Bat Shit

In my coming out post, I joked that women are all bat shit crazy and they make me bat shit crazy just by being near them. What I should have said was something along the lines of a Chinese fortune cookie: "You will yearn for the women that you cannot have. Your lucky numbers are 5, 7, 17, and 23".

You see, when men don't like you romantically, you never hear from them again. That's a gross oversimplification of the behavior of an entire sex, but give me a little credit here. I unsuccessfully dated men in Texas for seven years. Seven looooonnng years of online dating, most of which I chronicled on my blog. I know how this rodeo works. After a first date, you'll only hear from a guy if he thinks the fledgling relationship is going to go somewhere on the second date. Preferably somewhere horizontal. There is no, "Let's just be friends and get to know each other".

Then there are women. Oh my Lord. I have never had so many "friends" as I do with female first dates. When women don't see the possibility of a romantic relationship, there is always the very real possibility that this woman will become your best friend forever and ever, Amen. This situation works out if both parties, mutually agree, that you are completely incompatible, yet share a deep, abiding love of say...rhesus monkeys and Kit-kat bars. Then you can be friends! Short of that situation, one person is doomed to be longing for the other because there is a reason you went on a date in the first place. At one point, in the not-so-distant past, you both found each other attractive enough to meet for tea/dinner/drinks. That attraction doesn't stop with the phrase, "I'd just like to be friends" even when it's joyfully texted at the end of the date with a smiley face (:-) to soften the blow.

So there is a doomed sense of longing. Within the lesbian community, this longing can go on for years and even decades. While trapped in this version of Dante's Inferno, the friend is  forced to listen to other person's stories about their third blind date with her mother's uncle's friend that's on a softball team with a girl she knew in the third grade or how they are still in love with their ex-girlfriend from two years ago although all they did was fight. All the while, you know (oh how you know!) that you would in fact make this person wildly happy if only you weren't banished to the Friend Zone.

And this is just one of the many reasons that women make bat shit crazy, even if they do text me with cute smiley faces.