Asking the right questions?

I said in an earlier post that I would come back to the subject of why the men I find attractive are always the ones who are unlikely to reciprocate that attraction. Is that something I do subconciously because, deep down, my psyche knows that it's safest that way? That choosing the seemingly unattainable to pine for means that I will not have to deal with the terror of exposing myself, physically or emotionally, to an explicit, open rejection? After all, if I can preemptively reject myself on their behalf, all the scary stuff need not happen. Yes, it will probably hurt for a little while - I might cry a bit, write a few more sad poems, eat a bit more chocolate to feel better, but it will be a pain I can handle - have handled before - and not something that will rip away my foundations and submerge me in seas I am unable to sail. (Apparently today is a big figurative-speech day. Bear with me, please!)

The short answer is that I genuinely don't know. I want a reciprocal attraction - I can't even begin to describe how much, yet I am afraid that my subconscious mind is regularly undermining the plans and ideals of my conscious. Then again, I don't recall ever having met any man with whom I have felt an instant, sexual, connection. You know the moment in all the books, the films, the friend's stories - the one where your eyes meet his, and, whether it's admitted or not, all you really want to do is rip his clothes off while he disposes of yours, and get on with the business of mutual ravishment. I don't know if that tells me that I am repressing the urges that lead to that scenario, or that I'm simply meeting the wrong men, and that patience (never my strong suit) must endure. To be clear, I am not talking about an instant mental connection of emotions or intellect - I have several male friends where the instant 'simpatico' was blatant. Of course I want that in a long-term partner, along with a genuine, deep physical attraction. What I am talking about is purely sex, at its most basic. Relationships, I think we can all agree, are complex things, and the sexual part of a couple's interaction, though very important, is only a part of the whole. The urge to procreate, on the other hand, is fundamentally very simple. I am, without doubt, a sexual being. Waiting this long for the actual experience has probably made me even more so. I own various toys and use them regularly, though not a full-size vibrator - somehow I can't quite do the whole "battery-operated toy took my virginity" thing - far too much like a story from a trashy women's magazine! My appetite for smut fiction is prodigious, and wide-ranging, and though I'm not entirely sure whether I've ever had a proper orgasm (God, I love the oh-so-anonymous internet!), I've been giving myself pleasure at least once a day since I first discovered how good it felt to squeeze my legs together tightly pre-puberty. Yes, far too much information, I'm sure, but you get my point! I've even seriously considered hiring a male escort to do the deed, and for educational purposes - I like to know what I'm doing - but lack of funds, and the awareness that women frequently get emotionally attached to their first lover, continues to make that unfeasible. None of this, however, seems to translate into real life experience. Close friends know full well that my mind is a truly filthy one, but the world in general seems to view me as almost asexual. Why, I have no idea. The number of people I have shocked or startled over the years with an off-the-cuff comment or response is really quite amusing. You'd think they'd never heard of the "lady in the drawing room, chef in the kitchen, courtesan in the boudoir" concept. It's a very apt description of yours truly, although the last is only in theory as yet!

I digress. In theory, of the men I find attractive, at least some should reciprocate. In practise, I find this is not so. Men who appeal to me are generally, in many ways, my equals - they are talented, intelligent, charismatic individuals who have either already succeeded, or are well on their way to success in their field. They are usually nice people - I'm not really into 'bad boys' - and generally speaking, socially adept, though not the 'most-popular' type. Mostly, they are good-looking, but rarely in a 'take-your-breath-away' Hollywood manner. Not necessarily slim or particularly muscular. I am objective enough about my own appearance to know that I am also reasonably good-looking. I may be overweight, but I'm told that people don't really see me as a "fat person" - I have a clear jaw line, good bone structure, visible joints and tendons, and a definite hour-glass shape (it's just a bit bigger than I'd like!). I also have beautiful hair and eyes, good skin, good teeth, great posture, and enough sense to know what to wear to make myself look good, ninety-five percent of the time. I am not unattractive, though my body does not conform to the current idea of beauty (Rubens et al would have had a field day with me!). If these men are my equals, why would I assume that none of them would return my interest? Experience aside, what is my rationale?

Some time ago, I was with a friend when we ran into a senior professional contact of some influence. This person remembered my name and the details of our previous meetings, rather to my surprise. My friend, who has had rather more professional exposure and contact with this person, was not recognised. Although not always at this level, it is not at all uncommon for people to remember me, even if I have little or no recollection of having previously met them, or have only a vague memory of having seen the face before. When I expressed my surprise to my friend, she told me that "There's no-one else like you". At the time, I was too astonished by her comment and by the previous encounter to respond. I later thanked her for the enormous compliment she had paid me, and it was a compliment of some magnitude. However, having had time to mull it over, I wonder if it's such a good thing. Professionally, certainly it is. On a personal level. is it too much? Although I have friends now, with one or two exceptions, until University, I was a fairly friendless child. I had companions, but was never easily accepted into a peer group, in fact, I was excluded very efficiently through most of my schooling. I have never been a part of a group of close friends, and attempts to forge such a group from my rather disparate individual friends at Uni and beyond never worked. As I grew older, it became easier to make myself temporarily acceptable in a group, but I have never really felt that I belonged in any of the many groups I have been exposed to. Somehow, there has always been something that kept me separate in some way. Don't get me wrong - I have enjoyed being 'special' or 'different', and have sometimes gone out of my way to highlight the ways in which I am unusual, even though I do not often like the results of this being known. In many ways, I have been rejected by my peers, whether they meant it or not, since I started school at the age of four-and-a-half. As much as I try to be optimistic before meeting a new group of people, I wonder if I subconciously expect to be rejected, either explicitly or implicitly, and whether this carries over into my relations with men I find appealing. As I said in the first paragraph, if I can reject myself, it saves the pain of them doing it for me! Between this, and a family life which could not have avoided making me fairly independent at a young age, have I become too independent, too aloof, so that even when I try to bring the barriers down, their imprint is still there? The cat-who-walked-alone would also be a good description.

I'm not really sure if I have even begun to answer my own questions. In fact, I'm not really sure what the questions should be. An era has come to an end - at the end of last week, I left full-time education after twenty-two years in the system. As yet, I do not have any definite ideas about what the future holds - a rough outline's as good as it gets right now. For the next couple of weeks, at least, I have very little to do, and no-one around to distract me from asking the difficult questions. Perhaps that's a good thing. As lonely as these next few weeks may be, if I manage to analyse some of the things that haunt me, perhaps I will be able to move forward a little less burdened with the baggage of the last 22 years!