Talking to Karl

I was recently in a bar with a friend of mine, Karl. Karl's about 29. He's spent much of his 20s bouncing from crappy job to crappy job... Well, I think much of his twenties is a result of his poor planning and bad luck rather than a lack of intelligence or hard-work. He was working on his degree in theatre, and he couldn't complete school because of financial issues. He's also a person who fights for his principles; he's helped to organize a few local protests a few years back. I think he didn't manage to finish his degree until somewhat recently. But some of his jobs have been crappy.

For instance, he once worked at a cannery gutting fish. He also worked as a cab-driver and stage-hand for a while. His real love is writing plays, and recently he's started to work as an assistant stage manager at a local theatre and in his spare time, he's also written some theatre critique columns for a local 'Zine. I'm quite glad to see that he's now doing stuff that he actually enjoys.

"It's not full-time work, but they pay me to watch plays!" He grins. "I mean, that's something that the audience usually pays for!"

Karl is a very bright guy, and he has a splendid sense of humor. I always have a fun time whenever I meet-up with him.

Oh, by the way, Karl was for the longest time a self-described male feminist.

Discussing Stuff Last Night

Last night, we'd met-up in a coffee shop with a small group of friends. It got late, and several of my friends had to go home. He and I decided to stop-off at a local bar since we didn't really have any pressing engagements for the day after.

We're sitting there; he's glancing at the football game on the bar's TV from time to time. Relatively few people are there, so we can talk pretty loudly. Basically, we were comparing experiences of meeting women. I'm not sure how we got on this subject, but I share a few of my stories, and he shares a few of his.

"Okay, there's one thing I really don't comprehend about women." He says.

"One thing?" I snort. "What is it?"

"Well, I mean, there's one big thing at the top of the whole pile of things I don't understand about women." He corrects himself. "Mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in an en-ig-ma." He says in his best Winston Churchill voice. "Okay, I've tried to meet women in bars and through Yahoo Personals. A lot of these women tell total lies about themselves, and tell lies about whether or not they want to meet me. And they lie when I ask for their phone number. They just lie through their teeth as if it's mother's milk; there is just a total contempt for the truth on their part. Are you with me so far?"

I nodded. "And they try to spin reality so you'll always look like the asshole." I added.

"Exactly! Okay... so they lie. But- and this is extremely important to them- they have this very strong imperative that you have to unthinkingly believe their lies! You simply have to uncritically, unquestioningly swallow their bilge or they just won't be able to maintain their composure! I mean, they are adamant about this. No matter how ridiculously absurd or self-contradictory their swirling milllieu of falsehoods become, if you start to show the slightest doubt, they'll totally start to freak-out at you."

"I'm with you so far. It's sort of like 'how dare you call me a liar!' and there's something wrong with you for not believing her when she herself knows she's lying." I grin.

"Absolutely. You immediately become a jerk if you don't believe her. 'How dare you not be stupid, knave! Out of my sight!' I'm really wondering if I can ever trust women at all. Okay, pretend that you're me for a second."

"I am Karl- an assistant stage manager and part-time theatre critic for a local 'Zine. And I don't bathe... and I have a well-known penchant for buggering beasts of the field." I smile.

"Very good, jerk. Now, pretend that I'm a woman..."

"Love your stubble..." I smile.

"Shut up. Pretend I'm a woman, and ask me for my phone number. I've had, like, three women do to me what I'm going to do to you."

"Hi, I'm Karl. Ahem." I clear my throat and try to approximate Karl's voice. "Mind if I get your number? I'd love to talk to you later."

He speaks in a high-pitched falsetto voice.

"Oh... um... can I get your phone number? It's just because.... I don't know my phone number." I roll my eyes and shake my head in disbelief, chuckling. "No! No, don't make that face, I really don't know my phone number! I just moved-in to my apartment and I don't have it memorized yet."

I grin and shake my head. "I'm not buying it..."

"No, I'm serious! I really don't know my phone number. Please believe me?" He is snickering, but he manages to keep-up the high-pitched voice.

"You don't know your phone number?" I shake my head. "That's a good one."

"It's the truth! Please believe me!"

"Uh... sure. I believe you, I mean that could happen. Sometimes I forget my own name or I leave home without my leg attached to my pelvis." I laugh incredulously.

"Okay, so I'd like your phone number and I'll call you. I promise!" He switches back to his regular voice. "And then, of course, she won't call me. Why lie to me? Why not say 'I don't want to give you my phone number'?! It saves a lot of trouble for both of us! Why the hell is it so important to them that you can't call them on their lies?"

His Yahoo Personals Experience

He tells me a short story. "One time, I was trying to meet women through Yahoo Personals. And there was this young woman, her profile was called Day_Z_Chain or some silly pabulum like that. She sounded cool in her ad. I write her an email introducing myself. Foolishly, I also send her my phone number and invite her to call." He sips his beer. "So, a few days later, I check-out her profile, and it's been removed. I think 'Jeesh, I've scared her away or something.' I forget about her. Then, two weeks later, I get a phone call from her."

"You know, maybe you shouldn't have given her your phone number so soon?" I ask.

"We're all geniuses in hindsight, aren't we? Look at me. Over the past six or seven years, I've been working menial, shit-jobs. Things haven't turned-around for me until recently; I haven't had a girlfriend in years. Anyways, Day_Z_Chain and I talk. I ask her why she hasn't called me until now, and Day_Z_Chain says that she has tried to call me and she's gotten my answering machine. I ask her why she didn't leave a message, and she says she doesn't like to leave messages. Now, this excuse could be plausible, but my answering machine doesn't quite work that way. Whenever someone calls and doesn't leave a message, it still shows that a call was received. And I'm pretty sure that over the past two weeks I haven't received any indication that someone was calling me and not leaving messages. But I could be wrong. That might've happened and I just forgot about it... but I'm 90% leery at her story at any rate. I'm pretty sure she lies to me from the starting line, and I pretend like I don't realize it."

"You should've told this to her straight-up." I said.

"No, I want to be polite. I want to make a good impression. So I'm like, ooooookay, I don't believe you but I'll let it slide. She just needed a polite excuse for not calling me, I guess. I still wonder why she waited two weeks before she picked-up the phone, however."

"No mystery. It's because the guy she really was interested in at the time showed no interest in her, and she wanted to play some other guy in the interim."

"Probably. But she gives me her phone number. Later-on that week, I call her again, and I'm ready to ask her on a date. She says 'sure', she'd love to go on a date. So, I ask her to dinner and a movie. What movie would she like to see? She says that she'd like to see any movie that I pick. I find it a little odd that she's being so accommodating, I have a funny feeling that she's going to stand me up. But I suggest a movie, and she's like, oh that's fine. So I ask her to pick a restaurant, and she says that I should pick. I ask her if she'd like Thai food? Oh, that's fine. She'll meet me at the restaurant. She knows the time and place of both the movie and the restaurant and she says she'll meet me there. Naturally, I'm slightly leery of her and I'm going to expect being stood-up."

He sighs. "So, the day before, I call her and get her answering machine. I say hello, that I'm looking forward to seeing her tomorrow and I invite her to call me if her plans change at the last minute. You know, so I'm not sitting-around waiting for her if she's not going to come."

"In short, you're hoping for common courtesy." I say.

"Exactly, I don't want to waste my time that afternoon. I have other things that I can do. So, I go to the restaurant. And I wait. And she doesn't show-up. I'm a little irritated, so I go to a pay phone and call her. Answering machine. I tell her I'm at the restaurant, and I'm really polite about this. I'm like 'I have a feeling that you got stuck in traffic or something... I'll still be at the movie at 8, and I hope that she'll show-up.' So, I go to the movie theatre. I wait and she doesn't show-up. I go back home, and I never hear back from her." He shakes his head. "That's just rude, you know?"

Very true. I agree. Had he tried to come to her with the big 'Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes' check and show her how much she'd won, she wouldn't even bother to have a look-see. What kind of a rude, binty airhead is she? Utterly ridiculous woman.

As I said to Karl: getting stood-up is part of life. It happens to everyone both male and female. It's really rude, and obnoxious and when it happens to you, you get furious. There's not really anything anyone can do. If the chick is a totally rude bitch, then that's the real problem. It sounds like this Day_Z_Chain was just that.

I asked him why he no longer considered himself a feminist. He sighed and gave a reply...

"I used to really believe in the women's movement. I was out there in the protest rallies that were held last year when the local government was dithering on approving funding for women's shelters, for instance. In college, I helped to print flyers for International Women's Day, highlighting the problems of women in the inner cities. I thought I was, you know, really active." He shook his head and shrugged.
"But you know what? When the women you try to pursue romantically lie to you and ignore you like garbage no matter how much moral support you offer their causes... I mean, they keep on treating you like god-damned garbage time and time again. Why? Because I'm 'sooo nice'! And then... what do they do? They chase-after the men who treat them like garbage. They chase after these players who break their hearts. Then they come crawling back to me, crying about what a slime he was while expecting me to participate in the rally next month. When this happens over and over and freaking over again like a skipping record, that is when your activist zeal starts to wear a bit thin... 'What am I supporting, exactly?' When you see first-hand how women seem to act, you start thinking that they are just a bunch of whining hypocrites..."

Insane Girl from Indiana...

Karl told me another horror story that night: the story of the Insane Girl from Indiana. I'll try to see if I can't get him to talk about that in more detail next time so I can write about it more accurately. I'd hate to miss something vital.

(Trust me, this one's going to be a doozy. Insane Girl from Indiana is a total and utter wackadoo! She's also a snake- I mean, she can actually unhinge her jaw and swallow a small antelope!)

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"Females often seem to select males for traits that make them less likely to survive... In peacocks, for instance, a bigger tail requires the male to waste huge amounts of energy. It also inhibits his ability to fly and makes him more vulnerable to predators... But (the peahen) will nonetheless choose the male with the bigger, showier tail every time... The natural world is full of females falling hard for stupid male displays such as bright feathers, big antlers and bombastic courtship rituals." -- Why We Take Risks, Discover Magazine. December, 2001. (Note: this was a fairly interesting article. It suggests that a species' optimum chances for survival requires an element of stupidity and shallowness in a female's selection of a mate.)

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