Taste aversions

          The other day, my roommate and I had a discussion concerning boys, and the disappointing lack of "quality men" there've been in our lives. She likened our situations to a batch of burnt cookies. You know they're all burnt, and you know you don't like eating straight up carbon, but you pick the least burnt one because it looks the best of the lot, and you eat it despite the fact that you know it's still burnt.
          This is the Burnt Cookie Model of Why We Have Ridiculously Awful Luck in the Dating Department of Life.

          So I've decided - and this is a conversation I've had with friends before - that I'm not going to settle. You know - I'm gonna pass on those burnt cookies and look for the golden-browns. Metaphorically, I mean - you know, nothing to do with race or anything.
          I'd decided that kind, un-jackassy, interesting, well-traveled, educated, responsible, funny guys just didn't exist. It's the "kind and un-jackassy" part that's the clincher. There are plenty of interesting, knowledgeable guys out there with a wicked sense of humor and boggling intelligence, who also happen to be jerks to the nth degree.
          It's hard to hold out on not settling when the only apparent options (speaking in the bleakest, most fatalistic and pessimistic terms available) are spinsterhood and your principles or a moderately happy relationship based on a degree of personal compromise. Getting over those taste aversions.
          I've discovered, however, that they do exist - it is in fact possible to have that fatal combination of wit, education, and an arsenal of interesting experiences - without it leading invariably to being an asshole. It was like discovering a unicorn walking around in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Completely unexpected, entirely unlooked for, and wonderfully validating. If there's one in the world, it follows that there's more like him, however statistically unlikely. It doesn't matter.
          They do exist. Hope is restored.

          So the practical upshot of this story is:
          It's worth holding out for the unburnt cookies.


          They exist!