Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.08.2004, Page 29

BEERMAN GETS ROMANTIC by Beerman
They say guys trade love for sex and girls trade sex for love. They are, on occasion, right. Sometimes
you give too much away of one without getting enough of the other, and misery results. Sometimes a
shaky equilibrium is maintained, and marriage results. Which usually ends up with both parties losing
interest in both commodities.
But who are they kidding anyway?
People don´t fall in love with each
other. They fall in love with them-
selves. A guy falls in love with a girl
who laughs at his stupid jokes, which
makes him feel intelligent and witty.
A girl falls in love with a guy who
constantly tells her how beautiful she
is. Which makes her feel, well, beau-
tiful. You fall for the one that makes
you feel good about yourself.
A wedding is in three distinct
stages. Firstly, there´s the ceremony.
You sneak glances over at the girls
on the other side, trying to deter-
mine who´s available and who´s not.
The most pleasantly surprising thing
about a wedding ceremony is how
brief it is. The only time I´ve been
to church so far was during confir-
mations and graduations, and they
always seem to take forever. This is
not because weddings are any more
efficient than other ceremonies, it´s
just that there are fewer people get-
ting married at a time.
The ceremony over, we move
over to phase two: the eating and the
drinking. These happen to be two of
my favourite activities, but there´s
something uncomfortable about
eating at weddings. Perhaps it’s the
girliness of everything. The all-
pervasive hearts, bells and flowers.
I thought a wedding was supposed
to be a union of two people. But
everything around you seems to
suggest that you´re entering their
territory now. Perhaps you always
were, as soon as you started to take
an interest in them. How many guys
do you know who´ve tried to become
experts in poetry, in astrology, in any
subject you can think of because it
might conceivably appeal to girls?
How many girls do you know of who
memorise the names of football play-
ers to be able to hold a conversation
with guys? The game is played on
their terms from the start.
The man sitting next to me hap-
pened to have come up fourth in the
strongest man in Iceland competi-
tion, which at least lent a little bit
of masculinity to the proceedings. I
almost felt like trying to take him,
just to see if I could. But it was fairly
obvious I couldn´t.
After the grub is disposed of,
we move on to the third and
final stage: the come-ons.
Weddings are traditionally
thought of as good places
to pick up girls. First of all,
the booze is free. “Can I get
you a drink?” doesn’t entail financial
expenditure. Nor is your prospects´
inebriation limited by your account
size.
Secondly, chicks have a thing
about weddings. You’re hoping for
someone so desperate to get married
she’ll throw herself into bed with
anyone, and hopefully will have over-
come her longing by the morning
after.
But desperate means more
desperate than yourself and that, I
tell you, is hard to come by. I have a theory. If you sit
down next to a girl for long enough, eventually she’ll
be forced to respond. Mostly they do this by walking
away. But every now and then, someone will say some-
thing like “Hi,” which is your cue to jump in. If only
you knew more about astrology.
illustration: Þorsteinn Davíðsson
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