Skip to primary content

False Advertising of the Self | Aug 15 2000

Yesterday morning my friend “Bridget” emailed me from “England” (she’s “English”) to say how much she enjoys this site and other nice things, and then offhandedly added, “I always tell the truth. Unless I have a crush on someone.” Thus began an exchange in which Bridget revealed a devious strategy for approaching an attractive building-mate, one that I expect many of my readers to want to rush out and employ once they know what it is. Lucky for them, Bridget has graciously granted me permission to share it with the entire world (as defined by the readership of this website – as good a definition as any, in my opinion), so here is our exchange, nearly exactly as it was written, beginning with my initial response to Bridget’s crush comment.

Why would a crush crush your truthful resolve? What is love if not the harboring of another’s truth?

Michael

*

Is my truth a web of lies?

No, it’s just the dramatic romantic in me. It seems more fun to weave a story. And they’re not big lies. Just stupid little ones. Like the way I invented to meet the guy who lived down the hall many years ago… Addressing a birthday card to myself, erasing my name… putting his, opening it and returning it to him saying “happy b-day, I accidentally opened your card…”

Well, anyway, I didn’t do it. Borrowed a screwdriver instead. Dated him for a month. He was an asshole. Semi-stalked him for a couple years. Slept with his friend.

Bridget

*

I don’t understand this birthday card bit. You wrote your name, then erased it? I don’t get that. How did you know when his birthday was? I’m really confused.

Michael

*

Okay, I wanted it to have a postmark. So I mailed it. To myself. So that I would receive it and have something in hand, an excuse, to knock on his door.

However, the letter had to be addressed to him, so that I would be able to “return” it to him. So I had this idea to write my name in pencil. Receive the postmarked letter. Erase my name. Put his. And say “oops, I accidentally got your mail.”

Got it?

Bridget

*

This leaves but one question: How did you know it was his birthday?

Oh, and here’s another: Who “signed” the card and what was the return address?

Frankly, if I’m this guy, I’m thinking the card is bogus and that you like me. So it was probably good that you went with the screwdriver.

Michael

*

No, no, no. It was very clever.

It WASN’T his birthday. Oh, and I’m sorry, I didn’t use HIS name, I made up one. So that it looked like the letter was perhaps to an old resident of the apartment in which he lived. (And I signed a made-up name too.) And he could say “Oh, that’s not me. I’m not Alan, I’m Thomas.” And I could say, “Hi. I’m Bridget. Wanna go out with me for a month, dump me, be semi-stalked and then marry someone else and sit next to me at a co-op orientation?” Get it?

Bridget

*

Got it. Genius. Sorry about the co-op, etc.

Michael

A quick review on how it’s done for those readers who may have spaced out:

  1. Develop a crush on someone who lives in your building.
  2. Buy a birthday card and sign it with the name of a made-up person.
  3. Mail the card to yourself, with no return address, writing your name and address in PENCIL.
  4. When the card comes back, erase your name and address and replace it with the name and address of your crush.
  5. Go to the apartment of your crush, card in hand, and when your crush answers the door say, “Happy birthday, I accidentally opened your card…. Hey, wanna go out with me for a month, dump me, be semi-stalked and then marry someone else and sit next to me at a co-op orientation?”

This reminds me. If you’ve been around this site a while, you know that a few nights back I attended a party in which I asked my fellow party-goers to tell me their most recent lie. One woman – a rather beautiful woman, if you must know – said (I didn’t mention this before), “Is this some kind of line?” No, it wasn’t, or at least not in the sense she meant. However, her response made me remember something I read in my father’s copy of “The Sensuous Man” when I was perhaps ten. What I read was a collection of pick-up lines – or not pick-up lines so much as pick-up PERFORMANCES. The best one was this: You approach a desirable person and, crazy as this seems, embrace him or her and say, “Chris, oh, Chris, I can’t believe after these years to find you here, at a co-op orientation. I’m so glad to see that your skin has cleared up,” whatever you say, and then Chris says, “Who the fuck are you? I’ve never seen you before in my life!” and you say, “Chris, Chris, it’s me, [your name here], the one who pulled you from Lake Such-and-such just as you were about to drown. Could it be that you’ve really forgotten?” etc. (the version in The Sensuous Man was only slightly less outrageous). The desired person will doubtless insist that he or she is not this Chris person, has never had ache or been to Lake Such-and-such, etc., which finally makes you realize, or pretend to realize, what a HORRIBLE MISTAKE you’ve made, whereupon you say, “My god, what I have I done?” etc., etc., followed by the punch line, “Well, if you’re not Chris, then who are you?”

Ten-year-old me found this terrifying. Was there not an easier way?

At eighteen I approached a young woman in a public library, saying something to the effect of, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help but notice you here in the poetry section – I’m really into poetry, you see – and I wanted to meet you and this was the only way I could think of doing it. I’m Michael.” I really did this. I was shivering with fear. The woman was kind. She invited me to sit with her and proceeded to tell me that she was a sophomore in college, liked psychology, and had a boyfriend. I have never tried it again. Ever. Approaching women at parties is not the same thing. Parties provide a context for connection (that’s largely what they’re about), while the poetry sections of public libraries do not.

I mention this incident to talk about truth in advertising; specifically, self-advertising. When the time came to approach someone, the line I chose was the truth. And through the years I’ve basically stuck with this approach, at least within the context of courtship, in part because of my desire – an idealistic desire if ever there was one – to be loved for me, for who I am; not some gussied-up, watered-down version of who I am.

A funny story in this regard. I met my now-ex-girlfriend through a personal ad. We had a wonderful chat on the phone and agreed to meet for lunch. I really liked her and wanted to make a good first impression, so I asked several friends, all women, what they thought I should wear. The consensus was a nice shirt and nice pants, so that’s what I wore, a nice shirt and nice pants, despite the fact that I don’t feel very comfortable wearing nice shirts and nice pants; I’m actually a plain shirt and plain pants person, but my friends – all women! – convinced me that it would be a sign of respect, both to myself and my date, if I looked my “best,” which meant wearing a nice shirt and nice pants. I still remember waiting outside the restaurant and thinking, “This isn’t me. I’m standing here in a nice shirt and nice pants and I don’t feel right. I wish I could run home and change into my plain shirt and plain pants and run back, but there isn’t enough time.” Then my now-ex-girlfriend appeared and as it turns out she was quite attractive (which of course was another thing I was thinking as I stood there: how attractive is this woman going to be?), and then we went inside and sat down and started to talk. I immediately had this feeling that she didn’t like me – and I was right (one is rarely wrong about these things): many weeks later she told me that she’d had a certain impression of me on the phone, one that did not include any nice shirts or nice pants, and that it wasn’t until we talked for a while that she remembered what she had liked about me and could get herself to ignore my damn clothes.

Well, fine, not only was that story fun but it helped make my point. However, to be honest, I could have told any number of other stories that make the opposite point – stories in which I persist on being my plain-shirt self and pay the price for it. That price being rejection, as all of these stories concern a courtship that failed. And failed rightfully, I might add, because the woman in question was looking for someone I wasn’t.

Bridget’s approach is brilliant, in my opinion, but it points toward something I find both distasteful and sad: false advertising of the self. Actually, Bridget’s example is not so apt here. What I’m thinking of, rather, are those people who, wanting love (and who doesn’t want love?), make themselves into a kind of bait for the creature they wish to capture. One can get devoured this way – not by the other one desires, but by the other one creates.

I made myself a promise last week. I promised that whenever I thought of something that seemed too embarrassing to write, I would write it. So here goes. It’s a kind of thought experiment, one designed to test some of the ideas in the previous paragraph. I posit a woman who, wanting to attract a certain sort of guy, gets breast implants. Big ones. She’s right, too: suddenly guys of this type are all over her. Now here’s the scene. She’s in bed with one such specimen and they’re fucking and they both have these little thought bubbles hovering over their heads. His says, “God, I love those tits!” Hers says, “God, I love those muscles!”

Well, fine, presented this way it doesn’t seem so awful: she wants to fuck a guy with big muscles and he wants to fuck a woman with big tits, and here they’re both getting what they want; it is a perfect win/win arrangement. Actually, I believe we should call it a win/win/win arrangement in acknowledgement of the big score capitalism makes for convincing these two that they are products to be marketed – marketing inevitably requiring a budget. And around we go, buying and selling our brains out.

Of course, Bridget’s birthday card ruse has little to do with buying and selling; it’s just a wickedly clever way to meet someone. (Oh, how I wish she had tried this and that it had worked and that she had married the guy and had kids, because then she could tell her kids the story of how their parents met, and the kids could say something like, “God, Mom, you’re such a freak,” and Bridget could say, “Shut up or it’s into Lake Such-and-such with you,” or whatever cutesy thing she says when they’re getting on her nerves.)