Grammar notes for dating dudes
Implicit, implied, and for crying out loud, use the right "there."
I spend a lot of time thinking about word choice. I am guilty of hair-splitting in a Bill Clinton-esque “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” way. I’m slightly less pedantic about typos than I used to be but I still get tangled up in other things.
And I look for meaning everywhere, implicit or implied.
Here are three recent notes from potential suitors, deconstructed by my writer’s brain.
Hey sexy. How do you feel about young men of color? 😏 I’m 27, hung like a horse, and have my own place
Hey sexy: This should have a comma: Hey, sexy. I’m not a big fan of exclamation marks but if you’re going to open with this (and you should not, ever), it’s okay to use one. Hey, sexy!
How do you feel about young men of color? 😏: I’m pretty sure this means, “Are you racist?” Thing is, I can see from your photo you’re brown, so it’s superfluous. Age is the critical decision point. Also, my candid response to this question would be, “I feel bad for many of them — institutional racism is some bullshit — and good about them.”
I’m 27, hung like a horse…: Reiterating age in this context seems good, it’s important information. The size of your package, well, congratulations? Sharing this, combined with the ‘Hey sexy’ greeting, makes it clear that this is a sexual transaction. Again, useful information for this reader. I’ve come to appreciate the time-saving nature of this type of communication.
…and have my own place: The lack of closing punctuation bothers me, but that’s not where I got hung (heh) up. I read the message as a hook-up invitation, and he’s hosting. But then I thought about how I’ve paid rent since I was 17. This was circumstances — but also, I could afford to make my way in the world. By 27 I had been a self-sustaining adult for ten years. Rents were much, much lower and a lower percentage of my income. The fact that a man of 27 feels it necessary to call out he has his own place brings up a bunch of societal questions. Rents in my area are so high that this is noteworthy? That’s fucked up.
You can answer any or none of these questions or a different one altogether: [List cut here] If you reply, you might not hear back from me immediately; I'll be out of cell phone range Wednesday through mid-day Sunday.
You can answer any or none of these questions: Well, gee, thanks for giving me permission. While the questions were relevant to things mentioned in my profile (points for reading, sir), the word choice here is off-putting. There are more inviting ways to open this conversation. “You mentioned lasagne, I love lasagne. Do you make your own sauce?” is just one example and does not imply I now have permission to speak. (I did not mention lasagne.)
…you might not hear back from me immediately; I'll be out of cell phone range: There’s that implied tone. First, the notion that I await your immediate reply. Okay, okay, we live in an era of instant comms, I’ll leave this speed bump behind, but the clumsy soft pitch? You want to tell me you’re climbing Mt. Rainier or something but you want me to ask, possibly while batting my eyelashes. “Off the grid? So manly, do tell.” There’s a sexist power dynamic subtext in the sentence structure. Bad vibes, so easily fixed with better word choice.
Are you interested in continuing the conversation?
Are you interested in continuing the conversation? The pressure created by a binary yes/no question puts me in a very awkward place. If you want the answer to be yes, then just continue the conversation. The question itself makes me want to ghost because answering ‘no’ feels mean and if the answer was yes, we’d just be conversing. Delete and start over.
There’s a terrific Tom Waits quote:
'The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
It’s also destroying the quality of my dating options. I get this is a personal problem and yes, I have appended it to the list of reasons I am single.