As promised, here's a continuation of what I started ranting a little while ago...
Right, so, the paralysis of too many choices hits me hardest in my sex life -- kicks me right in the nuts.
NYC just isn't a normal environment. As David Cross puts it, when you're a guy living in NYC, you have a very difficult decision to make every 20 minutes or so, which is this: "Should I stare at the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life, or should I stare at the most insane-looking man I've ever seen in my life." Every 20 minutes you encounter both a new pinnacle of female hotness and a new low of scary male freakishness. Fear and Desire. Fear and Desire. Every 20 minutes. Most days, it feels more like every 20 seconds. On the desire front, anyway.
The super-powerful vortex of human energy that is NYC obviously attracts/creates people at all sorts of extremes. Bell-curves do exist here, but they're all way off the charts of the bell-curves for the same traits in the general populace. Not being a snob. It's just a fuckin' fact. And nowhere is this more apparent then watching the pretty, stylish women walking around in their summer clothes, flaunting everything flauntable.
Now, as much as I am a sucker for a pretty face/hot body, I'm not SO stupid and shallow that I am only swayed by looks. New York women are cool and brainy and interesting and witty too. So demanding those traits doesn't narrow the choices down enough.
The trait that always used to narrow the female talent pool down to manageable proportions for me elsewhere, was simply "would they go for me". I've often found myself in settings where there might only be one woman who'd ever consider touching me with a ten-foot pole, so therefore she was automatically the right one. But even if only one in a thousand single New York women between the ages of 18 and 50 find me even remotely acceptable, that's still, like, ten-million women!
Okay, maybe my math/demographics is off, but that's what it feels like. Walking around town or going to parties or standing on line at the bank... I just feel overwhelmed all the time. So much beauty... I can't take it! (Paraphrased movie reference is worth 5 points.)
And to make matters worse, contrary to what seems to be the common pattern as we age, I've actually become LESS discriminating in my taste in fellow humans as I've gotten older. This is entirely due to the "massive turning-point experience" I've alluded to before. Happened a little over 12 years ago. Still haven't fully gotten used to the new reality it opened up to me (and don't really expect to ever fully get used to it).
One of the major lasting effects of that experience was that it altered my perception of, and relationship to all other people. In a single canon-shot moment, I went from more-or-less fearing/loathing everybody, regarding them as insufferably crass morons who deserved to die... to loving everybody as beautiful perfect expressions of divinity, whose flaws only made them more beautiful and worthy of love.
Ouch.
How the fuck do you deal with that!?
WHAT'S A CYNICAL BASTARD TO DO!?!
Before that amazingly wonderful experience ruined my life, I was motivated solely by my testicles. There was no reason to bother with any higher aspirations, because human beings simply weren't worth the effort. So, driven by lust, I happily, hungrily pursued whichever women seemed open to it, and got whatever action I could. If the physical connection proved good enough for both parties, and there turned out to be personality compatibility as well, then perhaps a relationship of some significance could blossom.
BUT NOW... now I already love everybody I meet, and respect them for their humanity and basic human dignity and that just AIN'T sexy. But the problem isn't that I don't still feel the raw animal lust. Obviously I do. No, the problem is that raw lust is no longer the driving force. When it was, it was fairly easy to narrow down the field based on whoever simply turned me on the most or whoever seemed most likely to let me into her pants. On the rare occasions when both those conditions were met by the same woman, so much the better!
But now, with all this lovey-dovey touchy-feely rainbow and unicorn shit clouding my judgment, and everybody being all equally divine and so forth, the diner-menu effect could not possibly be more annoying. Wherever I go, no matter who I meet or how hot she is, or even--on occasion--how hot for me she might be, I usually find myself just kind of smiling and nodding a lot. Apparently, I don't have any desire to play the small-talk, flirtation, "the hotter you think I am the more you will lie to me"-game that so many people seem to expect of you in this town. Or maybe I just don't know how anymore. Fortunately, I don't really care. I mean, despite my typical solitude, I'm happy. Genuinely happy (which I'm also still not used to after 12 years, not that I'm complaining).
Now I generally try to take note when I encounter women who know what all that universal love stuff feels like, on a deep level. And there actually are plenty.
So far, they're all taken.
SONOFABITCH!
Next time: more dispatches from the front lines in the war on common sense! Woo hoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment