Masochism

Talking to Women — Under Construction

The times I had kissed my sister’s friends I had not spoken to them. They had been around while my sister was off doing something elsewhere, and they had drifted into my orbit, and so I had kissed them. I do not remember any talking. I did not know what to say to girls, and I told him so. 

– Neil Gaiman. How to Talk to Girls at Parties

 

I feel like I’m 21 years old again. I’ve forgotten how to be single, and attractive to women. There was a time when it didn’t matter. I just was. Even when I wasn’t single. I didn’t have to chat up women, because they chatted me up. But that was when I was older. At 21, I was rubbish with women, as bad at seduction as I had been as a teenager, and that was pretty damn bad.

And then somewhere in my twenties, I figured them out. I knew what they wanted, and what they liked. I figured out what they wanted to hear. And they couldn’t get enough.

And now I’m back there at 21. I’d forgotten how stressful it is to be single and out looking for women. The whole clubbing thing bores me now, and Colombo just isn’t built for meeting girls in bars. I just see the same women, and they’re with the same guys. And those guys are just not me anymore. I still know what they want, and what they like. I’m just not sure I care anymore. And I’m not sure if I’m looking for women really, or really just looking for a woman.

Sometimes I feel absolutely alone, and that aloneness is cool. I had forgotten that too. And I feel I could be alone forever. But sometimes I miss that softness that talking to a woman brings.

Son the Father

I spent a considerable amount of time with my father recently. It’s something I’ve always wanted, but never really had. It wasn’t that he had no time for me and my siblings. He did. But I didn’t. It wasn’t physical time that we lacked; it wasn’t even need. I think it was courage. We are both cowards; from a long line of cowards. Emotional cowards. He’s brave in many ways, in ways I cannot comprehend. He does things I could never do, I think. But he can’t talk to me. And I can’t talk to him. I’ve suspected this for a long time, and pretended it wasn’t true. But this time with him proved it. There was a time when I imagined what it would be like to talk to him, to really talk, man to man, as equals. But I think that time is past now. Equality is fleeting in relationships of time, and now that balance has swung right over. 

I know he tries. He wants to pick that lock. But he doesn’t know how. And neither do I. And it’s frustrating and, ultimately, annoying. It makes me want to walk away as he did from his own father. I know I will regret it one day, as he himself regrets. I know I don’t have much time left. But still.

And I fear that history of cowardice; I fear that it will be the same with my own son. With the boy, there is so much time ahead, a lifetime. So much time, but so little will be spent together. And I know he is already comfortable with that.