Being able to remember things is good. For example, remembering that sticking one's dick in mashed potatoes fresh out of the oven hurts really bad is what is supposed to prevent us from doing that particular thing again. Remembering feelings, however, sucks my nutsack. Remembering feelings is what leads us to drop trou and give it another shot, for even though we remember the pain we felt when we did it the first time, we also remember what we felt leading up to the pain - hope leading from the promise of warm, squishy joy.
Keep up with me here for a minute if you can, I'm trying to take this analogy to where I need it to go and it's not exactly working but I'm feeling particularly stubborn this evening.
The memory of hope, this is what we use to convince ourselves that maybe this time it might not be as hot, it won't burn us, it won't hurt as much. We've all done this, maybe not with mashed potatoes, but we've all done it.
Over, and over, and over again.
Of course it hurts again, even more so the second time. Because then we've got some other feelings to remember along with the pain, like embarassment that we were so stupid to try the same thing twice expecting different results. The mark of insanity, some might say. The mark of a mark or of someone who is way too trusting and really wants to believe that something is good, I might say.
What makes things worse is that there are people out there in this cruel, harsh world of ours that so callously encourage others to stick their dicks places that dicks don't belong, giving those people hope that the result will be beautiful and wonderful, all the while knowing that it won't end well, maybe even with blisters and pain. Lots of pain.
Fuck those people.
I don't know if they have had to deal with their own memories and hurt for so long that they just become indifferent to it, or if they are just unfeeling automatons bent on savaging the rest of humanity for their own selfish pleasure, or if they get some sort of vindication from seeing others hurt in the same way that they've been hurt in the past. Maybe it's a bit of all three, or something else entirely. I have no idea, I'm not one of those people. Either way, they prey on those of us who hope, who trust in others to not lead us astray, they are like the pasty-faced hackers in their mother's basements sending out e-mails on behalf of fictitous African princes in order to milk grandmothers of their copay savings.
There are times when I wish that I had one of those flashy thingies from Men In Black so I could erase my own memory when shit goes down that I'd rather not be able to remember. How joyous would life be if we could instantly forget the hurt and embarassment we've endured and only remember the times we spent with mashed potatoes that had been out of the oven long enough to give us joy and happiness without the rest of it?
But then, I suppose, we wouldn't know enough to be more careful where we stick our man bits, and that, after all, is what hurt and embarassment are for. They are warnings from our minds not to be stupid or too impulsive, to test something with the tip of our finger or to let things cool down before ramming more sensitive body parts right into them, just like a sunburn is a reminder to wear sunblock.
Sunblock, waiting for things to cool down, making sure that you can really trust someone before you decide to place your unending faith in them not to burn you where it hurts the most; these are all things that are prudent and wise and we learn as we get older. Unfortunately, they all take away a bit of the magic from those of us who grew up wanting to believe that princesses and fairies existed, chasing butterflies in bright flowery meadows. So we keep forgetting to do them, not learning that maybe we should have spent a bit more effort ahead of time listening to that nagging voice in our head telling us to turn around, to walk away, to zip back up and wait for something a little less harsh to intercourse with.
It's hard to give up hope that magic is real, but test it enough and get the same answer each time and you will inevitably arrive at the forgone conclusion that it is what it is, this is as good as it gets, and there's no princess waiting for you in some magic land with rainbows and unicorns.
Anyway, how can you be sure that you can really trust someone until you give them a chance to deceive you while simultaneously mistrusting them enough to go looking to see for sure whether they're lying or not? Inherent in the definitions of both faith and trust is that they are both untestable, which just seems naive to me. Then again, faith is something I've never been very good at when it comes to religion, and trust is something I'm generally way too eager to engage in when it comes to people. Maybe I should rethink all of that. After all, God can't let you down, He's always beyond reproach even when purging the Earth of entire crops of newborn babies. And people always let you down. Every. Time. And they never seem to have the decency to apologize or explain themselves after the fact, they just laugh and point and tell you how stupid you were for trusting them in the first place, or worse, try to make you feel like you did something wrong.
I sure as shit don't have any answers here, this is a rant blog and I'm just bitching. If you want some absolutes or solutions, go see a priest. Or a prostitute, at least they tell you up front that they are just using you for money and don't actually care at all about you or your stupid feelings. That's a level of honesty you just don't get from anyone else.
The good news is that I can tell you un-equivocally that using food as a sex substitute is fine, as long as there are no ovens or microwaves involved.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
She's just not that into you
It took me long enough to come to the following realization: you can't trust a woman with your heart.
Bereft of the capacity for logical thinking, women can justify anything they do if it makes them feel pretty or wanted; buying new shoes, dying their hair, or juggling men like hackysacks, it's all the same to them if it makes them feel special and beautiful and princess-like, and if you get in the way and subsequently run over it's never their fault - you clearly weren't doing enough to contribute to their self-esteem.
OK, probably not all women are this way, but right now it feels that way. Maybe I've just been in the habit my whole life of ignoring the warning signs and falling in with damaged women, women who are incapable of true compassion and caring and respect. I'd like to think that's the case rather than being forced to believe that all women are evil, but in order to protect myself I'm going to go ahead and stick with gross over-generalizations for now and be wary of every card-carrying member of the "fair" sex.
As such, it's important to be able to know where you stand, and how damaged the woman you are considering sharing your life with truly is. Maybe she's a self-confident woman with high self esteem who doesn't need men to fluff her ego, maybe she's not. Either way, she will never admit or even know that she is the latter, so it's important that guys get together on this one and share some tips for testing the waters while still retaining our dignity.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If a woman in your life fails any of these sort of barometer readings, run, do not walk, as far away as possible. She cannot be trusted. Ever. If she passes all of them, proceed with caution, it doesn't mean anything.
Here's my first contribution to this list of tips, I'll post more as I think of them, and I call on my readers to send in their own:
MAN RELATIONSHIP TIP #1: Send her some flowers for absolutely no reason when she might least be expecting it (this is important, do not send them the night after a wonderful time out, or after an argument, or on her birthday - in fact, this works best if you've never sent her flowers before). Do NOT enclose a card, or any other identifying information that will allow her to tell where they came from. Do NOT ask her later that night if anything special happened to her at work that day. If she calls you up right away when she gets them, gushing and glowing and thanking you for being so wonderful, then you are the only man in her life.
At the moment.
If she doesn't mention it or tries to feel you out a few days later, then that means that she's not sure if it was you that sent them or the ex-boyfriend she's been stringing along and keeping in reserve, and you can safely eject and pop your parachute. This is tried and true, it actually happened to me once when the delivery service forgot to enclose the card I wrote for her, and somehow I was stupid enough to believe whatever line she fed me about why she didn't assume they were from me, which led to disasterous heartbreak much, much later. Again: RUN, do NOT walk.
Bereft of the capacity for logical thinking, women can justify anything they do if it makes them feel pretty or wanted; buying new shoes, dying their hair, or juggling men like hackysacks, it's all the same to them if it makes them feel special and beautiful and princess-like, and if you get in the way and subsequently run over it's never their fault - you clearly weren't doing enough to contribute to their self-esteem.
OK, probably not all women are this way, but right now it feels that way. Maybe I've just been in the habit my whole life of ignoring the warning signs and falling in with damaged women, women who are incapable of true compassion and caring and respect. I'd like to think that's the case rather than being forced to believe that all women are evil, but in order to protect myself I'm going to go ahead and stick with gross over-generalizations for now and be wary of every card-carrying member of the "fair" sex.
As such, it's important to be able to know where you stand, and how damaged the woman you are considering sharing your life with truly is. Maybe she's a self-confident woman with high self esteem who doesn't need men to fluff her ego, maybe she's not. Either way, she will never admit or even know that she is the latter, so it's important that guys get together on this one and share some tips for testing the waters while still retaining our dignity.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If a woman in your life fails any of these sort of barometer readings, run, do not walk, as far away as possible. She cannot be trusted. Ever. If she passes all of them, proceed with caution, it doesn't mean anything.
Here's my first contribution to this list of tips, I'll post more as I think of them, and I call on my readers to send in their own:
MAN RELATIONSHIP TIP #1: Send her some flowers for absolutely no reason when she might least be expecting it (this is important, do not send them the night after a wonderful time out, or after an argument, or on her birthday - in fact, this works best if you've never sent her flowers before). Do NOT enclose a card, or any other identifying information that will allow her to tell where they came from. Do NOT ask her later that night if anything special happened to her at work that day. If she calls you up right away when she gets them, gushing and glowing and thanking you for being so wonderful, then you are the only man in her life.
At the moment.
If she doesn't mention it or tries to feel you out a few days later, then that means that she's not sure if it was you that sent them or the ex-boyfriend she's been stringing along and keeping in reserve, and you can safely eject and pop your parachute. This is tried and true, it actually happened to me once when the delivery service forgot to enclose the card I wrote for her, and somehow I was stupid enough to believe whatever line she fed me about why she didn't assume they were from me, which led to disasterous heartbreak much, much later. Again: RUN, do NOT walk.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
It's all Chinese to me.
I just got back from a business trip to Hong Kong, China. Great country, if it wasn't for all the Asians. I kid, the Asian culture is actually quite wonderful (except for their food); the people are incredibly polite and ridiculously efficient.
Getting to know several locals, as I had an opportunity to do, allowed me an understanding that while there are a great many things about these people that is the same as we're used to here in the States, there are also many things that are not. The biggest difference I noticed is their tradition of culture, especially the innate need to allow others to save face, even at the expense of one's own comfort.
The second night we were in town, out at a bar my friends and I watched two beautiful young local ladies being hit on mercilessly by some guys. The women's body language made it quite clear that they were not OK with the situation, under the table were tightly crossed legs and clenched fists. Above the tabletop however, they projected a completely different image. They laughed and smiled and let the men light their cigarettes, and if we didn't know better we would have thought they were enjoying flirting.
After a few minutes we rescued them from the situation and they came and sat with us for the rest of the night. When we asked them about the guys that were hitting on them, they straight up said that while they were wishing they were somewhere else, they had to entertain their advances because their culture absolutely forbids them to disgrace anyone else by being rude.
Of course we promptly taught them the American way of flirting, which is to raise your hand in someone's face and tell them to go away whether you like them or not.
These girls also had plenty of similarities to American women, in that the attached (married) one was all over me and insisted I give her my phone number. Apparently it's only important to ensure that someone doesn't lose face if they're right there in front of you, but not home waiting for you while you're out at a bar with some Westerner's phone number in your pocket.
Culture barriers don't make women stop being women, apparently.
Before the trip, a friend of mine was telling me about his brother who had visited China and ended up staying because he married a local girl. My thought at the time was that I couldn't help but be shocked at the cojones it must take to make such a long-term decision when the culture differences are so great. How can you truly know a person when they have such a different upbringing, and more importantly, how can you know what type of person they will grow into if you take them from their culture or introduce a marriage of your two cultures? It's a big risk, no matter how you slice it.
The potential for disaster is bad enough when two people that grew up in the same country start mixing their lives together. No matter how much of it is wonderful and beautiful, there are always things that have been built into our psychies from an early age that will eventually come to the surface and cause culture shock. Coming from two different families or neighborhoods is enough, forget coming from two different countries.
Now, however, it occurs to me now that those little differences, scars from our past, or morals (good or bad) taught to us by our parents, are probably even more apt to cause problems than cultural ones. And those sorts of things only come up after you spend a lot of time with someone in a variety of different situations. At least with cultural attitudes you know them going in and learn what to expect (assuming you do your research).
The more I think about it, I'm actually more astounded at MY relationship choices from the past than I am at my friend's brother's choice to marry into Chinese culture. Without the obvious cultural differences it's always seemed safe (to me) to dive into someone's arms and trust them with your heart, but the truth is that you simply can't trust what you see whether it comes from the same culture as you or not - it's what lies deep underneath that can come around and wreck your home months or even years later. And this isn't something you can predict like cultural norms, it's something specific to each of us. Or maybe you can predict it - I saw a hot Asian girl at the Hong Kong airport wearing a t-shirt that (along with my own experiences) sort of indicates that there's something genetic that comes along with the female gender that makes them natural home-wreckers. Her shirt said: "One Love Go, Another Come".
Women have been wearing a warning about their seeming indifference to committment and dedication to those that love them right there over their breasts all this time and somehow I missed it all these years. I guess like my new married woman-friend at the bar in Hong Kong proves, women will be women no matter what else it says on their passport,
Getting to know several locals, as I had an opportunity to do, allowed me an understanding that while there are a great many things about these people that is the same as we're used to here in the States, there are also many things that are not. The biggest difference I noticed is their tradition of culture, especially the innate need to allow others to save face, even at the expense of one's own comfort.
The second night we were in town, out at a bar my friends and I watched two beautiful young local ladies being hit on mercilessly by some guys. The women's body language made it quite clear that they were not OK with the situation, under the table were tightly crossed legs and clenched fists. Above the tabletop however, they projected a completely different image. They laughed and smiled and let the men light their cigarettes, and if we didn't know better we would have thought they were enjoying flirting.
After a few minutes we rescued them from the situation and they came and sat with us for the rest of the night. When we asked them about the guys that were hitting on them, they straight up said that while they were wishing they were somewhere else, they had to entertain their advances because their culture absolutely forbids them to disgrace anyone else by being rude.
Of course we promptly taught them the American way of flirting, which is to raise your hand in someone's face and tell them to go away whether you like them or not.
These girls also had plenty of similarities to American women, in that the attached (married) one was all over me and insisted I give her my phone number. Apparently it's only important to ensure that someone doesn't lose face if they're right there in front of you, but not home waiting for you while you're out at a bar with some Westerner's phone number in your pocket.
Culture barriers don't make women stop being women, apparently.
Before the trip, a friend of mine was telling me about his brother who had visited China and ended up staying because he married a local girl. My thought at the time was that I couldn't help but be shocked at the cojones it must take to make such a long-term decision when the culture differences are so great. How can you truly know a person when they have such a different upbringing, and more importantly, how can you know what type of person they will grow into if you take them from their culture or introduce a marriage of your two cultures? It's a big risk, no matter how you slice it.
The potential for disaster is bad enough when two people that grew up in the same country start mixing their lives together. No matter how much of it is wonderful and beautiful, there are always things that have been built into our psychies from an early age that will eventually come to the surface and cause culture shock. Coming from two different families or neighborhoods is enough, forget coming from two different countries.
Now, however, it occurs to me now that those little differences, scars from our past, or morals (good or bad) taught to us by our parents, are probably even more apt to cause problems than cultural ones. And those sorts of things only come up after you spend a lot of time with someone in a variety of different situations. At least with cultural attitudes you know them going in and learn what to expect (assuming you do your research).
The more I think about it, I'm actually more astounded at MY relationship choices from the past than I am at my friend's brother's choice to marry into Chinese culture. Without the obvious cultural differences it's always seemed safe (to me) to dive into someone's arms and trust them with your heart, but the truth is that you simply can't trust what you see whether it comes from the same culture as you or not - it's what lies deep underneath that can come around and wreck your home months or even years later. And this isn't something you can predict like cultural norms, it's something specific to each of us. Or maybe you can predict it - I saw a hot Asian girl at the Hong Kong airport wearing a t-shirt that (along with my own experiences) sort of indicates that there's something genetic that comes along with the female gender that makes them natural home-wreckers. Her shirt said: "One Love Go, Another Come".
Women have been wearing a warning about their seeming indifference to committment and dedication to those that love them right there over their breasts all this time and somehow I missed it all these years. I guess like my new married woman-friend at the bar in Hong Kong proves, women will be women no matter what else it says on their passport,
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