Or, you’re thinking, “I bet he chose that path. Probably asexual. Or maybe he just didn’t wanna commit to anyone. Yeah. That’s it. He’s the non-committal type.” To those of you who think that, I say, “Okay. Believe whatever the hell you want.” Truth is, I just never really met anyone worthy of going through hell and back for. Relationships, they aren’t worth it unless it’s someone you really want to go to the ends of the earth for. Sounds depressing, I know. But think about it. Look at, say, your parents. I know what your parents are like. They hate each other. Either they don’t speak at all or they sleep in separate beds or they pretend like they’re still in love around you. But trust me, when you ain’t around, that love goes right out the window. You can just tell by the way they look at each other. Think of all the stupid shit people do when they first fall in love. Do your parents do any of that shit? Well I’m 32 years old, a dead ringer for that guy from The Tao of Steve—not the main guy, the other guy—and I’m saying the whole thing is bullshit. And I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “don’t knock it, Paul, until you’ve tried it. Maybe you hate it because it isn’t anything you’ve experienced. You’re jealous of it.” Fuck you. Ain’t jealous. Think of it this way. I can say the concentration camps in Germany were fucked up. You know? I don’t have to go around trying my hand at ethnic cleansing to know it’s wrong. I don’t need to hook my nut sack up to a car battery with jumper cables to know it ain’t gonna be pleasant. You don’t need to experience things first hand to know the experiences are stupid. I ain’t fucking scared, neither. Lotsa people say I’m scared about relationships. That’s why I don’t go into them. That’s the biggest load of fucking horseshit ever. I’ve done all sorts of shit. I ain’t scared of no little girl. That’s pansy-talk. Like I said, just never met no one. Never met a goddamn soul worthy of putting myself through hell for. But I would, you know? I’d put myself through hell if I cared enough about someone. It seems sort of beautiful, sometimes. I mean— Well, shit. I might as well tell you this, seeing as it’s on my mind and won’t go away. I am scared of one thing. I’m scared of not being independent. I got this friend, Reggie, who gets depressed all the time. He says it like that, too. Makes no bones about it. Gotta love a guy who’ll admit, point blank, that he’s depressed. But the reason he’s always depressed is because he’s always lookin’ to cure his depression. But he can’t cure it right. He has to use girls to try and cure it. He finds some floozy and he plugs her into some void of his. Then all of a sudden, he mistakes that void for love. So the entire time, he thinks life is all crackers and he’s just floating, right? So then as soon as the girl goes away the void comes back. Only now it’s worse. I’m not really sure why it’s worse, but it is. Probably because when you’re sticking people in your void, it stretches the void. His void has stretch marks all over it from where he shoves all these women in and out. Trouble is, he doesn’t even know about the void. Rather than manning up and trying to fill the void his own self, he goes and looks for some external plug. You know, some other floozy. Thing is, if he tried at it, he could fill the void back up himself. Find the plug within. Become independent and happy and all that again. Then, once it’s all full, he can go and find some girl, some girl who doesn’t have a void of her own—(that's another thing…all these girls he finds have voids of their own, so it’s like they’re using each other for each other’s voids.)—and they can be independent together. I guess that’s what I’m looking for. Someone to be independent with. But I think I got a few voids of my own to fill, first. |