I've developed the reputation of an ego-centric fop with some of my friends because I talk about certain people I'm sure have crushes on me. Not everyone is in love with me, I'm told over and over again with disgusted head nods. That's not what I think, but it's obvious when someone you're impartial to is attracted to you. It gets harder when you're attracted to them back. With people I've really liked I go almost blind to their cues of attraction. I have to rely on friends to translate their behavior into digestible niblets because I'm usually too busy deconstructing all the reasons they wouldn't want me.

 

My friend S went on a date with a woman this weekend. He emailed me after it was over and said he was ready to fall in love with her. He sent her an email the same night and told her he had a great time and wanted to see her again the next weekend. She wrote back three days later saying she had a nice time meeting him but was too busy to pursue a relationship. In my head that sentiment is followed by a sad face emoticon.

Talking to S about it, my natural reaction was to denigrate the woman. It was the end of the day and I was tired, I had been traveling all afternoon, lugging bags around airports, train stations, and shuttle vans; but I'm never too tired to turn into a surly bitch for show. Clearly this woman had to be in the same league as protozoal slime to have not appreciated S's finer qualities. She must have been a mule, a dim-eyed trough of experiential excrement.

I hate it when friends do this with me. Swallowing the vinegar of rejection isn't soothed by hearing someone dehumanized, especially when they had been such a fond point of reference a few days earlier. What hurts about being rejected isn't the idea that someone doesn't like you, it's the dislocation of realizing you had heedlessly flung yourself after someone who you weren't paying attention to.

It's an unknowable abstraction that sparks first attraction, a sporadic collection of setting, energy, humor, style, and physical cues. There's no accounting for how and when it will happen. What doesn't help bring it about is need. The times when I've been out with someone and felt some internal push for companionship, an urge to quell my insecurities about myself and my circumstances with validation from a woman, I've failed abjectly.

Rejection is funny, ultimately. It's a joke of probability, and there's little need to personalize it, especially after a first date. I remember the first time I was turned down. I was in seventh grade and had asked E to "go around" with me after slow dancing together at an afterschool dance. She thought about it overnight and met me on the playground the next day with two of her friends. She presented her fist to me with the words "push me" written over a blue dot. I pushed the dot and she opened her fist. The final judgment was written on her palm. "Let's just be friends."

One time I was dancing with some friends in a college bar that we used to go to when we were still in school. I had left my drink on a runner bordering the dance floor and at one point I walked over to re-intoxicate myself a bit. Two undergrads were standing near where my drink was and their eyes went wide with apprehension as I walked towards them. The alpha undergrad stood between me and her friend and nodded her head incredulously at me. "Sorry, we're not interested," she said.

I've been told "no" in a lot of different ways, but I had never been rejected in advance. Apparently the simple idea that I might have something flirtatious to say to either woman was so distasteful that it needed preemption. I loved it. I reveled in that story for months. It delighted me to have caught such a brief glimpse of myself through the unflattering lens of their eyes. It was like looking at myself in a funhouse mirror.

Rejection is worst when you need something from another person. The frame of mind that's brought a person to such a lowly state of desperation only makes things worse. Nobody can give you anything. You are the only thing you get in life. The only possession you have is the one you get right from the beginning: your naked and shriveled body crying helplessly in the doctor's arms.

 

Previous Posts:

Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room

Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph

Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On

Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry

Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner

Sex Machine: Having Sex on Inauguration Night

Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time

Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend

Sex Machine: Getting Laid

Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?

Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date

Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After

Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans

Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog

Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home

Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party

Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays

Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date