This is intended to be a follow-up to my posts about coffee shops and doing dumb shit. It should be pretty well establish by this point that I am severely lacking in healthy social skills. My notions of propriety and privacy are skewed in various ways. As a very nerdy, awkward man I am rather preoccupied with whether some of my behaviors can be labeled as creepy.
Now, the irony of this situation is not lost on me. I’d wager that most people who are labeled as creeps lack even a fraction of the introspection and self-reflection that typically compel me. That said, I know that some of the things I do likely make people rather uncomfortable. I’m not going to recount the numerous faux pas I’ve committed recently that motivated this post, but I do want to explore what drives me to keep falling into the same creepiness trap.
One major flaw of mine is a reluctance to let things go. While this sometimes applies to arguments and criticism, a more common example of this is a connection with someone that fizzles out after a few dates. I often will see this as a problem that needs to be solved or a situation to be “unfucked” as I’ll often phrase it. Obviously this is extremely misguided and I recognize that some people just aren’t going to get along, but it often becomes a mild obsession that will frustrate me for weeks or months.
A more serious issue is one regarding boundaries when it comes to digital information. As I’ve mentioned, I have the regrettable habit of using my powers of observation to collect details about people who cross my path and occasionally I will progress from idle curiosity to actually using that information to contact them. In the moment, I justify it by telling myself there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it because the information is all publicly accessible and I’m perfectly harmless. I recognize that, to women, this likely comes across as very frightening and intrusive. While it is true that I am harmless, they certainly don’t know that and there are many men out there who are not.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my uncle who passed away last year. We always had a difficult relationship, both for the ways in which we were different as well as the ways in which we were the same. For most of my childhood he was a truck driver, stopping in town to visit occasionally while on the road. One thing that always struck me was the way he’d shamelessly hit on pretty much any attractive young woman he met. We’d often meet him for dinner and I’d squirm with embarrassment as the server was subjected to his charms. My uncle was rather obese and had a deep, gravely voice from decades of smoking, but I’ve seen pictures of him as a young man and he was very handsome then, so I suppose the confidence was, at one time, more well-founded.
Although I found his flirting very difficult to watch when I was a kid, I must admit I look back on it with a bit of envy now. He had far more confidence than I’ve ever had, at least in that respect. I’m also struck by the similarity, though, in our apparent obsessions with meeting women. It’s very much an in-joke and obscure reference to Homestar Runner, but my friends and I used to say “Josh has a crush on every girl!” Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but it’s not that far off the mark. Few things are more distracting to me than an attractive woman, though I don’t have my uncle’s fearless swagger.
I have a full post on the trials and tribulations of my dating life planned, but that’s not my goal for today. I’ll just comment that I’m so far removed from being in a healthy mental space for dating right now that my obsession with women is far more of a curse than usual. I simply don’t have the psychic capital on hand these days to offer much of anything to anyone. This makes it even more absurd when I send unsolicited messages to women in hopes of making a connection. It really becomes a no-win situation: I feel like a creep when they don’t reply, yet I’m not sure what I’d do if they did.
