The Art of Being "On the Prowl"

Before I begin writing this entry I wanted to cover the quick topic of changes to my blog. I decided recently that the "365 Day" approach just wasn't for me. I think it's because I'm really not a 365 days kind of person. I mean..there has to be AT LEAST a good 65 days out of the year when I just completely check out. So the title has been changed, however the URL has not. I could not find an appropriate URL that hadn't been taken already for my blog so I kept it the same. I changed the title to What Would Jane Austen Do, to pay homage to my role model and favorite person that ever walked this planet, writer Jane Austen. This is no longer a 365 Day blog so I probably won't write in it everyday. Instead it will probably be a "whenever the hell I feel like writing" blog which suits my lifestyle much better. Anyway...on to the actual topic of this entry:


My father once said to me, "Any man who hears the words 'I love you' coming from you will truly consider himself lucky." Well I can safely say that so far in my 21 years of life, no man has ever considered himself lucky to be with me. But I have gotten, "bored", "annoyed", and as my most recent ex would put it "miserable". Now...I am QUITE sure that I am not the kind of person to bore someone to death or to really annoy anyone unless they were extremely hypersensitive, or the kind of person to make people miserable. But apparently, this is the only feedback that I have received from any romantic relationship that I've ever been in. Yet most of those ex boyfriends would say that they had loved me back. What a STRANGE thing human behavior is.

I have been basically single for the last 8 months and to be quite frank with you, I'm getting sick of it. "Single" is such a nasty word too. Like SINGLE. BY YOURSELF. A SINGLE ENTITY. ALONE. I wish Facebook would just let me put "On the prowl" or "Available" or "On the Market" to at least make it sound less horrible. I guess you could say that I have simply exhausted all my friends to death complaining about how I can't find any dates for the last 4 months. Complaining about my loneliness and my apparent lack of dating skills and how no male will even look at me. And it seems that they give me the same God damned vile answer every time because it is the "socially acceptable" thing to say and the EASY answer to my bitching and moaning. "You just haven't found THE ONE yet." Oh THE ONE. Every time I hear "the one" I want to go into a fit of breaking things and then consume large quantities of hot fudge over a sad movie. Apparently my friends have become delusional with the idea of "the one". Has it not occurred to someone that I might not be looking for "the one"? I'm 21 freaking years old, give me at LEAST another five before I decide to attach myself in holy matrimony to someone else. Please God. Maybe I am just looking for someone to call mine. Someone I can make dinner for, someone to read with me in the park, someone to go bowling with, someone to watch movies with, someone I can just...talk to and express my ideas with. Someone that I can hold hands with and put my arms around. Preferably relatively good looking and around my age. Is that too much to ask? Maybe I'm not looking for that ONE person that's going to complete my life right now. And by people saying "you just haven't found the one yet", it kind of feels like they're insinuating that there is only ONE person on the face of this fucking planet that will want to spend time with me. How insulting is that? Albeit probably true.

And here's a thought for good measure. I don't think that finding the one is this weird instantaneous combustion of flowers and pink smoke. I don't think that you can really set eyes on someone and say "He's the ONE." "I have found the one". No. I think that finding the one is something that happens after a long period of time of being with someone. I think that after you have had experiences together and have actually...lived your daily lives out together that you eventually find out that they are the one. I really have a hard time swallowing the idea of that romantic comedy movie dynamic of "the one". Even in all my favorite movies and tv programs, I am still not convinced.

So why is it that I can't seem to find ANYONE to spend time with me? I'm starting to believe it's because I'm a generally good person with a sense of right and wrong living in a city full of fuckers. Lafayette, Louisiana is CRAWLING with fuckers. I really can't think of any better word to call them so if you have some sort of sensitivity to profanity please kindly get the fucking hell off of my blog. Thank you. There are basically two kinds of male fuckers in this city. The Frat Boys and the Weed Heads. Even if they don't really belong to a fraternity, they have dedicated their lives to acting as if they do. They're not that hard to spot. Polo shirts or Abacrombie graphic tees with board shorts, baseball cap turned backwards and their fucking red cups. I want to punch every single one of these people in the face. These people LIVE for the red cup lifestyle. If they are not 58% intoxicated on a daily basis they are extremely unhappy. Then...they are "trippin". The Weed Heads are basically any male artist in Lafayette, Louisiana. Which SUCKS because that's the kind of guy I like. Artists. But all of them...maybe not all but I would venture to say that 99% of the male artists in this city are lighting up on the daily. And you know what...I'm sorry...I just don't have any respect for these people as a person. I just...I don't. And I really have a hard time maintaining friendships with these people. I don't care whether or not your leaf should be legalized. In fact...I can really actually buy into that. I STILL think that it's disgusting. I think the way it smells is nauseating, I think the way that people act when they are high is irritating as fuck, and I think that anyone who has to RELY on a high to feel like a person isn't really a person at all. My opinion.

Give me any handful of white males in Lafayette and they will most likely fit into these two categories. I say white because the black male culture in Lafayette is something that I will NEVER understand. I can't really even describe it here because it is so foreign and weird to me. But I guess anyone who can develop a subculture off of violence, "gettin dem hoes", and gang behavior isn't really for me anyway. There are a few other categories, like Asian culture which...I think I could appreciate. But the thing is that I've realized is that Asian men stick to Asian women. They don't even really want to entertain the idea of being in a relationship with a white person. And that's sad. Again, these are all observation from my own university and my own town.

I have been living in Lafayette for three years and I have yet to find one person that I can really get along with. My last relationship was mail ordered from out of state. Ok...he wasn't really mail ordered, I use that as an expression of speech, but he did move here from out of state to be with me. So basically if you're not a disgusting bitch who tans herself, thinks that her life is actually a remake of Gossip Girl, and has 80 proof blood or a smelly "artist" who doesn't wear a bra and clothes made out of hemp you're shit out of luck with finding anyone in Lafayette.

I'm not saying that there aren't other kinds of guys in Lafayette. In fact, there are TWO other group of men that I forgot to mention. There are men who have completely let themselves go. They are either morbidly obese or so thin I could break them in half, they have halitosis and greasy hair and wear video game shirts and have rendered themselves completely antisocial. Now..this isn't really THAT bad. These people CAN be helped. But I find that MOST of them are REALLY mean. They're sarcastic, they think they know everything and they are just...bitter. I actually almost went on a date with someone of the less disgusting portion of this category. He told me straight up, "you're too fat to go on a date with me." I was like WHOA NOW. YOU'RE the one with the social disorder and no friends. You're the one who can't even get a woman to look at you much less talk to you. YOU don't have any room to be dissing ME like that. My most recent ex was borderlining this genre of male. At least he kept himself clean and his hair nice and his body fit. But I can see him traveling down the fast track to being morbidly obese and working at a video game store for the rest of his life....which gives me much pleasure to think about.

There is also the subculture of "redneck" here. Let's just keep this simple. I am much too intelligent and worth so much more than "going muddin", wearing camouflage, being your barefoot and pregnant wife in the kitchen making you your Sunday after church special dinner, being considered "lower than you" because I'm a woman, your ill paying labor force job and your high school dimploma "I can't really spell or form sentences and that's acceptable" mentality. End of story. I will have my PhD in psychology one day. If you can't actually spell the word "psychology" off the top of your head, I really don't want to go out with you. Thank you. I don't care HOW nice you are and HOW good a country boy you are. I have standards.

However...there is ONE male I have found that I think I might actually get along with. I found him running loose in my writing class and the day that he smiled at me I think I heard a choir sing "Hallelujah!" Not because I was instantaneously sexually attracted to him but rather because I had found someone that UNDERSTANDS me. I felt like falling to my knees and crying out "Oh dear God finally! I have been looking for you for three years!" This boy has the whole package that I have been looking for. He's good looking in the nontraditional sense. He's not "hot" and he's not "sexy" he's...handsome. And that to me is the highest form of beauty a male can have. If a man calls me "hot" or "cute" or "sexy" I just want to tell him off. I want a man to call me "beautiful" and I think that "handsome" is the male equivalent of beautiful. He is very handsome indeed. He's general studies major, but he specializes in humanities. He reads. Oh yes everyone, he READS! This has made me so very happy. Do you know how hard it is to find a male that REALLY genuinely likes to READ in Lafayette, Louisiana? That actually likes to read the classics and works of philosophy and THINKS about them? And WRITES about them? And CARES about the arts and about music and theater and appreciating all the things that actually MATTER? It's difficult. And yet I have found all of those things in this boy with black hair and glasses. He's a man that likes going for coffee and playing in the park. He doesn't really drink and he is religious and does SERVICE WORK for the COMMUNITY because he WANTS TO. I feel like going up to him and being like "All right, where have your people been hiding all along? There must be more like you somewhere!"

It's not like my first instinct is to want to be in a relationship with this person. Surprisingly, it's not. I think I am actually so jaded with the idea of relationships right now that even thinking about doing so makes my mind numb. Instead, I just want him to hang out with me. Forgetting romantic relationships altogether, I have had the damnedest time trying to even make friends in this horrible city. If I had all the guts in the world I would march up to him after class and say just this,
"Look. I am a really lonely person. I haven't been able to find many friends since I've moved here and I think it's because I'm not a total douchebag. And from what I can see, you're not a total douchebag either. And I just really really want to have coffee with you. Because I think that if I let you walk out of this classroom on May 6th without knowing me I might never find another person that I can really talk to at this university. I probably won't ever find another person that I can talk about the things I really love with. And I'm probably not as smart as you. I probably don't know half of the books that you know or have thought of half of things that you think but I don't mind being taught a thing or two. If you're willing to just talk....I'm willing to just listen and enjoy being with you."

But I don't have all the guts in the world. And in a universe that exists outside of my mind that probably wouldn't be an acceptable thing to say to anyone. So I just remain quiet. And I smile at him when he walks in the door and I wait patiently for him to say something to me one day. I wait for that chance to find an excuse to slip into his life and hear him talk about the things that he loves. I am too shy and much too generally embarrassed to do anything else.

I guess I can admit it, I've been rejected by quite a few men in the last month or two. Rejection is never an easy pill to swallow and I've been FORCE FED rejection for a long time. It's starting to weigh on me. But I guess I am sorrowfully glad that these men rejected me. Because when I compare them with people like the boy with black hair and glasses in my writing class...they fall considerably short. They were either much too concerned with themselves, or much too emotionally unstable or much too immature or much too utterly confused to be of much use to me. If I keep holding up that standard of what I do want, having that boy as the model for what I truly want in my life, I can keep focused on the prize. Then I guess being "single" isn't really that hard.

I just hope that there are more boys like the one in my writing class. There just has to be.