About the Girl...

About the Girl...

A short time ago (roughly a month), a LiveJournal commenter posted the following under my "The Perspective of a Human Toothache" post:

So what happened?
So what happened with the woman at work you're interested in? Don't tell me you wimped out.

Don't ever put her on a pedestal- it's not fair to you or her. She wipes her ass with the same toilet paper as the rest of us. And it's not fair to her to put expectations of perfection on her- she can't possibly live up to them.

If she's married, if she's involved, if she's just not interested- that's one thing. But give it a chance or you'll hate yourself later on.

And if it does end in heartache, you'll be where every, EVERY other guy (and girl) out there has been. And you'll get over it.

Some say love is blind; others, that it is selectively nearsighted. But lust is dominated by the physical senses, and just as it is best to observe a fire from a distance, so to with lust, lest one be consumed by either. Perspective is what I sought, and I believe that I have found some. I decided to do some amateur sleuthing about the object of my desire, and I discovered some things.

For starters, I discovered that she maintained a blog. Stephen King wrote that "Writing is the closest thing we have to telepathy," and I quite agree: we express ourselves quite differently when we write, using a wider vocabulary and syntax, and delving into deeper feelings and beliefs (and expressing those feelings and beliefs) than we do when we use the spoken word. Sometimes this is because of our internal editors, sometimes it's because of cultural or social norms; whatever the case, a written journal is a good window into the interior of a person. So, I delved into what she had wrote--and that's when I uncovered some things...

Now, I don't have many illusions about the compatibility of my worldview with those around me--I'm a conservative Roman Catholic in a post-Christian country, a republican disaffected with all our current political parties (and worried sick about the direction my nation is headed in), and a social Conservative in one of the most Liberal cities in one of the most Liberal states of the whole country. So I'm used to a difference of opinion--sometimes a radical difference of opinion. And in reading her blog, I could see that she holds some different opinions than I do--no surprises, and nothing beyond the pale. But, there were a few things that gave me pause.

One of these was an incident in which her girlfriend begged off a night out to be with her boyfriend, and the object of my interest responded to the effect of "I can't stand a woman who can't do anything apart from her boyfriend". Now, had there been some indication that this was a repeated occurrence--that her girlfriend ditched her quite often--I would see this as a justified expression of frustration; the problem is that I got the impression that she was simply upset that her friend chose the boyfriend over her, and that implies a level of pettiness that I find very unattractive. There were a few other posts that raised warning flags, but it is that one that stands out the strongest.

The most recent thing, though, occurred today, as she passed my post this afternoon; it wasn't so much what she said as how she said it, and in parsing her tone, I came to the realization that she thinks I'm Harmless.

Ouch.

Now, for those of you who don't know what I mean by Harmless, allow me to let you in on a secret: women have a grading scale for men, ranging from Yes, Oh, Yes!, Yes, Maybe, No, Oh, Hell No!, and Harmless. I think the categories are pretty self-explanatory, and it should be noted that there is a considerable shifting from one category to another (you'd be shocked how fast one can move from the Yescategory to the Oh, Hell No! category--sometimes on nothing more than a look). But the worst category for a guy to find himself placed in by the object of his affection is the Harmless category, because it basically says that she doesn't consider you mate-worthy material in the least. You're a big ol' teddy bear, and while she might luv her widdle teddy bear, she will never love that man, never share herself with that man in the way only two people can. She won't commit to spending the rest of her life with him, have his children, grow old with him, or die with him. A guy in the Oh, Hell No! category has a better chance by an order of magnitude than a Harmless guy does. And when you get to my age, if you've any sense left in your head, those are the things you're looking for in woman. You realize that you've more years behind you than before you, and that you need someone to hold you when the lights go out and the demons come. As of right now, she doesn't think it worth her time to be that woman to me.

But, as the sages say, "Despair is a sin". What is true today may be something entirely different tomorrow. Hope is eternal. And, while the rose may have thorns, it still smells just as sweet.

As Billy Pilgrim would say, "So it goes."