Saturday, October 1, 2011

Araby

Baltimore, Pt. 2 

It's starting to get cold and I'm questioning my logic in traveling North in the winter.  It's raining and windy and miserable like D.C., but the atmosphere seems more appropriate here.

I ride around the city.  I'm unimpressed with the aquarium, a result of fishing around a peninsula my whole life.  I make desperate, last minute bids to find the living equivalent of my fears toward women.  Having given up I go to a diner for a burger and milkshake.  I recognize one of the waiters as the bassist of the girl's band; the very same who I thought cockblocked me earlier.  I tell him about my journey.  He tells me the girl I'm looking for dates the keyboardist.  I request he tell her I came to Baltimore with the intention to ask her on a date or tell her she was cute.  I regret doing this before my food arrives as I have to sit awkwardly and exchange awkward glances with him.  I'm relived.  I never had a chance with her so I don't feel like the attempt was a personal failure.  My opinion of the bassist is also altered.  I thought he had cockblocked me, but now figure he didn't want to change plans with his host in Tallahassee.  Even considering the outcome, I feel accomplished for finding an unlikely connection in a big city.  I imagine I've made someone feel flattered, or at least mildly uncomfortable.

It's difficult for me to describe the depth of love for my hosts.  It's a lot.  After three days and a few nights I feel like I've known these people for some time.  Linden, the host with dreads, verbalizes how it's odd I'm involved in their lives here for a short time.  I try and explain that these quick forays into others' personal lives are the nature of the trip.  That being said, every time I get comfortable in a place it's difficult to leave.  I'd always like to stay longer, but have to remind myself it's a trip and not a migration.  

Marie, her friend, and I get stoned.  I watch her friend attempt to eat an entire apple from the top down.  He's a big, gay dude born in Germany with a proclivity towards Grey's Anatomy.  From my understanding, in Germany eating an entire apple is commonplace and the norm.  I argue that you can't eat an entire apple on account of its pointy bits of bone around the core.  He can't eat the entire apple because of its pointy bone parts and says it's a weird apple.  I eat an almond to see if I'm still allergic, as I found at the beginning of the trip.  I am and my ears and throat itch for awhile.

On my last night in town we go to a party full of art students.  It's large and boisterous and the cops arrive quickly.  People from the party follow us back to the house and establish a new party there.  Not long after the same cops walk into the house and break it up.  Linden and I talk to the cops.  She might have come off a little lippy to the cops who become a tremendous shitheels.  They take our information and make threats of fines and jail time to me and the tenants.  They mention my legal culpability being the only of age person there and thus responsible for anything that happens to anyone.  After Linden's roommate and I calm the cops down, they leave giving us a warning.

Before the cops have left the door, Linden is crying into my shoulder.  Her roommate returns from locking the door and we console her.  She says it's her first experience with cops.  We explain that you have to be obsequious as it's important for them to feel powerful.  She says she feels bad about my being threatened with charges and would have paid any fines.  I explain things like this make the trip interesting and that I was aware of the distinct possibility of my being arrested along this trip.  Linden has lost her phone in the confusion between parties and we go looking for it.  We don't find it.  I stumble through an apology about the band girl and go to bed. I don't make it clear I felt bad because I had I crush on Linden.  I'm not sure I expressed this to her well or at all during my stay.  I wonder if I purposefully sabotage myself in these situations so I can romanticize them later.  She says she'll read the blog.  It doesn't take much courage to tell someone you like them over the internet.  Sorry dude, but I was crushing pretty hard on you for the whole stay.  I figure I've either now doubled the number of girls in Baltimore who think I'm flattering or creepy or halved it.

Linden gives me peach cores to plant along the rest of my trip.

Sophogyny

Being raised by a single mother has made me equal measures feminist and misogynist.  Value can be attributed to anything, but from a biological and reproductive perspective, women have a greater inherit value than men.  That does not imply that men are devoid of value; theirs is determined by their utility to women.  Women's sexual success and evolutionary worth are found simply in their existing.

This doesn't mean that women can't be funny or clever, but it's not necessary for their reproductive success as is the case with men.  Men - aside from physical prowess or stability - are measured by their mental alacrity.  All of these characteristics, however, are tied to the service they provide to a mate.  The difference is the most attractive human man is not always the brute alpha male.  It's become more important for predominantly monogamous humans to look to traits fitting for child rearing and stability than just fighting back that fucking panther that won't leave us alone.  In both cases the female retains the right to choose.

It's contrary to the current conception of gender roles and probably the reason I don't get laid.  I don't do the normal, patronizing mutation of self required.  Instead I preemptively put every girl I meet on a pedestal.  I feel like it's demeaning to pander for sex and probably not fair to the other person.  In other words, I have placed myself in a perpetual friend zone and will never bone down again.

I'd like to say that it's more important to get into a girl's head than her pants, but I don't usually agree with female intuition.  I've never valued sex highly enough to let it change my personality, which means I don't get it as often as I'd like.  Being yourself is supposed to be an attractive quality, but it's less so when yourself doesn't get laid.  Normally I make fun of people for seeking personal validation by serial dating, as if filling a void  of some strumpet will fill a personal void in yourself.  I don't usually feel the need for a relationship like that, but on this trip I am definitely searching for validation.  I don't care if other guys think what I'm doing is neat, I need a girl to take notice of the fact that I'm in awesome shape and am doing a stupid, ridiculous thing.  I worry that my chances on this trip will reflect my chances upon my return, and that bothers me.

If nothing else though, I think I like Linden because she likes my music.  I ruminate on what I desire in a women and usually think intelligence or attractiveness is the deciding factor, but the real determinator is whether they like my music.  It's a more fundamental expression of my tastes and personality than anything else; a shared interest in that usually means a commonality in other things.  A girl that likes the same pattern of chords as I is more appealing to me than some stuffy cunt that doesn't but can understand my heady philosophic bullshit.

But good God, these girls don't know what they do to me.

Maryland Kill Count 
Deer: 1
Dog: 1
Frog: 1
Monitor Lizard?!*: 1
Opossum: 1
Raccoon: 1
Rat: 3
Small Bird: 3
Snake: 2
Unknown: 4
*Based on later research I think it was an otter.

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