I point­ed out the only cute one to Shirley, and she teased me about it for the rest of the night. I only chose her because she had those glass­es and that look. She was the type before I dis­cov­ered dis­cov­ered that I have no type. Almost every time some­thing like this hap­pens, I real­ize that they’re almost twice my age, and I won­der if there’s any­thing wrong with me. The oth­er guys I know feel guilty cause they talk to girls who are some­times 10 years younger than them. I feel guilty cause I catch myself flirt­ing with women who are more than 10 years old­er than me. I feel even more guilty when they decide to wear their orna­ment­ed engage­ment rings when wed­ding bands would be more appro­pri­ate, or when they show me pic­tures of their kids.

In almost all my rela­tion­ships, it feels like I’ve been wait­ing for my girl­friend to catch up. The only one who seemed to be on par or per­haps ahead, was sim­ply fuck­ing nuts. To me, the only sav­ing grace was a mix of open-mind­ed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to chan­nel this vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty into change, but most had one but not the oth­er. Perhaps I’m biased in believ­ing that a woman, not a girl, would have enough strength and expe­ri­ence to poss­es the prop­er mix of both. I real­ize that I’m prob­a­bly usu­al­ly wrong in this belief because most of the old­er men and women that I know are still very bliss­ful­ly igno­rant, and have become too old to change their ways (and this fact was a cause of a lot of my pre­vi­ous loss of faith in human­i­ty). Every now and then though, there’ll be one woman who stands out because I can read her like a book.

And she’ll be enough to keep my faith alive.