A Girl Who..

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."
— Rosemary Urquico

Craigslist.

"What Happened to All the Nice Girls?"

I see this question posted with some regularity in the personals section, so I thought I'd take a minute to explain things to the men out there that haven't figured it out.

What happened to all the nice girls?

The answer is simple: you did.

See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic gal pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. She'd tag along with you when you went shopping for the nights "smokin' date", stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn't feel like going out, or even sit there and listen to you while you droned on about how horribly the (other) girl that you were fucking treated you.

At the time, you probably joked with your guyfriends about how she was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to her. They probably teased you because they thought she had a crush on you. Given that her behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic, you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for her, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were "just friends." Besides, she totally wasn't your type. I mean, she was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn't know how to dress herself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, sexy, rich, stylish girlfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.

Eventually, your Platonic buddy drifted away, as your relationship with the girlfriend got more serious and spending time with this other girl was, admittedly, a little weird, if you werent dating her. More time passed, and the girlfriend eventually cheated on you, or became boring, or you realized that the things that attracted you to her weren't the kinds of things that make for a good, long-term relationship. So, now, you're single again, and after having tried the bar scene for several months having only encountered whores blondes and douche bags, you wonder, "What happened to all the nice girls?"

Well, once again, you did.

You ignored the nice girl. You used her for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy. You laughed at her consideration and resented her devotion. You valued the aloof girlfriend more than the attentive "just-a-" friend. Eventually, she took the hint and moved on with her life. She probably came to realize, one day, that men aren't really attracted to girls who hold doors open; think you smell great when you wearing the same shirt for 4 days; or make dinners just because; or buy you a Christmas gift that you mentioned, in passing, that you really wanted five months ago; or listen when you're upset; or hold you when you cry. She came to realize that, if she wanted a man like you, she'd have to act more like the girlfriend that you had. She probably cleaned up her look, started making some money, hid behind a mask of make up, and generally acted like more of an bitch than she ever wanted to be.

Fact is, now, she's probably getting laid, and in a way, your ultimate rejection of her is to thank for that. And I'm sorry that it took the complete absence of "nice girls" in your life for you to realize that you missed them and wanted them. Most men will only have a handful of faithful girls stumble into their lives, if that.

So, if you're looking for a nice girl, here's what you do:

1.) Build a time machine.

2.) Go back a few years and pull your head out of your ass.

3.) Take a look at what's right in front of you and grab ahold of it.

I suppose the other possibility is that you STILL don't really want a nice girl, but you feel the social pressure to at least appear to have matured beyond your infantile taste in women. In which case, you might be in luck, because the nice girl you claim to want has, in reality, shed her nice girl mantle and is out there looking to unleash her cynicism and resentment onto someone JUST LIKE YOU.

If you were five years younger.

So, please: either stop misrepresenting what you want, or own up to the fact that you've fucked yourself over. You're getting older, after all. It's time to excise the bullshit and deal with reality. You didn't want a nice gril then, and she certainly doesn't fucking want you, now.

Sincerely,

A Recovering Nice Girl.