You're no fun any more

I'm on a nostalgia kick again. Me? Sure. I'm remembering a time -- &, perhaps a place -- when a man could compliment a woman's dress or look in a very simple manner, & it would either be accepted or politely rejected for what it is -- a simple compliment. But, apparently, today, a simple compliment -- void of any seething intent -- is perceived as a sexually potent & lurid remark. Yes. I have now graduated from the woman repellent, to the creepy old man.

A statement to any woman under, perhaps, thirty to the effect of, "Hey, I like your dress" or "That's a nice skirt", has become intimidating. Somehow, women now expect such statements to be followed by a regimen of stalking resulting in some rape scene. For the record, I have never wondered how a woman would look from the bushes outside her home.

Of course, if any woman whom I'd complimented found me even remotely attractive -- guess what? I wouldn't be a threat, I'd be considered possible bed fodder or even -- if I had money & was generous -- a possible boy friend. One cannot even so much as scan a room & meet the eyes of a woman scanning the same room without being judged abusive.

I'm sure that any woman who has judged me such would deny these statements. I'm sure their ill perceived judgment of me would become more surreal simply because I accuse them of thinking entirely too highly of themselves & being conditioned either by breakfast cereal commercials or made-for-tv movies. But I hardly think my reaction to their reactionary minds bad powers of observation -- I've a rather strong ability to see beyond the surface.

I also know that I'm generalizing. There are certainly women in their twenties & later who know better. Sadly, I know a very small number of them -- & I expect that number to continue to diminish.

Apart from the fact I have never so much as expected, let alone forced anything of a woman -- "no" had meant "no" long before television told us so, & I had even made it conscious a point of respect before I'd ever had the opportunity to get to know a girl (when I was but a boy) slightly -- not even intimately -- to do only as they made clear I could. Sex, as wonderful as it can be, may be on my mind, but isn't something I've ever expected. Frankly, frequently in my life, I find sex so silly it's practically pointless.

So, have your sugar-coated lives; find your princes (or goth-punk-wanna-be-artist) & live your passionless, humorless, surface lives. Obscurity calls to me, the freedom to be & think & dream -- with or without the physicality sex -- grows ever more appealing to me than the phony life we must live now.

Misanthropy is the result of even a dolt who stops to think about it.