7 posts from March 2009

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I have fewer illusions.

Or perhaps I have replaced my old, tired illusions with fresh new ones, and that's always good.

No huge surprise: Laura blew me off.  We had an SMS conversation about it (we have never actually spoken on the phone).  She told me she was "stressed".  I texted back: "You can be too stressed to eat, too stressed to sleep, to fuck, even to talk, but it's impossible to be too stressed to drink."

I got back the longest text-message.  My phone had it break it up into several fragments to display it.  The gist was that I was an insensitive jerk.

I suppressed the urge to apologize -- alpha dog, alpha dog -- and just agreed with her.  Surprisingly, she semi-apologized and promised to call.

I thought about this a long time.  Obviously, I need to do a better job: there's a line between alpha dog and just plain asshole that I need to keep from crossing.  Well, practice makes perfect.

The next day, though, Laura asked to be my Facebook friend.  Do that mean I wasn't too far over the line?

Yesterday, I went out to lunch with James, an old colleague.  An old female colleague, and only "old" in the sense that we'd known each other a long time.  She was pretty, prettier than I remembered, and I started to wonder -- well, you know what I was wondering.  The answer, however, seemed to be "no", so I just chatted with her.

I even shared with her an extremely dilute version of my whole alpha dog theory.  Note to self: don't bother telling women about his theory, they just don't believe you.  Since James didn't believe me, I decided to see if it would work on her.

First, I told her about my visit to a strip-club.  Normally, of course, I would never mention such a thing to a female acquaintance -- but Alpha Dog goes where he likes and says what he likes.  James's response?  "I've always wanted to go to a strip club."  Alpha Dog shrugged: "Maybe we can go together sometime."  And changed the subject!

We talked about politics.  James was under the impression that Obama had won the election by a narrow majority.  I pointed out he was more than 5% ahead.  She made a response that indicated that that was the kind of error that was typical of me.  "Fuck you," I explained.  She smiled at this, recognizing Alpha Dog's growl, but I didn't let her patronize me.  "I'll bet you that Barack won by at least 5%."

"OK, what's the stake?"

I thought for a second.  "If I'm right, we go to a strip club, and you pay."  She agreed.  "What do you get if you're right?"

"We go to a strip club, and you pay."

Fine by me.

All the SMS exchanges I've had with Laura -- and they are all the communication I've had with her -- have had a very similar tone. To simplify:

Me: Want to get a drink with me tomorrow night?
Her: I'm depressed about work
Me: I'm sure it'll be OK
Her: I'm very worried
Me: You're capable and talented, you'll always find work
Her: You're so nice

Well, the New Me doesn't comfort women, he doesn't take care of them.  I feel kind of shitty about that, but not as shitty as I do about having less sex than Pope Benedict on a slow Tuesday night.  I do think she's capable and talented, and I do wish she could less anxious about her career, but the key thing to focus on is getting her and/or her hot girlfriend naked.

So I texted her the following:

Me: Are you still boo-hoo-hooing about work or you wanna go get trashed?

We're going out Sunday night.  Wish me luck.

Today I tried something radical and, I admit, a little sleazy.

I was raised by my mother and my sister and I learned early on that my happiness was tied very closely with theirs.  I have a vivid memory of going shopping with them, a Lord & Taylor in Philly, when I was about nine.  They were looking at clothes, and I was holding all their purchases, just standing there daydreaming.  My mom tousled my hair and said to my sister, "He's so patient and helpful.  He's going to make a good husband."

A good husband.  I've thought about that phrase a lot.  I realize now that my whole life, I automatically tried to take care of women, to befriend them, to encourage them.  I thought, not unreasonably but, I know now, wholly erroneously, that that was the way to romantic success with them too.

Even after I had decided to break that pattern, I found it very difficult to do.  A few days ago, I was walking my dog and stopped to chat to a very pretty girl of about 20 who was walking three identical black pug puppies.  We had a fairly long conversation, maybe a quarter of an hour, first about dogs, then just about everything.  As I walked away, it struck me: she was undoubtedly thinking, "Gee, what a nice guy."

Hey, it's nice to be nice; it's nice for people to think you are nice.  But the key thing is, what I needed for that girl to be thinking was, obviously, "Gee, I think I'd like to fuck that guy."

Girls, for whatever reason, do not fuck their friends.  I've seen this a hundred times, every guy I know has: a girl tells you how much she likes you and how mad she is at her asshole boyfriend, with whom she, mysteriously, is sleeping with instead of with you.

So I am not going to be the friend any more.

Selena texted me.  She said she was having a very bad day and might want to hang out.  I texted back, "I'm not your crying towel.  Call me when you have a GOOD day."  It took me an hour to get up the nerve to send it, but I did.  Haven't heard from her since.

I was chatting online with Keisha.  She said something about me that was uncomplimentary.  I told her to fuck herself.  She reacted with surprise.  I reiterated that if she was going to be a bitch, she could go fuck herself.  She told me -- non-ironically -- that she was getting turned on.

So today I tried something radical and a little sleazy.  For a few hours, whenever I was speaking to, or even looking at, a pretty girl, I tried to imagine myself slapping her.

It was remarkably difficult.  In my family, a wife-beater when I was growing up was on the same moral plane as a child-molester.  I wasn't doing it, but I was fantasizing about it, deliberately.

I went to the fitness club.  The girl at the check-in desk was on the phone.  The usual Spandex-coated gym treat, snapping gum and yacking on the phone. I pictured her vividly, looking at me with her usual indifference, and whap.  Her hand flying to her stinging cheek, the hurt look.

She hung up the phone and reached out for my ID card, sighing and tilting her head to telegraph her boredom.  In my head, another smack, harder.  A bubble of bright red blood forming in one nostril and the hurt look evolving to  a slight, shy smile.

I handed over the card.  My eyes narrowed, the hostility driving the fantasy leaking through.  "Hi," I said, in a tone like a jab.

"He-lloo," she breathed.

I discovered more bitter than death the woman
whose heart is snares and nets
whose hands are chains
-- Ecclesiastes 7:26

Again, Selena and I spent some time together on several days in a row.  Today, I finally asked her what was going on.  She said she had something to tell me.

We sat on a park bench and watched our kids play on the slides.  She told me about a man, an ex-boyfriend, and all the things that were wrong with him.  He was cruel, he was dishonest, he was physically repugnant -- and so, of course, she was obsessed by him.  She dreamt of him, fantasized about him, thought about him constantly.

She told me how much she liked me, that she thought I was sensitive and intelligent, and that it made sense for us to sleep together.  Despite that, she said -- "despite that", meaning of course, "therefore" -- she wasn't attracted to me, and we could only be, dread word, friends.

I don't understand the daughters of Eve.  They return loyalty with indifference but reward contempt with sex.  I treated Laura -- a lesbian! someone supposedly with no particular need for any sort of man -- with a mocking disdain, and she responded like a sorority girl.  With both Catherine and Selena, I opened up, dealt with them honestly and respectfully, and became their best gay friend.

I fear now that my choices are, and always were, to continue living a live I hate or to escape it by becoming a man I despise.

On Craig's List, she advertised for a small, Latino man.  I'm almost 6 foot and of Eastern European descent; I only responded since she had said something about "walking in Central Park", that she seemed to be looking for a New Yorker but was posting in the San Francisco list.  She replied she was in San Francisco and wanted to go out with non-small, non-Latino me.

She blew off the first date at the last minute, wrote back a week later and rescheduled for Wednesday at 8.  At 7:45 she emailed, said she'd be an hour late.  At 9:10, she emailed again, said she wasn't coming.  At 9:30 (I was hanging around the bar, trying to pick up the waitress) she showed up.  Prettier than I was expecting.  I asked her if she wanted a drink, she asked for a white wine, I ordered a Chardonnay for her, she corrected me, wanted a Pinot Gris.

We talked -- or rather, I talked and she laughed hysterically at everything I said.  She told me, rather pridefully, has a home in the City and another down the peninsula.  She brought this up twice so I decided to tweak her a bit: "How is it you live in two places -- you don't look that affluent to just own two houses." (She was wearing a cashmere sweater over a silk blouse, with a gold necklace carrying a pearl pendant the size of my eye.)

Mistake!  Boy, did she go off, asking me if she looked "destitute", apparently genuinely angry.  At first, I thought this was her idea of a joke, like Joe Pesci in GoodFellas: "What do you mean, I'm funny?  I'm amuse you?  I'm a clown, is that what you mean?"  But nope.  I apologized sincerely, though not abjectly and she didn't even slow down.  Finally, I had to say, "Look, you have two choices: one, you can just leave..."

She snapped "Fine." and made a few furious texts on her cell-phone.  Then, bizarrely, she decided to make small talk.  She asked me what I did, and I told her I worked at a small software company.  She said, "Work there?  What are you, like the janitor?"

"What's wrong with being the janitor?"  That stopped her for about three seconds -- she might be a cast-iron bitch, but this is still San Francisco and showing a lack of sympathy for the working man is grounds for banishment.  She stammered out a few words about it not being a challenging job.  I thought about asking her whether she thought she could do it for one day, or live on the wages for one week, but decided I want her to leave a lot more than I want to win the argument.

She surprisingly managed to say goodbye graciously and leave, and I went back to the bar, where the bartender and the waitress told me that they pegged her for a total bitch from the moment she walked in.  I don't know whether they were telling the truth or just sympathizing, but it cheered me up.

The bartender had work to do -- there were four or five people drinking at the bar -- but there was no one at all at the tables, so the waitress and I talked.  It became a really intimate conversation.  She told me about her ex-boyfriend, their unwanted pregnancy, the guy she's seeing now.  I told her about my wife.

Who showed up at this point but the guy she's seeing now.  Pretty much the ultimate cock-block, wouldn't you think?  But no, the guy was stoned out of his gourd and seemed like he'd be pretty dull even if he weren't.  I take advice from Carlos and am just best friends with the guy -- sincerely, not being a jerk, genuinely trying to be friends.  He isn't a bad guy, just unfocused and not too bright and very, very high.  I could tell the waitress was appreciating the difference between affable, outgoing me and the sullen zombie she is dating.  Eventually, he finished his boilermaker and wandered out.

Now I was feeling bulletproof.  If I can shake off the boyfriend, I can certainly get past any obstacle.

Pride goeth before a fall.  Next, her best friend showed up.  The friend plopped herself between the two of us and proceeded to tell us -- or tell her rather, because she's studiously ignoring me -- about some bad movie she just saw and how stupid it was and what a waste of time.  The friend was not just a bitch, like the CL woman, she's good at it.  When I say something, she watched me intently while I'm talking and for a few seconds afterwards, and then went on with her previous topic or another as if I were just a distracting noise, like someone dropping a tray of glasses.  Finally, the three of us ended up staring into space.  The waitress, formerly so talkative and open, was now uncommunicative.

She went off to the restroom; the friend and I were left alone at the bar.  The friend, needless to say, twisted her body around on the stool so she's facing complete away from me.

I heard the waitress coming back from the bathroom, so I crossed the barroom to meet her.  I took out my phone and was about to ask her for her number.  "Oh, no. No, no, no, no.  No."

"I understand that--"  She didn't wait to hear what I understood.

"No, no, no, no.  It's nothing personal, but no."

My philosophy is once a girl has said "no" more than 10 times in a row, she probably means it.  Damn, I was really hoping to salvage this evening.  I told her it was nice meeting her -- same thing I told the CL bitch but it's true -- and got a polite handshake, and I walked out into the freezing rain.  A homeless woman on the sidewalk asked me for some money and I handed her a dollar without slowing down.  "God bless you," she called after me.

"Not likely," I growled.

I had a second meeting with Maura and her boss, Achmed.  The boss wasn't sure about putting my name in for a job interview.  I spent 45 minutes discoursing about my good points (numerous and shining) and bad points (for every hero has feet of clay).  Maura sat silently through this, with a look of what I took to be adoration in her sapphire eyes.  At the end of the meeting, Achmed said he'd try his best.  Maura shook my hand and as Achmed wandered away, I offered to take her to lunch.

"Oh, that's OK."  And like that, she was gone.

The whole thing hit me pretty hard.  The job offer, which I really would have liked, was drying up (and ultimately, I did not get it) and Maura, who was prettier than I remembered, wasn't interested in me personally.

I texted Catherine and a few minutes later, she replied: "Can't live with us", plus a smiley.  I laughed at that but then the reality hit me like a taxicab hitting a bike messenger.

"You see what you did there," I told myself, sitting down on the curb, laughing sadly.  "You see?  Something important happened in your life and the only person you wanted to tell was Catherine.

"You think she feels the same way about you?  Do you?  No, if she wants to talk to someone -- or fuck someone -- she's got her husband, or her 'secondary', or about three other guys."

"That's fine, that's fine, we're just friends."

"No, you idiot.  She's just friends.  You -- you schmuck with all your brave talk about being wary of love -- you think she's your girlfriend!"

"No, I don't.  Or maybe I do.  So what if I do."

"She's not.  She never will be.  She'll never-"

"Don't say that."

"You know I'm right."

"OK, so she'll never sleep with me.  So?  We're friends."

"No, you're not.  Even you aren't stupid enough to believe that."

And I'm not.  I can't live with her, so I'm damn sure going to have to live without her.  I had to do it, I had to forget about Catherine.

And in case I was curious about how stupid I really was, the first thing I wanted to do, to memorialize this realization, was to write to Catherine.  I was actually composing the email in my head, and debating whether I should do it on the phone.

What was I going to say?  "Dear Catherine: You know that relationship you're not having?  Be advised I am not having it either.  Yours, Uli" 

It's simple.  It's as simple as giving up smoking.  I just don't.  I don't call her.  I don't send her SMSs or emails.  I don't write on her Facebook wall.

It's as easy as giving up smoking.  Every time my phone rings I imagine it's her and I picture seeing her name on the display and -- as I had promised myself I would -- pressing the red button that sends her to voice-mail.  Every time I wonder if I will be strong enough.  And every time, of course, it isn't her.  Of course.

And so I forget her.  And don't, of course.  I'll never really forget her.  I'll think about her less and less as every day goes by.  Maybe someday in the future, I'll run into her again, and if it's far enough in the future, it'll be nothing more than a pleasant surprise.