Monthly Archives: January 2010

The First Spot

The first spot was a curve on her cheek near the cor­ner of her lips. It would only appear when she was smil­ing a cer­tain way.

I have this pic­ture of her reclin­ing on the chaise with her head thrown back on the pil­low in laugh­ter. It’s hor­ri­bly com­posed, and I can hear her telling me how weird she thinks she looks in the pic­ture, but it cap­tured the expres­sion per­fect­ly.

The smile was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly allur­ing. It was goofy even. But that’s what I loved about it. She was this angel, this siren, this muse to the world, and I was the only one who could see her like this; cheeks pulled back, gig­gling uncon­trol­lably, bury­ing her head in the pil­low from self-con­scious­ness when­ev­er I point­ed out the spot and tried to kiss it. I was the only one for whom she let her guard down, even if only for a pass­ing moment. It was so adorable and inti­mate at the same time.

29 2/12: The Lachrymologist

I used to be a crier. Any strong emo­tion, good or bad (though more often the lat­ter), could bring on tears like a reflex. Now, I can’t remem­ber the last time I cried, which means it’s been a while. More than a year, I sus­pect.

Getting misty-eyed does­n’t count; that’s too easy. A poignant scene in a movie, the right song at the right moment, even see­ing some­one demon­strate a Tai Chi move­ment with mas­ter­ly detail and pre­ci­sion can cause my heart to swell, but the feel­ing only lasts as long as a few blinks after the blurred vision. When I refer to cry­ing, I mean when the tears are enough to over­flow and leak.

Self portrait at 29 2/12

 

When I was young, the kids in school would laugh at boys who cried — much less social­ly accept­able in this cul­ture — but I was nev­er embar­rassed about it. I thought it was nat­ur­al, the way some peo­ple are gay or Caucasian. I thought I’d grow out of it, the way one grows out of a fear of the dark grad­u­al­ly and sub­con­scious­ly, but I kept cry­ing well into my 20s.

I’ve always won­dered if my dad has ever cried, even as a child. I can’t pic­ture him doing it, not even when my grand­moth­er dies. He’s so care­free and log­i­cal that I can’t see any­thing affect­ing him emo­tion­al­ly. With my dad as my ear­ly mod­el for a man, I’m sure this is part of the rea­son I don’t feel like an adult yet. Society teach­es us that adults, or male one’s at least, aren’t sup­posed to cry.

I’m not sure why it’s been so long for me. Maybe the ther­a­py, com­bined with my study of Taoism, has evened out my ups and downs, help­ing me acknowl­edge my weak­ness­es (so I’m not as hard on myself), as well as the uncon­trol­lable nature of life. Maybe my life is sta­ble enough now that I did­n’t need that kind of release.

I turn 30 in 10 months, and I won­der when I’ll cry again.

The Turning 30 Series

My boner says you're a woman

This is awe­some.

So the English word “serendip­i­ty”, which is dif­fi­cult to trans­late into oth­er lan­guages, comes from a sto­ry named The Three Princes of Serendip. If you’re inter­est­ed, you can read sto­ry in it’s entire­ty (it’s short) on Wikipedia.

The strangest part is when one of the princes deduces that a woman was near­by:

I guessed that the camel must have car­ried a woman, because I had noticed that near the tracks where the ani­mal had knelt down the imprint of a foot was vis­i­ble. Because some urine was near by, I wet my fin­gers and as a reac­tion to its odour I felt a sort of car­nal con­cu­pis­cence, which con­vinced me that the imprint was of a woman’s foot.

Which basi­cal­ly means that this guy noticed a pud­dle of pee, dipped his fin­gers in it, smelled his fin­gers, then got horny, plus or minus hard-on.

That is some medieval Sherlock Homes deduc­tion shit going on there. What if he lat­er found out it was real­ly moose pee? Would he be able to admit to him­self that he was sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to moose?

You Can't Go Back

During his Emmy-award win­ning per­for­mance, Kill the Messenger, Chris Rock had a hilar­i­ous bit on the dif­fer­ences between men and women. He sums it up suc­cinct­ly:

Women can­not go back­wards in lifestyle. Men can­not go back­wards sex­u­al­ly.

An exam­ple he uses for women is the first time they get into a nice, warm car after club­bing, wav­ing bye to their friends who are wait­ing for the bus in the cold. After that, they can’t be with a man who does­n’t have a car, or as Rock puts it, “That’s how the fuck you roll for the rest of your life”. This extends to guys with their own places, then guys who take them on vaca­tion.

On men, he says, “Once we get the sex we like, that’s how the fuck we roll. I like my cof­fee like this, I like my steak like this, and I like to fuck like this…Ladies, don’t get mad at us. Get mad at our ex-girl­friends. She’s the one that [sic] spoiled it for every­body” because if your ex-girl­friend licks your ass, you expect your cur­rent girl­friend to do the same.

For me, the same is true for girls in gen­er­al, but not just in these aspects. I can’t be with a girl who refus­es to try exot­ic foods or refus­es to give uncon­ven­tion­al music a chance, who would­n’t rec­og­nize the effort I put into my presents, who would­n’t cher­ish the love and affec­tion I give, who would­n’t under­stand me, or would­n’t laugh at my stu­pid jokes, because I’ve been with girls who are a com­bi­na­tion of open-mind­ed, appre­cia­tive, roman­tic, on the same wave­length as me, and actu­al­ly find me fun­ny (when not com­plete­ly awk­ward).

That's why this entire idea scares me.

I know most peo­ple get more flex­i­ble on things about their mates as they head towards (or beyond) the mar­ry­ing age but I seem to be mov­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Each girl I’ve been with has been an improve­ment over the last. Now the bar has been raised so damn high I don’t think I’ll ever get there again, and I’d rather be alone than com­pro­mise or set­tle.

My stan­dards are get­ting high­er, and I can’t go back.