For the last few years I've mostly squandered this holiday, either just bitching or not focusing on it much at all.

But from now on, I will write a treatise and a State of the Union address on love, summing up what happened re: my favorite post-modern work-in-progress. I'll also throw out some (mostly) thoughtful reflections on the whole enterprise.

So as most of you know or can guess, I'm single still, though that almost changed on a few occasions last year.

2004 was an odd dating season, slow like Turkish coffee and mostly online like, well, me. Call it getting prepared for graduate school, call it being in graduate school, call it being too wrapped up in all of my hobbies like a good Western male. Call it what you will.

The first and longest was T, a scattered if seemingly well-meaning poetic type that came more or less out of nowhere. To say that 9 month situation was complicated would be an understatement. It seemed serious from the get-go: I'd had my share of dating attractive and neurotic girls with stability issues, while she'd gotten out of a very long relationship with a control-freak asshole. We wanted stability. It went from consistent IM's and telephone conversations to a patchwork quilt of wrong numbers and T's giving me a new number every time we talked. I had to work my ass off to stay in contact with her.

This jagged series of developments seemed to be based well enough in fact: she was moving out of state, she moved out of state, she got exceptionally busy with work and community college, she didn't have the money to keep her cell-phone service, she decided to move back to her home state, she still didn't have the money to keep her cell-phone service. Most of our mutual acquaintances and some of my friends wondered why I continued to bother. I kept the faith largely because it seemed like it could work if the life circumstances factor was factored out. We'd seriously talked about her coming to live with me in Insanity, Wisconsin, among other things.

By the end, though, I was hardly surprised by some of the things I learned about her. You know me and my keeping private matters private, so I'll just say that she did some shit which ended any possibility of an "us". To get a vaguely better idea of said shit, you can give a read to my poem and the follow-up to it (toward the bottom of the page).

A little overly dramatic, but I genuinely loved the fool. Much later on, which in fact was semi-recently, I got a cryptic message from her. Apparently she'd been lost in herself and, in a nostalgic twist of life, had realized what happened. If I let her into my life again, she wanted to marry.

And you know, despite not having any kind of forwarded number, e-mail address, or any contact information, I checked and re-checked all of her online and offline locations, sent out messages. Oh I know what you're thinking, but love and logic are oil and water. I thought both of us could use some closure. But with no way to talk with her about what happened and to get her side of the story, I assumed she was either out of her mind or playing with me for whatever unknown reason.

Lesson: If someone seems to good to be true, not only will they turn out to be anything but good for you, but likely throw in some aggravation to boot.

Done.

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Yet for the past year there's been someone who's quietly grown on me. When we're opposite, we're polar. When we're on the same page, it's to the period. I'm not sure if she and I'd ever get an opportunity, but I'd take it if only for the string of laughing felonies and public sexings that'd inevitably follow. She's also been there for me, even if I haven't mentioned it or her. Ain't it always just an intriguing hypothetical, though?

UPDATE (08/2005) Well that went to shit. She met a well-muscled guy with a huge dick that wants to impregnate her. Ms. I Hate Children has sold her principles for a nickel. More I talk to her though, more I wonder why I ever became friends with her. Oh. Wait. That's right. It was just about the prospect of fucking each other, and the friendship kinda vaguely grew like a vestigial nut.

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Sylph, by contrast, was a dandelion, one among a garden variety of disappointments in my life. It came together quick, we got close quick, and mutually decided it'd been altogether way too quick pretty quickly. I'll remember her as 'the chick I talked to constantly during the 2004 Detroit trip'. It was a fashion accessory courtship. It basically ended as I was out on the road dodging blizzards. Like almost all women I've dated, I don't hear from her anymore. Unlike most women I dated, she had the decency to say she wasn't emotionally ready for a commitment. And like most people, "I love you" formally translates to "You seem to fit pretty well in my day planner." So much for being one of your 'best friends'. Hope the pharmacy dick was better to your liking.

My central question to myself, then, is whether the modern western approach to life and the traditional concept of mating up with someone mix. That is: can anyone actually stay together in time and place like this?

Of course my answer is "it depends". I've noticed in my time and experience that certain groups of people tend to come together and stay together far more often than others. Take for example the large cadre of geeks I've known over the years. Nerdy, yes, not the most socially fluent and graceful of people, yes, but traditional in the way they approach human relations. It may be because the sub-culture was created out of people generally considered outcasts, but I'd say there's a certain cohesion to geeks that come together--both in friendship and in love. The Captain's cadre fitted this model pretty well: those who got together got married. I've noticed a similar trend among the geek groups I've known.

I also think that people from more traditional backgrounds may have an easier time about things. Even if I'm a non-religious intellectual urbanite Howa*d Dean liberal, I've known alot of evangelical Christians and orthodox Jews
in my time. Contrary to popular belief, the feminist movement and some progressive issues have filtered in to even traditional and religious dating partners. Be that as it may, I think there's a certain "push" from parents or their own creeds that might get them over pitfalls that normally swallow the rest of us.

And what about urbanites and their sub-urban, kinda moderate cousins? Sub-cultural kiddies ranging from the Goths and Neo-Punks (I said punks, not emo people) to your garden variety slightly alternative moderate 20-somethings?

I have come to the conclusion that we are in the Age of Sisyphus. I believe the younger sector of society values relativist freedom of intent and expression, productivity, and above all the individual over anything else. While I believe in all of these values, I will also say they make any lasting relationship very difficult to maintain. Not only do we need to find someone with whom we're compatible, but a person that fits and can fit into our life schedule--time-wise, temperment-wise, any-wise. When it does happen, I think such relationships last for as long as that mutually beneficial environment exists. When that benefit vanishes, there's obviously a wide gulf of tolerance--but I think that gradually erodes. Some of us are more selfless than others, but how far do we bend to accomodate someone with a diverging life/behavior path?

Another observation that occurs to me is tied to our emphasis on individuality. As vague as it sounds, it seems like people around my age have a hard time maintaining connections with others, compared to my mother's generation. I think we're healthy in terms of finding people that seem to fit the bill. Yet, we start getting into intellectualizing, over-analyzing, and (in some cases) emotional instability that stem from doing the former two. It's a breeding ground for misunderstandings.

Finally there seems to be the "what exactly DO I want?" factor. This isn't as direct as it seems. I'm not talking about why any one of us wants to get involved, that's fairly universal. I'm talking about the consequences of not really being sure of what we want. For some guys--and I'm certainly guilty of this--I've noticed that we'll casually flirt with a few to several different women and keep those general avenues of communication open, seeing what appeals to us most at any one given time, waiting for some unexplained something. I can't speak to what the female perspective is, but some female friends I've known have done something similar. I suppose that's human and probably not a bad idea, but then still keeping your options open when you've kinda sorta decided on someone can lead to conflict.

I guess you can boil it all down to wanting to completely be yourself while merging with someone else by degrees, which largely seem to be in conflict.

But for now I'll indulge in my two-dimensional world of work, enjoying friendship time when it's compatible with my overall life schedule, and generally being contentfully self-absorbed unless a crisis comes up.

Land of the Free, home of the Me.

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