The Unicorn

So...my friend and I were hanging out at her place watching crappy re-runs on TV and we got talking about the Unicorn. The Unicorn is that perfect person, The One, the yin to your yang or the yang to your yin, the caramel on your crème brûlée, the olive in your martini. Then she told me about this guy she knows. Let's call him Mr. X to safeguard his anonymity. She said that Mr. X is the perfect man for me, she wanted to set me up with him. And these are the reasons she listed:

1. He likes watching weird art movies and random Telegu movies. I like watching weird art movies and random Tamil movies.
2. He has nothing in his room except for a cupboard and bed, not a single thing that he doesn't need. I have epileptic fits about excessive consumerism.
3. He likes wandering off whenever he wants to. I like being left to my devices for long stretches of time and would live in a dungeon for the rest of my life if it had a library.
4. He likes to know everything about the music he likes. I like to know everything about anything I like.
5. He is a fitness freak. I am averse to bodies that are out of shape.
6. He wants separate bedrooms and bathrooms. I want separate bedrooms and bathrooms.
7. He does not want children. I do not want children.
8. He quotes Nietzsche. I quote from everywhere.

While she says all this, I realize that I never want to meet this guy. Ever. The conversation runs out, I leave, and as I walk home, I am thinking about this Unicorn. My friend wants an answer tomorrow, she wants to know if she can set us up. Why do I never want to meet him?

My friend, the same one I was talking to about Mr. X, had told me, "Relationships are all about compromises, you must be more accepting of other people, and have a positive outlook on life." And I said to her, "Fuck that." I don't see acceptance and compromise as an integral part of any relationship that I can be involved in. I am riddled with pessimism and doubt, I think hope is overrated, I delight in the sardonic and sarcastic, I detest idealism, question those "sincere" things that people say, laugh at noble thoughts. All in all, I never want to tiptoe through the tulips of other people's great feelings and emotions.

"You'll never find anyone," my friend told me. I realized she might be right. But I also realized that I couldn't care less. I'm quite okay if I live all alone and become the crazy old cat lady who gets eaten by the neighbour's dachshund.

However, I still don't have an answer to why I don't want to meet the Unicorn. Maybe if I met the Unicorn, everything would become perfect and boring. Maybe I'd rather be like Bertie Wooster and have sudden short-lived infatuations than anything permanent. Maybe I can't stand the thought of change. Maybe it's Maybelline.

I think of the words of the beloved Zenmaster Linji, "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."

The next day I call my friend and tell her, "I don't want to meet the Unicorn. Just like I don't want to meet the Easter Bunny. " "Fine," she said, "Stay holed up in your room forever. Don't come crying to me when you're forty and all alone."

I shrug and hang up. When I'm forty, I'm going to Ulan Bator and eat khorkhog with the nomads.

Not-Really-A-Date

It was the end of the day. Maya was packing away her laptop to leave. "I have to go home and write a letter," she said. Joey had to stay back late. She felt jealous. "Lucky you. Writing a letter while I slave away here for all eternity." Maya found no reason to sympathize with Joey's shenanigans.

Just before Maya left for the day, she asked Joey, "What about the good ones?"
Joey was staring vacantly at papers that seemed to have vague maps on them. "Huh? What?"
Maya said, "The good ones. You know, the good dates. The nice guys. The ones who made you feel great. Come on, I'm sure there were some."

Joey sat back speechless. She had dated so many morons that she'd forgotten what the good ones had been like. "Oh...the good ones. Actually, yes, there was a really good one. And not that far back in the past either. It wasn't technically a date, just a random guy. But yes, it was a good one."

Maya picked up her various bags (food bag, laptop bag, bag bag), and burdened by the thought of the letter she had to write, left, leaving Joey all alone with the mappy papers and the thought of the not-really-a-date.

(Later that night, Joey tells Maya about the best not-really-a-date in recent history. Film dissolves. Flashback to last month where Joey is sitting at one of the tables outside the CCD at Law Garden reading a book on anthropology. There are four tiny, hideously expensive empty bottles of what Joey is sure is fake water on the table.)

Joey hated the coffee at CCD, it tasted like ditchwater. She had drunk a lot of water so had no choice but to visit the hideous germ-laden loo. As she passed by the corner table, the guy looked up at her and smiled.

Joey was shocked, killers smiled at you right before they abducted you and slit your throat and ate your organs, but she smiled back bravely. When she got back to her table, the guy was sitting on the empty table next to hers. Joey instinctively got ready to run. When it came to fight-or-flight, Joey always chose flight. She sat down and looked around for something to beat him with in case he tried to eat her lungs or something. Finding nothing, she held on to her keys. If he tried to attack, she could gouge his eyes out with it.

"You like Levi-Strauss? I see you reading it." he asked her in a thick German accent.
Oh no! A Nazi! Joey thought.

Aloud she said, "Yes." She held the keys tighter.
"Me too," he said.

Joey let go of the keys. And they started to talk about weird things they knew about - weird tribes, Indiana Jones, the Survey of India, concentration camps etc. And a million other things most people would have been bored by. He was ugly, looked like he had a broken nose, his hair had been cut by a dementoid, his shoes were a loathsome khakhi colour, and he was probably almost 40, but Joey still liked him.

They went for a walk at the IIM because Joey told him about the birds that keep crapping on your head there and he wanted to see these marvellous crapping birds for himself. As they walked down the tree-lined avenue at the IIM, dodging birdshit, the guy asked, "Hey, you want beer? I got some," and he opened a backpack that was filled with cans of cold beer. Joey didn't want to spoil the magic by asking logical questions about why the beer was still cold and why anyone would want to walk around with a backpack full of beer cans so she just picked a can and they walked around the campus.

Then it was time to go home and they said goodbye. No phone numbers exchanged, no promises to meet again, no heartbreak, no fornication, nothing. Joey felt happy, though the next day she'd be back to her grumpy, curmudgeonly old self. She felt like someone in an arty Swedish movie.

The birds flew around at IIM, crapping on everything as always.

(Film dissolves. Back to the future.)

"And that was the end of that," Joey said.