Tom's Love Quest

So I brought up Facebook this morning, all cheery and ready to put in another day in earnest at the love quest.  But then, I got stung in a most egregious fashion, as I noticed that a girl I’d pursued a date with a couple weeks back, now happily claims to be dating another; though she all but ignored me.  Ouch! 

She had previously marked herself as ‘single’ But a few hours ago, she set her relationship status to ‘in a relationship’.  Oooooh! 

I mean, it was bad enough that she only tersely responded to several letters I’d sent her; inviting further conversation.  In those, I sincerely detailed my life here, my career, and attempted to show my genuine interest in her by asking lots of questions about her situation.  Unfortunately, she never offered any curiosity back, and that hurt.  True, she had never asked for any attention from me.  So I had no business expecting anything in return for that which I had offered her.  But still, her coolness zinged and smarted. 

It zinged even worse this morning when I found that she’d obviously connected with someone that she thought was more interesting than me.  I mean: It’s one thing when they say  no  to my face.  But it’s much more demoralizing when they further reject by passing me by, on their way to a “better” beau.  Shucks!

I could barely get a hundred words out of her.  But this other guy got a relationship!   Now, even after forty-nine years, I still do not handle rejection as well as I’d like, and I don’t get over rejecting too well either. 

Now, as is the usual case, I’m left to ponder how to ease the sting of this love rejection.  True.  I could talk to a therapist, and indeed get some relief just because s/he represents a consoling force, a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board, a seasoned advice giver, and all the other wonderful roles that good counselors play to help their patients. 

But I’ve also found writing about my woes to be intensely cathartic, and in many ways, even more lastingly effective than just airing them to a psychoanalyst.  Writing is my way of turning lemons into lemonade and thereby discovering and sharing how I sweetened the naturally bitter juice.  I got rejected, an experience that generates strong emotions, and that’s the time that I tend to write the most creatively, and am most likely to discover solutions for that pain.  So here I am, writing now. 

So with that said, allow me in the rest of this piece to meander and write anything that seems to relieve the pain of today’s hurdle when I think of it.  Perhaps in this way, not only will I discover my own cure for the blues of getting rejected, but also help my readers with similar experiences to find the same.  A love rejection is indeed the   ultimate rejection   because it hurts more and is more humiliating than any other I know of.  But lessening its pain is entirely possible when you develop the right mind set. 

The First Love Connection

Occurrences like today’s happen so often that I may have forgotten many of the rejections from yesteryear.  But seeing that woman choose another does call to mind similar poignant experiences with [First Love]. 

In school, I dedicated my life to impressing   [First Love]   enough so that she’d agree to be my girlfriend; just as I’d attempted to impress this girl on Facebook.  I bought [First Love] cans of pop often, fixed her broken devices in electronics class, and stood always ready to serve her in any capacity she requested.  I’d engineer things so that she’d see me hard at work with the dining staff; moving pots of hot food around, changing bags in the milk dispensers, and joyfully interacting with the waitresses and the head cook.  Instinctively, I knew that showing her that I could get along well with others, and in fact that many others liked me, would encourage her to like me too. I mean: Don’t woman tend to admire guys who have lots of other admirers as well?  Absolutely!

Yet in spite of that effort, I only managed to gain marginal esteem from [First Love].  Indeed, as I understand it today, inducing romantic desire into a woman’s heart always requires much, much more than just brute-force exertion.  In fact, destiny must favor it too. 

Back then though, I did not believe in fate, as fate was so often and closely tied to God in my learning.  Indeed, I began questioning the existence of God at fifteen years of age.  Eventually as I grew less certain about God, I divorced fate from Him as I realized that the forces of fate are easily provable, while the existence of God is far less so. 

Besides, after over seven years of chasing [First Love], I could no longer ignore the reality that my efforts were yielding no fruits.  I wasted my time as I came to understand, because my voluntary attempts to instill deep affection for me in her were rarely if ever successful.  Though I believed with all my heart that I could gain her impassioned longing, her undying love never materialized.  Though I thought I could make her fall if I worked at it long and hard enough, it turned out that unlike the little engine that could,   I could not.  All the positive thinking I could muster did not alter that truth.  Simply believing that I could did not mean that I could. 

While it came about after years of this epic slog that  [First Love]   felt sorry for me and thus threw me a few crumbs of loving here and there, this compassion-based fondness was not what I wanted even though it did finally usher me into her bed; a dream that I’d prayed would come true for years.  

Though I was blessed to be one of the few people out there who got to enjoy his first love in the bedroom and in the buff, I still never fully trusted her out-of-character professes of enduring love.  How could she change so quickly and so drastically after so long?  I wondered.  Besides, her affection was unpredictable and typically invisible, and on those rare times when it did appear and then left again, I was left crying in its dusty wake.  It would joyfully come and then painfully go.  But it was usually absent.  Depressing!

It’s true that briefly in 1980, she decided much to my great pleasure, that I was “good” for her; citing my years of dedication, forthrightness, and deliberate servitude.  She thought me safe, responsive, and consistently loving by then.  So she willed herself to love me; at least for that summer anyway.  My years of toil to build inroads into her heart had apparently paid off. 

However as I think back on it, she must have ignored the importance of being   in love   in order to completely love someone, when she chose to love me.  Perhaps she preferred to dismiss or hide her need for   the chemistry   as so many people today do, because they deem it shallow and immature.  Indeed, though she argued quite well that she did in fact love me, her words were somehow hollow, and her behavior over time clearly implied otherwise; suggesting that she never really did.  Sad!

She often veered from truly loving deeds, because there was no chemistry or deep passion to keep her straight, and her will to   stay straight   was only so strong.  She’d often forget to call, and then grow impatient when I’d take offense.  She’d spend time with other men; knowing full well that she was breaking my heart.  This was the ultimate rejection. 

Yet intellectually, she believed that she   should   stay straight.  But while she truly wished with all her heart that she   could   love me, the stark truth was that she simply   did not, and neither she nor I it turned out, could find the power to change that. 

She tried to fix it by bringing her willpower to bear, and I tried by behaving in accommodating, accepting, and loving ways to egg her on.  This was easy for me at first, because I had my heart pulling for me.  Showing her loving kindness, as long as we were together, came effortlessly.  After all, I possessed the gift of deep fervor where she was concerned; a passion that I did not choose.  It came from beyond. 

But no fire ever ignited in her soul in return for me; not even after years of my relentless (and at times, obsessive) campaigning.  The universe had not gifted her as it had me.  So, all the effort in the world had not, and it seemed, would not make her fall.  Without the pathways of destiny leading to love in the first place, I could not cut one on my own. 

She decided to love me, yes.  But she never managed to fall in love with me.  What she referred to as   her love   for me, was but a labor of will and resolve; without any abiding infatuation, awe, implicit admiration, or deep seated compulsion to back it up.  Her love for me never enslaved her to me.  Indeed, she could easily choose to be here today and gone tomorrow; whereas I could not.  Though she never intended to deceive or mislead me regarding the depths of her passions, deceived and misled I nonetheless felt. 

This romantic chapter (the only one as adults in fact) in our relationship ended after less than five months.  I suspected early on that it would because in our entire twenty-two year association, we spent less than twenty nights together.  The hurtful part in all that was that I could not persuade her to regard me any more highly than she did already. 

No matter what I did or how hard I tried, I rarely received more than mere cordial replies.  She shunned my painstaking efforts, no matter how much I offered.  This further frustrated me because I found, most brutally, that I actually had far less control over her passions than I’d imagined, when I set out in sixth grade to marry her and live happily ever after in twelfth. Destiny had other plans for her that did not include me, and in the end, accepting that nature beats nurture in these endeavors proved to be the most difficult and humiliating admission to make.  My experiences show that in nature there are far greater forces at work than human willpower, and that it therefore makes no sense to shame myself, should I lose out when pitting myself against them. 

Fully appreciating the limits of my powers when it comes bringing about deeply enjoyable romantic involvements, has made getting rejected in my love quest hurt much less and thus, quicker to recover from.  The hurt from the one today is already gone actually.  At times, like this one, I can indeed get over rejection. 

In fact, I’ve come to know that fulfilling romances result from the confluence of thousands of variables; the vast majority of which we individuals do not control.  The happiest love affairs were destined to be that way before they ever occurred because those thousands of variables were in large degree, already set prior to the love birds ever meeting. 

So when I agonized excessively over rejections received as a boy and young adult, my own arrogance proved to be    the   bona fide source of the resulting pain.  Indeed it was extraordinarily bigheaded of me to think that I could manage more than just a small number of all the factors that drive just how happy lovers will ultimately be together, or even if they get started at all.  If I indeed have so little control, then why should I think myself inadequate when I’m rejected?  Crazy!

These days, I blame myself for far less when the ladies say no.  Chances are, they’re rejecting me neither because I failed to behave as I should have, nor because committed some other unsightly blunder.  Instead, they reject because they feel no. But with a truly abiding attraction, people are capable of overlooking even the most wrongheaded behaviors.  E.g. Ladies who crawl after abusive husbands. 

It appears that when they feel yes, then the voluntary behaviors have only some effect on how deeply their passions run.  I gather thus that choice-based behaviors, unless they’re unusually inconsiderate, deliberately hurtful, or crass, contribute less than expected to how quickly or deeply we fall for one another.  So, I got rejected!  But this can, at worst, only imply a small amount of personal inadequacy, since that   yes feeling   derives from so many factors beyond the controllable ones.  Just because another deems us inadequate (they   feel   no) does not mean that we are lacking; though it does mean that   they   find us lacking.  Interesting!

She may call us a jerk or he might poke fun at (as he sees them) a woman’s numerous faults.  But the only definitive thing that the rejecter is qualified to say is simply that he   does not feel yes.  Any reasons for this that he might give, whether solicited or not, are probably speculative at best, and at worst, just plain wrong. 

I say this because in light of all those thousands of variables, it’s unlikely that just one or even a few can completely determine a person’s feelings of love.  It’s not just a single reason therefore, or even five or ten that makes someone fall, or prevents them from falling.  So, it would be foolhardy for them to state one or three or five as the all encompassing, overriding factors as to why they love us or not.  It’s also bad form for the rejected to assume that they were rejected for specific reasons that they could have done something about.  Very little of this is personal therefore.  Relief!

There’s a lot more to getting someone to fall than just behaving in the right ways.  So when they fail to fall, we ought not to blame ourselves for behaving incorrectly so much.  In fact, the whole idea that we can make someone fall, given my experiences with [First Love], I now believe is a myth, because in trying, we’re pitting ourselves against fate, and attempting to control those many variables that govern her heart that simply cannot be controlled by modern man. 

Assuming we can even know what those specific variables are for each person, actually managing enough of them to make the difference would be nearly impossible at present, and for generations to come I suspect.  Different people want different things, and the lists can vary hugely from one person to the next.  The core of rejection, I submit, is more about the differences in these lists between the rejecter and the rejected than anything else; any personal inadequacies notwithstanding. 

I offer and desire what I do.  Indeed, for the most part, I neither choose what to offer, nor especially, do I choose what I desire. So I cannot rationally be faulted for it. The same is true of the people we might choose to approach for a date.  They offer and desire various things too; but have no more control over these quantities than do we.  Whether or not these vast lists mesh with loving outcomes is a product of destiny; much more than any willful choices made.  Liberating! 

So, when we encounter getting rejected, we only can rightly shoulder so much responsibility.  Thus, any shame we feel at having received rejection is in the main, misplaced.  Rejection is less a statement about our controllable qualities as people, and more a simple measure of how well these lists match up. This, I’ve found, really takes the sting out of the experience of rejection for me.  With this in mind, I handle rejection more gracefully and have even managed to completely eliminate the sting of it in recent years, from certain ladies. 

It’s true that that Facebook woman, just as   [First Love]   did years ago, chose to reject me.  I mean both could have instead, welcomed me.  Indeed, there is a level of freedom of choice here.  But is choice really all that free?  True, we all have a vast plethora of choices before us that we could make.  But in all of those, there are far fewer ones that we’d actually desire to make, and I’d never anymore, wish someone to choose to love me without feeling it as well.  So when they say no, I just conclude that for whatever reason, we’re not right for each other, and then I move on, as I have today.  

Take care. 

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Avoid Distracting Compassion
• Can We Change Our Desires?
• Can We Change Our Nature
• Combating The Shame Of Rejection
• Cruel Better Judgement
• Enthusiastically Compassionate Love
• Inner Love Motivations
• Necessary Verses Needless Rejections
• The Perfect Lid for the Pot
• Therapy Session: 2009-02-21

I spent last Saturday afternoon at DelGrosso’s water park, people-watching.  Well, more precisely, GIRL-watching, and as I looked on, the following ideas occurred:

• It’s best to look for a new lover when it’s warm outside because the heat prompts girls to reveal their heavenly bodies; a sight that during the cooler months, we fellows might have to wait weeks to see.
• Better to see the ladies “live,” because 2D pictures and videos from the Internet just do not convey enough detail about her for me to know for certain that I’ll actually find her alluring once we finally do meet, in the flesh.
• In fact, I must see her live and scantily clad, as they are here at the water park today, before hanging my hat on her star. 
• It’s easier to find the most desirable women, to me, where many of them congregate, such as at swimming areas like this one.  Seeing one, all by herself is somewhat telling.  But viewing her alongside others allows me to know at a glance just how beautiful she is relative to those others.  We make better choices when we have lots to choose from.  So it’s probably a bad idea to choose, when the selection pool only has one or two women in it.
• I’d be more sure that I had in fact picked a right-on, and not a close-but-not-quite, if I’ve chosen her from a crowd. 
• My tastes are detailed, refined, demanding, and numerous.  They’re also unpopular, as a guy takes a lot of heat these days when he admits to finding the thinner women more attractive than the heavy. 
• Yet it’s crucial to own up to our desires.  We like what we like, even if some resent us for it.  Though our desires might be egregiously denied by some, they are nonetheless worthy of fulfillment.  In fact, we must fulfill them if we’re ever to know complete happiness. 
• While it’s always wrong to force someone to grant our wishes who does not wish to do so themselves, it’s also always right for us to keep seeking until we find that special person who enjoys satisfying our longings. 
• Others may shame us for our desires.  But this scorn is misplaced because while our needs are indeed our own, it’s also true that they come from outside.  They may have been instilled in us by God, by the universe, by our genes, by our raisings, and so on.  But we did not decide to have them, just as we did not choose to have two hands instead of one or three.  So no one has any business blaming us for what we like, so long as it hurts no one.
• But if you allow yourself to get too close to a lady without first knowing for certain that she’s got the right stuff, then you’ll likely become entrapped in a quagmire of obligation and emotional responsibility that is difficult to break away from.  I would never consider any long-term commitment until I’ve seen her naked and we’ve been to bed together. 
• My right-ons tend to be tall and thin, have small yet long thighs and arms.  But very few women who actually fit this description are right on.  Indeed, there are hundreds or thousands of seemingly inconsequential yet critical variables that I can’t see when she’s overly dressed or made up.  So I’ve often erred; picking the wrong ones, and not realizing it until we’d developed emotional bonds.  Nasty. 
• I so wish it was the custom in this culture to meet ladies naked.  This way, critical information could be gleaned without all the pointless preambles of tradition. 
• There’s no room for feeling sorry for the ones I reject either.  So I   Avoid Distracting Compassion.  In fact, worrying about their feelings and berating myself for not desiring them when I believe I should, wastes time.  Maybe I should like them.  Maybe I shouldn’t.  Whatever.  It doesn’t matter because either I do, or I do not; all shoulds and should nots notwithstanding.  Believing that I should like someone does not make it so, and thinking that I should not never extinguishes any fires of desire in the heart; it may intensify them in fact. 
• Deciding who I most desire to pursue is best done when I’m not close friends with them, as there’s less obligation to spare their feelings, should I decide against them.  If we’re close friends, I become wishy-washy; afraid to tell them that I don’t find them romantically desirable.  Their feelings start meaning too much even though romantically, they mean nothing. 
• True.  It’s possible that I might  “get lucky” when, after a long courtship, when she finally allows the relationship to go physical, that I’ll find her to be exactly what I’m looking for.  But the chances of that are small, and it’s not the case that longer courtships promote longer-lasting passion.  Life’s too short to wait around for very long.
• Often, ladies seem at first alluring.  But that quickly fades.  I’ve noted that this happens when they distract me with pretty clothes, hair, and makeup; devices that come off in the bedroom.  So again, I’d rather see them dressed down, as opposed to dressed up. 
• Very few women impress me in lasting ways; perhaps one woman in five hundred.  But there are those who do, and the best way to find them, and know early on and for sure that I have, is to find them in the nude.  Seriously. 
• I’m secure when they stare me down because I know that most of what they’re seeing I cannot take credit for, nor can I accept blame for either. 
• So I can be just as secure around those who see me as I can those who do not. 

 Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Avoid Distracting Compassion
• Last Time In Bed With Emeebee 
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Inspired by audio journal episode   AJE-2010-05-07-19-30.

As I said in the previous post   here, needless rejection should be avoided.  To summarize: A needless love rejection is one where you experience more pain and humiliation than necessary, to find out if that lady you like so much, likes you back.  Dating requires some risk, but not excessive risk.  Risking foolishly not only hurts too much, but it can damage you psychologically by creating insecurities that not even the best therapists can help rid you of.  These will plague your love quest with undue hardship.  So take the possibility of being rejected seriously, and don’t ask her any more than you must in order to figure out her wishes, and don’t linger once she’s made it clear that she does not desire you.  Do not pester, and as a general rule, do not retry very often.  If she says no, she probably means it, for years to come.  So give her those years, before you ask her out again.   Subjecting yourself to needless rejection will probably make you unduly afraid of love rejection. 

As long as we’ve shown her all the consideration, respect, and sensitivity we can, then we should not be embarrassed or shamed, should she reject us anyway.  Once we’ve stopped the excessive strutting, asking for too much too soon, and the too-frequent retries, any rejection that we still get does not make us universally bad people.  Experience shows that ladies usually reject us for circumstances beyond our control to fix, and beyond theirs as well.  So why blame them?  Why blame ourselves?  Doing so only angers us at them, and pointlessly shames us besides.  Even if they deem the fellow as   the reject,  it’s never valid for him to draw that same conclusion about himself. 

Rejection is usually not personal; especially once we’ve eliminated any bad-choice components from our approach.  That is: Getting Rejected typically does not occur due to things about ourselves that we could have controlled, or should have.  Once we’ve incorporated politeness, respect, consideration of her needs, and gentle-but-not-brutal honesty into our getting-acquainted routines, her response becomes the choice of the gods or destiny; we are neither responsible for a yes nor a no answer.  Primarily, it’s nature that defines who we’re attracted to, and who’s attracted to us.  Any choices that we could rightly be held accountable for, are secondary and so, for the most part irrelevant.  So, we cannot be faulted much for another’s dislike of us, and so, should not feel guilt or inadequacy when ladies shun us. Realizing just how little we actually do control about ourselves can help us to be less afraid of rejection.

While she may deem us unworthy when she scoffs at us, that opinion is not universal fact; though it may feel like it.  In fact, the only universal truth she can state with any authority whatsoever is that she personally does not find us attractive.  Period.  Anything beyond that, such as hateful glares, insults, and demeaning comments, is just blusterous and meaningless.  Why? Because she’s neither qualified nor empowered to evaluate our worthiness; unless we give her that power.  Therefore, her words should not be allowed to diminish our self opinions.

She has no right to put us down for trying; at least, not for   trying the first time. Indeed, the simple act of polling her does not make us bad, and asking her out does not reduce our universal worthiness, no matter what her response is.  There’s nothing wrong with inviting her to a date, unless of course, we know that she’s already happily involved with someone else, or we’ve asked her recently but she declined.  In these circumstances, asking her anyway would constitute the needless risk of our love being rejected (rejected love) mentioned above, that we’re well advised to avoid.  It may also show her that we do not respect her wishes, which will offend her and thus, net us a much more poignant rejection than necessary.   She may publicly humiliate us by shouting at us to get away from her.  So the trick is to ask without needlessly offending her.  Once we’ve eliminated that needlessly offensive part from our love questing strategies, there’s then nothing wrong with asking. 

Asking does not decrease our worthiness.  Nor does her response actually; no matter how inhospitable that might be.  She may not like that we asked, and in fact, may object boisterously.  Never mind that though, because it’s beyond her purview to shame us for asking.  She has no right to do that.  All we were doing was testing her availability.  So we should neither be ashamed to ask, nor feel like we’ve committed a grave sin by asking, should she reject us.  We all deserve to be happy in love, even if she denies our request to get happy with her. 

In fact, her response to our date request does not determine the appropriateness of our query at all.  In other words, we should never conclude after receiving a rejection that we were wrong to ask in the first place.  Indeed, in light of today’s diverse cultures, how would we know what she’d say?  She may berate us for asking, and she might even suggest that our asking was inappropriate. But she’d be wrong because the outcome of a poll never determines the rightness of taking the poll.  The conclusion of the poll may reveal undesirable answers.  But the degree to which those answers are wanted (or not) does not invalidate the need to take the poll in the first place, to seek those answers.  We would not have those answers unless we polled for them to begin with.  So it’s irrational for her (and us) to project backward and harshly refute the poll’s necessity because of what we learned from it.  Whether she accepts or rejects our date request, it is always right to ask given that the conditions above are met. 

Rejection and how we interpret it can be by far the greatest opposing force to wining the love quest.  If we regard it too little, then we needlessly offend others, and make ourselves more afraid of rejection.  But if we take it too much to heart and confuse unnecessary rejection with necessary rejection, we become overly anxious and fearful, and deny ourselves  the opportunity for true love.  We don’t seek it because we fear the seeking process too much.  Indeed, the more afraid of getting rejected we are, the less we’ll approach new ladies.  The less approaching we do, the less likely we are to find a dream girl who views us as dream guys.  It’s all about the numbers; the more we try, the more we’ll succeed.  So to make the love quest as painless and rewarding as possible, we must put our rejected love into the least hindering perspective.  We should not take it for more than it actually means, and through this writing, I hope I’ve lessened its negative connotations for myself and all who read this. 

Take care, and happy hunting.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Avoiding Needless Rejection: 2010-05-19
• How To Attract Women
• Indeed A Fear Of Rejection
• Necessary Verses Needless Rejections
• Romanceless Camp
• Therapy Session: 2009-02-21
• Tom’s Diary –> Today’s Business: 2010-05-26

Dear   [BT],

I dreamt of you this morning; the first time in a while.  Yet over the years, you’ve appeared here and there in my slumber, and left me smiling upon waking every time; for days afterward sometimes.  It’s the same feeling I get when I see you for real, and it’s the same feeling I miss when you’re not where I’d hoped you’d be. 

I dreamt this morning of guiding you to a free seat in the   main dining room at WPSBC,   fetching food for you, and helping you find someone you were looking for after the meal was done.  Seeing you is one reason I so look forward to our alumni activities.  But I’ve missed seeing you at the last two events and was thus disappointed to learn that I would not be able to serve you at them.  I enjoy doing things for you; I always have.  The thrill when I make you laugh, seems almost boundless because when you smile, I melt.

Though I’m sure you know of my special feelings since we first met over thirty-five years ago, until now I never felt confident enough to directly mention, much less discuss them with you.  I never defined them to you, nor have I ever asked you for what I really want.  True, I’ve occasionally beat around the bush; once through an awkward letter, that I, not knowing how to write Braille myself, got another person to Braille, so you could read it; a letter which, as I recall, you didn’t like; a letter that compelled you to warn me never to use someone else’s hands to address you again; a letter that you said did not persuade you to go out with me.  You didn’t want to rock the cradle, you said.  I was fifteen then.  You were seventeen.  So your heart appeared, for the most part to be hardened toward me.  I, as a squeaky-voiced, obnoxious boy, was too immature for you, and it was perhaps that very immaturity, that kept me from seeing that. 

So, as your high school graduation approached, I kept after you; agitating you on your father’s bus each Friday; I’d tug your long, dark brown hair that was so soft and exquisite.  I’d offend you with corny jokes; jokes whose punchlines made them not worth the time required to listen to.  No wonder you didn’t like them.  I get it today.  I don’t like them either.  But back then, any attention from you, even negative attention, was positive, and I cherrished it.  So I kept the bad jokes coming until the end of my nineth grade year; the year you left the school for the last time as a student.  It may have seemed like I relished getting under your skin.  But not really.  I just wanted you to pay me some mind, and making you mad seemed easier to do than winning your love.  But the truth is,   [BT],   that   I teased you so because I loved you so.

I’d heard once that you went to your after-lunch classes a little early.  So I made it my business to know your schedule, so that I could be there to meet you.  Then we’d have ten minutes or so to talk before fifth period began.  We did talk too, at least twice each week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Remember?  You in twelfth grade, me three years behind.  You had a health class or some such on the first floor of the instruction building, and I so savored those conversations. Thanks for never shooing me away though on many occasions, your teachers had to ask me to leave.  Though perhaps you found me elementary, I found you utterly enthralling, and treasured all the minutes you spared for me, and I thank you for them.

Maybe my wishful, idealistic, teenage thinking colored my intuition.  But I thought you liked my crush at least a little, even though you permitted nothing more between us than frequent, yet painfully short conversations.  I say that because I asled you for your picture, a week or two before you graduated.  Your response confused me; especially after your comment about rocking the cradle.  For a moment, you appeared surprised, flattered, and humbled that I would want one.  You smiled a little, yet said nothing, turning away as though you’d not heard my request.  But then, a few days later when I saw you waiting for the bus home and came over to greet you, you took a black and white photo from your coat pocket, found my hand with your other hand, turned it palm up, and placed the wallet-sized senior picture you’d brought, over top of my eager fingers.  Again you said nothing before turning away, and it was clear that you wished not to discuss the picture, or anything else with me then.  I didn’t care, for I was overjoyed at your portrait gift.  In fact, I think I still have it in an album someplace.

That experience really jolted me, for in those couple seconds that your hand grasped mine, I felt a resonance, a connection, and a delicious albeit temporary convergence of yours and my destinies.  You seemed to be saying that though in the real world we’d never be together, that you might nonetheless consider a romance with me somewhere else; say, in an ideal world.  So I wonder to this day   [BT],  if underneath all those schoolgirl aspirations to meet a Prince Charming, if you, in some small way found me charming.  Or, did you find me undesirable and so, unworthy of your attention?  If you thought me a pain, were you just being polite during all those pre-class talks?  Or did you actually feel a nice connection too, but had to fight the feeling because I wasn’t the type of fellow that you’d normally date?  I heard you say that guys you’d date had to drive a car and make lots of money.  But these descriptions, neither back then nor today in fact, describe me accurately.  I’m still poor, and I still do not drive, although our three year age difference wouldn’t matter nearly as much today as it did in 1976. 

Yet there still was that private picture moment and a few others like it that made me wonder just what your true feelings were.  It seemed that publicly at least, you treated me no more kindly than any other guy in our school.  But when no one else was around, you said some (perhaps) innocent, yet emotionally provocative and kind things.  Once you commented that you liked how I answered extension 52 just outside your 2nd floor Spanish class in the instruction building.  You made my day with that quip, and you should know that I used to sneak out of my class in the weeks that followed, just to answer that phone, when I thought you’d be nearby to hear. 

Then, you’d get all giggly at my complimenting your dimples and cute pony tail as you served students supper in the   main dining room.  Once, when I teased you and then tried to run away, you got hold of me near the steam table and wrestled me to the floor.  Then you held me down while you laughed, for a longer-than-normal yet way too short a time.  Of course, I did not fight you, and I remember looking up into the floodlights as I lay there on my back with you to my right, both your hands pressing against my chest like you were giving me CPR.  Your straight long hair shown in the light, and it was long enough to reach down to my face and tickle my nose.  As it did, I smelled a delightful combination of your perfume and shampoo.  Your many bracelets jingled as you moved a hand from my chest to my shoulder as you released me.  We both got up then and ended the fun with a quick hug, and feeling you hug me back made my week.  But you know, I’d have layed there all day like that if you would have stayed there too.   

Now   [BT],  I’ve probably read too much into these memories.  But on the off-chance that I haven’t, let me say that you’ve always been a princess; in reality as well as in my dreams.  In fact, when last I saw you at the 2007 alumni social day, you were at 48, as captivating as you were at 17.  Your beauty it would seem then, is timeless, because you haven’t aged a bit in my aging eyes.  You’ve always been, and I suspect will always be, supremely gorgeous, no matter how the coming years ravage either of us. No matter how old we get, you’ll still look seventeen to me, and I’ve got thirty-five years of good feelings to prove it! 

This morning’s dream brought you, our memories, and my feelings front and foremost once more, as dreams like it have done several times since the seventies.  This time though, it inspired me to write.  Why?  I don’t know your current situation or even if you’re in a position to respond; perhaps by now, you’re married again or engaged or something.  So I hope not to intrude.  Indeed, if you’re in a happy relationship, then I so wish you well.  But I’m not getting any younger.  So I didn’t want to let any more time pass without coming clean with you, about the complete extent of my feelings.  Though we’ve only seen each other a handful of times since high school, I’d still love to spend some romantic hours with you, just as I fantasized back then. 

These dreams show that my feelings still run deep for you, and I want you to know that if ever you become available to explore them with me, then by all means tell me.  Then, I’ll make sure that I’m available too, and you and I will do the exploring together.  I don’t care if you get to be 60, 70, or 80 and beyond, because I’ll always be excited to hear from you; even when my own ears begin to fail.  If you reject me now, then at least I’ll have the peace of mind knowing that you did so based on complete information, and not just bits and pieces.  I have, for the first time since knowing you, said it all here, without shyness to muzzle me.  So, if you still say no, then there’s nothing more I can say to change your mind, and thus I’ll not try again.  But should you ever seriously consider coming to me, just keep in mind that as long as I’m single, I’ll always jump at the chance to know your loving side better.  Okay?

Take care, with love.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Dear Susan Jacks

Dear [Linda],

This post is in response to the comments you made   here.

It has been written across time that the desire to love and be loved by someone desirable is a lot of things; it’s a thirst, it’s an itch, it’s a pain, it’s what we as humans were designed to seek, presumably, in order to create future generations of our species. It’s what most of us live for; at least, until we get it. Once we do get it, and it’s continued supply is assured, then we can go on to truly excel at other, more worldly pursuits, like writing. But until we get it, maintaining consistent focus on those other pursuits is much more difficult. Have you ever tried writing while thirsty? How about doing a term paper when you’ve got an itch that just won’t quit? Or, what about understanding a hard book while nursing a toothache? Like these other distractions in my opinion, you can’t stop the yearning for love just by ignoring it, or by insisting that it should not exist. No, you’ve actually got to quench the thirst with a beverage, scratch the itch, and eliminate the pain at its source. True. You can num it for a while by becoming a workaholic, and for a time, you may indeed do well at the job in spite of the thirst, the itch, and the pain. But when you go home each night and feel that cold draft upon your face as you climb the stairs to your bedroom, where there’s no one up there waiting for you, you’ll realize sooner or later that the job does not, and in fact, cannot fill your need to be loved. The job neither quenches the thirst, nor scratches the itch, nor gets rid of the pain of being alone. No matter how deeply you plunge into your work or how often you visit the bars afterwards, that draft will always be there to remind you that your bedroom is cold and that your life is not, as of yet, as fulfilled as you’d like it to be.

People deny this need because it makes them emotionally dependent on and thus, vulnerable to being hurt by others, and they hate being vulnerable; they hate needing others in order to be truly happy. Nonetheless no matter how much they’d like to erase it, the need for love cannot be vanquished; it can only be met. Work is no substitute for true love.

Oh sure, we can stay busy with other pursuits, though thirsty. We might even enjoy them at times, though the ache of loneliness will still remind us of our unsatisfied needs. We can use diversions like work, friends, games, and drugs to temporarily lessen that ache or reduce the itching. But the Beatles had it so right in the 1960s, when they sang that all one really needs is love. Love is an essential stop on the journey to our destiny because it appears that in order to achieve our maximum potential, we must first be fulfilled in love. Otherwise, the love need will eventually and virtually always hold us back. Perhaps you’re right that this should not be the case – that neither love nor a woman should keep me from writing. But the fact is that I write so much better when there’s someone to dream about and enjoy. I didn’t choose this. It just is, and while I might try and fight it if I was thirty years younger, my mission today is to fully accept this inalienable truth; that my writing will indeed ebb and flow in lockstep with the romance in my life.

Take care.

Tom

One further point about being alone: I’m not afraid of it. I got over that fear in my early thirties, and I’ve lived alone (without a steady lover) for many years. Aloneness and I are old pals (and long-time enemies too). If all my remaining days spent in solitude turns out to be my destiny, then at the end of my life, I shall accept it, and know that I did the best I could to change it. But I shall never resign myself to it, no matter how much the odds of finding my dream girl are against me.  As long as I have breath remaining, I’ll keep seeking her; either that, or I’ll die trying.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

The only problem with trying to   take charge   of social evolutionary forces is that we would likely not realize the fruits of our efforts, which might not ripen for generations. Though social or cultural evolution would seem to occur more quickly than biological evolution, it still takes decades to modestly change public attitudes (abortion rights), and centuries to alter them fundamentally (civil rights), though this lag might shorten in the future thanks to mass media and the Internet. In the meantime though, the need for love appears deeply entrenched in our psyches, and I don’t know if you could preserve the positive side of pursuing a need while omitting the negative, especially in level three and lower needs [referring here to Maslow's hierarchy of needs triangle]. If you could, then the need really wouldn’t be a need anymore, since there would be no negative consequences when thwarted. Removing the negative effects of a need would seem tantamount therefore to eliminating the need itself, which, as noted, is quite an undertaking, and perhaps more difficult than biting the bullet and just gratifying it.

At any rate, for us, it seems that whatever path we choose (to seek a happy life either with or without a mate), we’re talking about a grueling journey. It isn’t easy no matter how we go. Which way to actually go boils down to personal preference, for by the time one weighs the known pros and cons of the single and the mated life styles, in the end the decision to the outside observer seems about as arbitrary as tossing a coin. A therapist in Philly used to assuage my anxieties over such choices by pointing this out. She thought that if we understand that much of what moves us to choose as we do is beyond our conscious comprehension, and thus unpredictable, that this would help us blame ourselves less for choices that turn out to be wrong.   [We'd thus] fret less over those future choices that might be wrong.

I don’t know that this worked all that well for me, but I saw where she was coming from and in certain circumstances at work, found that I could make impacting decisions more decisively and quickly, simply by going with my gut and taking a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may attitude. Indeed, once I moved into higher positions,   any   decision generated opposition. No matter how extensively researched a choice was, when that choice affected others, as high-level decisions invariably do, people fight it. So it doesn’t make sense to agonize over it too much. No matter how good it is, you just won’t please everyone. The important thing is, when possible, to please yourself.

I believe the choice to seek the mate we need, or to seek not to need one, is such a choice. It’s a gamble for sure. But one sure thing about it is that no matter how we choose, there will be pain. And who’s to say that one outcome is reachable with any less hardship than the other? I suppose that it really depends on the   guts   of the individuals choosing – those seemingly irrational forces that sway us one way or another though we can’t express exactly how or why.

Now we’ve turned this choice upside down and inside out over the past few months, and exposed plenty of good reasons and bad for choosing either way. It was a good exercise and certainly not a waste of time. However, I don’t think, given all this, that further justifying my position will do any more good. Quite reasonably, it doesn’t make sense, for all the reasons you’ve cited, to keep trying for something [a life of love with an attractive mate] that probably can never happen. But in spite of all the rationale and empirical data we’ve exchanged that would seem to place us at a severe disadvantage in the mating arena, my heart still longs for my dream girl. Maybe this is a shortcoming on my part. But it’s a part of me that I must cater to since it dominates my life.

I know you understand what I mean, because your choice of careers in college would seem most unlikely for blind men to pick, much less succeed at. Yet you persist and have done so for going on three decades now, to get it right. You know that no matter the odds, you just can’t turn your back on it. I’m the same about my dream girl.   I’ll either make this happen or die trying.   You’ve apparently made progress because your grades are better now than in the 90s, your overall level of depression is lower, and your psychical disposition is healthier than you’ve ever known I suspect. And as I’ve said, I’ve made progress too in that the amount of time I spend with ladies is higher since 2000 than at any time previous. Plus, I enjoy it more because the ladies I’m picking are closer to my ideal. Our respective goals may not be instantly achievable. But we’re both progressing, and that’s the real bottom line.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

Well, the possibilities of a blind person becoming a jet pilot would seem to be markedly lower than mine of finding my dream girl, and so his dream would be more unrealistic as a result. After all, I at least have   some   experience with such women on my arm, not to mention the fact that many other men of similar gifts to myself have already done what I wish to do. The same is not true of the [aspiring] blind pilot though. He would probably never have an opportunity to fly a plane, even with an experienced pilot holding his hand. Plus, there would be no others like him in the air to illustrate the achievability of his dream. There would be no hero, no one whose footsteps he could follow, and little encouragement in general. So he has far less reason than I, for holding on to his dream [of becoming an aviator]. [Few] have done his [dream], but many have done mine successfully.

Further, the dream of becoming a pilot would seem to be higher in [Maslow's] needs hierarchy (levels four and five) than that of fulfilling the love needs. As such, his is a less urgent dream, and normally, its thwarting injures to a lesser degree an otherwise healthy man’s psyche than having to become resigned to never finding a lover. I suspect that far fewer people suffer psychopathological consequences who must give up their dreams of flying planes, than who must live their lives without love. You’re right that the blind pilot would do well to think about his dream rationally, realize that [the] chances of it coming true approach zero, and then choose a more attainable goal from the [many] choices available. However, I’m sure you also understand, as you indicate, that the lower the need is in the needs hierarchy, the less effective can rational thinking be at quelling it, and the fewer the ways there are to gratify it. So while we might rightly expect the blind pilot to find something more fitting to do, expecting a man seeking love to find a more fruitful quest is quite a different [and dubious] matter. I think you get this [...].

Also, before your email this past Sunday, I thought that you attributed too much flexibility and changeability to the love need [as though it's an optional need]. I was skeptical [...] that you had managed to appreciably reduce its fire without actually gratifying it. But I [wanted to say that] if the need really is not urgent for you, then that’s wonderful that you’ve learned how to put aside our carnal urges [...].

Now some of this I wrote before last Sunday and it may not therefore apply now. So just ignore the issues mentioned that you’ve already addressed. That said, the tone of the emails up until Sunday [suggested] that [you're] convinced that giving up the love dream in the healthy person should not seriously impact his “psychical well being,” and you’ve hinted that if it does, then that person is [...] weaker than he could be, too obsessive, too needy, not as self-sufficient as he ought to be, or not as advanced [...]. But again, gratifying the mating desire with anything else but a real mate just doesn’t work as well in most people. If you can do it, then you are way the exception [...] and I admire your resolve to do it, given the situation you laid out yesterday.

[We need love, and that's okay.] I recommend that you reread   Motivation and Personality   because Maslow discusses at length the pathologies (negative consequences) of thwarting any of the basic needs, and he lists lots of complications that can (and so often do) result from ungratified love needs. The data suggest that letting this desire go unfulfilled would   naturally   threaten even an otherwise mentally healthy person’s psychical well-being, because more so than level four and five needs deprivation, the unsatisfied love need causes measurable sickness in people — shorter, less healthy lives, less ability to concentrate, greater tendencies toward harmful addictions, more tendency to behave anti-socially, and on and on. In short, people aren’t in any meaningful way inadequate for having the love need, even though that need makes them more vulnerable to others. Blaming the lovelorn for their sickness of love starvation is little more useful than maligning a man for becoming parched when he has no water to drink. I may not be good enough for most women as I am. Yet the empirical data I have suggest that I   am   good enough for   some. I stay on the quest because all I’m dong is trying to fulfill a destiny laid out by human nature. I’m thirsty, and I not only have the right, but also the obligation, to do whatever I can to quench that thirst, lest I spend the rest of my life lonely, an abbreviated life at that.

There is no more immediate use for one’s brain power and talents, than self-gratification. My mother says often, “Tom, you’re wasting your brain and your education sitting up in that room all the time.” But I say, “No, I’m not because now more than ever, I’m finally focused squarely on what really matters.” Not sure she understands that fully. But that answer seems to satisfy her. Being happily involved is a right that one day I hope to enjoy. My need for love indicates strong (not weak) health.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

We’ve been talking about the obsessive quest for love; you sighting its disadvantages and wanting to stay clear of it, and me its proponent, embracing it and attempting to show why it’s necessary to the excellent man.

Continuing the discussion, I offer another advantage of serious questing (whether for love or anything else): The hunt itself enriches the soul, even if in the end, we never manage to bag the prey. It supplies meaningful reasons for living and the stamina for executing life’s many pursuits, motivating us to learn about many things while seeking our big answers. Quests, fruitful or not, advance us closer to supreme understanding and self actualization.

You know, I was musing the other day that until last year, I had no regrets. I never felt I made many bad decisions. Even with bad outcomes, I usually knew that I had made the best choice possible given what was known at the time. But lately, my history of academic laziness at WPSBC troubles me. Though I tried there, to read classic literature, history, and philosophy, I simply couldn’t stay awake through it. True, the sugary, caffeinated beverages and the late nights we kept, contributed to the chronic drowsiness. But the reading was also boring, just like algebra, geometry, and Spanish, because I saw no relevance of these materials to electronics or mating – my two biggest dreams then. What would this stuff ever be used for? Its benefits just weren’t clear when my voice was high, and the fact that adults   forced   us to study further closed my eyes to any goodness of knowing about X, Y, and Z, not to mention the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. If a teacher then could have connected the dots and showed how literature, history, and philosophy could help solve problems that would plague us later in life, I might have been a straight-A student.       Naaaaaah!

Fortunately, though tardy, my Love Quest has done this. It’s made literature’s relevance clear, albeit twenty-five years after graduation. The problems posed by chasing the Big Dream (what you and I have been scratching our heads on now for some years) might well have already been solved in a great novel that I just never got around to reading yet. If I had read more books growing up, during that time of high mental pliancy, I might not today be struggling to find the answers which have eluded me for so long. If only a teacher had said back then that the more we read, the better equipped we are to tackle life’s injustices, I might have discovered my current-day zeal for reading that was nowhere to be found a quarter century ago.  [My] quest instilled the reading passions lately, and this is good. The Quest is good. In this way, it has improved me.

Speaking of Dr. Phil, you’ll be pleased to know that he agrees with you on this subject, advising people not to focus on finding relationships. Like you, he says that a person should indulge his other passions first. Don’t go to bars, clubs, grocery stores, or any other mate market with an agenda. Go without hidden motives, simply because you like going and not because you want to meet a mate. In terms of The Triangle, he’s telling his audience to reach for Ego and Self Actualization needs, before they fulfill their Social ones. This sounds rather ill-advised to me.

Then, he gets too spiritual, and says to believe that if it’s meant to be, a relationship will happen, without looking for it. I agree with this partially. It really does go just this way for some people; specifically, the prettiest. Certainly, the    most attractive   among us need put forth the   least   effort to snag a high-quality mate. The prettiest girls don’t have to go to dating services or get their friends to match them up with blind dates. All they need do is walk down a street where guys are, and by the time they reach the next block, they’ll have been hit on several times. Relationships find them, and they’re sitting pretty because they never have to risk rejection.

It’s no wonder that attractive people (like Dr. Phil) advocate this wait-for-it-to-happen attitude. Why not? For them, happen it usually does, without them ever lifting a finger. Indeed, a basic tenant of evolutionary psychology is that the prettiest are most destined to mate. (Studies show that they’re the ones who most often actually do mate.) Rewording this slightly, you could say that nature means for the prettiest to be loved the most. And when nature means for you to love, it’s easy to say, “If it’s meant to be, it will be.” Dr. Phil offered nothing truly profound here.

But things don’t work this way for the average or the ugly. Indeed, the less desirable the man, the fewer the women who will want him. Clearly, this necessitates a higher degree of dedication from him than from his more attractive peers, so as to find one who does. The average Joe just can’t afford to be passive here, because relationships   don’t just happen   for him. Not like they did for Dr. Phil. Nature thwarts rather than favors the lovelorn, which is probably why they’re lovelorn in the first place. For Average Joe, nature’s good intentions aren’t so abundantly plain. Such people learn early that nature does not intend goodness for them, and so they learn not to count on it for that. While it may still be “meant to be” for him, love is by no means as easy to achieve. So he must try and try hard, because virtually all of us, pretty or not, are subject to Maslow’s Triangle. We have a strong need to be loved by a quality mate, and unless that’s satisfied, we won’t achieve maximal fulfillment in the triangle’s higher need levels of Ego and Self Actualization. Its queer how Dr. Phil’s philosophy doesn’t seem to account for The Triangle, and how he doesn’t often acknowledge the existence of alternative rules of social engagement which the less attractive among us must follow.

It should be plain that the rules of how to get love differ vastly among people, depending on how attractive they are. Thus, there is no one patent way to approach relationships. Neither the devoted nor worldly ways are always right. Perhaps the most attractive can afford to be Worldlys and still have fulfilling unions. But this approach is often only right for other attractive people, and has little value for the less desirable, who are negotiating an entirely different social landscape. This is why I get so frustrated with Doc Phil because he often targets his advice to the most attractive, and the applause and groans of his audience tend to discount the points of view of the Average Joes. But hey, it’s his show. He’s free to run it as he wishes, of course. I only mean to point out the limits of his advice and to underscore that his “words of wisdom” work well for far fewer viewers than who actually watch the show.

Not only do effective mating strategies differ between the more and less desirable mates, but as you know, they also differ vastly between men and women, attractiveness notwithstanding. Traditionally, ladies have not aggressively sought mates. In the high school dances in the 50s, women lined up off to the sides of the dance floor, awaiting the men to invite them out. This still happens in the bars and night clubs today. As found among most species, human females tend to defer to males to make the first move – to come to them, and to take all the initial risks. Many telephone dating services employ this philosophy to get women to join by only charging the men, while the women use it for free. The more assertive, risky, and costly role has been, and will be for centuries to come, the male one. So we’d expect females to support a more passive approach to mating than men. Indeed, when Dr. Phil related his wait-for-it-to-happen view above, it was the women who were heard applauding the loudest.

So, female passivity is still true even though we’ve reached the post feminism age. Though equal rights abound today, women still largely favor   The Gentleman, who opens doors for them, pays for their meals, and takes the bulk of emotional risks in order to advance the relationship. They like the man to drive and be the initiator. Yet they often say they don’t approve of his assertive antics, claiming that they couldn’t ever imagine behaving that way themselves. But the fact that they wouldn’t behave that way doesn’t explain their dislike, though they frequently offer it as such. Why should they behave like him? After all, they’re female, not male.

What actually determines how she’ll react is not so much his behavior as it is how attracted she is to him. Prettier men get away with more. They can disrespect, neglect, and abuse their women without worry of her leaving. Even if she does go, they’ll have no trouble finding another. But let me get back on track here and say that women on the TV talk shows frequently fault the male approach to relationships, sighting his obsessive compulsions as saboteurs in the relationship. And males, like Dr. Phil, buy into that, because Dr. Phil knows that he’s going home that night and sleeping with none other than a woman. For him to support anything other than his just-let-it-happen-by-itself approach, would not bode well with his wife. There are clear differences between male and female approaches and the problem with TV talk shows is that they tend to lump everyone into one pot, where one approach is right for all. Not so, as I hope I’ve made clear.

Okay, okay. I got carried away. I promise, I won’t write anymore in response to   this   part of your letter. Also, I guess we’ve drifted away from the central theme of this thread – about whether or not we handicapped men can do better than handicapped women. Let me say that I think we can, but with difficulty. Parker found himself a fully functional woman. And if he can do it, … well, you know the rest.

We may not have to do better though, if we find a   right   handicapped woman. As noted in previous posts, there are a few of them out there, though they’re quite few and far between. But whether or not we do better is irrelevant so long as we find someone we consider supreme. History proves that it’s possible for us both to find preeminence in eyes that don’t see well. You’ve loved   [First Love],    [your sweetheart from the late 70s], and probably others. I’ve loved [First Love],   [Alandra], [...] and others. They were quite good. So even if nature restricts us to dating only the handicapped, well, given the love we’ve experienced from these women, perhaps that’s not so bad. But no matter who we seek to date, the climb is up a steep hill for us, and we won’t reach the top of this hill via half-hearted or no effort. We’ve got to focus, because with focus comes clarity. And with clarity comes clear direction. And with clear direction and a willingness to follow the path, success will likely come.

More later,

Tom Hesley

Good morning, Svetlana.

Wonderful pictures. Thanks very much for them.

I’m glad to hear that you had such a nice time with your friends. I got home from BINGO last night at 8:30 and went to bed soon afterwards. We had lots of thunderstorms at the park yesterday. So everything was cool and damp. I sleep well under those conditions.

I don’t go to bars, clubs, or dance halls these days. Since I do not drink, they just don’t hold the same enjoyment for me, and it gets boring watching others who have been drinking be so loud and foolish. However, when I used to visit such places, no, women didn’t try to meet me. Don’t know why for sure. But they didn’t. Perhaps this is why I grew to not like such places, because they made me feel lonely and envious of the guys there who had the women all over them. Besides, I have much better luck on the Internet. After all, I met you on the Internet. Right?

If you had been at the places I frequented in Philadelphia, PA here in the US, the whole experience might have been very different. You with me would have been fun. Seeing you in all the colored lights and fog, and swinging you about as I hold your hands tight. You might be able to persuade me to dance again someday.    Now if I still went to the bars and dance places today, I don’t think I’d be interested in the women there, because, well, maybe your female magic is starting to work on me.    It’s not that I didn’t like these social places. I just didn’t like going to them and having to sit there alone all night. They might actually be very fun with the right girl at my side. What do you think?

Yes, whispering in your ear and kissing your cheek is a sweet dream, one I hope will come true someday. When I see couples, my heart aches. Why, after all, had destiny sentenced me to aloneness? Well, perhaps now, it has a different plan for me, and maybe, you will be the conduit through which fate delivers me from my loneliness. If you saw me in a bar, would you seek to get acquainted with me?

I take our correspondence seriously. It’s more than just entertainment to me as well. It may in fact, be salvation. You?

I have to work BINGO again today. So have fun in your day, when you wake up again. I think where you are, it’s evening now and you’re getting ready for supper. What are you, about 8 hours ahead of me? It’s 10:54 AM here.

Anyway, enjoy your day. Looking forward to your next correspondence.

Tommy