“Mickey’s Rival”

When I got home from my mission I was determined to keep a journal, but after a few years of “Amy’s so great... Amy just broke my heart; Kari’s so great… Kari just broke my heart,” I decided to write off journal writing because all my entries seemed to be about girls—and it seems like most girls I like (no matter how powerful my connection seems to be with them right off the bat) don’t remain in my life for long enough to rationalize the amount of pages I tend to spend on them.

When my good friend D$ opened my eyes to the wonders of maintaining a blog, I determined to write only fun stuff—nothing sappy, nothing love struck—I didn’t want to waste my time writing about every cute girl I met. But I want to write about this one, because what’s significant isn’t the fact that I’ve met a girl that I’m interested in (although that happens so seldom that it is, in itself, noteworthy), but the significance is in the competition surrounding this girl.

“Comes with the territory, Kent!”

I like pretty girls. In fact, I can’t think of any girl I’ve ever been interested in who was ugly. Pretty girls get a lot of attention from a lot of guys, so I’m accustomed to situations in which the girl I like gets attention from several (sometimes many) other guys.

“Truth to say, every portal to Katrina’s heart was jealously guarded by a host of rustic admirers.”

There’s an old Mickey Mouse cartoon entitled “Mickey’s Rival.” The premise is Mickey is trying to have a peaceful, romantic picnic with his main squeeze, Minnie, and another guy mouse by the name of Mortimer pulls up and starts hogging all of Minnie’s attention. Minnie is impressed and entertained my Mortimer’s tall physique, flashy clothes, fast car, and non-stop gags (which, unfortunately, come at Mickey’s expense). The entire time Mickey is steaming, because, although Minnie seems to enjoy Mortimer’s antics, Mickey can see past all that charm and see the weasel that Mortimer really is deep down.

“But Ichabod was confident he’d soon ride rough shod over these simple country bumpkins.”

I used to worry a lot about the competition if I knew that a girl I liked was being schmoozed by other guys, but the more of my competitors I meet, the more I get to know just how unique I am, and the more I realize that even if there’s no such thing as an ideal man, there is an ideal me—and I totally nail it. No guy will ever be as me as I am. And if it turns out that a girl chooses one of those chumps over me, then there is obviously something about that girl that either points her preferences toward an ideal other than the one I think is best (that best ideal being me), or that distorts her vision into thinking that the other guy is better at being me than I am.

“Don’t be upset, Jim dear. It isn’t that I don’t love you. I do. I love everybody. But when Ted explained how much he loved me, and…”

“All at once we both realized that we belong together.”

“The two of us dedicating our lives to making people happy with our feet.”

“The two of you, huh? Dedicating your lives to making people happy with your feet. That’s sweet. Well, I guess that kick I just got was a good start.”

Therefore, it doesn’t (completely) bother me to see other guys hitting on the girl that I like because I realize that the presence of inferior competition will simply separate the dross from the gold. If she falls for the Mortimers of the world, then it is she who is the dross, because she “shall not see when good cometh” (Jeremiah 17:6—if you enjoy irony, look up that verse (King James’ Bible) and read it from the beginning). And if she is the kind of 24-karat girl worth being interested in, then she will see those Mortimers for the dross that they are—despite their flashy clothes and fast cars.

“The most formidable obstacle of all, however, the schoolmaster failed to recon with. That was the redoubtable Brom Bones, himself.”

What’s newsworthy about the competition with this girl is that my competitor this time isn’t the usual shallow, superficial, one-dimensional Mortimer that I’m used to dealing with. No, this time it’s none other than my truest bro, Dustin (‘D’, D$, D’Narrow, Glaige) Glaizier.

Let me explain—our other roommate, Ty, and his girlfriend, Lisa, set up Dustin and me with some of Lisa’s friends for the six of us to go on a triple date. My date was quite pretty, yet quite not what I’m looking for. I won’t say what, I wouldn’t want to embarrass her or offend the mutual friends we have, so I’ll just say that for me and my preferences, she was without question a Mortimer.

Dustin’s date, on the other hand, was very cute and totally my type. She was bright, she was bubbly, and she gave the impression that she was the type of girl that would have no trouble picking out a Mickey from a crowd of Mortimers. The three couples stuck together for most of the night, so all six of us got plenty of time to hang out with each other—which I loved because it gave me a chance to finally get to know Lisa without her and Ty being all smoochie-faced on the couch. It also gave me plenty of chances to interact with Dustin’s date, Cassy. Cassy and Lisa are roommates and they invited Ty, Dustin and me over for dinner that Sunday, which gave us all more time to get to know each other.

“Now, the ease with which Brom cleared the field of rivals both peaked and provoked the fair Katrina.”

It was pretty obvious that Dustin was into Cassy, and she seemed pretty down with him. Seeing as how fate had set the two of them up together on the date, I realized that regardless of how impressed I was with her, I needed to stay out of the way. But, I knew that would be hard to do, because there was no denying that I was more impressed by her than by any girl I'd met in a long, long time.

“So, what do you think of her, Han?”

“I’m trying not to kid.”

One of the things that has brought D$ and I so close, especially as of late, has been the fact that we can both discuss dating woes with the other guy, and unlike most people I talk with, his advice actually makes sense and rings true with my goals and expectations (because his are the same as mine). Given that that feeling is mutual, Glaige e-mailed me a few days after that group date to ask for my take on what I thought would be his most favorable next move to make with Cassy.

“Though a wiser man would have shrunk from the competition, love—they say—is blind, and Ichabod was aware only of the dame fortune that was at last thundering at his door.”

I had been back and forth in my mind as to how, or even whether, I would tell Dustin that I was digging Cassy. It was obvious that he liked her, and it was apparent that she enjoyed both Dustin's and my company. I had come to the conclusion that I would just hold off telling him until it seemed absolutely necessary. Well, now that he was asking for advice, it seemed absolutely necessary—for I didn’t want to allow my interests in her to even give a threat of biasing my broish advice.

I replied to his e-mail saying that I probably wasn’t the best person to be giving advice on the matter, because I was interested in her myself. He wasn’t upset—in fact, he said it came at no surprise. We had discussed the matter before of approving of each other’s future wives: that the only way you could ever truly feel that a girl was good enough for your bro would be if you felt a bit of jealousy—meaning that you wouldn’t mind having a girl just like that yourself. So instead of getting mad and telling me to get my own girl, he just smiled with an implied understanding that I considered her good enough for him.

“Oh, that’s going to be easy… like peeling a turtle.”

We were very open about how difficult it would be to both be vying for the same girl’s attention—especially since we can both see what she might see in one guy or the other. And we’re both so similar, we’re both such Mickeys, that the advantage that we usually enjoy over the many Mortimers who we’re each so used to competing with is gone. It’s hard not to feel in competition with him. I can feel the temptation to start looking for flaws in him, but I stop myself because he’s my bro.

I can totally see why she’d chose him over me. He’s so chill about everything, whereas I get pretty anal about this or that. He’s got his own style—the way he dresses, his sense of humor, his colored hair, and me—I mostly just dress and look the same as every other conservative preppy.

“There was no doubt that Ichabod was the man of the hour. Brom knew that he must concede his rival still another victory, and yet, there was still a chance his time would come…”

Yet at the same time, I’m really not too concerned about her choosing him over me. I feel like who I am, is exactly the kind of product I want to present, and if she likes someone else—even my ultimate bro D’Narrow, then she obviously sees in him something that she doesn’t see in me—and I’m sure when I see what it is, the mere discovery that such a thing would be as important to her as to be the factor that distinguishes me from another guy, I’ll lose all interest in her, because it will be the part that makes him him, and if that's what she wants, then she's not what I want, because I want a girl that is looking for a guy like me.

It won’t be something that he and I have in common, and it won’t be something I could or would want to adopt, or worse--fake. Some things just aren’t me, and if another guy has it and its something that one particular quality girl is looking for, then my blessings are upon them and their future, because I’m really not interested in changing who I am just for a girl, nor in “dedicating my life to making people happy with [my] feet.”

“You’re crazy, Maimey.”

“I’m crazy?! I knows Miss Linda. I knows her like I knows my own kids. Why, she ain’t the fancy type no more than you are. What she wants is what you got right here."

But in the off chance that what she's looking for is what am, I'm willing to endure any competition necessary. And I'm confident that there's no risk of damaging a friendship, because as Glaige and I have discussed on several occasions, the reason we're friends isn't because we like to do the same activities, or listen to the same music, or wear the same brands (in fact, we're polar opposites on all those things), it's because of who we are and how we perceive and approach life. It's because we're not just friends, but bros.

“We're the same... split, right down the middle...”