Field Notes from Mars

Photo by Nina Leen

“I think Veronica’s mom Hermione is the most attractive character,” I was saying. “Like, without question.”

“See, I disagree,” said Dad. “I think Betty is clearly the cutest one in the show!” As we addressed each other, our eyes never left the TV screen. I passed him the bowl of popcorn. Three big handfuls later, he passed it back to me.

We were watching Riverdale at my parents’ house. I found Hermione Lodge, played by Marisol Nichols, strikingly beautiful. With her flawless olive skin, glassy brunette mane, curtain bangs (before that trend returned with a fury in 2022), and cheekbones carved with love by Aphrodite herself, it kind of hurt to look at her. And yet I dare not look away. It really didn’t seem fair to cast her in a sea of comparatively mediocre faces. To me, she was positively radiant.

Dad, meanwhile, was a gentleman who preferred blondes. So to my amazement, it was Betty, played by Lili Reinhart, who was his standout character. “She’s just not for me,” he said simply when I made my case for Hermione’s superior beauty. Betty? She was fine, I guess. Then again, my dad had always been staunchly certain in his opinions. When I shared that I’d been loosely toying with the idea of chopping my long hair into a pixie cut, for instance, he sighed. “Tayls,” he said, with the great heaviness of someone explaining something that should have been obvious, “do you even want a boyfriend?”

Devoted opinionation aside, these examples only scratch the surface of a something that’s certainly stumped and beguiled far more women than just me: the mysteries of the male brain. What…are you? I want to ask each one, holding up a magnifying glass to their innermost thoughts. What’s going on in there? 

“So the first thing you noticed about me were my boobs, right?” I asked Jake recently. I know his answer is no, but I do this to rattle him nevertheless. So I repeat the question every few months or so, seeing if his answer will change.

But his reply is always the same, his sigh just as weary. “In law, they call that ‘leading the witness,’” he says dryly. “And besides, you know the answer.”

I also pester him with other questions that don’t pertain to me—at least, that pertain to me less. On one occasion, I am on the couch watching Buying Beverly Hills on Netflix (because after Selling Sunset, I am a hopeless junkie for real estate reality shows, though none of the others ever measure up). I grab the remote and pause it on Farrah, whom I find striking, though in what way, I can’t quite decide. I picture my first visit to the dermatologist’s office for Botox, holding up her picture on my phone. “I’ll have about…ten percent of what she’s having,” I imagine myself saying.

“Do you think she’s attractive?” I ask him. No matter what, his first response when I ask this question is always this one: “Is this a trap?”

I wave my hand dismissively and point at the screen. He follows my point, considers her face. “To be honest, she looks a bit scary,” he says. “How old is she?”

“In this episode, she’s throwing a party for her thirty-third birthday.”

“She’s only thirty-three?” He raises his eyebrows. “She looks way older. Not in a good way.”

Like Carrie Bradshaw, frowning pensively as she types away on her keyboard, I, too, am eager to unlock the latest idiosyncrasy of the heterosexual male. What in women do they find most compelling? What instantly attracts them? What features in us send sparks through their brain? Physically, or otherwise?

Unlike Carrie, though, who seems to accept her ignorance of men with a shrug (“Men I may not know, but shoes, shoes I know”), this does not satisfy me. This years-long endeavor–and the answers it procures–continues to delight and flabbergast me, in equal measure.

In college, for example, I asked a male friend, “What’s a trend girls wear that you find unattractive, something men find strange?” I tried to keep my voice low, as we were standing in line for our coffees at The Acorn. Before he could respond, another guy, who’d been standing in front of us in line, overheard my question and answered first. “Those super short shorts,” he said, turning around to face us. He was referring to the high-waisted, raw hem denim cutoffs that rode up so much they teasingly revealed the bottom sliver of, well, the bottom. That style had been having a major moment in the mid-2010s.

But trendy or not, this guy loathed them. From the firmness in his reply, I got the sense that this was a core value to his very being. “Like that little bit of butt that shows?” He wrinkled his nose. “What even is that? Is that meant to be attractive?”

“What’s the first thing you notice about a girl?” I asked a group of guy friends while working at a Young Life camp one summer. “Her smile,” said one, a dreamy look on his face. “The eyes,” said another. “Confidence, hands down,” said a third. “I can tell immediately if a girl is confident in herself. That’s super attractive.”

One night when Jake and I were dating, I was over at his house–seven roommates and all–and chatting with one of his rather stylish friends. I knew he would have an opinion on this. “What are your favorite features in a girl?” His answer was immediate. “Calves and obliques,” he declared, with all the pride and smugness of someone ready to spill tea, which, actually, he was. 

This fascinated me. “Really?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” he affirmed. “Like when a girl wears something with a cutout design on the side? Come on.” At this his head fell sideways and he rolled his eyes upward, as if he simply could not handle even the imagination of it.

Naturally, I dug for more. “So what do girls wear that you find strange?” At this, he paused, tapping his chin. “Those sandals that wrap up the leg,” he finally said. “Gladiator sandals?” I clarified. “Yes, those,” and shook his head, adding, “What’s the point of those? It’s just too much.”

I appreciated his candor. Trying to walk the straight and narrow, many guys are hesitant to share their honest opinions, lest they be labeled something unbecoming. “It’s a trap,” said Damon, earlier today during our shift at the coffee shop when I brought it up. He’d been burned one too many times by women who’d asked similar questions, only to chastise his answers. Of course there’s always a line between liking what you like, and objectifying someone. But if women are allowed to express what they like most in men, then that allowance should go both ways. Still, I often have to coax out an answer.

Later, when Jake and I were dating long-distance, him in North Carolina for law school, and me still in D.C., I’d still get together with his friends. They were boisterous and teased each other constantly, always good-naturedly, always fun. Over waffle cones at Jeni’s Ice Cream on Capitol Hill, I posed this same question to them. I took a bite of my goat cheese ice cream, and waited. 

Crickets. All three of them–all of whom would be groomsmen in my wedding–eemed hesitant, glancing uncertainly at one another. I cleared my throat. “Like, what stands out to you the most when you first meet her?” I prodded. More silence. I couldn’t believe such a simple question stumped such a sharp and decisive trio of men. Finally, Groomsman #1 broke the silence. 

“You mean…like physically?” he cried, as dubiously as if I’d wondered aloud whether it would rain piglets in the District that day. I heard Jake’s voice in my head, a question that echoed again: “Is this a trap?”

“Sure!” I said. “Anything. Physically or otherwise.” 

“I like when a girl’s in shape,” Groomsman #2 finally said. Then he amended: “What I mean is, she doesn’t have to be ripped, just active. It’s a lifestyle thing. I like when she’s down to be active with me.”

“She needs to be playful!” chimed Groomsman #1. “I want her to play with me! We don’t have to love all the same things, but I want her to be down to jump in on a game of flag football or whatever.” I personally hated flag football, but I understood what he meant. The sentiment was sweet: he wanted to share some of his favorite things to do with her.

I looked over at Groomsman #3, who was staring off thoughtfully. “I like when she’s cool enough to eat a cheeseburger,” he said simply. “I don’t like when girls try to be dainty with food, thinking they have to be. Don’t be like, ‘I’ll have a salad,’” he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “I like a girl who can eat.”

“So you want her to be fit/active, but also pound cheeseburgers?” I teased. Hearing this out loud, they snickered.

Always emboldened in each other’s presence, Allison and I would ask our male friends, “So, are you a boobs man or a butt man?” and eagerly watch as they fumbled to answer. After selecting one or the other, whenever we asked why they like one or the other, most would mutter, “I dunno, I just do!”’ Every now and then, however, a unicorn would arise. 

“If you think about it biologically,” our high school friend Trevor began, “what attracts a male lion to a lioness is her ability to bear cubs. Does she have ‘cub-bearing’ hips? Will she successfully carry on his genes, give birth to the sturdiest offspring most likely to survive? I think that same motive applies to humans.”

Allison and I looked at each other. “So what’s your answer?” she nudged.

He shrugged, fighting back a smile. “I think we’re just into curves in general.”

I’m always appreciative when men bequeath these insights so candidly. While they do better inform my grasp on their lens on the world, I will never fully understand the male mind. But even the most honest answers can only carry my understanding so far. Other factors are at play, whether men are aware of them or not.

Some are. “Desperation isn’t cute,” one guy friend said to me. “Immediately it’s a turn-off.” I think this speaks to something most men–most people, in fact–can sense in each other, even if they lack the language to describe it. 

Of course, Anya already had it. “Rats are attracted to garbage,” she began, pausing with her fork in the air, while we were out for lunch. At this I cocked my head, wondering where she was taking this. “In the same way, men can sense in the spirit when women are desperate, and vice versa. The wrong kind of men will be drawn to that. If someone has an un-dealt-with mess in their heart, others will pick up on that. They can ‘smell it,’ in a sense, because it ‘stinks.’” 

“So for people in a healthy place in life,” I asked, “that ‘stench’ in others turns them off? Even if they have no faith, or can’t explain why?”

She leaned forward and nodded. “Exactly.”

~~~

As I think about this, I’m brought back to my sophomore year in college. To say I wasn’t doing well would be like calling Rudi Giuliani’s odd stint on “The Voice” “not that bad”. After a flash in the pan summer romance, it fizzled painfully the same week my classes started. My friendship with my best friend was souring, and in fact, had veered into abusive territory, though at nineteen, my concept of that word was so limited I couldn’t yet identify anything wrong. Though plenty of things felt quite wrong, I dismissed it as nothing, because I didn’t have language for it. And the party scene–a realm that had once been my zone—my throne, even—as the life of the party–was quickly growing tedious, vapid, and unbearably dull. I no longer gleefully shouted along to R. Kelly’s “Ignition,” as we all did, every weekend, at every party, the song at the time that never seemed to get old, no matter how many times the Kappas/Sig Eps/Deltas blared it at the end of the night. Now, I found it tiresome and annoying, as I did with the same music, the same entitled frat stars, always in their uniform croakies and chubbies, the same parties that went so unoriginally and predictably the same way.

Getting drunk four nights a week, which I’d done habitually since my arrival to college, was no longer serving its purpose, either. Which was, to say, to be my reliable getaway car from, well, all of it: namely, the family problems I faced back home, the frightening war I battled in my mind. Like a reliable old friend, sordid and shifty as she was, alcohol slung her arm over my shoulders and offered whatever it was I needed. Liquid courage? Better dance moves? Funny stories for the next day? New girlfriends you meet in the bathroom? A release valve on the pressure I felt as an oldest child, the obedient over-performer, the goody two-shoes? A hazy wave that carried me into my next wild night out in college I’d only too soon forget? Sold.

Now, instead of waking up a bit thirstier than usual, tagging up with my girlfriends over breakfast and giggling about our slipshod escapades the night before, I was left only with new companions thatt were not my friends: nausea, a splitting headache, and the embarrassment of not remembering what I’d done, or what I’d said. Whatever I did manage to remember, which slowly returned to my memory in foggy patches the next day, I wished I could forget.

By final exams, I’d cut ties with that friend (who’d announced ceremoniously that she was going to start dating my ex, under the meritorious guise of asking if I was cool with it). I came to terms with my passivity and its effects on my relationships. And I took stock of the addiction I’d developed for male attention. Hurting from that summer’s breakup and desperately seeking a Band-aid, I had spent the semester spiraling into a steady string of failed romances, one after another. The high from turning the head of each new flirt, a prized victory in the ruthless college culture of a female-majority student body, was undeniably compelling. Soon, it became compulsive. Male attention was not new to me; needing it like I needed sugar, alcohol, or my numbing devices, was. But equally devastating was when his attention would inevitably vanish like smoke, the only evidence of the fast fuse that flamed out just as quickly as it sparked. 

My mental health was at an all-time low. I felt angry almost constantly, an emotion I’d been raised to stifle that quickly became my sword and shield. I began snapping at friends and roommates, eager to attack first before someone else did. “I fantasize every day about smacking her,” I said to a campus counselor about the former friend I’d fallen out with. I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “Is there any chance that’s allowed?” He told me it was not—at least not without involving disciplinary action. The one place I remembered where I could mercifully escape my own thoughts was when I fled campus for several hours at the barn. On the back of a horse, I could gallop away from my troubles-literally. The last place where I felt at home was in my own mind.

Losing my taste for the partying lifestyle had felt disastrous at first, and it left against my will. It was the identity I’d clung to, and now it was slipping through my fingers like a bar of soap. I didn’t want to stop what I’d been doing. In one fell swoop, I was losing my numbing cream, my blinders, my ego boost. For a year, it delivered what it promised, night after sloppily drunken night. I’d naively believed it was my three-for-the-price-of-one deal. But over time, I realized the cost was much greater, as I woke up each Sunday morning with cotton mouth, smeared makeup, and last night’s clothes on, wondering what I was doing with my life. This epiphany led to a turning point for which I later became very grateful.

By junior year, I’d shrunk my alcohol intake considerably. When I first tried going dry for January, my former drinking buddies thought I’d lost my mind. My definition of “social drinking” shifted from carelessly chugging four solo cups of Natty Light or Jungle Juice to leisurely sipping glasses of wine with friends on the couch. For the first time, I picked up weight lifting and found a new joy in working out. I wrested off my scarcity mindset and the habits I’d developed in its wake–hoarding food, filling our fridge with catering leftovers from work, toeing the line with obsessive compulsion in the name of “not wasting”–and began cooking more, growing more conscious of what I was eating, and when. I cut back on the two AM trips to Cookout for milkshakes, now doing less midnight grazing. Instead, I started getting up at sunrise to read my Bible, finding quiet solace in its promises, before heading out the door to walk to the gym.

By senior year, I found my first therapist. I saw her regularly throughout the school year, at least twice a month until I graduated. This became my first foray into cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. In 2018, at twenty-six, I recommitted to regular therapy when I moved to Winston-Salem. At the time, I was reeling from back-to-back breakups with my two-and-a-half-year relationship, and the subsequent rebound. I’d also just moved to town, started a new job, and lived alone, not knowing anyone in the area except my ex, who knew where I lived and periodically showed up at my doorstep unannounced, still trying to exert control by intimidating me. Once again, my stress, anxiety, and aimlessness had skyrocketed. 

I began to sense that the way I’d been living the past several years was like teetering near the edge of a cliff, but didn’t know how to change that. If my first entry into therapy had been challenging, my second one was utterly grueling. A standard dental cleaning compared to a root canal. “This will get worse before it gets better,” Jayne told me. “But I promise you, the other side will be worth it. Are you ready?” Sure enough, over time, things did get better. I got better. I learned to embrace each breakthrough as a gift, a new mercy, though it felt like I was being cracked open from the inside out. I learned not to run away from my pain. I learned to cry openly, without shame, something that’s since taken years to improve, after years of being conditioned to suppress my emotions. I gained awareness, empathy, and love for myself and those around me, grew them like a muscle. I felt drawn to messages, sermons, books, on investing in yourself before you meet someone, rather than simply letting physical attraction take over and hoping for the best. Eventually, I realized what it meant to retake the wheel of my own life.

Standing in my parents’ driveway while unpacking my car, in between moving from Winston-Salem to Washington, D.C., I told my dad that if I didn’t meet someone for another five years, I’d be perfectly fine with that. And I meant it. Dad, however, hoped I didn’t. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up by settling for nothing less than Tim Tebow,” he said, referring to my celebrity crush in college. I, however, was content to stop looking. I sensed my life was about to take an exciting turn.

Sure enough, it did. Six months after I moved to D.C., at an Arlington housewarming party with Allison, I met Jake. At two in the morning, after hours of talking and dancing, he asked for my number. On our first date the following week, he looked at me in a way I’d never seen a man look at me before. Not a trace of lust or lasciviousness, or mischief, but something else: adoration. With him, there were no games, no coyly feigned lack of interest, no avoiding showing his hand. On night one, he laid his cards right out with such frankness it took me by surprise. Soon though, it became one of the many things I loved about him. “I find myself smiling whenever I’m with you,” he said, looking me straight in the eye, smiling, as he did. And I waited for that familiar frenzied feeling that had swept me away like a wave for years, that urge to lurch for him, to snatch his attention, his approval, his affection, before someone else did.

It never came. Instead, I let myself sink into his care, warm and safe. With him, I traded my signature roller coaster water slide for a soothing bubble bath. This was new. This was nice.

Another year and a half later, we arrived on Jayne’s doorstep, a sparkling ring on my finger. She, my beloved therapist for years, who saw me through some of the worst and most painful chapters in my life, would lead my fiancé and me through premarital counseling. “Taylor,” she said to me solemnly, squeezing me by the shoulders, my name sounding more like “Tyler” in her thick Southern accent. “Jake is exactly who we’ve been praying for. This is it.”

Two and a half years later, as our second wedding anniversary approaches—four years after we met in that backyard in Arlington, watching our friends play beer pong—I crawl into bed to join him. He’s watching Tennessee baseball on his laptop. I snuggle into him, and think about the list of things I love about him that now stretches as long as my arm: at the moment, the ease of our marriage, how naturally our lives have converged. His smell. I marvel at my life now at thirty, how different I am from that flighty nineteen-year-old I once was, who was crippled by a broken heart and so badly wanted to be loved, doing the best she could. It’s not that Jake swept into my life and erased all my problems, a sort of messianic Mr. Clean. He’s endured his own share of setbacks in life. But it’s who I am–an ongoing outcome of someone worthy of my own investment–and who I’m becoming with him, and he, with me. Two people making each other better, a little bit at a time every day.

So, what was Jake’s first impression of me?

I may not be able to climb into the male mind. But I do get to share my life with someone I trust more deeply than anyone else I’ll ever meet this side of heaven. Every day, I get more comfortable not knowing the exact answer to that question of his first impression of me. And I think there’s a reason I seem to forget it as often as I do, whenever he does answer it. Because each night when I get to climb into bed with him and say good night, I love you, nice butt, et cetera…I’m reminded that our life together is far sweeter than any answer to that kind of question.