...at least a little bit.
Little crushes.
I've had little crushes since time out of mind...all the way back to grade three, when I played kissing tag with a gaggle of girls. I still remember the four mainstays fondly: Laura, Sonia, Anna, Catherine. Truth be told, especially Laura. With all the ardency a nine-year-old could muster, I announced to my parents that I loved that girl. Which didn't stop me from kissing the other three whenever I could. And it didn't stop her from kissing my friend and partner-in-tag at the time, Gordon. I never felt so much as a twinge of jealousy at that, either.
I'm convinced that my grade three experiences set the tone for my love life later on. Well, those and my subsequent experiences from grade four on. I moved between third and fourth grade, and got glasses, and went in an eyeblink from prepubescent hunk of desirable manflesh to get the hell away from me you geek! That culture shock continued to bitch-slap me around for way too many years: I searched high and low for my missing popularity, ever looking and not finding, becoming more and more pathetic a figure as time went on.
I still fixated on girls -- and woe unto the girl who so much as seemed to smile at me, for one smile could provide fuel for a fortnight of fantasy-fires -- but being as no girl in her right mind would give me so much as a speculative glance, and further being as try as I might, I couldn't find any girls in their wrong minds...an endless parade of women sashayed through my waking (and sleeping) thoughts. It's fair to say that if you were female and I shared a class with you, you had top billing in my Theater Of The (Dirty) Mind at least once.
Now, now, don't be alarmed. From what I've been able to determine, pretty much every guy going through puberty is exactly the same in this regard.
By high school -- halfway through it, at least -- I'd managed to gain one close female friend. And oh God how I wanted this woman. The thought of her could and did actually give me the shakes. She, of course, was oblivious. Well, not oblivious, just extremely skilled at deflecting my overzealous attempts at I'm-not-sure-what without...quite...deflecting me entirely.
Deflected and somewhat deflated, I settled my attentions on a succession of Darlene-substitutes, each of them desirable, none of them fit to tie Darlene's shoelaces. One speck of attention from Darlene--and she'd dole them out just often enough--and all thought of other women would shoot out of my head as if on wheels.
It bothered me to no end that I seemed incapable of shutting all these Nicoles and Danielles and insert-name-heres out of my mind. It never occurred to me to look all the way back to grade three for the root of the problem. It was a pleasant problem to have, after all...until, of course, I actually managed to snag a serious girlfriend. Because that serious girlfriend came with several distraction-flowers. Audrey and Melanie and Pamela and Patricia and Judy and Jesus, Ken, get a grip.
No, not a grip on Judy, you perfect asshole.
By then I'd found the Internet, which was teeming with women. It allowed me to fixate on people I'd never actually met in real life. It also introduced me to polyamory, which seemed to my wondering mind to be a perfect way to have my Kate and Edith, too.
I truly believed I was polyamorous, that I could love more than one person at a time. Hadn't I been doing that pretty much all my life? Hell, I'm a loving person, and an idealistic one. Having more than one partner shouldn't be an issue--I've got more than enough love to go around, and it goes without saying my partners wouldn't have any restrictions on their loves, either. Oh, how charming and frightfully naive I was.
Given an opportunity to express my budding philosophy in real life, I failed...spectacularly. Seems I can't lavish attention on one person without alienating another. And so I sabotaged another relationship, beyond repair.
There's only so many times you can let life smash you over the head with a lesson before you decide to buckle down and learn it. Ken: DON'T LOOK AT THAT GLAMOUROUS WOMAN OFF TO THE SIDE. That way fire lies, and fire burns.
Which isn't to say the crush parade disappeared entirely even after I met and married Eva...only that I was able to avert my gaze whenever a particularly alluring float flirted by too close. I managed to cultivate some real friendships with women, (almost) entirely free of sexual thoughts. I'd always gotten along better with women, anyway: way too many guys either didn't share any of my interests or shared an interest in beating the snot out of me.
Now here I am, eleven years married, feeling like the honeymoon has barely begun, and I've had a epiphany.
THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH LITTLE CRUSHES.
They can be managed. Easily managed. For a guy with a long history of mismanaging these things, this is a revelation.
The fact is, the qualities that attract my attention to these pretty little candles are the same qualities that attracted me to the sun in my life than is Eva. The exact same. This shouldn't be surprising to me, and it isn't, really, but I never thought it through. If you're compassionate and funny and intelligent and loving and complicated, then chances are I'm going to notice you, because you remind me of my wife.
I think this goes for other relationships in people's lives, too. My best male friend is similar in many ways to my best female friend, the woman I married. Wouldn't it be kind of odd to be close friends with somebody completely the opposite of Eva? Somebody stupid and narcissistic and uncaring and dull? Yech.
This has got me wondering. When guys cheat on their significant others, how often are the mistresses similar in personality to those significant others? Pretty damned often, I'd suspect. It seems odd to my recently-awakened mind to throw away a relationship of long standing just to replace it with something similar, yet it seems to happen, quite frequently.
I don't get cheating, despite the fact I cheated on not one but two women. Or rather, I do get it--it's something self-centered and immature people do. I was once self-centered (extremely) and immature (beyond extremely). But not any more.
Here's to growing up. Would that I'd done it a hell of a lot sooner: I could have spared so many people so much pain.
And you women--I figure all three of you have probably guessed who you are--have nothing to worry about from me, even on the exceeding off chance you feel the same little crush I do. That goes triple if your name is Eva, the wife of my life. I'm spoken for, and I spoke those words myself eleven years ago, and I speak them again without hesitation here.
But I've finally figured out that little candles can't snuff out the sunlight, and it's a tremendously liberating realization.
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