Bullitt

Rule Number 7: There is no longer such a thing as a real life Steve McQueen, but that won't stop him from making you look like an asshole

I've had a few heated debates recently with a friend of mine (who was just staring at me self-righteously while criticizing my blog's direction) who suggested (demanded) that I stray away from the rules based formula of my blog. And I will say that her argument has some merit (begrudgingly, of course). It's been a few months since my breakup and in many scenarios, these "rules to dealing with a breakup" will start to sound like melodramatic sob stories. So I give to you my new formula. Continue on with the rules format (suck it, Katie), yet remain vague and nebulous about what exactly I'm giving you rules for. In fact, in some cases like tonight, I'll just open my blog with a poorly-constructed witticism and hope that it tricks you into thinking I'm clever and that these rules actually matter. Don't look now, but you've just been played, oh reader.

And now onto the crux of the matter. What's the deal with Steve McQueen? Taking a quick glance at Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page, one can learn that he possesses not only the dashing good looks and rebellious persona that have made so many young women swoon throughout the years, but that he's also a certifiable badass. He served as a marine, did all his own stunts, was an avid motorcycle racer, had a black belt in some variety of martial arts that I've never heard of, and did all of this while snorting cocaine and having inconceivable amounts of movie star sex. He even died in Mexico for Christ's sake. The man was more legend than flesh and bone during the apex of his fame. And what was this man's key to success? Acting in roles where he pretended to be unassuming, careless, and generally aloof. And this is what gets men laid. Not being a marine or a black belt, but pretending like none of that matters and that really you'd rather just smoke a cigarette on the hood of a car in the desert. Do you still wonder why there were so many sexually frustrated authors and physicists?

McQueen is a perfect example of a trend in our culture that seems to have started with post-modernism and has now expanded to include Pavement, James Bond, and Burt Reynold's moustache. Disillusionment is chic. It's one thing to do a lot of cool things with your life, but it's an entirely different thing to have an air of superiority. Much like women are led to believe that they need to be either sun-stained skinny models or intriguing indie goddesses, men are pretty much led to believe that they should be unassuming action figures, alcoholics, and sex fiends. I understand that this is making a lot of assumptions about what females are actually looking for in men...but let's face it ladies, a lot of you would rather go for the guy staring down a bottle of whiskey in the corner of a club than the guy talking your ear off with genuine, caring questions about your day. The problem is that I've never actually met a man who fully embodies this disillusioned apathy that is so idealized in modern culture. At some point, we have to show some emotion. Steve McQueen's don't actually exist in real life; or rather, they don't exist beyond the Hollywood ideals that we cast upon them. Remember Tom Cruise? We all thought that he was one of the coolest guys in Hollywood. Then the homoerotic Top Gun scene started gaining some indie steam, he came out as a Scientologist, and jumped on Oprah's couch. As much as men can pretend to be disillusioned and to feign indifference, ultimately, we will all fall short of the ideal.

Now I've put myself in a vulnerable position, because as a single man I'm not supposed to reveal that I have emotion and am supposed to actively ignore any woman who I am remotely attracted to on the off chance that someday she'll see me stare longingly at a proverbial green light on the opposite dock (hopefully at the same time as she notices my grungy stubble and dirt-stained jeans) and realize that I'm her soul mate. I blame you F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you Charles Bukowski, and mostly, I blame you Steve McQueen. That said, I do believe that there is hope for the men in society who don't live up to this ideal (read: all men). The hope? We're all in the same boat together. Granted, there will always be the eternally douchey jock crowd that will never admit that they have emotions beyond "this Natty Ice tastes great." But for the rest of us, there is some solace in the fact that eventually, even if we don't play into the eternal aloofness hypothesis, we will all meet somewhere on our journey towards the middle. I do have faith in the crowd of women who don't idealize me or my kind as cooler than we should be. And occasionally, it is a little fun to play the game and come off as indifferent when in reality, most of my instincts are bouncing off the walls like children on Christmas. In the end, though, a man will not end up with a woman who thinks he is Steve McQueen. Men will end up with women who understand that they are exactly as they are, and that there's a reason for that.

Mr. McQueen's Wikipedia page also lists three different wives. I have a feeling those romantic failings didn't occur because McQueen was too cool to handle. I have a feeling they occurred because after all, even the coolest actor that's ever hit the big screen is still human after all.