works by william pham, 2005-present
The One-Hundred Percent Perfect Person
What qualities constitute
the perfect and completely idealized partner
for you?
This is a question a lot of us struggle with.
We daydream and imagine, wrapping images
around a blank slate of a person that,
as far as we know,
does not exist (yet).
And then we meet people in real life,
and we measure them against this
invisible set of unrealistic criteria.
Inevitably, when they don't match up,
we then have a new struggle:
reconciling reality with the idealization of
these people whom we spend time with.
Perhaps her nose points slightly to the left.
Maybe his penis points slightly to the right.
Maybe she smells vaguely of peanut butter,
which you hate,
because when you were eight years old
your brother smeared peanut butter
all over the gears of your brand-new bike
and it took forever to clean it all off.
Maybe he doesn't smell like anything,
which could be the most disconcerting smell of them all.
Her eyebrows are very bushy,
which reminds you of the time you went
to a museum of natural history,
and saw a lifelike wax statue of
a Neanderthal man with very bushy eyebrows,
and it was kind of frightening because he was holding a stone axe
and dragging a Neanderthal woman by her hair into his cave.
Probably he was going to rape her,
and maybe she was into the whole nonconsensual thing,
maybe it was just a rape fantasy, but
maybe it wasn't, and
the whole thing just made you really uncomfortable.
So when she smiles, and raises her eyebrows,
you think about vomiting;
you don't call her back after the first date.
He has acne scars on his neck,
which reminds you of when you were in high school,
and you had acne
not just on your face and neck, but your shoulders too,
and all up and down your back like little geysers
which sometimes spewed pus.
It made laundry traumatic;
it made high school completely unbearable,
because if it was particularly bad,
you'd have to stash an extra shirt in your backpack or locker
along with all of the medication,
the topical creams,
the washes that burned because of their high concentration of
various skin-scouring acids,
and the antibiotics which were the worst of all,
because when you were popping pills in the bathroom,
people assumed you were dropping ecstasy
or something.
And you wished you were.
We can't help these completely irrational connections.
We can't help the way we feel about people, good or bad;
but we can control how we act upon our feelings.
This is my humanitarian project:
classified ads for the one-hundred percent perfect person for you.
Only one-hundred percent perfect people
should consider replying to an advertisement.
Of course, perfection very rarely works out both ways;
someone who is one-hundred percent perfect for someone else
may not think that that someone else is perfect for him or her.
Put yourself out there anyway.
Think about your concept of perfection in a person,
the kind of person you want to spend the rest of your life with.
Why bother with the rest?
And if it doesn't work out, then maybe
you can start searching for the ninety-nine percent perfect person,
or ninety-eight percent,
or ninety-seven,
and so on.
But you'd have to find someone else to help you with that.
That is not my area of expertise.
This is a bargain at one dollar a word per week.
One hundred dollars for
one hundred words to find your
one-hundred percent perfect person.
Really, this kind of thing is invaluable.
Please act now.
Space is limited.
There are a lot of lonely people out there,
and I'm not just talking about the single people,
though that's most of them.
Realistically speaking,
the divorce rate in the United States is around forty percent;
four people out of every ten.
And of those other six,
you might imagine that
at least a few of them are in unhappy marriages,
but they are toughing it out as if we're still
playing baseball in elementary school,
and we slide for that second base steal,
and we skin our knees,
and it really hurts,
it really stings,
and we know that there will be hydrogen peroxide which
hurts even more,
that burning clear liquid that all the adults say
we need to have poured over our wounds
but we can't see why because it stings so much,
but the coach just says,
"Walk it off."
So we walk it off
through the rest of our lives.
Don't walk --
run to the nearest telephone, or computer.
This is the digital age, of course,
so we have automated submission forms on our website,
please submit your credit card number,
of course this is a secure transaction,
please don't mind the sensationalist stories.
Please digg it,
del.icio.us it,
forward the address to your co-workers,
post a MySpace bulletin,
type out a clever haiku like that guy from Fight Club,
send it to your Facebook networks,
post about your submission on your blog and
wait for the comments that will never come
because who cares about your life
except for you,
and me,
and our company.
Please follow format.
Try not to use too many abbreviations.
This isn't your standard classified advertisement.
Here is an example:
Vietnamese male seeks Asian female,
preferably second-generation,
but no more than fourth-generation because otherwise
all of the old values are gone;
alternatively, white female with red hair and pale skin
but not necessarily of Irish descent.
Must not have dyed hair,
or if you have dyed hair,
please don't dye it blonde.
Must drink coffee or tea,
but no soda because soda rots your teeth and
it tastes bad when I kiss you;
it tastes like high fructose corn syrup.
Must have a vivid imagination.
Must be willing to experiment in bed.
Must enjoy words in all forms,
including but not limited to:
conversations of at least three hours in length
usually occurring between the hours of one and four in the morning,
classic and contemporary literature,
especially Lolita,
The Great Gatsby,
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,
Sputnik Sweetheart,
etc.,
short fiction,
poetry,
especially the works of T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, and
selected works of William Carlos Williams.
Must have excellently-shaped scapula.
Must have a definitively-curved neck,
such that when I say I'm going to kiss the nape of your neck,
I know exactly where I'm going to kiss.
Must not be fat because I hate fat girls.
Must have an expressive face capable of showing
the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows.
Must be passionate about something,
and also about life in general,
even though there is so much misery and
so much loneliness and so much loss in life,
because otherwise,
if you didn't have passion,
you'd be nothing, you'd be boring, and
no one idealizes boringness.
However, must also be willing to enjoy and/or
see the beauty in the mundane, the day-to-day,
such as waking up every morning and
having breakfast together and so on.
Must love parks. Must love art. Must love music.
Must be willing to go on adventures, such as:
sand castles;
getting lost;
sex in a public location but without anyone actually watching
even though there might be someone watching
but we can't tell and it doesn't matter anyway because
we're having sex;
driving long distances for a specific reason or
maybe no reason at all.
Must be between five-foot-one and five-foot-five.
Must have a creative and exploratory palette and
enjoy going out to restaurants and
like both cooking and eating home-cooked food
because even though I don't cook enough,
I do like cooking,
especially cooking for someone else and
eating with them and
knowing that they like my food.
Must eventually want children but not right now
because I'm not ready for children,
I'm barely ready for you.
And anyway this is all a lie, this is all a sham,
I'm no humanitarian, I'm a writer, and
we're the cruelest sort of people.
We are thieves and we will slit your throats in the dark
for your words, especially if you cross us.
copyright (c) 2007 by william pham