Along came an awkward gentleman...

In the wake of a distressful emotional episode, I decided to embrace my newfound "openness" and take it to a new level and decided that no time should be wasted mourning transient affairs. Affairs that are doomed to failure from the very the moment of their inception.

And very much like my dysfunctional self I had my sight set on a delightfully awkward gentleman. Someone with a slight social-anxiety disorder and incredibly sexy skin head.
I personally have a soft spot and another hard one, if you get what I mean, for skinheads.
Something about the fact that they sacrifice their hair for a more crude, almost barbaric appeal does it for me.
Romanticizing the savage, I know. But it still is sexy.

But social anxiety and incommunicable mental attitude hardly works. My gentleman was a tad too awkward and a tad too private and socially conservative.

It was like talking to a sphinx. With the same risk involved. If you answer the three questions right, the truth that shall be revealed to you will inevitably drive you mad.
And I personally had no intention of gouging my eyes or marrying my mother.

Too many blows to my already fragile head, made me know when to give up.
And after making myself "too clear" I decided it was time to let my gentleman go in peace.

Let it be known that I did not go down without a fight! Oh, I did, I did. Most honorably as well.

But my gentleman being one of those workaholics, who works for our modern idea of a cotton plantation, rarely ever finishes work. Or leave work for that matter. He is either at work, going to work, or coming from work.
Now its not a secret my bohemian notions about work and society. I personally think work is the curse of the middle class.

In any case, I feigned utmost interest in the kind of work my gentleman caller was involved in.
Ever the courteous, good girl that I am.
And to his credit, he did respond, in a very minimal and almost mentally indistinct way. But I managed to extort out some signs of interest. Yet after two calls and many text messages my gentleman was just too "busy" and too "awkward" to be engaged elsewhere.

In retrospection, part of my attraction was my gentleman's social clumsiness and helplessness. It appealed to me. To my world-famous maternal instinct. And my unabashed ego that relished working with nutcases. Something about overcoming insurmountable social obstacles with someone is very rewarding psychologically.

But then again this borderlines the psychotic. One should (look at me issuing moral injunctions so liberally) never take pleasure in treating people as social experiments. That would be dehumanizing enough to brand me as a monster (and not in a theatrical amicable way, more in a grotesque, censorious way).
Yet, I can not believe myself to have been such a monster in the way I regarded my exquisitely awkward gentleman. I did have a genuine affection. And something about his earthy, uncomplicated sense of humor endeared him to me.

But human emotions are a complex phenomenon. And they can never be explained by one notion or theory.

And I know I will cherish the few awkward moments I enjoyed with my shy, reticent gentleman. Fraught with social gaffes, inconsistencies, meaningless banter, yet it was cute. I would go as far as sweet even.
For fleeting seconds, never to linger or be consummated.