The weekend has really been about focus.
I had three dates that were not more than hour apart straight from Friday night at 7 to Sunday morning at about noon. Friday night I showed Codename: McBeal around downtown San Jose. She spent the night. When she left in the morning I had just enough time to shower and make my way over to see the Lady Door. We had plans to smoke some pot and play miniature golf. Lots of fun... I like her a lot more than I express. And then when I got home I had a few hours to watch some TV before Chelsea picked me up to go to a Barbeque with her friends, and later we went to Power Exchange with David, Athena, and Elena. She also spent the night, although I’m not having sex with any of these people. I’ve decided not to have sex outside of relationships that have some communication on the matter. I’ve also decided that it is only right to tell all of these people that I am dating the others. And I’m not going to solidify any of them into full blown relationships until there has been some communication about the others. The only person I haven’t discussed it with yet is Lady Door, although she knows I’m seeing other people. She is the one who stirs the most emotions in me, and ironically the one I have the most fear communicating with. This is partly because we are coworkers. I’d like to elaborate on all of these outings when I have more time. But right now I want to write about some thoughts I’ve had.
First: People’s interest in one another seems to be an inverse function of how attracted the other person is. In other words, we are most attracted to those who are not attracted to us. Further, we are turned off by other’s attraction to us. Man if this isn’t a sick psychological joke. It’s still unclear to me whether this is a function of people’s actual beauty, like compensating for being less attractive by being more aggressive, or if it’s on the part of the observer. Leemore seems to think it’s all in my head. That I am personally more attracted to women who aren’t into me, and their actual appearance is irrelevant. This might be somewhat related to women’s tendency to date assholes and try to fix them. It’s like we feel the need to over come a challenge to validate our own worth… But this mostly bothers me when the shoe is on the other foot, when showing interest in a woman means her losing interest in me. Although a big part of what’s going on is that I was rigorously trained not to expressing my feelings while I was dating Katie because she would always get scared and pull away.
Second: Appearance may or may not be totally arbitrary. When I was in high school I thought I was fat. Not just chubby, I thought I was obese. Although in photographs you can see that I’m pencil thin, with ribs showing through T-shirts. So there’s a fair chance that I had an eating disorder in high school. My body image was nothing short of a hallucination. And I wasn’t on any drugs at the time. So it’s hard to tell whether or not my current body image is a hallucination. My weight doesn’t actually fluctuate very much, but when I was dating Katie she used to tell me that she wasn’t attracted to me, that I was chubby or over weight. And so I felt heavy. I felt unhealthy. But now I’m taking these yoga classes, feeling more in tune with my body, and even though my actual weight has not changed at all. I look 100 times better, at least to myself, in the mirror. I feel healthier. But it doesn’t stop there. I think my image of other people’s bodies might be a hallucination as well. Chelsea for example looks exactly the same as she did in high school. Although if you ask her she’s actually put on a lot of weight. In high school she was like me, pencil thin with an eating disorder. Now she is at a healthy weight, and according to her looks completely different, yet to me looks the same. My freshman year of collage I was in bed with this woman I barely knew, and to this day can’t remember the name of, and moments before coitus I freaked out because she looked like Codename: Holiday Eyes, who I dated twice in high school, and once just recently. This was a complete hallucination, non drug induced, and as a result I could not perform sexually. This happened a few times after that, but interestingly enough, when I actually dated Holi again last year, she didn’t look as I remembered, although she claimed that she had not changed since high school. Now Angel looks like hallucination of Holi to me, and yet Angel and Holi look nothing alike. So where is that face I dated in high school? Holi was the first, but it clearly wasn’t her face… it must have been some kind of hallucination even back then. Last week Chelsea stayed over at my place, and I was high as fuck and thinking about these hallucinations. It occurred to me, rather impulsively, to grab Chelsea by the nose and pull her face around, thinking to myself, “You will look as I want you to look.” Through an act of willful hallucination I was able to make Chelsea first look like Katie, and then look like Holi, but ultimately left her looking like herself. I didn’t share this experiment with her because I worried it might offend. But for it brings up a strange concern. If my image of Holi was a hallucination from the beginning, and my image of Katie is a hallucination, then maybe my image of Chelsea is a hallucination as well, and none of these faces are the truth of what these people look like. What does anyone look like?
First: People’s interest in one another seems to be an inverse function of how attracted the other person is. In other words, we are most attracted to those who are not attracted to us. Further, we are turned off by other’s attraction to us. Man if this isn’t a sick psychological joke. It’s still unclear to me whether this is a function of people’s actual beauty, like compensating for being less attractive by being more aggressive, or if it’s on the part of the observer. Leemore seems to think it’s all in my head. That I am personally more attracted to women who aren’t into me, and their actual appearance is irrelevant. This might be somewhat related to women’s tendency to date assholes and try to fix them. It’s like we feel the need to over come a challenge to validate our own worth… But this mostly bothers me when the shoe is on the other foot, when showing interest in a woman means her losing interest in me. Although a big part of what’s going on is that I was rigorously trained not to expressing my feelings while I was dating Katie because she would always get scared and pull away.
Second: Appearance may or may not be totally arbitrary. When I was in high school I thought I was fat. Not just chubby, I thought I was obese. Although in photographs you can see that I’m pencil thin, with ribs showing through T-shirts. So there’s a fair chance that I had an eating disorder in high school. My body image was nothing short of a hallucination. And I wasn’t on any drugs at the time. So it’s hard to tell whether or not my current body image is a hallucination. My weight doesn’t actually fluctuate very much, but when I was dating Katie she used to tell me that she wasn’t attracted to me, that I was chubby or over weight. And so I felt heavy. I felt unhealthy. But now I’m taking these yoga classes, feeling more in tune with my body, and even though my actual weight has not changed at all. I look 100 times better, at least to myself, in the mirror. I feel healthier. But it doesn’t stop there. I think my image of other people’s bodies might be a hallucination as well. Chelsea for example looks exactly the same as she did in high school. Although if you ask her she’s actually put on a lot of weight. In high school she was like me, pencil thin with an eating disorder. Now she is at a healthy weight, and according to her looks completely different, yet to me looks the same. My freshman year of collage I was in bed with this woman I barely knew, and to this day can’t remember the name of, and moments before coitus I freaked out because she looked like Codename: Holiday Eyes, who I dated twice in high school, and once just recently. This was a complete hallucination, non drug induced, and as a result I could not perform sexually. This happened a few times after that, but interestingly enough, when I actually dated Holi again last year, she didn’t look as I remembered, although she claimed that she had not changed since high school. Now Angel looks like hallucination of Holi to me, and yet Angel and Holi look nothing alike. So where is that face I dated in high school? Holi was the first, but it clearly wasn’t her face… it must have been some kind of hallucination even back then. Last week Chelsea stayed over at my place, and I was high as fuck and thinking about these hallucinations. It occurred to me, rather impulsively, to grab Chelsea by the nose and pull her face around, thinking to myself, “You will look as I want you to look.” Through an act of willful hallucination I was able to make Chelsea first look like Katie, and then look like Holi, but ultimately left her looking like herself. I didn’t share this experiment with her because I worried it might offend. But for it brings up a strange concern. If my image of Holi was a hallucination from the beginning, and my image of Katie is a hallucination, then maybe my image of Chelsea is a hallucination as well, and none of these faces are the truth of what these people look like. What does anyone look like?