My Year of Not Pursuing Women

The year ticked down with each drunken second, and I found myself looking at the girl I had been talking to most of the last hour, thinking about her as a possible kiss as the ball dropped. The countdown started, the girl looked at me, and I left the bar as it erupted into cheers and jolly good fellows, slipping out while the champagne and distraction flowed.

I didn’t kiss the girl, got a slice of pizza, and settled on my first New Year’s Resolution; I would not actively pursue any women in 2015.

The motive wasn’t just that isolated incident on that warm night; it was cumulative of my entire romantic life. Since I was 17 (I was a late-bloomer) a backdrop thought, like a persistent fan’s whine, was girls. Not so much a particular one, but rather a collective, an idea. I had never previously had any trouble conversing or befriending girls, but under that premise I was less than comfortable. And in 2015, I was tired of it.

I’ve always struggled with vulnerability, and I think that dating has just been a lens deeper into that insecurity. As a guy, you’re usually charged with the task of pursuit. You have to be the one that steps up and looks that girl in her beautiful eyes, and comes forth with something real enough to make her want to give you a chance, but not too real as to scare her away. Strategies vary of course, due to personality, but for me it’s generally embodied as a “Hey, let’s go on a walk,”

Apparently this is who I am according to some book (whatever book you don't know me)

Even that is a showing of vulnerability. You are the one that has the desire to connect, and you put that agency in the hands of someone else. They have a small bit of your ability to be happy, and you know what happens more often than not? Nothing. The girl says “Uh, better not,” and I’ll sit there, thinking over the words I said, how our personalities differ and mesh, and hoping that she doesn’t make me sound too desperate or lonely in her depiction to her friends. Or worse even, with awwws, and other horribly emasculating exhalations.

The thing is, that even after rejection on rejection that guy has to keep his self-confidence and ego intact, because after that long walk for a short no; he still has to have the courage to ask that cute girl he met in a used bookstore out. So I’ll psych myself up at my table, maybe wait for her to stand in line for a refill of coffee or tea. Try my hardest to say something clever, and strike up a conversation. Surprise, she’s open to it; something in her crazy life has left a window open. Maybe we go on many walks, maybe we talk about good things, real things. Maybe we start a relationship.

This relationship is unlike any other I’ve experienced. She wants to get to know my emotional side, provides support that I had not sought or known about before. To this point the friendships in my life have been based around doing things, mostly with other guys. I have guy friends I play sports with, ones I talk politics with, ones I listen to good music with, ones I listen to bad music with, etc. They’re neatly compartmentalized, and it's fine.

She breaks those barriers, and despite my best efforts starts to infiltrate the other sections. She’s my best friend.

And she leaves.

So now, I’m a guy that has a hole in a place that I hadn’t previously known existed. My best friends try to perk me up by covering this sadness with straight-faced serious suggestions of beer and hook ups. The idea of approaching girls is still uncomfortable, but it still has to happen. Men exist with the knowledge that if we do not continue to pursue women then we might end up alone, eating a meal by ourselves in our studio apartment totally thinking about fantasy football and NCAA brackets, and totally not thinking about loneliness. But the idea of pursuing a girl is now tinted with even more fear. You might still be able to get the courage to approach that girl you saw at the gym, but now getting her to say “yes” is laced with more terror. What if she says yes, you date, she leaves?

But your first sentence still has to be self-confident; you remember reading on some stupid facebook thoughtcatalog article that self-confidence is the most attractive quality in a guy. What you want to do is show her your wounds as soon as possible, tell her that you’re hurt and that you’re trying the best you can, but that’ll scare her away.

I see this not in the meek men that subtly move into a girl’s life, but in the brash, overly machismo, types. They saunter up, say their shit line, and despite reaction go back and do it again. To their guys they dehumanize women, calling them names (warning, this link has swear words!), always shifting the reason away from who they are, and onto something else. Because it can’t be them, if it was them then they would have to take a good, hard, look at themselves -- a task not easy for anyone, and see that who they are is not enough. I think they’re just trying to still have that confidence to have that chance, so they don’t end up alone. I’m not saying it’s right or justified, because it’s not, but it’s not from nowhere.

2016 New Year's

The same for the creepy guy. This poor schmuck has never been anyone’s first pick; not at dodgeball or at school dances. But he had a realization, he saw the looming dark cloud of perpetual loneliness, and sought to do something about it. He checked out books, watched videos online titled shitty things like “How to approach women.” His friends and family offer him idealistic and bullshit advice along the lines of “Just be yourself,” but he has been himself, for 26 years, and that just got him a poor sense of fashion and the Library of Alexandria of video games.

So he goes to a bar, puts on that shirt that some girl in his gen ed English class said “looks nice” one time, orders some sort of dark beer, and tries to talk to a girl. It doesn’t go well, of course not, it’s his first attempt, he reasons. He tries his best not to imagine a future with each girl that walks through the door. He forces himself to not think about the group of giggling girls that sometimes glance at him. He goes home, and says maybe next weekend. Once again, maybe he missed the boat on social interaction training, and it’s no one's job to give him a chance, so I’m not pushing for that. Just empathy. It doesn't come from nowhere.

Good people's new year.

I think that’s the biggest takeaway from my year of not pursuing women; it’s empathy. Quiet problems that guys have to deal with that I never had to. Flirting came naturally to me, and while I definitely blew some chances with some really, truly, amazing women; I still looked at myself in the mirror the next morning. I have the ability to introspect and write stupid, self-indulgent reflection pieces like this, but I know that not everyone does. I took a brief philosophical vacation into a place where some people simply exist. So I once was told that you should leave these wandering, pedantic rants with a something to chew or act on.

So in the year of 2015 I’ve learned a few things:

• I do better with women when I’m not trying to do better with women.
• I’m jaded and cynical when it comes to romance, usually looking for reasons why things won’t work, rather than will work.
• I like self-confidence in girls.
• I felt more enamored with the ideas of “everything happens for a reason” and “fate”, because the power of my romantic happiness was no longer in my hands.
• Girls should ask guys out more.
• Everyone is a little lonely, a little sad, and that’s amazing.

Edited for Content

Edited for Content

By Andy Hayes

My alarm sends a jolt through my dream and pulls me back into reality. The memory of her face fades with each sonic pulse of the alarm. I’ll see her when I sleep next. I rise without hitting snooze and find the off switch on my clock radio. I stretch my arms to the ceiling and swing my feet over the side of the bed. The computer display on my end table says that I am 100% synced to this body and that all of my faculties and memories should be intact. I check my end table drawer, put on my watch and roll an old gold band ring between my pointer and thumb. Long worn away is the inscription, but I remember it, and that’s what matters.

I think I was in Tokyo the night before, but I can’t really remember. I move a few fingers across the display to find my record of resynchronization and see that indeed I was in Tokyo last night and the SyncWay charged me 1,000 dollars for a trip back.

I rub my eyes and give this new body a couple of quick run diagnostics. My arms work, my fingers work, my legs have feeling, my toes move. Everything is in order. Me, Tokyo me rather, was probably on its way to the incinerator by now. I tuck the ring into my slack’s pocket and dress myself in something that will allow me to move inconspicuously amongst the crowds. I opt not to take the SyncWay to work this morning and instead travel by bipedal motion.

Walking is something that is out of the ordinary for anyone with any sort of financial backing. I push the door out of my building and feel weak, sync sickness probably. My building is a mile and a half away; that should be more than enough room to get the bugs out of my system. I pass people on the street begging for change, physical money something that is quickly becoming antiquated. I drop them a few spare bills that I happen to have in these pockets and keep moving.

The doors to my work swing with more ease than those of my building, and I take that as a good sign. The girl at the reception desk looks surprised that I chose to walk and quickly rips off a formal greeting. I nod at her to soothe her unease. My boss wasn’t so easy. He steps out of the SyncWay already screaming. He wants to know who let the cat out of the bag about our newest project. ResurERECTION; a show about people avoiding sexual arousal on threat of death. I duck out of the conference room and into my corner office.

My walls are covered with posters with large title splashes on them; trophies from my war in prime-time television. We are immortal now, but I feel like that has just given people more time to watch TV. I go to the minibar in the office and pour myself a tall glass of whiskey from an ornate glass decanter. The set was a gift from my mother or some long-forgotten girlfriend. The whiskey was much less royal than its holdings let on, but it’s all in the presentation I remember being told.

The city is dead out of my window. The only people on the street are those panhandling for money and the few transport trucks that are used to haul fresh bodies from place to place. It’s odd how quiet it is now. Long gone are the car horns and general roar of people that was the ever present heartbeat of this great city a decade and a half ago. SyncWay trucks don’t come standard with horns, and the bums and beggars don’t have much to say beyond their repeated speech.

There’s a knock at my door and I turn to see my red-faced boss glaring at me through his beady little black eyes.

“Ratings are in,” he says

I just nod and finish my whiskey.

“Your raise in in the works,” he says

I nod again, and he leaves my office. He slams my black aluminum door to show that he might still have some power in this building. I call to my computer, and she responds pleasantly. I can’t help but think if media designed technology or if technology designed media. Voice activated and responsive computers were something you saw in futuristic movies, but now they were reality.  

The office is quiet and moreso, boring. I put the old gold ring into one of my desk drawers and ready myself to die. The SyncWay in our office has a line, so I use the my boss’s private chamber. The SyncWay’s booth opens and I step in, the large white doors seal and a pleasant arrangement of classical music plays. I close my eyes and relax until I feel the cold metal press against my forehead.

I wake up to a pleasant chime and the doors of this SyncWay opening. I step out into the sun and my eyes fail to adjust immediately. A familiar hand shields the rays from my new eyes, and all of my prewalk routines seem to check out. The SyncWay says that I’m 100% synced and that all of my faculties and memories are intact. I watch as people emerging from their white wombs do the same tests that I just completed. Contestants, hosts, set assistants, producers, directors, come out of these booths. My credit has been charged the same as theirs, but I can write my charge off as a business expense.

One of the many set assistants comes over to me to offer me a cool towel and a freshly squeezed lemonade. Long gone is all of the fanfare and pageantry of an executive coming down to mingle with the everyday. I take them both and thank her. As she turns I notice her tight skirt’s revealing outline, and I know why she got the job. My own tight-skirted secretary bustles out of a SyncWay booth and already has her computer chatting away in her ear.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Why are you here? The office is blowing up about the leak and you’re on set?” she says, her new hair falling over her face.

I ignore her and continue to walk towards our set. The show’s name is The Great Passing. It used to carry a number after it denoting whatever generation it was on, but after 10 they decided to to nix it in favor of the much cleaner title.

“You know, TGP can’t be your endgame. You need a new project. The ratings are constant but it’s only a matter of time...” she trails off when we get to the set.

She had been with me since the beginning, but the set still takes her breath away. Massive stone rollers covered in dried blood litter the lot like Easter Island statues; gas-fueled nozzles spray their payload in large towering flames; hungry metal jaws mechanically snap around loose limbs. Large bloody carts haul off corpses of people long passed on to their next respective body. People are shouting for certain camera angles and different obstacles to be set up. Contestants dressed in their bright jumpsuits with corresponding team names are lined up, tittering like they just got out of their first Sync.

A director yells at me, but I ignore it. He has a job to do, and I’m just an executive. I don’t have much to say about this everyday stuff. I take a long sip of my cool lemonade as I watch a man clad in neon green become impaled on a wicked looking spike. I can see from a nearby monitor an animated icon fade away from the upper left-hand corner. This green guy only had one life left before he would Sync back to the waiting room with the rest of the losers. My assistant finds her tongue again and starts up.

“This wave is great, and we’ve rode it for a good long time; blood, guts, mutilation are all well and good, but we’re only appealing to half of our audience. This new sexy show has tested well with both genders. Women love sex just as much as men, but dismemberment is pretty much penis-linked,”

She rambles on and on, because she knows her career is pretty much dependant on mine. I hired her for the same reason lemonade girl was hired. She wore a low-cut top and said all the slightly suggestive things I was looking for as a young exec. It was all a ruse; she is far smarter than that.

“We’ll make success, because that’s what we have always done,”

“We did it once,” she replies.

I hear screams of consciousness leaving bodies and the grind of bones under stone wheels. Young interns fresh out of film school rush to clean up the mop in their full rubber suits. This was their chance! Yeah right, I want to laugh in their faces. They’d have better luck running the Great Passing than they do cleaning up after it.

Suddenly whistles blow and explosions light the large warehouse in a flash. Someone has won. I stop and clap for the fellow before his dismembered limbs can even touch the cold concrete floor. Even in winning his body is mutilated, but when he wakes again it won’t be in the waiting room. He’ll wake in a cushioned room back at our office where we’ve prepared a lavish meal and a comically large check for his winnings -- all filmed of course. He’ll make a speech about the strength of God or thanking his parents, and then make the plug for SyncWay systems for making this change in his life possible.

The cue cards would stand no more than five feet away from him, so that even his new eyes can read the black type. Once we got the footage the check would be taken from him and the money would be electronically transferred to his account. He’d be shoved out into a SyncWay and wake up at his house. It was clean, it was ordered, and that’s the way it just was after however many years we’d been on the air.

Fingers snap in my face, I’d zoned out watching the next round of contestants compete against each other. This round played as teams with one group running the course at a time while the other team controlled the lethal traps. The studio is filled with pointless screams of bodies that mean nothing.

“Come on, office, now, go,” my secretary says through her red lips.

She looks at me unblinking through purely cosmetic glasses. People didn’t need glasses since we started being reborn with new genetically superior versions of ourselves every other hour. I agree to her request and watch as her perfectly shaped rear end leads me to the nearest SyncWay booth.

I wake up back in my boss’s office and he’s already mid-sentence yelling about something to do with my program. Something about having to make it harder because of all the winners we’d been having lately. I brush him off; winners made it real, and made it relatable to the audience. He leaves in a huff to go blow his little horn at someone he actually had a shred of power over.

My office is dull and lifeless, the stopper on my whiskey decanter was left open. I bet my father would have thrown at the whiskey left in the container, but I just drank another cool glass of “stale” whiskey. There’s work beeping in my ear, and I nod my head in confirmation. The voice in my ear kicks on with a soothing female voice. She informs me that the winner had successfully succeeded in overdosing on some sort of drug within the time it took me to get back to my office chair. He didn’t have a backup body, so he woke up in the incinerator room where his old body from The Great Passing was being cremated. That body didn’t last long, so he was currently just dead. The voice assured me that he’d be revived as soon as the SyncWay truck brought his new body to his home.

“Idiot,” I mumble.

“Yes you are,” my secretary says from behind me.

“You heard about our fabulous winner?” she continues.

“Yup,”

“It’s your 166th birthday next Friday, what are you going to do?”

“Get drunk and kill myself,”

She saunters over to my liquor and pours herself a glass. Takes a sip and makes a face like she just bit into a lemon.

“Stale,” she says finishing her glass.

I knew there was a reason I hired her. We move from day to day work in a daze. She’s always on my coattails nagging away about one thing or another. We finish, and go our separate ways. A courteous goodnight the only goodbye we afford. She takes a SyncWay and I take the ring from my desk drawer. I don’t want to leave my wedding band at the office, so I walk. The rain on my skin is glorious. The homeless around me scatter under what little cover the barren streets provide. There are no lamps because only the poor walk these streets now, and no one cares about them. Just high rise skyscrapers with straight, uncreative, uniform lines. Muggers and murderers don’t matter because all money is carried electronically and murder would just get me back home faster.

A few bodies splatter on a distant asphalt. Probably just some kids trying to get their kicks. There used to be the past time of running across streets in between SyncWay trucks, but that got old fast. Then they moved on to trying to get hit by the trucks. The trucks were installed with cattle catcher-like front bumpers that would still kill the kids, but would brush their dead bodies out of the way so that they could continue to their destination. This must be the latest craze, jumping from the skyscrapers and making messy piles of mush of themselves.

The hair on my head stands on end, and my arms feel lighter. I look up just as the lightning catches me. The bolt throws me a hundred feet back and into the hard asphalt. I can feel my organs failing and my chest cavity filling with blood. I can’t see, I can’t smell, I can’t hear. I’m dying. This is much more miserable than the simple piston through the temple that the booths take.  

I wake up and I’m not in my house. It’s not morning, it’s still night. I remember that I had used my back up body at my home to party in Tokyo. I curse my damnable desire for spontaneity. The truck didn’t deliver a replacement body I guess. I get out of the booth and run everything down. Everything works and I take note of where I am.

My office is dead quiet and the sound of trucks outside plays in the void left by the last conversation of the day. I take the stopper off of the decanter and pour a glass of whiskey. I sip it while looking out over the city. It’s so quiet, there are people on the sidewalks milling about looking for some place to hide from the rain. My old body still splayed out in the middle of the street with my burnt clothes clinging to my body. A truck rumbles by and stops at my smoldering corpse. Two men hop out and unceremoniously pick up and throw my body into the back of the truck.

Another long sip of my whiskey as I watch myself be compacted in a trash compactor along with a dozen other bodies. My secretary’s voice breaks my quiet sanctuary. She must have been notified of my unplanned death.

“Lightning eh? That’s a real shock,” she laughs to herself, and I can’t help but slip a chuckle.

My ring.

My glass falls onto the table; its contents pool around the unstoppered decanter and each of the glasses. I push my way past my secretary and head out the door without waiting to hear her gasp or her questions. She’s with me when I break out of the front door to the office building into the cold rain. She complains about her hair and her makeup, things that were done before she even lived in the body.

“My ring,”

She gasps and gone are her complaints I can hear the truck no more than a block from us. Bright spotlights shining from atop it to scan for bodies of kids who chucked themselves from top of these skyscrapers. Those kids were my only saving grace. Each time the truck would stop we would be able to gain a block or so on them. Then they’d start up again and lose us. We pant and moan, she lost her heels a couple blocks back and the rain is no longer piercing cold, but refreshingly brisk.

My wife’s decision to kill herself was her own. She had lived 124 years and was ready to go. She’d complain about too much life, and about the loss of the transitional. You were never going somewhere, you were always here or there. In her later years she would walk everywhere. Take the long way to work and the longer way back home. She’d start off without even having a destination. She’d just walk. I watched the wrinkles develop on her face, the deep lines woven into her flesh that told stories about the laughs we’d shared. The marks around her lips were no longer permanent, but instead changed and moved with each day that passed. She was new in her old.

We never talked about me dying with her, but I felt like it. I wanted so bad to go with her, but I just couldn’t. I wanted to wake up and be 32 forever. I struggled over many glasses of whiskey and many more bodies. She never pressured me, and she went bravely into death.

My face is wet with a salty mixture of tears and rain. We catch up to the truck at the edge of the city after running five or so miles. We latch ourselves to the back of the truck unbeknownst to the drivers and suck in cold, crisp breaths that burn our lungs. Walking is a rarity and running is extinct. Our bodies are genetic masterpieces, but running unconditioned wears our engineered bodies still. We nod off with our heads rested against the worn steel runners of the truck.

We awake when the truck finally comes to a stop. We’re far out of the city and the sun’s rays are probing the sky as if seeing if the sky is prepared for the sun’s full force. There’s no gate or fencing and we hop off the truck without a word. We look a mess, so we attempt to hide out. The truck’s compactor opens and I see my mutilated body. The burned face stares blankly ahead. I’m so desensitized by now that I hardly care enough to exchange a second look. I pull through body parts like I’m rummaging through garbage. My pocket is mostly burned shut, but I feel my ring through the fabric. I rip and a tear and finally it’s free. I quickly shove it deep inside my pocket. We decide to look for a SyncWay back, and walk through an open door on the dock.

The hallway is well-lit and empty. The shift must have just ended. We move through doors looking for those signature white booths. We find none. A scream breaks us from our search and panic courses through our veins. We find a room that’s larger than any of the other rooms. It overlooks a painfully lit warehouse. Rows and rows of beds from wall to wall. Each bed with a bald, naked, pregnant woman strapped to it. Their eyes are shut with pupils racing beneath eyelids like insects trapped under the skin; their heads wired to monitors that read in fast numbers and stuttering lines. I see several births in the span of a couple minutes. People in white coats and masks move and take the babies immediately, and then later come for the mother. A new bed with a new woman is placed in the spot left vacant. This is where our bodies are coming from.

A gunshot catches my secretary in the back of the head, and I watch as her lifeless eyes stare at me as her body crumples and slides down the glass leaving a deep crimson trail. I duck and run. I hear voices and the sound of boots running on tile floor. I burst through door after door, not knowing where I was going. Dead end, turn around, dead end, turn around. The rooms are mostly vacant, this disgusting factory must be staffed by only a couple dozen people. Finally I hear the sound of rain on the side of the building and I emerge into the fog of the morning. I run for the second time since my wife died.

I fall into my bed exhausted, and place my ring into my end table drawer. They had no clue who I was, just some guy that looked like every other guy from behind. I wake up to my alarm the next morning after a sleep filled with memories of her. The SyncWay’s computer screen is still black. My body is sore and aches with each movement. I can feel the body attempting to repair tissue, something that I haven’t felt since I was mortal. I immediately find my ring and clinch my fist tightly around it. When I open it my palm is left with neat white ring surrounded by the pink of my palm. I call my computer, and she responds ever-so-sweetly. I ask her to contact my secretary and she does.

“Hello,” she says cheerfully.

“Where are you? We need to talk,”

“At the office,”

I hang up, get dressed, and walk to work.

The receptionist says her rehearsed salutation and I give her the most polite cold-shoulder I can. I find my office amongst the motion and commotion all around me and call my secretary in to see me.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“Find a new angle, blood and guts were the thing this past decade, but we need to think about next decade,” she replies

“Wait, no...”

“No, don’t wait, right now!” she yells.

She doesn’t remember. I rush out of my office, my mind racing; our memories are data, and our data is controlled by those evil fucks in the white lab coats who harvest human children. I watch as my disgusting co-workers move in and out of those disgusting booths. SyncWay knows me, if they can alter what she knows, what she remembers, then they can figure out who I am. I need to make this public, I need people to know what I saw. The studio, but I have no clue how to get there by walking. It could be half a world away. There has to be a camera or some sort of link out of here; I hear the telltale whistles and explosions of someone completing The Great Passing, and it hits me, the winner’s lounge.

I wade and fight my way through the sweating boys and girls trying to catch their next break, and finally find myself with the guy holding the big check. Another winner, two in two days, my boss won’t be happy about that. The SyncWay booth opens and a lanky brown-haired man steps out with a smile already cracking his gaunt face. I see the transmitting light on the camera. This is live.

No one stops the executive from getting on screen. The director rolls his eyes at me, but I don’t care. I had him his check and smile some fake smile.

“Hello The Great Passing audience. SyncWay is a lie, they control your memories and are harvesting babies from millions of women to give you your immortality. Don’t die,” I’m tackled and dragged off screen. It went out though. The whole world saw it, and there’s no way SyncWay can edit that many memories in that time. A small smile cracks my face, my eyes wide with hope. I think of my wife, turning and smiling at me, begging me to catch up to her to catch the sunset over the green hillside. I close my eyes, and feel the gun’s barrel pressed against my temple.

My alarm sends a jolt through my dark dreamless sleep and pulls me into consciousness. I don’t hit snooze and rise immediately. I stretch my arms to the ceiling and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I check my status on my end table’s computer. I’m 100% synced, all of my faculties and memories should be intact. I open the drawer and pull out an old gold band ring.

“I wonder where this came from?” I ask to myself.

 

Keeping My Hand in the Fire

I was sitting alone in my room. My phone was plugged into a wall that was not accessible to me at the time, and my computer was starting up (a laborious task most mornings). I found myself reading the back of a deodorant container that sat on my desk.

Why?

I poured over these names to impossible chemicals that I didn't honestly care about, yet was compelled to fill my time with. I protected my fragile ego with explanations labeled as "curiosity" and avoided words like "distraction". I just wanted that time in between me hitting the power button on my computer, and the time when I could start browsing the internet and all things stimulating to go as fast as possible or better yet - disappear.

Why?

I then thought about the time I spent in the gray spaces of my day. The times that weren’t super stimulating and engaging. The half an hour I had before a lunch engagement, the space between meetings, walking, all of these times that I would plug in and disconnect. I’d look at this screen, or that screen, or whatever I would have to do to make the time go by quicker.

Why?

I wanted to just be at destination from destination, and hated the transit stage. Miley Cyrus allusions aside, but maybe it is just about The Climb. I don’t even mean the journey vs. the goal tired old message. All living things have an instinctual self-preservation; it’s what makes us pull our hand away from a flame without thought. I think that without thought bit is particularly interesting, because what if that reflexive reaction is also present within our thoughts?

Perhaps I’m rushing through those blank or gray spaces, because I’m afraid of my thoughts? Or maybe I am attempting to preserve myself from something that I already know? Or something I feel? I mean, I’m not the most emotional or feeling guy, but I do have them -- even if they’re under several layers of scrutiny and critical thought -- and I do value them. I don’t like feeling sad or lonely, I know that from my gut, but are they inherently bad?

In a bad break up our friends and family often try to mend and heal those feelings. They want you to move on as quickly as possible, and the victor of said break up is often seen as the person that does so first. Why? We empathetically hate to see people we care about hurt, but that’s an immediate and short-sighted understanding of emotions. All of them: loneliness, happiness, sadness, etc. are temporary and recurring. So maybe that same self-preservation instinct applies here; we distract and timewarp in order to avoid feeling these uncomfortable “bad” feelings.

Those feelings are human, and are not bad or good. They’re part of being a human.

This also means that it’s human to not want to feel them, and therefore I cannot blame myself for running from them or covering them up. I am guilty of being unconscious though. I excused myself for not feeling or thinking by arguing boredom or apathy. I was allowing my self-preservation to dictate my thoughts and feelings, and it was without thought, like pulling my hand from a flame. So I try to keep my hand in the flame for a little longer, and see what it feels like.

I do have to defend myself, because if you allow those feelings bog you down, it allows the incessant flow of doubt to erode you. And frankly, who wants to share a coffee or a tequila shot with someone in a deep existential hole?

So maybe I protect myself to maintain my optimism. I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see hope and doubt swirled into one complete human, with balance and confidence. I need to be able to maintain optimism when thinking about the future friends, family, career that will be my life, but also about the beautiful, smiling, girl sitting across from me in my favorite coffee shop

I sit in that worn, gray chair, and realize that I’ve been staring at my reflection in the blank monitor screen. I attempt to ask myself the questions that only I can ask myself. I allow myself to feel truly, tragically, and hopelessly alone, and smile.

Untitled NaNoWriMo - Chapter One

James I glance through the space between the stall door and the divider as I count the minutes as they pass. My watch reads 2:45 p.m, and I know that if I make it a little bit longer then I could spend some time at the water cooler during the afternoon “Consulting Meeting”. That would be another 15 minutes, then I could get away with a half an hour of catching up on emails and internet things, then another half hour at the coffee station and water cooler, 10 minutes back in the bathroom, and by then it’ll be practically punch-out time! No one works the last half hour, or at least I don’t. So I can get by this afternoon with maybe 15 good minutes of productive activity. I get up from my throne of procrastination, and flush, despite there being no reason to, appearances to keep I guess. I wash my hands in another purely ceremonial fashion, and head out the door. I spot Dave from a couple cubicles down from me staring blankly ahead while sipping water from the cooler. “Hey Dave, how’s about them Steelers?” I offer, remembering him recounting his favorite team. “Huh what?” he asks, and I repeat. “Hey Dave, how’s about them Steelers?” “Oh man, they’re up, they’re down, without a solid secondary there’s no way they’ll go far in the playoffs,” he returns, a little glow finding its way into his eyes. “Yeah, I have them as my Fantasy Football defense, and they’re killing me,” I reply. “Totally,” “Totally,” The weight of the awkward tension would bog down nearly anyone else, but not me. I’m here for the long-haul, or at least the next 13 minutes haul. I wait for him to balk, for him to waiver, and give up this social stamina contest, but his gaze goes blank again, staring at the sea of cubicles. I see that he’s a master, I’ve only been playing this game for the past three years, so I prepare to dip out to his obvious supremacy, but then he wanders away. “Well, good luck this weekend!” my words chase after him as he drags down the corridor. “With what?” he asks, genuinely concerned for a moment. “With the game,” I respond. “Oh yeah, thanks,” he says, turning back around. Man, that was disheartening, but I won the great water cooler war, and now I can spend the remaining 6 minutes without the pressure of forced conversation looming. For a second I wonder what I’m going to have for dinner tonight; I don’t think I have anything leftover in my fridge, and I definitely didn’t thaw anything from the freezer. Maybe I could grab some take-out, but I ate take-out last night. But really, what other options do I have? I wonder if that Mediterranean place will still be open by the time I get off my train. Oh shit, I have to pick up more cat food anyways, I guess I’ll just go to the grocery store, and pick myself up a rotisserie chicken or something, maybe some bread and other things for when I finally remember to start packing my lunch, instead of eating out everyday. “Hey Jimbo, how about them Ravens?” “Sorry, say that again?” I ask, and he repeats. “Hey Jimbo, how about them Ravens?” “Oh yeah, we look pretty good this season, but we’ll probably choke like we always do,” I respond. I my leave, checking my watch, and I stop by the coffee pot to grab a stale cup before returning to my desk. I see that there’s a covered platter of doughnuts on the counter with an emphatic note reading “PLEASE EAT ME”. I briefly consider, before complying, twice. I wipe my chocolate frosting fingers on a napkin that was hanging around from my fast food lunch that day. I open my company email, and then another browser tab for my personal email. I check the filter on my personal email labeled “Fantasy”, and look at my roster. All of my players seem healthy, and my pending trade for a different defense for the week was accepted. I silently celebrate my imminent victory, and close the window to check on pressing work matters. Who keeps leaving the creamer out on the counter? URGENT: Need reports in for the Consulting Meeting this afternoon Party Planning Committee requires new members! Important Member of the Owner’s Family Site Visit James, read this. I click on the last email, and begin to read its contents. Dear James, How have you been? It’s been since college that we last spoke! Well, me and Jennifer ended up getting married, it was a really small ceremony, and that’s why you weren’t invited. Lies, I saw the pictures on Facebook, and their wedding rivaled the royal one. Even the weird kid Billy that lived down the hall from us, and his odd colored hair choices were spotted in some pictures. I just wanted to let you know that we’re planning on moving into the area, and wanted to see if you’d like to grab a bite to eat. Sorry about the dramatic email subject, I just thought that it’d get lost in your work email archives if I didn’t make it sound so serious, and we all know that you just use your personal email for fantasy football. I hope all is well, and look forward to catching up soon! Cheers, Trent --- Trent Landon Associate Financial Officer - Charles Ingram Financial Trent Landon, my college roommate that ended up marrying my college girlfriend. Honestly, I don’t hate him or her anymore, but I had comfortably removed myself from their friend circle soon after they had sat me down at a small coffee shop “to have a little talk.” I begin to type: Hey Trent! You’re right, it has been a long while, too long some would say, some would, but I wouldn’t. I jam on the backspace key, and try again several times before giving up. I then open the urgent email and its attached file. I search through my filing cabinet, and find the note sheets that I had filled out during the last consultation. One of my current clients was this up-and-coming cell phone app that allowed people to post pictures of their meals and would be matched with people based upon their similarities. They were workshopping the name, but currently it’s called “Heart Through The Stomach”. I hate it, but my job is advertising, so I have to make it sound like its the next instagram. I watched T.V. shows about marketing and advertising when I was in school, and it seemed so sleek, so cool. Episodes considering the immense responsibility it was to come up with the perfect slogan for a brand. Swirling expensive bourbon while inappropriately hitting on tight-skirted secretaries, and planning happy hour drinks with clients that looked always like movie stars and never like overweight businessman. The smell of mahogany and cigars practically oozes out of your screen while you watch these shows, and they never have florescent lighting in their immaculate corner offices. I quickly search the name of our client’s app on the internet, and note the first few links that pop up. Nowadays this game was about internet searches and keywords; “all about those clicks and downloads.” my boss had said during the last consultation. I found it hilarious that he couldn’t even make it sound remotely clever. The slogan truly is dead I guess. The company that had contracted us had bought the app from a couple of entrepreneurs had no plan for the app beyond three years, and was hoping to resell it to one of the big companies before the end of the year. I swirl the sad coffee in the bottom of my “Hardly Working” mug, and look at my administrative assistant, a nice college grad from the local university named Ted. Ted likes dogs and reality T.V., and doesn’t care much for sports. We haven’t exchanged many words since our initial meeting. I reach my hands to the ceiling and open my mouth wide, sucking in air and hopefully energy. I briefly stand up from my Officesmart Econo-comfort Chair, and see a dozen other people over the cubicle walls doing the same thing. I smile for a moment, thinking of a science channel special I had watched some nights ago about prairie dogs. I spot middle management getting off the elevator, and signal to the others to get down before we were spotted. The clock reads 4:00, and I prepare myself for my next bathroom break. I unlock my top desk drawer, and retrieve my personal cell. I also grab a fun-sized candy bar. I give my polite goodbyes and little jokes about the grind to my office companions as I left. Tough crowd, but they can’t help it. I gotta try to bring a little light into this place. The first train is bustling, and I wasn’t able to get a seat. I stare blankly at my phone, despite its serviceless state. I scroll through my screens of apps, some personal and some demos from potential clients. I grab a copy of today’s paper to read while waiting in between stops. I notice a young man pondering over one of the station maps. I consider helping him, but I hear my train pulling in behind me. I get off at my stop, I buy a bag of nuts from a street vendor, and stop to give them to Chuck the homeless guy that lives a couple blocks from my place. “How about them Steelers?” I ask him. “Same shit, different names, they’ll be alright though,” he replies. I walk a couple more blocks before I get to my building. It’s an older model, but has been taken over by 20-somethings and bohemians. I don’t really care, because I don’t spend much time there anyways. All I know is that within the three years I’ve lived here, two different coffee shops, and a microbrewery/used bookstore have sprung up. I put my key into the lock of my small studio apartment, and remember that I had forgotten to go grocery shopping. I look at my watch, and decide that it can wait another day. Take-out at this time would take another hour, and by then I am hoping to be at most half-conscious on the couch watching a show about how gumballs are made or something. The door swings open and Trig, my cat, brushes my leg, and looks up at me expectantly. Breaking my heart with every molecule in his little feline being. “Shit, sorry dude, I totally forgot to buy you food, and much less importantly myself any food,” I tell him. I open my freezer, and grab a bag of frozen chicken thighs and run them under water in the sink. Once they’re thawed enough to get out of the bag I put them on a plastic plate and in my microwave. I contemplate actually calculating the amount of defrosting it should require, but I end up frustrated, and just hit the comp-u-defrost setting trusting that the magic of technology will help me. I sit down on my rundown old couch, the same couch that hid ping pong balls and quarters during my college days, the same couch where I had first met Jennifer, and the first couch that I had to move up flights of stairs into my own place. I mean to turn on the T.V., but I wake to the sound of my microwave chirping at me. I remove the rubbery, half-cooked chicken, and then toss it in a frying pan with some salt and pepper. I start boiling water for rice, and grab a can of salsa from my refrigerator. The chicken is already practically cooked, so it doesn’t take long in the pan. I take a thigh out for Trig, cutting it into very small pieces, and smash some rice into a paste for him. He digs in without hesitation; I remember reading about cats that are picky eaters, and then pet Trig, suddenly feeling more appreciative to have him. I eat as procedure, to fill a necessity, and the metal clang of my fork hitting the bowl marks the end of my meal. I catch an hour of T.V. before looking at Trig and asking. “Well, bout that time eh?” I make sure my alarm is ready, and pick out a tie for tomorrow.

Accidentally Finding Humanity

I sank into my worn, gray, computer chair; the chair I had bought at Goodwill for fifteen dollars. It was the chair that held me as I wrote paper after paper, mere minutes from their deadlines, the chair that moved with me from dorm to apartment, to apartment again, and, finally, back home. I had just bought a plane ticket to San José, Costa Rica from JFK in that chair. The plane left in two days. I was going by myself, and I don’t speak Spanish. I took a large bus to NYC from my small, college town. I was planning on staying at my longest standing friend’s place for a night before my plane left in the morning. I gave him less than a day to save me from a night on a cold park bench, and he came through. We spent the better part of the night talking about life, growing up, and figuring out what sort of shoes I should buy to blend in to NYC. "A rule of New York City is that you don't stare," says my resident friend as I tag along on his morning subway commute. I immediately think that's dumb and continue to watch as people focus intently on their phones. We're underground, so I know they don't get service. But they'd rather stare at their unconnected devices than try to connect to these people. I thought that was dumb, but now I don't. You see, if your stare lingers too long, your passing glance becoming a brief moment of eye contact, you might start to actually see the people around you. Your mind might notice the worry lines, the smile lines, the blemishes, the scars. Your mind might realize the certain way they hold their bookbag - close to the chest, or their shoes - well worn and faded. Your mind might turn over stories that explain them, the family that created the person in front of you, friendships and relationships that created those worry and smile lines. Adventures past that left blemishes and scars. You might stumble upon their humanity. And if you should do that, it's hard not to fall in love. Not necessarily romantic love, but empathetic love. Then, the voice booms over the loudspeaker and you watch these people weave out of your life, likely never to be seen again, and you realize why everyone is so devoutly attached to their little bubbles. Because people can only take so much heartbreak in a day. I made it to JFK, and then to San José, and then to the farm I was staying at, and then around a couple other cities, back to San José, and then back to NYC. I survived with only a few key words and lots of wild gesticulation. That goes for both my travels abroad and NYC’s public transit system. I was beaten, worn, and looked like a homeless farmer. I didn’t match the dress code for a couple of restaurants, and the one I finally sat down in didn’t give me a menu. I’m pretty sure the waitress was just thinking of a nice way to kick me out once she thought that I had sufficiently warmed my ol’ hobo bones. When I got back on the subway to go home, I stared. Accidentally, I fell in love with every single person, because in that short time we shared something sad, beautiful, and pure - humanity.