Tom's Love Quest

The contents have been moved to   Best Weight Loss Plan.   Enjoy.

Tom Hesley

When an already-existing attraction is suppressed due to prejudices, diagnosis biases, and ill-informed judgments, eliciting compassion might work to persuade someone to lower these barriers and allow their underlying feelings to come through.  But the joy of being kind is a poor substitute for the desires and gratifications of true love.  If there is no attraction, then pity for the other will never suffice to fulfill us as much as a deeper, truer love for them will.  So don’t go out with someone because you think they deserve it; do so because you feel that you deserve it and that you desire it.  Being a do-gooder might score you some brownie points with God.  But in my experience, it will never net you the love of your life. 

But, while the choice to be kind to another should never form the sole basis for why you would go out with them, it is nonetheless, best to treat all people kindly and respectfully; whether you wish to date them or not.  This information is critical.  But voicing your preferences is usually unpopular, for few like to hear from someone that they do not meet our preferences.  So it does no good to tell heavy women for example, that we’ll only date the thin, or to say to smokers that we find their habit unattractive. 

Experience proves that little positive effect results from sharing our individual passion preferences with potential lovers, and it’s probably a bad idea to tell someone outright that we find them unattractive at all.  Even if they would change, there’s no guarantee that after they did, per our preferences, that we’d find them any more alluring than we do now.  Further, implying that they do not measure up can make them cry, and this can tug hard at our heart strings.  When we see them so sad because we rejected them, we may be tempted to pity them and reverse course.  We may decide to go out with them anyhow, in spite of our better judgment.    

However, as much as we may wish to “save them,” we can neither change what we desire, nor what we do not.  So there’s probably nothing they can say should they learn this that will change our minds.  A drug addict would probably never convince me to find her attractive enough to fall in love with, even though I might be highly sensitive to her plight and be amazed that she’s gotten this far in life. 

The cold truth is that if we’re not predisposed to desire them already, then they won’t turn us around by arguing their hard-luck case.  They either have what we want or they don’t, because passion can be neither elicited, negotiated, nor coaxed.  It’s either there, or it isn’t; and if it isn’t, then attempting to explain to someone we’ve rejected precisely why it isn’t, will not console them, but only hurt them.   All they really need to know is that it isn’t, but they need not know why.  The very fact that it isn’t should be good enough for them. 

Indeed, I’ve erred here in my early years by allowing folks to talk me into revealing my exact reasons (as if I could even know those for sure) for declining to date them.  But my honesty, though gently expressed, offended them deeply, and the result was that they betrayed me in public forums; painting me as shallow, heartless, and needlessly brutal.  They shamed me for answering the questions that they themselves insisted that I speak.  Some even played recordings of me for all the others to hear in these discussions.  So I quickly came to understand that I gave them too much honesty; more generally, too much information. 

While some responded to me with contempt and vengeance, others cried, and blamed nature for not better equipping them to get me to fall for them.  Either that or they blamed themselves for my lacking interest.  My opinions of them lowered their opinions of themselves.  But I never wished to have that much power over another; for someone giving this much leverage to me might make them appear overly needy and thus, unfortunately, unattractive. 

Keep in mind that the object of not dating them is just that: not dating them.  It’s no more, and it’s no less.  Saying things that insult them, even if no insult is intended and even though the words might seem true, is a bad approach.  Indeed, telling them anything that implies that we think them inadequate in some way whether they can change it or not, will invariably be seen as hurtful and insulting as discussed above.  So, don’t do it.  Instead of going into details about why not, just say, “I don’t feel it, and I can’t help it,” and leave it at that.  Most people will accept this detail-sparing rejection without further challenge, and you’ll avoid being compelled to pity them when they show signs of being hurt.  Even if they react badly to your jilting them, telling them precisely how they fail to live up to your dating standards only makes matters worse.  So keep it quiet, and you’ll observe less agony from them and thus be less likely to be drawn into the quagmire of pitying them; a situation that can be quite difficult and time-consuming to get yourself out of once you’re in.  While I support honesty in most every endeavor, I also believe that it can be over-used.  Some things really are best left unsaid. 

Take care.

Tom Hesley

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• Getting Love By Seeking Pity
• I Love You Emmy
• Love Born From Pity
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• Seeking Pity
• Seeking Pity to Get Love
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• Water Park Musings: 2010-06-02
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From audio journal episode:  AJE-2010-01-09-14-11. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking of skipping summer camp this year.  One big reason is that, though not completely, camp has largely failed me romantically.  When I first attended as an adult back in 1995, I hoped to find continued love and acceptance from attractive women. If you’ve read much of this blog, then you know that this has been the central theme of my entire life as a man, and it’s the one thing that my life has sorely lacked.  Thus, I thirsted for alluring ladies with whom I could enjoy frequent and sustained physical affection. 

I wasn’t necessarily seeking just one lady, although if I found a goddess, I’d have been happy with just her as long as I stayed in love.  But I would have gone for multiple simultaneous dates even, if it meant being consistently gratified romantically and sexually.  Whether it took one woman or many to accomplish this, I simply didn’t care; as long as it got done somehow.  But while it’s true that at camp, a small handful of satisfying relationships indeed developed, I’ve found no lasting romances there since 2003, and very few worthwhile outlets for my foot fetish.  So after this seven-year dry spell, I’m thinking that camp provides an insufficiently target-rich environment in which to pursue my love quest such that I’d have   reasonable   chances of winning.  So it might be time for a change in this new decade.    

Now I wish not to completely dismiss the associations I forged at summer camp.  Indeed, there have been some interesting ones, as follows:

• There was this very young adult woman in 1995 that I liked, right away, and she didn’t mind holding hands and occasionally kissing.  But she did this with many, and that put me off with her indiscriminate promiscuity, just a few days into the session.
• The friendship with   [Alandra]   in 1996 was great at the beginning.  On my end, this romance brimmed with passion.  But that summer love lost interest in me soon after that summer ended. 
• Then, I met   [Judith], a very eligible Czech counselor in 1997.  Giving her foot massages in the pool brought many of my most intense erotic fantasies to real life that summer for the first time.  But once camp was over, again, so too was our romantic relationship, pretty much.  Even while camp was in session, we only managed a few “stolen moments” together, as she had little time each day to spend with me, due to her work schedule.  Besides, camp regulations, so it’s been said, forbid counselors from involving themselves romantically with campers, and she wished, understandably, not to break the rules.  So all I could do that summer was long for her from afar.
• I met no one special in 1998.
• Then in 1999, I met camper [JenGee].  Not particularly attractive to me, but at least initially, her jovial and bubbly personality created a short-lived illusion of attraction to her.  However, subsequent dating in Philadelphia that fall, revealed an excessively hot-headed, temperamental woman who often used the F word, and who preferred not to keep a clean dwelling.  One day at parlor on Market Street, she ate ice cream from the same dish as her dog, after the brute had taken a few licks.  She was  not  stable. 
• I met [Kathy], also in 1999.  But, engaged already, she seemed unimpressed by me; though she appeared to enjoy me taking lots of pictures of her at the winter retreat. What is this anyhow?  The longer and sexier the legs, the less the ladies those legs are attached to like me. 
• I did not attend summer camp in 2000.
• 2001 brought one strikingly beautiful, partially sighted camper to Beacon Lodge.  Though she smoked routinely, most of the other guys were drawn to her too.  Thus, competition was fierce for this one.  Plus, she had a boyfriend at home, and she was very religious besides. So, there would be no sneaking off in the dead of night with this one.  In spite of all that though, I wrote her a few times.  But she either did not respond at all, or what she did communicate was terse, and lacked any passion. She did not talk about what I wanted to discuss.
• Then, there was Lisa Davidson at the winter camp retreat in 2002.  However, she also had a boyfriend.  So we ended up not really getting together until the spring of 2004.  When we did, I found that she was a smoker as well, and actually rather needy.  She carried much baggage that I was ill-equipped to handle, and this I believe drained away any sexual passion I harbored for her at the beginning. 
• Next, came counselor [Kandi] in 2003, who rejected me flatly  a couple years later, when I asked to rub her sexy feet, even though she had previously allowed [Jack] to do it.  This crushed my ego, needless to say, particularly since my foot fetish leaves me longing for pretty feet just as much as his does. 
• However, the one very good relationship that camp made possible, was (and still is) that with [Emmy]. I met her in 2003 and we built a friendship that nearly seven years later, has grown into the deepest, most abiding one I’ve ever experienced with either a male or female. Though   [Emmy]   and I are not romantically involved at this point, I suspect that if not for her coming to summer camp the past seven summers, I’d have stopped going myself much sooner.
• From 2004 through 2007, I met no other intriguing women there.
• In 2008, of all the female campers and counselors, just one 18 year-old,  [Prism], had me fantasizing over stealing away with her up to the a-frames or the Braille trail.  Towering over me at 6′ tall, she piqued my curiosity the very first time I saw her, in spite of her “pleasantly plump” figure.  Honestly though, she’s the only plump woman that I’ve ever found sexually intriguing.  Now usually, heavier girls do not interest me.  But this one did.  Unfortunately, she was notably aloof and seemed like she really didn’t want to be working there.   She shunned small talk.  More about her   here.
• Surprisingly therefore, in 2009, [Prism] was back, and for the first two thirds of the session, acted precisely as cold as she had the year before: overly custodial, like she was taking care of unruly pets rather than adult campers.  She scolded as well, in this condescending, belittling tone, like a gruff old teacher.  But she softened over the last several days, toward me at least, presumably because she realized that I was (at least) her intellectual equal.  However, she has not written me, though I put my contact info right into her hand as I departed on the last day.  I’ll write more about this encounter later.
• I did not attend camp in 2010. 

Thus, as I hope is obvious, camp accomplished   some   of what I hoped it would. But back in 1995, I guess I desired more.  I would have liked meeting four or five girls like [Emmy] over the fifteen years I’ve been going, instead of just the one.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect camp to provide endless streams of fresh romances and gorgeous feet to pamper. But I suppose that it’s no less fair than the hunter, hoping that the forests he visits have lots of the sorts of prey that he wishes to bag.  If they don’t, then he does not hunt in them.  As the saying goes: If you want to hunt elephants, then you go where the elephants are.  But it appears that camp has become a depleted forest for me, and to continue the metaphor, camp has proven to be one place where the elephants are usually   not.  Indeed, I find way too few potential lovers there, to make going and enduring the tight quarters and inevitable weight gain worthwhile.  So I must find more plentiful hunting grounds elsewhere, I think.

Unfortunately I don’t stay attracted to most women for long.  Indeed, my greatest thrills of passion generally occur in the first week or two of a new affair.  But most of those in fact, lose that,    the   very first day.  Afterwards, the lady and I either become great   romance-less   friends (romanceless love), as has happened with [Emmy] and I, or we eventually drift apart, quite likely, forever.  However, this would be less of a concern at camp, if more eligible ladies came around. 

Nevertheless, I’m fortunate that [Emmy], loving soul that she is, has chosen to grow our friendship, rather than abandon it. Even though I can offer her no exclusivity these days, over the years she’s made the “desolate” periods at camp much less lonely than had she not been around.  When there are no ladies I desire at camp for romance, at least there’s [Emmy] there, for great friendship. Hanging with her makes those dry spells bearable.  Again, without her to soften the disappointments of finding no eligible women upon my arrival at camp, I’d have stopped attending summer camp long ago.

At camp for me, with so few interesting ladies attending, it has sometimes occurred that I’d meet someone on the first day (in fact, the only lady at that session that catches my eye at all), only to discover that she’s lost her charm on the second day.  Then, for the rest of the time, I have no one else to check out, to admire from afar, to admire from a little closer, and then finally, to pursue into the woods on some sultry evening, for an hour or two of passionate kissing. Indeed, by the time the woman I desire feels comfortable enough to indulge me, I’ve done lost the passion.  Then, there’s no one else to chase. 

I consider myself lucky though, even when all I find is this    abbreviated attraction, because usually,   no one there   interests me; not even on the first day.  So it’s sadly disappointing on the second day when I think that I’ve found a wonderful sweetie to enjoy for the rest of the session, only to learn that I’ve lost the fire with so many days left in the session.  Thus, romantically speaking, I’m usually quite bored at camp, from day two on.  But if greater numbers of attractive ladies came, I think I’d have a better chance at making a great love connection, and better enjoying all of the time in the session. Sadly though, these women seem to largely steer clear of camp.

Somehow, I must secure a steady stream of new women, and work that wellspring until I find one in the bunch who captures my heart, in a relatively permanent way.  I do want lasting love, though some might think that all I really wish to do is spread my desire around.  At camp, however, it’s typical that I only see one or two ladies a year that I’d want to approach.  In most sessions, I find none.   Thus again, I may need to find richer hunting grounds.

“Rule ‘em in, and rule ‘em out.”  That’s what one therapist in the mid 1990s said when I discussed this with him.  “You rule in the ones you like, you keep them in as long as you like them, and then you rule them out soon after the relating to them stops feeling nice, and right.”  Now I certainly believe that I’m capable of enjoying a romantic relationship, for years at a time.  In fact, ultimately, this is what I desire; a lasting love relationship with one, very special lady.  But I’ve just had a lengthy run of bad luck when it comes to picking the lastingly beautiful women.  I’ve been hard pressed to find ones that like me enough to date me in the first place, and even on the infrequent occasions when some like that do appear, they do not hold   my   interest for more than a few short weeks.  Unfortunately, camp has not supplied   enough   of these longer-running types of romantic encounters and liaisons.  The cold truth is: Very few female campers (with the exception of [Emmy] and one or two others over the years, have been appealing to me.  Outside of people like [Emmy] there’s been no camper for whom I felt any electricity.   I so wish that  [Emmy]  and I could have found ways to keep the romantic fires burning for longer than just the first few months we knew each other.  I suppose that romanceless love is better than no love at all.  but it’s not ultimately what I desire. 

Yes, it just might be time to try something else, besides annual summer camp.  But what?  Stand by.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Childhood Foot Fetish
• Necessary Verses Needless Rejections
• Prism 2008
• Tom’s Diary: Bad Food At Camp
• Tom’s Diary: Camp Fatigue: 2010

The chat group resented my preference for dating tall, thin women, and they’d been riding and ridiculing me about it for days.  So at this point, I wrote this to them…

I never said that I seek someone who will be forever illness-free, [...]. Indeed, I’m quite an effective caregiver, at this very moment, mind you.

I simply prefer not to date heavy people for reasons that I’ve explained in depth. You call it rationalization; I call it explanation. That’s all.

On the contrary: genetics and life-style have just about   everything   to do with why people get sick. It has been written that we humans are indeed designed genetically to self-destruct eventually, and guess what? We always do.

Tom Hesley

The chat group took offense at my willingness to leave a lover who gets fat, just because she got fat.  I defended my position as follows:

The other circumstances in the relationship would also influence my decision to stay or go if the lady got heavy.  If her weight gain happened because of some disease or was an unforeseen effect of some medicine she started taking, then I’d be less tempted to go.  But if she grew plump due to reckless abandon, and she did not exhibit a strong desire to lose it, then I’d be more eager and tempted to leave.  This is a very hard question to answer though because in each relationship, every set of circumstances is different.

But if someone would be afraid of me leaving them for gaining weight, well, there are many other potential reasons to go  as well.  She might fear a man leaving if:

• She swore too much
• She drank excessively
• She drove too fast
• She got gray too quickly
• She was overly stubborn
• She squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle rather than the far end
• She lost her mind
• She lost weight

 

A person might up and leave us for any (or a combination of) hundreds of reasons like these. .It seems to me that more often than not, relationships move forward in spite of the potential terminating effects of these other reasons.  But when it comes to weight?  Like my ballerina friend back in 2004, some folks are just plain insecure, and they immediately rule out anyone who appears to be overly occupied with weight.  Yes, you’re right, this was probably one big reason that the ballerina called it off.

Just imagine if people didn’t worry so much about what MIGHT or MIGHT NOT happen in the future, I think relationships would flourish much better. 

Tom Hesley

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• Coping With The Ultimate Rejection

Dear [Ballerina],

Hi. How are you? I hope you’re well and that you remember me, because it’s been five years since we last spoke. You remember that summer of 2004 when I winked at you on the web. I wanted you from the first time I glimpsed the pictures you put up there. I figured that you wouldn’t respond because women who look as good as you rarely do. Your face reminded me of Helen of Troy because, in another time, just like hers did, yours would have launched a thousand ships as well. So I was not surprised that you didn’t respond right away.

In fact when you did, a month and a half later, I’d all but forgotten who you were, but was pleased that you wrote nonetheless. Then, right away we began emailing and swapping pictures, and then, a couple weeks later, talking on the phone. I tell you that you made September of 2004 one of the most romantic months of my life, for I’ve never felt the passion for a woman more strongly, than I did for you. Your memory to this day in 2009 fills my heart with joy, and my eyes with tears.

Yours is a great memory. But it’s a sad one too. I never got over how things so abruptly ended, and what’s more, I never understood it. So I never had closure. You just stopped communicating one day without any explanation, and that was that. Our relationship was suddenly through, though in my view, we were just getting started on the most wonderful journey ever.

I still wonder what drove you away, and since I never had anything from you afterwards to go on, I can only guess at what it was. I suspect several factors. But I’ll only talk about one in this letter.

You remember in early October I came to Pittsburgh to see you? You’d just visited me a week earlier and you spent one night here. I remember that you sure liked TV, as you watched mine all night long. We had such a good time then, that we decided that I’d visit you this time. So I came out and you picked me up at the train station, and drove us to your apartment in South Hills. I met your son and daughter then, and your son and I helped your daughter with her math homework. That was so much fun.

Well, during the second afternoon of my visit, I walked into your kitchen to find you cooking our supper. I stood in the doorway watching you for what could have been an hour, but what only felt like a few seconds. Your hair was just the right length. Your skin was fair and healthy. Your east European accent was so cute, as you called out orders to your kids to help with the meal. Your legs were strong yet long and intensely sexy, and nowhere on you was there even one extra ounce of fat. You were the healthy woman I’d been seeking for decades, and with more people in the US obese today than not, believe me I considered you quite the find.

In old Europe, you could have been a queen, and I’d have gladly worshipped you too because everything about you, and I mean everything, was perfect. The way you walked, the way you talked, the way you smiled and watched me so intensely as I spoke; it was all so wonderful. The way you cooked, the way you cared, the way you wanted to serve was so very charming and disarming.

I fell in love with you then, standing in that doorway, and I didn’t just suspect that I’d fallen. I knew it positively. These indescribably sweet feelings of pleasure and peace swirled in my mind and brought me close to fainting. The sense that my decades-long search for my dream girl was finally over flooded my entire being, and if I was a believer in God, I might describe this moment as Him, making a miracle. With one loud snap of his fingers, he drove any doubts I had about you and how quickly things were moving between us, away from my heart, and in that instant I would have married you. I would have thrown all caution to the wind and had no misgivings about doing so either.

What I was feeling then, was precisely opposite to the pains of loneliness and missing fulfillment that I’d come to know so well in my life. But all that had changed this weekend as I watched you cooking that meal. Every last painful emotion from past relationships disappeared. Not one voice in my head said that you might be wrong for me. In fact, they all argued profusely that you were so, so right.

I was certain that our sex had been, and would continue to be phenomenal. This was important to me because I’d always wanted good sex but never found it consistently; until it showed up in you. So this was another reason I valued you so much. I’d been looking for someone like you for so long and was desperate to end the search.

Then, there you were, the embodiment of my salvation. You were the first woman in twenty-five years who could make me hard with but a single look or just one kiss, or a brief but tender caress with your beautiful index finger. Unlike with all my other women prior, with you I didn’t have to fantasize or concentrate in order to warm my loins. With you, it happened automatically and naturally, without any forcing whatsoever. It was as though my body had been waiting for you to unlock its deep vaults of intimate passion, that had been filling up for years.

I’d been waiting so long for someone like you.  But by the time you came along, I feared that I had no passion left to offer any woman and was also frustrated that I couldn’t find someone who could please me this way. But oh my!  You sure proved me wrong. My body responded to you as a thirsty cactus does to water. It drank you in, loving the sensations, and never quite getting enough. I was convinced that there would always be more pleasure to be had and to give to you too.

I don’t know exactly what it was about you that revved up my romantic interest so. But I do know that that love lust resulted from the confluence of many factors that both you and I brought to the table. It was much more than just your body, and it wasn’t just me. It was you too, though not just you, and not just me. It was the circumstance of our lives at that time; how each of us was raised, the values with which we’ve been instilled, our particular experiences, and so on.

My fever of love was not a desire I chose to have. Never do I decide on the sorts of women who excite me. Those ladies, whoever they are, just do, perhaps due to natural selection or some other big forces that dwarf my puny will. As I see it, we don’t voluntarily decide when and where or for whom our bells of love lust ring. Put simply: We don’t control who turns us on. That’s determined by many forces beyond our control at very young ages; probably before we’re born or even conceived in fact.

You caught me looking then, and threw back a big smile. Then you returned to the meal without a word. I wanted to kiss you and to thank you for being my dream girl. I wanted to compliment you too on your charms, and I figured that some of this feeling, but not all of it mind you, came from how physically fit and trim you were. I was so glad that keeping yourself healthy was very important to you and admired your ability to do it well.

In our phone talks, you revealed that you spent many hours each day exercising and dancing, and believe me, that work paid off for you. Though in your mid-forties and now an ex-ballerina, you still looked great; just as good as you did a decade earlier in those pictures you’d shown me the previous night, of you twirling and dancing joyfully around the stages of the most exclusive theaters in Pittsburgh. I revered your discipline that allowed you to stay as thin at 47 as you were when you were 17. So as you cooked on, I walked over to and stood at your back, putting my hands under your arms and around your waist to cup your flat stomach. Then I said, “You’ll never know how glad I am that you’re thin.”

You then grew angry. That one comment would throw up a wall between us that never came down again. “What do you mean?” you snapped, clasping each of my wrists in your hands and throwing them away from your ribs. “You know,” you argued, “I used to be just like you. I hated fat people, and always avoided them. But I’ve learned! I’ve learned that they can’t help the way they are, and that it’s wrong for people like us to hold their weight against them. But you don’t care that they’re human beings. It seems like all you care about is a woman’s body.  If she happens to be too fat, then you ignore the person inside and just throw her away. But they have feelings too I tell you. Don’t their minds and hearts mean anything to you? How can you be so cruel? That’s mean and crazy, and you really ought to grow up!”

I was so shocked and dismayed at the abruptness and degree of your hostility that I said nothing back. I just walked into the living room without another word, and we didn’t speak of this again for the remaining two days of my visit. But oh, how cold and distant we became. You stopped sleeping with me that very night.  Instead you chose the couch in the living room. You gave short yes-no answers whenever I’d ask you anything. The morning you drove me to the train, you were cordial but I knew that once we said good-bye and you kissed me on the cheek, that I’d never hear from you again. I haven’t either. Not even to this day in 2009.

When I got home that afternoon, I called you only to get your voice mail. I left several messages during the following week, inviting you to call me back. But you never did. I sent you email too, but to no avail. You totally ignored me and I had no way to discuss it with you.I was crushed.

For months afterward, I frequently awoke in tears. What we had seemed so right. So how could it have turned out so wrong? Losing you profoundly saddened me. What’s more, you allowed me no say, preventing any way for me to explain what I meant when I said that I was thankful that you were so thin. But I want you to know. So I’ll write it here and maybe someday you’ll find it. Maybe someday, you’ll understand. Maybe someday you’ll call me again. Maybe someday we could be friends. Maybe, maybe, maybe,… Maybe not. But I hope you’ll at least read the rest of this, even if you do nothing more.

First off, I do not hate fat people. I maintain good friendships with lots of them, and I’ve worked productively with many more. I enjoy their company, value their opinions, and respect their judgments. I also empathize with their difficulties in losing weight because I’ve struggled myself to get thin. So I understand that trimming down and then keeping the pounds off is hard. It’s a never-ending battle, to be sure.

But I believe nonetheless, that permanent weight loss can be done. In fact, it has been done by millions. So I disagree with your claim that the heavy cannot help that they’re heavy. While a small percentage of them do have medical problems that prevent them from losing weight, this is not true for the vast majority; as proved by the masses who manage to lose weight all the time.

I care about these humans. Perhaps you didn’t know that before you came along, I dated mostly the heavy. So you don’t have to convince me that there are some heavy, yet very wonderful people out there, who’d give everything to please their lovers. I dated several such women and those relationships lasted the longest of all; at least until I met my current girlfriend. These women were very caring, understanding, and thoughtful. I could not leave them for months sometimes, because I couldn’t bare the thought of jilting them. Believe me, I cared deeply about them.

I knew that losing weight was a life challenge for them and felt mighty sorry too because of it. But I also realized that I couldn’t be the superman who would save them; who would carry them away from a life of solitude, brought on because others avoided them for being so big. I wanted to be the hero though. I wanted to be the bigger man, and I cried for many an hour, once I understood that I couldn’t.

Why couldn’t I? Because my strongest, most profound desire beyond good food, clothing, and a warm and quiet place to live, has always been to enjoy lots of erotic quality time with beautiful women. Mine is a thirst that only women like you can quench. But for whatever reason, I just don’t feel erotic when lying with heavy women.

Before you, I struggled in vane to “scale down” my vision of my ideal woman many times; but never succeeded. Indeed, I wanted to somehow learn to love the fat ladies. After all, there were so many more of those types around than the skinny ones, and usually whenever I managed to attract someone, she was big. So, changing they type of lady my heart beats for seemed like a good idea since I was way more likely to attract a fat lady than a thin one.

I longed to learn how to actually get off on the weighty. I prayed to God and the devil too, to make me lust for them. I spent hundreds of hours meditating; trying to convince myself that I physically enjoyed the so-called big and beautiful just as much as the petite and trim. I dated heavy women lots of times besides, though truth be told, I found the encounters unfulfilling. In the worst cases, they disgusted me. So after five or six failed attempts at dating the heavy and close to two years in therapy, I realized that I can’t help that I want certain things in certain ways. I can’t help who I desire, and so, I can’t change who I desire, and I desired you in a big way.

So please don’t blame me for wanting you but avoiding the heavy people. I am a good man, and my aversion to fat ladies comes not from prejudice or shallow thinking or an unwillingness to get to know them.  Instead, it comes from years of failed efforts to see them more favorably. I can’t help that I found you irresistible but not them.  So it’s strange that you would hold this biological nature of mine against me. Well, I hope you understand me better now and that you realize that my desire for you was a valuable thing that you discarded without taking the time to understand it.

So how would you have me handle this? Should I have continued dating the heavy while passing up chances to spend time with the tall and thin ladies that I so dreamed of? I couldn’t do that with sincerity, and if that makes me an uncaring person in your eyes, then I’ll just have to live with that judgment, because I cannot change. I know I cannot change because I’ve tried relentlessly for years to change.  But at least, through all that effort, I deeply understand now that I can no longer lay with the Rubenesque while my heart longs for the slender.  I will not do that to either myself or them.

Sure. I care that they’re human beings. I care about them a lot, as human beings. But I can no longer forego my dreams by staying with them, while they fulfill theirs by being with me.

Yes, it’s a sad thing that so many guys pass by the pleasantly plump and that as a result, these women are often left alone. But that’s not my problem, for I cannot solve it unless I deny my own needs. Now honestly: Do you really think that a man should give up his dreams in order to make a woman happy that he does not desire? I do not, and if you do, then you’re coo coo.

Besides, even if I withhold from them what they want, others will still love them. Lots of guys adore frumpy females, and I’d be doing a disservice to them by clinging to one despite my true feelings against that. I’d be keeping a lady that I really don’t desire, from men who do want her. That seems wrong. Just because I reject her, doesn’t mean that she’s doomed to a life of chronic rejection from all other men. So don’t blame people like me for the loneliness and isolation often experienced by the heavy.

To me, the only way a person can ever achieve complete happiness is to know and accept his set of preferences for women unconditionally, and then spend his time seeking to fulfill them as they are. He’s merely spinning his wheels if he wastes valuable time trying to change what he wants.  Experience shows that such efforts in inner self makeover are doomed to fail, and result in lower self esteem and much frustration and profound deprivation. We really can’t easily change what we truly desire.  All we can do is either act to satisfy it or act to repress it, and I choose to go for it rather than deny it.

But instead of going after what we really want, we often second-guess our desires when we believe that they can be changed.  Then we never get around to actually fulfilling them. We question whether they are morally straight or unselfish enough to pursue. The result is that we end up going without what we want because we think it lame or immoral. Thus, we’re left perpetually unsure of ourselves and sadly, unfulfilled to boot. So it makes little sense to think of me as shallow or selfish, for I am what I am, and I want what I want. I can’t change that, and if you thought about this at any length, you’d probably discover that you can’t change your desires either.  Therefore, was it not wrong of you to fault me because I cannot change mine?

When we met, I knew what I wanted, and accepted that as unchangeable as my fingerprints. Whatever made you the goddess I saw working the stove that day, though I didn’t fully understand it, I cherished it. I was so thankful to have stumbled across our situation, where everything aligned perfectly. I was thankful for you. For the first time ever, I had this strong sense that I’d found a relationship that was as good as they get; I felt that I would never find another one better than ours. Even if ours would have gotten tough at times (which it didn’t), I would have stayed with it because I had this strong idea that no relationship would ever be better.

Now I understand why people hold on to what, to the outside word, looks like a doomed love affair. Perhaps they feel about their lovers as I felt about you; that no other person could make them feel as wonderful. The good times, if they’re really good, make it possible to weather the bad. We had good times like those, you and I, and if you hadn’t so completely cut me off, I would to this day, still love you.  I’m sure.

You mentioned their minds. You seemed to be saying that while we might not be able to pleasure ourselves from a person’s outsides, then we should be able to do so with what’s on the inside. But I wonder: Does it really make sense to split humans apart in this way? Mind Vs. body, physical appearance Vs. personality, Inner beauty Vs. outer beauty, and body Vs. soul. I don’t think so.

Perhaps you were upset because you thought I was placing too much value on your body and not enough on your mind. This idea is wrong because it’s not true that people who express interest in a person’s physical attributes have no regard for the person’s mind. I say that they can’t help but regard the mind since it’s the mind that animates an otherwise lifeless body. A body can’t very well be sexy without a mind controlling it in sexy ways. The mind and the body are fused into one in such extensive and broad-sweeping ways that it’s impossible to tell where the body ends and the mind begins when discussing sexual attraction. The ways in which the mind controls the body, along with the body’s shape work together to make the body sexy. You can’t have sexy without both of these working in harmony. So even when someone says that they like your sexy legs, they’re in fact saying so much more. Not only are they complimenting you on the shape of your legs, but they’re also admiring how you move them when you walk, or cross them when you sit down, and so on. They’re admiring your mind as well, just as I was admiring yours when I complimented you on your thinness. Again, I’m sorry you didn’t see my point of view more clearly. I would have gladly explained it to you if you hadn’t severed communications with me so abruptly and so completely.

If your anger at me stemmed from your pity for the heavy, then I think you underestimate how attractive some guys find them. Not everyone thinks them ugly. What about you? Do you think they’re ugly? Do you think you need to defend them because you seem them as ugly? Is this why you rose to their defense with such intensity and sharpness when I commented on how thankful I was that you were thin? If so, then perhaps you’re shallower than I. You did say that you were like me once. Perhaps you still are. The fact is that people’s tastes are not universal. Though admittedly, many prefer a healthy and thin mate, many choose the chubby. Some enjoy the pleasantly plump, and they worry about crushing someone who has too little meat on her bones. There are lots of married heavy folks. So they do a better job at mating than you give them credit for. Perhaps?

In light of the above, why do people expect others to love with a blind eye toward a person’s physical attributes? Do you expect this? Is this why you snapped at me, because I do not love with this blind eye? You know, it’s been said that you can tell a great deal about a person just from one drop of his blood. So if that’s true, then would not his appearance tell us so much more? After all, there’s much more of it than that drop of blood. At a glance we can deduce his general health and make some pretty good guesses about his life style and preferences. By listening to his cough, we’d know if he smokes or not, or has some lung disease that perhaps we should avoid. By smelling his scent over time, we can tell if he values cleanliness or if he is taking some medicines that alter his scent. A foul odor generally means poor health or at least, poor health practices on his part. By listening to his speech, we can learn much about his education level and the culture in which he was raised. By observing how heavy he is, we can figure out how much he likes to eat and what sorts of food. From his weight, we can also predict how healthy he’ll likely be in the future and how much he values good health besides. You’d agree I think, that a relationship with someone who does not value good health as we do would be difficult. So I say that with all this data, we can make wiser choices about whether this person would be a good mate. By paying attention to this data, we can avoid lots of wasted time by steering clear of relationships that would not be (could not be) what we want. Sometimes, you don’t need to actually get into a relationship with some to know that it would be bad if you did. I’ve learned over the years that relationships with the heavy don’t make me happy. So I hope you’ll forgive me when I turn away from them these days, without even giving them a try.

We don’t control who turns us on. Do you think I do, and because of this, do you think I can decide to be attracted to the heavy? Let me assure you. I don’t, and I can’t. Since I can’t control this, you’re wrong to judge me harshly for it. It was wrong of you to end our relationship without as little a single discussion. The reality is: What turns us on is a complex convergence of hundreds or thousands of variables that involve ourselves, our lovers, the genetics and upbringings of each, and the circumstances surrounding them. Perhaps a small number of these variables we control. But most we do not. Further, it’s usually not just one of these variables that makes us desire or not. This is why desire is so hard to manipulate. You’ve either got it by default or you don’t, and not all the makeup, hair color, fancy clothes, or perfume in the world will change that.

You had it with me and you didn’t have to try at all.

You know if I thought about you enough right now, I could bring a tear to my eye. Your sudden departure five years ago left a wound in my psyche that has not yet healed. Oh I don’t think of you very often. But when I do, there are still some strong emotions there and I always wish that things had worked out better. But I don’t regret complimenting you on your thinness; I’d do it over the exact same way. What I’d do differently though, would be to talk more to you before you sent me home. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the wherewithal back then to say what I’ve said in this letter. Let me ask you: Would this have made any difference? It seemed like you had made up your mind and that no amount of talking would have changed it.

Does it change anything now? I shouldn’t ask that because if you showed up in my life again tomorrow, I’m not in a position to respond to you. I have a wonderful girlfriend. [Emmy] never bolted on me and she always takes the time to listen to me. You didn’t do that. You handled the situation poorly and because you were so reckless with my heart, I don’t think I could ever fall in love with you again. Still though, when I look at the pictures you gave me, I wonder at what could have been, and regret that we didn’t get further than we did.

Well, thanks for listening. I needed to get this out. I hope that you’re doing well and that you’re not given to the sorts of too-quick reactions these days that drove us apart back then. I’ll just have faith that the experience grew you as well as it did me. Do take care and perhaps in the next life, we can try it again.

With love,
Tom Hesley

Hello.

It’s Tom here again with some background about me to help put this whole love quest thing into context.

Let’s see. I’m a 48 year old single white male. I never married, never had children, nor do I want to. I’m 5’ 8’’ tall at 179 pounds. Currently, I live where I grew up, in central, PA. However, in my working life of nearly 20 years, I’ve lived in Dayton, OH, Pittsburgh, PA, and Philadelphia, PA.

I began my education in public school. At that time, I lived at home with my parents and sisters, like most kids. But in third grade, I switched to a special needs school in Pittsburgh due to weak eyesight, which affected me since birth.

Well, if I had it my whole life you may ask, then why didn’t I switch schools sooner? Because the low vision did not lower my grades in the early years, and I liked being close to my family. The teachers in kindergarten through second grade accommodated me lovingly. They liked me and were eager to help. So my grades stayed very good, my self-confidence kept pretty high, and I got along well with the other kids.

But it got harder to keep up as the lessons grew more complicated, as they had in third grade. Kids teased me then about my thick glasses, threw rocks at me, and beat me up in the school yard at recess. I grew frustrated since I could no longer follow the training, and teachers grew impatient as I got angrier. I missed more and more of the lessons, as teachers taught more with chalk boards, overheads, and copies of their handwritten notes; which I could not read well without getting very close. If I was going to have any chance at a good education, I needed a different school; one equipped to handle low-vision kids like me. So, in February, 1970, I left the school across the street for, hopefully, a more positive learning experience in Pittsburgh.

Of course, this meant living much of the school year away from home since each way to Pittsburgh took more than two hours. So with the new school over a hundred miles away, I stayed there overnight during the week. The only times I saw my family were the weekends and on summer breaks. Initially, this adjustment hurt all of the family, and my Mom agonized for years over whether she should have sent me away. In the end though, we all agree that she chose wisely, and I’m grateful to her for sticking to it though she missed me and cried over it often. I cried too, especially on Sunday nights, for the first couple years. But I’m glad we all stuck with the new school, as it did what we’d hoped it would by giving me a second, much better chance at a decent education.

Though my vision is low, it’s always been stable, thank goodness. I have enough to be productive in many “sighted” activities. I read large print, take buses, and watch TV. I know what colors are. My favorite is a deep yet vibrant blue. I maintain the house, doing most repairs and enhancements myself. I fix computers, mow the lawn, do light construction, perform plumbing and electrical repairs, and I paint. I know how to use power tools like drills, saws, sanders, and heat guns. That great school in Pittsburgh taught me well how to better apply the vision I had to maximize my independence and productivity.

However, the biggest drawback of my reduced sight is that I cannot drive. This fact has complicated my love quest greatly since good old sweet sixteen. In fact, many women who’ve rejected me confirmed this. “I can’t date you,” they’d say with a tone that challenged my audacity to ask them out in the first place. “You don’t drive,” as though I should have known better than to seek their affections. Nonetheless, finding sustained pleasure in love remains my top priority. Though my eyes are weak, everything else is strong; including a desire to enjoy fulfilling erotic relationships.

The search has been hard for different reasons at different times. During high school, I struggled because there weren’t many girls there that I wanted. Why? The high school was small, with less than 150 boys and girls combined, and of all the girls, only four to six interested me romantically. Of these, three were too old. Plus, the remaining three were quite popular with the other boys. Thus, competition was fierce, leaving the pickings quite slim. So I had few dates in high school, and no one ever asked me out first.

I was also quite shy. The prettiest girls scared me most. The more I wanted them, the more I feared approaching them. This meant that the girls I desired most were the least likely to know that I wanted them. I never quenched my teenage thirst for great sex. Not until well after finishing high school (which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing), did I ever score. Looking back on that time from here in 2009, I’m glad I didn’t have sex and am thankful that I never got anyone pregnant. But in the 70s, I hated this abstinence forced on me as it was by the circumstances at the school, by what some described as my average looks, and my own fears.

My fear seemed my worst enemy. So, I spent the first decade or two of my love quest, trying to rid myself of it; striving first to understand it, then learning how to beat it, and finally, once I realized that I couldn’t beat it, learning to happily live with it. I’ll share how this came about in upcoming episodes.

Fear turned out to be quite the foe. I could neither silence it with alcohol, nor marijuana, nor a hundred self-help books, nor direct confrontation, and not with years of psychotherapy. Fear has been such an encompassing and basic part of my conscience that eliminating it completely proved impossible. So I’ve not destroyed it. However, I do go after what I want, even though the fear accompanies me everywhere. I negotiate with it and sometimes, it allows me to speak.

I’ve made peace with fear, and learned to tell my desires to women, not so much in spite of it, but rather through working with it. What do I mean by that? Well nowadays, I see fear as a protective parent or older brother, watching over and guiding me, using its strong but gentle hand to steer me away from situations likely to be fruitless. But I didn’t discover until well into adulthood that fear almost never the bad guy, and there are times when it does not restrain me, even around the tallest, thinnest, most attractive women. Sometimes, it allows me to approach. And those situations were the most likely to turn into full-blown, happy relationships; more so than when I chose to ignore it and press on without considering its counsel. Few (if any) times where I defied my fear ever turned out good. In retrospect, I should have listened to it more that I did. It has wisdom and so it knows when the women like me and when they don’t, and it permits me to approach those that do and pushes me away from those who’d rather I fly a kite. I’ve come to understand how that works and I hope you’ll check out future episodes for more details.

Though in my teens, fear kept me away from almost every pretty girl, at times I rose above it and made my interest known. However, usually the very thing happened that I feared: They rejected me and threw in some distain and jeers for good measure. My fear knew what it was talking about when it said, “Stay clear of this one.” Nonetheless, I enjoyed some potent romantic times. A few girls said yes. A few girls, my fear permitted me to seek out.

One case was our tenth grade prom. That date turned out to be perhaps the best romantic date I ever had before or since. I asked this female employee if she’d go with me. When she agreed, I almost fainted with thrill. The date turned out well and even today, I remember most every minute of it. But because I was a minor (sixteen at the time), she wouldn’t go out with me again. And by the time I came of age, she had left the school and I, in this pre-Internet era, could not locate her though I tried.

Besides the prom date, I had a “first love” and it was in eleventh grade that my passion for her really ignited. But for various reasons, anxiety tainted that association because her first love was someone other than me, and, I knew it. Plus, she and I had very different values. I was too young to understand that intellectually, although my conscience got it loud and clear. And so, at least during high school, we never connected romantically; although I daydreamed about her often during class, as I watched her much more than I paid attention to the teacher. She was just so beautiful, and I’m certain I failed a few exams due to focusing too much on her.

She and I had a few encounters. But she’d never come as my date to school activities. True, we’d dance sometimes and she’d let me hold her hand once every several blue moons, though she never squeezed back. She’d allow me to nuzzle her shoulder during a slow dance. But her arms only rested on my shoulders; never drawing me closer. Not in high school anyhow. Once in a while, she’d even come out with me for pizza or movie, at my prompting of course. But she never invited me to go with her anywhere. Any activity where we’d be announced as a couple, she rejected. In fact, I had asked her to our tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade proms as well as numerous dances and field trips. But she always said no, though she said yes to others. This hurt, and the pains of her repeated,  chronic rejections followed me though many of the early years of my love quest. Let’s just call her   [First Love].   She really was that and to me, because   [First Love]   always came first. I would have taken her to the tenth grade prom. But I took the employee instead, since   [First Love]   rejected me. Nowadays, I don’t see the employee lady as second best even though she was not my first choice, because I ended up falling in love with her afterwards, once I realized just how memorable that prom date was. Still though, my feelings for   [First Love]   never wavered and I would continue chasing her for many years; long after the employee departed, and long after high school ended.

Of course I did more than just quest for a girlfriend as a student. I enjoyed repairing electronic devices and dabbling in amateur radio; I loved anything electronic. Additionally, I worked several little jobs as a teen, which included a kitchen helper, a telephone switchboard operator, and receptionist. I sold Christmas trees each December to raise funds for the school, and I played music at our dances. I also managed the school radio station and interned at KDKA radio in 12th grade. These jobs made me feel important and confident, and this I thought, gave me a leg up on the competition for girls. Though I loved the fun of this work, I did it to attract more girls as well. The jobs paid money and as I saw it, girls liked money and guys who had it. So anything I could do to make more of it, I did.

Electronics, specifically radio, fascinated me. This was a good thing too because aside from a few friendships, it was the only pursuit that distracted me from feeling sad for not having a girlfriend. I cried often after seeing girls I wanted hanging out with men I deemed beneath me. Yet those girls avoided me like I was beneath them! They seemed to view me as badly as I did their loser boyfriends. They saw me as the loser, and those losers as winners. Go figure. I didn’t get it. How they could want those cads and not me? I thought this was because I appeared ugly to them. Indeed, some of them said this to me. But over all, I didn’t believe them. So, I kept pressing for a good date. True, I got frustrated often for not finding good ones. But never did I consider my looks a curse, nor did I obsess over them.

I rarely used cologne or dressed up, and did little to enhance my appearance beyond the daily bathing, shaving, nail cutting, hair grooming, teeth brushing, and wearing clean clothes and deodorant. I was secure about my looks even though some said I was plain and unappealing. I never wore designer clothes, gold necklaces, or name brand shoes because I was fine and whole without them. Indeed, as I looked in the mirror to straighten my hair, I liked the guy looking back. He was reasonably handsome with much going for him, and he should be able to attract the girls he liked. Yet in high school, no girl ever desired him back. They laughed as he passed or scurried away on the street as they walked arm-in-arm with their thuggish boyfriends; those guys with the rap sheets that terrorized us civilized folk. The girls preferred these “bad boys” to him. To me: me who never had a police record; me, who got drunk only seven times in high school; me, who never beat up anyone; me, who had better grades; and me who had the promise of a good career in electronics. All these good things that I had, those losers did not. So what did they have that drove the girls wild? With all the jobs and good performing I was doing, I thought I should have been more attractive than the losers. But the girls disagreed. The fact that I wasn’t confounded and confused me, and I’d spend many an hour pondering why this was so through the rest of my love quest.

My powerlessness to answer led me through years of depression, which stretched way beyond high school, and sometimes, affects me to this very day. But as I entered adulthood, electronics kept me sane and made all this bearable. It gave me something besides dating to focus on. While studying, I could forget the nasty looks and words from pretty girls. So, I continued studying radio and TV repair into the mid 80s.

In fact, upon my 1979 graduation, I attended trade school for two years. There as well as at the school for blind children, I only saw a few ladies at Connelley that I liked, but more than in high school. There weren’t many female students in the electronics classes, although the school taught other subjects that drew more just down the hall. Still, I was too scared to approach any ladies. I liked one woman in my advanced electronics class. As usual though, I was too afraid to tell her. But she figured it out after catching me watching her a few times. Flattered she was, but not interested in dating me. So while I did well in trade school scholastically, I had still made no love connections. No matter though because two months after graduation in 1981, I was onto my next adventure; my first full-time job.

In August, I got a temporary job as an electronics technician, also in Pittsburgh. The first few months were hectic because I had no direct supervisor to teach me about the equipment I’d be repairing. There was no senior technician because that fellow had taken ill some months earlier. With him gone, his office soon filed up with hundreds of broken audio visual devices. So once that pile got real big, they felt compelled to bring in someone temporary to repair some it. So they hired me.

I was all alone with this mountain of malfunctioning projectors, TV monitors, and video cassette recorders. My mission: To fix it all. It was nice though, because no one pressured me. They understood that I, fresh from trade school and the only technician there, was in way over my head. Soon however, I could repair three to six items per day once I learned how things worked and how to order parts. Fortunately, most projects were simple — such as frayed power cords, broken belts, missing knobs, and burned out lights. Yet, there was much to do, simple though it was.

As in trade school, again I feared failing and so, spent many extra hours at the office and took home manuals to read over the weekends. I so wanted not to screw it up. Thus until the senior technician returned, I didn’t have time to think about women. I was all about the job at that point.

But ten weeks after I started, the boss man returned. I thought that I’d be laid off. However, the directors liked my work so much that they voted to keep me on to assist, until we finished fixing that massive pile of equipment. With two guys working, it soon disappeared. Then, they asked me to stay for over a year more, and I soon realized that I didn’t have to work so hard to please them. So I had time to resume my love quest, and resume it I did.

Four ladies at work caught my eye. I was still too afraid to say to ladies that I liked them directly. So I’d let them know by just hanging around them until they got it. Then, either they’d pull me aside and say that they knew I was interested and that they’d love to go out (which never happened at that job). Or they’d say sadly that they already had boyfriends and that, while they’d love to go out, they couldn’t. This always happened. I wrung out all four ladies this way, and you guessed it. None were available. So, with no one there left to pursue, that familiar ache of loneliness soon came back again. The excitement of the new job along with the hope of meeting a special lady there was gone.

To cope, I sought religion. Perhaps while following this story, you’ve wondered about my religious background. So let me say that I am neither religious nor spiritual these days. Though raised Catholic, as I matured, believing in things through sheer faith became impossible; especially once my beloved and devout grandmother passed away in 1980. I’ve always been a terrible follower, and so believed in nothing in my early twenties, simply because another said I should. I’m a concrete guy, and so, must sense it for myself to believe it with conviction. However, all of that notwithstanding, as a young adult I attended church often. In 1982, church was good. The people welcomed me and that felt nice. But it was just a distraction, for it left my heart still empty once the services were over. I enjoyed that temporary respite though, because anything (even church) was better than sitting at home on a pretty Sunday morning, alone, with nothing to do. With each passing year, I grew less and less spiritual. But it would be fourteen more years until I completely dismissed the church as a useful means to feel less lonely for having no lovers.

My interest in church came in spits and spurts. So after several months, church lost its appeal as this particular spurt came to an end. I knew that I’d probably not meet my lady there because all of them seemed to believe more strongly than I in God. The whole speaking-in-tongues thing and the faith-healing was just plain crazy to me, and so I could not respect women who believed so strongly without proof. Blind Faith and I never got along, and so I felt guilty attending. Parishioners questioned me about why I was going and suggested I stop until I “saw the light.” So I did stop going regularly in late 1982 once I realized that love questing in church would probably be a fruitless endeavor.

Currently, I’m agnostic – neither believing nor disbelieving in God. He may be out there. He may not. I can’t prove it either way; nor can anyone else for that matter. That’s good enough for me, but not so for women at large who generally believe in a greater entity that regulates their lives and helps them succeed when they follow his rules. They call me a humanist and one even said that I was a son of the devil and kept her children away from me, fearing that I’d corrupt their views about heaven and hell and how God wants us to serve him. I fear not the possibility of no life after death as they do. I’m fully prepared to embrace this if it turns out that way. But without strong faith and hope in a life hereafter, the love quest got harder; not because God was thwarting me, but because the women I encountered looked down on me for questioning. Staying true to my beliefs has cost me dearly in my love quest.

Long ago, I stopped arguing religion. Nonetheless, when I was a stronger believer in the 70s and early 80s, I spent hours a week praying to God, asking him to brighten my dark heart, and bring the woman of my dreams to me. Well, he never did, even after two decades of praying. Indeed I’ve done better in my search by myself, once I stopped believing that he’d do it for me. God was not going to win my love quest for me. No, if this would ever happen, I’d have to do it myself.

But I digress. So let me get back to my job.

Eighteen months into the job, in the spring of 1983, I realized that I could not earn the money I wanted fixing home entertainment devices. Nor had I found a true love at Pitt. It didn’t look like I would either, for I had quickly run through all the women in mine and surrounding departments. Like I said, none would date me. Though I made my own money, aloneness still followed me everywhere. Thus far, the women weren’t impressed with my achievements, hard to achieve as they were, and successful as I was at achieving them.

So when that tech position ended, I went in a new direction; to college for computer programming, a career that promised a higher wage, and would bring more desirable ladies to me, which it eventually did. But during the first two years, I made only three new friends because I was a bookworm. As usual, I was terribly afraid of failing, and since I’d been out of high school for nearly five years, rusty in my reading and writing skills too. So, besides the usual college level work, I also had to relearn many of those forgotten skills. This left little time for socializing between 1984 and 1986, as I spent most every hour outside of class studying. Even the summers were full in those days, as I took my Calculus courses during the first two summers, computer classes in 1986, and a writing class in 1987. Actually, I’m glad I didn’t meet a lady then, because I’d have surely flunked out. There wouldn’t have been time for managing both an education and a relationship although occasional sex without strings was nice.

I longed for my dream girl just the same. So much so, that I visited my first psychotherapist in the fall of 1986. For nine months, we met each week, and though I couldn’t put my finger on any particular insights I got, I did start feeling better about being alone, and less afraid to talk to college women. At times in therapy, I just wanted to get rid of the desire for women rather than satisfy it. No doubt you’re wondering, “How could you want something, and then wish that you didn’t?” Well, at this time the rewards in my love quest were so few, and the disappointment so great, that the longing had become painful, leading me into many humiliating situations and leaving me feeling ashamed. Often women reacted so negatively when I showed them interest that I began feeling that my desires were wrong. At 25 years of age, I believed that though the world was full of beautiful women, none would ever think me beautiful.

Now a few women agreed to date me. So I could attract some, but not those I really desired. I was so disenchanted with the love quest by then, that I’d have been relieved to find that why hadn’t yet found Her was simply because no such person existed. At least that way, my aloneness could not be my fault. That would have been easier to swallow than the idea that there might be some correctable thing wrong with me that was keeping them away.

The therapist listened patiently, offering a consoling voice. I liked discussing the love quest with someone who understood my pains of loneliness and the dilemmas of how to satisfy it. But he refused to assure me that She was just a figment of my imagination. He also assured me profusely that I was not defective in any way, even with my low vision. He thought that She was out there and that I just had to find her. He thought I was fine and that if I was going to ever find Her, I’d have to search harder and smarter. I’ll tell you how I did these things in upcoming episodes.

Therapy encouraged me to intensify my love quest efforts, though I left it with more questions than I had going in. I don’t know how. But even with those questions unanswered, I was, while not cured, markedly better. Maybe it was the therapist’s cheering me on or his unwavering confidence in me. I’m not sure. But I felt more confident asking ladies out. I had achieved the objective of that therapy, which was to get more women into my life. That therapy gave me a big push that got me very far along the journey of my love quest.

Meanwhile back at college, I also improved at the coursework, which meant that I could study less. So in the fall of 1986, I joined a computer users group of sixty students. We sent email back and fourth, and met each other for meals between classes. At night we partied, and so I drank back then, quite a bit. I was known for carrying this round black bottle that had the words “Get Bombed” printed in white letters on the side. I’d fill it with a quart of Jim Beam whiskey and take to many a gathering. In fact, this flask looked like a bomb and the girls seemed charmed by my tipsy displays as I held onto it. I did make a couple close female friends from all that. Yet this life style was not quite what I was after. I wanted them to like me for the sober me; not the intoxicated version. But thinking that I’d have to sacrifice my values a little to get what I wanted, I went along with the drinking for a good while. I attended all sorts of college parties, visited bars, dances, festivals, and hung around the student union, looking for ladies who would come to my bed and please me.

But, with my collegiate education nearly complete, I thought I might have to leave Pittsburgh for a job. So, I avoided serious relationships, though I ached for one. I knew that if I found it, that it would only be temporary. But I didn’t care. Anything would be better than nothing, even a one-night stand. Also, the ladies I met, while very nice, either did not attract me or vice versa. Yes, that same problem once more. I always seemed to interest the ones I didn’t care about. Nonetheless, I made lots of lady friends; a real change from life before college. So while college didn’t drop a dream girl in my lap, it, along with therapy, moved me closer to Her, for I had more female friends and was asking more of them out than ever before. The odds of finding Her thus, had improved much.

While I asked more for dates than ever before in a given year, I also got more love rejections. In a way, this was also rewarding. Rejections were better than nothing at all, as they proved that I had begun to master my fear of approaching ladies. The more rejections I got I reasoned the less afraid of ladies I must be. So the chronic rejections themselves became a measure of success in my love quest. At least now, I was hunting, trying different approaches, and acquiring the emotional scars to show it. So at last, in college, I finally managed to break out of my shell.

I finished school in 1988, with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science along with a minor in mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh; the same place I’d worked some five years earlier. From there, I went on to spend fifteen years, working as a software engineer for a fortune 500 company.

My hope that the computer field would bring more women into my life came true. Indeed, during my first two years, I met hundreds of women; more than in my entire adult life prior. Now that I had more money than ever, I could afford to try dating services, attend weekend-getaways, and go to dances and meetings with singles groups. I signed up for my first dating service immediately after cashing my first big paycheck. I then applied for a second one a year later.

Then in 1992, I bought a nice home after a few sweet raises. This, I thought, would surely impress the ladies and I was certain that only a little more time stood between me and my dream girl, who would, at any moment, waltz right in and complete my life. In fact, I bought an extra-large refrigerator, reserved space for her things in my bedroom alongside my king sized waterbed, and saved a spot in the garage for her car.

One day in 1994, a neighbor called as I was sealing my back deck, and invited me to his church. Eager to bond with my new neighbors, I forgot about why I had abandoned church in 1982, and I went with him, just to check it out. To my surprise, I found lots of eligible women. But soon, just as had happened some twelve years earlier, II quickly grew bored with it. I was no more a believer in 1994 than I had been in 1982. The truth was, I wasn’t there to worship. Instead, I went to meet women. That was it, and they knew it quickly. Once again, none would go out with me. Another strategy tried in the love quest, and another one failed.

Meanwhile, at work, I asked over a hundred ladies for dates, hoping that now that I was in my own home, they’d surely say yes. I invited them for lunch and hosted a couple team-building sessions and parties, so that all would see how well I was doing and appreciate how good a provider I could be. They came, they complimented me, and some stayed a couple hours. They liked my house and how well I kept it. But in the end, like my latest church stint, the big house and good salary never won any hearts. So no one ever parked her car in my garage. No one ever put her underwear in those empty drawers in my bedroom. No one ever brought any food to keep in my refrigerator for her next visit. I had instead, this cold draft that I felt against my face every night I ascended the steps to the second-floor master bedroom; a daily reminder that no one was up there waiting for me, and that no one I’d met so far wanted to be up there. So, after four years, with my dressers, garage, refrigerator, and heart still empty, I came to the conclusion that once again, a big change would be necessary to move me ahead in my love quest. I could not turn that great house into a wonderful home full of love thought I put every spare hour I had into the quest. I began feeling tethered to that house and soon, came to hate it there.

So in 1996, in that final year in the house, I came to look forward to Mondays and dread Fridays while my coworkers felt the opposite. They couldn’t wait for Fridays but hated Mondays. Why was I so different? Because I knew that come Friday, I’d likely spend the entire weekend alone, and that come Monday, I’d at least have people around me again when the new work week began. The loneliness burned in my heart. Career-wise I’d come so far. But socially, I ached as much as ever for sustained eroticism, and love.

As fate had it, I discovered Philadelphia, a city with way more single women. Some friends from there invited me to visit. So in December, 1996 I went, and loved it from the minute I arrived. Pretty ladies adorned every city block downtown. Plus, with the extensive public transportation, I could get to the social spots much easier than where I was currently living in Ohio. So, it didn’t take long to decide to sell my house and move there.

The Philly move turned out to be another big step forward in the love quest. For the first time, I could access thousands of women easily, without transportation worries. So I made friends, went to bars, boat trips, restaurants, skating parties, a trip to New York City, and any event I could to place myself among potential mates. One day even, I had two dates; one in the afternoon, and one that night. Each weekend, I’d pick a spot in the city, and then learn how to get there on the bus or train, and then go there, striking up conversations with beautiful strangers along the way. The thrill of learning a new city kept me from feeling too lonely, for the first year at least.

But after three plus years there, and only a few delightful but short-lived relationships (Cathy, Violet, Carol, Joyce, Karen, [Vee],   [Lynn],   [Tina],   Joanna), I was still alone. Now I did meet more women per year in Philly than in any other place prior, and I did have a few wonderful erotic encounters. During my last year there in 2001, I asked at least a thousand women to dance, and also launched numerous campaigns on the online and telephone dating services, where I contacted thousands more. I approached more women than ever that year. However, all but ten rejected me flat. And of those that agreed to meet me, only four wanted a second date. And of those romances, none lasted longer than a few months and all but one fizzled after just a few weeks. So while the move to Philly provided the target-rich environments I sought to move further in my quest, I left there in December of 2001 empty-handed, unfulfilled, and extremely disappointed. I was fresh out of ideas of what to try next and didn’t even want to try anymore.

This love quest had by this time cost me lots of money too! There was the move from Ohio, the loss of money when I sold the house, and all the household stuff I had to just about give away so I could downsize from that four-bedroom, two-story house with a double garage, to a two-bedroom apartment in a high rise building. Also in Philadelphia, the quest cost the most as I paid for most all my dates as well as my own drinks and transportation to the various hot spots around town. My desire for companionship was strong as ever, but after three decades, I still had no idea how to get it. I felt I had to do something radical but wasn’t sure what. But then, fate laid another clue in my path.

During my last year in Philly, I started having problems at work. The job was getting harder, I received no raises my last two years there. To add insult to injury, I still had not found my dream girl after thirteen years of building that career and the wealth that went with it. That’s when I surmised that corporate life was not for me anymore. All the hard work and extra hours to build a happy, successful life had not paid off though I had done everything a fellow was supposed to do to succeed. I got educated, held a good job for a long time, and set up several great living quarters. Unfortunately, ladies never lingered, if they even came at all.

I grew weary of the increasing pressures to step up my work performance. While I liked the raises and promotions which were more plentiful during the 90s, I found the rewards emptier and harder to get, the higher in the company I got. Working harder just didn’t make sense eventually, since all I had when I turned off the computer was an empty, cold dwelling. My place.

So the question occurred: Why fight so for a career whenever only cold rooms, a quiet kitchen, and an empty bed were my reward each night? I couldn’t answer this except to say that I shouldn’t. I understood that I couldn’t fix whatever was keeping her away, while working myself to death as a senior software engineer. I also knew that finding her was more important than anything, including making lots of money as a corporate big shot. Life was marching on too, as I was already well into my forties without having solved my happiness problem. So I promised myself in the summer of 2001 to either find my dream girl or die trying. If that meant devoting full time to the quest, then that’s what I would do.

It would be some months before I appreciated fully what that promise meant. But I knew right off that I’d have to free up lots of time to work on me. I would need to quit my job and learn once more how to live cheaply, at least until I found Her. But I agonized over doing this because the job treated me better financially than I could do on my own; guaranteeing me a spot among the middle class as long as I kept working. Plus, after reading hundreds of thousands of ladies’ profiles on the dating sites, it was clear that lots of women find richer men more attractive than those with modest incomes. So quitting would exclude me from consideration by many attractive women and thus, set me way back in my love quest. These and other truths made leaving one of the toughest choices I’ve ever made.

I suspected that I’d never find another position that paid as well; at least not initially. But so what? What good was the money if I wasn’t happy? Money had not made me happy to date. In fact, the joy of having it did not counterbalance the hardship of earning it. In the end, I was indeed worse for the wear.

True. The job qualified me for, and surrounded me with, lots of women. But simply being among ladies and having lots of money in my pocket and a nice suburban home was not enough. While the job exposed me to more women, the fact that I had it did not interest the ladies, any more than did my previous endeavors. They still saw me as, at best, too plain, and at worst, too ugly to date. The job with all its trimmings therefore, did not end this now-monotonous love quest.

Plus, and most sadly, women still looked down their noses at me, the same as they had twenty-five years earlier in high school. The fact that I was now earning close to ninety thousand dollars a year didn’t matter. The results of my approaches had remained essentially the same as it was in my teens. Zilch. I was still as lonely as I’d been in the 70s, yet still just as eager to win at love. Working so hard at a career just hadn’t gotten me where I thought it should, and I was ready to give it up in order to try something different.

So, in late 2001 I began preparing to resign: I saved money, moved back home with Mom, fixed up her house while I still had my software engineer’s salary, and spent thousands of hours journaling and mentally turning myself inside out. I looked for ways to change for the better, all the while seeking tools I could use to finally end my love quest victoriously.

This effort became my full-time job. Everything else, including my real job became a distraction. I substituted self-help books about relationships and dating for computer and software manuals. In the evening, time that I’d normally spend working extra hours on some programming project, I instead spent trolling the Internet for ideas and dates. My day job had become second priority, especially after business hours. Imagine that!

Now I’d planned to keep working for three years once I knew that I’d be leaving. But as the first of those years progressed, the job changed into an irritating distraction from my true purpose. That purpose, which I now understood since making the promise to myself in 2001, was to finally win the love quest. I wanted to really give the quest my all.

Though I had given up the extra hours, I was still putting too much time into the job, and too little into finding fulfillment in love. Not only did I wish to spend my evenings and weekends working the quest, but wanted to throw in the forty regular weekly work hours as well. As usual, the loneliness which had been with me since the age of twelve continued pounding at my soul, and I was getting really tired of it, and more eager than ever to find relief. From my history of many things tried and many things failed, I figured that I wouldn’t silence its doleful voice unless I could fully focus on it – something I’d never really done before. What else could I do?
It seemed like I’d done everything else. Let’s see. As I mentioned earlier, I:
• Acquired a good self image,
• Reduced my teenage fears of talking to women.
• Held jobs all through grade school and high school,
• Stayed out of serious trouble,
• Successfully completed high school and trade school,
• Held an electronics technician job for nearly two years,
• Completed psychotherapy,
• Joined the computer users group in college,
• Successfully completed college,
• Got a good job,
• Owned a nice home,
• Learned how to maintain a home,
• Attended singles groups and churches,
• Approached more than ten thousand women,
• Achieved a respected status at work,
• Earned close to ninety thousand dollars a year at the end,
• Which enabled me to give a lady a very good time,
• I avoided drugs and immoral behavior,
• I was stable and kind,
• Threw myself into lots of new environments and cultures throughout the quest so I might find the best areas in which to search.

But the one thing I hadn’t done so far was to completely devote my entire life to the pursuit. Up to this point, the love quest had always been more of a hobby; one that I worked during weekends and sometimes on weeknights. I’d never really gone at it full tilt before. Yet I knew that I would never be as happy as I could be unless I could find Her, and I was convinced that the way to do that the most effectively, was to sink every last waking hour into the search and into fixing myself.

So it came about some fifteen months after I began executing my plan to resign, that I did indeed quit. Was this too early? Perhaps. True. I didn’t make it to the end of 2004 as in the plan. I actually resigned in March of 2003. Nonetheless, I managed to pay off all debts and finish all the maintenance projects on Mom’s home too. I cancelled any magazine and music subscriptions I no longer needed, hauled away a ton of junk, and began saving coupons. This resignation was a pivotal moment in my love quest, and I’ll discuss more about this difficult choice in future episodes as well as what happened subsequently.

An all-time approach to this problem (as opposed to a full-time or part-time approach) proved to be grueling. So I devised a few diversions. One was part time DJing. Others included writing, computer repair, reading a lot, buying and selling on eBay, and watching classic movies. I enjoy watching Dr. Phil McGraw and Dr. Joy Browne as well, as my philosophies generally align with theirs. I’ve written numerous articles and stories which are, as of yet, unpublished. But they will be, in this blog and podcast. I’ll share some of my best works, which center on the quest. In fact, most of them do actually. Also, as in high school, I still enjoy ham radio, and hold an extra class Amateur Radio license (my call sign is N8UBU). Also, I got certified by Microsoft as an expert on various versions of their Windows operating system. Nowadays, I’m butler and caregiver for my Mom, who is recovering from open-heart surgery. I just finished re-plumbing her house last March and installing a wooden banister alongside the bridge from the parking lot into the side walk, so she has something to hold on to when entering. I do keep busy, which is one way of reducing the feelings of emptiness I discussed earlier. It’s not a cure. But it is good, temporary relief.

Perhaps my love quest talks will sound humanist or Buddhist in that they encourage us to tap our own inner strengths rather than looking to greater, outside, and improvable forces. This is my mantra now and it is an essential premise in my philosophy throughout the love quest. This should help clarify why I chose as I have as well as why I’ve tried doing much of it myself.

Through no other force than my own hard work and lady luck, I think I’ve found Her. But I’m not sure. I’ve enjoyed a wonderful relationship with [Emmy] for going on six years now, and prefer this association far over being alone. We get along quite well; we’re lucky if we fight once a year, and even then, we never yell at each other. We always maintain respect for each other and never go to bed mad. Although we have problems sexually that we’re working on currently, [Emmy] is among the most caring and understanding woman I’ve known. I have 95% of the relationship I’ve sought, and feel that once we work out the issues of eroticism, I’ll officially be able to end my love quest.

So since I’ve not yet actually won the love quest, I admit that I’m no expert. So while you’ll see many success stories here, you’ll see much sadness and despair as well. Indeed, the bulk of my experiences have been sad, sorry to say. For every one hour of joy I’ve experienced in my quest, I’ve probably had a hundred hours of pain and disappointment. In my search, sorrow has been a big part of the reality. Many have suggested that I express more of the joys than the sorrows. But to preserve the truest essence of my quest, I must relate completely my sad times because as painful as they were, they made it possible for me to have the good times that I do now. So I’d trade none of those sorrowful years away.

Not all the stories are sad. There are many pleasant ones. I’ll tell you about my introspections and the changes to my philosophy and approach to the problem that enabled me to reduce depression. In short, I’ll let you know how I learned to cope with being alone. Merely coping however is not ideal. So I’ve not given up. I hope through this blogcast that I can persuade those of you who have abandoned your search, to keep trying. In 2001, I declared that I would either win at this game, or die trying. You’ll need this same resolve if you’re ever going to experience true happiness, and I hope that through sharing my experiences and insights, that they’ll help you find the resolve to press on yourself.

I am no psychologist and have little formal training in this subject. My writings come not from any large-scale clinical studies or other systemic techniques for deducing human behavior. They come however, from my own three plus decades of experience chasing “the perfect woman”. So any advice I give should be considered no more than inspirational, and is not intended to replace bona fide professional help. This blog is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as anything other than me, telling my story of my love quest.

What is “the perfect woman,” you ask? Well, stick around and I’ll tell you about my vision of her. But not now. However, I will tease you and say that the word “perfect” here does not mean absolutely without flaws. More on that in future episodes, along with much more about the struggle to find perfection and the many strategies I’ve tried, to get it.

So thanks very much for stopping by and I hope you’ll visit again soon. There’s lots more to say.

Tom Hesley
http://tomhesley.com/

A while back, I recorded an introduction for a chat line in Philadelphia. I described myself and listed my favorite activities — reading, programming, watching Star Trek, and the like. I said I wanted to meet tall thin women, and it didn’t take long for the hate messages to come. You’d think I’d threatened the pope! They called me shallow, superficial, and lame, and these are the nicest words. Even some thin women complained.

But what they didn’t get is that I can’t help what I like, and I like thin. Real thin. I learned this the hard way over two decades of dating the heavy. So I never want to try that again. I’m no bigot, but do wish to avoid any more disappointing experiences like those I’ve had already, dating “big and beautiful” ladies.

I’ve tried to see beauty where I wouldn’t find it. Often I dated the frumpy, the stocky, the plump, and the obese, only to find no excitement when they finally reached my bed. In all cases, I suspected at the instant we met that this would be the outcome. But I didn’t trust my opinion as a young adult and didn’t want anyone to say that I hadn’t given the relationship a fair chance. So against my better judgment, I waded into these murky waters. Then I struggled to get back out, because I felt guilty over hurting the women. I’d take months to work up the courage to say good-bye, feeling lousy about them and myself all the while. A couple times, I had to seek professional help to break away. What a waste of time, and money!

Though I found the Rubenesque unattractive, I had compassion for them nonetheless. Seeing them cry as I jilted them really tugged at my heart strings. But ultimately, it came down to either their happiness or mine, and though I struggled with this often, eventually therapy helped me to chose mine and make a break.

I’ve always been more attracted to the petite. Even as a boy of five or six, my eyes followed the lanky lady teachers around the classroom as my ears savored their every word. I wanted to hear what they had to say, and I got better grades as a result. I listened more to those with the ostrich legs, but slept more in buxom teachers’ classes. Or I’d peer out the windows, bored to tears. I didn’t choose to feel as I did. I just did.

There’s nothing immoral about a desire particularly when it’s the product of evolution and, not chosen. So please! Don’t punish me for my wants. They are after all, my nature.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Water Park Musings: 2010-06-02

Looking backward from 2010-04-03.

Friends,

A couple times each quarter, I’m lucky to meet a new woman who entices me enough (intentionally or not) to make me want to write about.  This lady’s name is [Prism], and I’ve known her for nearly two years now.  But for the first twelve of those months, I didn’t like her much. 

We first met in 2008 at summer camp.  She was kind of cute, but heavier than the ladies I generally find appealing.  She was generally very quiet, and sometimes, even grumpy, pushy, and condescendingly controlling.  She did what she had to do, to fulfill the duties of her counselor job; but nary a stitch more.  Indeed, she appeared to not want to be there.

I wondered after observing her for a few days why she bothered coming at all.  I mean, the pay isn’t very much and the job of counselor at a special-needs facility like this camp is monumentally demanding.  Like with most jobs, but particularly with this one, you really must love it, to do it well.  But she didn’t in my opinion; not even close.  She’d rarely smile.  She’d give curt answers when campers asked questions, and was quick to scold.  She never laughed once in 2008 that I saw, though she had all the sessions prior to ours to get used to “our kind”. 

Typically, counselors “loosen up” as the session progresses.  They smile more and befriend the campers, so that by the last day, some of them even cry, wishing the campers could stay longer.  But over time in 2008, she warm up not one bit, and was as rigid and stone-faced at the end of the session as at the beginning.  These things didn’t put me off too much however because I can relate.  I sometimes get to being very quiet myself.  So, I am often misread by others as not caring enough. 

But what cemented my dislike her occurred at the 2008 dinner dance, when she insisted that I end my DJ show before all the campers’ requests had been played.  This overly authoritarian behavior got me riled up because up until the last twenty minutes or so, I’d played many more songs for the counselors than campers.  It was not fair that the campers should go the entire night without hearing their requests too.  Further, that pavilion on the green where we held the party, was located several hundred feet away from the closest cabins, and we pointed the speakers away from them as an added step to avoid disturbing sleepers.  So, playing a bit later than 9:30 PM would not have bothered anyone.  We could have gone all night without problems, except for these artificial issues that she created. 

Now if [Prism] is reading this, I hope that she does not bale on me yet, because I have many nice things to her next year.  I just need to get this negative stuff out on the table because it was key in how I eventually came to know her (and like her).  So stay with me for a little while longer, please.  This bashing is almost done.  J

Anyway, she relentlessly commanded that we shut down, precisely at 9:30 PM, and kept asking how many more songs there were to go, and saying several times, “Are you done yet?  Are you done yet?”  You got to be quite a pain, and so you forced me to be nasty back.  I hated doing that.  But I’d push back again without hesitation, when my dignity is trampled on, as you did that night.  You stepped on my toes, and I said ouch! 

One thing about me [Prism] should know if we’re ever going to be friends is that I will never tolerate someone scolding me like I’m a little kid, who must be told when to go to bed, take a bath, wash his hands, and such.  What she apparently didn’t get was that we were all adults; not children.  Yet in my view, she treated some of us with an almost custodial air; fully dismissing what many consider my most attractive attribute; that being my fully-developed, educated, and functioning adult mind.  She did not know that I was an electronics technician for two years and a software engineer for fifteen.  Or how about that I’ve lead software support teams and helped design money-making web sites?  Would she have ever guessed that I’ve been a mobile DJ, computer technician, and published writer for nearly ten years now?  Apparently not, because she apparently regarded me as a child who never grew up; always telling, never asking, always demanding, never negotiating, always dismissing, never acknowledging.  For future reference, I hope she keeps in mind that I respond well to people who engage me as an equal, respect my accomplishments, and consider me unquestionably worthy of their attention.  But I detest those power-lording disciplinarians who assume that I’m beneath them, and have nothing to offer except childish aggravation and burden.  Like anyone else, I just want to be liked; that’s all.  But if they must struggle to see my good points, then I’d just as soon avoid them.

Now back to the dinner dance, or more specifically, the next day: I saw her in the sun porch while everyone was packing to go home; this being the last day of camp.  I don’t remember exactly what she said.  But it had something to do with how tired she was because she had to fight with us about shutting down the dance the pervious evening.  I challenged, saying that we didn’t go but fifteen minutes past 9:30 and that that little amount of lost sleep wouldn’t make her so tired.  She said nothing back; she just kept smiling this notably insincere grin.  Her lips were smiling, yes.  But I was close enough to note that the rest of her face was scowling.  I could see, behind the smile, that she was quite unhappy with me, as she sported this how-dare-you-challenge-me look about her. 

Nor was I happy with her.  So it was a good thing that the session ended only a few hours later, because if there’d been a few more days to go, she and I might have gotten into some interesting yet distressing shouting matches.  But as it happened, my ride came shortly after, and in the weeks that followed camp ’08, I forgot all about her, figuring that as much as she seemed to hate the job, that she’d never return.  This would be great.

This often happens in the love quest, where I meet someone intriguing, only to learn later, once they reveal themselves, that they were much better while obscured, as a beautiful stranger.  Ironically at times, I’m afraid to get to know pretty women, because almost always, once I know them, I’ve learned things that ruin their initial image of desirability. 

More about   [Prism]   later.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Oh No, Prism Is Back
• Prism Fell And Grabbed My Heart
• Romanceless Camp

Hi [Melinda].

We got about 7’’ of snow Friday night and yesterday but no sleet however.  This will probably be the last big snow we get, although I have seen snowstorms as late as the end of April.  We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

I’m probably going to take a few days off from writing.  I’ve been participating in a couple debates, besides the one with you about that controversial pity letter, and I’ve written over 15000 words in the past week and a half.  My wrists hurt, and so, I really want to be careful with this career not to become burned out.  I think that’s what happened with software.  I put in so many hours in a short period that eventually my brain just said, “That’s it.  Fort Pitt.  No more.  I refuse,”  and there was no going back.  So with writing, I’m trying very hard to work in moderation.  In addition to the writing, there’s the three daily hours of reading.  This Plato book, The Republic, is really quite taxing. I can follow its arguments okay, but remembering them?  Well, that’s an entirely different matter. 

Memory is a funny thing though, because I often feel like I don’t remember particular ideas, but when situations arise that call for them, they come flooding back into mind with the same clarity as when I first learned them.  I remember when I got mugged in Philly in 1999.  Convinced that my life was in jeopardy as the fellow chased me, cursing under his breath and swearing that he was going to get me, a memory surfaced that I know I hadn’t thought of in at least 20 years.  I recalled a self-defense class that I had taken in 1976, with amazing lucidity.  It was as though I had been transported back in time to 9^th grade; more vivid than a dream.  In fact, if it weren’t for my pumping legs as I ran away from the mugger, I’d have sworn that I was reliving the class.  I could smell the wrestling mats on the gymnasium floor, and see the other people standing beside me.  Even little details came back, like the sounds of the peoples’ thighs rubbing together as they raised their legs to do the defense moves.  And, I could hear the teacher’s words as clearly as when she first uttered them.  She said, “If you ever find yourself trapped in a threatening situation, you scream!  Scream as loud as you can.”  Then, she let out this hair-curling yell that echoed for some quarter of a minute in our big old gym.  AS the resonance of her scream died, my mind returned me to the present, to that awful mugger chasing me.  I did as the memory instructed, and screamed so loudly that I set off several car alarms as the mugger and I ran past them.  At that point, fortunately, the assailant gave up and landed a parting blow on top of my head before retreating.  I felt so grateful that I had taken that class, and grew intrigued at the mystery of memory.  My memory often failed me in college, but it’s always been there when I’ve really needed it.  I just hope, getting back to Plato, that I’m remembering what I’ve learned from it and that the lessons will come back in the future, when I’m writing on topics for which they’re relevant. 

I hope, someday, to become a revered philosopher – or at least, someone who effectively argues his positions.  I’m about getting at the truth of all matters, although I tend more to write about love and relationships than anything else currently.  What I fear is that I’ve become intolerant of lies, whether big or small, black or white.  With lying being so commonplace and routine these days, Mom advises that I should find some way of coping with it.  But the more philosophy I read, the less I can accommodate it.  I’m seeking the truth, or at least, to get as close to it as I can, while others, with their lies, interfere with that quest.  I just hope that I don’t become so disgusted with the liars that I become reclusive.  That happens to so many philosophers.  But if that’s the road I’m going to have to follow, than I will do so gladly. 

Now on to the weight discussion, your words [...] produced the thoughts posted in my   Tom’s Views –> What Is Ideal Body Weight?   piece.  By the way, I really liked your 17’’ thighs.  Though you rarely wore shorts, at least you frequently donned tight-fitting jeans that revealed your shape nonetheless.

You sound depressed, especially if you don’t mind the thought of dying 30 years before your time.  So you might find that if you ate more healthfully, that your weight would go down and your depression would fade as well.  

Well, I’ve got to get going and tidy up my bedroom enough so that my sister can come in after while and clean it.  I hope you feel better.

Tom Hesley

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