In my much younger years I was in the post break-up phase with a girlfriend. We were young and didn’t know how to end relationships. We tortured ourselves by continuing to hang around each other.
Several months after the split I went to her place to pick her up for one of those miserable post-break-up dates. I was running late, but she wasn’t ready. She came to the door in her bra and panties.
I was never the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to maIe/female issues. I am still that way. I stood around stupidly while she took her time getting dressed. Was this humiliation? This is what you’re not going to get anymore, buddy. Was it trust ? Despite everything, I remain comfortable with you. I was too shell-shocked and conflicted to figure out what was going on, but I never told the story. My God, I thought, this has never happened to anyone but me.
Jump ahead twenty-five years. I am married to the darling and amazing Mrs. WhatIfYouCouldNotFail (a much better choice). One of our sons is going through the break-up thing and guess what happens to him? You got it, the bra-and-panties treatment.
So much for the singularity of my experience.
This is not a diatribe about the awful things women do to men. Trust me. Men are guilty of this, too. I have been a shit many times. The lesson is that few of us are unique in our experiences. If I write about the bra-and-panties episode in my fiction (and I have) there are men and women out there who are going to relate to it. They’ve been there.
This is part of what makes us writers—the recognition that the human experience is not unique to anyone. What is unique is our ability to interpret experiences and recreate them in ways in that others can relate to.
A few of my sons are artists. The ability to draw is a big part of their talent, but along with that comes an eye for detail. Artists see things others miss. With writers it is an eye for detail, too, but also the ability to identify feelings and emotions and express them in a way that allows others to identify.
How many times have you sat at a meeting and listened to the group ponder a dilemma? A solution occurs to you, but you dismiss it as too “out there,” too risky. Then someone else voices it, and it is pronounced a “hell of an idea.”
Why didn’t I voice that idea, you think? You, too, could have been deemed a genius.
There is another way in which some of us are unique. You see it in the great writers--the courage to speak the truth.
See ya’ later.
The first time the bra and panties thing happened to me was when I had gone over to my ex girlfriends house to repair something for her. I was still in love with her and was willing to repair something just to see her. Post repair she took me into her bedroom, removed her robe and she was wearing revealing red bra and panties. She sat in front of her mirror putting on he makeup for her "date."
I had to leave before the date showed up.
The next time another woman pulled the bra and pantie thing on me I was a little older and wiser. I grabbed ahold of her, touched her breasts, rubbed her ass, put my hand on her crotch.
She hadn't expected that. I laughed and I left without trying to have sex with her. I was shy with the first woman, young, 21. After that I had become an aggressor and didn't put up with that crap.
Ed: http://stealinglasvegas.wordpress.com/
Posted by: Xnt1081 | 06/27/2012 at 03:45 PM