Dealbreaker

Back in undergrad, my friends used to play a game. Whenever the party was winding down and we were sitting hunched over our last dregs of alcohol, swirling hideous concoctions around in red plastic cups, not quite ready to go to bed; or when we were bored and waiting in line; or even just on a momentary whim, someone would start, “so they’re perfect for you in every way, except…”

The premise of the game is simple. Imagine a person who is perfect for you in every way. Funny, attractive, kind to animals, voluminous hair, they just get you in a way nobody else does—the questioner can elaborate on this in a variety of ways —except for one flaw. Do you stay with them? The flaw can be anything from the mundane (they don’t brush their teeth, they make inappropriate jokes, they have really goofy facial hair, they’re a secret conservative), to the weird (they will only eat hamburgers, they always wear a novelty tie when they leave the house, they make hideous macaroni art that they gleefully decorate your shared living space with, they insist on wearing a Richard Nixon mask during sex), to the outright fanciful (at a random point every twenty-four hours they transform into a fish, once a week they disappear into a mysterious portal and will not explain where the portal goes or what they do there, they have a green ribbon tied around their neck that they forbid you from touching).

You can elaborate on the scenario, ask questions about its limits: “how secret? How conservative? Are they giving material support to causes I find reprehensible?” — “do I have to get them to a fish tank when they transform or risk having blood on my hands?” — “will I be able to discreetly throw away the macaroni art?” — “how about if I engineered an ‘accident’ so they were no longer capable of producing macaroni art?” — “well, would they stay with you under those circumstances?”

Or if it doesn’t seem like the person being asked is taking the hypothetical seriously enough: “ok, so you’re in bed and reach out to caress the rubbery Nixonian face of your lover—”

Or too seriously: “Do you know what it’s like to really feel like you’re being seen and loved in your entirety by another human being? An ugly tie is going to get in the way of that?”

It’s a good way to learn about people, not just by their answers (“well, so long as nobody else knows about their political donations”; “I respect my partner’s bodily autonomy and have no desire to pull on the green ribbon”), but by their evasions (“look, I really think that turning out the lights solves most of that issue”; “I don’t think partners are entitled to know everything about each other’s whereabouts so what they do in the portal is none of my business”; “people don’t turn into fish, stop giving me stupid ones”), and by the questions they pick (“suppose they were blond?”;  “would you say, in this light, that I have a roughish Nixonian charm?”; “what about if they looked… exactly like me?”).

There’s one version of the question I always liked to ask, always near the end, one foot out the door, splitting a cab home with friends, the most important, but also perhaps the cruelest, the most apt to produce indignant sputters and sour the tranquility of a quiet walk home alone: “So they’re perfect for you in every way. Absolutely perfect. Do you stay with them?”