Bantu time-horizons, diminishing marginal returns ...

I'm trying to understand people.

Specifically, female people.

A good friend of mine says I have the time-horizon of a Bantu. I think he means they live only in the now and have just the dimmest sense of a future or a past.

Certainly I make a lot of choices and decisions for immediate-gratification.

I guess the question is, "what makes women pay attention to men?" If you're like me, a man who enjoys female attention, who basks in it, you have to wonder about their motivations.

I attract people for all different sorts of reasons. Some of my friends just think I'm funny or interesting or whatever. Other "friends" think I'm useful -- for helping them out financially or emotionally or keeping them from being bored.

The validation that comes from someone paying attention to you for things you think are fundamental to your character and your being, now that is special!

Then there are times when someone (e.g., my ex-wife or a particular soccer-mom ex-girlfriend) just finds me useful, because I fulfill certain husband/boyfriend purposes pretty well and pretty consistently. In a way, that's very tricky and misleading. It FEELS like they care about you, but the truth is: anyone who would fulfill those functions would do.

Exotic dance clubs teach a few lessons. One I'm learning is, it's illusory: you go in there, and you feel rich, powerful, important, however briefly. Giving away money in big chunks makes one feel generous, wealthy, magnanimous. And yes, you get attention....for a few moments.

But dancers have short memories, or possibly the substances they're enjoying render them incapable of registering (in long-term memory) the fact that you've been generous.

It's like they have dementia of a sort. OK, it's an alcohol- or cocaine- or meth-based dementia, but still.

The bottom line is, their attention is not "personal". Nor is it enduring. It endures for maybe a 3- or 4-minute song's length, and that's all. Or until you quit buying them drinks or VIP dances.

I have a habit of cultivating female friends everywhere I go, usually Platonic in nature. I like to feel like I matter to them.

One friend in particular (this summer) demonstrated clearly that I was just an unpaid therapist. When I tired of her self-absorption and objected to her self-centered behaviors, she vanished. I thought we had been close friends, for several years. Yet, when I called her out on her narcissism and lack of consideration for others (me), there was no discussion.

I basically said, "the free ride ends here, either this will be a two-way street friendship or it will end". And she vanished.

What's funny, I don't miss her. Her calls and concerns were invariably about her own drama and love-life, rarely about Sam or his life or interests. She is typical of a small minority of my women friends. I've had one or two in each place I've lived, and usually I reached a point of asking myself, "what do I get out of this so-called friendship?" The answer was usually "not much".

The reality was, I liked their attention and their conversations, even though they were She-centered and had little if anything to do with me. I liked the fact that they would call me, visit me, talk to me, spend time with me. I didn't stop and ask, "WHY is she calling, visiting, talking with me, spending time with me?"

I should have.

I'm not resentful or bitter. I made the choice to accept that pattern, that asymmetry, that unilateral give-give and rarely get back dynamic.

But I ask myself now: should I continue that pattern? Those (very small % of my) friends were vampires, sucking off my life-energy, absorbing my attention and compassion and giving little in return.

I have a lot to give, so I didn't mind too much. I also liked feeling "important".

But I have so many other friends who give so MUCH to me, who care about me for myself, intrinsically, who share themselves with me, who make me laugh, show me a great time, who open up and are "real" with me.....why would I continue to carry the freeloading few, who drain me, don't value me, and ultimately (when I ask for reciprocity in our friendship) abandon me for their next victim?

Why, indeed?

What strip-clubs can teach you about life ....

1) You never dip your toe in the same river twice
2) You see the best...and the worst in human nature
3) You learn what REALLY motivates someone
4) You learn who really has the power, sexually (hint: it is NOT men)
...to be continued...
Keep!Hope!!Aliiiiive!!!
a Jesse Jackson '80s slogan
Actually - it's a recipe for perpetual suffering.

I need to let hope DIE.

I need to accept that, maybe, life will only be what I have now, and what I see in the foreseeable future.

And that is OK.