the ick

The ick is the only emotional event in modern dating that is treated as both a medical condition and a verdict. It arrives suddenly, it cannot be treated, and there is no appeal process. People describe it the way they describe food poisoning, with the same grim respect for the body’s decision.

The documented triggers are small enough to require a magnifying glass. Clapping when the plane lands. Pronouncing espresso with an x. Holding a fork in a fist. Running for a train. A catalog of these circulates online and grows by several hundred entries a week, each submitted with the confidence of a field biologist logging a new species.

What makes the ick useful is that it removes the need for a reason. A person who ends something over incompatible values has to describe the values. A person who ends something over the ick only has to describe a backpack. The listener supplies the rest, and the storyteller is spared any inquiry into whether the backpack was carrying other information.

I keep the same catalog with the sign reversed. On April 25 she made a dissatisfied face at a waitress over a side dish that did not come with the plate, and I wrote the face down as expressive, emotions worn openly, and entered it on the credit side. That is the ick’s instrument exactly: a verdict taken from a gesture too small to survive being described, held with total confidence, and never tested against anything else. The only difference is the direction of the finding. After 4 dates and $445.94 I am doing the ick’s work at my own expense, and calling it observation.