Structurally Sound

This is just a question fired off into the realms of the intarweb - I wonder, do you actually know what it feels like to ask a girl out? Judging from what I know of the readership of this petty thing I like to call a blog, I think not, unfortunately, and so you'll have to take everything I say from here on out as a fairly concrete account, not having experience to contrast it to - and it also puts an inordinate amount of pressure on me as an orator to get it right.
Well, here goes.

I realise how much this post contrasts in relation to the previous; if I'd have known things were going to end up this way I would of course not have posted one or the other. However, much as I like the fact that I can say what I want in this type of medium without too much fear of misinterpretation or reprisal (I see myself as much too good of a writer to give the wrong impression, however arrogant that may be of me), I'd also like to know that everything I've said stays said, in much the same way as a conversation - that way I can look back over the posts and see my exact emotions, rather than a haphazard cut-and-paste job with only half a pair of scissors.

So, yes. Girls. They're rather an obscure beast to us male of the species, and for some reason seem to be fundamentally different as to almost be another species. I think it was Nick Hornby in High Fidelity (a book I've only just recently read, and found rather too insightful) that first explained why this was in such simple terms - I'm not going to copy out the entire passage, or book even, in this space, but his explanation was basically that from birth to death, women are the controlling factor in a man's psyche - we are introduced to breasts at a very young age, and want more when they develop in our peers - 'it is as if breast were once our rightful property, and we want them back,' he says so expertly - and the fact that men seem to hate foreplay, mainly because when that was all we wanted in our teenage years we were denied it by a young girl's idealistic abstinence, and it became exhausting, and when we grow older there remains some shred of immovable thought that says it is a waste of time, even though we know that it's now allowed and even encouraged.
I suppose it's bizarre to talk about sex so brazenly when all I'm supposed to be skimming over is the act of actually asking someone out, but it's important to know the stimulus that gains the response.

I suppose it's that control that women have over our lives that brings the 'problem' of initiating any relationship - except of course, I have to stop there. Is not all the worrying before asking someone out, again, controlled by the woman, and hence initiated, essentially, by her? All the worrying beforehand, the little games you play to see if she likes you, and of course hers to see if you like her - and ultimately, it comes to the fact that in essence all men in this stage are very submissive, despite what they may be like the rest of the time. You ask her - and it comes down to two polar opposites - yes, or no.

But wait, no, rewind that just slightly, and pause - just there where the man leans over almost imperceptibly.
"Listen, uh, are you free on Friday night?"
It's not perhaps the bast way to do it, but there is a flash of recognition in her eyes and you realise that all the suspicion you had before you actually went ahead and took the plunge was correct - you mentally kick yourself for not having done it sooner, in fact.
She mumbles much the same, and even though you know you've made some sort of contact there's still a distance - or rather, a distance has now been created. You've gone from being friends, perhaps fairly close, to suddenly this whole new area of where you could, possibly, end up in a darkened room making the beast with two backs. And it creates this gap between you, not necessarily widening one that was there before, maybe even closing it, but a separate one altogether that you would love to close together.

This, of course, runs through your head in a split second. And then, you get embarrassed. You know you shouldn't be, but there it is anyway, the blood rising to your face and filling it somewhat bizarrely like a cup with water - from the bottom up. It's done, the worst part's over - in fact, it was much easier than you thought - and you've reached a common ground, built a foundation. And you realise that the connection is there - she's thinking the same thing, she's reddening too.

No matter how many times a person does this, I don't think it gets any easier, or harder, or even different, to accomplish. It's not even hard, really, it's just breaking that barrier between 'I want to ask her out' and planning how you'll do it, even - and actually doing it. And once it's done, you plan, and make arrangements, and change them, and try your utmost to make the other person like you, even though you know they probably - almost certanly - already do. So you jabber on about anything, everything, people you know at work, school, what the weather's like (theweather!), the Braille on dustbins and one-legged pigeons - anything to dance around the fact that you like her and she likes you.

I think there's a lot to be said in that first few moments. Most people judge how a relationship is leading from a first date, but that is superfluous - the date isn't the part where you find out if you like someone or whether they're compatible, it's that moment where you ask her if she'd like to spend some time alone with you and she says yes. That's the start, the first brick in the wall, and it gives such confidence.


Those of you who've skimmed to the bottom of this mass of text will just want to hear this part, and those who haven't will, I'm sure, be anxious to know what's coming next.

So, yes. I've taken a day off work so that I can, perhaps, put another brick in this wall I've started to build today. I've no doubt it will be a very short wall, owing to just a month of building, but I'm sure the wall we build will be fun, nonetheless.

Before I drift off into a huge lake of metaphor (with rivers of over-extension running off it, dear God), or even become bed-wettingly emo, I think I'll ring off - not a bad outcome at all for the first girl I asked out in person, I think.