Even as fully grown adults we remain secretly starved for guidance and instruction. Many of us are walking around with the uneasy feeling that we missed the first day of class and wondering if there are CliffNotes. Most people desperately want someone to tell them what life’s about, what people are for, what we’re supposed to do—how to be a human being. But serious literature, at least since the 19th-century, has been disdainful of fulfilling any didactic obligation. Sorry, kids, that isn’t what art is for.

I will not disagree that there exists a certain amount of contemporary art that’s “anti-didactic” (if you will), but my immediate reaction is to dispute any assertion that all modern art avoids entirely this edification, for any age group.

This article is incredibly important, I think, and not only for its considerations about the state and the nature of literature in our lives, but also about our lives themselves. The author says, “I’m over 40 now … and I’m starting to realize, in something like panic, that I don’t understand anything, and that nobody else seems to know any more about it than I do.” Reading this, I could not help but feel that he’s expressing (through a meditation on literature) a fear that’s also been at the forefront of my thoughts lately.

I wasn’t kidding when I said my feelings of fraudulence are a can of worms. They’ve developed pretty steadily through the years; I felt I was a fraud in school because I strongly believed that I’d learned little other than how to bullshit other people. Now I feel as though I’m just bullshitting on my résumé to appear more qualified for jobs.

Last week while at work I expressed this fear to a coworker and he surprised me when he said that those fears don’t go away. “I feel like I should end all of my posts with, ‘You buy that?’” was how he put it. “And the closer I get to people higher up in the field, the more I realize that there are no ‘experts’.” So basically, everyone is some varying level of fraudulent. What matters, seemingly, is how effective of a fraud you are, which I used to think was the secret role of education and the need to accrue knowledge. If I could only be a better fraud, I’d get the best jobs, the hottest girls, et cetera. Cynical though it sounds, what he said actually made me feel better about it all. Yet another friend put it simply:

“It gets better.”

That, I submit, is the true and guileless didactic quality of the art that the above article’s author may consider “anti-didactic”. All the convoluted pomo stuff, all the self-conscious stuff, all the abstract expressionist stuff—those thinkers are trying to show us that we are frauds by exposing the nature of their own fraudulence. It’s an attempt to bring us out of ourselves by trying to bring us further inside ourselves, the sole edifying quality, distilled, being that “It gets better.” It doesn’t get easier, but it gets better. And this is the real secret purpose of education that I’ve been missing all this time. Because here I am retreating further inside my self, and yet I’ve learned to write in ways that try to bring a better you out, trying as best as I know how to relate to you a simple truth that I myself haven’t yet found a way to believe: It gets better.

I then expounded on my thought that I would be the person least qualified to write a personal ad for me, reasoning that, of everyone that knows me, I know myself the least. And frankly, I’m biased. We all are. We all have this hope that we’re the best possible person we could be and I know that, despite my grandest delusions, I am not. So, by my twisted logic, if I were to write a personal ad it would be filled with details about me that I have cherry picked and described in English sentences which naturally ends up being an embellishment and making me feel fraudulent (which fraudulent feelings alone—let me tell you—is a can of worms you do not want me to open).

And anyway my supervisor says, “Have someone else do it for you!” This I feel is a great idea. The people around me in all likelihood know me better than I do. They’ve experienced me being a dick to them probably at some point in our interactions and I have not (despite what some might say, I think being a dick is like tickling: it’s not possible to do it to yourself) and could probably paint a better portrait of who I am than I.

In thinking about this whole business of Internet dating, while at work I tweet about my reservations in trying it: do I want the humiliation associated with appearing in a personal ad and then the risk of either getting a date or not getting a date from it (both entail their own sets of issues, practical and existential)? Cut to later in the day: my good friend Zane replies to my tweet urging me to put up an ad, saying he was “totally considering putting an ad for [me] on Craigslist the other day.” Oh, gosh. While I appreciate the coincident nature of the whole situation, it’s slightly harder to appreciate that I know so many people right now that want to hook me up with someone (anyone more likely) which I can only imagine is to shut me up finally about the whole thing.

I guess the moral of the story is that recently it’s experiences like these that are teaching me how healthy this time alone is for me. I mean, did you just read the last three paragraphs? There’s some serious self-loathing-thinly-disguised-as-self-depricating-humor going on up there. I spend so much time talking about relationships only because I’m trying to derive meaning from experience through language (I’m only an undergraduate liberal arts academic for a couple more weeks, let me have my moment, OK?). That doesn’t mean I’m actually ready for one. While I’m always down to meet new people, dating just seems like this weird, foreign thing right now.

So, in the meantime, if you have anyone in mind feel free to send her my way, though probably nothing will come of it. I will simply respect her, treat her as a human being, then fuck the shit out of her.

Just kidding. Unless, as Nelly says, [she's] gon’ do it.

You don’t have to be overly macho. You don’t have to be over-complimentary. Gain her respect. And that’s treating her as an equal. Don’t bullshit her. Treat her as a human being. Treat her as you would treat yourself. As soon as you have that respect from her, she’ll treat you with the same respect that you show. Then you fuck the shit out of her.

In an ideal world, yeah. And I’m that head-in-the-clouds idealist, too, with a little cynicism sprinkled in for good measure, of course. Or so I would like to believe.

But, as happens all too often, if you’re not macho you’re a pussy. If you’re not over-complimentary you’re a dick. If you treat her as an equal you’re a pushover. If you don’t bullshit you get bullshitted. And giving respect and treating someone like a human being rarely means you get that same respect and humanity returned, no matter what their gender in relation to your own. And that last part sounds great. If only it weren’t so oft reported that many women prefer things like chocolate over sex.

Undoubtedly, all of this has to be taken with a grain of salt. This quote was spoken by a porn star and I found it on This Recording by way of a blog called Synthetic Pubes. And anyway what the hell do I know.

However dismally, it’s liberating in the idea that I won’t have to be burdened with finding anyone in the future because, all things being equal, they will all more than likely be happier and more appropriately paired with somebody else.

Normally, with a particular class routine, you know when you’ll be on campus and you eventually become accustomed to seeing the same people each day at the same times. This, however, was a timeframe during which I’m generally not on campus this quarter.

Walking to the university services building, I looked up from my feet and saw him, my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend, walking in the opposite direction. I felt that, out of courteousness, I should flash a half-smile and give a nod. Make eye contact, or something. Before I knew what I was doing, though, I was taking the check I was on my way to deposit and my wallet out of my pocket and fiddling with them in my hands, looking down at them as if they were of some greater immediate importance.

I suppose I just don’t have the kind of nebulous fortitude it requires to look my failures in the eye and acknowledge they exist, rather than pretending to have something incredibly interesting inside my wallet.

The bus pulled up to the stop light at the intersection with Union and next to it, a late-model sedan with a dog in the back. Clearly a friendly dog, it was at eye level with me and seemed particularly interested. We had a little bit of a staring contest: I smiled at him and considered waving, but didn’t want to seem insane. I also didn’t want the driver to turn around and see me waving at her pet.

I suddenly remembered that I had my K1000 with me and, conscious that the red light would soon be turning green, quickly and clumsily slung it around my shoulder. I advanced the film and had to adjust the exposure really quickly and focus. By the time I clicked the shutter, however, the car was in motion and the dog had moved. It was disappointing certainly, mainly because the dog had such engaging eyes and a friendly face. It probably would have been a better remnant of our little interspecies exchange through glass had he been looking.

The bus stopped and I stood and got off, thanking the driver as I left, which he didn’t notice because he was too busy looking into the rear view mirror at someone repeatedly shouting “Back door!” from the other end of the bus. Walking along the sidewalk I thought I heard something through Sufjan Stevens’ singing in my ears. A woman was trying to get my attention.

“I know this might be random, but—” I took my earbuds out. She repeated herself. ”I know this might be random, but I just really wanted to tell you how happy it made me that you took a photo of that dog. I saw him and he was really cute.”

“Oh, yeah!” I was excited that she stopped me to tell me something so mundane. I would not have the same courage. “I tried to get him while he was looking at me, but I think the car had already moved, so—” I shrugged.

“I just loved the fact that you captured that moment. That’s what life’s about.”

I thanked her again and walked home alone, grinning.

The only compliment that you ever gave me (besides “You’re a good looking kid,” which I do not count as complimentary) was when you told me that I had a knack for picking the perfect descriptors for things. You won’t ever know how meaningful it was.

The best times I had with you are the simplest to describe. The happiest I felt were the times when we shared more than we spoke.

I have this hope that life is so much simpler than each of us makes it out to be. The problem lies in that, being simple, it isn’t made any easier.

• The sound of light rain on the skylight, lulling me to sleep.
• The way the early-setting sun’s light falls on me while playing guitar and singing pitchily in my bedroom on an afternoon just after daylight savings.
• The sound of passing planes through the air vent above the stove.
• The way it’s impossible to see what’s on the television screen at around 8:30pm during the summer time.
• The way my bed shakes lightly when people downstairs walk around too heavily on their heels.
• The view from the back deck of the surrounding evergreens, the DSHS parking lot, and the tall illuminated central spire of the hospital.
• Four words: porch light dimmer switch.
• The sound of the wind chime attached to the front door when someone comes home.
• The bathroom mirror that takes up nearly an entire wall.
• Walk-in bedroom closet.
• The “Elizabeth Caval” pukey spot in the living room (don’t ask).
• The quirky suns with happy faces drawn clandestinely in corners around my room and the sticker that says “You are here” behind the door in my closet, all of which were there before I moved in.

And yet still many more that I can’t think of at the moment. My lease ends this coming July and I will be moving elsewhere, after having lived here for two years.

You were wearing that white hoodless sweatshirt with an image of a wolf on the front and, unintentionally, I had just gotten a young girl at the park to repeat out loud that “wolves are so last year.” I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard and getting someone else’s little girl to repeat what I’d just said made me feel accomplished in that silly “ha-ha that was a joke, but some day having kids is actually going to be pretty awesome” sort of way. I wonder now why it was you I had this experience with and no one else. Like it only ever could have happened with you. That it was supposed to happen that way.

We took a walk up the next few blocks. We were waiting again for him to get to my apartment and you were mad at me, trying feebly to explain why. Or perhaps the opposite, trying to shroud your feelings from me against my incessant needling. It was so early on. Now that I’d annoyed you, the only way I knew how to explain myself was to tell you truthfully how I felt. I was never certain if this worked. But on the way back to my place—after walking several blocks up the street and after he was already waiting on my doorstep—you took my hand in yours.

It was one of those moments when the bottom just suddenly falls out of pretty much everything; when you realize why exactly it is people feel a need to do silly things like marry, to try to suspend a moment in time for as long as they’re alive; when you understand that how you feel about someone has absolutely nothing to do with how long you’ve known them or the things they say or especially with how you want to feel. It’s the kind of moment that invariably fills me with a sense of elation and anxiety, with hope and despair.

I’m not sure that you noticed.