I do feel that I get lonely sometimes, and I mean the kind of lonely one gets when they’re single and want that deep, intimate connection with someone. Some female that I can trust and share my secrets with, someone who can rely on me as much as I can rely on her, someone to hold as I sleep rather than hug a pillow, someone who compliments or compensates my character, as Carl Jung put it.
More often, however, I’m only incredibly horny, and that isn’t a good reason to get into a relationship. Or even date, perhaps. I’ve found that when one is horny enough and can’t bear to think of oneself as so primitive and shallow their private parts disguise their demands for sexual satisfaction as yearnings of the heart. As a consequence, I can’t even be entirely certain that when I feel lonely its truly loneliness; to the contrary, there is good reason to suspect that its just my dick’s last-ditch attempt to drive me towards the ol’ in-out via a false flag operation.
That may have been behind the whole Kara thing. And maybe that was truly what was behind me accepting Mary’s request for us to go out sometime and actually following through with it despite my isolationist tendencies and the ongoing global pandemic.
The evening I spent with her a few weeks back was nice enough, and I didn’t even manage to get my geographically-dyslexic ass lost on the way to her apartment. Actually, its her brother’s apartment, which he let both her and her daughter live in with him. It was a small but cozy place, and the only off-putting thing I eyed on the tour, or throughout the night for that matter, were two little Jesus pictures hung beside one another on the wall just behind the door.
I made the decision not to ask, but to pay close attention if she indicated any religious persuasion. And I tried to be conscious of my tendency to mock religion, as I didn’t want to offend her with any jokes poking fun at religion. I didn’t consider this self-censorship, either, so much as courtesey. If she asked me my angle on religion, I would oblige.
Later on in the night, in the midst of conversation, she referenced “getting right with god.” I held my tongue and let it bleed.
After the short tour, we ultimately rested our wary asses on the couch. The first member of her household — apartmenthold? — that I met was a little black cat named Spooky, who, unlike all other names in this blog that aren’t celebrities or political figures (fuck, is there a difference anymore?), I will not use a pseudonym for, because I fucking like the name. Spooky was a nice and delightfully weird little creature who occupied my attention throughout the night.
Next, her daughter came in, who I never really remember talking directly to me, but seemed sweet enough, and did occasionally laugh at things I said. Ultimately her brother arrived, who in some ways seemed like a more extroverted, motivated, and trusting form of myself. He seemed very giving, very welcoming, which I feel I might be like if not for the underlying suspicion and fear of being used or judged. He also had broadband empathy devoid of my fears of forgetting about my own emotions and being consumed by the other person’s.
If that makes sense.
He had all the good qualities I feel in me without the embittered obstructions I erect as a self defense mechanism, to put it another way. On top of that, he’s an excellent cook, but that came later. When he first came in, he was talking about the elderly landlord who wasn’t looking so good and had run out of his medication. He also hadn’t bought any food. So he had run some errands for him, but because he was tipsy he didn’t want to use the landlord’s car, so he did all the food shopping and whatnot on foot. As he told this story, he offered me a 24 of Bud Ice, which I gratefully accepted.
We had all been in the area just outside their apartment where they smoked when this incredibly skinny guy came in, and I quickly pieced together that he was the daughters boyfriend. While he certainly had a distinct feel about him in comparison to the other three, he fit in quite well with them: he was generous, trusting, welcoming. We smoked weed in the kitchen, where the brother began cooking.
The boyfriend had a lot of carts, but no vape pen, and I had my own pen in my bookbag in the truck. Sometimes I take a hit or two on break, as it tends to elevate my mood. I needed to offer it: they’d been so kind, and I had thus far only donated by awkward presence and cranberry juice for the vodka. I offered to go get it, and eventually I did. It was only on my way to car that I realized how moderately drunk and incredibly high I was. I got back and they passed it around. Talking a little, mostly listening, I couldn’t get over this group. Really. I liked them. All of them.
There was some talk of Gypsies among them in conversation, I believe regarding their family, which made me think of Hemlock Grove. It also made me remember a conversation Mary and I had had earlier while on the couch alone together, where we were talking about dogs and I mentioned a former collie my parents had had named Gypsy. She seemed to light up and told me how cool that was. It makes sense that they’d have some gypsy in them, too: they seem nomadic, very family-oriented, with true friends brought into the fold and considered to some degree as family.
At some point, as we were out smoking alone, she tells me how her ex-husband was schizophrenic. She didn’t know when they first marrued, but over the years it became painfully evident and she finally handed him the divorce papers. She had at least one live-in boyfriend before moving in with her brother, and it seems she — as with her brother and daughter — have been moving from state to state, town to town for most of their lives. To someone like me, who has lived in Ohio all throughout this life, I found that fascinating.
I waited till I was sober, gave her a hug, and headed out. Shortly before I did, I realized that though I really liked her, really liked her whole tribe, there was nothing there between her and I romantically, even sexually. Part of me did feel let down, and I immediately began to worry that she might feel differently. In either case, I had gained a really cool friend, if I could secure her as one, and a really cool friend who wed me to a circle of equally awesome people, but subsequent hangouts would never again be confused with dates.
She texted me back the next day and said that what she was really looking for right now was a friend, which was a profound relief. Even before the “date,” I had been driving myself nuts, as if it turned out I wasn’t interested, I didn’t know a kind way to express that to her.
Now, I realize this hardly constitutes trying in the realm of finding a girl, and in fact hardly constitutes dating, and that if a child were to give up after he’d fallen multiple times as he’s trying to walk on two feet, that kid would remain crawling on all fours for the rest of his life. But maybe that’s the wrong analogy. And even if its not, this “child” is 42 fucking years old.
If I could just get laid by a girl I find fascinating and attractive, no strings attached, and get all this out of my system after a sexless decade, perhaps I’d find that’s all it was. Just a biological impulse to scratch that instinctive itch. Or maybe, after I’d get it out of my system, I’d find that sex was only part of it, and while I need it, I also need something more.
Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe I’ll never get laid again, and I’ll have to pick up the mystery in my next incarnation.
Sometimes its hard for me to believe I’m a member of a social species.
Chronicles of a Madman. 