Late summer afternoons, when I was a young teenager full of innocence, suburban angst, and sappy love poems, I would bike past a certain house to catch a glimpse of the girl who, by dint of having never been corrupted by actual bedsharing, would remain a lifelong figure of purity to me. Being my first lust object, she set the gold standard against which future girls would unknowingly compare.
Such a vision she was, that even from a non-stalker distance her miniature form made my heart thump like a wet drum. She stood up from her chaise lounge chair in the front lawn to apply suntan lotion, long sweeping motions up and down her arms, wearing corduroy shorts and a white bikini top. I stopped my bike to watch her, transfixed. She sat, laid on her stomach, and didn’t protest her straight dark brown hair when it dropped in silky ribbons across her face as she read a book. To this day, the memory lingers as powerfully as the smell of my grandparents’ house, or the first time I got a bloody lip in a fight. Eventually she moved, and the memory is all I have of her.
It’s easy to get the dating doldrums from years of being in the field. Age tempts the spirit with weariness. Learning the ropes and becoming proficient at game makes you realize that women respond like automatons to certain stimuli just like men do. The princess pedestal that men start out putting women on quickly crumbles with real world experience.
Life is ugly like that. The trick is to live as if the underbelly of life had no authority over your mood. You understand that it is there, and even use it to your advantage, but you never let the poet in you be subsumed by the machine. Happiness is equal parts realistic appraisal and self-delusion. There is indulgent joy in putting women on pedestals — it splashes color into your life that could easily turn monochrome from cynicism.
So many men and women have become irretrievably jaded with the dating scene. They’ve seen it all, heard it all. Dating for them has become a chore whose only purpose is to efficiently ascertain the suitability of a person as potential relationship material. Just the way I wrote that previous sentence pretty much sums up how modern dating feels. The whole enterprise takes on the flavor of checking off a grocery list. The sheer giddiness of sharing the company of a date and careening recklessly in the emotional whitewater gets lost along the way.
I know that game works. I know that women aren’t unfathomable creatures. I know that the beastly side of life always has its maw open ready to swallow you whole at the slightest misstep. I know that once women pass that magical age of 26 a part of their femininity morphs into an accountant consumed with bottom line analysis and dreary practical concerns. None of this stops me from approaching the pursuit of sex and love with anything less than fiery ardor. When I see an attractive girl in a candle shop or across a club I remember how I felt when I watched that ribbon of hair tumble across the face of the girl sunning herself in her front lawn. And all is good.
None of the dirty, crusty filth of life has any hold over me. That memory stays with me for a reason. It guides my way. Recall your own sweet memories when you see a girl you want to meet and the feelings anchored with that will show in everything you do. If your passions are strong enough you can drag an accountant away from her cash flow spreadsheets.
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