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When I started this adventure down this strange (and not gonna lie, super fun and fulfilling) path of writing fun articles and hoping that Will wasn’t too drunk from the cruise and hungover from his ribbon cutting at Friday’s to read them PGP accepted them, I really didn’t have any thoughts, expectations, or even knowledge of what was going to happen. I pretty much just wanted to write an article to tell my girlfriend in the most passive aggressive way possible that she should probably tone down her low-key crush just a little bit (author’s note: she has not done that at all). I didn’t expect it to morph into something where I could publicly address her psycho-ness or talk about everyone’s true feelings about Dillon Cheverere (by the way, Dillon, even though she still despises you, she said you looked “on fleek as fuck” during the cruise). But most importantly, I really had no expectations about the universal truths that I would learn while writing.
As an engineer who studies fundamental physics, there are certain truths that are always true: opposite charges attract, like dissolves like, and the easiest way to way to make someone hate you is to tell them “trust me, I’m an engineer.” I assumed that engineering and physics would teach me what it was like to be the biggest nerd in my group of friends the secrets of the universe, things that had to be true all the time. Since seeing what engineering is actually like (lots of staring at computer screens and making sure other people don’t mess up your experiments), I’ve realized that there are many other fundamental truths out there, waiting to be learned.
I was at some weird, grungy, apartment basement electronic-computer “music” party that one of my girlfriend’s friends was playing at (honestly, I have absolutely no idea how to describe what was happening) with her and her friends, and she was telling them that I was “writing articles for TFM’s older brother site” about her, and that I was making her “low-key internet famous.” While I don’t know if she is low-key internet famous yet, that’s been the most glowing review I’ve gotten so far, so I’ll take it. As soon as she told her friends (all girls) that people all across the world were able to read about the things she does, they all turned to look at me as fast as Dillon turns to look at himself in a mirror and said, “OMG, can you write about us too?”
Now don’t get me wrong: having the undivided attention of four undergrad girls makes a dude feel pretty special, and of course, I always need more subject matter to write about. But there was something about the way these girls turned to look at me like it wasn’t like they were looking at me, but like they were hyenas looking at a source of nourishment and they hadn’t been fed in days. They didn’t just want someone to write about them, they needed someone to write about them. They needed someone to catalogue their every thoughts, their every action, every time they did something that was “haha, so #bad” (this was last used by this group of girls to describe when one of them drank too much wine, tried and failed to hook up with my friend, and then passed naked out on my couch under my beloved Patriots blanket).
As I squinted my eyes, regained my balance, and tried to ask them what they legitimately wanted me to write about, they began to spew random phrases out of their mouths. “The time we got drunk at the cabin in the woods,” “Halloween,” “LOL, that one time on Spring Break,” “When I passed out on your couch,” “That one time [my girlfriend, name redacted] threw up in her own shoe, dumped it off the balcony, and put the shoe right back on her foot.” It was like waking up on that first day of spring and hearing all the birds chirping, except instead of cardinals and robins, it was a bunch of college girls wearing Lululemon, holding Starbucks and staring at their iPhones. As they talked more and more about nothing in particular, I began to realize it, to see the fundamental truth: these girls didn’t necessarily want someone to write about them and to catalogue their day: they wanted the world to validate them in their basicness. They want to be told they’re basic.
As this realization hit me, I felt my world turn inside out. This was mainly because the shots of fireball that I took before the party were starting to catch up with me, but it was also a tiny bit because I finally began to understand so many things that my girlfriend and her friends do. They don’t wear Uggs, leggings, and rugby polos to brunch because they want to; they wear them so people know that they’re basic. They want to be called out on the fact that they go to Starbucks too much, or “of course” they have iPhones or drive Jettas. They don’t get monogrammed vests or shirts or flasks because it’s classy: they get them to have their initials engraved on their clothing, proclaiming their basicness (author’s note: I’m personally a huge fan of monograms).
As they continued to jabber on about this and that like Cris Collinsworth and his undying love for quarterbacks who throw ducks and never have to answer for any of their transgressions that are so much a bigger deal than possibly underinflated balls, I knew that with this knowledge, my life would change forever. I have now taken one small step for men everywhere in understanding the female psyche. However, I still long way to go in this endeavor, and I will still continue to struggle to know what my girlfriend is thinking and doing 95% of the time. Case in point: I went with her to get her hair colored the other night; that shit took two and a half hours, and all she got was a bunch of tinfoil pieces with weird paste put on her hair. I honestly couldn’t even see a difference when she was done. It takes me 15 minutes for the woman at Super Cuts to cut my hair perfectly; what is this one hundred and fifty minute bullshit? But even though I was sufficiently confused for those two and a half hours, I can say one thing: honey, you looked basic as fuck. .
Image via Unsplash
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@joshlitofsky
I’m going to need the number of that girl who sleeps naked on other people’s couches so that we can get wine drunk, have sex, and never speak to each other ever again.
You’ll need to give her more Fireball and less wine for that to happen.
Every time I’ve done Fireball shots with girls, it always ends with me holding their hair with their head in a toilet.
I think you’re supposed to have already had sex and left by that point. They always throw up, it’s just a matter of whether or not you’re present for it.
By the title, I almost assumed this was a Caroline article… but then I remembered Shibs has her “preoccupied”.
#FreeCaroline
It’s tough to know what girls are thinking and doing 95% of the time… Since many of us truthfully don’t know either.
I’m just waiting for a liberal arts college to announce a course on women’s studies called “Basic Girls: New breed of women for the new millennium” or “Basic Girls: A study of the simultaneous evolution and devolution of women” something like that.
This was a bold move. It’s either going to work out great for you, or you’re fucked.