It’s a frustrating balancing act to be a part of. Say something slightly insensitive and you
seem like a douchebag. Leave a remark
that’s slightly down in tone, and you look like some melodramatic pseudo Beat Poet. Come off as chipper, and you’ll sound like some
bubbly airhead. The only solace is
humor. Thank whoever for humor. Without it, I would be way too worried about
how the fairer sex viewed me… making constant adjustments in my speech &
action. A week of that and I’ll be so
neurotic about everything, if a cute girl was near I would start to nervously shake
like one of those overbred Chihuahuas. I’ve recently become worried enough as is.
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| Rocko knows what's up. |
God dammit, this is why I stopped chasing after women. Just a few weeks ago I was a model of
confidence & wit, covered with a thin veil of apathy. I was not looking to date anyone, therefore I
saw no need to try and impress anyone.
It was a very stress-free social life – I thoroughly enjoyed being single,
and I was fucking good at it. Beautiful
girl walks by, good for her. She stops
and says hi, good for me. I’d respond
with a “hi” and have a carefree conversation, because her view of me was not a
priority at all.
That happened to me one night, fairly recently. I can't remember where I was exactly; I just know
it served overpriced coffee inside and had an undersized parking lot outside. I had just finished circling this puny
parking lot for the third time when a spot opened up. I backed in,
right in front of a few large windows and the front entrance. I liked this.
Not because I’m one of those people that like to constantly look at their
car wherever it’s parked, or always back into a parking spot just for aesthetic
reasons. I just happen to be paranoid,
thinking someone in a huge truck might not notice my pocket-sized two-seater
& whack into it… and the only time I back into a spot is when I know it would turn into the Wide World of
Maneuvering if I had to back out
of it… because god DAMN, that little thing is littered with blind spots.
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| Look at that crap. A triceratops could walk by and I'd never know. |
Anyway, after I was inside and had scooped my coffee order,
I began to set up my little writer’s workstation that hipsters like to
duplicate, to seem like writers. Hey, don’t get mad at me, I’ve seen them do it all the time. They strategically
set up their blank notebooks and unread Bukowski novels, open up their
Mac and cruise Facebook, until someone walks by, at which point they open up a
document and pretend to work on it. Once
they think no one is around, right back to Facebook. Apologies for the tangent, but it drives me
up a wall when people pretend to be deep and creative just to seem cool.
Shortly after I sat down, a very pretty girl around the age
of 25 took a seat next to mine and complimented me on my car. This threw me off. See, as a testament to the stupidity of the
modern male, the entire $25,000-50,000 sports car market is based off of the
notion that women are attracted to men that drive them… but in fact, the only
attention that car will get is from other men.
It’s the ultimate automobile irony.
From what I’ve seen, a guy needs to drive something much nicer to start
to get that kind of reaction. I
however,
do not.
That’s why she caught me off guard with, “Hey there, I like
your car”. Once I got my bearings back,
I thanked her. She continued, “You
looked like you were climbing out of a spaceship! What do you do?” I saw an
opportunity to be a bit of a smartass.
“Ironically enough, I’m an astronaut.”
“Get out,” she shot back at me, “You're not really, are
you?”
“Nah, I’m just messing with you.”
“Good thing you came clean, I would’ve found out
eventually.”
And that, ladies and gents, is why I titled my March 14
th
post on
Rusted Bolt (
AHEM!):
She’ll Find Out You’re Not an Astronaut. The funny part is… I had already written the
majority of it, I just went to that coffee shop to do the editing and think of
a title, among other things. We talked
for a minute or two longer, then without warning, she left her number on my notebook and went
back to her own table. I didn’t keep the number though. While getting a woman’s
number without asking is extremely rare for me, I already had my eye on someone
else… so that little sheet of paper went in the trash with my coffee cup as I
was leaving. But here's some more ultimate irony: not
keeping the number probably jinxed me, as the other girl has since not worked out.
The Jinx is a real thing, people. I’m normally a realist, but when it comes to The
Jinx, I'm a believer. I’ve seen too much evidence from my
personal experiences to just brush it off as mere coincidence. But I digress.
Later that night,
She'll Find Out You're Not an Astronaut went live. Now usually after I post something, I keep
thinking about it. In most cases it’s to
ensure I haven’t missed any points worth making, or to reflect on the general
theme and make sure it isn’t askew in any way.
With this one though, I kept trying to think of other finer points I
might know about the fairer sex. This
snow balled into introspective sessions that lead me to second guess myself at
every moment. I accidentally fell back
into the awkward person I had spent much time growing beyond and have since then, been fighting my through the quicksand of my insecurities.
 |
| In case you're wondering how to do it yourself... |
Back in the coffee shop, when that girl reached for my
notebook, penning down her phone number, I didn't think much of it. When she handed me the paper, I simply folded
it up and put it in my shirt pocket when she was looking, then discreetly threw
it away with my grande cup when she wasn't.
However, in recent days I don’t think that episode would be scripted the same. I could easily
imagine myself being preoccupied with calling her, pacing back and forth
through a room filled with action figures, like we all saw in The 40 Year Old Virgin. Well, that’s a bit of a stretch – being that I
only own one action figure.
 |
| Hey fuck off, Venom is badass. |
The reason for this
change isn't a simple matter of psyching myself out with my infamous
self-awareness, it's probably also due to the Springtime Itch.
We all know that feeling – coming out of the cold winter months as a
single person, and during the day, you start to see people pair up and you want
in on that sweet, sweet action. At night
though, the gloominess sets in and the Springtime Itch becomes the Lonely Bug.
Getting the Springtime Itch / Lonely Bug is not something
that most people are willing to admit, let alone in great detail, while citing
their hindrances and insecurities that add to it. Then again, like I’ve said many times… I’m
not most people. By now, if you don’t know
me personally, you can probably tell I’m one of the more open & honest people that one might encounter. That’s because being
mysterious is just not in my nature.
Well… with one exception that is obvious to some; Wright is not my real
last name. The way I see it, everyone
goes through feelings of loneliness at one point – many go through it numerous times – so why
bother hiding it? But enough bonding
over our shared embarrassments, let’s get back to my own. I’m the narcissist here. Me me me.
Like I said in that post I previously mentioned (on
Rusted Bolt AHEM!!!), I only know roughly 2% about women because 98% of the time I think
something is heading in one direction… but in actuality, is heading in the
wrong direction… or isn’t heading anywhere at all. Once I think I have something or someone
figured out… 98% of the time I am
ohhhh
so wrong.
At this point, I was going to sum everything up by making sense of the contradiction
between the viewpoint of this post and the one I explained in the other, but it’s four
in the morning and I'd like to avoid having the sleeping schedule of a vampire. So instead, I’ll just
cut this short and leave you with a line I thought up a minute or two ago. It has nothing to
do with anything… and I don’t even think I would necessarily agree with it. It just like the way it sounds.
“It’s not what you know, it’s not even who you know… it’s
what you know about who you know.”
 |
| Thanks Chuck. |
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