What do you look for in a man?

When you are about 5 or 6, the quality you look for in a man, well, boy, is that he notices you. Boys are noisy, and terrifying, they climb trees and jump off tall things and come back from playtime muddy. You can climb trees and jump off tall things and you just want them to notice you. To let you in. You write him a note on a very small square of refil, cut painfully carefully symmetrical, it says: Dwayne, why won't you notice me, we were meant to be together. You don't even know what this means.

When you are 8 or 9, you look for the quality of 'difference'. By now, you have divided the world, there are: good people, normal people (some are good), weird, dangerous people (some are still good) and bad people. You like him because he is the weird, dangerous good type. He comes from a bad gang family, the wrong side of the tracks (the state housing up the road), but he has intelligent eyes and you see more in him. You sit together in the classroom at story time so close that your whole thigh is touching. You think that one day you might kiss. But you don't, because a pretty girl moves to your school from out of town, and she kisses him in the cloak bay. You move on.

When you are ten or 11, you are interested in a boy who is 'older'. Older is sophisticated. You are desperate to grow up. You are in intermediate and the world (that matters) is divided into two groups: form one, and form two. You are form one and you aspire for greatness, recognition, coolness. So naturally, you want a boy just out of your reach, a form two boy. Mostly, you choose him because your very best friend loves his very best friend, it has nice symmetry to it.
The grapevine at school 'arranges' for you to meet behind room 12 one day after school to pash. You can't do it, you don't show. He 'dumps' you (via the grapevine). You find yourself that Christmas Eve staring at fuzzy rainbow coloured fairy lights through your tears, as you cry softly, because he doesn't 'love you back'. At this tender age you have a rich sense of what it means to be 'unrequited'. You fake your little, broken heart out.

When you are 13 you have you first friend who is a boy. Actually you have two of them. They are great fun. They get into terrible trouble. They smoke cigarettes, holding them with the lited end cupped in their hand like men at war. You try to smoke cigarettes. It makes you sick. You like this boy because you can be yourself around him, well, more yourself than ever before. He loves you first. So you go out with him. You wag school one day and he spends hours and hours giving you hiki's trying to get one to look like the batman signal. You start to think it might not work out because he is a foot and a half shorter than you. Height becomes an issue.

When you are 15 you look for the quality of 'coolness'. He is very cool, he is a skateboarder, he is really good looking, with curly blonde hair and big brown eyes. He is a cunt to you. But you can't really do anything about it because you have no idea where your personal power is located. He cheats on you with your friends friend, the same night that your one of your oldest, best male friends confesses his undying, never ending, all inclusive, overwhelming, eternal love for you.
You switch boys.
You love this new one. The quality that you love most is that 'he loves you'... 'to death'. He is the first boy to ask you to marry him. Drunk. You 'sort of' accept. And break up with him a few months later because he drinks too much and has no ambition. You decide 'love' as a quality cannot replace 'ambition'. Because lets face it, ambition is hot.

When you are 17 or 18 you are, tragically, still looking for a guy who is 'cool' but with something more, unique hobbies, rare talents.
You hang out with your friends older brothers, at the pub, underage, playing pool, trying to seem cool, taking drugs, going to parties, trying to seem cool, feeling painfully insecure and unsure about everything, working overtime to appear cool. You like him because he's older, cool, and he's the closest thing to a professional musician you have ever met, he plays in a band. He's a twin. He just needs a good scrub. You could be really good for him. You score him at a party one night. You realise he is kind of a loser. It starts to dawn on you that YOU might actually BE cool.

When you are 19/20 you want a guy who 'treats you right'. No more mongrels. No more lending them money for hot chips/cigarettes/vodka/the bus and not getting it back. You want a suave guy. A guy who owns a suit. A guy with good manners who you can take to meet your parents. A guy with a good car. You move into a house with him (as flatmates) and get to know each other pissed on the upside down couch at the front of the house playing guitar singing elvis songs. He treats you right, he is suave, he owns a suit, he's a DJ and he loves rat pack music. You've never had it so good. You fall madly in love. You work at the same bar. When your shifts finish you get drunk, be beautiful together and ball room dance to Frank Sinatra. You feel envied. A drunk comedian writes a love poem about how beautiful you are together and gives it to you. When he leaves and goes to London. You feel sure that you will die.

When you are 22, 23, you want to turn the tables, you want a guy who you can do more with than drink and party, you want a fit guy who is 'into things' outside of a nightlife. You find him, he is into mountain biking, kayaking, camping and snow boarding. Outdoorsy. You start going to the gym and running and you quit smoking (for the first of many times) because you like hanging out with this healthy guy. When he comes to stay he brings his 5kg tub of protein powder, he can't leave home without it. he is a cancerian, you have your first expreience of having a truely deep, emotional connection with a person of the opposite sex. He moves to Wanaka and you break up over the phone.

When you are 24/25 you look for guys who 'have their shit together'. You want a grown up man. You want to stop being their stepping stone on the way to emotional maturity (snort). You find one. He's six years older than you and he is a teacher. He's from South Africa and so has an incredibly fascinating past/accent. He's not like kiwi guys, he CHASES you for over a year. As an excuse to see you he takes you to lots of concerts always paying for everything, just like a grown up man would. He's really got his act together and he is totally crazy about you. It drives you (good) crazy that he's so crazy about you. But also, for all his charm, he is a bossy know it all and you are hard headed and emotional labil. It flounders. Funny how he could seem so grown up, but when you look back you can see he was just a young man.

When you are 27 you date a guy who falls into your lap. The quality he has is that you are mutually infatuated with each other. As if your love rings at exactly the same note and tone. You see yourself in each other. And you are inseparable and pyschotic about being together. I mean, you guys are angelina jolie, blood in a vial around your neck, tattoo your name on my arm, i don't need another single person in the world, mad, crazy, scary infatuated with each other. Its the best feeling you've ever had. Together, you have the best time of your whole life, and equally the worst. The passion spills into your disagreements. You are plate throwers. The good times and bad times are rolled together like sugar and cinnamon in a cinammon roll, but eventually, there sweetness is all lost.

When you are in your early thirties you look for a guy who is: the right age, has a good job, wants to get married and have kids, treats you with respect and wants to love you. He finds you. You let yourself get swept away on a fairy tale. The fairy tale is fuelled by alcohol as you have an equally matched propensity for drinking too much too often. After a few months you here yourself tell your best friends that you have nothing to talk about, and that every declaration of love and forever has been made under the influence. When you are on the precipice of sacrificing your entire life for him he ends it. Was it just the long distance? Him breaking up with you, in hindsight, appears to be the greatest act of real love of the whole affair.

And then... you get a little bit older, and you think to yourself that after all this looking, all these boys and men, these heart surges and heart breaks, these electric shocks and discoveries... you must know SOMETHING about what you really need, something about what you should be looking for in a man... you MUST be able to pick (find, identify, attract and keep) the right guy.
You start falling for a guy because he has this quality: he makes you feel calm, unselfconscious, happy and relaxed. It suddenly seems so obvious.