I Said Maybe You're Gonna Be The One That Saves Me

You walked in just like smoke . . . 

A couple of weeks ago, a random friend-in-law read my palm at a martini bar. She was friendly, cute, but a bit overly locquacious for my tastes. She cupped the back of my hand with her long fingers, studied my palm for a few moments, and said, "You do not know what you want in a woman, which is why you will date around, never settling, you will not be faithful to any one woman."

My friends and I stifled a laugh at this. Out of my circle of friends, I'm the Johnny Straightarrow of relationships--perhaps not just a little naive, and a strong believer in putting 100% in whomever I'm with. I'm intense, which can be read as passionate if you're inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt, or which can be read as fucking unstable if you meet me at the wrong time. Put together, this means I will not be the one to stray in a relationship, because I will be devoting everything to the one who eventually lights the forest so I can find a place to stay.

Or at least, so I thought.

A real Johnny Straightarrow would not intentionally fuck about with a woman who he knows to be engaged, making love to her even as she has her ring on. A real Johnny Straightarrow would feel some guilt for breaking up a relationship, even if it were a relationship that had been rotting from the inside for three years. A real Johnny Straightarrow would not be pouring out his heart to someone he knows is seeing someone else, putting his friendship with her on the line and valuing his own feelings over anything and everything. So maybe my friends and I are wrong, still thinking I'm still that naive intense guy that I was ten years ago. I'm just a man--a fucked up, dirty, manipulative but at least honest man.

The talkative palm reader was dead right on one aspect--I don't know what I want in a woman. I'm almost thirty-three, and my only response to the question "What are you looking for in a woman" is "someone who adores me as much as I adore them." But honestly, I know that's a fucking copout. Unfortunately, it's the truth.

I can't say, "I'll know her when I meet her," because that's not true. I fell unknowingly for Certain Someone over the course of a year, and the latest situation over the course of six months. And Makeup Chick, though I had an intense reaction when I first saw her, would've probably burned out in a course of just a few weeks had things been different.

And all the standard shit people put down, honest, funny, nice--well, I've met honest, funny and nice women, and once they left my life, I've forgotten their names and faces. The standard shit I used to put down--quirky, artistic, creative--also come with unreliable, and psychotic attached.

My pals used to point out women and say, "Now there's a Marty-type woman for ya." Usually blonde, sometimes brunette, green or blue eyes, slender, petite, a cornfed Midwestern prettiness just a shade over plainness. But that's no longer true either. Certain Someone, Bee's Knees and Financial Advisor are all Asian. File Clerk is Mexican.

Sometimes it's liberating to realize the truth. Not this time though. When the arc of my desire for a nice, stable relationship hits the arc of the knowledge that I have no idea what I want, there's just this hole.

View this entry as "poor me-ism" if you want. That's fine. This is my blog after all, and it's here partly to be my de facto therapist. And in the meantime, I'm going to listen to Ryan Adam's cover of "Wonderwall" on repeat, both dreading and impatient for what will happen tomorrow.