i've learned a lot since moving to manhattan. i've learned new subway routes, explored my new neighborhood, took the first steps in my career. it's all a part of being a grown.
a valuable lesson that i recently learned is if you are a female in the city within three weeks of christmas and a five mile radius of any new york bar, you WILL get hit on by a santa clause.
bar behavior, especially in new york, and especially on a week day always makes me laugh under the condition that i'm not being a participating in it. most guys are either creepy regulars or there to hit on you...quite possibly and probably both. most girls are there to get hit on for the self esteem boost, send copious amounts of text messages, and not pay for drinks. both are there to disillusion themselves into thinking they aren't making a mistake, even though they are, or trying to forget a past one. the girl will hold out hope that it's love and he's different than the previous night's guy and each guy will hope that she's not that special and he can move onto someone else tomorrow. i'm not saying that all great love stories don't start over a guy buying a shot of Jaeger for a girl in a shirt that she cut the back out of with scissors--but they don't.
it's fun to watch people fake love for a few hours. that love can be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or if you're in the village sometimes a ? and a ?. normally it's between a man or a woman and their drink. or themselves.
what's funny is regardless of who you are talking to every conversation is the same. it's starts of polite, you laugh at eachothers jokes, you pretend he doesn't reek of abercrombie and she doesn't look unseasonably tan and underdressed for iceskating weather. i have calculated that as the conversation continues, 92.7% of the time one of the people involved will say i'm just really guarded sometimes" or "i'm not really open when it comes to relationships." this will unhealthily and inevitably intrigue the other party forcing her to pay attention to you, or him to buy you drinks.
regardless of gender, saying "i'm guarded" or "i'm not into relationships" or "i'm focusing on me" is really saying "i'm way too fucking scared to take the chance that my heart may get demolished again," which is fine, especially in a bar on a Monday. but if this cycle is on repeat at the same bar on any day that has a vowel, you aren't going through a "guarded" phase. you're kind of just a big baby who doesn't want to get over it. healing can talk a long time, but if you aren't really making the effort to heal, then you are just scared. i'm not saying i haven't been there, or even that it's wrong, i'm just saying call it what it is. and also that it's kind of wrong. you are classifying everyone else you meet based on an unrelated past experience, screwing yourself out opportunities with great people, and probably stringing some poor other guy or girl along in a "complicated" situation that's only undefined so that you don't have to get too close. girls think it's cute and mysterious, guys think it's clever. you're both wrong. it's just a bunch of unnecessary mind games that you hope will exhaust both of you so that you can call it all off without saying how you really feel.
calculus is complicated and can be solved. people are complicated and can grow. if you could solve for "x" with people, the human element would turn into math, and then i'd have to hate humanity as much as i do equations.
-k.
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