Monday, February 19, 2007

Lessons? What lessons?

I had this one long-term relationship a while ago - ok, a decade ago. It was a pretty exceptionally flawed relationship in the grand scheme of things (racist, sexist, ignorant, ex-military and took great joy at abusing the trust his loved ones would put into him. And these were his high points. That plus one hell of a nice ass and extreme flexibility. If ya know what I mean...) but there were some ponies in that room of hay and horse shit.

The best, in my opinion, were the lessons learned, and one in particular: don't change who I am to fit who I think he wants me to be. I know it sounds super-obvious, and I think I thought I already knew it. But after all of the doing it anyway it seemed pretty clear I DIDN'T "know" it. I just was familiar with it. I could identify it amongst a pile of polaroids, but if you asked what it's favorite color was I'd have to guess.

Since the dark days with What-Was-I-Thinking? dude (or WWIT, as we'll call him from now on) I've really held true to that idea. With everyone. I'm sure I've chased off some just lovely people, but frankly lovely people are far too lovely to handle my particular mix of forceful-and-nutters. I'm really thinking of them!

So here's where this has anything to do with the mission. In case you've been gone, we've moved from Wove.com to Yenta.com (from a relationship website to a dating website) because on Wove nothing happened. Big Nothing. N-O-T-H... you get the idea. (I-N-G) So now we're doing the dating site and you know what's happened since I signed up almost a month ago? (well, how's your spelling? How about your memory? What did we spell most recently?...) And before anybody starts with "well maybe you should try contacting someone!" I did. I winked at someone and he winked right back. If, by wink, you mean he said "Gah!" and ran to opposite-direction-land.

But other than that ego-boosting social experiment it's been quiet. Too quiet. In war movies it would be right before the enemy attacks. Right before the killer attacks in the slasher film. Right before the lesbian kissing scene in porn. And it's lead to a big lack of writing ideas.

So I could go out there and just start winking at anybody who even remotely fits the profile (age, smoking and drinking, location) and see what happens. But I'm really having a hard time doing that (and here's where I tie it all together, and I thank you for your patience, and I do it all without showing the characters with frogs raining from the sky!) BECAUSE by doing that I feel like I paint myself with the brush of the desperation. How do I wink at a guy I'm not interested in unless I'm just so desperate to make a connection that I no longer care if they're a good fit? And that's not me. It's me being what the websites and some of my friends and society generically want me to be. A costume I look goofy in.

So I'm not sure what my next move should be. But the one thing you can still be sure of is that once I DO know what I'm doing I'll let you know.

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