Former Perfect Lover v. Dream Soul Mate
ONE ANSWER TO [AN] AD'S QUERY: "WHAT MAKES A GAL A GOOD NUMBER?" IS SIMPLY "LOOKING LIKE A NUMBER OF OTHER GALS"; TO THE QUERY, "WHAT'S THE TRICK THAT MAKES HER CLICK?" THE ANSWER IS "BEING A REPLACEABLE PART." JUST AS SUCCESS AND PERSONALITY KNOW-HOW CONSIST OF RECIPES AND FORMULAS FOR REDUCING EVERYBODY TO THE SAME PATTERN, WE SEEM TO DEMAND, IN HARMONY WITH THIS PRINCIPLE, THAT LOVE GODDESSES BE ALL ALIKE.
The issue is never the Former versus the Dream, but the Living versus one of the two. The New Seed is always in competition with the imagination; even the Former's perfection is mistaken. Éluard said somewhere that one would never recognize his soul mate because they would not look or act like he had imagined them to -- the true soul mate is not the being he had fashioned in his fantasies.
