So the other day I’m sitting here parsing through SEB’s referrer logs to see who is dropping by the site and weed out spammers when I come across a link to a MySpace page, that I’ve since lost the link to, where a lady has linked back to SEB. The entry itself is a meme that’s going around right now about the bloggers you read with questions like “which blogger makes you laugh” and “which blogger touches your heart.” I was surprised to see that I was her pick for the question: Which blogger would you most like to have sex with? It seems she reads the site regularly and finds my evil bastardness — she doesn’t consider me stupid — to be a very sexy thing.
So I came back to SEB and I took another look at my picture on the front page and many of the other goofy pictures of myself that I’ve put up on SEB over the years and I thought to myself: She’s obviously reading the site through a feed reader and hasn’t actually seen me. I admit that I think that I’m a devilishly handsome guy, but I also admit that I’m probably the only person outside of my wife who thinks that. Not to mention the fact that I’m overweight and about to hit 40 years old this year. An event that has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Now when I was much younger I was a reasonably good looking fellow who managed to have more than his fair share of attention from people of the opposite gender despite never being the sort of person who turned heads when he walked in the room. These days I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that I’m noticed more for my scary beard than for my stunningly rugged good looks and it doesn’t really bother me. I’m happily married and Anne seems to like what she’s bought into so I don’t tend to spend a lot of time contemplating how the opposite gender views me. Which is why it was a surprise to see someone pick me as someone they’d most like to have sex with despite not really knowing me. Needless to say it was quite flattering, if somewhat puzzling at the same time, and it gave me pause to sit and take a new look at myself.
It used to be that as long as I was in my thirties I could still pretend to be a young guy and that was helped by older people telling me “you’re still just a kid” whenever I mentioned my age, but as the big four-oh approaches I no longer feel like I can play that game anymore. Last Saturday I was sitting in the car outside the library where Courtney works waiting to pick her up when she got off for the night and the setting sun was at that one perfect spot in the sky where it casts a warm glow across the landscape and everything in it. I happened to catch my reflection in the rear view mirror and that golden light was perfectly illuminating all the little micro-wrinkles that are starting to form on my face revealing to me that full-blown wrinkles aren’t very far off in my future. The results of a youth spent outdoors in the sun too much without any sunscreen on.
Oddly enough the sudden realization that the wrinkles were already there and just too small to see in normal light didn’t really upset me. I found the idea that I had these mini-wrinkles kind of appealing in a strange way. Made me feel more like a real adult than I usually do. That moment in time combined with stumbling across the female fan who thinks I’m sexy gave me a new perspective to look at myself from which was helpful as I’ve been struggling with a mild bout of depression lately over my continued unemployment. More of a funk I suppose, but this was still enough of a lift to make me feel better about myself for awhile. So a bit of thanks to the lady who finds me sexy for reminding me that there are things about me that others can find attractive.
Too true. The need for “nice guys” is a half truth, and “nice guys” tend to come bundled with their own problems in adapting.
Pure speculation coming: I figure that women want guys who have dominant personalities as part of a natural imperative - some sort of leftover from the hunter-gatherer days. I know a lot of really nice guys - but their tendency to be passive or submissive stops them from getting the attention of others. Aggression is normative. I repeat - aggression is normative. I do not know an aggressive person who is without a date. That may not be the experiences of others.
Yes, women want nice guys who indulge them, who tend to their emotions, who… whatever. That fits in with current social paradigms. But they want that at a different time (and for different reasons) than they want an aggressive man-ape as a provider of some things.
I’ve said this before, but I believe people naturally desire primarily and almost exclusively those who will play to their sympathies. The difference is, the aggressor tries to take what he wants, and those who are willing, accept. “Nice guys” make the biggest mistake - they don’t gather people, and they should. There are far more problems that I don’t have the time or the patience to outline, as having been a “nice guy” I am intimately familiar with the relationship problems that led my down a path of loneliness and abandon.
If being a “nice guy” were a requisite, I would not be friends with women who refuse to detach from abusive assholes, and I’ve been friends with several.