This is the thing. I’m normal. Kind of. A reason to be happy? Not for me. A theme of my life has been the need to have my needs met and an itch to be loud. I wanted life to mean something, to have an impact on more than my immediate circle of kin and friends. Explains this blog, maybe. The ways I wanted to go about being loud have put my serenity at risk. There was jail. And homelessness, more than once.
So, since leaving my son and his Mom in 2002 to find a way of ending the insanity I’ve returned to a bad hobby. It’s so common as to be laughable. Lolita. It was a play then it was a movie. It’s taboo. Old fart loving on nubile young thing. Not good. And way too common. In Hollywood, and among the rich & stupid, it’s almost de regueur. You get to a certain level, a certain age and you get awarded your own SYHT. I may be the right age. I’m a little low-brow to qualify for that lottery drawing. It doesn’t stop me from some rather deplorable late night fantasies.
Lisa Brooks, a student of mine, SYHT 2 & 3, one of whom was a stripper, a waitress at Richbrau, SYHT actual, who inspired the initials I gave her, Aimee, whose Dad is an elder at a local church, a local web developer and graphic novel writer, and lately, Felina Ramos. The bad hobby? I keep trying to catch me a kitten and failing.
What’s knocking about my heart is Felina Ramos. I should run the other way when Felina meows and leans against my leg. Did I? No. I tried to scoop her up to feed her and she bit me. Serves me right. Four hours from the time I left work until I hit the door at the house with the mind racing at the depravity possible. She wasn’t where I thought she’d be. She was an hour away in a completely different part of our metroplex.
For Felina, I am an absurdity. I’m an older guy who is attracted to her but my impulses run to being Pappa rather than boyfriend/beard. Felina’s experience with men is that they want her cookie and not her. She may say she likes guys for more than just a 3am romp. But too much of life has taught her that it all comes down to that, to bumping uglies in the wee hours of the morning. She can’t look at me, look at any guy, without a little anxiety, a little question, “when will the abuse start?”
All the good people in the fat part of the curve have all the usual tropes about women like her. “She must like it” [Hell no], “You can tell by the way she dresses. She brings it on to herself with the men she goes with. “. [Law of attraction, I get it, but unfair.] The thing is, when you are that far down, that deeply captured by the dark side, you resonate dissonant.
You attract crazy and abusive. Dissonance feels normal. We (yes, “we”) tend to attract to us the things that represent our unconscious signals, good and bad. I am absurd to Felina but that thirty-something musician who wants to be Marilyn Manson 2.0, him? Felina is all about him. He confirms for her what her broken heart believes about men–we are dogs, pigs and goats. Nothing from men is free, “ass, gas or grass . . .” Matthew 5:1-12 is insanity for her.
I could easily stand on my heritage as a WASP, on my blue-bloodline and my upbringing. I’m Presbyterian, for God’s sake. I could stick to the party line about how everything has to come to me without any agency of my own. I could say it’s because of Felina that I have done foolish things. In the popular orthodoxy, I’d be right. Also, in the orthodoxy of the day, Felina is a goddess. She, with her downtrodden story, is to be worshiped as confirmation that all men everywhere are the same–dogs, pigs and goats. What say I? Yep.
If anything, in this post, I am writing a confession rather than an accusation. Felina is God’s business, not mine. My business, my dog in the fight, is my 0-8 record at luring a kitten to me. I’m annoyed at my failures. Felina, or someone like her, is catnip to me. Failing, though, is probably the better thing.
Felina is about five years out from being sick and tired of being sick and tired. When the street becomes too much she crashes with some thirty-something guys in a home that is sometimes subdued but on the speed dial of the local cops. Remember the movie Hangover? Yeah. But, like, a suburban house that is like that all the time. That is Felina’s milieu.
The old reliable, my awkwardness and stubborn insistence on some personal tropes with women disrupted the dastardly plan. The other thing is something I had to get used to. I’m not abnormal. The bipolar vibe that was so attractive back then just doesn’t click with me. Felina, as I think about it, was perhaps hoping she’d make it past my front door and then who knows? I bought dinner for her at Chipotle. Buzz kill.
Then last night, which ended up being four hours on local roads driving, parking to send some texts, driving some more, rinse, repeat. Felina had been talked into moving a friend after work and instead of the promised easy couple hours it had spun into an all-nighter. Meanwhile I’m wandering about Metro Richmond hoping to find my stray kitten. Since, Felina has made me a ghost.
My win-loss score with this bad hobby is 0-8. The closest I’ve come is a really odd, awkward, naked afternoon with SYHT actual. Parts of me feel a bit peeved at this. Eight attempts and all I got was some necking with SYHT.
I got the house. I got the car. I filled the house with the stuff I thought would be attractive to her. Stuff that my Mom would like. Stuff that my son’s Mom liked when we were still married. I don’t have the HiFi yet. I did get a TV. FIOS got cancelled when I couldn’t pay the bill last spring. So far, it’s just me in that house.
I’m sort of like that puppy that catches a squirrel and doesn’t know what to do next. Propriety should lead me away from my hobby and a realization that I’m old enough to be a grandfather. I have no business messing about with women young enough to be my daughter. 0-8 so far. Over 950 words about a lot of fantasy and a night on the road going nowhere with a hope that cannot be. I am still a fool for love.