No, this post isn’t about the show Arrested Development. But if you don’t watch it yet you need to because otherwise it’ll be cancelled and the funniest show on television will go away (yeah, it’s usually even funnier than Family Guy).
Anyway, tonight I went to dinner with my family to celebrate my Uncle’s 44th birthday. We went to a place called “Cheeseburger in Paradise” up by polaris. Obviously it has a Jimmy Buffett theme. The food was alright, but I liked the place. They had live music which was pretty good, and they had Christmas lights up, which if you know me you know that earns points in my book. I love Christmas lights. It would’ve been better if there were more people there, as I would imagine there are on friday or saturday night, but not on a wednesday like today.
Anyway, the hostess there was really cute, as hostesses tend to be, and I wanted to ask her out. She was pretty and she was really nice too. You’ve probably already guessed that I didn’t say anything. As usual I overthought the situation. Plus, I didn’t want to be like “that guy“. I thought, well, she’s being really nice and she’s looking at me, but then again that’s what she’s paid to do. I don’t want to make it sound like cute girls talking to me and looking at me is a rare occurrance, but cute girls looking at me and talking to me is a rare occurrance. (That was a joke.) I’m not really sure if the wide-open internet is quite the right place to discuss this, but here goes. A lot of times I’ll catch a girl looking at me, but we both tend to glance at each other and then look away when the other makes eye contact. However, never have I been sure that the girl has an iterest in me, and thus it seems I am utterly incapable of taking it any further than awkward glances. Unless I’ve been drinking. Then it seems that a lot of the apprehension goes away.
OK. I know I sound like a pubescent middle schooler there (except for the part about the booze ;-)), but let’s analyze it. C’mon-it’ll be fun (Not really. It’s wierd rambling and boring and strange. I’ve read it. -ed.). You probably read this site either because you’re my friend and you’re just being polite or because you want to know my psyche better. Either way, you’ll continue reading. Now, because my animosity goes away with alcohol it follows that my problems are only psychological, and thus conquerable. I have no problem talking to girls that I’m not attracted to, or to girls that I’m attracted to that I already know. So the problem, then, is limited to meeting cute girls that I don’t know. Why is it limited to meeting new girls? Because I care about what they think about me. I’m not sure why this is, but probably stems from my need to be liked and thought of as a nice person. Which, I think stems from society. Anyway, girls I already know already have opinions about me and thus I’m not afraid to talk to them because I know what they think about me. So, my real problem is that I can’t know before I talk to them what they think of me. Because I have difficulty, we know that I default to thinking they have a negative opinion of me, since if I thought they had a positive opinion of me we can assume that I would have no problem approaching them.
Now, the female form is genetically encoded to be absolutely the most attractive shape to most men- myself included. We get a little endorphin boost whenever we see one. You could say we’re addicted. Forgive me for treating women as objects for a moment, but before you meet someone that’s basically all they are- entities without properties. If you see someone, then their visual properties get assigned to their entity. So now all you have is an entity with purely visual properties and all you have to describe that entity to yourself is their visual description. Then, your mind starts formulating opinions, because that’s what good minds do, based on social preconceptions and the only way you have to describe the entity to yourself. That’s probably the way that religion propogated, come to think of it. Basically what I’m trying to say is that before you meet someone but after you see them then there is no way to stop yourself from thinking of them in a purely physical way since that’s all the information you have to go on. One explanation of my problem is that I only dwell on missed opportunites to meet cute girls and that the animosity is there for everybody that I meet but I simply don’t think so much/remember about meeting unattractive people. Maybe not politically correct, but possibly true, though I don’t think so. Another, and perhaps better explanation is that we tend to put pretty things on pedestals. Look at any art museum, for heaven sakes. I know that I’m guilty of putting women that I’m attracted to on pedestals and overlooking incompatibilities between us simply because I want us to be compatible (ie, labeling them as “Perfect” without a basis for that claim). Now, from the perspective of anything perfect, anything non-perfect is crap, and if I see the women I’m attracted to as perfect then I would see their opinion of me as being poor, since I’m not perfect. The logical part of my brain knows that they really don’t think this, but for some reason my subconscious can’t seem to let it go.
So to summarize, my problem is that I put cute girls on a pedestal and label them as perfect because all I have to go on is their visual form that I’m chemically addicted to, which generates in me the perception that they see me as slime, which prevents me from meeting them and knowing them other than simply visually, which would remove them from the pedestal and allow me to interact normally with them. Catch-22. Hmm. The only logical solution, as I see it, is to wear a blindfold everywhere. But that’s not practical, is it? Now that I’ve gone through all of this, it makes perfect sense to me why pretty girls seem to always go out with assholes- the assholes see themselves as perfect and thus have no problem approaching cute girls.
I’m in no way saying that this is fair, or that I like it this way, or that it should be this way, or anything like that. In a perfect world looks wouldn’t matter. Unfortunately, we’re a product of evolution and sexual reproduction and the way people look and act are tied together in a deeply rooted, genetic fashion and society plays up the difference between the pretty and the ugly.
So thanks for sticking with me through this rambling exploration of my weirdness. I’m sure that in 30 years somebody will drudge this up off of archive.org as an explanation as to why I shouldn’t be President of the Universe. So to all of the people that I haven’t scared off by now, thanks for reading. I think I’m done opening up my feelings to the world for now. I’ll bet you’re all thankful for that.
