Author: Teel

Okay, I realise that few people actually bother to look at Modern Evil on weekends, which is fine, but if you happened to stop by today and saw today, 121.0 A.C. (5/10/03) displayed as 11.25.0 A.C, I apologize. There was a problem with the algorithm I wrote. I have taken action to fix it, but there may be more problems in the future. I will try to keep a close eye on it. Thank you for your patience.

Note: Okay, this is getting longer (not to metion silly), but this post is in response to these comments and this post, which was a response to this comment on the post from the previous day. PTHHHBBBBBT!!!

‘I seem to have got the getting the girl (or boy) part down, but I’ve been stuck on the question of “Once you’ve got them what should you do with them?” for quite a long while. So much of the “dating” scene seems to be about finding that special someone and then getting to know them/impressing them/convincing them to stick around. I’ve got that part down pat. I can see almost immediately who someone is and whether or not they are the sort of person I can get along with. I’ve learned how to be myself, and that seems to be all that’s necessary to get to know them, impress them, and convince them that they like to spend time with me. I just … I don’t know what to do next.’

-Teel, May 16th, 2001

I swear, it’s like I’m in a coma sometimes, unchanging. Two years ago, in the first posts on FYTH I was posting about the exact same things as I’m posting now. I guess I’ve made some progress. I was trying to figure out how one figures out what one’s core values are, and today I feel I have said values and try to live by them. I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of ‘relationships’, and today I have a pretty good idea – that About a Boy quote pretty much covers it, it’s mostly about mutual affection and, well… actually being IN a relationship. And while I may still have the ability to go from stranger to interested acquiantence, I still don’t know how to break the threshold from interested acquiantence to boyfriend/girlfriend.

Is it as easy as just stating my interest in said level of relationship?

Most of the things I can’t wrap my head around that everyone else just takes for granted end up coming down to some simple thing like that. I’d hate to have been struggling with this thing for more than two years and have it come down to something simple like “the only thing you have to do to get what you want is declare that you want it, so you can find out whether they want it, too.”

Continue reading More of the same

Note: This post is a response to this comment on yesterday’s post.

Obsessing. All or nothing.

Yes, yes, yes, you know me. Which is why I bother asking. Sometimes I can’t see the obvious things about me and the world I live in. But you can see it.

I … I obsess. I don’t know another way to be. I don’t know how to do something halfway. I’m either doing it or I’m not doing it, right? Whether I’m doing it fast or slow, giving all I’ve got to offer or just ‘phoning it in’, I’m doing it. How could it be any other way? I suppose there’s quitting half-way, but like a differential, right up until the moment one quits, one is doing it – and then they’re not. There is no halfway.

Is there?

I obsess. I get the idea in my head to do something, and if I’m going to do it I’m going to do it. Why waste time and energy doing something if you know from the start you plan to quit somewhere down the line? Or here, let me re-word that so it’s closer to how I usually approach things now: If you know you don’t want to go past a certain point in an activity, or that you’re only becoming involved because you enjoy the activity itself and not because the activity is a means to an end, then approach it knowing full-well what you’re trying to do. Know where you’re headed and where you’ll stop and why you’re doing it. Realize the activity is the end, and that by doing it you are successful.

But yeah, all or nothing. Like the iron work I wasn’t personally interested in doing or learning to do – I still gave it my all, I bent that steel as accurately and quickly as I could and cut the stock to the exact lengths creating the highest quality output I could & doing as much of the hard stuff as possible to not over-tax my grandfather. I didn’t complain at all. I followed directions and offered helpful suggestions and got the work done. This is why I’m here. To help my grandparents to the best of my ability. Why do a thing at all if you aren’t going to try to do your best?

Or like why I don’t want to re-enter the workforce: I doubt I could give my all working for a company if I didn’t care about what I was doing or had any better reason to do so than to maintain the status quo… so if I’m not going to try to do my best, why bother doing at all? Instead I do things I care about with as much energy and accuracy as I have in me.

Argh. I’m off topic. What was the topic? Dating? Zoe said “You were always so focused on the end-game, or obsessing over any number of single people that you never let yourself “date” and experiance the entire dating scene, so you lack those valuable skills, and now, when you finally are starting to let yourself experiance that, you beat yourself up over it so bad you will never let yourself develop those skills, because in the mind of teel there is no grey areas, no skill ark, its always pass or fail, all or nothing, perfection or crap.”

And I wish I knew what he meant when he referred to “the entire dating scene” Or really, what ‘dating’ means. What it was I wasn’t doing. Because, seriously, I know I missed something, and I know what I was doing, but … God, I’m an idiot sometimes. And I figured out I’d been missing something important about dating, and I’m not sure I thought of it as a ‘scene’, but maybe… and in the last five years I’ve been trying to figure out what I was missing and go get it. And I gave trying to figure it out my all, and I couldn’t. I learned so much about relationships that I found myself counselling friends and strangers, teaching people how to be more successful and happy and fulfilled and fulfilling in their relationships, and it was almost enough to make me want to just give up hope because for all I could learn or teach about relationships, the steps between strangers or friends and ‘dating’ or other more serious relationships are still foreign to me.

So yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what scared Danielle away; I missed the in-between and just went straight to the emotional intimacy that I suppose normal people avoid until some magical date down the road. And I tried to explain it to her, that I don’t know what the in-between is supposed to be, and she just freaked out. And I tried to get her ideas on what the in-between is supposed to be like, and she thought I was being patronizing. Patronizing, while I felt like a child, ignorant of the ways of the world. And I tried to go back and do the in between as best I can guess it ought to be done, and she got mad and stopped talking to me. And while I’ll admit that there may have been something not-quite-right about her reactions, I’m more likely to believe that it was my actions that were the problem.

“No skill ark,” yes. Like most everything else in my life. I tend to believe that things in the future will be similar to things in the past. And in the past when I tried to learn something, to practice some new skill, what I found was that once I understood what it was I was supposed to be trying to do, I was doing it well. Like when I started at Prints Plus, it didn’t take 100 prints or a dozen prints for me to get the hang of framing prints. It took two. And after two, I was already better than the friend who got me the job there and had been doing it for months and months. Or with bending scrolls this week. I stood by my grandfather as he tried to put the scroll bending attachment on his compact bender & figure out the instructions, and then I offered a little help, finished assembling it correctly, and only reading one word on the instructions page, assisted him in creating the first scroll. And I’ve seen finished scrolls, but I’d never bent metals or seen anyone bend them or use a machine like this, and because my grandfather read the instructions wrong the first scroll was a slightly looser scroll than he would have liked, but as soon as I stepped up to the machine, BANG! I bent out 15 identical scrolls.

Or drawing. I never thought I could draw. And then I tried, and found I could draw a little. And then I took Drawing I at ASU with a teacher that instead of explaining how to draw, simply said “draw”, and I found I could do better than most everyone, using techniques I’d never heard of or thought of, even on my bad days. And I ordered this correspondence Art course and finished the first two units they sent me within a few hours – while they assummed it should take not less than two weeks to complete the second unit alone.

And everything else I do up here seems to involve some thing I’ve never done or thought of before, and often even just in briefly describing what he’ll ask me to do the next day or the next week my grandfather will get upset at me for being ignorant of the tools and materials and techniques he’s describing. But then he puts the tools in my hands and shows me the materials and describes the technique again briefly, and most of the time – BOOM! I’m doing it. Sure, I seem to have a physical handicap that’s keeping me from welding well (my dad thinks it’s an occlusion on my cornea), but if I think of my welding as welding blind, I was doing pretty well. I still don’t want to go back to welding, since I can’t see what I’m doing and have to work by feel and imagination, but I’d be willing to bet that if I did go back and try welding a second time I’d be twice as good as I was before. (Paritally because I won’t be trying to see anything next time.)

I don’t know. Maybe I have a handicap that keeps me from seeing whatever it is I’m supposed to for dating. I tend to think it’s that I don’t understand what it is I’m supposed to be doing that I’m not doing it well. No one’s been able to give me even the brief description that my grandfather offers for most tasks about what I’m supposed to be doing. What ‘dating’ is. How to be a member of ‘the dating scene’. What I’m supposed to be trying to do to get from strangers to ‘dating’, or how to know when I’m there.

Wait… I have something here…

I was watching About A Boy recently… and .. yes… here it is…

There’s a scene at the Zoo, with monkies in the background, and the younger boy (because really the man is just a boy in a man’s body) was asking about dating and how you know whether what you’re feeling is the stuff of relationships, and Hugh Grant’s character’s stupid response was “Well, do you want to touch her?” See, he’s been shagging so many different women for so long with no real emotional attachments, his first reaction was to think of relationships as being based around sex. But then the boy said something smart. He said “I wanna be with her more. I wanna be with her all the time. And I wanna tell her things I don’t even tell you or mom. And I don’t want her having another boyfriend. I suppose if I could have all those things… I wouldn’t really mind if I touched her or not.”

And yes, Hugh told him he’s learn how important touching was when he got older, but that’s not the point. See, that description… it feels right. When I say I’m attracted to someone, that’s usually what I mean. Sure, sometimes I’m attracted to someone in a purely physical way. I have a libido. But what I really want is someone I can be with ‘all the time’, someone I can talk openly to about everything, someone who is ‘dating’ me and no one else. Sure, I look forward to someday getting married, growing a family, all that… but that doesn’t happen overnight. Not if you want it to last. So what I want is … a significant other. Monogamously, if possible. And I’m keeping my eyes open, but…

I worry. I’m shy. I’m missing ‘valuable skills’ for the ‘dating scene’.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, my life isn’t exactly normal.

I’m not entirely useless. I did have something somewhat like what I want, a few years ago with Alison. I got to see her all the time and I talked with her about everything and she wasn’t seeing anyone else (that I know of), and for a time, we were happy. And I can’t remember exactly what went wrong (and she won’t say), but something like she became distant (emotionally) and I reacted poorly… I don’t know. Knowing me, I probably said something awful, but when I think about the sort of relationship I want to have, the pseudo-relationship I had with Alison all those years ago is the closest thing I can remember happening to me. And not that I want to go back to her, but that I want to have something with that sort of feeling. Physical closeness (as oppossed to living a dozens or thousands of miles apart and never seeing each other) combined with emotional availability, plus exclusiveness.

Is that too much to ask?

…

Maybe it is, right now. Maybe my current lifestyle doesn’t allow for sociability, for ‘dating’. I tell you though, I’m willing to change my lifestyle to accommodate this thing that feels so missing from my life.

The Modern Evil Virtual Book Club will be doing something unusual next week – they will be meeting in person. That’s right. Wednesday evening, May 14th, (yes, a little ahead of schedule) we will be meeting at the Denny’s at 32nd Street and Bell Road in Phoenix, AZ to discuss The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker. I do not, at the time of this writing, know exactly when we will meet, but presumably it will be sometime after Zoe’s normal workday and before I go see the midnight showing of The Matrix Reloaded. If you have read The Great and Secret Show and would like to meet with us, or if you’d just like to meet with us and maybe point fingers and laugh at us for being book readers, you’re welcome to join us. Just give me a call. If you don’t have my phone number, email me for it. If you can’t figure out my email address, comment here. If you can’t figure out how to call or email or comment, just show up at the Denny’s at 5PM and sit there until you see me. I look just like the photo of me in the right-hand-column of this page.

You know… unless someone shaves me, or I get into a horrible disfiguring accident.

I’m such a pussy.

Or at least shy. Is shy a better word?

I can make all sorts of excuses for myself. I’ve endless excuses. I just wish I didn’t have to come up with excuses. I wish I’d just do the things I want to do. There’s just this one area of my life I seem to be having trouble with that in right now…

So, okay. Last night I spent a couple of hours bending steel, and then today my grandfather and I were working for a while on cutting and grinding and bending steel. We’re just about done with that part of the operation and about ready to start the welding part of the operation that will turn the bits and pieces of steel we’ve been working with into a security door and two sets of bars for windows. But since we worked for over an hour today, grandfather will probably be beat for several days, so we probably won’t get back to work on it until I get back to town next weekend.

Okay, so. I’m going to be heading into Phoenix Monday with my grandparents and then staying with my dad through Thursday or Friday. I’m going to be seeing a midnight showing of The Matrix Reloaded, Wednesday night, May 14th at the Harkins North Valley Theatre. I’m also going to be seeing The Matrix Reloaded at least once more in theatres, probably on the afternoon of Thursday, May 15th.
If you would like to try to see me (I sure would like to get a chance to see you!) while I am in town, please just let me know. If we have plans in advance, most everything else can be worked around them. Everything else including, in this case, helping my father try to finish a large portion of the remodeling that needs to be done to the house. He is theoretically working all this week to be sure that we’re ready to work on Monday, instead of still getting ready to work on Monday. But he’s glad to work around my plans to see my friends, if I let him know what they are. So. Let me know what they are.

Today I went for a bicycle ride for the first time since I moved to Pine. I knew my legs would be out of practice, and I knew the air would be less oxygen-rich, but I thought I’d try anyway. Now, as my grandfather likes to say, it doesn’t matter where you’re going around here, it’s uphill both ways. I have never done much hill-riding, but I do have a ‘racing’ bike with 21 speeds and I was confident that some of them must be suited for inclines. And they are. I had about an hour available to ride between when grampa got too tired and when we were supposed to leave for supper (well, almost two hours, but it takes time to get ready to ride and time to get ready for supper, so I really had an hour for riding), so I decided to just go down to Hardscrabble road (just a couple of blocks from here) and ride along it and see where it took me. I set my phone to alert me after 38 minutes, thinking I could stretch my hour to 75 minutes, and that I shouldn’t go farther than I could get back from in time. And I rode, and for the first time in the thousands of miles I’ve ridden on this bike, I had to downshift. But my legs are still strong. I climb up and down steep stairs many, many times a day here. So I was riding along, and the road went from asphalt to hardscrabble. Which I seemed to be able to ride on. It’s basically a good dirt road with plenty of rock to make it hard enough to resist major erosion. And plenty of loose gravel throughout. And then I was in the National Forest land, and heading pretty steeply up. And my bike, which is a road bike and has thin tires with no tread, seemed to be doing okay on the hardscrabble. And my legs seemed to be doing okay with the increasingly steep incline. But my body kept telling me I wasn’t getting enough air. I was practically hyperventilating, taking rapid deep breaths constantly and only moving forward slowly, in the lowest gear, but my legs weren’t anywhere near the end of their stamina. But my blood must have been, because I kept having to stop just to breathe for a while. And every time I did I noticed the incline a little more, and every time I tried to restart I’d have a heck of a time not just falling over backwards. But I was getting closer and closer to the top, I could see the valley sinking down below me, and I could see the highest trees getting closer and closer to my eye level, and my phone hadn’t gone off yet, so I kept ascending. I kept thinking that perhaps I ought to just walk the bike up this next steep section, but I never walked it up, I knew I could do it on my bike. And then instead of just being out of breath, I started coughing. And my lungs started burning, even just standing still breathing. And I started belching (though that may have had more to do with the day-old potato salad we had for lunch today). And my legs still weren’t tired. Luckily, my phone went off. I was 38 minutes up the hill. So I turned around. And even just turning around my bike almost got away from me and the hill seemed a lot steeper facing down than it had when I was working my way up it. And I didn’t even want to begin risking riding down, so I got off and started walking down. And as I began walking my bike down the gravity of the situation began to become apparent. That is, my natural forward momentum due to the incline quickly turned my walk into a near-run and then a run, and I almost couldn’t slow down if I tried. On foot. With shoes with plenty of traction. And my bike, even at walking speeds, was bouncing quite a bit. Perhaps because I was not riding it, but also because the road was so bumpy. And I knew that if I were going down the hill with any speed and hit a big bump, whooosh, there I would go. And I walked and walked until I got to a section of the road that seemed flat, and got on my bike to ride for a bit, until I came to the next down-part. Except that it must have been a perception trick that it seemed flat, because before I could even think to pedal I was going. Fast. And I braked, and on this ground that seemed flat compared to the incline I had just been on I had to brake almost constantly to stay in control. And then I was braking too hard or whatever, and my wheels started skidding on the hardscrabble. But I stopped and was able to land on my feet and not lose the bike down the hill. And I walked some more. And I thought about how long it might take me to get down the hill walking, and I set my phone to alert me after the full hour had passed, knowing that that would mean I probably had at most 15 minutes slack to get home, and if I wasn’t at least off the damned hardscrabble, I probably ought to call my grandfather and let him know what was going on and that I’d be later than I thought. And I kept walking down. And it seemed like it was taking forever. And eventually I got to a part of the hill where it was not insanely steep and was able (with only 80%-90% constant braking) to ride down the hardscrabble and keep a slow enough pace that I only thought I’d lose control around one of the corners. And then I was off the hardscrabble and STILL going downhill, but on the asphalt, my tires were at home, so I let my speed get up to around 25-30MPH with controlled braking as I coasted down the hill. And there was some uphill, but mostly that just helped take some stress of my brakes. And I rode on the wrong side of the road for the couple of blocks back to where I live, and as I was approaching the gate, my phone went off. The hour was up.

And then we went to dinner in Payson. And instead of going to the Bee Line Cafe where we have gone to their Friday Fish dinner special a dozen times, and several other times to boot, we went to El Rancho Mexican Restaurant. Which was a nice change of pace. We’d been there before, once, and it seemed nice enough, and there was a waitress there that I found attractive who seemed to smile at me. And then tonight she was our waitress, and she definitely smiled at me. And I smiled back. All through our meal I kept watching for her, admiring her, hoping to catch her eye and smile, and a couple of times I did, and she smiled back. And my grandmother saw even the first smile, when she was just taking our order, and harrassed me all through supper about ‘flirting with the waitress’. And I don’t know… I don’t feel I could have done more than I did in front of my grandparents… something about sitting there having supper with them made it seem weird that I might try to ask the waitress for her name, her number, or out sometime… And I thought of trying to slip away from my grandparents and somehow attract her attention and do it, but … I didn’t. And I thought of several ways I could have given her my number, but … I didn’t. And when she refilled my water, she leaned in close, and she smelled great and smiled big, and all I could say was ‘thank you’. And eventually the meal was over and it was time to leave… and I’m the one who wheels grandmother around in her wheelchair, so from then on there wasn’t much I could have done, but … I don’t know. I feel like such a coward. And I give myself all sorts of excuses… I don’t have a car, and she probably lives there in Payson, so how would we get together for a date or whatever? Except I could probably borrow my grandparent’s Chevy Tracker. And I don’t have any real source of income so how could I afford to go on a date? Except that I’m still on unemployment, so I do have SOME money coming in. And then there’s the other problems… the things about me that bother just about everyone new… Except what if they don’t bother her, or what if I can be a normal human being for a change?

But none of the excuses and none of their counterpoints matter, because I froze. I smiled, she smiled back, but I did nothing. I don’t even know her name. What an ass. What a failure. Why am I this way? Why can’t I overcome this? I got along fine with the iron working today, why can’t I ask a pretty young woman her name? Gha.