Subtle Artistry

And perhaps your theory is that I never write about you. About that you are terribly wrong. I write about you a lot of times, all the time, even, if you realize with all these things that I am, in fact, talking to you.

The science of seduction is not lost on me. But it is also not the sort of thing that is foremost on my mind. Afternoons spent dissecting mixed signals, riding fences, drawing stories out of sticky glances transformed the chase into an art form. It is inevitable, for me, that this is how I see the world. And now here it is, the calm after the storm, and part of me is still aching to be seduced. The downside, really, of wanting to know things.

I know what I think I know about human nature because people act with surprising regularity according to whatever stimulus is presented to them. Know their story, understand the reaction. I'm no exception to this. All my irrational outbursts, all my creative spells, all my instincts, there are solid, if not logical, explanations for everything. The only people who ever truly amaze me are those with convoluted stories, stories within stories within stories. Stories, not issues. Issues tend to kill real personalities.

I'm not saying everyone else is simple, or that being simple is boring. Being simple is, quite possibly, the real point in all of this. But you, perfect reader, are the real reason I wake up every day, why I even bother at all. With you, the seduction is complete: you will never know who you really are, you might wonder if it were you, for a moment, then dismiss it, who am I, really, and why should what I think matter?

But maybe this is enough: that the thought of you makes the colors in my life brighter by a notch. An important notch, the notch that makes all the difference. When I write, I think about how to tell you that I'm utterly fascinated by what you are, secretly wishing we never get to say the words. It's so much better this way. I don't really know you, you don't really know me. We are perfect for each other in so many ways.

(Note on August 12, 2012: This was originally posted on my Tumblr.  I'm doing some online housekeeping and I figured I'd leave my Tumblr out of the drama and corral introspective shit here. I left my blog last August of 2009 but I've reemerged somewhere between that and this.)