As a child my father was very strict about my relationships with boys. This caused me to never have any real friends who were boys. At the age of thirteen, much to his relief, I enrolled in an all girls’ boarding school. That pretty much marked the end of all common interaction with boys for me. Once I graduated high school and entered college, I discovered them – grown up boys, much taller than how I remembered them to be, thinks that everything can be a joke and much smarter in general.
During class assignments I had difficulty working with them. I didn’t understand their work ethics and their different attitude towards life. They seemed a lot more ambitious, they loved competing and they don’t really get emotional at all. My lack of understanding on how they function would later on transpire into my dating history – they didn’t work out very well or for that matter, lasted very long. As years go by I tried to educate myself about them. I started befriending more guy friends, and through that it helped me a little in understanding how they operate. I even went as far as reading books on them, with most of the reads telling me the same thing – that men are simple, and we shouldn’t compare our female complexities with how they are as human beings. But here’s the thing. As I grew older, I got to know more of them. At work, during social events, as well as observing the male figures in my family. And I found out that really, they’re not that simple after all. There is no one manual that fits all of them. I forgot that they too, are people just like the rest of us women. Yes, maybe a lot less emotional, but still people like us. They have a range of personalities, some game enough to approach anyone, and some much more introvert. Some have been hurt rather badly in the past that they have walls, some love girls too much that they cant just have one. Some have horrible pasts, some have family commitments, some are nice and some are douche bags. Sometimes my girlfriends and I would get together and we end up discussing relationships. After a few are married, some are engaged and the rest still figuring things out, it later dawned on us that maybe, just maybe, we are brainwashed too expect too much. We put men on a pedestal and expect them to be everything. We expect them to be brave and not have insecurities. We expect them to be knights in shining armors who has it all figured out. We expect them to rescue us. It would’ve been a lot easier if in the beginning, we thought of them as people like us too. With uglier footwear, of course. When I was in college I went on a lot of dates. Sometimes because I like a guy. Sometimes because the guy likes me. Sometimes because I needed a free meal (Well a girl’s got to eat. And scholarship money wasn’t that much either). And sometimes, even on rare occasions, it’s because there was nothing better to do anyway.
In that time all the boys were still in college too, and we couldn’t afford expensive restaurants, so many of these dates will take place in a Mc Donald’s, at some hawker stalls by the street or at some dodgy-looking ethic deli. During these occasions I would fantasize that one day, when I have a big shot job and are asked out by proper working guys, I would be taken on dates at nice restaurants where people would keep refilling my glass. That would be perfect, just as I had seen them in the movies. Now that I am X years old, I can say that I have indeed been to a date of this kind. The perfect looking man with a perfect looking car who took me to a really nice restaurant at a really nice place where people talked in hush whispers and the waiter looked like he could qualify as a Calvin Klein thong model. But it was during one of these very dates that I suddenly recalled a memory in college when I went out with this particular guy I really liked. He asked me out and we ate at an A&W. I couldn’t remember what I ate or what we talked about, but I remembered vividly how I awesome it felt. On the other hand, as I sat in this fancy restaurant with this fancy schmancy guy, I was happy to be at the place, but I was not even nearly excited about it as I had been back then. The place was amazing, the food was tres delicious and the whole going-on-a-date-protocols were followed closely, so what was wrong? The answer is, as I've come to realize, a date is not at all about these things, or these protocols, or who’s picking up who at the front doorstep with a dozen flowers and candy and moonlight. For years I have convinced myself that a date is not a perfect date unless it is exactly how I had fantasized it in my head based on too many misleading Western books and movies. When truly, a date is simply about one thing and one thing only. A date is about THE GUY. I remembered a date at a hawker stall I had about five years back. There were some loud obnoxious guys sitting next to us that made us feel like we sat in a circus, the food was forgettable and the cook looked as dodgy as one of those ‘Wanted’ men at the airport checkups. But I can clearly recall how excited I was. I really liked the guy and he turned out to be amazing. I remembered how happy I was, and despite the bad lighting and the dangers of being run over by pickup trucks zooming past down the street, we talked for hours and before I knew it, we had been sitting there for six hours. It was worth every butt cramp from sitting down for too long. On the contrary, sitting in that perfect restaurant with a plate of gourmet was all well, but I found myself to keep glancing at my watch and checking how long we’ve been sitting there. And with every subject being brought up about business, world economics and politics, I found myself fantasizing that a hole would open up on the floor and I will be swallowed by it, like Alice in Wonderland (on second thoughts, maybe that was why she ‘fell’ down that hole. She was probably actually on a really bad date). So I guess a good date is like a hamburger. The guy is the meat patty and the date is everything else – the buns (pun intended), the mayo, the lettuce and the rest of the sides. It will never in hell be a good burger so long as the meat patty itself is of no good. But if it’s delicious and the bun and sides too are amazing, well, ta-dah! You’ve got a perfect hamburger. And by 'hamburger' I meant date. D'uh. I went for brunch with a girlfriend and three other guy friends. We ended up comparing the differences between the male and female species when it comes to handling breakups.
Female: Be sad, talk about the problem to another girl, and then another girl, and another, and another, until the whole entire female kingdom would’ve heard about it. Lunch hours will be an intimate discussion ‘The View’ style. Talk about the subject to its death. All girls will take your side and hate they guy. In fact, if they can, they would like to put him on a stake and burn him, or maybe drag him around the city by a horse. Because somehow, the whole female species can feel the rage for him. Male: Be sad, play with video game for hours. If work is available, will bury life in work. Then go out with a group of guy friends, but never talk about the girl or the problem. Then maybe will seek a close male friend and tell him the story, but not in detail and definitely NOT while crying. If the subject isn’t even brought up, then none of the other male friends are allowed to bring up the subject. Then play more video games or sports because hell, that’s how problems are solved. I was cleaning my room last weekend, and came upon a stash of old books. One of them is 'He's Just Not That Into You'. I remembered the day my girlfriend and I bought it, right after we saw its movie adaptation. Somebody told us that the book is ten times better than the movie itself.
There is an excerpt in the book that particularly stepped out of the book, grabbed the book, and slapped me right across my face. It said; "If he doesn't give a crap, it's because he really, really doesn't give a crap." Or something like that. Dude, I can't memorize every single word! I suddenly recalled an event when my friend was seeing a guy, but they were not officially dating, but she thought he really liked her, but she wasn't too sure, especially when he called her only once every three days. "Oh, you know, he's probably just busy. I'm sure he really likes you." I said to her. I wish I can go back to that time and douse myself on fire. What fiction! Lesson: We should stop reading things 'between the lines'. What lines? A guy at the office made a joke today.
"GOOGLE is a woman," he said. "Why?" I asked. I braced myself for a borderline sexual harassment answer. "Because everytime you type something into the search engine, it tries to finish it for you." Hilarious. I told this joke over lunch to a few other friends. "Sure, GOOGLE is definitely a woman," says another guy. "Why?" I asked. "Because even when you've typed something and clicked the 'search' button, it'll still come up with, 'did you mean...?' and start suggesting things you didn't even think of in the first place." Doubly hilarious. I went out to dinner with a bunch of friends, which accidentally, happened to be all guys. So of course they ended talking about this hot chick and that hot chick while I ended up sipping on soup.
One guy complained that it is hard to approach girls because he just doesn't know how to. That, and the fact that he was scared of rejection. "You just gotta do it, man," one guy replied. "I have an office colleague, who's not that good looking at all, but he just puts himself out there, and buy the end of the day he will always end up with a phone number or a business card." Well, that is sort of true. Sometimes when a girl says no, it just means, "try harder, stupid." And if you try hard enough chances are she might give in. I know I would. "But then," I chipped in. "You still have to know when a girl is subtly rejecting you. Sometimes she wants to say no, because she's really not interested, so you have to know when she's being subtle about it out of respect for you." The guys looked interested. "Usually," I carried on. "When you ask a girl out to dinner, and she accepts, but at the same time tries to invite other people to join you, that's most probably her way of entertaining your offer while rejecting you at the same time." At this point my friend looked shocked, and as if a sudden revelation had fallen on to him. "Son of a bitch," he said, flabbergasted. "That happened to me so many times before! I had no idea that's what it actually means!" You're welcome, guys. Glad to shed you some light on this matter. My guy friend at the office and I were talking about the new intern who had just started working in our floor. "Have you met her yet?" I asked him. "Nope," he answered.
The intern was a girl in her twenties, and she appeared to be a bit snobbish. So I proceeded to tell this guy friend of mine about my first conversation with the girl, which happened in the female restroom. "I've only talked to her once," I told him. "I was in the female restroom and in came the intern. She didn't even say hi to me. All she did was fix her scarf at the mirror, and hey, she could have at least pretended to be interested in making friends..." I stopped talking because by now, I had realised that this guy friend of mine seemed to be drifting off and not listening to a word I was saying. "Oi," I said to him. "Are you listening to me?" He snapped back to reality. "Oh, sorry," he said apologetically. "All I heard was 'you', 'intern' and 'female restroom'. And then my mind kind of drifted off someplace else." Lesson: Apparently boys have evolved into developing skills of listening to only what they wanted to hear. Clever trick, I must say. I don't know anything about boys/guys/men. Neither do I pretend that I do. The only information I have is that they like sports/blown up cars/blown up cars with hot chicks/people punching other people/dirty jokes. Hmm that's probably not enough (maybe that's why none of my relationships ever lasted that long).
This page is dedicated to attempt to at least figure them out a little, based on my life observations. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, maybe not. Maybe one day I'll be able to sit on a patio and give advice to other people. Or maybe I'll still be scratching my head. |
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