I met Dark Haired Girl for lunch at Brixx down in Dayton today.  We had our usual completely frank and uninhibited conversation.  It felt like we hadn't talked in years. I told her my irrational worries about New Guy.  Rationally, I know he's a total sweetheart, but much like the little dog from that insurance commercial who sleeps fitfully dreaming of his bone disappearing from the safety deposit box, I just had to hear from the source that all was well. She gave me quite a few examples of how he's been acting to her and her girls, and the things he's been doing around the house.

He's perfect.

---

The sexual tension between us was no secret.  I told her, heart pounding, that I was ready to pounce on her right there in the middle of the restaurant... I didn't care who watched.  She basically returned the sentiment.  Verbalizing it really helped us laugh and dissipate the taut stress.  Of course it's going to take time, this is all of week two of New Guy being in the picture, and we both acknowledged that the lust we share may very well never go away.  Time will soften the shock of the transition, and quell the intensity... won't it?

To kill the rest of her lunch hour, we walked down the block to Mendelson's, a nearby warehouse random-clearance-crap store.  Out of habit, she looped her hand through the crook of my elbow to steady herself on the snowy sidewalk.  I pressed my elbow and her hand to my side. It felt good to feel her hold onto me again.  I was swept over by a flaming hot urgent desire so intense as to nearly make me feel out-of-body.  It was so base, so animal, that I couldn't even speak; every fiber of my being was concentrated on restraining myself and maintaining dignity. This isn't going were you think it is.  Save for a goodbye kiss that was a little too tender and a little too long, nothing inappropriate happened.  I hold New Guy in the deepest of respect.

I just worry that given the opportunity, the devil on my left shoulder would knock the piss out of the angel on my right.  I can't honestly say that I'm man enough to resist.

Have you ever really thought about how the traditional symbol for the Yin and Yang is more than just a visual representation of the balance of equal but opposite forces? Ever notice, much like warm and cool air, how they remain not statically side by side, but rather swirl and spiral about each other in graceful fluid turbulence? The perpetual rotational momentum forever remaining unresolved, and thus, balanced and equalized by its own imbalance and inequality?

I have had so many positive blessings fall at my feet over the last couple of weeks, it is as though I could walk ankle-deep through them as I would a fresh snowfall: The new adventures of my traveling job. The demolition of my lifelong social brick wall. My latest consistently good paychecks. My friend Jen who when I asked laid against me and let me hold her while we watched a movie. Forming solid friendships with the people I work with, and learning and growing significantly by the examples of their free spirited natures. Akron Girl sending me a virtual kiss, perfectly timed after my feelings got bruised. A first date today with girl who, while I don't think I will pursue her romantically, was a sweetheart nonetheless. Talking with another I have yet to meet, but with whom I have established a definite “click”.

But just as there are soothing warm breezes, there are also chilling cold winds... the unpredicability of my new job's nomadic lifestyle which has turned my usual way of life upside down. Having to uproot and move somewhere new, wiping my slate clean just as I begin to get comfortable and learn the lay of each new temporary home. My student loan lender threatening to garnish my wages. The knowledge that as I sit here typing this in my room at 3:07 am, alone in the darkness with nobody to reach out to, 20 minutes away another man is laying with Dark Haired Girl where I once slept. The God-awful sick feeling of being so quickly replaced. The abject guilt of having stood by idly and done essentially nothing while our relationship stalled, crashed, and burned. The devastating sudden deprivation of human touch.

And just as yin and yang dance their whirling dervish, and warm and cold air meet in thunderous violent storms, so too have the good with the bad been clashing in my head. It's been a very confusing time lately. Most everything I'd come to know has been upheaved. While I've always upheld the belief that change is good, and I'm sticking to that claim as my life had ground to a dead standstill before taking off with the explosive speed of a Patriot missile, all this swirling conflict has created a raging tornado in my head. So please excuse me if I don't seem like myself for a while. I'm having trouble processing the sheer volume of new inputs.

Tornadoes inevitably dissipate, storm fronts eventually occlude, and soon enough I'll begin to grasp just what in the HELL is happening to me.

Till then, pardon the temporary insanity. :-)  

The Moment is a Masterpiece

Thanks to Plenty Of Fish, and having gotten over my fear of messaging pretty girls (not just the ones I think would have me), I have engaged in several wonderful conversations.  Each time, I am amazed by how dynamic and intelligent they are.  Then it hit me... I'm a raging sexist.

I have to be.  I don't marvel when a dude turns out to be cool, but when a woman does, I'm bowled the hell over.  Delightfully so, but still.  Now, it's no secret that my dealings with the fairer sex have been few and far between throughout my life, and there was The Ex Wife who dominated me for an entire 1/3 of my existence on this earth, so my preconceptions tend to be based far more on a curved prejudice than on experience.

But why be astounded by their awesomeness?  As a guy who places femininity as a whole high upon a gilded pedestal, why not instead be surprised when one turns out to be a psycho?  It's as though my core concept of women is inherently damaged, thereby I'm caught off guard when I talk to a girl who's a sweetheart, rather than expecting her to be so.

I feel like such a dick.  But I'm working on it, I promise.

---

Ok, so I've been thinking about this all day and kind of had a revelation.  Turns out I'm not a chauvinist pig after all.  Shaggy always said to me that for someone who has the biggest ego, I have the worst confidence.  I myself have long pondered this paradox, and my realization does a nice job of resolving it.

It's not lack of confidence.  Say some p-y-t has a camera in her hands.  I'll be all over her talking photography, quite confidently.  What holds me back from just simply talking to a woman is fear.  Not the usual fear of rejection, that's too easy.  Besides, rejection itself doesn't really bother me.  Hey, you can't appeal to everybody.  It's this irrational fear that women without that humanizing element (such as the camera) are somehow a step above, god-like, immediately passing negative judgement on imperfect little Andy.

Those two conversations changed all that, and my surprise at their humble sweet human-ness isn't from a place of sexism, it's just straight lack of exposure, lack of experience, and the gullibility to buy a lot of the pop culture image crap.

Now this is going to sound like the biggest "Duh, Andy" I've ever posted on here, but it's one of those things you can know without feeling.  Well today, it really kind of sank in with some context and a whole lotta logic.  Ready? Here goes...

Women are people, just like me.

I know!  Duh, Andy!  It's not like I haven't known this all along, it's just that I've matured to the point where it's finally sunk down to the level of feeling, not just knowing.   I feel it now.  This really forced my eyes to see unfamiliar women not up on some lofty pedestal, but on an equal playing field.  People have been telling me this for most of my teens and all of my adult years, but you can't force it to absorb.  I finally had the proper blend of events to crack my defenses and let it rush down from my head into my heart.  I owe the vast majority to Dark Haired Girl, and how she picked me up when I was down and spent the past five years building me up.

Dazzled by this lightning bolt moment, I immediately started chomping at the bit to go and say hi to people.  And I did.  We're working at a nursing home, and I met the eyes of, smiled, and said hi to every nurse I passed.  Not in an effort to flirt, and it wasn't one of those instances where I was consciously forcing myself to do so.  It just happened.  It flowed naturally from me, and I soared high on the ecstatic feeling that after 32 long years, I'd finally busted through to the other side of one of my life's most debilitating mental brick walls.

I talked to girls, and I wasn't scared. :-)