Have Cake, Will Eat

Anyone who knows me at least a little knows I spend the vast majority of my time single. And, once upon a time¹, it's something I whined a lot about. I sort of got suckered in by seeing romance on TV and movies, sadly. I felt like I was missing out on the human experience by not having a girl to do things hand-in-hand with.

Oh, but I had a plan. I was going to go to college, meet my wife, get married, and start life from there. It was beautiful, simple, and guaranteed to work. As you can likely ascertain, that did not happen. I'm sure the 18-year-old version of myself would have considered this a failure at life. The current version does not share that opinion.

If anything, I've grown accustomed to, and perhaps even come to expect, the single life. At heart, I'm an independent person. I want to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I don't want to have to account for my whereabouts with someone else or have to worry about another person's schedule or opinion when figuring out what I want to do².

When you're in a relationship, the primary price you pay is your freedom³. I've had it for so long, I don't know what I would do without it. That would be a huge adjustment for me. I'm an American, right? Am I not supposed to cherish freedom? Freedom and guns? A subset of that is the expectations. You're expected to "check in" every so often, whether you want to or not. I bristle at that.

I've always wondered why so many people end up pairing off. I find it hard (if not impossible) to believe everyone is happy in a marriage/lifetime relationship. Why do it? Tax benefit? Societal pressure? Fear of living alone? Child rearing? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask the next miserable-looking couple I see⁴.

I'm at that age where more and more friends are getting married. This scares the crap out of me. Are you people all insane? What is wrong with you? My best friend has been married for more than a year and a half now. I don't know how his head has stayed attached to his neck. Someone very prominent in my life recently intimated to me his/her future husband/wife is his/her current boy/girlfriend. My first thought? "No! This can't be! I'm not ready for this!" How do you people do it?

I've yet to have an actual adult relationship, so maybe I have it all wrong. I've had flings- more than I thought I would- and I won't deny they were fun. Perhaps I enjoy the thrill of something new. Maybe when it comes down to it, I'm terrified of a committed relationship and I subconsciously pick girls I know it can't work with or I sabotage it. I don't know, but it's an interesting theory.

I've gotten used to my life as it is. If anything, a girl coming along for the first time annoys me more than anything else. This is for a couple reasons: 1. I expect things to fail. 2. It messes up my routine, such as it is. Suddenly, I have to start thinking about that other person. I have to try talking to them⁵, which means I have to start putting other things around it. It's annoying, but I feel like I have to at least try⁶. I mean, hey, there's a girl, and I'm interested... something good might happen, right? Right? So then I find annoyed at the girl for being the reason I'm changing things up. Of course, she's completely innocent in the matter and never did anything wrong to deserve such feelings. As a result, I get even more annoyed at myself for being annoyed. It's a nice little circle.

In other words, I don't want to try, except I do. And I want things to change, but stay exactly to same. That's not asking too much.

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1 High school. I have no idea why anyone put up with me back then; I was insufferable.

2 Like last summer when I went to Cincy for three days to see the tennis tournament. I didn't tell anyone. I just went. That's freedom you can't buy.

3 But considering how few people choose to be single for life, it must be worth it. Still, I find that a bit crazy.

4 I could launch a full sociological study at the Athens County Fair alone.

5 But not too much! And not too enthusiastically! It's beyond stupid.

6 Otherwise, I have cousins thinking I'm gay.

Resume Management

There comes a point in one's career in which prospective employers no longer care about part of your history. When I'm trying to get a job when I'm 30, nobody really needs to know that I worked at Sea World when I was 16. It's relevant, but only in a very limited sense and has little direct bearing on what is happening now.

I wonder now if I have reached the point in which high school relationships don't count. Yes, I officially dated two girls in high school, but that was a long time ago and under very different circumstances than I would date a girl now. Does it count? Should it be removed from the "resume"?

What of relationships that were such in name only? Does it count that I dated Kat for two weeks? How can that be part of the tally? Probably not. I say now I have never been in a "true" relationship¹- one in which genuine exchanges of emotion and spirit took place. I never have been in the position to need to truly take another into account when making an important decision. I have not had to think of another person when envisioning the future, long term or short.

Perhaps I should just note my "girlfriend number" has an asterisk. Makes sense to me.

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1 I note with some ruefulness I'm getting to the age in which this would freak women out. Sounds like a catch-22.

Yeah, That Sounds Nice

I'm currently reading The Broom of the System by
David Foster Wallace (who else?). I had never ventured into DFW's fiction before, but at LaWell's prodding and providing of books, I am doing so. While I'm still in the nascent stages of the book and his fiction writing in general, I am enjoying it thoroughly, even if I still like his essays better. Aw well. Either way, I wanted to post this excerpt.

"I admit it, it is what I do, I am a kisser, and a kiss with Lenore is, if I may indulge a bit for a moment here, not so much a kiss as it is a dislocation, a removal and rude transportation of essence from self to lip, so that it is not so much two human bodies coming together and doing the usual things with their lips as it is two sets of lips spawned together and joined in kind from the beginning of post-Scarsdale time, achieving full ontological status only in subsequent union and trailing behind and below them, as the join and become whole, two now utterly superfluous fleshly bodies, drooping outward and downward from the kiss like the tired stems of overblossomed flora, trailing shoes on the ground, husks. A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which I skate with buttered sloes over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child's blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I not longer wish to be part."

OK. So, I don't know if you noticed, but that whole thing was only two sentences. Also, wow. I don't know if anyone has actually experienced anything like that, but it sounds pretty incredible, no?

Seriously, the genius of this man almost hurts. In telling people about DFW, I say he was so brilliant, it tortured him. In reading him, I wish I could even approach a glimmer of his talent. The other part of me knows it couldn't handle that burden.

Not Cursing the Snow

The snow storms we had a while back reminded me of something: How much I hate snow. But a coworker mentioned something that made me think of you¹.

I remember when we would get a foot or so and the ground would be covered in pure, untouched snow. I think that was your favorite thing in the world. You couldn't wait to get out there. Normally, when you were outside, you needed something to do² if you weren't just laying down. But in the snow? Oh, man, you went nuts. You would leap around, duck your head in it, throw it around. You would run and run and run and play until you couldn't move anymore... and then you did it some more. When you came in, you didn't even bother getting the snow off of you. You just let itstay there, as if you didn't want it to leave.

Remembering that, I guess the snow wasn't so bad after all.

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1 You know, other than whenever I look at my phone.

2 Frisbee or tennis ball, which you would demand to be thrown forever, not seeming to care how much freaking slobber you put on it.

Finding Truth Through Uncertainty

Ever get the feeling that the universe was goading you with a stick and a carrot? I have certainly had that experience. I was taught to believe in something. No, not taught... programmed to believe in it. It was never presented as a maybe or as a variable. It was an undeniable truth, something that inevitably I would experience. In the meantime, I would just have to sort of wait for it.

There are rules for this, of course, but nobody ever tells you the rules, and nobody certainly tells you they are different for each person. So you have to observe others, observe how it's done in art and try to apply it to your own situation. You also have to figure out it will differ each time you try it with another person. So these truths exist, except when they don't, or when they change. And they're not even permanent. They can morph with the same person that you are trying to find this or do have it with.

One truth that does seem to be universal is that you can't force it. Of course, nobody listens to this piece of advice. How can it happen without forcing it? Nothing in life just happens; you have to make it happen. So you think you see the light, and you reach out and try to grab it instead of letting it come to you. When this happens, it merely goes right between your fingers, and it hurts. You're left wondering what you did wrong, where your technique faltered and how to keep the light in your hands the next time. You try and take notes, learn what you did wrong and adjust accordingly. Of course, these adjustments may or may not be meaningful in any way the next time you see the light. That is, if you even see the light, because you may only be imagining you see the light.

Then there are the times you know the light isn't really there, that you're just grabbing for something that may provide momentary delight at a steep price. But you ignore that, deciding that short-term benefit is worth the long-term cost. It isn't, but you delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

So you begin to wonder if maybe the universe has been lying to you this whole time, getting you to believe in something that doesn't really exist. Everyone assures you that it does, that you will join the club in time. But all you know is that these people are not telling you the truth. You even begin to suspect that everyone that claims to have found it are really just acting, putting you on.

Then one day, the light comes to you. And it doesn't just come to you, it strikes you directly in the chest and knocks you over before you even have the chance to think twice. And it's warmer than you ever anticipated. You can't believe how you were able to survive this long without the light. And you hear a song like "A Whole New World," and it just makes you want to cry and cry. You can't control it, and you don't care.