So when is a giving a person a business card just giving a person a business card? Or when is giving a person a business card an invitation for <enter crude sexual innuendo here> (it's late at night and it's hard to think of something clever sex joke right now).
The line between friendliness and flirtation is something that I don't think I'll ever be fully aware of. Some members of the opposite gender are so adept at mixing the two together, it is entirely impossible to distinguish the two from one another. The common male assumption (remember to ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME) is that the member of the female gender is flirting with him, which is boosting to the male ego, something, that, if I may mention, is in constant need of boosting. (Now although the line between friendliness and flirting is sometimes blurred, the line between sarcasm and observation is not. For those who do not know me well, the comment about the male ego was sarcastic; ie I know a lot of assholes) The common female reality is that flirting and friendliness are subsequently misinterpreted. Most likely, she was being friendly.
That is the common assumption I make though. Unless a girl woman (I stopped dating girls) has her hand on my crotch and is whispering crude sexual innuendo in my ear, I think the member of the female gender is being "friendly."
This is probably not a healthy attitude. But it's a safe one. Too many times have a misinterpreted her interest in the huge blot of ketchup that is grotesquely hanging off the side of my mouth for the desire to make out. (What? I'm a messy eater.) Or the sidelong glances and tight lipped "what a douche bag" smiles as "checking me out." Or the subsequent proximity or brushing or touching as more than "dude, you're a larger dude and this is a crowded room. It happens."
Even with this unhealthy outlook, sometimes I still get confused. Assuming that no one is really flirting with you kind of bottoms out that thing called self confidence, and the only way to maintain such an attitude is to believe that you have an incorrigible, toad like personality and that you resemble the creepy dude from the Lord of the Rings trilogy that kept on saying 'my precious.' (Yes, I know his name is Smeagol. Yes, I read the LOTR trilogy. Twice) Unfortunately, despite my constant self berating, I cannot entirely convince myself that I am a squat troll. Thus, statistically, a marginal amount of the girls women that I encounter and converse with potentially might be slightly attracted to me. Thus, based upon this conclusion, they must flirt.
But then the question is, is she flirting or is she just being nice?
There are always articles in prominent and not so prominent men's magazines about 'how to read a woman's body language' or 'how to tell that she's into you.' My response to all of this? My next blog that will be entitled 'how to be a sucker and actually believe the stuff you read from a magazine full of buxom, lingerie clad women that interview like they want to have sex with you but in reality don't and the stuff they print about the psychology of women is not true.'
I mean, I guess this is really a roundabout way of saying it, but meeting people is tough. Flirting is awkward. It sucks. But lately, I've been feeling this intense feeling of lack of closeness in my life. I wrote loneliness at first, but when I thought about it, I didn't think it was the right word. I'm not lonely. I have a dog, great friends and family. I'm not alone. I'm not lonely. What I do feel is that as I've gotten older, the relationships that I've made have gotten more superficial. I know, its sounds horrible doesn't it? But it's the truth. Even the closest friends I have, they have trivial problems in their lives and don't necessarily have the time to pay attention to all my trivial problems. Yes, I know not everyone's problems are trivial, but with enough perspective, they usually aren't as big as we make them out to be, but that's beside the point. It's not mean spirited or anything of that nature, it's just the natural progression of life. Even branches of the same tree, although rooted in the same soil, grow apart. I don't question any of my friends' loyalty or even the quality of our friendships. It's just as we've all grown and moved in our separate directions, the daily intimacy of shared experiences was lost.
It made me wonder though. Can this desire for intimacy that I found to be missing in my life be found in anything else besides a significant other? We often bridge the gap of physical intimacy with emotion intimacy. Basically, do I need to be having regular (and subsequent very brief) sex with a person to recapture this essence of intimacy from shared experiences with someone? I find it funny that we often we bridge this aforementioned gap between confidant and sex partner. But it makes sense in an odd way. After all, as we get older, we lie, repress, avoid, change subjects to build walls to protect ourselves. And one of the biggest things that we avoid/repress/lie about is in how we dress. We push up things that aren't really that big, wear larger sizes to hid bulges, wear patterns that "slim." When you're nekked in bed, exposed in all your pale skin that has never seen the sun in ten years glory, this wall is finally gone. (Let me explain naked and nekked as it was explained to me. You get naked to take a shower. You get nekked in order to do something that will make you need to take a shower, later on.) And with this first wall down, it's only natural to assume that most of the rest will come tumbling down.
So is my fate to toil with this lack of intimacy that enshrouds my life until I find someone to have relations with? Or can I find it in other places besides a girlfriend. I don't know. I find myself brooding on late nights wondering if those poor suckers that decided to get hitched at an early age knew something I didn't know. But then I see their looks of unabashed jealousy when I tell them how my weekend which involved beer, channel surfing, and a couch. Maybe I just need to suck it up.
When I told my good friend about these interesting theories, he calmly told me that I should consider moving to New York and come live with him. This would eliminate the daily intimacy lacking in my life, he assured me.
I asked him if he was flirting with me.
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