A Manifesto on the Fictional Paradigm:
Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend

Written by Peter Welle
Concept by Peter Welle & Jeff Boyardee

Conceptual Origins
In late 1997, I was at a local Bible college visiting a close female friend of mine. The experience of walking down the halls of her dormitory was a sobering one. Many (70%) of the doors in the hallway were decorated with cut-out photos from bridal magazines. In my friend’s own room, the walls were littered with pictures of wedding gowns, handsome men in tuxedos, and little girls holding baskets of flowers. These women made no pretense about their desires in life - they desired to get married. I do not believe that they desired to be married; they lusted only after their wedding day. They wanted all eyes to be on them as they walked down the aisle - their own personal victory march.

Around that same time, the Titanic phenomenon occurred. The movie, while being a finely crafted film, began to expose inherent flaws in the demands of women concerning their boyfriends or desired boyfriends (mostly the latter). Many young women - including many young Christian women - saw this movie in the theater numerous times and were moved by the boyfriend character of Jack Dawson, and desired a boyfriend like him for themselves.

At this time my good friend Jeff Boyardee and I were sophomores in college. We realized that many women’s expectations of boyfriend behavior were beginning to spiral hopelessly out of control and out of the realm of reality. We began to hypothesize on what the future would bring in this regard. Would women’s desires simply have to go unfulfilled? After watching the Rose character from Titanic achieve enlightenment, truth, and happiness in the arms of Jack, how could people allow that to happen? We determined that perhaps the U.S. government would make a move to counteract the rising tide of female expectations by creating an army of robot boyfriends. This move seemed too cold and industrial to appeal to many women. Jeff Boyardee and I ultimately determined that to best understand what was happening, we needed to really determine what it was that these women were really looking for. Who was this person who could fulfill their irrational demands? Of course, we now understood that this person could not exist, and so we had to create him. Thus, Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend was born.

The Basics
Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend is a fictional paradigm of what many women are looking for. He is not based on any actual person; the name Jeremy was chosen arbitrarily. He does not exist in any physical sense. His construct is simply a mechanism by which we as men can best understand the illogical lunacy that females are demanding of us.

It is important to understand the target demographic for Jeremy. When confronted with this topic, all women will invariably say something like, “Well, that’s not what I’m looking for.” While we admire their efforts to shrug it off, we as men know that many of them would happily date/marry Jeremy. Jeremy will be best received by women who fit under three or more of the following categories:

-Have fantasized about their wedding day since early childhood

-Find most men to be crass or insensitive

-Went to a Bible college

-Can’t imagine getting married at any age older than 23

-Have had a crush on (or a secret desire to closely befriend) a gay man

-Saw Titanic more than three times in the theater

-Have never/very rarely kissed a boy

Jeremy’s basic characteristics are oftentimes very subjective. For instance, his personal appearance has been a matter of much debate. Jeff Boyardee and I finally determined that he appears different to every woman who sees him. If one woman wants a very preppy, Abercrombie-looking boy, then that is precisely how Jeremy looks to her. If another woman wants Jeremy only to dress in his wedding tuxedo at all times, then that is how he appears to her. However, it should be noted that given the spectrum of women who desire Jeremy, his range of appearance is effectively quite small. For instance, not many women who meet the above criteria would want Jeremy to dress in leather motorcycle gear. But should they so desire, then that is how Jeremy will appear.

Jeremy’s hair is also a point of contention. It has been determined that Jeremy is able to grow his hair at an acutely accelerated rate in order to meet the demands of the hairstyle that his girlfriend might find attractive at any given moment. He can grow facial hair at a moment’s notice, if she likes, or he is able to relax his facial hair pores and permanently release all whiskers if she desires a smooth face (this is a popular option).

Jeremy’s age is also subjective - he is always exactly three years older than his girlfriend.

Characteristics of Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend

-Jeremy has a well-toned, muscular physique with healthy-looking, bronzed skin. However, these attributes were not gained by weightlifting or tanning beds, as those methods would be too prideful. No, he earned those with long hours of chopping wood in the hot sun with his shirt off.

-Jeremy’s speaking voice is a husky whisper. He prefers to interact in extraordinarily close quarters and whisper intimately (note: his breath is always minty).

-Jeremy is a great athlete. In high school, he was the captain of the football and baseball teams. When he played football, he played without a helmet as to be more easily identified by his girlfriend. Jeremy was also heavily scouted out of high school by the New York Yankees but turned down a shot at the pros to pursue the relationship with his girlfriend. Jeremy dismisses the time that Sports Illustrated dubbed him “the next Babe Ruth” and instead says he is the “Babe Ruth of your heart” to his girlfriend. It is also important to note that Jeremy has no interest in watching sports.

-Jeremy urinates only while sitting down. He does not use urinals.

-Jeremy has a solitary male friend that he only hangs out with when his girlfriend is otherwise unavailable. His name is Joshua the Innocuous Friend. Joshua is a somewhat socially awkward, skinny, generally unattractive fellow who is widely acknowledged as “such a good guy.” Jeremy’s friendship with Joshua serves a few purposes. Primarily, it allows Jeremy to be seen as a friend to the underdogs in life, and somebody who looks after people. When Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend and Joshua the Innocuous Friend hang out, they do not watch TV, drink, curse, or even laugh. They just talk for hours, oftentimes about Jeremy’s love for his girlfriend. Joshua the Innocuous Friend also exists for the sake of pity. When Jeremy, his girlfriend, and Joshua hang out, the girlfriend can feel sad that nobody knows what a good guy Joshua is except for her and Jeremy. She may conspire to hook him up with one of her unsuspecting friends, or she may simply pat herself on the back for being friends with such a specimen.

-When Jeremy is with his girlfriend and an attractive woman approaches them, Jeremy does not look at her. In fact, during that time, he stares only at his girlfriend. After the attractive woman has left, the only comment that he might make would be to say, “That outfit would look great on you.”

-Jeremy loves to hang out with his girlfriend’s friends. He is very sweet to all of them and enjoys their company. However, while in such company, he holds his girlfriend’s hand or rubs her back at all times. This behavior is very effective at making other women jealous of Jeremy’s girlfriend, which is what she secretly desires. Then, after Jeremy leaves, all her friends can say to her, “You’re so lucky!” She will revel in their jealousy, or perhaps encourage them reconsider dating Joshua the Innocuous Friend.

-Jeremy weaves his own clothes out of pesticide-free vegetables, and after done wearing them, romantically feeds them the girlfriend so that they may return to the mother earth in an environmentally friendly manner.

-Jeremy says things like, “I don’t like it when women have large breasts.”

-Jeremy has never tasted alcohol.

-Jeremy desires to be with his girlfriend at all times. Though, in theory, he has a job (see below) it never conflicts with their time together. When separated, he will often call her and leave adorable messages on her voicemail like, “I was just thinking about rainbows and it reminded me of you.”

-Every day at least a dozen gay guys flirt with Jeremy and he is invariably cordial in turning them down. Prominent gay magazines regularly feature him on the cover with the title “Can We Convert Him?” which he is good-natured about.

-Other men (with the exception of Joshua the Innocuous Friend) do not enjoy Jeremy’s company. This does not bother Jeremy’s girlfriend, as she doesn’t particularly like men herself (thus the need for Jeremy).

-There is one incident, which must occur with Jeremy and his girlfriend. They will be together at his house (not an apartment) where he is cooking a meal for her. He will ask her to get some small item for him out of his room. She will go into his room and get the item, but on her way out, she notices an easel in the corner. She approaches the easel and sees a large sketchpad resting on it. She lifts the first page to see a perfect rendition in charcoal of her riding a unicorn, with stars and rainbows in the background. Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend enters the room silently and says, “I’m not done with it yet. What do you think so far?” She turns around to him and she is smiling through her tears of joy.

-Jeremy only wants to kiss on his wedding night.

-Jeremy has no discernable sense of humor. This is because while all women theoretically desire a man with a sense of humor, many women dislike the active practice of joking around - they find it crass or rude. Jeremy is able to make his girlfriend laugh by referencing previous humorous incidents or by recounting scenes from funny movies, but he as a person is not funny, and in particular he would never use sarcasm.

-Jeremy has a job working for a (subjectively determined) charity. Somehow he makes an incredible amount of money at this position, which he uses to buy things for his girlfriend and provide for their future.

-Jeremy often talks with his girlfriend about their wedding day.

-Jeremy can say “I love you” in 6,000 known languages, as well as the language of the dolphins.

-Jeremy plays acoustic guitar. Though he is extraordinarily accomplished, he chooses to write songs using only 3 chords. Of course, all of his songs are ballads to his girlfriend. Jeff Boyardee and I took the time to write a small example of one of his songs:

(excerpted from the Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend Song)
Charcoal etchings of a gray-white horse
Dedicated and created for you
Together, we’ll gallop across the sky
Clinging as two lovers do

Our lilac promise in the lilac bush
Fuels my undying love
If the lilac wilts than our lilac dies
Is my lilac enough?

-Jeremy has adopted and nourished a crippled baby seal, who he has somehow trained to work in investment banking.

-It is important that Jeremy have some tiny measure of imperfection or pain, in order that his girlfriend can still feel like she can tame him or nurse him in some way. For that reason, Jeff Boyardee and I crafted this back story for Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend:

One of Jeremy’s childhood friends was a girl named Jessica the Previous Girlfriend. Jeremy and Jessica grew up just a few houses apart, and always played together and rode the bus to school sharing the same seat. As childhood turned to adolescence, Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend and Jessica the Previous Girlfriend began to have romantic feelings toward one another. They began to date each other when they were each sixteen. They spent their summers constantly together, and when they were seniors in high school, they were voted “Best Couple.”

While in college and on Christmas break, they went on a skiing vacation together. At the top of a mountain, Jeremy playfully asked Jessica if she wanted to race him down the mountain, and she agreed. As he sped down the mountain, Jeremy, out of the corner of his eye, saw Jessica the Previous Girlfriend lose control and ski into a restricted area. Sadly, Jessica fell off a 300-foot cliff and died. Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend was heartbroken and racked with guilt. He personally carried her brutalized, decapitated body to the hospital, all the while screaming “Why? WHY?!”

Shortly after that sad episode, he met his new girlfriend. She saw him alone and crying and approached him to ask what was wrong. He whispered to her, “I just want to fall in love so bad.” She put her arm around him and comforted him through his sorrow, and thus began their relationship.

Summary
What lessons can we learn from Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend? Some men might feel inspired to change their ways, to become better men like Jeremy. Those men are foolish bastards. No, the only lesson that can be taken from the fictional paradigm of Jeremy the Perfect Boyfriend is that many women are insane, needy people who desire men to have traits that logically contradict each other. If we as men are to survive, we must avoid these women at all costs, in order to ensure that their genes cannot be carried on into a new generation of gender role chaos and mutually assured destruction.