How a Boring Summer in Madison, Wisconsin Prepared Me for Life
Spending the summer in Wisconsin with my older sister was a weird and unique experience. I worked at what was arguably the largest employer in Madison, and was single having gotten out of an odd relationship with a girl I wasn’t really attracted to at the time. Not that it started out that way, but feelings change and fade away, and that was the first thing to go. My roommate had put me on with this girl that I was into because it was about the idea of having a girl more so than it was any enthusiasm about being with the girl herself. But it was fun and interesting to be involved again, the months that it had been, so I went with it.
I have a way of getting into these strange situations where there is a lot of sexual passion upfront followed by long periods of transformation in which you never really have anything to say to the individual whatsoever. You tend to realize how much you two really don’t have anything in common, and how there was nothing to build upon but well, just nothing to build upon. The first time I’d kissed a girl, had I had sex then that would have been the type of situation I would have found myself in. The first crush I had, same thing. There is a lot to be said for valuing sexual attraction above everything else in a so-called relationship, which is why I am confused that so many people continue to do that in this day and age. How many passionate poems have I read, novels have I seen, scenes that I watched, in which such chemistry is heightened and glamorized in a way that leads the average individual to believe that such bliss can last a lifetime, without interruption, without facing reality. It sells because it is an important ingredient of our dreams but then it lets us down, so low, to such tragic depths that many of us never completely recover from them. Perhaps I am wounded from memories of such occurrences in which a few hot weeks or days were followed by negative thoughts and emotions of anger and rage, or perhaps I am completely fine and healthy and know that everything is a-ok because there is always the morning to look forward too!
To make a long story short make out sessions turned into dry kisses without any tongue whatsoever, and then absolutely no action at all. Before I knew it rather than spending time alone with the girl I shared the stage with four or five of her friends. I was emotionally engaged but with little to keep that going it all fell apart.
Of course it would have helped matters if I hadn’t broke up with her on the premise of my wading sexual attraction to her. Or even more perhaps if she didn’t know it, but the terrible liar that I am, she both knew about it and held it against me when we got back together. I know, I know I should have at least tried to make some vain attempt and letting her down otherwise but I had to be completely upfront about it. But by then being with her meant watching television with her friends and leaving when she felt the need to have sex with someone else. Which is what had to have been happening because when I wasn’t claiming her, sex was simply not something that I was interested in doing.
That could have played differently of course, I could have continued on with my usual course of action and seen if anything had developed, if those feelings ever would or could have come about. I could have been kinder and not as much of a jerk about the whole thing and not seen the situation as one that needed immediate rectification, as if I had more than enough information to work with at the time. I might have had the luck that I had later on in following years, in which I was able to do things short of the goal for most but what I now realize to be even more fascinating than the matter at hand, the things that appear to be more stimulating from a psychological perspective and that can lead to situations to wane on for months on end. But at the end of the day, no matter how I look at it, none of what I just mentioned was anything that I wanted, not with this particular individual. Plus I got to see a side to them that I would have never seen had I not done what I did, one that was even uglier than the physical attributes I had issues with, even particularly mean, such hostility.
I connect my time spent with family with time away from girls that I was in odd and sick relationships with because that time apart always taught me just what type of an individual I had let adversity turn me into. Wisconsin is significant because it was a longer time than most, although it was not the only time that this has happened. I learned what a lot of individuals have to get sick from an std or have children to realize, that a strong sexual attraction often masks aggression and hostility that is otherwise disturbing and unhealthy to exhibit or show in any type of relationship otherwise, and has to be put in its proper perspective before you make any real decisions of whether or not to continue with this individual, or with yourself. Particularly outside of marriage, sexual energy is often the ether in which real problems mask themselves as being of little importance or completely invisible whatsoever; if ether is ‘an all-pervading, infinitely elastic, massless medium formerly postulated as the medium of propagation of electromagnetic waves’ then the sexual energy and attraction are those electromagnetic waves and emotional indifference is the reason for those emotions being propagated to begin with.
So I spent 3 months befriending complete strangers from neighboring cities on their transit system and befriending some Indian guy watching him and his girlfriend being affectionate with each other. Perhaps this is what it is all about, affection, and showing emotion in a civilized manner without running into the metaphorical roadblocks of sexualized emotions. It changed my tactics, and I got the girl that I not only wanted, but also was the best fit for me. Of course I’ll never see those people again, and never need to. They got me over a rough spot I didn’t think that I was having because I was actually having a good time in a weird, bohemian sort of way, through a series of distractions, it made my college dating experience a lot easier. My life is a series of interactions with individuals I never would have contacted or engaged in any conversation or interaction with that, at the end of the day, actually teach me more about myself than the people I’m most comfortable with being around. Writing about it is simply the emotional residue behind the process, being able to put it all into perspective is the true reward of it all.
