Some Recent Thoughts

I'll just start typing, since that seems to be the best tactic. Get all those lovely thoughts out in one stream of consciousness.

Tuesday night, I got a call from Oz and then quite soon afterward from Turck. A possible poker game quickly turned into a meet-up at Miley's in Jamestown. I was late, since it only occurred to me at the last minute to take enough stuff home so that I wouldn't have to return to Fredonia before Sunday.

We had a decent time at Miley's, eventually traversing to the College Inn, where I had been maybe twice previously. It was somewhat dead, although we did get to witness a domestic dispute before the principles made up and made out. Oz got semi-plastered, but was unimpaired as far as darts were concerned.

It was nice to see Alex; I hadn't had the privilege of hanging out with him in quite some time. The night was marred a bit when Oz and his 'other half' got into a tiny altercation (read as: tremendous blowup) over the phone. I'm sorry that he finds himself in such an inconsistently harmonious relationship. Though we were laughing at the brash things he was saying and likely making the situation worse as a result, it was pretty painful to watch. I have a tendency to occasionally draw parallels between his situation and one that I was involved in, but this is probably a mistake. I'm fairly convinced now that the two situations are not that close. Obviously he needs to do the thing that will make him happiest, but I'm fairly confident that he is having a lot of trouble figuring out just what that might be. Although a wise man once wrote that "there are two paths you can go by" and "there's always time to change the road you're on," it seems like Oz has doubled back on the same road quite a few times now and he's not really getting closer to his destination.

Apparently Randy's dad recently expressed surprise or chagrin that Matt and I are still single. Randy relayed it as, "those two still don't have girlfriends!?" Yep, that's right. I haven't really attempted anything on that front in a while. I'm weakened considerably by my standard approach of not really approaching at all - that is, waiting for females to either come on to me or to make things so obvious that I'm metaphorically smacked in the face with their intentions. There have been exceptions to this general rule. Not shockingly, they've arisen when I've had alcohol and I'm feeling just a bit braver. Aside from an extremely brief success in March 2004 that lasted about two days after making out in front of the Hotel Ellington (classy, I know...), I have not had much luck. I guess she was expecting more than I had to offer.

I think I've already discussed my frequent inability to distinguish between legitimate prolonged eye contact and simply returning my stare. Maybe I should rely on the fluttering of eyelashes or something. I don't know. I'm very bad at "playing the game," as I've said many times. This is mostly because I dislike the fact that it is so much of a game. I am almost always very blunt, open, straightforward, et cetera about my attractions and my intentions. I guess it disturbs me that so few others are. I think this is one more thing that I could claim as a product of the Destini experience. We had a few weeks of catching each other's glances and then she just made her move. I'm "ruined" by that in a sense; I expect every subsequent relationship to progress similarly and when it doesn't, then I dismiss it.

However, even when I am approached in a similar manner, it doesn't always work out. I've avoided talking about the Chelsea thing because there is significant evidence to suggest she still reads this on occasion, but I guess that matters little now. When she started work, I was pretty flirtatious, but I didn't really expect anything to develop. Age was a primary concern, but there were numerous other warning signs that we had fairly little in common beyond a willingness to make innuendoes to each other. When I found out how old her boyfriend was, I was a little blown away, but it quickly fit into a remarkably easy-to-construct psychological profile of a girl whose paternal role model failed her somewhat, or was at least out of the picture a lot. She turned to a much older guy instead.

My mother's situation is pretty similar. The affair she had when I was around 8 or 9 was only a precursor to the one she had when I was 17, and if I've picked up on my father's hints well enough, he has his suspicions about the time immediately preceding their marriage (the first one). My father's transgressions when I was 16/17 with Sandy were - I am convinced - purely a product of what my mother had done. You would have to know my father pretty well in order to know what I'm talking about, but take my word for it that he's not the type of guy to do something like that unless the line had already been crossed.

By the way - all this psychoanalysis is not something that I kept from Chelsea - I covered this with her well before we went out. She had claimed that neither she nor Jordan knew how old the other was at the outset, but this is either a lie or just incredibly naive - I'm not sure which. I showed her something on my blog at work. I’ll admit this was a tactical maneuver – designed to let her see more of my thoughts than she was likely to be exposed to in a work environment or in casual conversation. I showed her one innocuous post and then she read others on her own, which showed that she at least had some interest in me as a person. I figured that her reaction to what she read would tell me a lot about our possible compatibility. She seemed pretty interested and later left an anonymous comment that was a little too obviously from her that was complimentary about my appearance. I confirmed that she was no longer seeing Jordan (something that turned out to be just a little short of what one might refer to as the TRUTH), and asked her to go to a movie with me that night after work. And it kind of took off from there, about a month before it crashed, burned, and died. Now I have my theories about how the whole thing developed. I think her interest in me was a fairly direct result of the fact that I was the only guy close to her age in the department. The circumstances of us working alone for a few days had to help. The more you’re exposed to a person, the more likely you are to experience a growing intensity of any feelings you might have had initially. In other words, the more I worked with that jackass with the coke habit this summer, the less I could stand him. I think I could have fairly good luck with a lot of girls that I’ve liked if I had been able to spend more time with them in a working environment or hanging out in small groups. Being in class or seeing them in passing on campus doesn’t quite do it. I think it also helped that I’m pretty confident of my abilities at work. I know what I’m doing and there’s little secret that I do fairly well at it. That attitude is regrettably in pretty stark contrast to how I behave generally in LIFE. Life is not really something I’m very good at, so I don’t walk around like I know what I’m doing most of the time. And when I do, it’s usually briefly and it takes little to deflate me/shoot me down.

The Big Lebowski quote -

The Dude: “Fragile, man – he’s very fragile.”

Walter: “I did not know that.”

Yeah – so I think that has a lot to do with it. I had lingering doubts about the viability of the relationship, pretty much from its inception. However, I was encouraged by a few people to look at things from a different perspective. Just because we don’t have everything in common, they said, doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be given a chance. They reasoned that I certainly wouldn’t want someone who was exactly like me. Indeed. What a frightening thought.

So I stuck with it. I don’t know how soon it started to decline. The fact that she stayed in touch with Jordan, courtesy of his constant phone calls – certainly didn’t help matters. She changed cell phones, but the new number was passed along to him somehow, intentionally or unintentionally I’m not exactly sure. She kept telling me that I was “amazing” in the meantime, obviously something no one really minds hearing a lot. An excellent moment occurred when we were “actively engaged” on her living room floor and Jordan called her phone, which was quite close to our location. She was breathing heavy and I told her to go ahead and answer it, hoping he would ask her what she was doing. I took a certain sadistic pleasure in that, but now of course I’m not so sure that I never called while she was doing the same thing with him. Disturbing. Lack of trust is a horrible thing.
The night of August 16th into the 17th (the night after my birthday into the morning of hers) may have been the most fun we had together. It just happened to also be the end. We went out for trivia night with Turck, Lindsay, Abe, and Matt and afterward went to the Saloon where multiple drinks were bought for me. Chelsea drove me all the way back to Fredonia to my apartment, where we probably spent the best night of our time together, although there were a few that might be close seconds.

By that night, she had met up with Jordan at his parents’ house, had a fight with him, lied to me about how things transpired, and within a couple days she invited him to accompany her to get her tattoo. (Matt refers to a tattoo in the lower back as the “Whore Patch.” I normally call it – somewhat less crudely – as the Sorority Spot. Another popular name is the Tramp Stamp. Take your pick, I guess.) Of course, she had told me at various points in the past that she had decided not to get one, and then that if she did, it would be "someplace where only you can see" (I pointed out that the guy who actually gave her the tattoo would also have to see it, but apparently that didn't count), and that it definitely wouldn't be on her lower back, which I explained could send a far different message than she may want to be sending to guys.

I never understood that placement anyway. It's not like the person with the tat on their lower back can sit and admire it. Is it supposed to provide entertainment to the guy who is screwing the girl from behind? Are they that bored? I don't understand it. It's not sensual or sexy to me, but it is slutty.

It's pretty demoralizing to be rejected in favor of someone with so few prospects. A former used car salesman who told her he lost his job because he couldn't concentrate after they broke up. A guy who had - she said - choked and punched her, in addition to cheating on her multiple times over the course of a little more than a year. A guy who repeatedly threatened me over the phone, letting me know that he was going to kick my ass if I didn't stay away from his girl (the one he had cheated on, choked, and smacked around). He must be bringing more to the proverbial table. Good for him. I'm sure they'll be very happy together.

She recently called work and asked me if I was upset that she had left (she transferred to Erie, near her college) without saying goodbye. I told her we all do what we have to do. She expressed surprise that I hadn't called. I laughed aloud, reminding her that the last time I saw her, she had been walking out of the department with Mr. Right tagging along behind, glaring at me all the way (but not kicking my ass, amazingly enough). I don't know - maybe she thought we could all hang out sometime.

Long story short - it didn't work. There are quite a few reasons. Chelsea blames her lack of truthfulness on my declaration that I didn't think the relationship was going to last if we couldn't talk to each other about meaningful things, which she evidently took to mean that it just wasn't going to last at all. Apparently this realization made lies and deceit acceptable, although I have my suspicions (aided by the fact that I can't really trust anything she says to be factual at this point) that the lies and deceit were there from the beginning.

Would the whole thing have developed if not for the fact that I hadn't had any female contact for more than eight months beforehand? Well, if I'm honest with myself, probably not. That fact combined with her willingness as a very attractive girl to "come after me" in a way - just too much for someone with such a shortage of self-control.

All right. There's always more to say, but I think I'll leave it there for the time being.