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The Kobayashi Maru of Love
by Carljoe Javier

You’re better off not having a writer for a lover. At least that’s what advocates of the “Thou Shalt Not Date a Writer” semi-fictitious quasi-movement think. They maintain that because a writer, by definition, writes, a writer with whom you’ve entered an intimate relationship is bound at some point to write about you. Further, they believe that writers possess an inherent tendency for fictionalization. Even those who claim to be ‘memoirists’ or ‘nonfictionists’ tend to fabricate their own realities in their efforts to inject a certain degree of drama or so-called raw humor into their work. Just ask James Frey, who, after a flurry of lawsuits and allegations against him, admitted that he made up some key parts in his account of his rehabilitation from alcohol and drug addiction in his bestselling book, A Million Little Pieces. Or ask David Sedaris, who confessed that he “exaggerates for effect” and famously said, “Memoir is the last place you’d expect to find the truth.”

These claims are all very well when everything between you and your writer-beau is running smoothly; perhaps he’ll write about how it’s all sunshine and rainbows and blossoming bluebells every time you’re together. But just you wait till your relationship hits a particularly rough patch and falls apart altogether; he’ll probably write about how manipulative you can be and how you’re a major obstruction in his creative process. And if you’re especially unlucky, maybe he’ll even cook up a treatise proving you’re a direct descendant of the Lernaean Hydra.

Carljoe Javier is a writer. A woman named Cha made the ostensible mistake of falling in love with him — and out of it. Proving members of the “Thou Shalt Not Date a Writer” group right with regard to the first part of their argument above, he did write about her, in his new book of essays called The Kobayashi Maru of Love. But proving the same people wrong with regard to the other part of their argument, he did not need to densely fictionalize his experiences with Cha and expose her shortcomings as far as their ill-fated relationship is concerned. Unlike most writers, Carljoe is a true-blue geek, and in Kobayashi Maru, his sort-of-sequel to his first book called And The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth, he is more inclined to infuse his essays with contemporary popular and, far more often, not-so-popular culture references than to sprinkle it with impertinent embellishments. He chooses not to make up a troubled history between him and his ex-girlfriend or draw a family tree that traces her genealogy to a many-headed monster in Greek mythology, although it’s quite clear from his breezy writing that either task is well within his capacity. This is — dare I say it — his Eat, Pray, Love, except that it deals with post-breakup misadventure rather than post-divorce hedonism, that it’s told with a voice that’s sincere rather than annoying. Kobayashi Maru is dripping with honesty: undiluted, unpretentious, and occasionally uncomfortable geek honesty.

The geekiness of this book is impossible to miss. Just look at the title: The Kobayashi Maru of Love. Made up of just five words, already it’s a self-contained remark on the complexity of intimate relationships. But the essence of the title (and, by extension, of the book itself) is lost if you’re in the majority of the world’s population who still don’t know their Vulcans from their Romulans. The foreign-sounding phrase in the title comes from the science-fictional universe of Star Trek and pertains to an elaborate simulation used to train Starfleet Academy cadets. During the Kobayashi Maru test, they’re forced to go under extreme pressure of choosing between rescuing the eponymous ship which is rendered inoperative within enemy territory or just leave the ship behind to ensure their own safety. It’s a no-win situation, a puzzle, a game. And to Carljoe, it sounds a lot like love.

In The Kobayashi Maru of Love, Carljoe chronicles his journey from being truly, madly, deeply-doo in love with Cha — so in love that he was willing to suspend his firm sense of masculinity and accompany her to the spa — to being lost in the emotional and existential fallout from their breakup — as evidenced by the second part of the book, which is in fact the result of a week-long exercise in creative nonfiction, a total of seven meditative essays that are also melancholy and at times suggestive of the tearful sentimentality of the recently widowered Rob Sheffield in Love is a Mix Tape — to being hopeful upon his discovery of an otherwise obvious truth that is as much about life, the universe, and everything as it is solely about himself — although his ultimate realization comes rather abruptly in the book, a glitch that is less ascribable to the recounting of his epiphany in an essay with not much incident than to the book’s lack of a strong sense of cohesive progression. But throughout the book Carljoe makes certain that the story of his eye-opening trek inside the labyrinth of life and love is told with a mixture of allusive intelligence and self-deprecating humor topped with honesty so unabashed that among his compositions that made the cut is a brief anecdote that appears at first to be a discourse on self-exploration but soon enough turns into a conversation making euphemistic use of the compound term (wink, wink).

Carljoe is a geek, proclaimed as such not only by himself but also by close friends and mere acquaintances alike. Kobayashi Maru is proof of that. Every essay in Kobayashi Maru, most notably the one called “Attribute Point Allocation,” where he authoritatively laments the “inverse proportionality between how good we look and how intelligent we are,” is proof of that. I had the pleasure of meeting Carljoe during a meet-up of local book bloggers and independent publishers last month, and this was what I gathered: He’s a geek all right. He showed up looking coolly casual, carrying the sort of scruffiness normally attributed to persons primarily involved in nonsocial pursuits. True to his nerdy persuasion, he was quiet around strangers, i.e., us, but he was more than willing to sign my copy of his new book. In it he embeds the famous blessing that accompanies the equally famous Vulcan salute from Star Trek: “Live long and prosper.” It’s the same blessing I suppose he bestows upon himself from time to time as he goes about his quest not to find an easy way out of the many entanglements of romantic relationships but to fully embrace the intricacy of this thing we like to call love in English, pag-ibig in Filipino, ai in Japanese, and parmaq in Klingon — this thing that, by any other name, would remain a Kobayashi Maru, a test of character, a beautiful mystery.