Being single kind of stinks
And not just because I'm a natural freeloader who likes other people to pay for dinner, movies, etc. All of that is absolutely true, by the way. Even if I don't have Scottish ancestry in this body, my cheapskate tendencies are evidently learned enough that they came over with my memories and a good chunk of my personality, and perhaps could even be said to have thrived once I got a handle on how the whole sex appeal thing worked. Ah, the joys of getting plastered for free because men think it will get them laid...

I'm kidding, of course. Well, mostly; I can't say I don't like being taken out, but I try not to look at it completely as commerce. I'm even starting to feel a little bad about it, even though I know first-hand that guys like being able to pay for a woman's evening, that it fulfills a basic hunter-gatherer need. Maybe it's a result or indication of feeling that this body is "home"; where a year or so ago, I figured the world owed me some entertainment at the very least for being stuck in a woman's body, now I think I'd like to be shown some respect. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I need someone else to take care of my needs, right. It's a little belittling, even though I know it's not meant that way at all.

Anyway, I've gone over that before, but it's kind of odd to see my attitudes changing. I wonder if it's a different-body thing, with the female brain and hormones and stuff gaining the upper hand because they're constant while male experience is receeding; a different-perspective thing, since I never really looked at it from a female perspective before; or just a getting-older thing, where age and experience just gives me a more complete world view. It's just odd to be in a bar after work, and trying to figure out what I feel about some guy buying me a drink, and why.

And, here it is, Friday night, and I'm home watching TV and playing on the computer. It's getting harder to remember how I really felt about that situation as Martin. I remember not liking it particularly, unless there was a Boston-New York game or something on TV, but memories of emotions are sort of vague. It's like emotions are transitional states, and if the emotion was strong enough to actually trigger a physical sensation - light-headedness, nausea, whatever - that sense memory sticks, but the actual feeling is elusive until I feel something similar later on.

I'm pretty sure, though, that I didn't feel like I was wasting time when I did it. I don't quite get why I feel that way. I'm not looking to rush headlong into a new relationship, I didn't get the whole "you need to have a husband and children to feel fulfilled as a woman" message pounded into me growing up - at least not to the extent that little girls do - and, let's face it, I can be said to be physically younger than I was two years ago. I've got time, right?

Then again, the rest of the world around me isn't standing still. Wei and Jim are married. Jen and Carlos have set a date. Nat has a kid. Heck, I could have been engaged to Doug. Maybe it's peer pressure - all your friends are acting like grown-ups, moving on to the next stage of their lives; why aren't you? I say I want to be good and ready, but how'm I supposed to know whether or not I'm ready if I don't try?

Maybe I'd be feeling the same things if I were Martin Hartle, living in Seattle without ever having had my mind plopped in another brain.

But maybe I wouldn't. Heck of a thing to ponder sitting in front of a computer on a Friday night.

-Martina
- posted 11:05 PM - - (archive use only)