Travelin Monkey

I look forward to coming home, turning on the laptop, surfing the internet, enjoying some good music, probably a bottle (or three) of wine, and our projector on whatever. Part of my daily routine after work is surfing through Myspace and Craigslist, mostly for the entertainment value of it. I would have never joined Myspace if it hadn’t been for a friend I wanted to keep in contact with, and Craigslist was introduced to me while I lived in San Francisco.

So I move back from San Francisco to the San Fernando Valley (yeah, I know.. I know) and I realize that life.. is boring. The sidewalks are all cracked, full of weeds, and unkempt because NOBODY WALKS ANYWHERE! The garbage I had in my hand stayed there for a while because the lack of pedestrians yields no need for garbage cans anywhere in the valley!

Three of us moved in together, the three of us single and out of long term relationships. We went through the typical gambit of emotions (despise, hate, rage, self pity, and acceptance) until we came to terms with what had happened in life. That is when we started enjoying life and analyzing everything.

During that time I started to surf Craigslist. The first place I went to was the ‘Woman Seeking Woman’ section, just to see what was going on in the lesbian world. Wow, was I shocked. Women complained about women the same way men complain about women.

It then dawned on me. My female friends kept on telling me that they thought men were too emotional, but I was confused. Weren’t all these love novels written about a female’s desire to be swept away by prince charming on his white horse? Weren’t women waiting for that one guy to sweep them off their feet in their live action fairy tale? What about all this Hollywood garbage love stories that they throw out there (Titanic, anything J’Lo makes, etc etc)? Didn’t women want that emotional guy that listens?

Yes, but only if he was their gay friend or the ’sweet’ guy they would never hook up with. Women call men dogs, but in reality, there is a vicious cycle that begins with a woman and ends with the guy. Take, for example, your first experience with a person from the opposite gender (junior high times that is). Girls at the time watch these soap operas, read these stupid Seventeen magazines, and eat up the stupid Hollywood bullshit. They, unfortunately, are stuck with little boys. Yes, I’ll admit it, women do mature earlier than men. How could they not? They start developing before us, they have a hormonal surge WAY before our testicles decide to stray away from the warmth of our loins, they just… click before us.

So, they seek what the magazine tells them they need to look for. They test everything about the relationship to figure out “Is He Right For You” and beware if you get a 5/10!!! Innocence is still there, but it is being manipulated by… wait for it.. wait for it… SOCIETY!! YES PEOPLE! SOCIETY! When you are young, the only thing that matters is acceptance, being popular, and NOT sticking out. As you get older, those who understand life seek their uniqueness and go on life journeys to find themselves.

Now, imagine being this boy dating a girl who is on a different level than he is. Suddenly, he is thrown into argument after argument because of, quite frankly, nothing! His innocence towards relationships after a while turns into life experience. Suddenly, society (and I blame everyone, even myself in this) ruined another boy and another girl. The boy grows up to be the asshole all women despise but can’t seem to keep their knickers on for… and the girl grows up to be the “sexually liberated Sex and the City” whore (I don’t buy the stupid sexual liberation movement, sorry. If you are promiscuous, it is because of some deep underlying reason that you hate yourself and need to hurt yourself by humping anything and everything. Psychology owns you.)

Of course, these are the extremes of the Bell Curve that our society inevitably creates. Most of us will lie in the middle, somewhere along the lines of asshole and whore. We probably have made our mistakes, maybe even some regrets. There might have been a period of time of promiscuity, there might have been a ‘born-again’ virgin syndrome, but never the less, here we are… looking for the “hot, athletic, intelligent, mature, and can hold a conversation” person we never met.

All of this boils down to the ladder theory of relationships. I’m not sure if I read this somewhere or if someone mentioned it to me once, so I might not be on top of the entire theory, but let’s just call this the Webmaster Version of it.

There is no true friendship between a man and a woman. Under every friendship there is some attraction. It just makes sense. At some point during the friendship one will think of the other in a sexual way, it is the way we are programed, it is our animal instincts kicking in. Once a woman meets a guy, she almost instantly knows if she will or will not sleep with the guy. Maybe this isn’t a conscious decision at the time, but she knows. The guy, on the other hand, is a caveman. If she doesn’t have big boobs (not that there is anything against women with small breasts, but nature programs us to desire women with big boobs to better feed our kids, it’s a survival of our genes type of thing), a drop dead body, or a gorgeous face, we probably won’t think about sleeping with her until we think about it one day masturbating, or discuss it with the guys.

At this point, the woman has set up two ladders. One ladder is the friendship ladder, the other is the relationship ladder. If she decides that she will NOT visit on Hump Day, sorry buddy, you are stuck on the friendship ladder. The higher you find yourself on the ladder, the closer a friend you are OR the more likely it is she will sleep with/date you.

Here is where the confusion comes in, but only for the man. Men may misinterpret signs of friendship and compassion as “she wants to sleep with me.” Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but only the woman knows. So, we do what gorillas spend their free time doing, throw shit at trees until we find one where it sticks. And here comes the bottomless abyss. Once a guy tries to hop from the friendship ladder to the date/sex ladder, he falls into the abyss and is never heard from again.

Why? Because women are emotionally cold. Because when it comes down to it, they have better control over their emotions, they can expel desires better than men can, they can erase someone from their lives better than men can. Why is this? Because any woman anywhere in the world can find 15 idiots willing to talk to her and the rest of the world willing to sleep with her, and for us, it is a never-ending battle for the next piece of Pooty-Tang. Plus, who the hell can compete with a hormonal rage every month since the age of 13? The are just trained to be that way, nature forces it upon them!
And that is the ladder theory. I’ve heard rumors that the topmost rung on the friendship ladder could be the bottom-most rung on the date/sex ladder, but really, if that is where you find yourself, go get some self-respect and find someone worth your time.

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