Stuff to See!

Thoughts From Outside

Dateline: May 31, 2004, Memorial Day

Another beautiful, rainy day transpires in the city of Baltimore (dum diddy dum). The combination of rain and heat has produced a bumper crop of grass and weeds, which matters little to me because I have no lawn to mow or plants to preserve, but I'm sure that there are many others who are cursing their fate over this small development.
I like the rain, especially in late spring and summer. In fact, my favorite weather phenomenon, aside from a 28-inch blizzard, is a summer thunderstorm which strikes just at the beginning of nightfall. There's something oddly alluring about lightning, thunder, and massive amounts of rain.
So what harebrained scheme am I pursuing this upcoming month, nobody asks? In between tracking down people I haven't seen for many years in the hopes of nothing in particular, and awaiting the release of Ricochet (aka Stepper) to the American market, and continuing to toil away at work....not much in particular. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like had I grown to be somewhat more like than unlike the rest of my demographic. I'm happy with the way I've turned out, but it's a queer feeling sometimes, like I'm in this world, but not quite of this world.
Not that I'm actually from another world...I'm just not essentially tuned in to whatever scene others of my age and socioeconomic background find themselves in. As far as I know I've always been on the outside looking in, for whatever reason. Just a hair's width out of phase with the rest of mankind, and not even completely at ease around the few people on earth who know me well.
What is the meaning of life? Most creatures of this world exist solely to perpetuate their own species, it seems, and humans are no different in this regard, except that the nature of the product is not always biological. I watch the pair bonds, the male and the female of the species, in their attempt to deceive each other and themselves into believing that they're not actually out to produce offspring together. Sure, they talk about politics. They discuss art, or entertainment. They drink alcohol or coffee and talk about their friends. They may even talk about cicadas in this particular year, since the phenomenon is remarkable. But the point, the only thing that really matters, is the urge to mate. Everything else, the grocery shopping, the trips to the mall, is just window dressing.
But what about the people who find fulfillment in the company of their own sex, someone may ask? Surely they can't be driven by the insatiable procreative imperative, right? From time to time I give the idea some thought, although I must say by way of proviso that I am, if anything, interested in the opposite sex, when I'm interested at all, which isn't that often. The human being, the rational animal, must know that to mate with one's own sex will not produce offspring, will not contribute materially to the gene pool. I'm sure this can be seen in the rest of the animal kingdom as well (particularly with dogs). What's the point?
I don't know, really. Perhaps the mating impulse is still there, since there are many same sex couples who engage in acts of fornication. Perhaps it fulfills a different drive, the drive to pleasure. I won't go into this much more for reasons I don't feel the need to expose. It's not for any discomfort I feel about the idea, which really doesn't matter one way or the other to me. I'll just put it out there and let others chew on it.
But I do enjoy observing the interaction between people, between those who may find themselves fit to mate, or at least to try it out. The whole social exercise, the dance of man and woman as they observe each other and find one another fit, or, more often, who find one another unfit, smacks of hypocrisy. The very last thing people will discuss as they judge each other is procreation. They'll dance around the subject, flirt with each other, attempt to charm each other, or at least one will try to charm the other who's partially unwilling, bury each other in circumlocutions and other assorted meaninglessnesses in an attempt to disguise what they truly want, only to pursue the very same thing. It's confusing, but the direct approach almost always ends in failure. Why is this?
Man is competitive, much like any other species of animal. Normally the competition in nature is purely physical, if not between rivals then between male and female themselves. It used to be, and in some cases may continue to be, the same with man. On what basis does man still compete? Is it physical? In terms of ritual combat between males for the right to beget offspring upon a desired female, not really. In elementary school I recall an interesting episode where a boy (2 or 3 years my senior, which is a gross advantage when you consider I was 8) challenged me to an after school battle over the affections of one of our female classmates. I had no interest in that, and indeed the female in question thought we were both foolish. Does this happen with adults? Very rarely, I'd say.
The field of competition is mostly psychological, I'd guess from personal experience. A battle of wits, of charm, not usually between rivals, but between both halves of the potential pair bond. One will attempt to engage the other's curiosity, say all the right things, or at any rate some of them, make the right gestures, and eventually end up in bed, or not. Although I despise hypocrisy, I know from personal experience that, at times, I danced the dance, even when rival suitors were involved. My success, or lack of it, depending on an objective appraisal of my romantic history (which I'll not lay bare for the world to see), is a testament to my fitness to pass on my genetic heritage to the next generation of man. For the record, I have no known offspring, which seems to weigh on the side of failure. Curiously, I'm happy with this.
The reason for my lack of substantive success in the mating game has to do with the lack of suitable mates. This is not intended to slander the very nice people I've seen in the past, but none of them has been right for me, and I've been right for none of them. Boo hoo. At this point, having reached the ripe old age of whatever I am, still in the prime of my life by any objective assessment, I find myself being tired of the whole exercise. Indeed, sometimes I stroll into the arena with the sole purpose of finding prospects and denying them, to satisfy some perverse need in my psyche, no doubt. Sometimes, in the rare occasions I'm in the arena with friends of mine, I'll break the ice with some female just to show my friends that (a) I can do such things if I choose, and (b) so can they. I was in a nightclub once, and a friend of mine was eying up some woman who was sitting by herself, presumably waiting for someone. I encouraged him to strike up conversation, but being even more paralytically shy than I am, he refused. So I did it. We hit it off well, the prospect only dropping the boyfriend card when I told her I wasn't trying to pick her up. I think I even bought her a drink...we crackled, and she gave me her contact information which I promptly destroyed when she was out of sight. My poor friend was not happy with me, especially when I told him that I intentionally scuttled the enterprise, although truth be told my success was doubtful.
Looking at things now, I don't even bother going through the motions because the inherent dishonesty repels me. But the honest approach always fails. Again, why? Is it that people don't like to confront their basic desires so blatantly? Is it that they have to perpetrate the charade out of some bs societal imperative? Or do they just like to play the game in the hopes of hitting the jackpot? A combination of all of these, and other factors, I believe.
Most people disagree strongly when I say that the basis of male-female interaction, outside of family and work, is attraction. They'll offer counterexamples of how they just enjoy being around their opposite-sexed friends, without the need for the huddlings of sex. I ask them to tell me the details of their first meeting. They begin to see my point. Even the idea that men and women only begin interaction based on degrees of attraction is repellent to our civilized minds. People refuse to admit that their sole purpose in life is to procreate...they talk about their dreams, their goals, their artistic aspirations. These things are important, too, no doubt (although I don't consciously have dreams, goals, or aspirations, except for the desire to live). I'll freely admit that the primary reason I've started conversations with women I'd never met was a sense of attraction, even to them. Normally the attraction becomes something different, and before long is no longer there even with good friends, since, in some way, conscious or unconscious, the women in question fail to meet my instinctive standards of what I want in a mate. I don't think they'd mind knowing that, for the most part. And for the ones who may pass initial scrutiny, the possibility is not there, so I simply experience their company, which is usually enjoyable. But the INITIAL contact is made because of attraction.
Does this mean I only talk to people I find attractive in life? Not at all...I'm sure there are some people whose company I enjoy who may have approached me on the same basis as I've approached others, and for them the attraction transmogrified as well. It's not even a conscious thing, really, for most people. Or if it is, it's submerged in platitudes about making conversation, or passing time. Maybe some people actually function this way, or maybe all of them do, but I doubt it. I'm close enough to being a human that I feel I understand most of the human drives and impulses, instinctively if not consciously. Indeed, bringing to consciousness what should most likely be subconscious may account for my self-imposed hermitage. I refuse to play by the rules and have fouled myself out.
Maybe.