Time To Get Walkin'
We gotta get you a woman,
We better get walkin’, were wastin’ time talkin’ now.
-Todd Rundgren, “We gotta get you a woman”
Searching for blog material on the web the other day, I ran across a blog entitled “According to Sauce.” Penned by a young woman who works as a Hooters Girl.* Sorry guys, she’s taken. In fact, she is so in love with her boyfriend, she calls him “Dreamy.”
I think I hear wedding bells in her future …
Speaking of marriage, I made a girl laugh delightedly one night at my health club the last week of the year when I quipped I was out to prove on the basketball court geeks could jump, then chatted with her again the next night … only to see a guy walk by and give her a wink and exchange a few words of his own. Before we parted, I asked her if that was her boyfriend. He was even more than that: she informed me he was her husband and that she was not wearing her ring (hey married couples: keep ‘em on, please. You keep confusing hell out of us bachelors/bachelorettes.) I am happy to say that, even as a feeling swirled in my gut which, if cast into words, would have read: “Damn, damn, and double damn!” I made sure to tell her that I respected the fact that she was married, which she was both surprised by and pleased to hear. I’m not as callous about being in relationships as, say, Brad Pitt was.
Nevertheless, the flip side of the coin for both incidents was that whenever I think of them, I writhe in inner agony the crew of the USS Nimitz does in that creepy time-warp storm which rips them out of the future, into the past … and back to the ol’ future, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, in that little-known sci-fi classic The Final Countdown.
Blog post pictures to the contrary, I’ve not ever had a true girlfriend.
Why not? Loooong story there, man, longer than the “Google” number (yes, it’s a number as well as a search engine.) Let’s just say that things are so pathetic right now in my romantic life people like Sauce and Dreamy seem richer to me than any billionaire when I read their stories of love as another dateless year without romance threatens unless I get my act together chop-chop. No mean feat in Minneapolis, land of 10,000 single men and precious fewer single women.
Where’s a girl for me, man? I’m not ugly, boring, or needy. I also believe in respecting women to the point of respecting if she is in a relationship even if I have a raging crush on her. Finally I believe in good hygiene and not taking myself too seriously.
Granted, I’m not perfect. I’ve got raw nerve ends (for example, if you are the political kind of young woman, do not ask me what I think of the state legislature!), and still struggle with deep-rooted bad memories from all the ugly bad things that have happened to me in the past (many of which I am chronicling over at Feo**) and an irrational fear that the same vile things that people did to me way back when will be done by new people in the future.
Another monkey wrench: fear of getting into a romantic relationship, only to see it ultimately go ka-boom! Having experienced heartbreak-like angst when I was 18 over a girl not worth it (hindsight reveals to me that she was pretty, but at heart also a shallow, insecure person ; man oh man what a dummy I was …) If I think reading stories of happy couples like Sauce and Dreamy will put me into an agony like those dudes in The Final Countdown suffer, I’d hate to see what a romantic breakup will do.
Please God, should I ever suffer a genuine “breakup” I want it to be: A. amiable, B. drama-free and C. I don’t shed so much as a single tear. As I have discovered via my passion for the “sad songs” of the past like, say, the Civil War (just because I don’t take myself too seriously does not mean I don’t take certain things too serious), there are way more things worth shedding tears over in this world than a relationship that dead-ended.
I am well aware that all of the above is so much baggage crowding my mind like so many shot-up planes on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier; it needs to be dumped overboard big time, and over the side I am sending ‘em, bub.
And besides, despite the doubts that snap at my heels each and every day about dating, I cannot help but say: Vive les femmes forever. And that I’ve got so many tender feelings regarding said femmes it makes me want to sing along with that classic Beatles tune “And I love her.” So I have to cut this short because I better get walkin’ cause I’m wastin’ time talkin’ here, guys …