As someone who likes words, I like this idea of presenting myself with a textual base. I like the way I look on paper, and equally, I trust my ability to judge another based on the way they present themselves on paper. I can find some semblance of attraction through this means, though it’s never complete unless touched by a physical hold. I need to like the way her shoulders are put together, to need the smell that sits behind some obstructing hair across her neck. One doesn’t exist without the other. I’ve often heard the head banging bash of internet hatred [with respect to dating], but I think it misses the point somewhat. The internet, as with any medium that accounts for presence and interaction, is nothing more than a context. You can slip a man into a bar and watch him flounder over beer and the brevity of poorly worded small-talk, but have him perched atop a golf cart on a fine green day and he’s peachy in turns. We react to circumstance, we’re a play of personality in flitting light. It’s easy to think you regress to some familiar past when visiting family, but in many respects it’s simply your personality responding to known variables. Within the confines of family, an expression of self [relative to those variables] returns. It’s not that you necessarily changed when leaving home, but more that your externalities shifted, and as did you with them.
I like this idea that we have versions; some conscious, some reactive. I like this idea that the introduction of a song with the right rhythmic blow will pull us along in its draft; pleased. And in the company of others, our offered self becomes a victim to the boundaries those interactions build. To be short tempered and cynical in the hold of a man we’re jealous of, to loving and lecherous in the presence of the man we want something from. Most people have some idea of choice surroundings, this place that offers their best reflection of self; and by extension, that comfort lends itself to the latching of others. In my case, the characterization of another comes down to characters. To see somebody in a bar leaves me grasping at unknowns; to greet, to please, to flail, to fall to my knees. But the neglect of an apostrophe, an abbreviated word, the excessive enter of enthusiastic exclaim, these are things I know not to need. These are things I trust. A sentence requires thought, a lustrous hair-flick is thoughtless groin-fodder [though to be fair: a lustrous hair flick thrown by a well-sentenced woman is lovely enough].
Just a thought, discard and leave me pleased.
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