1 post tagged “ridiculous want”
What was the one thing that you wanted badly that made you do something ridiculous?
Submitted by estell.
Funny thing, this question: I was actually about to write a post along similar lines. Therefore, I'll kill two birds with one stone by answering this question and discussing my own thoughts. I'm actually in the midst of a Blade Runner on Blu-ray "marathon" (hard to actually have a marathon with one movie, but it's more about watching the various cuts of the film, listening to the commentaries, watching the documentaries, etc.), but now is a good time to take a bit of a break. As I mentioned in my last post, this blog isn't really about entertaining anyone or even updating my friends on my day-to-day life...rather, it's mostly about writing down my general thoughts and feelings, much like that heroic youngster of the early nineties, Doogie Houser. Sure, he certainly wasn't the first character to keep a journal, but whenever I think about blogging, I always hear that theme song, see that computer screen, and wonder why I watched so much TV in my youth.
Anyway...I was thinking about dating and attraction this morning (as I am wont to do). When one really sits down and thinks about it (which I have...my commute is lengthy and boring), it's almost astonishing that anyone ever gets married. I mean, first you have to find someone you can actually stand to be around and who can stand to be around you, then you have to successfully date and/or keep away various outside forces (prohibitive work schedules, flirtatious strangers, fear of commitment, etc.). But even all of that seems more reasonable than what comes next: moving in together and spending the majority of your time with someone else, essentially losing all freedom and personal space (not to mention privacy, lest you be considered "secretive" or "walled off"). If all of that actually works out, then you go from spending merely all of your current time with someone to spending the rest of your life with them, ie: marriage. This is, of course, as long as all of the little things don't get in the way (do your friends like him/her, does your family get along with them, is one person carrying the other financially, do you both want kids, etc.). Finally, having overcome all of those obstacles, you're married...and then you have to spend the rest of your life with the same person. No new encounters, no first kisses.... There's always divorce, I guess, but that's not a satisfying option by any means.
I could go on and on, spiraling ever further into the gaping maw of depressing reality...but that's not even what this post was supposed to be about. That's really a larger topic that I'm not about to address right now (there's still a lot of Blade Runner to watch...). I don't know...lately, I've just started to wonder if marriage is worth it...and by "lately," I mean over the last six months or so. The only solid reason I can see for getting married is to have kids...and one doesn't even need to be married for that (though as a member of the male gender, it would be more difficult to get one of those without a woman of some sort). I just wonder: is it worth all of the aggravation to try and find someone and jump through the endless hoops of dating, love, relationships and marriage? What's so wrong with being a bachelor? I mean, I'll be the first to say that, yes, the whole "physical intimacy" thing is pretty important, but one doesn't need to be married for that...some might even say that it helps not to be.
Then again...I've been in love. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that casual sex with a model is as satisfying as curling up with someone you love in bed and watching a great movie together. I'm endlessly attracted to the idea of being part of an exclusive two-member club, the idea that there's my girlfriend/wife and I, and then everyone else in the world. On those days when work crushes my spirit and my commute makes me want to steer into the median at 90 MPH and no one wants to hear my movie pitch, it's the black, rotting cherry on top to come home to my empty apartment. When I was dating Krystal, there was a week when she came out here to Los Angeles to visit me. During that week, when I would come home from a lousy day of transcribing to find her here, at first, it made me crankier...the bachelor/solitary part of me was bothered that I had to talk to someone when all I wanted to do was lie down and be alone. And I would be a jerk, grunting out a hello and using my body language to keep her away from me. But after a few minutes, all of that bitterness and anger (at my day, not her) would sort of burn away, and I would gradually become human again...and I would be so grateful for her presence. Not to trivialize all of that, but it's sort of like the recent season of Heroes, with that brother and sister: she would get angry and inadvertently use her mind to kill people until her brother would come along and use his power to calm her down and bring her back to normal.
That's not to say that I'm just some rageaholic monster...I could also tell stories about being there for other people when they're in that "mind-killing" funk...but the point is, as tricky and impossible as relationships seem sometimes, and although I still can't help but wonder whether or not they're worth the trouble, there's that tiny part of me that knows that they are.
As for something I've wanted badly enough that has led me to do stupid things, I would say that pretty much everything I've tried to do to get this current girl's romantic attention has been pretty stupid...not because I regret them, but just because if one of my friends told me that they had done these things, I would shudder with embarrassment for them. But then, the irony of it is that such romantic gestures don't really work...and I know it. Romance is dead...real romance, that is. Actually, to clarify: the romance of wooing is dead...romance once in a relationship is still very much alive and well. Case in point: this girl and I went to Legoland last weekend and she was telling me about how her parents and grandparents got together. The story of her grandparents' courtship was immensely romantic, like something out of an early David Lean film (specifically Brief Encounter...but without the affair part...it makes sense to me). It was one of those stories that could seemingly only happen during World War II and obviously took place in black and white. Then the story of her parents' wooing was a bit different: it started off as another achingly romantic tale, only to go in a very different direction at the end...very 1960s, 1970s. Of course, after hearing those tales, I wanted nothing more than to ask her: what will your wooing story be like? Very 2000s? Will it involve alcohol, a random makeout session, some sort of technology (texting love notes, perhaps)? Because part of me can't help but believe that it won't involve any of the actual romance I've tried to summon, because that's not how things happen anymore.
The thing is, theoretically, I know how to get a girl to be interested in me (that is, if there's some sort of basic attraction...if the girl finds me ugly or retreats from my use of words like "layover," I can't bounce back from that). With almost every girl I've liked, I've always been the doormat. I remember in second grade when I liked a girl named Erin Eichler, I would do everything she asked me to do. I would carry her stuff, I would do what she wanted to do, etc. And I remember one day, my dad told me that girls don't really want a doormat, they don't want a guy who will do whatever they say or want. And in my second grade way, I scoffed and said to myself, "Pshaw, what does he know?" Of course, as the years have gone by and as girl after girl has rejected me or has looked at me as "one of their best friends," I've come to understand that he was exactly right.
That's not to say that it's okay to be abusive or cruel...not at all (and that's not what my dad was advocating, either). But as much as girls talk about being desired and treated like a queen, etc., I think that's more how they want to be treated in a relationship...when wooing, they want to be treated like the enemy. And indeed, when I finally did get a girlfriend, it was partially because I wasn't interested in her in the first place, made no effort to woo her, and professed my feelings for a different girl (who, by the way, was never interested in me and still isn't...we're good friends, sure, but back when I actively liked her, it was Doormat City, population: me). Of course, when we were in a relationship, I mostly treated her well...but had I done the same things and tried to woo her, I would have been dismissed.
But I didn't really see the correlation until my second girlfriend. With Krystal, we worked together in New York during 2004...just months before I was planning to move to Los Angeles. So while I was attracted to this new girl in the office, I knew there was no chance of anything happening and made no effort to act upon my crush. Rather, I was very much "myself" to her, which my friends may know as being occasionally caustic, sarcastic, vitriolic, and borderline mean at times (though never with malice...just with joshing). And oddly enough, she was never offended or bothered enough to stop talking to me at work. I remember thinking to myself at the time, "You know, it would be really funny if she ended up liking me, because I feel like I'm being kind of a dick sometimes." Lo and behold, about a month before I left New York, she asked me out.
(By the way, I know that between that story and the story above, it seems like I was horrible to Krystal...I really wasn't. First of all, my humor was never mean...just bitingly sarcastic. I was never actively rude to her...I don't feel like that's part of my personal style, per se. And secondly, when we were together, we had our ups and downs just like any relationship, and I was just highlighting both a down and an up in the story above. True, in the end, I did have to break up with her, but that wasn't being mean or planned...it was complicated.)
Whether these results mean that just being a general dick is alluring to women or that being myself (who can be dick-ish) is what's alluring, I don't know. But I can't help but think about these facts now that I'm wooing this girl. I find myself being a doormat at times, which is my wooing nature, and I try to tell myself to be more "myself"...but it's not easy. I almost feel like I'm in the "relationship" part of our time together, wherein I just want to do nice things for her and be with her, when I should be in the "wooing" part, wherein I act aloof and hard-to-get. But I can't act aloof...with Tina and Krystal, I really wasn't trying to be that way. I think that if I acted aloof or dick-ish, I would just come across as an out-and-out asshole.
Anyway...I think I should get back to Blade Runner. Some lovely future noir might help drown these thoughts of mine...after all, I am on vacation. Still, it's taking me some time to come down off of my daily thoughts and routines. For the last two nights, I've been going to sleep and having work dreams. Yesterday morning, I woke up, frantic about whether or not we'd have enough BD-Rs for CES. It's moments like that when I can't help but yearn for someone to be lying next to me, to remind me that life isn't all about work....
