Posts tagged with "human interaction"

The Problem With Manual Stimulation

At the hair salon tonight, a new girl washed my hair. She went through the usu­al rou­tine, but before she fin­ished, she placed her fin­gers along the front of my hair­line, and with con­stant pres­sure, slow­ly worked her way back.

The water was warm, my hair was wet, and I felt the ten­sion going down my scalp. It was com­plete­ly sub­lime.

The edges of my lips start­ed curl­ing, but I could­n’t tell if I was help­less­ly smil­ing, or it was the stretch­ing of my skin upwards.

In the show­er tonight, when wash­ing out the stray hairs, I tried doing it on myself. It did­n’t feel the same, of course.

It was like that scene in Secretary, where Lee Holloway (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) tries to spank her­self with a hair­brush when explor­ing her sub­mis­sive ten­den­cies. I love the expres­sion of intent, and ulti­mate­ly let­down, on her face.

The prob­lem with man­u­al stim­u­la­tion is that it nev­er feels as good as when some­one else does it for you.

A Truth is Worth a Million Words

You inter­pret my heart, my nature, as you wish to believe it.

— Onegin

People see what they want to see.

As I touched on a while back, some of it comes from inse­cu­ri­ty. Other times, from a fal­la­cy of pro­jec­tion as some peo­ple igno­rant­ly, and mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal­ly, believe that every­one must think and act as they do. There are a few oth­er cas­es that don’t fit into either of these cat­e­gories though.

An exam­ple: I once offered a guest in my house some yogurt. The first thing he asked was, “Is it going bad?”. He did­n’t believe I would have giv­en it to him oth­er­wise. It was a per­fect reflec­tion of his dead­beat friends who expect­ed you to eat before com­ing to a par­ty, and he had nev­er known any oth­er type of peo­ple. A more extreme exam­ple is if you offered to feed some­one at your house and they got insult­ed because they thought you were imply­ing that they could­n’t afford to feed them­selves. Some peo­ple see things that aren’t there. It’s an amaz­ing sub­con­scious sign of their char­ac­ters.

The way some girls inter­pret things is also an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non. Some of them think a guy who’s talk­ing to them must be hit­ting on them so they drop the b‑bomb in ran­dom points of con­ver­sa­tion, just to warn you they have a boyfriend. Some girls think you’re gay because you don’t make any advances towards them. Some girls think you’re torn up, depressed because they declined your advances, and end up mak­ing a big­ger deal about it than you do. I want noth­ing more than to tell these girls to get over them­selves, but I bite my tongue because they end up embar­rass­ing them­selves more than I could ever do myself.

There are also times when a per­son is so pig-head­ed and stub­born that they see every­thing through a fil­ter, inter­pret­ing your actions in some crazy way, and believe you’re at fault because they sub­con­scious­ly refuse to see their own mis­takes.

The old me would have been insult­ed when some­one assumes I’m a cer­tain way. Nothing would anger me more than some­one pre­sum­ing to know how I feel or what I’m like, and I used to care des­per­ate­ly what they thought, even if I knew I was just mis­un­der­stood. It’s an inter­est­ing feel­ing to be passed that now1.

The truth leaves no room for bias, only inter­pre­ta­tion.

I’ve learned nev­er to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­er peo­ples’ inter­pre­ta­tions. Only take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your intent. You learn a lot about a per­son from the way they inter­pret things and from the way they see the world.

With the truth in your heart, it does­n’t mat­ter what any­one thinks.

With the truth on your side, noth­ing can go wrong.

  1. It’s actu­al­ly been qui­et a few months since I wrote this entry. I did­n’t post it at first because I want­ed to be absolute­ly sure that it was­n’t a fick­le feel­ing, and that my strength was firm. Reading back on it now, it seems more rel­e­vant than ever. [↩]

The Best Part Of My Day

She leans the chair back, my neck to rest in the cra­dle of the wash basin. The water comes out luke­warm. She knows it’s hot out­side.

Shampoo. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. In small cir­cles, her fin­gers work my scalp, mas­sag­ing with­out too much pres­sure, scratch­ing when there is no itch.

“This is the best part of my day”, I say.

“Mine too”.

The Bias of Insecurity

I like to think that humans are, in gen­er­al, cere­bral beings, unaf­fect­ed by bias or emo­tion.

But every time I’m met with a big­ot, who has noth­ing to cling to but the strength of their opin­ions, I lose this hope.

The more they speak, the more they prove them­selves as inca­pable of accept­ing any­thing but their own beliefs. Added to this is a lack of self-aware­ness, caus­ing them believe that they’re not closed-mind­ed, they’re just right.

Often it betrays an inse­cu­ri­ty. You can tell that under­neath their words, they har­bour a sub­con­scious feel­ing that they’re wrong. To make up for this, they express them­selves strong­ly enough to con­vince them­selves that they’re right.

As log­i­cal­ly as you explain things, step-by-step, premise to con­clu­sion, they won’t under­stand. They’ll nev­er be able to accept the truth, and remain com­plete­ly igno­rant.

It’s impos­si­ble to have a dis­cus­sion with some­one like this.

The dis­cus­sion is super­fi­cial, and the issue lies with­in the per­son them­selves.

The Inherent Risks Of Happiness

There is a risk, there’s a risk when your deal­ing with love
You could snap my neck
Any speed you dri­ve can be dan­ger­ous
When this frame fails me
Will I trust you to car­ry me through?
I know there’s no such thing as safe­ty
But I know what a promise can do

—Trust, Thrice

I’ve alway been one to put a lit­tle too much faith into peo­ple. Although this often ends up hurt­ing the par­ties involved, myself includ­ed, I’ve always felt like it was worth it. I’d rather give some­one the ben­e­fit of the doubt, and per­haps this is why I end up being let down so much (____ would add that my intol­er­ance is par­tial­ly to blame). Some peo­ple don’t like to take that risk and need oth­ers to make the first step, need oth­ers to make that leap of faith. I know, because in some cas­es, I used to be one of them. One may hold back until they know that the oth­er per­son has as much at risk as they do. It’s the eas­i­est way to not get hurt.

There’s always one per­son who has to make that first step, to lay every­thing on the line. It’s one per­son who has to be the first to go for a kiss, the first to say, “I love you”, with­out know­ing what the oth­er per­son will say in return. It makes it eas­i­er, of course, if one can under­stand or accept the fact that there are risks involved in any sort of rela­tion­ship, that not every­thing will go the “right” way.

But that’s what life is about. That’s what love is about. Nothing is worth it if you don’t put your­self out there.

There’s a Simon and Garfunkle song that goes, “The roller coast­er ride we took is near­ly at an end / I bought my tick­et with my tears, that’s all I’m gonna spend”. When Paul Simon penned those lyrics, in the man­ner which he plays with words and rhymes to cre­ate his beau­ti­ful, renowned lyri­cal vers­es, he should have writ­ten, “That’s all I need to spend”. There’s absolute­ly noth­ing more that one can give.

Tears are a small price to pay for a chance at hap­pi­ness.