Pretty Shallow

Another night, another text. This time Pretty Shallow texted, asking if I wanted to go see a movie.

I met Pretty Shallow in New York a couple of years ago. He is a nice guy, makes some money, travels for work and pleasure and is both pretty and shallow. I mean that in the best way possible.

There really is nothing wrong with being pretty or shallow, in fact, for a while, those were the only people I would date. There was a time that if you needed to know anything about pretty shallow people, I was your man. Then I got married, which was fine for a few minutes and not so fine for a few more and then is disappeared like a bad dust storm.

After that I changed the way I operated. I would no longer date just on looks alone. I wanted more. Although I was not confident I could offer more, I knew I could no longer be on a first date and realize that I was sitting across from a person who was both pretty and shallow. Of course, I am not so pretty, but I have my shallow moments, so I was a part time member of the pretty/shallow club.

When I met Pretty Shallow he was working for a bank on Wall Street. I had traveled to the city to interview an elderly woman who was about to have her condo foreclosed. She was a sweet woman, a liberal from the days when that meant something. She was photographed by a friend of mine protesting bank bailouts while homeowners were thrown into the streets. Before meeting this woman, I was tooling around the canyons of Wall Street, shooting b-roll footage for a long form film I was kind of piecing together. While standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange Pretty Shallow approached me, asked what I was doing and after a few moments, invited me to his 38th floor office where I would have an expansive view of the entire financial district.

Pretty Shallow had an assistant and a secretary. I think my sense of making it has always involved a driver. I knew I had done well if I could place a call and a driver in a nice car came and picked me up and took me where I needed to go. This has not happened, but I hold out hope.

Pretty Shallow had made it. You need money to have an assistant and a secretary and god knows what other support staff and he certainly had that. Plus, he really did have an expansive view from his corner office with glass walls looking out over the heart of the worlds financial empires. He had a lot to say about the countries economy and when I pulled out my wireless microphone Pretty Shallow said no way would he be interviewed, ever, for anything. I made a mental note of that.

We exchanged all sorts of contact information, email and cell numbers and we would talk often over the months, from finances to terrible relationships. Pretty Shallow is apparently incapable of any sort of long form relationship, having had one longer term relationship that lasted 6 months. Then again, being pretty and shallow has a payoff, people often want to talk with you, get to know you, sleep with you. Pretty Shallow does well in the bringing people back to his apartment routine. The problem with pretty shallow people is that after a short time period, most adults get bored looking at someone who is both pretty and shallow.

That is not always the case with me, but I do not speak for everyone.

Pretty Shallow has been in my city for a couple of weeks, working on some sort of merger project, all hush hush and again, Pretty Shallow put up a wall years ago when it came to specifics, insider trading is something he fears more than hair loss.

I texted back, telling Pretty Shallow that there was not a movie out right now that I would be interested in seeing. This statement is not all together true, only because I am unaware of any movies in theaters right now, up and above whether I would want to see them or not.

We have been out a few times, dinner, sometimes a club in the city, sometimes just a group of people I would not know, sharing some sort of communal meal in Brooklyn. Pretty Shallow is hardly ever the center of attention, because after the nice suits and perfect hair, the white teeth and the art on the walls, his opinions are based more on assumptions and TV that knowledge and understanding. He is shallow and seemingly proud of this fact. As he once said to me in the middle of a night of expensive wine drinking, "no one ever wants to go out with me cause I am smart."

Truer words.

So, faced with the prospect of a movie sitting next to Pretty Shallow and a night alone, at home, looking at an off white wall and a neurotic dog who keeps stepping on my genitals, I texted back and said I was on a date.