A Bad Man in a Bad Place

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I wrote this introduction after I wrote this post. I’m hesitating on posting this. I’m struggling with the death-flu that’s been going around. I’m back to only a few hours sleep a night, so my immune system suffered, and now I’ve got a fever. Laying in bed feverish allows for a fair bit of self analysis. Does that translate into cogent writing? We’ll see. It’s an extremely self absorbed post, even by the standards around here, processing my life since The New Yorker. Read at your own risk. You have been warned.

I know I said this about the last post, but it’s true here too. If you’re coming in from the Pickup community, be aware that I’m familiar with your works, but not of or among you. You won’t find advice on how to find, meet, attract, or close here. You’ll find some self examination by someone who is already reasonably “successful” with women, but I’m wondering now if perhaps that is, well, the entirely wrong totally fucking backwards approach. If you are “good with women” (and I question the construction of that sentence, but defer to Marcelle and her friends to parse that phrase) how about woman? Does it make you good with woman, too? Or just self indulgent and emotionally stunted? That’s not an attack on the community. I don’t know the answer to these questions. Maybe Pickup is just what the doctor ordered to respond to feminism? Maybe it’s setting us all back and making us emotional cripples. I don’t fucking know. I just know where I am right now, which is processing, in emotional pain, having just made a small breakthrough about how out of control my life has been lately.

This is a raw open wound to me as I realize that I became “That Guy” after so many years not wanting to be “That Guy.” Be gentle if you decide to read. We’re treading on the real live stuff here.

Since The New Yorker, I’ve had sex with 11 women, and I haven’t kept track of how many I’ve hooked up with. She and I broke up in April 2007. Wow. I thought it had been 2006. This puts a different perspective on it, doesn’t it? Depending who you ask, that’s a lot, or not many at all. I’m going with “it’s as many as I’ve had” and trying not to judge myself.

Fresh out of the relationship, I tried to go slow, stay relaxed, not get involved with anyone. But the yearning to be in love stays, and has never left. Sometimes Ms. Right Now is called for, instead of looking for Ms. Right, yes? I’m not alone in this, am I?

I don’t know if I’ve ever had the same sort of reaction to another woman as I had to The New Yorker. It’s hard to explain it, really. I lost a lot of my friends while I was dating her, as they didn’t like her. I lost control of my life, and I poured everything I had into loving her. I shut down this blog, I shut down the part of my personality that is flirty, replacing it instead, with being madly, wildly, desperately in love. And we were. It was the sort of up until six am every time we get together kind of love that you read about. Until it wasn’t. And we tried, desperately, to get the love back. Over and over and over. And failed. I don’t know what happened, can’t pinpoint the moment, but I know that I loved her deeply and it took a long time to accept that we just couldn’t work together.

She’s been much on my mind lately. I’ve wanted to call her, get together, reveal that it was a big misunderstanding and that hey, we should try to make this work. We had something special, after all. We don’t anymore, she’s had a boyfriend for a long time, and it’s not my place. We both squandered it.

That happens.

Maybe it was more me than her, maybe it was more her than me, it doesn’t matter now. We had a lot of issues, and she always asked me not to write about her, so I’ll respect that, except to say that as I’m listening to my iPod, the song that first got us together,
Chariots Rise, just came on. Because the universe likes to fuck with me like a small child toying with a dumb animal. Really? Really?

I never fully processed the death of our relationship, I realize now. I moved right on. First The Neighbor, July 4, then a one night stand at reunion, Surfette, The Writer, The Sous Chef, a handful others that I won’t ever write about, culminating, this past Friday night, in taking home one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever spoken to, much less had sex with.

And running that evening straight into the ground by being WAY too sexually aggressive. I have more regret about that night than almost any other night I’ve spent with a woman.

Self sabotage much?

Rereading my posts about Surfette showed me just how hungry I was to get that feeling back. Surfette was lovely, don’t get me wrong, but she lived in LA and I was embarking on my own journey. What should have been a one night stand was, instead, a cross country jaunt culminating in getting kicked out unceremoniously, most likely in favor of her boyfriend. I don’t regret that situation, only that my reaction to her was to think that we could have had something there.

July 4? Smoked. Gross. The neighbor? I didn’t actually like her. The Sous Chef? She was busy a lot.  The Writer was lovely, but ultimately not for me.

So the question becomes - why am I saying, on the one hand, that I am looking for love but then doing the opposite? Going home with pretty girls from bars after two hours? Trading clothes around the bar with a girl’s sports team and making out with some of them? Why am I still acting like I’m 23 when I’m 33?

Of all the women I’ve been with since The New Yorker, I can think of three that I really like, and the others were either to prove something to myself - can I take a fit model home? Can I get laid at reunion? Can I take home the hottest girl in the bar after a few hours of talking to her? Yes, yes, and yes. Wonderful. What have I achieved?

Now, what I’ve done in the past has successfully netted me what I want - Rotating girlfriends, in the case of The Buffalonian and SouthernBelle, A charming and beautiful sub, in the case of Princess. Someone to love in the case of The New Yorker - I often get what I want. More likely, what I need, with a nod to Jagger.

A reader and friend asked me the following, as I was puzzling this out online the other night:

So if you find someone who gives you attention, loves to nurture you, loves sex, is very confident. Lady like, appropriate….”lady on the streets, freak in the sheets” that sorta thing…smile that brightens up a room, and listens…

doesn’t have a problem with your blog, your past, your aggressive nature…then you’re sold?

oh and beautiful of course

I had to add:

Pretty much. And wants a child or two. And is willing accept attention, love, and nurturing back. I’ve met some doting women who just want to mother, not partner. I don’t need that, I want to be with a woman who accepts that I intend to care for her, too.

Which surprised me when I wrote it, but is totally true. SouthernBelle was amazing, but she was all about propping me up, not about letting me in. I found a mix she made for me of sex songs called “For The Cause.” The Freshman? Ditto. Maybe it was a control issue with some of them, or maybe I’m too much of a taker (exes, if you’re still reading along, I’d love to get your input, High-Fidelityesque as that is…) and too self absorbed, I don’t know at all. I know it’s self absorbed to wonder why your exes are, well, exes, but still, find me someone who hasn’t wondered that at least once in their life and I’ll find you a liar.

I’ve dated women I met online, in bars, through friends, at parties, at conferences, and of course, there was college. Where else should I have been looking?

And don’t say that it happens when you’re not looking, because jesus, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, sure. But not always.

Lately, though, since The New Yorker, it’s been bars. In fact, three quarters of the women I’ve been with since her are women I met in bars. I stopped online dating. I mean, Friendster ended and I don’t understand Facebook. I’m not interested in paying for a site although my parents regularly suggest I use JDate. I never have, don’t bother looking for my profile.

Bars aren’t the answer, nobody’s going to bars to meet their soulmate, are they? Unless your soulmate is an enabling drunk, in which case, there are other issues. Conferences and benefits are my current bailiwick, and I don’t get to enough of those. Legs suggested I just talk to pretty girls wherever I find them, after a guy approached her on the street and asked her to coffee. Which I’ve started to do.

I’ve lost the feeling I had before the New Yorker, that I can’t explain. It was something about wanting to be in love and being open to giving AND receiving love. I’ve been much more “aggressive” since we broke up, but not letting anyone in.

Christ. It took this long for me to realize I haven’t let anyone in? I tried with the Sous Chef which was a stupid self destructive choice on my part. It took me this long into this post to realize that I haven’t even been trying to let anyone in?

What the hell? Am I an idiot? How did I just realize this now?

I don’t even remember what it’s like TO let someone in. To meet someone and let my guard down. To try to get emotionally involved with them.

I tried with The Writer. I did. It didn’t work. And the Sous Chef. In the words of Napoleon Dynamite - IDIOT.

No wonder I crashed Friday. No wonder I’ve had more one night stands this year than ever in my life. No wonder the nice girls that entered my life turned tail and left shortly thereafter, and no wonder there haven’t been a lot of nice girls, either. I caught myself saying that I go for girls who are already over their coke habits. It’s not ACTUALLY true, but it paints a close enough picture. Cocaine is a filthy drug, and I prefer dating women who have never dabbled, but I digress.

This is obvious stuff to you, I’m sure. Don’t make fun. It’s hard, living here in my head. I haven’t processed a lot, I just wrote and wrote and wrote and hoped, Aporia like, the ideas would suddenly appear. But they never did, because I wasn’t asking the right questions, and actively avoiding being this open. God. Now I feel like this whole exercise was shallow and pedantic. Fuck. How is it not obvious to anyone who was looking that I’m not “letting anyone in?” Ok, if it was open to you and not me, well, that doesn’t help me very much, does it?

I mean, I let in friends. Plenty of them. But when it progresses past friendship into something physical, there’s been a change in how I interact. I can only think of one woman that i’ve been physical with in the last two years that I’m still speaking to regularly, to say nothing of close to. (I’m close to her, too).

It’s like there’s been a break, for me, into “these are friends” and “these are fucks.” That’s fucking awful. That’s really rotten. I know I’m being hard on myself here because, in part, I’m processing, but still, one night stands, anything up to being together for like, two weeks, is still just physical and not trying to get to know the other person.

Stems from Surfette, I just decided. But before her, obviously. Stems from her because I put so much onto her as a potential, even though that was totally false, that when it didn’t work, well, I went inward and bifurcated into “sex guy” and “friend guy.” I need to integrate those sides of me.

My 21 year old self had some things to tidy up, obviously. Some things to prove to myself. And so I proved them. Now, however, that I’m out the other side of proof, what’s next? Therapy, obviously, but what else?

How do you, for lack of a better phrase, get back that loving feeling? That feeling that you want to share with the person you’re with, rather than just wanting to bring them intense physical pleasure? That you want to hear about their day, talk about what scares you, and be open to life as it happens, rather than “god you’re sexy, do you mind if I back you into a corner of this bar and finger you?” Not that that’s ever happened. Of course. At least, not this week.

So, joy of joys, my life lives up to the name of my blog. I am a Bad Man now. Never wanted to be. Bad was supposed to be more of a “go on with your bad self” than bastard. And a Bad Place, well, that’s just my repeated hubristic corrections.

Now, though, I’m in a bad place of a different sort. I recognize that there have been reactionary changes to my self and I don’t like them. I don’t know how to undo them, but I don’t like them. Fuck.

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