The Search For Gwen Stacy

I've found recently that I've become increasingly prickly when it comes to social gatherings in which I will become the third and/or fifth wheel ... which amounts to every social outing I seem to end up in. As much as I love hanging out with Colleen and Ian, and as much as I enjoy Cooter and Amy, and as much as I like to see the folks, I get god damned weary of being the odd person. Or to put it another way: I need to find a girlfriend. To that end, this year, 2008, begins the quest to find the right girl for me. She might hit me right out of the blue like a bolt of lightning, it might be a slow build over time with someone I have good chemistry with, or I might have to use science to narrow down a field of several possible candidates. I don't know. But I do have something of an ideal in my noggin as far as what I would like to find out there somewhere. And that would be Gwen Stacy, former girlfriend of Peter Parker (aka the Amazing Spider-Man).



Now you can call me crazy, as some have, for choosing a comic book character as the ideal for what I'm looking for in the "perfect girlfriend" (if such an entity actually does exist), but .... wait! Hear me out. I'm going somewhere with this. Gwen Stacy is one of the classic "good girls" of comics, and let me just say for the record that a good girl is really what I would like to find, because having sampled the bad, and while evil is definitely sexy, I'd just as soon wind up with someone on the good side. It's easier. They're less crazy. And I really do need a little less crazy in my life, you know.

Gwen is also an interesting sum of her better qualities: she's attractive, she's smart, passionate, loyal, funny, and just great to be around. Even though she died in the first comic book I ever read, I got to know her through older reprints and she's become one of my favorite comic book characters of all time. It's too bad they killed her off. I'd have liked to have seen where her relationship with Pete might have gone. (Sometime if I remember I'll do up an essay on Gwen Stacy and Laura Palmer and the whole Doomed Girl Syndrome thing that tends to put me in the way of a certain type of girl. Remind me.)


Of course, the 'Gwen Stacy' that I find doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the original, or a clone, because my tastes are never that specific. She can be tall or short, thin or somewhat bigger, blond haired, brown haired, brunette, a redhead, with blue/green/brown/orange/whatever eyes. She can be younger or older, talkative or kinda quiet, creative or scientific, rich or poor, long hair, short hair, green hair, have lots of piercings or none, have tattooes or not. It doesn't matter.

The superficial details aren't what's important. I'm looking for someone who's smart, funny, attractive, intense about the things they like, open to new things, and is interested in bringing out the best in me. Someone who would make me think of my favorite line from As Good As It Gets: "You make me want to be a better man." I would love to find someone who causes that feeling in me.


I'm looking for someone who likes to try new things, who may not like all of the things I do, but would be open to sampling some of them on a trial basis, because I will certainly return the favor for her. Someone who likes to go to the movies, because I'm kind of tired of going to the movies alone. Someone who likes to stay in and watch movies, too, and I now have the perfect couch for just such a thing. Maybe someone who likes to read a lot ... maybe even more than I do. Someone who loves books and loves to learn about new things. And I have an ulterior motive here, too: maybe someone who could help inspire me to great things in my own writing. Maybe even someone I can inspire to do great things themselves in whatever creative endeavor they partake in.


I know there is a Gwen Stacy out there. I've met a few. I'm sure I'll meet a few more. Some of the important females of my life were Gwen Stacys.

Jen, on the other hand, was more of a Mary Jane Watson.