On Men and Parallel Parking

So.
Men.
I don’t get them.
And lately I’ve found myself more and more attracted to the kinds of men I’ve always reviled. The tattooed and the dirty and the drug addicted. Is this the after effect of a six-year relationship with a ‘nice guy’ (who, as it turns out, wasn’t so nice anyway)? Or is it a rebellion against my Eastern European, Catholic, clothes-freshly-washed-and-ironed upbringing? Whatever the reason, I find myself being inescapably drawn to the suggestion of a no-strings-attached liaison with a man who will expect nothing of me but simultaneously shower me with attention. “Fantasy!” I hear you say. Very possibly so, but a girl can dream can’t she? And by God I have been.
But dirty men aside, what I really don’t understand is the whole courting ritual. Once again I blame my LTR* for my complete lack of dating savvy but really, if a girl is interested, but not overly so, why must men make everything so complicated? Is it that they believe all women want to marry them? That every interested girl automatically thinks of nesting down? Because I can truthfully say that in my case this isn’t so. So why the hot and the cold? The on and the off? The furtive glances across a crowded room and the arrogant attitude? I mean for God’s sake (should I believe in him, which I’m not sure anymore that I do), just tell us what you want and be done with it. But I guess that’s asking too much. After all, I have a 6-month-old secret crush that I express by being openly rude and hostile, so what can I really expect in return? And, deep down, at the very core of my subconscious mind, I don’t actually believe that any man is really capable of loving one woman for the term of his natural life, nor that he really wants anything more than sex, so what am I getting so upset about anyway? If only I could, a) become emotionally self-sufficient and actually stick to my resolve for more than a day; and b) train myself not to view every man through the relationship filter left for me by my parents.
If only.
But if I am to be completely honest - and I always am with you, my reader - what I really want, really truly want, is someone to be nice to me and make me cups of tea and kiss me on the forehead and hug me when I have a bad day and come to me with their sorrows and tell me jokes that aren’t funny and buy me clothes I’ll never wear and speak to me in languages I don’t understand and wave their smelly socks in my face and be impressed by my parallel parking and play with my dog even when I’m not around to see it and watch disgusting zombie films with me and listen to me talk about books they’ll never read and show me work of theirs I don’t care about but will pretend to anyway and, and, and… make me feel like their day is that much better for having had me exist in it.
Is that so much to ask for?
Is it?
Perhaps.


*LTR - Long Term Relationship