Today's Report Card

Can't get no forgiveness round here, everyone I moaned and bitched at the other day said there was nothing to forgive. See, I knew I had good friends, which is one of those things where you earn each other. I don't know how much I'd get done if I was as non-judgmental toward myself as I am toward others, but there's a time to stop driving myself and treat me like I'd treat a friend. Fortunately I have friends who do that for me.

People tell me they're fucked up too, but it usually takes awhile before I see it. Until I witness a neurosis that's at least as bad as one of my own I have difficulty empathizing. I'm a cynic who likes strangers, but I try to find flaws in them so I can relate. I can idolize or be attracted prior to that, but in order to really like someone I have to see similarities to myself. (Ego doesn't mean you think a lot of yourself, it means you think of yourself a lot.) And sure those similarities can be good qualities, but we're much closer if I catch you with a flaw that matches one of mine.

This itself might seem like neurotic ground, but other people do it too. People who marry (with or without paperwork) tend to have physical similarities, such as finger length or nose size or eye shape. Because on some level we're attracted to people who look like the people we grew up with. Whether that's evolutionary or genetic I don't know; I read this in some study and I don't remember what they gave as the reason behind it, but the reason was just an educated guess anyway. Basically, somewhere along the way I should be attracted to people who look like me. Which is probably why my wife and I are both half-breeds (she's half-Korean, half-American soldier, my parents are from Illinois and Ohio).

Okay, so I don't get the visual aspects of the argument. But I'm pretty sure there was a scientific study that firmly established that heterosexual males, regardless of their intelligence level, are attracted to hot babes. And while the term 'hot babes' remains open to interpretation, 'heterosexual males' is for the most part clearly defined (except in the Bay Area, where I happen to live.)

Anyway, the argument re. marrying the familiar didn't take on a Freudian tone. It wasn't that you marry someone who reminds you of your mother because of some underlying sex-with-mom thing; it was more along the lines of finding attractive that which you've grown up with. So presumably if you weren't in a close family unit that was related to you by blood, or if you were exposed enough to the community around you, your attraction might be toward another group.

Maybe it's a finger and nose length thing, but I grew up in pretty much exclusively white areas and have never been particularly attracted to white females. That is, when they were the only females around I was attracted to them, and I've never consciously sought out women of a particular racial type, I just seem least attracted to the group I grew up around. I don't know if that study I read about just gave percentages (I never looked at it closely) and maybe I'm a rebel compared to what the conformist is in the group they studied, or I'm rebelling (shit, I don't need it now, but when I was single I'd have conformed, rebelled, whatever road got me laid) and taking the 'exotic,' but for all I know the exotic I've chosen fits their definitions of sameness.

Susan and I have done a lot of stuff over the years, but we've yet to break out the ruler and measure the noses.