Okay what I’m going to say will be unpopular to some, but hell I’m going to say it anyway. But let me put this into context first, so that you might at least see where I’m coming from…
When I started out of this little adventure of mine a few months shy of my thirtieth birthday, I might as well be honest and admit it was all about “me”. Well it was. Mr self-confessed boring bastard went online, discovered confidence personified in a brand new persona, riskily took it offline, nearly had his heart broken as a result, and yet in the end he survived and prospered. Almost sounds ruthless, doesn’t it? But hey practice makes perfect. And things have been somewhat perfect since (except of course when I’m drunk).
However, as you all know, of late I’ve been asking a lot of questions. It began on a beach with too much time to think and has, in between the now usual carnal interludes, intermittently progressed from there. What I’ve been asking, especially as my thirty-fourth year approaches, is where is this all really taking me? I’ve lamented missing out on the refreshingly less restraining toyboy thing altogether, having instead gone straight to maturing toyman stage that’s marooned me in some kind of limbo where I don’t quite fit anywhere despite (and in fact partly because of) all the fun I’ve been having. It’s almost as if something’s telling me I “should” fit somewhere but I’m for the moment still trying not to listen.
You see the other day, over Sunday lunch, my mother (whose never been known to pull her punches), made the pointed remark that unlike my two younger siblings who appear to be happily ensconced, I’m obviously “afraid of commitment”. To be fair I think she’s after grandchildren (but that’s a whole other conversation for another time) rather than passing any judgement on my current lifestyle, mainly because she has no idea what my current lifestyle is, and never has. I don’t reveal that much to that many because I guess that’s just me. However, without her realising it, there behind her comment belies the point. I do indeed have absolutely no idea how to handle commitment.
Of course statements like that, as I warned you earlier, immediately get the hackles up. I mean perhaps it’s a tad hackneyed but that really is something that most women (and particularly the more discerning older woman who’s “heard it all before”) have absolutely no time for. It puts me in the realm of those so-called players I often allude to when making stark warnings about the dating tightrope we singletons delight in wobbling across these days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you all want commitment. Hell it was me who gave you the phrase “the committed fling” after all, that fuzzy state of somewhere in-between the relationship, the f*ckbuddy and the one-night stand, the “invisible” rather than “no” strings scenario that nonetheless still demands some small degree of mutual accountability even if it’s just in the loosest sense.
Apart from Jane though, which I see now was at best a “committed fling” (at least on my part anyway), everything else for me has probably been merely fling-ish, entirely through my own making I hasten to add. You know me, I’ve settled into my fascination of the older woman, appreciated the compelling beauty in her maturity, independence and assurance as much as my addiction to her stylish and sexual superiority over her younger counterpart. However I’d be lying if I said I’d stuck with anything or anyone. I admit I have my “sometimes” moments about Jane still creeping up on me every so often, but apart from that it’d be fair to say I’ve merely wine-tasted rather than consumed that curious aspect of human experience they call constancy.
Anyway, what’s also made my mother’s observation hit a little too close for comfort has a lot to do with someone I met recently. Oh I’ve already told you about her by the way. Yep that’s right, the theatre loos escapade. Remember? Well it was fun so things have carried on. And yet if you recall, even after our first night there was a part of me asking should I really still be doing this (although you might think that’s a bit rich because I’m not exactly turning it down am I. No. But then would some of you?). I haven’t been dishonest though. I don’t do that. I don’t make promises or say the right things just to get my leg over. I’m a lot of things, but not that low. And I don’t disappear without a trace either, as such. Having a previous personal affinity with rejection myself it’s not something I care to inflict.
But maybe then what I do is far worse, because what happens is this, and it’s happened in this case. Somebody starts to analyse me. Big deal you think, like you’re that special. Well it kind of is. I’m not good at those questions. The “why don’t you get involved” to the “you’ve suddenly become very distant” is then only a step away from the “how do you feel about us?”- awkward when I probably don’t feel anything beyond a kind of friendship mixed with mere raw chemistry which isn’t taking me or “us” anywhere. What do you say when you’ve already said at the outset “let’s just have fun”, “let’s not make things complicated”, “let’s have no mind games”, but nonetheless the subtle enquiries start? Well you know what I do, I do repeat all that, while at the same going into a less forthcoming system shutdown until they, maybe quite rightly, think “total time wasting loser” and move on to someone far better who can offer something I couldn’t have given them because it didn’t click, because it didn’t feel right to drop my guard again and be the all encapsulating “me” beyond this creation whose one odd flaw is he won’t allow me to be occasionally vulnerable.
So hey folks, I’m sh*te at commitment in case you hadn’t guessed. However I’m not going to use that well-worn cliché as a means to get away with what I’ve so far got away with. Otherwise you really would disapprove wouldn’t you! You see I’m sensing that maybe the next part of my big adventure is this; maybe it’s time to experience what this commitment lark, even if only in it’s less binding, “committed fling” twenty-first century sense, is really all about.
But okay if that’s the plan, who then to commit (in whatever way) to? Well as I’m sure you’d tell me, it’s finding this out that’s half the fun…
By Bastian Dash Read his diary on your home page….
