My Search for the Übermensch

[::I'm sorry about the pictures being oddly shaped! You can click on them to see them in better form!]

            When I was in high school, I had a friend who kept a mile-long description of her Dream Guy.  Now, this wasn’t just a little blurb about the kind of things she looks for in a man. This was a full-on character profile, pages and pages on traits, lengthy descriptions, and measurements that no man could ever hope to even aspire to be.

            “He has to be taller than me.” she, clocking in at 5’10 and built like a brick wall, would always say, “With green eyes and brown hair. He’ll have great arms and a six pack and love to swim. He has to love Rent and Shih Tzus and Audrey Hepburn movies. And he should be a doctor. Or a lawyer. He has to be able to treat me like a princess.”

            Naturally, being the understanding person that I am, I used to openly scoff at her for having such ridiculous expectations. I know that most girls at some time or another during their teenaged years have made a list describing men like my friend’s Shih Tzu-toting Dr. Sixpack. Most of the time they aren’t as lengthy or specific, but everyone has a list of traits they look for in a significant other.

Up until recently, I thought I was one of the only people who didn’t have a list at all. The only thing my three exes had in common with one another was the fact that they were overgrown man-children, a trait to which I’m not particularly attracted.  I seemed to be attracted to individuals rather than a specific list of traits. I was proud-arrogant, even-about the fact that I didn’t go around vetoing potential beaus because they didn’t fill my mental checklist of my Dream Guy.

I'm assuming this is the kind of guy my friend had in mind.

This July marks a full year that I’ve been a single, independent woman after being cheated on and dumped by a sociopathic fiancé. I’ve changed a hell of a lot since that train wreck, and I’ve learned a lot about myself that I would have realized earlier had I not jumped from long relationship to long relationship since I was fifteen.  One revelation in particular sticks out to me. It came, oddly enough, in the form of a question from a mundane facebook survey.

Yes, I’m one of those people who does those surveys to pass the time. Sue me.

Anyway, I had copied this survey from a friend of mine, pasted it onto a new note document, and was in the process of replacing my friend’s answers with mine when the interesting question came up:

What famous couples do you think of when you think of true romance?

My friend-and others who did this survey around the time-had put down couples like Michelle and Barack Obama, Westley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride, Brad and Angelina, Aladdin and Jasmine, Jack and Rose from Titanic,  Jack and Sally, Harry and Sally, and other couples from various chick flicks and Disney movies.



How romantic.



And then, there were my responses:

Erik (The Phantom) and Christine, Edward Scissorhands and Kim, Freddy Krueger and Nancy, Dracula and Mina, Louis and Lestat, Clarice and Hannibal Lector, Lili and the Lord of Darkness from the movie Legend, Joker and Harley, Eric Draven and Shelley Webster, Batman and Catwoman, and…Harry and Sally.



...Whoa, wait, what?



 So…right.  Other than Harry and Sally (how could you not love them?), it’s obvious that I have a major screw loose in the romance department. After nervously laughing at myself for being such a complete and utter freak, I actually studied my bizarre list and found a disturbing pattern. Again excluding Harry and Sally, each couple is an effigy for the impossible relationship in some way or another. All of them are high conflict, high passion, and, which royally freaked me out, high violence. Upon inspection of the men in the relationships specifically, I realized that each and every one of them were superhuman, subhuman, not human, and/or somehow “more than” human.

What the hell does this mean for me, I wondered? That I actually do have a list of traits I look for, and that list of traits is completely and utterly psychotic? That I’m attracted to dangerous and dominant men, or (like Edward Scissorhands) impossible love? That I’ve been subconsciously searching for some sort of sub-human übermensch* from the darkest underground corners of society?

After much thought, I concluded that the answer to my questions was: Eh, kinda sorta.

Just because I didn’t notice this inclination of mine doesn’t mean it hasn’t always been there. Looking at the two or three men I find myself casually attracted to right now, I can see it. One man I’m attracted to has a shaved head, no eyebrows, snakebites, and a lithe, sculpted body riddled with tattoos and self-inflicted scars.  That definitely insinuates a dark, otherworldly, possibly even dangerous individual (although for the record, this guy is an absolute sweetheart.) Another, on a subtler note, is an excessively creative and intelligent individual with a larger-than-life personality that hides crippling self-doubt and tumultuous mood swings. That sounds like Erik and, in some literature, Dracula.

Either internally or externally, these guys are good manifestations of my attraction to übermensch-like qualities. Now when I find myself looking at men, I realize that a couple of things I often find sexy-tattoos, piercings, scars, eyeliner/industrial makeup, etc-are all embellishments that make one stand out, makes them different, enhances the form of man.  They, in other words, become more than human, in a way.  All my life I’ve been drawn to books and movies about vampires and other supernatural creatures, other superhumans. Apparently my libido is no different.

Damn you, Phantom.

Why am I inclined toward passionate, tumultuous connections with superhuman prodigies? Well, honestly, I blame Erik.  The Phantom of the Opera has been a part of my life since I was in the womb. It’s my favourite musical, my favourite book. Erik and Christine became the quintessence of romance to me at a young, impressionable age. Part of me may always be searching for Erik in a mate, which isn’t good, because though Erik is a genius in so many ways, he’s also completely batshit. But for better or worse, the Phantom has successfully blurred the line between fear and attraction in my brain.

Now that I think of it, that explains my conflicting terrorlust for Heath Ledger’s Joker. On one hand, he scares the hell out of me (especially when he’s tormenting Rachel Dawes), but somehow I don’t know if I’d totally mind being on the other end of his knife, if you know what I mean. ;)

Um....hot?

Terrorlust would be an awesome name for a band.

…I have no attention span.

Moving on.

Unfortunately this little revelation doesn’t make me any less attracted to the men I deem übermensch. Does this mean I’m destined for some sort of wildly dysfunctional relationship with a madman like Hannibal Lector or anyone else on my little list?

I don’t really think so.

Though friends of mine love to joke about my penchant for ink and metal, I’m not exclusively attracted to those attributes. Many of the things on my Dream Guy list (which I’ve finally admitted to having, it just wasn’t written down) are positive and ordinary. I love a great smile. British and Irish accents make me melt into a girly puddle. I don’t think I could stand to be with a man who doesn’t have a good sense of humour.  My Dream Guy may not resemble my high school friend’s musical-loving muscle lawyer, but he isn’t Freddy Krueger, either.  There’s hope for me finding a strong, stable, sweet man yet.

But it’d still be great if he had snakebites.

Nero Bellum has beautiful snakebites...and the rest of him is fantastic, too.

*Übermensch is a term loosely meaning ‘superman’ or ‘overman’. It’s most closely associated with Nietzsche as a goal for mankind, übermensch as a man of this world rather than the otherworldliness of the Christian God.  I’m using the phrase as its more literal meaning of a ‘superman’, rather than Nietzsche’s übermensch.