Thursday, 27 May 2010

• The L Dating Chronicles: I Ended Up In Jersey And Made Out With A Murse

  
  Normally this is the kind of story I would plead the 5th on, but I've got a dating chronicle to upkeep... so let's dig in.

  My friend Ramona just got her degree from NYU and scored her dream job in the music biz. I thought this called for a trip to Vegas. She booked us a room in Atlantic City. That's right: I spent the weekend in Jersey.
   

  So, the first night in AC our group of girlfriends hits the Tropicana and takes enough shots to forget the smells that leaked into the car through the air conditioning on the way in from New York. While I was still looking good (aka before the sweat from this Shore-worthy club led to a ponytail and runny mascara) I caught the eye of the sexiest guy I have seen in a long time. I gave him a glance, then the cold shoulder, and before I knew it there was a silky smooth voice asking, "Want a drink?"

  Maybe it was because my head was in "pimp mode" or just because it was one of those nights when I wanted time to dance with my girls, but I was looking for an excuse to end the flirting. 

  "What's your name?"

  "Dan." (Okay, nothing wrong there.)

  "Where are you from?"

  "Jersey." (Fine. I'm not a hater.)

  "What do you do?"

  "I'm a nurse." BINGO!

  The grinding stopped and the kissing ceased, but when the dreaded attack of "What are you thinking? He's so hot!" came from my friends I knew exactly what to say. "I wasn't so into him. He was a male nurse." And when I relayed the story to friends at home who wanted NJ details, they too completely understood. The fact that he was a male nurse was funny to us all. After all, it got a few good laughs for Ben Stiller's character in Meet The Parents. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed the reaction that all my girlfriends had to his occupation if I wasn't deliberately using it as an excuse to shun a drool-worthy guy (calling myself an idiot in retrospect), but suddenly it seemed bizarre that his job was understood to be a total deal breaker.

  I did a mental inventory of all of my exes' occupations. Most ended up in the finance column, while others fell under law student or trust fund baby. And then it hit me: How much weight do we put on what a guy does for a living? At 21 you'd think I would be willing to take a chance on a suvlaki vendor, but it seems like my generation of 20-somethings has put j-o-b at the top of our checklists.

  Remember the scene in Sex and the City where Carrie and Big find that amazing apartment, and while she's drooling over the New York space she suddenly realizes, "Can we afford this?" Mr. Big takes one look at her, utters, "I got it," and every woman's heart in the theater melted. This guy had sent her over the emotional edge for six consecutive seasons and we got wet for him all over again when he picked up the rent check.

  I consulted Jess, my friend of nearly a decade who is dating a fully employed, nearly thirty Cornell grad. She was freaking because after two years of going without a single "I love you," her boyfriend was talking about moving in together.

  "He just switched jobs," she said. "How can I move in with you when you make an entry-level salary, my dad still pays my phone bill, and we live in the most expensive city in the world?"

  There it was again: his job was a major reason their relationship couldn't move forward. Suddenly it seemed so relevant. She was talking about renting a home together. Certainly she had the right to be concerned with his salary... even though it's a new job... and she's only twenty one... right?

  And then there is my roommate Grace, who is dating a guy who just turned thirty. She loves him desperately but he never went to college, collected unemployment for a year, and still plays in the shit-spattered sandbox of seasonal employment. Every time she tells me about the latest job-related problem in their relationship, my advice is the same. He's a loser; dump him. But if I take a step back, he is probably the most caring, devoted guy in any of my friends' lives. So which is it? Dump, or no dump?

  Do we judge men based on their jobs? It seems to me like this might be a lingering afterthought of the old school mentality that a man has to provide for a woman. I never planned on staying home with a gaggle of kids behind my white picket fence, but I think that the power-suit career might make a man more attractive in my eyes. We all ooh and ahh at the boys with briefcases, and red convertibles, but if we want to make the argument that a job is a legitimate relationship concern, then a woman's job should be just as big of an issue when it doesn't seem to be. I've never heard a guy talk about the car his girlfriend drives or get on a woman's case about her career. Is this a way for us to bring a 1950's mentality into the 21st century, or should a guy's occupation factor into his dateablility?

   

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