[No fiction today.]
I don't know if you knew me when I was younger, but I didn't understand anything about women. I thought they valued the same things as me, or that they wanted different things entirely. It depended on the day or on who was asking.
The first woman I ever complimented, I actually said she was sexually attractive. To her face, of course, because I'm not afraid. Not just like that, but almost as bad. Anyway, I thought it was a compliment. I wanted more than anything else for her to think I was attractive. So I told her that. Probably a mistake. I could ask her; I still have her number.
Or worse than that, the first girl I ever dated actually kissed me because I swung too far in the opposite direction. I was positive she didn't want to make out. One of my friends looked me straight in the eye and said "Robby I bet she wants to go out in the woods and make out." I scoffed then, because that was before I realized that women do, in fact, have a libido. Some are worse off than me, I hear. I only hear, because what woman would attack me I don't know. I'm a big guy and I'm singularly scritchy.
So we've established that I'm clueless. A girl I like hangs out with me for months, probably waiting for me to have the chutzpah to ask her on a date, and I keep postponing. Finally, I ask her and she has a date with a guy that weekend or whatever. Great, ok. It's over. It's high school. Not like I'm going on a ski trip and her parents are volunteering to chaperone so she comes along too and the two other people on the trip back out last minute. We stop by her cousins' house and I'm such a non-entity at this point that I'm actually allowed into the building. I don't know how much her dad knew, but I assume he knew I liked his daughter. She and I are talking, unsupervised, in the room where she's going to sleep, because it's assumed that she could cut my throat with my own fingernails if worse came to worse. It's only now, a full year after my disastrous attachment to her, that I learn that she has had a string of boyfriends as long as my arm and not all of them nice. The first was a total dirt-sucking goat humper, and he did a number on her. She's been looking for a man to distract her from her memories ever since, and I was not that guy. I now know more about her when she doesn't care about me than I ever did when we were a thing.
We go to the mountain. I feel more and more like I'm in the way, and I'm incredibly apologetic. Get this: she tells me I say "I'm sorry" too much, so I apologize. She teaches me to snowboard. I get pretty good, but it wears me out. She and her parents go up the mountain one last time, and I head down.
Two hours later, I get a call from her parents saying that she flipped off the track into the woods and possibly broke her spine. They're all in the hospital and want to know if I'M ok. I apologize. My life turns into a short story with a tragic twist and I'm alone in an apartment with all of her things on her family's vacation and I'm so apologetic that it sickens her and so I apologize for who and what I am and for that I cannot change to suit her because I would and I just want her to know that.
She's with a man who is perfect for her now, and nobody but I remembers the trip to the snow and how terrible I was at reading women.
It's simple, really. Women want the same things as men want, just totally different (depending, of course, on the day or on who is asking.).
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Your ending is good.
ReplyDeleteThe apologies are interesting.
Scritchy is a good word, but inaccurate, I think.
I am sad for her. For you. I'm sorry.
The thing you said about learning more about her after you've given up is like an echo of something I was thinking of yesterday or the day before that.
ReplyDeleteI have observed that people who are thinking about being more than friends seem to have a terrible time communicating. Why? I think maybe because there is so much more riding on every conversation when commitment, when investment, when intimacy. When you know you have to give everything, and you know your everything isn't enough. (And when they find that out, your hope is gone forever.)
Yeah, but high school.
Your hypothesis makes sense, but only for high school. I find that the stakes are raised in college, and you run violently away when things don't resolve otherwise, leaving no opportunity to get to know the other person whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe grad school changes everything again; or perhaps I was tired of high school, and college, and I decided to throw caution to the wind and communicate like it didn't matter, like my entire existence was a shrug of "I'm here, I'm curious about you, I think I like what I see, and I don't have time to waste with head games--what are you thinking?" Unless you talk like you have nothing to lose, it's all guessing and mistakes anyway. And hey, it's worked pretty well. But man, high school. -shudders violently-
ReplyDelete(As an aside, I actually went through a point after we started dating, when I realized how much it meant and how important it was, that I got shy, and had a terribly difficult time with communication. So I know exactly what you mean, Janelle.)
Also, I hate the fact that you felt like you had to apologize for your existence, Rob. That's the worst. But not as bad as the Holocaust.
Yeah, I'm glad I didn't actually date in high school. Never a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI've found that only the opposite sex can have such a profound impact on someone's life and simultaneously be disposable. Anything else capable of changing who you are and your basic motivations for living can't just move away or break up with you. Anyway, I apologized for me and I have done it since, too. Tragic story, really, but no worse than yours, I'm sure.
I didn't date in high school, but I always felt as if I were apologizing for being around. I'm glad now that I didn't date then. Yet...
ReplyDeleteCollege--well, my mom's given up hope of me finding someone in college.
Anyway, sorry to hear that happened to you, R.W.
UGH OMG I HATE THIS STORY
ReplyDeleteHave we established that I will claw the eyes out of any girl who breaks my brother(s) heart(s)? Because I will. Certain females still make me see red.
And here is a fact: women, like wine, improve with age. I shouldn't generalize about the person in this story or any other girl you've ever met, but based only upon my life experience I have one word for these girls and it is IMMATURE. Every day of my life I know myself a little better and I have a little less patience for women who don't A) say what they want clearly, B) own up to their mistakes, C) treat men as kindly as they want to be treated [honestly, when did we decide that men are made of stone and heartless so we can do whatever we want?], and D) allow previous bad relationships to dictate later behavior.
Oooooh, I'm getting real angry now. There are some bad things that can happen to a girl that will mess her up emotionally later, but if she has some time to mature, she will work through those problems rather than explain them to men and then use them as an excuse for her inappropriate behavior. Maturity is the key, Robert.
So I guess what I'm saying is that you should start cruising the local nursing homes for a nice older lady who has her shit together.