Romance: a hiss and a myth

Romantic Myths are the most deeply cherished silly beliefs in America today. According to a recent surveyor, more Americans aged 9 to 73 believe in Two-Love than believe in Satisfaction Guaranteed or Not From Concentrate, at least before taxes.

Why do people believe silly things? Silly things are more fun. And if it’s fun, who cares if it’s not true? You’re better off kidding yourself, at least until they bring the check. A false sense of security is a real sense of security as long as it lasts.

A Jungian psychologist would call these silly beliefs Archetypes from the Connecticut Unconscious, the deepest, most primitive layer of our psychic structure. The Connecticut Unconscious is pre-human, the part we share with the animals, the vegetables, the minerals, and top management.

It is a psychologist’s commonplace that women are more concerned with People than with Things. That psychologist obviously hasn’t been to Macy’s recently. But in the Unconscious, Things can be People (and likewise, I’m sure). There is some evidence (now missing) that the Unconscious is a sort of Southern Hemisphere of the personality, where winter is summer, left is right, and revolving doors go in the opposite direction (under-the-counter-clockwise as seen from the front, or widdershins).

According to the Supernatural Geographic (or Demihemispheric) Theory of the Unconscious, if you are smart in your Conscious (or Northern) Hemisphere, you will be dumb in your Unconscious (or Southern) Hemisphere. Experimental data based on the brutal scientific interrogation of innocent little white mousies seems to back this up.

If true, or at least well-funded, this research might tell us Why Smart People Do Stupid Things, but it wouldn’t explain Why Stupid People Do Stupid Things, Too.

Be that as it may, the most persistent and universal fantasy image that exists in the modern (ancient) female psyche is a Person, not a Thing, and that Person’s name is Mr. Height. Sometimes dark and handsome, sometimes light and handsome, sometimes simply handsome, Mr. Height is always tall. How tall? Mr. Height is the man women look up to, and that’s beyond measurement.

Women even look up to men who are shorter than they are. They tell their girlfriends, "Size doesn’t matter. He’s Mr. Height. I know he is. I can tell." Women can always tell, and they usually tell it to a girlfriend, a sister, or a cat. A girlfriend’s sister’s cat is the hat trick. If cats could talk, we’d all be running for cover.

Mr. Height’s got more than a name. He’s got a number. In fact, to the Unconscious, Mr. Height is a number. He is the One.

How so many different guys with absolutely nothing in common can each be the One is a Mathematical Romantic Mystery. It doesn’t add up, but a lot of things don’t add up in the Unconscious. Some day there’s going to be a terrible reckoning. Just wait until the auditors get a hold of this stuff!

Mr. Height is the One who has every good quality a woman could ask for in a man, that is to say, in a Myth. He is kind, gentle, concerned, sensitive to changes in mood, respectful of a woman’s space, yet dynamic, forceful, even aggressive. Mr. Height knows when to hang out, when to disappear, and when to kick the door down. He knows how to fix the door, too. He’s a very handy fellow, Mr. Height is, and he’s got slow hands, except when it comes to jobs around the house.

Mr. Height is intelligent, articulate, sharing and talkative, yet never sarcastic or hurtful, except in order to apologize and make up for it later, in which case he can be very sarcastic, and even biting. Of course he’s pretty good at biting anyway, but only when she wants it.

Mr. Height is strong and silent, full of presence even when he’s absent, and yet somehow vulnerable, though never weak. He does get sick and helpless from time to time, and then it takes a Good Woman to nurse him back to health. When he’s too sick to speak, his eyes say it all.

According to the United Nations Bureau of Myths, Fairy Tales, Press Releases And Government Reports (UNBUMF), Mr. Height has been found in all cultures that have been visited by an anthropologist, or at least filled out the form. Mr. Height is a Universal Archetypal Figure, registered with the C.G. Jung Institute and the Franklin Mint. He exists in many local variations around the world, since women are very imaginative in the Unconscious, or wherever they happen to be, or both.

In the German-speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine, women believe that someday a Fritz will come, giving rise to the popular folk expression, "on the Fritz." The Fritz doesn’t always act like Mr. Height, but women look up to him and that’s all the clue a trained psychologist needs. Or a trained Alsatian.

In Atlantic Canada today, women are looking for Mr. Pushbar, the One who will open the Doorway To Happiness, which typically involves getting out of Atlantic Canada. In northern Finland, women are currently more preoccupied with the question of where your Lapp goes when you stand up, but they’ll think about Mr. Height next spring, when the sun also rises.

No matter what women call him, his number is always the same. He is the One. He is Mr. Height, the big, tall, strong, excellent guy who just doesn’t exist. If he did, he’d make a bloody fortune. Of course the taxes would be brutal, so maybe he’s better off staying in the Unconscious where the women all love him. All love and no taxes. What a lucky guy!

Robert Hurley

NEXT TRANSMISSION: We expose the pneurotic workings of the Voodoo Windup Doll that is the Masculine Unconscious, which occupies fully 87 percent of a man’s brain, the other 13 percent being devoted to Sporting Propositions.