Learning normal

Sorry I've been quiet.  A lot has happened.

I am slowly learning a new social and emotional vocabulary.  The difficult stuff - the stuff that emotionally-gifted people pick up easily, as children, while the rest of spend the rest of our lives scratching our heads.

Namely - normal behaviour, like normal men and women do. 

I have now told three people.  Three.  Real, reacting eyes-faces-voices people, not safe electric like you.  It felt OK, I cheated slightly by keeping everything past tense.  I Still find it much easier to confide in women than men.

Oddly enough you - the electrics - know all three of them. 

One.  I met this girl for lunch.  We spoke ten-to-the-dozen about out lives.  We are similar people, and can share information at high bandwidth.  I listened, trying to keep it more peer-to-peer than ADSL, which is how I used to be, back when the Earth rotated around me.

She is full of fun and colour and music and love.  We agreed I needed more joy and beauty in my life.  Now I've finally understood the nature of our relationship - we will never be more than friends - I decided to tell her.  It felt OK.  We'll meet for lunch again. 

FACT:  Whoever you are, whatever you do, you need joy and beauty in your life.  A platonic relationship with an attractive girl can be both - but it is a challenge.

Two.  I went for coffee with this girl.  I asked her out again, not trusting myself that there hadn't been a misunderstanding that first time, when she dodged the question. 

What are we going to do next time?  I mean why don't the two of us get something to eat?

Oh - you mean, like, a date?!

Umm, well, I suppose it might be a bit like that, yes...

Oh no!  That would be- I mean no, why can't we just have coffee ...

Of course she understood the first time - idiot.  This time she anticipated the bloody question.  The weird thing is that afterwards I felt happy, I felt RELIEVED.  We met again soon afterwards.  She apologised for saying "no" quite so quickly, which I think we both found quite funny.  I said I was sorry it had taken me two years to ask her, only to fluff it at the last minute.  In discussion I told her a little more about where I am.  We agreed to meet again, and again.

FACT:  The company of a beautiful woman is reward enough.  Things don't have to "go anywhere".

Three.  This girl got in touch with me again.  She was very angry and upset with me.  She was right to be.  When we met we remade our connection.  Remember - she was the first girl ever I spoke to at any length, in my first week at university, over a decade ago. 

But since then I had been lost in my own World, and hadn't got in touch.  For three months.  Pretty unforgiveable.  But worse, in the meantime a genuinely terrible thing had happened to her.  A genuinely terrible thing that I shall so describe, not because it is secret, but simply because it is not mine to tell.  It is hers.  But it was a genuinely terrible thing that anyone who considered themselves a real friend ought to have been there for, to help her through, and I wasn't. 

After a bitter-blazing exchange over e-mail - consisting mainly of her saying deeply hurtful, deeply true things, and me apologising - we made peace and met again.  She confided in me her feelings about the genuinely terrible thing.  In return, I confided in her.  We are close now.

FACT: It is possible to go out for drinks that don't end in drunkenness, dates that don't end in disaster, but in parallel thoughts and opposite trains.  And hugs, and happiness.  And not shame.

I've fallen off the wagon one or two times.  OK, not fallen... leapt, jumped.  Can't really complain.  I voted for longer hours; we all did.  Wincing at bank statements weeks later - overlarge debits to unidentified establishments, and mystery withdrawals in the small hours. 

FACT:  These days, there are a lot of places in central London that will sell you a drink after eleven.

Baby-steps.  Nursery classes.  But slowly I learn, and slowly things get better.

Fact.

Comments

[Stray]

Would it be inappropriate to offer you a hug? I'm not sure who I am trying to make feel better ... hmm. Um, good for you though.

I always thought normal would be boring, dull, unsatisfying, ... but actually it's rather lovely. Thanks for reminding.

Sx

[Timbo]

It's hard, if not impossible to be friends with beautiful women. Actually, It's pretty difficult to be friends with any fucker.

As a direct result of this I have no friends.

The End

[looby]

It's really good to read this. I know how difficult it sometimes is to be friends with very attractive girls (I'm meeting one on that basis in - ooh, 37 minutes), but the project of gathering around yourself girls whom you like but not in a possessive, potential-lover way is a very worthwhile one. It's something I'm not very good at but it;s developed lately with someone who lets me know exactly what's on offer and what isn't. Like your feelings of relief (ooer,missus), the safety of knowing where I stand outweighs the odd tinge of regret that she doesn't want to take it any further.

I really feel for you with the girl who understood that it was a request for a date the first time round, but am glad you're not put off from chancing it every now and again.

[pocketpunk]

OH NOOOOOOOOO

Dont learn to be normal ...cos then your posts will be all boring. You're much more interesting FUCT up....

Hang on....am i being selfish....?

[Peach]

Jeeze, while I wholly congratulate you on your newly acquired normal, I hope it is only a cape of normal swished on occasionally when the weather gets a little chilly because I was starting to have a secret fantasty that we could meet up and ruin our lives together...

[Peach]

Shit, did I just post that out loud?

[Ariel]

Owie, this post reads like my life a few years ago, but in some way you are further forward than I'll ever be emotionally. I'm trying to get there but I keep getting waylaid by my lust for one person who suddenly decided to make himself inaccessible again. As for normal, pah, no such thing! It's just one arbitrary concept among many others. And if normal means dull, don't you ever learn normal because your voice would get lost.

[Beth]

Being in a horribly depressed mood, and drinking gin and tonic on a day of no-breakfast-hardly-any-lunch-mid-afternoon-starbuckscaramelfrap-no-dinner, I have mixed feeling about your post.

Not for you, I'm glad you're learning about some of the normality stuff. But my advice would be do it as you would Nazism - its sort of interesting, in a morbid way but most certainly not something you'd want to be part of.

I don't advocate society's concept of normality... the bottom line is its fucking impossible to attain and, I believe, for the few that do attain it - not as attractive as it seems on the outside.

Essentially, I don't believe creative people are ever normal. You need the abstract to maintain your edge.

[Dandelion]

At the risk of seeming terribly ignorant, can I just ask why it's so hard to be friends with beautiful women?

[clarissa]

I'd have coffee with you.

[clarissa]

I'd have coffee w/ you.

[overnighteditor]

Stray - Thanks. I wouldn't want too much normal, mind. Can get a bit dull.

Tim - Very true. Near impossible.

looby - I find it getting easier too. As I get older I realise how much I simply value female company.

pocketpunk - Don't worry, still plenty of fucked-upness in the tank

Peach - I think I'd quite enjoy a little mutual ruination.

Ariel - When lust is in the equation, it always dominates over friendship. And I thought only men had this problem!

Beth - You're right, I will study "normal" as if it were a beautiful decaying corpse.

Dandelion - You really don't know? For me (probably most men) friendship and lust inhabit very different parts of the brain - so it's very difficult for a man to feel both things about one woman. Unfortunately lust has men dancing like idiots long before friendship has even got its shoes on.

clarissa - I'd have coffee with you. Maybe one day.