I had to go out and buy the third book in the series, because I had to get my fix of Marcus Flutie. I went to write yesterday, and although I got my "goal" amount of work done, I couldn't concentrate, so distracted was I by love of an imaginary person. (I've read a lot of these books in the last week, and am starting to sound like Marcus in his letters). What's totally hysterical, (in the psychotic crazy meaning of the word, not actually funny) is that there are hundreds of teeny-boppy websites devoted to my imaginary friend.
this is why teen lit/chick lit/romance is crap.
I thought maybe the third book would have to be bad (it kind of is) and lame and make me fall out of love with Marcus Flutie and get me over it. The book isn't nearly as good. It would be impossible to make it good: the nature of writing a book about a girl going off to college insists that she learn something there, but she refuses to learn dick. She stays the same small minded judgmental / observant self-righteous person she was in the beginning. The problem again, is that she is a much less likeable person than Marcus. She's kind of a brat. Not that that doesn't redeem the book; it does allow us to like the book, because I know I am a person like her: high minded, self righteous and a little bit rash in my behavior, so that Marcus continues to woo her and love her makes me (the reader) think this all is possible (along with the possibility of a Marcus Flutie existing) feel happy that he still loves her. But she does get irritating in her unbelievable inability to forgive her parents for being people and begin to love them. Most people get over that during college. Marcus, when he comes to stay with her and her sister, sees value in her whole family. Again, he's the wise one.
The problem (or maybe not problem) now is I feel the Zen need to separate myself from things and desire. To cleanse myself of desire for things or sex or attention or even completion of my writing in order to be more whole and honest with myself.
I have never tricked myself into thinking that the things I want be they possessions or destinations weren't both constructs and comforts. I am affected and a little bit pretentious. I like cool things but I hate cool things when they become just things everyone has, yet I love to wear my ugg boots and wish they didn't say something about me so I could wear them out of the house. The observations Marcus makes don't ever quite work logically: he can go off on a hippie retreat to learn, but most of those people always end up being pretentious and suck anyway, he can be Buddhist and separate himself from desire, but he still comes back to Jessica constantly so he still has desire. And Jessica might judge the death of irony with the ironic t-shirt, something I have obsessed about for years: it can't be ironic if it's fashion, then its fashion and intrinsically not ironic.
(Aside: this goes to comedy, too. the level of comedy, like watching Anchorman last night, where the jokes are supposed to be post-politically correctness or even a commentary on seventies style office harassment, they're not. they're just potty humor in the office. No one is laughing at the inappropriateness. It's not Americana.)
Yet Marcus is still this dream man, writing these cryptic postcards, six one word post-cards over two years? And I think it's shitty when a dude plays games with me for a month? Wow. Oh yeah, they're TWENTY! They have time (and three books) to waste.
I think about the way I've felt for the last few days since I started reading these books and I'm trying to remember the last time I felt that way about anyone real. I know I dated someone in the last year who I had hope for, but it was all projected. It didn't culminate in a poem, or some cryptic postcards, it ended with a couple awkward phone calls and running into him when he made out with his new (taller than me but with more wrinkles, if that's supposed to somehow make me feel better) girlfriend, to which I responded, very unMarcuslike, but getting drunk and making out with my best guy friend. Luckily my friend doesn't suck and he was cool with it right away.
The weird thing is the crush I have on this guy makes me think I could fall in love again. Makes me remember what it was to be in love. Makes me remember how great it is to feel scared and nervous but really excited and happy--but then again makes me kind of depressed. I turn 35 in two weeks. Less now. THIRTY FIVE! In the last seven years I have said I love you to two people, one of whom (who does love me) said, "I don't like the way we're treating each other and I don't know why you're using the L word." The other tried to convince me it was just sex. It was I think the best sex I've had, but I suspect he has that kind of sex with a lot of people. He is more Marcus than many people I have met because he radiates something that isn't in his physical appearance. But in my life I have only felt that "forever" feeling with one person, who I broke up with seven years ago because we were to young and too insecure to trust and love each other and trust that we loved each other. It sucks. It, more than any career thing, is the one thing I regret in my life. But it doesn't end in sad post cards, just one cold email a year. He's not the same person I was in love with and I'm sure I'm not the same person he was in love with.
But that's why these books suck. They teach you to hope for love possibilities that are not real. Or maybe they could be real if I had been this in love when I was this young. Or if my first sexual experiences hadn't been bad ones.
This is crazy.
Charmed Thirds is a terrible name, too.
