Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me_ (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling [56]
10. I really think guys only need two pairs of shoes.
A nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors. The key, of course, is that you need to replace your Chuck Taylors every single year. You cannot be lax about this. Those shoes start to stink like hell. They cost forty dollars. You can afford a new pair every year. And if you can’t, why can’t you? You have much bigger problems. Stop reading this and go deal with them.
11. Bring wine or chocolate to everything.
People love when guys do that. Not just because of the gift, but because it is endearing to imagine you standing in line at Trader Joe’s before the party.
12. Get a little jealous now and again, even if you’re not strictly a jealous guy.
Too much, and it’s frightening, but a possessive hand on her back at a party when your girlfriend looks super hot is awesome.
Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry
I FEEL LIKE WE know each other pretty well by now. You’ve read about African kids bullying me, Broadway plays rejecting me, and my boss throwing me out of my place of employment. When I’ve cried about these things, the pain was real. So I guess I should actually feel grateful for all the times I cried from something that did not scar me emotionally. Isn’t that what makes us wiser, or more interesting, or something? Nietzsche did a whole thing about this. Anyway, in addition to crying at typical girl cry-bait, like The Notebook, I also have been moved to tears by some other stuff, which I’ve listed in no particular order:
THE PROMISE OF EVAN LIEBERMAN
Just before Christmastime, when I was twenty-six, I met a really cool guy. I’ll call him Evan. He was in finance and had been the college roommate of my friend Jeff, who worked on a sitcom I loved. Evan was smart, financially stable, and he loved comedy, even though he wasn’t in comedy. We had roughly the same job description, which was that we both worked long hours at jobs we loved. Most notably, Evan was cheerful. It sounds odd, but cheerful is very hard to find in Los Angeles. I think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful. At that time I remember thinking, I just want to meet a guy who has not been, at one point in his life, diagnosed with clinical depression. That was my only criterion. Oh, and that he wouldn’t make me convert religions if things got serious. (One thing you should know about me: I absolutely refuse to stop being a culturally Hindu, deeply superstitious Christmas tree have-r.) Evan was very exciting. For our first date, he took me to a really cool Korean BBQ place in K-Town he had clearly researched and driven by beforehand. That kind of apparent effort slays me. Over dinner Evan told lots of slightly embarrassing and funny stories about himself. He loved The Office and had seen exactly half the episodes, which was the perfect amount to me, for some reason. He was funny in a natural way. Plus he was super cute, in a “handsomest guy in the AP calculus class” kind of way, if that makes sense.
Do guys have any real idea how much time girls spend getting ready for a promising date? For my second date with Evan, I spent the afternoon getting my eyebrows waxed and my nails done, and spent a fortune at Fred Segal on a new skirt and even more time making the salespeople all weigh in on it. I honestly don’t understand how people go on dates on weeknights; don’t they want all that fun time before to get ready? I had kept all my best friends updated about my upcoming date in a long and exhaustively detailed e-mail chain with the subject heading: “HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, MAY NOT TURN INTO A CRAZY JANE EYRE ATTIC LADY AFTER ALL.” I really enjoy all these rituals; it’s part of the fun of having a good date to look forward to. But it takes a lot of time and effort.
At six-thirty