Conversations with Women & Other Imaginary Concepts
Wow. I ask for feedback on back cover text and I get an explosion of conversation. I'm impressed because this brings out a lot of the hurdles a writer has to deal with. But first...
This is not a parody. That being said, anyone is free to jump in and discuss. If it stays civil, it stays. Otherwise, I'll use my editing powers and that will be the end of it.
If you'll give me a minute or two, I'll say a few words about myself, which, in turn, will say a few things about my writing. In this case, I'll explain my background in dating and relating to women.
As a child, I largely learned to read on my own. By the time I was going to school, I already had an active imagination. Those two things together made me a eager to read, especially when the stories were some sort of fantasy, or eventually science fiction. I didn't read any of the great tales until I hit college though. By then, I'd already made my imagination something that I used creatively.
When I was seven, I accidentally made up a GI Joe character I called "Commander Lazer Killer," or "CLK" for short. That mess got me into so much trouble. I kept making up stories involving CLK's exploits, usually fighting or teaming up with characters from movies I liked. As I hit puberty, my fascination with some crazy fighter in camo waned. I found that black was a color I could wear comfortably and confidently, so CLK started dressing the same. Then I looked in the mirror and realized how ridiculous CLK was; that's when I dropped all but the first nine letters. With a little refinement, I had the character I call "Commander." (Note: Yes, this blog is named for Commander because I still write his tales to this day.)
As I mentioned, a lot of my ideas were shifting as I hit puberty. That's natural. But none of the ideas I had were being abandoned. As a good student, I knew that, if I wanted to know how to do something, I just had to look it up. In tenth grade, I found out, for the first time, there are a lot of things you can't ever look up.
What happened was a new student came to my school. She was in tenth grade, just like me. She liked basketball and movies and books. She was a genius, which instantly made her my rival. And she was pretty. A very simple kind of pretty. She was pretty enough though, that I obviously liked her, and she obviously didn't. Put the fact that we were rivals and friends along with that, and you've got a recipie for unrequited love. I think this is the point where most people would have given up and moved on to the next girl. I didn't have that option. There was no next girl. I didn't have any real interest in anyone else.
Here's where the stalker arguement comes up, because a few people I went to school with thought it was a proper label to apply to me. I can logically debunk that thought. I didn't call her incessantly, in fact, she was always the one who called me. I didn't follow her around on Friday or Saturday nights. I was incredibly dumbstruck and smitten. Without any real guidance, I did the best I could. One last bit here, I started my senior year of high school by asking this girl to the movies, but the window had passed during the summer when I heard little from her.
About two months into my first year of college, I almost asked a girl out. She joyously told me her boyfriend was coming to see her one second before I was going to ask her out. Needless to say, I didn't say anything after that. My second year or college, I tried asking another girl out, which resulted in us playing this crazy game of sexual tension for a year, but it never resulted in me ever having a chance with her.
I was 20 years old when I had my first kiss and first girlfriend. It lasted a few months. My first girlfriend felt like she had to fight the girl I wanted in high school and another girl for my affection, but it wasn't true. They were still my friends, which created a decent amount of conflict that wasn't necessary. I've had another girlfriend since then, but continued physical distance (100+ miles, and neither of us trying to see the other) killed that relationship.
By the way, I know this will sound funny, but it's true (and not a parody). I've never had sex. I'm 28 years old and I've never had to use a condom. I've had one opportunity with girlfriend #2, but I was so inexperienced, our relationship as a whole was an exercise in what don't I know. Besides, I wasn't ready. I'm probably still not ready.
I could go into detail about what I find attractive. I could discuss the quality of legs more than breasts or auburn hair over blonde hair. I could do a lot of things. Instead, I'll settle something here and now. I have rotten luck when it comes to women. It's not for a lack of trying; I'm just not attracted to every woman that walks in front of me. It takes more than ten seconds to decide if I'm interested in a girl.
Last week is a good example of this. The girl I pursued last week, I'd been at least partially attracted to for a few months. I decided to move forward because of those elements outside of the physical, although that's an important element as well. To quote one of my coworkers when I told her the outcome of my most recent failed pursuit, "It was still a good idea."
Now that I've said all that, you might wonder how I portray relationships. As largely an outside observer to the dating world, I have two methods to this. One is cheap couplings assembled only for sex. The other type could be called honest relationships, where it's for more than sex (if that), it's to be around the other person. I know that Vitamin F has both. In fact, I'm sure my depiction of both will likely create an implication that I see sex in our society as being cheap and pathetic. I euphamism I might use would be going to cash in a winning lottery ticket and throwing it away to pick up a penny off the ground; sure, you're a penny richer, but you could have won a million dollars and you let it get away.
I think that covers most everything concerning how my approaching women has developed over the past 13 years or so. I now open the floodgates of discussion. Come one, come all, come and tear my past asunder.
This is not a parody. That being said, anyone is free to jump in and discuss. If it stays civil, it stays. Otherwise, I'll use my editing powers and that will be the end of it.
If you'll give me a minute or two, I'll say a few words about myself, which, in turn, will say a few things about my writing. In this case, I'll explain my background in dating and relating to women.
As a child, I largely learned to read on my own. By the time I was going to school, I already had an active imagination. Those two things together made me a eager to read, especially when the stories were some sort of fantasy, or eventually science fiction. I didn't read any of the great tales until I hit college though. By then, I'd already made my imagination something that I used creatively.
When I was seven, I accidentally made up a GI Joe character I called "Commander Lazer Killer," or "CLK" for short. That mess got me into so much trouble. I kept making up stories involving CLK's exploits, usually fighting or teaming up with characters from movies I liked. As I hit puberty, my fascination with some crazy fighter in camo waned. I found that black was a color I could wear comfortably and confidently, so CLK started dressing the same. Then I looked in the mirror and realized how ridiculous CLK was; that's when I dropped all but the first nine letters. With a little refinement, I had the character I call "Commander." (Note: Yes, this blog is named for Commander because I still write his tales to this day.)
As I mentioned, a lot of my ideas were shifting as I hit puberty. That's natural. But none of the ideas I had were being abandoned. As a good student, I knew that, if I wanted to know how to do something, I just had to look it up. In tenth grade, I found out, for the first time, there are a lot of things you can't ever look up.
What happened was a new student came to my school. She was in tenth grade, just like me. She liked basketball and movies and books. She was a genius, which instantly made her my rival. And she was pretty. A very simple kind of pretty. She was pretty enough though, that I obviously liked her, and she obviously didn't. Put the fact that we were rivals and friends along with that, and you've got a recipie for unrequited love. I think this is the point where most people would have given up and moved on to the next girl. I didn't have that option. There was no next girl. I didn't have any real interest in anyone else.
Here's where the stalker arguement comes up, because a few people I went to school with thought it was a proper label to apply to me. I can logically debunk that thought. I didn't call her incessantly, in fact, she was always the one who called me. I didn't follow her around on Friday or Saturday nights. I was incredibly dumbstruck and smitten. Without any real guidance, I did the best I could. One last bit here, I started my senior year of high school by asking this girl to the movies, but the window had passed during the summer when I heard little from her.
About two months into my first year of college, I almost asked a girl out. She joyously told me her boyfriend was coming to see her one second before I was going to ask her out. Needless to say, I didn't say anything after that. My second year or college, I tried asking another girl out, which resulted in us playing this crazy game of sexual tension for a year, but it never resulted in me ever having a chance with her.
I was 20 years old when I had my first kiss and first girlfriend. It lasted a few months. My first girlfriend felt like she had to fight the girl I wanted in high school and another girl for my affection, but it wasn't true. They were still my friends, which created a decent amount of conflict that wasn't necessary. I've had another girlfriend since then, but continued physical distance (100+ miles, and neither of us trying to see the other) killed that relationship.
By the way, I know this will sound funny, but it's true (and not a parody). I've never had sex. I'm 28 years old and I've never had to use a condom. I've had one opportunity with girlfriend #2, but I was so inexperienced, our relationship as a whole was an exercise in what don't I know. Besides, I wasn't ready. I'm probably still not ready.
I could go into detail about what I find attractive. I could discuss the quality of legs more than breasts or auburn hair over blonde hair. I could do a lot of things. Instead, I'll settle something here and now. I have rotten luck when it comes to women. It's not for a lack of trying; I'm just not attracted to every woman that walks in front of me. It takes more than ten seconds to decide if I'm interested in a girl.
Last week is a good example of this. The girl I pursued last week, I'd been at least partially attracted to for a few months. I decided to move forward because of those elements outside of the physical, although that's an important element as well. To quote one of my coworkers when I told her the outcome of my most recent failed pursuit, "It was still a good idea."
Now that I've said all that, you might wonder how I portray relationships. As largely an outside observer to the dating world, I have two methods to this. One is cheap couplings assembled only for sex. The other type could be called honest relationships, where it's for more than sex (if that), it's to be around the other person. I know that Vitamin F has both. In fact, I'm sure my depiction of both will likely create an implication that I see sex in our society as being cheap and pathetic. I euphamism I might use would be going to cash in a winning lottery ticket and throwing it away to pick up a penny off the ground; sure, you're a penny richer, but you could have won a million dollars and you let it get away.
I think that covers most everything concerning how my approaching women has developed over the past 13 years or so. I now open the floodgates of discussion. Come one, come all, come and tear my past asunder.
Labels: Commanding Thoughts
posted by LEN! at 3:37 AM
3 Comments:
Sorry about all the typos. It's a long post, and I didn't feel like going back and fixing every last little thing right this second. That's a job for another day.
I'm not sure how qualified I am to speak of this, since my experience in dating is effectively nil.
There was a girl in junior high and high school that I was very interested in, but never worked up the guts to ask out, because I was a) worried about rejection, b) thought she was way out of my league, and c) I was in a state of mind where I figured that the any relationship that happened would end badly. I think the last one was due to the disintegration of my parents marriage that was happening at the same time.
Since then, there's only been one girl that once I got to know her, I was interested in, but she wasn't showing any signs of reciprocating. Any other women I've started to get to know and felt positive towards usually wind up already being involved with someone, and I'm not about to trying to break up someone's relationship.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is my friend Alex, who in the decade+ I've known him has probably dated over 15 different girls, and likely been infatuated with 10 more. What works for him is his easygoing and giving nature helps girls to open up to him, and so they trust him, and they like him enough to date him. Unfortunately, that same easygoing/giving nature also leads them to take him for granted, and a lot of those relationships end because they cheated on him, or they expected him to always be available to listen to their problems, but were never around to return the favor.
He's certainly more experienced (in every sense) than I am, but I'm not sure he's any better off. I would say he has even less of a clue what qualities he's looking for in a girlfriend than I do, which is probably why he keeps going back to the same girls (he's broken up with one girl four times, each time because she slept with another guy).
So I think that ultimately, you just have to go with what feels comfortable to you. You seem to notice a girl, get to know her better, and if you're still interested, then you try and start a relationship. Personally, I think that's a pretty solid way to go, because it reduces the chance you wind up in something unpleasant. Other people will take other tacts, and those may work for themm, where they wouldn't work for you or me, because we'd feel out of our depth.
As to relationships in your writing, I don't know exactly how you depcit the more shallow, sexual relationships, but I would say that there can probably be relationships based on sex that have no long-term meaning, but are very important emotionally to the people involved in the short-term, because of lonliness, or fear, and it provides comfort or safety. Maybe that leads to a deeper, more honest relationship, or just to a stronger friendhsip, because of the shared experience. Or it makes things awkward. I can't really say, but maybe it's something to consider, if you thought it would work naturally in one of your stories.
Calvin, I think you've summed up my own thoughts in telling of your own past.
I think a real relationship has to be something that is forged over time. Rarely is it something that is going from the moment two people meet (I'm actually proof of such possibilities).
In contrast, yes, I have written a few sequences in [i]Vitamin F[/i] about "relationships" that exist only for sex. These relationships happen exactly the way you describe, Calvin: they are an exercise in searching for fleeting comfort and safety, in finding protection from fear and loneliness.
In time, I hope to be able to show more, but as things stand, I can't. There's too much work still to be done on the book.
Post a Comment
<< Home