Fell in love with a girl
I fell in love once and almost completely
She’s in love with the world
But sometimes these feelings can be so misleading
She turns and says, “Are you alright?”
I said, “I must be fine ’cause my heart’s still beating”

The White Stripes

Once every couple of years, I fall in love with a girl, or I suppose woman is the better word. And perhaps love is not the best word to use because I don’t think I believe in love, much in the way that I don’t believe in happiness. I don’t believe in constant states. I believe in outliers and their undue influence – we tend to remember extremes and they colour our memories of the past and general impressions of the current state of things. More specifically, a few spectacularly great experiences are likely to make us overestimate how great life is, and conversely, a series of equally spectacularly horrible experiences is likely to darken our perception of our state of affairs. So, I’ve found it better to appreciate moments, positive or negative, for what they are, and in this way, I don’t have to pretend that things that don’t truly exist are real. (Guess why I could never be religious, even at an early age…?)

I’m meandering down some path I didn’t intend to, so let’s trot back to the trailhead. So yeah, every so often, I meet a woman that I ‘fall in love with’ briefly. I think I used to fall hard when I was younger, but as Jack White said above, “Sometimes these feelings can be so misleading.” And I learned. See, it’s never an available person that I fall for  – and no, I don’t intentionally create these situations so that I have an excuse not to ‘commit’ to someone. It’s just that the women I tend to be attracted to seldom meet the crucial criteria for relationship-making.

First, they are almost always ‘straight’. Yeah, I put that in quotes. I don’t believe in heterosexuality for women. I remember watching Todo Sobre Mi Madre back in 1999, and one of the characters (I think one of the drag queens, actually, which sullies the sentiment and turns it into a bit of a joke, but whatever…) comments something to that extent – that all women have a bit of lesbian in them. And I would have completed the thought by saying that almost all women have the lesbian stamped and shamed out of them early in life. All this is to say that I’m attracted to women whose inborn lesbian shines like a beacon, despite the hetero life they are living and whatever their expressed feelings about lesbians are.

Another issue is age. I keep forgetting how old I am. I don’t live a life typical of a woman my age, my heart is young despite any wisdom gained from experience, and I seldom get to meet or spend time with my age group because of my lifestyle and mindset. So I either tend to meet women who are a lot older or a lot younger, and while I am fine with cross-generational friendship, I don’t think romantic relationships between people with large age gaps are appropriate. I don’t like power imbalances, and age can be a major source of imbalance and resulting creepiness. Not quite as bad between women as it is between men and women, I think, but still… I have principles and comfort levels that are derived from those principles.

The other major issue is values/beliefs. Even if I were to meet an age-appropriate lesbian, it would be hard to meet someone who puts women first, who is a female separatist, who isn’t in the mother-worship cult, who isn’t anti-white, and who sees the trans bullshit for what it is – an anti-woman, anti-lesbian, conservative, rape-apologist, male-energy-driven shit-show.

And finally, I’m looking for a companion, not someone who espouses straight thinking on what relationships should be (sex-driven: no sex = no relationship). That doesn’t mean an aphysical relationship – physical affection is great from my point of view. I think not wanting to touch or be touched is a sign of some very serious trauma. But I’m not looking for a fuck-buddy. I think I’ve had enough of that in my life, and it didn’t provide or solve much for me. Bottom line is it’s hard to imagine meeting a woman like myself ideologically who also wants a companion.

All of this is to say that I’ve fallen in love again, and it is another go-nowhere situation, sadly. I’ve found myself in a difficult (workwise), but otherwise socially interesting situation. I’m working in a girls’ school (one of the reasons I jumped at the job offer – I really hate teaching boys…), and almost all of the teaching staff and most of the administration are female. And it is culturally quite different from my native homeland and China, where lived for so long. In North America, females are physically rather cold to one another. It varies greatly, but generally, as a culture, there is a huge anti-lesbian sentiment, and that drives the stigma against excessive physical contact between women. China is much worse in some ways. While girls and women can hold hands if they are family or close friends, it is not a physically affectionate culture, generally speaking. They don’t hug, and they certainly don’t kiss in an affectionate way like many other cultures. I actually like physical affection. I’m touchy, although I’ve learned to be hyper-aware of modern Western hypersensitivity, so I’ve probably become more reserved over the years.

Where I currently live and work (it’s the same thing, currently…), physical affection abounds. It is refreshing – I feel like I’ve had to bottle myself up for so many years, in the uptight places I’ve found myself. But it is very multicultural here, AND it is also extremely sex-segregated. The few males that work at my school have separate rooms for working and eating, which is Awesome with a capital A, and likely due to Muslim values in this area. It’s funny to think that I agree with this very traditional way of thinking, and we might actually agree with the reasoning for the segregation on some levels, but at the same time, I would probably be fired if they found out I wasn’t straight and that I think that women are superior to men in all ways, and that all males should be microchipped at birth… Now, I can’t speak for how things work with the men at my workplace, but among the women, I’d say that the female affection mostly comes from the local people and what appears to be strong Turkish influence. I don’t get the impression that the locals of Russian heritage are driving it – they seem to be cold in the way that North Americans generally are, but I’ll admit that I know little about Russian culture, in general. It just seems cold to me and reminiscent of home.

Of all the people with whom I work – and as I said, we are rather multicultural – the Turkish women are my favourites. They are exuberant, kind, welcoming and confident. And as you may have guessed, I’ve fallen for one of them. She is closer to my age, and while not what I’d call beautiful in a traditional way, walks with a confidence and energy that is just sexy and I just want to be around it and her. And we click. She has a sense of humour, and I think she likes the weirdo in me (the comfortably conservative of the women at my workplace, on the other hand, are comfortably uncomfortable with my energy – nothing unexpected or new there). I really wish I could spend time with this lovely woman, but she is married with children. Just my luck. I’ll just have to appreciate the moment while it lasts and for what it is.

Perhaps my next job should be in Turkey…

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