Then I found out...

George Harrison died ten years ago today. He was 58 – the same age I am now.

Fuck.

Even still yet more stream of consciousness

Talked to my friend Diane tonight. She's a nurse. She helped talk me down from my 'certain doom' hill, and I think I can calm down enough to sleep.

Still yet more stream of consciousness

Going for a walk. Struggling to resist temptation to call someone and babble incoherently on phone for twenty minutes.

Still more stream of consciousness

By the way, do you have any idea what a colonoscopy and endoscopy cost? I can afford it, but holy shit. The stock market better be very good to me for the next 45 days.

More stream of consciousness

There's this thing. Something that happened when I was a child. I feel like I know what it is, but I can't quite pull it out of my archived brain files. But sometimes, in moments of stress, it seems to push itself forward, like it's saying, "Right here, Indiana Jones. The secret is right here. Just reach over here and grab it."

But I can't.

It was something I did. Or, actually, it feels like it was something I was supposed to do, but I didn't. It wasn't a bad thing. It was just some stupid something, like fumbling a fly ball or tripping over my shoelaces – something like that. Something my parents wanted from me, and I couldn't or didn't give it to them, and I've been doing penance for it ever since.

This is why I have to have such screwed up relationship stuff. It's why women have to find me unattractive: they know. I don't know, but they know. They can't tell me; they couldn't even put it into words. But at some instinctive, below-the-baseline level of consciousness, they all know what I did.

It's part of why I'm always depressed.

It's why I have to get sick and die young.

I'm just doing my penance.

This is actually how my brain works almost every minute of the day. As crazy as I may sound most of the time, I am actually, for the most part, keeping the craziest part to myself.

Think it's excruciating to read? You should trying being in here.

Stream of consciousness

So, of course, I'm trying to stay calm and collected. I'm a Buddhist; life and death are just illusions for me. But the 'life' illusion seems very real.

The first time I read about colorectal cancer, when I was in my twenties or thirties, I thought, "That's how I'm going to die." It seemed, and still seems, like the most undignified form of cancer imaginable. Perfect for me.

I am not entertaining any notions of seeing a shaman, mystic, kundalini healer, supreme galactic Melchizedek or whatever. Nor am I letting anyone shine colored lights up my ass. Don't even go there. You know who you are.

I've always known I was going to die. We all are. I've visualized myself dying - many times - in some sort of home hospice surroundings. I've tried to anticipate what it will be like.

I've entertained the notion that if I found out I was incurably ill, I would say my goodbyes here, then go to the Zen hospice center in Santa Fe to wait for the end. I may still do that.

I always had the goal of outliving my mother, just out of spite, because I suspected she wished me dead. Well, more than suspected. She died in 1999, and everything since then has just been cake.

If it turns out I am ill, I am not telling my stepmother, because she will kick into high gear trying to grab everything I own. I won't mention this on Facebook, because she's on Facebook, and I don't want her to find out. Dying will be annoying enough without her or her attorney on the phone every day, trying to find out if I'm dead yet.

I think it's going to be the 45 days of not knowing that will be the worst.

My doctor's concerned

As I mentioned previously, I went to the doctor for my annual checkup last week.

Blood tests are back, and the doc's concerned. Iron deficiency anemia. Possibly more ulcer problems, possibly cancer. In for more tests - endoscopy and colonoscopy - in January.

The last time I had anemia, I was just dead on my feet. Right now, I don't feel any different.

Moving on to less excruciating matters

Damn, my legs itch. This happens every winter. My skin gets dry, and the itching is maddening, especially around and behind my knees. I might as well get up now, because I can't sleep.

Another zenidiot photo

This one's a little different in that it was taken today, after I put zenidiot on hiatus.

I put my iPhone on a little snap-on tripod, set it up on a table at the Red Cup, turned on the timer, and leaned back with my coffee.

This picture isn't a half day old yet.

But it doesn't look anything like me.

If you gave this picture to a private detective and told him to track me down, he'd never find me. Because I don't look like this.

I look like this.

Well, like this, but with longer hair.

One thing I'm not is a narcissist. Even so, I have an extraordinary knack for taking misleadingly flattering iPhone pictures of myself.

That guy in the first picture is who I wish I were. But it's an act. A pose. I know that picture is misleading because when other people take pictures of me, I always look like the guy in the second picture.

Draw long hair on the second picture, give it to the P.I., and he'll find me in no time.

That's enough negative energy for today. I'm going to try to find something positive to do.

zenidiot and me

The name I used on OK Cupid and the other dating sites was 'zenidiot'. I chose that name because of my continuing interest in Zen and Taoism, and because of the Zen tenet that once you begin to think of yourself as being knowledgeable or experienced in Zen, you are headed for trouble.

'zenidiot' started out as a mostly accurate depiction of the real me. But then I made an edit here, a copy and paste there, and zenidiot morphed from being who I am to who I wish I was.

If someone had assigned me the task of making a list of things I would change about myself, I would probably have written that I would like to be thinner, tidier and better organized, and that would be it.

Zenidiot, having crept out of my subconscious a sentence at a time, is a more complete portrait than I would ever have been able to write deliberately.

Even though we were the same guy, zenidiot even looked different. Compare some of the pictures I used on my dating profiles with the 'real' me.

Finally, I realized that if I ever met face-to-face any of the dozen or so women with whom I had been in contact, they would see the man on the right, not the one on the left, and there was no way to smile or pose my way out of that.

zenidiot was not a Marlboro man or a rock star or a sophisticated playboy. He was still sarcastic, maybe less cynical, and he smiled more. He still wore berets, even though he was in Oklahoma. He was still a Zen and Taoist dabbler, and he still quoted Alan Watts.

I am almost, but not quite, him. I am him without the charisma.

I am simply who I am.

And he does not exist.

No, I didn't lie

I want to be a little more clear about what happened with these dating web sites.

I did not post twenty-year-old photos of myself, or use pictures of some other person. I didn't pose in front of an expensive car or home that wasn't mine. I didn't write anything about myself that was untrue.

I did exactly what every other member does – I accentuated my positive aspects and minimized the negative. The problem was with the extent to which I did it. The description I wrote was so idealized that had any of my friends seen it without the photos, they wouldn't have recognized it as me.

It wasn't a lie, but it was dishonest.

OK Cupid update

Someone pointed out to me this evening, quite inadvertently, that I had used these dating profiles to rather seriously mislead people about what kind of person I am. I had, in fact, used them to also mislead myself. It might even be accurate to say that the target of my deception was really me, and everyone else got pulled along for the ride.

Confronted with the reality versus the image I had created, I realized I couldn't, with any sense of fairness or honesty, continue to pretend to be this person I had invented.

I pulled all the accounts. (I say 'pulled' – in fact, as I discovered, some of these free sites have literally no way to cancel an account. You can 'disable' an account, which I did, but you can't delete it. That's why they're able to claim umpteen million members. Many or most of the members have been gone for years.)

The meetings I had tentatively set up are off. I had actually arranged for those women to meet a man who doesn't exist, and whom I could never pretend to be without the camouflage of the Internet to protect me.

This was the right thing to do – in fact, it was the only thing to do. The truth would have been evident eventually, no matter what.

Olivia and Carol, I know you will likely never see this, but I'm sorry I misled you. I played a game with you and myself, driven by loneliness, desire and selfishness. No one deserves to be treated the way I treated you. I don't think I would be morally outraged if someone had done this to me, but I would be annoyed, and you have every right to be annoyed as well.

(Would a direct apology to these women be appropriate? Yes, it would, but I didn't think about that until after I had suspended the accounts. Now I have no way to email them without reactivating, and I'm not going to do that. I have Olivia's phone number, and she has mine. If she calls, I guess I'll tell her directly. Otherwise, I think our ships have passed in the night.)

If the rest of you think you know the details of what this is about, let me assure you that you don't, nor am I going to discuss it here. I will only say that it has nothing to do with anything that has been previously posted here, either by myself or by anyone in comments.

But let's see if I can get back to seeing things clearly and honestly, instead of through the filters of my own desires, preferences and aversions.

I really feel pretty stupid about this whole thing.

Surely it's not really this bad.

This is the 'dating persona' test paying OKCupid members can take.

Which isn't to say that they should.

Your results are in! mcarp, you are...
The Last Man on Earth

Random Brutal Sex Dreamer (RBSD)

FACT: The apocalypse has come. All are dead. You never should’ve asked her out.

Shit, rejected again. You are The Last Man on Earth.

Sorry, but most women would rather see the human species wither to an end—and therefore deny the most fundamental instinct that living creatures have—than sleep with you.

We’ve learned the following: you don’t think things through. You’re haphazard. You’re dangerous. You’re somewhat inexperienced. It’s totally obvious that you’re a horny bugger, as well. Everybody knows that and steers clear.

To top things off, when you do find your way into a relationship, you tend to be a dick somewhere down the line and fuck it all up.

There’s a small, but negligible, chance we’re wrong. In any case, your friends find your shit hilarious. There’s nothing cooler than a dude reducing himself to human rubble.

Random notes for Thanksgiving Day, 2011

Back in August, I wrote this post about some changes I felt like I was experiencing. Although I can't find it now, I recall that I wrote in a later post that my libido had suddenly kicked into high gear, back to where it was in my twenties and thirties.

Here are some random notes about what's happened since then:

- I dropped by the willowy, ethereal Buddhist woman's house a few weeks ago, and visited for a couple of hours. It seems as if the last glowing coals of lust there have finally died for me. I suppose they could reignite later, but it really seemed as if there was just nothing there that day.

- As I wrote previously, I joined three online dating sites. Match.com has proven to be a complete bust for me this time around, but I'm getting a lot of responses on Plenty of Fish and OK Cupid, especially since writing my 'nothing but bad news' profiles.

Plenty of Fish has connected me with a lot of marginally literate women posing on their Harleys, but I've found some truly interesting women on OK Cupid. I've tentatively set up face-to-face meetings with two of them after Thanksgiving. One of them is six feet tall! I can't tell you how long I've wanted to date someone as tall as I am. I've seen a lot of women's scalps in my life, and most of the women I've dated have come up to somewhere between my elbow and my shoulder.

- And yet, as I develop all these contacts, I find my libido is decreasing again, and my desire for solitude is once again on the rise. I suspect that one of my blood pressure medications is partly responsible.

Another probable contributor is the stress involved in making myself 'date worthy.' I haven't dated or had the desire to date for about five years, and because of that, I've let a lot of stuff go. The house is a mess, and not particularly suited to entertaining even one person. My cars are both full of junk. There's laundry everywhere, as usual. And there are probably many other things I haven't even thought about.

- Another random note: I blacked out at the doctor's office Tuesday. They had just taken blood for tests, and I had gone to the counter to pay for the visit. I suddenly became nauseated and dizzy. The receptionist asked me if I was all right, and I mustered enough focus to reply, 'No, I'm not.'

She had me go sit in a chair in the lobby. I had been there a minute or two, with my head down, when I heard someone ask, 'How long was he unconscious?' Another voice replied, 'Just a second or two, but he convulsed before he blacked out.'

I, of course, had not even been aware I had lost consciousness. The nurse put me in a wheelchair and rolled me into an examining room, where they put me on a table. I think they took my blood pressure while I was in the lobby, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. They took it again in the examining room, where it was 85 over 20-something.

They kept me about a half hour while my BP slowly elevated to normal. My doctor told me this was a normal response to having blood drawn, and that about three patients a week experience the same thing.

I mentioned to him that I had undergone several blood tests over the years without this happening. But I forgot to mention that it was similar to the time I blacked out in my own back yard about three years ago.

Another OKCupid update

This email arrived this evening:

We just detected that you're now among the most attractive people on OkCupid.

We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something?

Well, it's working!

To celebrate, we've adjusted your OkCupid experience:

You'll see more attractive people in your match results.

This won't affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match's answers. But we'll recommend more attractive people to you. You'll also appear more often to other attractive people.

Sign in to see your newly-shuffled matches. Have fun, and don't let this go to your head.

And of course, I won't.

Another OKCupid story

I wrote a fairly straightforward profile for match.com, which I then copied over to plentyoffish and OKCupid.

It began something like:

I'm a retired journalist/artist. I'm something of an introvert. I do well in small groups of a half-dozen or so, but I'm not comfortable in large crowds or big gatherings.

My spiritual beliefs are centered around Buddhism and Taoism, and I'm influenced by teachers such as Huang Po, Seung Sahn and Thich Nhat Hanh. I also am influenced by Taoist masters such Chuangtze, Wentze and the Huinan Masters.

And something and something and something. I've already forgotten the details.

That stayed up for about ten days. No one contacted me, nor did anyone respond to my contacts. Finally, last Saturday, I changed my OKCupid profile to begin as follows:

Let me try a different tack here: I am probably bad news for you.

I am marginally motivated, profoundly non-Christian, eccentric, slightly (or more than slightly) perverted, and not particularly ambitious, at least by any conventional Bible belt definition of the word.

Check my pics. Do I look to you like anybody's "Outstanding Young Professional" - of any year?

I'm a liberal, fiscally and socially. I am neither a homophobe nor a racist.

Now, for the one or two percent of you who are still reading:

And I went on from there.

Three women emailed within 45 minutes. And two more over the next 24 hours.

I changed my plentyoffish profile to begin with

To tell the truth, I am probably nothing but trouble for you.

And sure enough, women began contacting me. I can't even keep track now of who I've answered and who I haven't.

And I just modified my match.com profile to begin with:

Hi... it's me. You remember: the man your mother warned you about?

How have you been?

We'll see how that goes over.

I just found out...

I've been mispronouncing outré all these years. It's oo-TRAY.

Pictures

I shouldn't presume to speak for all men, I suppose, but I don't think any of us are doing these online dating sites because we want to go out with a woman's dog or cat, or her Harley, or her Hummel figurines, or the hotel where she stayed when she went to Miami in 2009.

So why do women put pictures of all these things on their profiles? My profile(s) just has pictures of me - the guy who's less interesting than a thumb. But I don't think I'll make or break it with a woman based on what my cat looks like.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 18

I cannot take credit for the following. It was posted on a Facebook account. But it's certainly appropriate for me:

I am thankful for forgiveness. I can't imagine a world where all of my bad choices, decisions and actions piled up like stones and stayed with me—I would have been crushed a long time ago. And I am grateful that I can forgive, not only tossing away another potential stone from my pile, but also removing it from someone else's altogether.

 Thank you, Timothy Brister, for the inspiration and guidance.

Photo test redux

I emailed a couple of women who voted for my pictures in the A/B comparison test, basically to say thanks.

They told me the same thing happened to them when they took the test. Their pictures were rejected in favor of random shots of feet, furniture, the sky, etc. And let me tell you, they were both drop dead gorgeous.

So I feel a little better about it now.

But this is all still pretty damn bleak. I feel exhausted by it.

A random thought about looks

Several years ago, I had a brief conversation with the woman I have referred to here as Ms. Home Rehab Person about being good-looking. Ms. HRP was a very attractive and sexy blonde. She never had to worry about getting dates or about whether men would like her, because they always did.

It was difficult for her to fathom a life in which a person felt anxiety about meeting new people because his or her looks were always an impediment rather than an asset.

Conversely, I – and, I think, most people – have a difficult time imagining a life in which you can always count on being liked, rely on having people buy you meals and gifts, and never ponder having to be alone.

That was also how my father lived most of his life, until the drinking ruined his looks. He always had trouble relating to me and my issues because he simply couldn't imagine what it was like for me to not be able to rely on my looks to get what I wanted.

Things did not end well between Ms. HRP and me, and I haven't talked to her in about a year and a half. Some people have asked me why I put up with that situation as long as I did.

I think part of it was that whatever else she may or may not have done, Ms. HRP never treated me with contempt or disdain simply because I'm not as good-looking a man as she is a woman.

I think I'm done with the online dating thing

They have this deal on OKCupid where users rate your photos against the randomly selected photos of other users. This is supposed to give you as a member an idea of how effective your photos are.

Given a choice of my best photos versus the photos of other users, I lost to, among others:

• a guy wearing a gas mask
• the Statue of Liberty
• a guy who put his hand over the camera
• a morbidly obese guy who cropped his photo so that only his nose, mouth and neck showed
• an empty hammock
• a closeup of a thumb with a cartoon face drawn on it

The respondents – all women – were identified by affinity groups. My photos scored fairly well among self-identified introverts. I did badly among self-identified Christians, conservatives, athletes and 'divas'. Remember, they were simply reacting to the photos with no other information about me.

The photo that got the best response was the one that I thought was least effective. It's a somewhat dark wide shot of me leaning against my Volkswagen. That picture did well among self-identified artists, but all the other pictures did badly with artists.

Across the board, only about a third of those who responded thought I was good-looking enough (or that my photos were good-looking enough) that they'd be interested in meeting me.

However, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have honest feedback.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 17

Well, the search for love is not yielding any results. But I am grateful for the opportunity to at least try.

That sounds like I'm just trying to put a positive spin on an unpleasant situation, but I mean it.

The search continues; OKCupid

Now I'm giving OKCupid a spin. This is an interesting service in that the 'matching' questionnaire is apparently endless. Users can suggest their own questions. I've answered literally more than one thousand questions over the span of three days, and skipped some others.

Many of them are useless, from my point of view. For example, "Have you ever judged a person standing behind you in a grocery store checkout line based on the items in their cart?"

I would guess the origin of that question is someone who recently ended a relationship, and was annoyed by the ex-partner's habit of doing exactly that. But what bearing does that have on my search? I wouldn't rule someone out on an issue like that, and I don't think most other people would, either.

On the other hand, I was posed some questions that made me think about things I had never considered before. For example, "Do you want your partner to be kinkier than you are?"

I can say I had never considered that before, and faced with the question, I realized the answer was 'yes.'

I will spare you details of my personal kinks, but I'll admit I have some. I am at the point in my life where I no longer need fear the approbation of Sunday school teachers, parents, friends, employers, employers' consultants or anyone else, really, and I'm willing to consider my fetishes/kinks more openly than I once did.

So here's OKCupid asking me some rather touchy questions about bondage, master/slave roleplaying, rough sex and similar matters, and I find myself surprised by the answers I'm giving.

There were also a lot of questions about social issues like gay marriage and interracial dating. I was astonished, frankly, by the number of women with whom I was rated incompatible because they're racists or homophobes. Also some who rated monetary wealth above love, compassion and everything else. I guess, living where I live, I should not be surprised by this, but nevertheless, I am.

The lonely search continues...

Anonymous wrote the following in a comment to a previous post.

Match.com is for entertainment purposes only. It bears no relationship whatsoever to reality, relationships, sex, dating or real life social interaction. 

Go look at the profiles of men with whom you "compete" for the attention of the women on Match and remember there are dozens or hundreds of males for each woman. Just as all the women are beautiful (in their profiles), all the men are superheroes who love walks on the beach or some such. 

I was on Match for awhile and even met a few women, but there is a REASON why people are there. Often that reason is that no one who meets them in person wants anything to do with the horrible, crazy person behind the profile. Since I was on Match (in 2002-3, sometime in there), my most recent look convinces me it's become a morass. I would switch to Plenty of Fish, OK Cupid or e-Harmony.

What I noticed that seemed different about match.com this go-round, versus five years ago, is that there seem to be far fewer people now, both men and women.

I did look at the other men, and in my age bracket, at least, I ended up feeling pretty good about myself. There was one guy on there who makes a 20 million dollars a year, is proficient in three martial arts, speaks seven languages, advises the Dalai Lama, amateur atom splitter, etc., but the rest of them were pretty much Jed Clampett wannabes.

Based on a couple of recommendations, I tried Plenty of Fish. Far more women there with names like HarleyBabe4Christ and so on.

This is definitely where all the biker chicks and Aunt Bee types hang out.

I received one email within an hour of my joining from a woman who described herself as a 'conservative Christian' who was alarmed by my Buddhist beliefs. She wants to meet me for the 'intellectual challenge.'

What's a lonely Buddhist to do?

Checking my mail

I looked at my email today, and noticed the last time I had looked at it was October 28. It was entirely spam, so I didn't miss anything. But I find it's harder and harder for me to take in outside data. I also went got mail out of my mailbox today for the first time in maybe three weeks. Again, it's 90% catalogs and crap, but I probably should check it more frequently.

It could be worse.

A friend of mine walked into his place of business yesterday – the company he'd spent 16 years building from the ground up – only to be ousted in a coup d'etat orchestrated by his partners of about three months, who seem to be intent on using my friend's good reputation as a boutique supplier of a quality, high-end product to sell their own cheap commodity version at marked-up prices.

So, relatively speaking, my life doesn't look bad at all.

Bleah.

I think I have mentioned before that my depression is worse at night than it is during the day. It was certainly worse last night.

I'm not taking back what I said. I do believe that in our culture, romance and the emotions that go with it are more properly the domain of the bold and the beautiful, and not so much old lumpy dudes like me. I feel silly and embarrassed having to cope with these feelings. I feel like I am behaving inappropriately.

Browsing through match.com, I found hardly anyone that looked like someone I could get along with. I have seriously marginalized myself.

But I wouldn't change that. I am mostly comfortable being who I am. I wouldn't sit through a season of OU games to please any of the large number of women who listed OU football as part of their profile. I wouldn't buy a Harley Davidson to please any of the two or three women who included, 'must have motorcycle' as part of their profile. And I'm certainly not changing my religion to accommodate the overwhelming majority of women who want a Jesus-y boyfriend.

But I came across one woman whose profile certainly intrigued me. It was almost what I would have written myself if I could write a prospective date's profile. And she was about my age. So, I sent her an email, outlining all our similar interests - art, philosophy, quiet evenings. We even go to the same coffee shop. I even pointed out that our interests are so closely aligned, we probably have mutual friends. I suggested we meet for coffee.

But... she's really attractive. Not an Aunt Bee type at all.

She didn't answer.

In retrospect, it occurs to me that she may already know me, even though I don't know her. If she knows me, she knows me by reputation, which means what she knows is, 'weird, dumpy-looking, boring, depressed nose spray addict.' (That last part is not true, by the way.)

I'll tell ya this about match.com. When you put what you think is your absolute best foot forward, and you are greeted with absolute and utter indifference, it's kind of a letdown. Even to someone approaching it with expectations as low as mine. Winks ignored, emails ignored... it's pretty much what I expected, but even so, it's hard on the ego.

Which, from a zen perspective, is exactly what I deserve for having an ego.

More flummoxed

I feel embarrassed. This is so fucking stupid.

I wish I had a switch to turn this off. The whole thing is just pathetic, and I would give anything to not feel this.

Flummoxed

This whole thing has me flummoxed. It's been years since I've felt this noticeably alone. I used to babble on about the willowy, ethereal Buddhist woman and Stevie Nicks and so on, but those were mostly idle wanderings of the mind.

Now, it's as if I almost desperately want someone to be with me, to touch me, to let me put my arms around her, to feel her head on my shoulder.

And there's nothing sweet or charming or touching about some lumpy sack of potatoes like me feeling this way. This is the stuff pretty people do, and it feels wildly inappropriate for me to have these same desires.

Speaking of Alan Watts, he had a great suggestion for meditation. He said one should observe one's own thoughts as if they are sounds coming from the street outside. What a perfect way of describing that process of seeing one's own thinking.

And that's what I've tried to do today. I've tried to see this crazy longing as if it were something coming in from outside. What's it about?

Well, it's harder to deal with than some other things because part of it is tied to basic biological wiring. I was born with it, as we all are.

There is no fundamental right or wrong here. Things are just as they are. But I am swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom and cultural sentiment, and I don't see how this can end well.

108 Days of Gratitude - Day 16

Today I am grateful for the writings and lectures of Alan Watts.

His real gift was peeling the veneer of mysticism off eastern philosophies and explaining them in ways westerners could understand without devoting their lives to gurus of possibly dubious quality and intentions.

So, thanks again, Alan. I wish I could have known you.