay to set two people who live in two different countries up on a date (as long as the time difference does not exceed three hours, otherwise the technology-assisted relationship becomes tricky). And with Christmas being a prime time for that crucial face-to-face first meeting, I tried to arrange something between two friends — a driven and determined woman who has everything but the man, and an equally successful man who, by all accounts, is not afraid of women who openly declare that they can have everything and who shrug off the old dilemma of career versus family as totally old.

I don’t know either party very well, so in the spirit of thoughtful matchmaking, I decided to invest a little time doing the preliminary groundwork and asked each one what his or her requirements and non-negotiables were. With three beers in him, Guy Friend assured me he was up for anything — commitment issues, temper problems, competitive streaks, whatever — except ugly feet. Apparently, long, painted toenails filed to a sharp point were very Wolverine and strictly for X-Men. I know many men who check out feet like they do other curvier aspects of a woman’s physique, so this came as no surprise. Noted.

Meanwhile, Supergirl’s response was a typically lengthy e-mail that read like God’s concept paper for Brad Pitt — willing to plunge headfirst into a family half the population size of “The Last Supper”; willing to support his partner in everything she wanted to do or anyone else she wanted to adopt; and willing to look hot and artfully disheveled all the time. At the end of her e-mail came a surprisingly singular, albeit curious, bottom line. “I would never,” she wrote, “date someone whose living room furniture revolved around a large TV with tentacles for games. Or someone who has all those action figurines that look like monsters. Or someone who keeps his PSP in a velvet pouch.” The last line has no double meaning: some guys actually do have velvet blankets for their PlayStations.

Guy Friend happens to be among those in their 30s or even 40s who have not outgrown the toys they had when they were 10. With infinitely more money and space to call their own, they like to think of themselves not just as mere boys with childhood toys but as collectors. Most of these toys are action figures of superheroes, and Guy Friend’s main guy is Batman. He has 11 models of varying tabletop sizes and make — one is hard plastic, another is aluminum, and one has a broken arm from when his nephew accidentally trampled on it. His nephew is no longer allowed near the Batman collection shelf.

I tried to argue on Guy Friend’s behalf, saying, “He’s completely mature and he could just be, you know, a little boy at heart. Isn’t that cute?”

Pop psychology, my female friend told me, would immediately draw parallels between a guy’s “obsession to recover his lost childhood” and his capacity for serious decision-making, for instance:

Girl: Should we get a two bedroom or a three-bedroom apartment?

Boy: Definitely three. The toy collection and the Wii can go in the third bedroom.

Girl: But we have two kids!

Boy: They’re small, they can share the other room. By the way, they’ll need permission to enter the game room. You know how they just bump into everything, and the new Batman is worth a month’s rent.

It sounded to me like Supergirl had been flying where the oxygen is pretty thin — the whole dialogue of a future life with Batman was much, much longer and at some point included a toy-collection-versus-kids’-college-education debate — so I decided to put the date on hold.

Girl Leaves Lover Over Darth Vader

Boys’ small toys are a non-issue for most women. “As long as,” clarifies one friend, “they don’t play with it. Or make it walk or fly, with sound effects.” Her boyfriend has a display wall of toys he has collected from all his trips — they all look like they came from the same factory in China, but hearing him recount how he found each one, almost always by accident, in between business meetings abroad is like listening to someone share a swashbuckling tale of acquiring a kris knife in a strange land. It’s simply entertaining, and totally harmless.

He does, however, concede that a few, notably whack men have taken it to an extreme. One guy, he was told, had a dazzling collection of all things Star Wars and knew the myth and the legend by heart. This guy could speak of Darth Vader’s pain like it was his own. His girlfriend, on the other hand, could deal with all the talk, but when she came home to their shared apartment one day and found Darth Vader standing in the hallway, she decided it was war. Evidently, toys are one thing, but a life-sized dark Sith lord in the house is another. Guess who the guy chose to keep.

Another woman I know is more supportive. Her husband has a roomful of toys, most of them still in their original boxes so they can be viewed through the clear plastic box windows. On one occasion, she even gave him what at some point was a central conversation/art piece in his apartment: Wolverine’s hand and forearm, metal blades blazing and glinting in the yellow light, standing upright inside a glass casing. It was a thing of beauty.

Many of my women friends see nothing wrong with harmless toy collections, and most men just seem more perplexed than intrigued when I bring up the subject as though it was causing ripples in the universe. Collecting toys, one guy clarified, is not a systematically motivated geekiness like, say, taxidermy. He said, “It’s not as though we’ve become non-performing dorks who stay up all night sorting out the lineage of all these superheroes.” He snorted at the idea, then backtracked. “Although if anyone’s interested, I… I kind of know it.”

I told Guy Friend all about Supergirl’s concerns, which I delicately branded as “hesitations,” replacing the gruff tone of The Dialogue of a Future Life with coy giggles. All I needed was one word in the line of “Hey, that’s not true, your friend is being paranoid” and the date would be on again. Supergirl was flying to town in eight days, and would be here a little over a week, so any local bookings or cancellations in her busy schedule were strictly touch-move.

With a blank-eyed, mesmerized countenance as he sunk deeper into the couch for another round of Raw Vs. Smackdown, a wrestling video game, Guy Friend enigmatically said, “Cool.” I decided that thoughtful matchmaking was overrated, and that I had better things to do than force the issue, so I simply flipped a coin. The date is on again. Bahala na si Batman.