The 2.0 Heart

Recently, I gave up dating or making any attempts to get involved with women. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
I just want time to examine the choices I have made with women and put myself back together in such a way as to not leave myself open for any more of the same kind of damage.
A very interesting side effect has occurred; I have never had more female attention!
The Universe plays a practical joke on you when you attempt this. The desperate or damaged signal is no longer being broadcast to women. Instead, they are picking up a signal that quietly says, I am OK with being alone at this point in my life.
Who knew that the ultimate way to attract women is to be comfortable with who you are? Oh wait, that's what they always tell us!
I think it is the same phenomenon that happens when you are truly over the X. That's the moment when the X contacts you again.
The same thing happens on a national level too. A few years ago, there were stories that America had finally come to terms with it's war in Vietnam. Sure enough, Vietnam contacted us to see if we wanted to resume normalized relations.
We did.
It's going to be a long time before Iraq calls us to hang out and catch up over a cup of coffee and talk about old times.

I am being flirted with at random places during the day. I am getting phone numbers from women after shows. Women are telling me they are interested in me. What do you say? I say, thanks, but I really need to get this stuff figured out before I get involved with anyone else just now. No sex, no random hook-up's, no trolling the craigslist or hanging out by the door after shows to pick up the strays that fall behind. Nope. Just talking to women and making friendships. Turns out, I am a pretty good listener when I am not trying to get in their pants. Who knew!
Don't get me wrong, I still think about sex every other second, thats just being a guy, but at least I don't do or say something that embarrasses me now.
Much.

The first thing to do is look at the women I have been involved with and look for the things they have in common. Chain smoking. The one thing the women I have fallen for or spent any length of time with all had in common was chain smoking. Chain smoking is the emotional equivalent to a car parked on the side of the road with it's hazard lights on. Why are cars usually parked on the side of the road with their hazard lights on anyway? Something is broken but you don't know what. let me repeat that.
Something is broken but you don't know what.

The two women I have lived with also read books like you and I breathe. At first, it seems harmless enough. No one gives people who read a lot a hard time about it either. I mean, how stupid do you sound if you try? "Damn it! Have you been reading all day again?"
With reading, you sort of have to shrug your shoulders and think, hey-she's smart! Thats what they would do for most of the day though, chain smoke and read. That's it. Seriously. Granted, Borders Books is a far better crack house, but it's still a crack house for them. Somewhere in between chapters they would fit me in and any complaint of mine would be greeted with a condescending, "I'm reading."
So thats the second big thing they all had in common; they read books for escape.

They had extreme family issues too. I know; who doesn't right? But I mean extreme issues. One or more of the parents is extremely religious and emotionally distant. In fact, this is part of the insanity they had to grow up with that I really understand. I had to grow up with it too. My Mother constantly talked about God and Jesus like she had lunch with them everyday. Since we failed to believe in their views, we were considered let downs and in spite of God's eternal love and blah blah blah, we got emotionally distant Mothers who treated our lack of faith as a charter flaw to be pointed out constantly. They wanted us to learn about God and the Church. Instead, we got a lesson in hypocrisy for our childhood.
Thanks Mom=)
So it's fair to say that they all have abandonment issues.

Lets put the list together:
1. Something is broken inside but you don't know what.
2. They read for escape.
3. Extreme abandonment issues.
I am getting hard just reading that list! You see. Thats the problem! Something about this short list of charter traits is attractive to me. Of course they don't seem very attractive right now, but put it in context of a real world encounter. A beautiful young girl pages through a dog eared used book store copy of catcher in the rye. She sits outside a cafe casually drawing a breath off her cigarette held between slender fingers. When she exhales, she moves her hands and face in a gesture of gracefulness that stops you in your tracks. You manage to strike up a conversation and in the first minuet she makes you laugh with a sarcastic comment about her Fathers lack of attention in her life.
This is the part where I fall in love. Every time.

If we could pick who to fall in love with it might be a quieter world, but I suspect not a more interesting one. So how do you change what you are drawn too? Do you change something in you or do you look deeper at this list and look for what it is about their issues that gets you? Were they all looking for a Father figure to make up for something they didn't have in childhood? Are they looking for a knight in dented armour to rescue them from dragons in their heads? I don't know. I know it always starts out amazing and ends in drama I should of seen coming like a bad sit-com. Oh, they also hate science fiction. I mean hate! Thats another clear signal to me. In my head, it must function like this; she hates something I am wildly interested in, hates her dad but really wants his affection, smokes and reads. LOVE!
Kinda fucked up. I know.

The last and most important thing they all have in common was me. If I ever got rich enough and crazy enough to do it, I would track them all down and bring them to a hotel to meet each other just to see how they would react to each other. I am pretty sure they would hate each other. That might be the way to find out their flaws, let them sit around a pool chain smoking and reading as they trade sarcastic insults with each other about defects only they can see.
I think I smell reality show!
Eventually they would put it together that I was the common link in their lives. That would have to be creepy. It would creep me out if I was hanging out in the lobby of a hotel and after conversation with some strangers realized that at one time we all dated the same girl. At that point you would have to freak out a little bit. Then the embarrassment would come. Only the last boyfriend would be immune from the stories. He would know them all. The reason she broke up with the last guy, the troubles they had, what she really thought about things years after they happened, and the secrets she swore never to tell anyone that she of course told the next serious boyfriend.
I would need a lot of ash trays for my X-girlfriends' convention.
I wouldn't even have to be there for this. I could send market researchers to ask questions with clip boards in hand. Thats right, I would get all my X's together and do a focus group. What is something you didn't like about Joe? OK. Now name something that you really really liked him? You get the idea. Then, with genetic engineering, some education and a lot of positive reinforcement, I could grow the perfect cloned version from a little bit of all the girls I ever had feelings for!
Girlfriend 2.0
Girlfriend 2.0 would be on great terms with her family. Mostly because she would have no family. Girlfriend 2.0 would sit and talk Star Wars with me for hours as foreplay. Girlfriend 2.0 would have just enough ADD added to her genetic makeup so she couldn't read for hours on end. Girlfriend 2.0 would also eat meat, not smoke, not want to change my hair, be as dirty as a porn star but never send weird signals to my friends, love comedy, not have a cat, and develop a rash in the shape of a tear drop on the small of her back that would let me know when she was thinking of another man. Girlfriend 2.0 would be perfect!
Until of course she met some jaded womens Boyfriend 2.0 and runs of with him because they have more in common with each other than us. But hey, can you think of a better, This is how we met story than this?
Wishful thinking. I guess what I truly need is a 2.0 heart.