Bad boys
April 21, 2002 | 12:00am
A friend is hopelessly smitten with a man who won’t give her the time of day. Yet the more stone-like and aloof his behavior, the more certain she is of their shared destiny. Every effort comes from her–phone calls, texts, requests to get together. I see that it kills her yet in a strange way, it also enlivens her. What is so attractive about a man who withholds his affections? Everything.
My best girlfriends and I used to sit around and joke about the kind of man we really wanted. He was always the rough, macho type; someone who would keep us on our toes–wanting, blushing, anticipating. He was never ever the one who would treat us with kindness; never the good boy. One of my friends always said she couldn’t wait to serve the sando-encased hunk who would ignore her, bark for beer and throw her against a wall or two for entertainment. All in half-jest, of course.
One of my Hollywood crushes is a B-movie regular. He almost always plays the bad guy and when he doesn’t, well, the level of smolder suffers significantly. I’m not even sure he can act, but if I so much as see the man’s shadow on the tube, I am hooked, much to my husband’s over-acted disgust. I can’t blame him. He can sit there and roll his eyes until his forehead begins to light the room and I still won’t budge. Goodbye golf tournament. I will sit through every abominable plot just to revel in Mr. B-Movie’s "badboyness." And what a wonderful bad boy he is. Every story finds him ignoring the gorgeous woman on his arm–some perfect female specimen who seems to live only for that little morsel of attention he might throw her way and when he does, even I want to take cover.
Such is the power of the bad boy who won’t give. He captures your sentient soul and holds it hostage. From then on, everything in your life seems to be about feeling, needing, quenching. Your brain is temporarily turned to pulp, churning out philosophies and theories that rail against your once-reliable wisdom. You are wide open, vulnerable, spread-eagled, throbbing at every point. You walk on tiptoe, unable to touch the ground. You are wild from not knowing; consumed by the all-encompassing need to get him to recognize his salvation in you. You struggle helplessly in the wind, searching furtively for anchor. In a strange, perverse way, you are inflamed and alive. There lies his power.
In high school we always hung out with the good guys, but the bad were the ones who always made it to "boyfriend." They would lure us with indifference, hook us with aloofness, and finally reel us in with that special brand of cultivated nonchalance. It was the ultimate feminine challenge. We would play the game; find out everything they wanted and become it, discarding who we really were for something they might want. No one was happy, of course, but our improperly incarnated, highly deluded hormones kept us in virtual euphoria. Thank God they eventually found their way home.
Now that we are older, hopefully wiser, we see things differently. The bad boy with the overwhelming sex appeal still makes the flesh tingle but he’s hardly the one we want to go home to. We’ve finally figured out that all that excitement leads not to a deep, resonating love, but to a constitution-altering exhaustion. Best path to bruha beauty. Now we know the value of the guy who will get into bed with you and caress your hair until you fall asleep. No groping, panting, heaving, insisting then turning away in disgust at the failure of a woman you are. Now we appreciate the man who shares in the mundane and cherishes us through the daily non-events that make our lives. Now we know that the spaces of our woman heart expand only under the love of a man who treats us with kindness. Now we know that the bad boy is not a demigod but a Neanderthal trapped in a great-looking disguise.
A woman’s journey is complex, often characterized by incredibly bad judgment. Sometimes it takes the stone-cold heart of a man to shock her into recognizing that part of her that must be gingerly picked out of the net and dried in the warm sun. Sometimes it is that hapless flailing about from one extreme to the next that will reveal her center. And so the bad boy serves his purpose. He is not entirely to be dismissed. He is the arrow that points the way.
It is useless to tell a friend to hold out for the right man; to stop wasting her time on someone who is oblivious to the jewel that is her heart. It is not for me to say. Only her soul knows the path it must take to wholeness. She must navigate the course her way, stopping for anyone who might bring her closer to herself. It may take one bad boy after another, but I am confident she will find her path. For now she will dance like a feather in a hurricane. I can only hope that one day soon, somewhere in the horizon, she will find her true north and never again fall prey to the enervating powers of the elusive bad boy.
Jim Paredes will be holding his successful workshop "Tapping The Creative Universe" at the Rockwell Club, Makati on June 24, 26, 28 and July 1, 3 and 5. This workshop is designed to uncover, identify and set aside the blocks that stand in the way of creativity in everyday life. It will be great! Please call Ollie during office hours at 426-53-75, 424-29-21 or 434-29-21 for details. Or e-mail me at myspace@skyinet.net.
My best girlfriends and I used to sit around and joke about the kind of man we really wanted. He was always the rough, macho type; someone who would keep us on our toes–wanting, blushing, anticipating. He was never ever the one who would treat us with kindness; never the good boy. One of my friends always said she couldn’t wait to serve the sando-encased hunk who would ignore her, bark for beer and throw her against a wall or two for entertainment. All in half-jest, of course.
One of my Hollywood crushes is a B-movie regular. He almost always plays the bad guy and when he doesn’t, well, the level of smolder suffers significantly. I’m not even sure he can act, but if I so much as see the man’s shadow on the tube, I am hooked, much to my husband’s over-acted disgust. I can’t blame him. He can sit there and roll his eyes until his forehead begins to light the room and I still won’t budge. Goodbye golf tournament. I will sit through every abominable plot just to revel in Mr. B-Movie’s "badboyness." And what a wonderful bad boy he is. Every story finds him ignoring the gorgeous woman on his arm–some perfect female specimen who seems to live only for that little morsel of attention he might throw her way and when he does, even I want to take cover.
Such is the power of the bad boy who won’t give. He captures your sentient soul and holds it hostage. From then on, everything in your life seems to be about feeling, needing, quenching. Your brain is temporarily turned to pulp, churning out philosophies and theories that rail against your once-reliable wisdom. You are wide open, vulnerable, spread-eagled, throbbing at every point. You walk on tiptoe, unable to touch the ground. You are wild from not knowing; consumed by the all-encompassing need to get him to recognize his salvation in you. You struggle helplessly in the wind, searching furtively for anchor. In a strange, perverse way, you are inflamed and alive. There lies his power.
In high school we always hung out with the good guys, but the bad were the ones who always made it to "boyfriend." They would lure us with indifference, hook us with aloofness, and finally reel us in with that special brand of cultivated nonchalance. It was the ultimate feminine challenge. We would play the game; find out everything they wanted and become it, discarding who we really were for something they might want. No one was happy, of course, but our improperly incarnated, highly deluded hormones kept us in virtual euphoria. Thank God they eventually found their way home.
Now that we are older, hopefully wiser, we see things differently. The bad boy with the overwhelming sex appeal still makes the flesh tingle but he’s hardly the one we want to go home to. We’ve finally figured out that all that excitement leads not to a deep, resonating love, but to a constitution-altering exhaustion. Best path to bruha beauty. Now we know the value of the guy who will get into bed with you and caress your hair until you fall asleep. No groping, panting, heaving, insisting then turning away in disgust at the failure of a woman you are. Now we appreciate the man who shares in the mundane and cherishes us through the daily non-events that make our lives. Now we know that the spaces of our woman heart expand only under the love of a man who treats us with kindness. Now we know that the bad boy is not a demigod but a Neanderthal trapped in a great-looking disguise.
A woman’s journey is complex, often characterized by incredibly bad judgment. Sometimes it takes the stone-cold heart of a man to shock her into recognizing that part of her that must be gingerly picked out of the net and dried in the warm sun. Sometimes it is that hapless flailing about from one extreme to the next that will reveal her center. And so the bad boy serves his purpose. He is not entirely to be dismissed. He is the arrow that points the way.
It is useless to tell a friend to hold out for the right man; to stop wasting her time on someone who is oblivious to the jewel that is her heart. It is not for me to say. Only her soul knows the path it must take to wholeness. She must navigate the course her way, stopping for anyone who might bring her closer to herself. It may take one bad boy after another, but I am confident she will find her path. For now she will dance like a feather in a hurricane. I can only hope that one day soon, somewhere in the horizon, she will find her true north and never again fall prey to the enervating powers of the elusive bad boy.
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