I Am Fascinated By Human Behavior
Over in the corner of the bar, I sat, as a spectator. It had been a long day. I had worked a double from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. when the kitchen was closed. Usually I would have worked until closing at midnight, but this was my second double in a row and I was quite exhausted. So, when the offer was made for me to clock out, I was happy to do so. A few customers had bought me some drinks for when I got off of work, so figured I would stay and relax a bit before going home.
As I sat, drinking my beer, playing the video poker machine, I listened to the nearby conversations. A short distance away, I could hear Ken’s voice. Ken is a very attractive man that is until he opens his mouth to speak. I often hear people refer to women as plastic. Ken is the male version of that. He’s an airplane mechanic and makes six figures. I know this because I have heard him repeat this to countless women. His wife is dead and after speaking to every women he meets for a while, he makes sure to tell her. Sometimes she has died in a car crash, sometimes its cancer, but on this night he says that she had been murdered by a stalker. Of course, by the sound of the woman’s voice, I could hear that she was falling for it unfortunately like many women I have seen before her. The woman is so intrigued that she does not realize that he has not even asked one thing about her. He hasn’t, not because he is self-absorbed, it’s because he does not want to know anything about her. I know of course, he will go to her place, because he is a single father. Then like the women before her, she’ll come in every night for at least a week hoping to run into him. The story she’ll tell me will be like all the women before her. I’ll get to hear about the great sex, how he had to rush off afterwards to get home to his kids, and how he got her number and not vice versa.
One would think he is married, but it is not so. He is a single father, but by the look in his eyes when he speaks of his wife, in reality, I think she abandoned him and the children. In the past, when I have spoken with him, behind his fake confidence, is the odor of fear. The sad thing is, he does this to women, because he does not want to get attached. He is afraid. So, he manipulates them into bed and then disappears.
Behind me I could hear Wes and Kevin playing pool. Now there’s a match. Not a gay union of course, because they are both straight men. They are a match in the fact that they are both victims of self-pity. Wes was married for 20 years and his wife left him two years ago. The more he drinks, the more he cries about it. Kevin is a nice guy, but he falls in love with every woman he is with within the first month and scares her away. He was married for 15 years and his wife left him for someone else. I know his nature, because I dated him. Of course he came in for a few months to stare at me and look depressed in hopes to make others resent me for calling it off and give him pity. Both of them had wives that left them, but are always searching for someone to love them back. The reality is that if either of these men were go find the female version of their emotional selves, they most likely would not want them.
So, as I sit, I contemplate. Here I have three men, all of which have been abandoned by their wives. One manipulates women into bed and then runs away to avoid getting hurt. The other two are always searching for a replacement and fall in love with every woman that they take to bed. I can’t help but wonder why they reacted so differently to their circumstances. Maybe it’s because the other two did something wrong to cause them to leave, so there’s some guilt involved and the other possibly left out of selfishness. Maybe the degrees of hurt and guilt had a part in their reactions.
Sitting in the corner as a spectator is a common occurrence with me when I’m in a crowd of people. Different scenarios of this are what go on in my head quite often. I have a tendency of listening to the conversations people are having and evaluating the reasoning of their words and actions. I dissect people’s words, hand movements, tone of voice, and their eyes when they speak. In this scenario, I was only listening while playing a game. I have always been somewhat of a loner and have done this since I was a child.
