Before I talk about Kat, the last girl on my list of colossal failures of late, I’m going to have to give you all a little foreshadowing. I subtly mentioned this before but I’ll spell it out now because it’s going to become important (or at least, important to me).
This is a story about pop culture (generally). This is also a story about the internet (metaphysically). This is, however, also a story about Amy, the girl I spent the better part of the last two years with.
Because this is a story about the internet, I’ll begin by saying we met on it. It wasn’t one of those “what if she’s a guy?” kind of things though. It was a mutual friend more or less playing matchmaker, and knowing that the safest place for two real, attractive, and early 20-somethings to meet these days is in the seclusion of their own bedrooms.
I want everyone to imagine what went wrong. Then realize that you’ve likely got no idea, because the things I can think up will marvel even the most cynical. But anyway, the right now reality of it is that I’m sitting in my apartment with pictures of her, and all I can do is think about how as soon as someone takes a picture of us we’re a celebrity. We immediately become objectionized and are known only for what we’ve presented to the public, especially because of the internet. We took so many pictures of one another it wasn’t even funny.
And because this is a story about pop culture, the reason I listen to Ted Leo and Bright Eyes and Azure Ray and Bruce Springsteen is because they all remind me of her (mostly because she introduced me to them). The reason one of my favorite movies is Pieces of April is because we watched it together fir the first time. Same goes for art. I still have her art on my walls.
Basically, this is a story about Amy because my vision of pop culture (and the internet) is completely shaped by her. Sure, there’s other stuff, like my scholar-like interest in professional wrestling, that have absolutely nothing to do with her, but my favorite stuff usually does.
My point is, Kat made me realize that pretty much the only girl I could be with is Amy. And this is how she did it.
Kat was a very big Gilmore Girls fan (just like Amy, and incidentally just like me). Kat is also a friend of mine, and is still a friend of mine, and this wasn’t actually a date or anything in the sense that a date is something both people are going on. In my head the night she invited me over for a Gilmore marathon was an opportunity to take this friendship further. She thought it was a good idea to procrastinate from her Earth Science term paper.
Over the last summer I caught up on Gilmore Girls because it was something Amy said I had to do. I didn’t do it until after we broke up, because immediately I knew I’d made a mistake and wanted to wallow in things that reminded me of her. I downloaded just about every episode, but couldn’t get a hold of a select few. Kat, who was so much more savvy a pirate than I had them all (and converted to DVD too!) So we planned this night and I brought chips.
Kat haded banter when the TV was on, and this always bothered me because she was the kind of girl who watched so much damn television (and so many reruns) that she would be such a kick ass commentator. It’s always been a great pleasure of mine to play Statler to someone’s Waldorf (or Waldorf to someone’s Statler. I’m not picky) and when I see someone let that potential go to waste I feel like I should say something like “I am perturbed about this.” but I don’t.
During the fast-forwarding of the commercials, just after Dean and Rory kissed for the second time (no tongue), I mentioned that I thought their relationship was interesting because it was almost like the writer was using them to parody lesser dramas and their prototypical teen relationships (which was proven extremely right when the relationship was destroyed by prototypical means). Kat hated the fact that they killed off Dean, because he was so sweet and perfect and normal. I wanted to tell her that he was pretty much the only normal character on Gilmore Girls (though you could argue that Rory was completely normal before she turned heel at the end of season 5), but by this point the show was back on and I shut up.
Thankfully, it’s easy to stay quiet when you’re watching a Gilmore Girls episode you haven’t seen. If you haven’t seen the show, you won’t believe how fast the characters talk. You know those 30 second pauses in between each line on the OC not spewed by Adam Brody? That doesn’t happen here. In fact, I’m not sure there’s ever been a time on Gilmore Girls when there hasn’t been constant chatter or making out. The way they pull this off is that Gilmore Girls isn’t a show about what happens in the lives of these characters. It’s a show about the conversations that happen before and after the happenings of their lives.
Here’s how it usually works. Lorelai and Rory (or a pairing of any of the two dozen folk on the show, really) have a conversation about having to do something, and this is interspersed with weird references to old television and new music. Then, they go inside or drive off or hang up, and then a commercial airs. Afterwards, they have a conversation about what happened, and this is usually filled with weird references from old songs and new movies. The actual matter-at-hand is rarely shown, unless it’s a really good argument between two main characters filled with references to television and music from six months ago. With each DVD set released, it comes with a booklet explaining many of the absurd references. No other TV show does this.
Later on, when Kat is fast forwarding through Rory kissing Jess (because Jess took her away from Dean), I have a moment to ask her if she noticed that as soon as Jess showed up (the book-smart rebel) Dean suddenly became an illiterate farm boy (to make him the quintessential opposite of Jess, because it wouldn’t be a prime time drama if the two love interests weren’t complete opposites). She told me that she thought Dean was always simple like that, and that’s why she liked him. I mentioned the conversation Rory and Dean had in season one about Hunter Thompson, and how that showed Dean not only read but had a passion for it. She didn’t remember, and insisted that I was making shit up. She was in Dean denial.
When you watch 80 episodes of a show over the course of 4 months you notice little discrepancies that even the writers wouldn’t catch. The one I like best is Luke only knowing Lorelai for eight years (during season 4, anyway) but recalling a time he gave chicken soup to Rory because she was sick when she was four (which would have been 12 years before he said it). It’s sort of like if someone lies to you at the beginning of the relationship and six months later they say the lie differently (because they’ve forgotten the story). It’s telling.
Halfway through the episode where Rory and Logan first make out, which is one of the few episodes where everything dramatic happens on-screen, I ask Kat if she thought Luke or Chris was more out of line for what they did, and if that changed the fact that Luke was much more of a classic father figure while Chris was more of a modern father figure (absent and constantly apologetic and drunk)? She said “I don’t actually ever think about that, Kyle. In fact, you’re getting pretty damn annoying right now, so if you would just shut up a bit and we could watch the end of this it would be great.” There would be no kissing her after that.
But at the same moment that I realized Kat and I could never be more than just friends, I realized that Amy was my Waldorf. The one Gilmore Girls episode she’d shown me before we broke up, she talked through most of it, which was fine because I had no interest in the show. But I remembered then how she talked, and it was similar to the way I was talking to Kat. It was then I realized (and this would be my last realization of this paragraph) that it’s now what you like, it’s how you like it that really matters.
I had things in common with other people, but only with Amy did we like (and dislike) things in exactly the same way. There were things I liked that she didn’t, and vice versa, but the things we clicked on we did on a wavelength I’d never heard of in the movies or in love songs.
And at that moment, the moment I crossed Kat off my list, the moment I finished figuring out why everything was going wrong, I went outside and felt what it is to go after the thing that makes you right.
It felt really f*cking good.
