Theoretica

It will come as no great surprise to many of you that my success in the dating world, at least in the last twelve months, has been circumscribed at best.  And for those of you who know what a helplessly odd little bird I am, my solution to this problem should surprise you even less than knowing that I scare the men away.

The sad, sad fact is that I am my biggest problem.  I am like a built-in, auto-activating, self-destroying riddle wrapped in a physical shell that only barely meets the minimum requirements for being Not-A-Total-Dog.  Furthermore, I suffer from intense nervousness that has come to be the cornerstone of my marginally mysterious social persona.  When I was a child, one of my teachers thought that I was cognitively challenged, “You used to rock back and forth and sing yourself songs while you waited for everyone else to be done with their work, like a little rocket ship waiting to take off.”  You’re telling me, sister.

As bodies evolve, so do nervous impulses.  Instead of tapping musical S.O.S. messages to alien reinforcements on my knee, I just say the wrong thing these days.

Truthfully, sitting in front of someone cute and interesting makes me feel like my hair is about to catch on fire and saying the wrong thing seems like the right thing to do.  Take for instance, the time I met Mr. X - for the first (and only) time.  In the context of mealside chatter, he asked me what the book that I’m working on is about and I told him that it was about Wondering, and more specifically, about the product of wondering: theories.  He then asked me what kind of theories I was going to write about and so I started listing some of them… I think I may have mentioned Chapter 2: What Happens When You Wonder About Whoopi Goldberg Too Much and may have descended the discursive ladder into the darker Chapter 4: Wondering About Alien-to-Human Hand Combat.  Suffice it to say that I managed to elicit the kind of pitying, confused look that no self-respecting man ever wants to get.    In a move not dissimilar to aiming a harpoon at a life-boat floating away from a sinking ship, I went on to talk about Chapter 6: Fairies, specifically noting that the inspiration for the chapter had come from a found object (a photo harvested by the sticky fingers of the Google search engine) – a computer-animated photo of a fairy – one bearing a striking resemblance to Beyonce – wearing a purple, satiny gown that made the best prom dress in Norwalk look like a sack of onions.  It was amazing, no doubt, but not something a total stranger wants to hear you gush about.

So… you win some and you lose some – but be me for a second.  Wouldn’t you wonder – if only just a little - what it would be like to not be the toucan at the dining table?

I awoke from my slumber this morning at six, possessed of an idea so whacky, that it might just work.  In the dream, a man fell in love with me.  It just so happens that he was also deaf and blind.  In the dream, it seemed like a perfect fit – for reasons which should be overwhelmingly obvious at this point.  I know how politically screwed this post is, but dammit, I was happy – if only for a moment.  And I’m not about to let political crucifixion for condescending to the blind and deaf get in my way.

Besides…  You’re allowed to dream about just about anything.  Aren’t you?