#why the fuck would I write this. oh my gd alan

[jimmyspades]

Sad Boston Legal analysis at 9 am sorry

Season 3 Alan sees Vanessa in that pretty yellow dress and he can’t stop staring, he tells her why it affects him so deeply:

When I was a sophomore in high school I attended my very first dance. There was this girl, standing across the dance floor, wearing a yellow dress. She was so beautiful. I didn't have the courage to ask her to dance, perhaps for fear of the long lonely walk back across the gym floor after being refused. I finally willed myself to go ask, and then suddenly she was gone, in a fleeting second she must have left. I began to imagine what she must have been like. Her laugh. Certainly her kiss. I still know exactly what that feels like, though l've never felt it. She's been a figment for 29 years. An imagined standard by which all other women seem to have fallen terribly short.

He said it was a sophomore dance so he was probably 14-15, which means he had already been assaulted by his neighbor (s4 ep4: “I was 14, Denny. It was statutory rape. You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to.”) but he hadn’t yet been abused by his best friend Paul’s mom Victoria (explored in The Practice s8 eps 13-15: “Victoria, I was 16. Can a boy even be capable of love? … How many teenagers had you been with?”)

So there’s teenage Alan at the dance, at a very strange, confusing time in his life—

—his parents aren’t there for him, his father doesn’t like him, his mother never hugs him, but recently other adults have started showing him affection; grown women want him and use him sexually, and he thinks he’s flattered by the attention because he’s a stupid horny teenage boy!, of course he should want this!, he’s never been touched and suddenly everyone wants to touch him, even Denny makes a joke of it decades later when Alan finally calls it rape, but he’s still just a child. He’s 14!!!! Suddenly he’s “experienced” and treated like an adult and has a reputation—

—but tonight he’s shyly leaning up against the gymnasium wall, alone, wishing he had the confidence to ask this beautiful girl in his class, his own age, to dance. She was so pretty and safe to him—making up a harmless, idealized girl who would never hurt him at a time when he was being abused and tossed around and confused beyond belief—that for the next 30 years (and beyond) Alan used the idea of her to protect himself.

The idea of her kept his standards so high he could always walk away, he never had to be hurt—because any woman who hurt him clearly wasn’t her, so of course she’d disappoint. He expected this.

Of course Tara broke up with him. Of course Sally wouldn’t stay. Of course the women who had sex with him as a teenager lost interest. Of course he and Gloria would never work out. Of course Phoebe (and several other ex gfs) came back to use him then leave again. Of course his wife died. They weren’t the girl in the yellow dress, they were always going to let him down. “I’ve never met the girl in the yellow dress.” He’s still waiting to find her.