Now for the article of clothing. Your favorite article of clothing represents how you’re perceived by others. I love this one because it’s usually antithetical to the essence of the animal we pick—that is to say, how we perceive ourselves. So I think I’m a honey badger and other people think I’m a hoodie. There is quite an incongruity between who I think I am and who others think I am, which either means I have a self-perception issue or that I wear a mask around people and have an authenticity issue. Spoiler alert: I have both.
This juxtaposition usually shows that we’re attached to an old story of who we are and/or the role we played as a child. I realized that if I could just figure out a way to see myself the way other people see me, that my life would get a lot easier, and my self-esteem could start hovering over zero.
Now to your favorite body of water. This one symbolizes how you view . . . drumroll, please . . . sex. Embarrassing as it was, mine was right on the money. I like it “sometimes rough, sometimes calm.” Well, stranger, now you know pretty much everything about me. I’ve had a guy on a first date tell me his favorite body of water was a pond because it’s “still and peaceful.” We did not end up having a second date. It was pretty safe to assume he’s a bottom, and that would never work out because, well, I have bad knees.
The white room metaphor gives insight into how we view death. This one is just sort of fun because I personally don’t think you should judge people too harshly on how they view death, unless their response is “I like to create white rooms for other people to be in forever,” because then they may be a good old-fashioned murderer. I’ve had some friends write “annoyed.” It cracks me up to think about someone who’s annoyed they’re going to die, “Goddamn it! My flight was late, traffic is crazy, and I freaking have to go die at some point. Who has time for this shit?”
If you administer this quiz with your date and he or she passes without revealing any obvious psychotic tendencies, the second game to play to find out if there are red flags lurking beneath a charming, beguiling facade is word association. Again, Mr. Jung was big into this one. That dude knew how to party. You know the deal, you say a word and they have to say the first thing that comes to mind, which can reveal some random but often also horrifying peeks into someone’s subconscious. One time I was doing word association on a second date with a guy, and we went back and forth on a bunch of words. We were cracking up laughing because his responses were so innocent and funny. When I got to the word “marriage,” he went dark and he blurted out, “Cunt!”
Uh-oh.
A man using that word is grounds for leaving the table immediately, which of course meant I dated him for another four months.
Jung has specific words he uses which I’ll include for you cuties, but I like to make up my own list based on what I need and specifically want to know about a person. You’re probably not going to get something as clear as you saying “cheat” and your date responding “I will totally do that!” but a vague response may lead to a deeper conversation you wouldn’t necessarily have had otherwise. Again, the goal with this is to learn as much about a person as early as possible so we aren’t finding cocaine in our boyfriends’ wallets at the Cancún airport. Don’t worry, that story is coming up.
Here are the words I like to use when I play this game on dates.
Skin
Future
Write
Wife
Dad
Me
Animal
Play
Pain
Wet
Baby
Blood
Man
Fear
Want
Mother
Red
Test
Fresh
Mind
Religion
Sex
Brain
Rich
You
Girlfriend
Dead
Life
Fight
Fantasy
Give
Bitch
Work
Money
Family
Friend
Deep
Cheat
Sick
Taste
Song
Freedom
To make you feel less ashamed about your weird answers, here are mine in case you want to feel less crazy or judge me.
And here are the words Jung used in the actual test in case you want to trust a trained professional instead of a comedian.
I realize that my responses aren’t funny, and I’m very insecure about that, but the idea isn’t to be entertaining, it’s to be as honest as possible with the first thing that comes to your head. The idea isn’t to be a laugh riot, although that’s always a bonus, but the point is to look for any major red flags—for example, you say “man” and she says “castrate,” or you say “girl” and he says “poison.” And I don’t mean the band. That said, if he randomly yells out “Poison the band!” my advice is to marry him on the spot.
Now here’s the hard part of all this: Once you do spot a red flag, your job is to actually read the writing on the wall. You don’t get to pick up a pen and rewrite the writing on the wall. For most of my twenties I rewrote the writing on the wall, and frankly it’s a miracle that as a result I’m not in court trying to get custody of my seven kids from numerous very handsome malignant narcissists.
Hopefully these tests save you some time and help you weed out some weirdos. Ultimately, even if the games don’t yield poignant or revealing answers, I feel that if your date is down with being open and vulnerable enough to play the game, I already like them. Godspeed. And I better get an invite to the wedding.
But even if you don’t invite me, I’ll be fine.
THE CODEPENDENCE CHAPTER
A lot of people ask me why it took “so long” to write a book. I pretend it was because I didn’t have time or didn’t think I had enough to write about, but the truth is, I was scared. I was scared it wouldn’t be good, that people wouldn’t like it, that I’d be rejected or that you’d think I was a narcissist for writing a book about myself. I’ve felt this same paralyzing fear with every show, every joke, every performance. Even with my sexual performances. What I’m trying to avoid saying here is that I have a condition called codependence, which essentially means that for a long time I couldn’t tolerate not being liked. Down, boys! I can’t marry all of you!
I don’t trust you to look up the condition online yourself, because if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up in a wormhole Googling your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. So, let me save you some time; here’s a definition of codependence I remixed from a compendium of sources: