The Hopeful and the Hopeless

One day as I was fixing a server as a younger engineer when I came across a really nice lady, lets call her…Cecil :). Cecil was a fully qualified banker and telling by the way her fellow colleagues held her in great esteem a damn good one too. She was also extremely stunning and pleasing to the eye. Her smile was contagious and her hip to waist ratio sent electronic signals to the left side of my brain, tickling my right ear. I thought to myself "joe, there has to be a God. A design like this could not be attributed solely to chance".

Anyways, those of you who know me, know that I claim not to be the flirty type but how could i RESIST this woman was simply magnetic. Who am I kidding, I barely spoke a word and sat there trying to look like i knew what I was about. Trying to seeeeiiiiize the opportunity that every young adult male dreams of…"the random pickup encounter". That's right folks, good old joe was going to bring out the wolf, and like any good wolf knows; I would have try at creating the illusion of appeal that I felt women sought out before eventually crippling her hindquarters and biting her neck.

Of course, as I have absolutely no game I quickly resorted to "hyena" instead i.e. allowing her to run her fucking mouth and wear herself down until she was too tired to notice that I was a glorified nerd on a long lunch break. After almost 40 minutes of feeding her transient verbs and verbal commas that took her to sentence upon sentence. she finally made mention of a man in her life. You know how you women like to slip it in unnoticed.

It soon became clear what my true role was in this new found relationship. That's right, I was…. "miss cleo". Okay, let me pause my story a minute and break it down for all you guys out there that don't know when the woman you are "chatting up" expects you to have long braided hair, a fake jamaican accent, a Dr.Phil degree and a fucking crystal ball.

One, she makes mention of her man
Two, followed closely by sentences that end with "what do you think" or expressions to that effect
Three, You find yourself in a Q&A session littered with questions that start with "Why?" or "How come?" and,
Four, if she puts the two words "You" and "Men" together more than 4 times in 20 minutes then you are not getting any!!! At least not today :). I digress

Another thing soon became apparent. Cecil here was suffering from "hopeful hopelessness" a disease that causes its victims to be consumed with hope over a situation that could never be. Overtime they become riddled with low self esteem, self pity and self doubt they soon become less than half the person they are meant to be. They soon take the shape of a helpless pustule. Some eventually recover but others, unfortunately are doomed to die. At the time, I wasn't informed enough to know what this all meant. It wasn't until some 7 years later that one of the strongest women I know would educate me on this.

I felt for Cecil. She dreamt after a man that didn't seam interested in her at all. What had me puzzled was that Cecil was informed enough to deliver a story that allowed me to deduce this in a single conversation but wasn't informed enough to pull herself out of the situation. "Huh..look at that", and the more she went on, the harder it was for me to point a finger at the man for putting poor, but still very sexy cecil in this rut. Of course, he is to blame as well, after all it takes two to tango. But then i thought to myself, who am I to talk. I may not be a wallowing sap shooting myself stupid behind someone who would rather feed himself to piranas than be with me but I damn well could be. I'm far from being exempt. I hope for the impossible at times which means it's not about male or female, it's not an indication of how intelligent someone is, where you grew up or how many underpaid guyanese work for chump change at your father's convenient store. Think about it though the only major thing that makes me different from cecil is probably my very low expectations of people. Which means I'm probably more likely to think that someone will screw me over before they actually do, even if they had no intentions to. Who would you feel sorry for? Me or her?