The mind of a man

A friend of mine asked me as we were running last night if I thought a man and a woman could be friends.

First of all, let us all dissect and analyze the previous statement. Focus on the running (or my version of running, which some people interpret as fast walking while wildly swinging my arms and wearing far too tight shirts and pants that accentuate the jiggle). I'm going to go on a tangent about running. There are several types of runners out there. Plodders, heavy runners, light runners, morning runners, night runners, the 'please let this be over' runners, the 'running is my life' runner and so on. From there on, it boils down to three types of runners: talkers, silent runners, and music listeners. Talkers are self explanatory. They enjoy conversing as they run. It makes the run go by faster if you distract yourself from the constant explosion of pain in your lungs and heart and legs with every stride you take (at least for me). The music listeners are also self explanatory. They listen to music as loud as possible to distract themselves from the overwhelming pain that is creeping in their lives as they trudge down the path/sidewalk/road. Silent runners (who are alien to me) enjoy running for the sake of running and choose not to have a distraction. They like their coffee black and their liquor straight as well. In fact, it's best not even to pour their respective liquid into a glass. Just hand them the bottle and/or the coffee pot.

The point of all of this is the fact that I am actually a music listener. I like listening to high energy music when I run, because it distracts me enough from the details of the task at hand (how long I have left, how much my feet hurt, why this hill is so long) and in turn lets me focus on what's important (one foot ahead of another, left foot, right foot, left foot, -oh is that a pole? I probably should move out of its way-) Now, the problem with this is when you run with a person of a different genre.

My friend is a talker.

Call me crazy, but when I run with a talker, I feel obligated to leave my ipod at home and talk. Not that I don't mind the conversation. It's great to catch up and just hear and talk about a person's day, especially someone that you live with and/or are close to. Our respective lives are so busy, that even though we see each other daily, honestly, we don't get to talk as much as you would think. So I don't mind the conversation at all.

My body, however, does mind. I feel bad for my friend when my answers are so convoluted by my constant need for oxygen. (word…..gasp gasp….string of words….gasp gasp gasp) Not to mention that the oxygen deprivation to my brain makes my answers lack cohesive logic.

Back to the point at hand, yesterday, my friend asked if I thought men and women could be friends.

Now at one point in time, I would have responded with a resounding yes. I was also younger and more naive and less experienced with the gender known as the female, and the complexities involved with relations with them. So my answer changed from a resounding yes to a somewhat unsatisfying 'well, it depends on the person.'

In my oxygen deprived state, I tried explaining the mindset of men and how it is different than that of women. I think I was unsuccessful in my attempt to describe the feral beast known as the male sex drive. Instead, I tried to explain it as 'hope.' Once again, I don't breathe too well when I try to converse and run at the same time. Given that explanation, it's quite easy to explain how I mixed up the words hope from horniness.

Let me explain. As a well adjusted male, I, on some subconscious level, instinctually think (even as a fleeting afterthought) about having sex with essentially every female that I meet (age appropriate, of course). Men will deny this all they want (just like men deny watching porn) but this is how a good majority of men think. Most of these thoughts are just fleeting and don't really substantiate as full fledged thoughts because as we have grown to be well adjusted adult males, and we realize that there are societal and moral complexities that would never allow us to act upon or even fantasize about these thoughts.

Now, from what little I know about women, I know that women can pine the same way after men. However, women, by nature, are more discerning. They look for attractive qualities in a mate. Men, on the other hand, are not. When I wrote the above statement, I meant it for every woman I meet, regardless of attractiveness level. (Okay, so this is going to sound horrible. And I swear that I am not that bad of a person. But like, when an ugly and unattractive girl passes by, the thought related to sex that whizzes through my head is something like, 'I wonder how many beers I would have to drink before I would allow myself to bask in the gloriousness of her ugliness, nekked?')

Now, knowing this fully about myself, I (surprise) still have female friends. The context in which you meet really can determine the manner of the ensuing relationship. If I met a girl when I had access to a lot of girls in my life, like in high school or college, usually, thoughts like that could be easily squashed and dismissed and the ensuing friendships would be platonic. If I met someone as my friend's girlfriend or if I, myself (this hasn't happened in a while), was in a relationship; likewise, the sex thoughts are quashed and dismissed. Meeting people in a professional environment, where often times sex is the last thing on my mind (except those few years where I worked as a male escort), thoughts sex are, surprise, easily dismissed.

Also, this is another point to clarify. Just because the thought go shooting through my head of sex with the woman that I just met, it doesn't mean that I want to have sex with them. It's just a thought. Whether you want to do it or not is a discussion of attraction and given my track record, that might take multiple blog entries to explain.

I guess the point being is for every attractive woman that I meet for the first time, there is always some sort of fundamental attraction that belies my interest in her, if I show interest. Every one. Women, again, are different. They discern qualities beyond that of just physical attractiveness (thank god). When I make friends with women these days, sadly, as a single guy, the tendency is that it is more for selfish purposes of sexual conquest (yes, I said it) rather than more altruistic purposes. Of course, there are always an exception and circumstances that add complexities to this, but in general social situations, you can pretty much use this rule as a guideline for social interaction with men.

Even as I write this, I can think of addendums that I would like to add, where in fact this rule did not hold up. Such is with many things with life and generalizations. My friend, the contrarian that she is sometimes, cited an example that happened to me recently. There was a girl that was her friend that I drunkenly kissed at a bar. We were becoming friends before the incident, and after the incident, needless to say, my interest in her was heightened. Since alcohol was involved, details of the situation were hazy to the other participant, and it soon became obvious to me that alcohol was the deciding factor in the situation, rather than attraction. Well, now, previously stated make out buddy, is seeing and/or dating another guy.

My friend unintentionally accused (I apologize to my friend who is going to read this eventually. Accuse is a strong word and not what I wanted to use, but I just had a foot long sub and my brain is only functioning at a sub par level. Synonyms are not coming to me) me of losing interest in her when I discovered she really didn't reciprocate the level of attraction I had. I had to think about that for awhile before I really knew what to say to that. I am a simple person. I've always been told that I wear my heart on my sleeve. I've never been one for subtlety or manipulation; I always lacked the requisite cleverness for that. When I kissed her in the bar, it wasn't just the caught up in a moment thing. I remember the drunk things I do. I remember how soft her lips were, her eyes looking back at me, how smooth her skin felt. So when I had to just force myself to kind of let go of that memory (yes, I know it was one night and I probably made waaaay too much of it, but it was a nice feeling those thirty seconds it happened (much like most of my sexual experiences)), the only way I knew how to do that was to distance myself from that memory. And the source of it as well. I second guessed my actions; did I do this because I wanted to be friends with her or because I was attracted to her. I don't know. When you kiss me, it complicates things and it takes a little while for me untangle things.

But in the end, if I didn't want to be friends, I wouldn't try to untangle things and would've just cut things off where they were. And I didn't. I think most women should give men the benefit of the doubt about things like this. If you don't reciprocate interest in a guy, things are going to be different. It happens. But, if the guy sticks around and still wants to be a friend, it should mean something to you as well.

So can a woman and a man be friends? I guess it depends.

Where I’ve been for the past couple of months….

I think I'm worn out.

Emotionally I feel a little drained. Physically, I feel tired all the time. Creatively, I feel constipated. I managed to get by the work week with a constant source of caffeine streaming through my body. But even diet coke (gasp) is losing its battle with my creative apathy and general fatigue.

I'm twenty nine years old. You know what I hate most about facebook? You get to see where people that you once knew are. And for me, a twenty nine year old that doesn't have a clue to really where he's going with his life, seeing people arriving at destinations and going directions; I hate to admit it, but it stirs up feelings of envy and jealousy. Like the thought that that could be me beatifically smiling in these pictures with girlfriends, fiancés, and wives in exotic locales and destinations.

Instead, I find myself single and lonely, and lacking inspiration to finish anything I start. I'm stuck in the same place, running circles in my mind. I've just gotten fatter.

This scares me. I feel myself growing bitter and resentful for my status, but in the end, I have no one else in the world to blame for where and who I am but myself. Thus begins the long and often bumpy downward spiral into self loathing and self destructive behavior, one that I have somehow managed to side step thus far (then again, taking oneself not so seriously is a talent in itself). But I feel myself slipping. I feel myself lashing out. I feel angry and resentful to the people I love the most. I feel emptiest around the people that know me best.

Is it bad that I feel more comfortable around strangers sometime rather than people that I've known for more than half my life? I don't know what this says about me. I sometimes feel as if my childhood friends are more friends of my brother and that know me by association rather than the shared experiences of growing up together.

I don't know why I feel this way. I wonder if I always have. Whatever the case, I realize that I need to let go of this bitterness that I'm seemingly clinging to before it really does rip me asunder, emotionally, physically, spiritually and creatively.

As a self loathing adolescent, I used to hold on to these emotions. I was always felt intense, passionate feelings and emotions. I learn to cope with the intensity of what I felt by internalizing them, burying what I felt, how strongly I felt, letting myself float into a void. This, of course, manifested itself into deep cycles of depression soon after. It's so funny how these things work – we create these defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from pain and hurt, but these defense mechanisms that we create turn out to be greater monsters than we originally set out to protect ourselves from. My depression turned to be a greater detriment to any pain or hurt that I would feel. It was suffocating. The loneliness I felt. I remember writing a poem as a teenager (yes, I was THAT guy that wrote poetry) describing the way I felt as standing knee deep in a stream of water, but still dying of thirst. Happiness was all around me. I had great friends. Functional parents that, although were not well equipped to handle me, still loved me none the less. Yet I let myself fall into this void and not recognized these things. Or feel these things. I would find things to hate about myself, hate about my situation, and cling to them, intensify them, let my subconscious coalesce with them, all in order to numb myself from feeling.

God. It sounds so stupid now. The stupidest thing is sometimes, I still find myself repeating this behavior. Finding things to numb myself with emotionally. Whenever something goes well in my life, I find fault in it as for it not to threaten this imperfect void I have around me. I guess some habits are hard to break.

But now the things that I hold onto are beginning to embitter me. Rather, they have embittered me. I think each of us is born with a darkness inside of us. It's some nasty side of our personalities that we don't let other people see and for good reason. You hide it under smiling masks and chivalry and polite manners and joking tones, but it's still there, lurking to rear its ugly face. I only bring this up is as I'm slipping deeper into my void, I feel like that part of me, my own darkness, is manifesting more and more in my personality. Needless to say, I don't like it being there.

So the trick is to just let go. Life is too short, right? Now, just to figure out how to do all this without the aid of alcohol.