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We were watch­ing Boogie Nights, and in the movie, Scotty’s wast­ed at the New Year’s par­ty. He tries to kiss Dirk, but Dirk throws him off. I asked her if she knew Scotty was gay. Until that point, I thought he nev­er gave off any such sign.

Of course”, she said.

How could you tell?”. I had to ask, because I could­n’t tell. I’ve watched Boogie Nights with dozens of peo­ple before, and they’ve all asked if Scotty was gay before it even got to this scene. It must have been the 20th time I’ve seen this movie, but I still did­n’t see what so many oth­ers did. My gay­dar can’t be that bad, I thought to myself.

Just from the way Scotty looks at Dirk all dreamy”.

Dreamy? So Scotty was­n’t being par­tic­u­lar­ly flam­boy­ant, he was sim­ply attract­ed to Dirk. It was obvi­ous to every­one but me.

Then I recalled Pat telling me a few years ago that a cer­tain girl liked me. He did­n’t have some kind of inside knowl­edge, he said he could tell just from the way she looked at me. I nev­er believed him, of course, because I had no inkling of such an mes­sage. I nev­er believed him until she gave me a writ­ten con­fes­sion.

It made me won­der, am I that obliv­i­ous? More impor­tant­ly, do I ever give myself away, do I ever make myself so vul­ner­a­ble, with such a look?

It took me almost a year to be com­fort­able enough to pho­to­graph Jenn (let alone get­ting over being so tongue-tied around her), because I was afraid of being too trans­par­ent. I always thought that by ask­ing to take her pic­ture, every­one could see how attract­ed I was to her. I would go around Aaron’s par­ties and pho­to­graph any­one but her. Now I real­ize that in doing so, I prob­a­bly gave myself away.

It’s scary to think that peo­ple may read me so eas­i­ly from sub­con­scious body lan­guage. A girl­friend once said that her mom asked how she would feel if I asked her out, about a month before I did. To this day I won­der how her mom knew I would. All we did was have din­ner togeth­er on Sunday’s. Did I steal glances from across the table? Did I look away when she looked at me? Did I lose myself in her face and stare?

Am I that trans­par­ent?

I’d like to think that I can hide such things, but how can I when I don’t even rec­og­nize what it is I’m doing.

How can I hide my heart, when I don’t even know that I wear it on my sleeve?

10 comments

  1. why the need to hide it?

    Be proud of your choic­es, of your nature, of your instincts.

    i think you’re dreamy… maybe i should hide it bet­ter, might have more allure. hmm *wink*

  2. Aw, real­ly? No, I just thought for awhile that I annoyed you. :) (Trust me, it is well-known that I am the most obliv­i­ous per­son on the plan­et.)

  3. @loo — There’s a dif­fer­ence between being proud of your choices/nature/instincts, and putting your­self out there at the risk of humil­i­a­tion through non-rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion.

    @Jenn — I was hop­ing you would­n’t find out in such an inap­pro­pri­ate way, but I had to say it for the point of the post. Now I’m a lit­tle embar­rassed.

  4. Time has sped by and I’ve spent the bet­ter part of the last hour read­ing back through the last two mon­th’s posts. I can’t believe it has been that long since my last vis­it. You’ve had a very dif­fi­cult patch these last two months and I’m glad you have friends that care enough to keep you from becom­ming too much of a her­mit. Once again your writ­ing has moved me and your pho­tog­ra­phy con­tin­ues to blow me away. I hope November returns you to that bliss­ful state of con­tent­ment you had found in August. And a great choice for the pho­tog­ra­phy con­test. :-)

  5. It’s a dead give away when you force your expres­sions to be neu­tral.

  6. Thank you, Barb.

    Your encour­ag­ing words are always very much appre­ci­at­ed. :)

  7. You’re absolute­ly right, Pita.

  8. It’s been *years* since I watched that movie, so I can’t remem­ber if I picked up on the Scotty/Dirk thing but I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty good at that stuff, *except* when it comes to me. Probably half the rea­son I think men are such jerks (except you dear ;) is because the only ones I notice are the ones who are right in my face, jump­ing up and down and yelling that they want to get in my pants. As for my own feel­ings, I keep them pret­ty well hid­den. Lots of prac­tice remain­ing neu­tral when inter­est­ed in peo­ple that rela­tion­ships pre­clud­ed any goings on with. It prob­a­bly is a worth­while skill.

  9. Oh, and I did­n’t mean neu­tral expres­sions, I meant actu­al neu­tral­i­ty ;)

  10. I’m not even good at that stuff when it does­n’t involve me. That’s what’s so scary. I’m com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous.

    But lots of prac­tice remain­ing neu­tral, eh? That must be a help­ful skill. I think I’d find that more dif­fi­cult than actu­al­ly hid­ing my feel­ings though.

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