Can you change your type?

A recent date asked me this question. We were talking about relationships, type, how you get drawn to the same personalities in different packages over and over.

This began because we were talking about people who are really, really driven. And I said in my experience with really successful men, all of them are driven either by anger or fear. Predominantly anger.

He didn't necessarily agree. What, he wanted to know, was I talking about?

I used, as an example, the Dementor, who I'd recently seen. And when we were together, I told him that he was the most anger-driven person I know. He said, "What else is going to get you up at 5 am and keep you working till 11 pm?"

And so this date asked, "Do you think you can change your type?"

My answer was, "I don't know, but I hope so."

I've given it some genuine and intense thought, and vacillate between no, you can't, you absolutely can't, and sure, as you learn and grow, of course you can.

I'd like to think that the answer is yes. That as I figure myself out more, and understand the reasons behind the choices I make, I can make better ones. My dad, my brother, and the Dementor are probably the angriest men I've ever been close to. My brother has no idea the extent of his anger. I'm certain he doesn't admit the depth and breadth of it even to himself.

Yeah, I know. Shocking to choose men like your father and your brother. How banal to be such a cliche.

And so I think, now that I understand why I've chosen some of these people, I can choose different ones. The answer is yes.

But I'm afraid the answer is no. The ones who get me really intensely, who pull me in and make me care - they're invariably the difficult upbringing, angry ones. It's not that they're angry for no reason, and in some ways - winning in sports, winning in their careers, for example - the anger is really useful. But it's so malignant.

Now that I know what to look for, I spot it more quickly. And now I get the "why" of some of the guy who grab my interest. Some of them are really good at keeping it buried, and so I might already like them before I figure it out. Which is why, when I like someone, I begin to look for it.

Incredibly smart, intense, angry men? There are a lot of them. And they're often so compelling.

Which would mean the answer is no.

Self amusement through the 80s

Now I'm on a huge 80s music nostalgia trip.

I'm not sure if some of these were popular here or not, and I am not prone to making lists. But I somehow felt like sitting down and listing songs from the Delhi disco period of my life. I actually own some of these. Others I came across and remembered that I used to love while winding down the 80s road on iTunes.

This isn't comprehensive, in any particular order, or anything. And some of it might even pain you.

Forever Young - Alphaville
Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper
Rio - Duran Duran
Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life - Attraction
All Night Long - Lionel Richie
Goodbye Girl - Squeeze
Ain't Nothin' Goin' on but the Rent - Gwen Guthrie
Venus - Bananarama
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Here Comes the Rain Again - Eurythmics
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Bonnie Tyler
Broken Wings - Mister Mister
True - Spandau Ballet
The Power of Love - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go - Wham!
Something About You - Level 42
Obsession - Animotion
Lady in Red - Chris de Burgh
19 - Paul Hardcastle
Wouldn't It Be Good - Nik Kershaw
Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins
No One is to Blame - Howard Jones
Caribbean Queen - Billy Ocean
Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Don't You Want Me - Human League
Need You Tonight - INXS
Whisper to a Scream - Icycle Works
Two of Hearts - Stacy Q
Rhythm of the Night - DeBarge
Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

I know there are many I'm forgetting. Since Kristin dated the DJ at the Gunghroo for a while, we had an excellent mixed tape of many of the gems listed above. Which we played over and over and over. I wish I still had it, although I have nothing to play it on at this point.

We did a cheerleading routine (yes, I was a cheerleader - but only for a year, and it was India, so I feel like that mitigates the ridiculousness of it) to a Human League song, and I think it was Seconds - it was definitely off the Dare album, but it bugs me that I can't remember which song it was at this point.

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is a song I found on iTunes. That they played every night at the Number One disco. A phone rings during the song, and it's the ring of one of those old, dial telephones. Which we had one of, for the entire house, in Delhi.

The phone was very heavy black plastic. It sat in our front all. And sometimes worked, sometimes not. Sometimes you could hear the men who (we were pretty sure) tapped our line having a conversation. You could politely tell them that you wanted to make a call, and they'd stop talking.

Once Betty got so frustrated with lack of phone connection that she picked up the phone and bashed it against the wall. And it broke apart.

She went to the neighbors to call the phone company to say her phone wasn't working.

When the repairman came to fix it, he saw it shattered. "Madam," he said, holding distinct chunks of the phone in each hand, "I see your problem."

He was entirely unfazed. Perhaps he saw this level of phone frustration all the time.

Digging into your music past, even if it's embarrassing, is so much fun. Some of these songs, like All Night Long, make me wistful. That was the song played at the end of the night, and everyone would get in a big group slow dance circle and sway. How many times in your life are you that intensely close to a large number of people? I don't mean just physically. I loved the sense of community, the closeness.

If you believe that music tells you a lot about a person, that's who I was in high school. Or maybe who I still am.

The rest of the date

This is a continuation of this post.

We went out for dinner to a place he chose. A perfectly nice restaurant, but neither amazing nor overly spendy. This becomes an issue in post-date interaction, in case you're wondering why it merits mention now.

As soon as we'd settled into dinner, the questions began. Initially, when someone asks you a bunch of questions, you feel flattered, no? Who doesn't like to talk about themselves? Wow - he must be really interested! He wants to know all about me!

Here's the thing about me - if you ask me a point-blank question, I'm likely to answer. And so I very candidly answered a variety of questions. You really want to know something and you ask, I'll tell you.

But then, at some point, I started feeling like I was being interviewed. And the questions got too intense.

Unfortunately, my verbal Akido skills are rusty. I haven't been put so completely on the defensive in a conversation in a long, long time.

And so I started asking questions back. And it became clearer and clearer that any questions I asked were being deflected. He was, in fact, quite defensive. He didn't want to answer questions. Just to ask them.

And then the compliments/why aren't you married? piece of the evening began.

I can't remember if he asked if I was wearing my glasses on the date because I was deliberately trying to look less pretty than I am before or after the rest of what I'm about to describe. It all lumps together for me in one big blur of assholiness.

Anyway. Then there was a period of you're strikingly beautiful. And clearly really bright and hilarious. This, as you know, was only leading up to. . .

"So, why aren't you married? I'm going to assume that you've had opportunities?"

How do you answer that? I've laid it out before and a number of you offered possible responses.

But what I said was, "Really, what you want to ask is, what's wrong with me? I mean, that you can't see on the outside? Right?"

In fact, that was what he exactly wanted to know. So awesome that I'd been so blunt about it!

I couldn't wait for the date to end. And it was one of those dates where the person wants to lock you into the next date before you've said goodbye. I just wanted to get to the corner, say goodbye, go home, close the door, and breathe.

I've given this a lot of thought. Initially I was furious. It took a while - because it took a couple days past the two-day post-date aftermath - for me to stop being angry and really think about it.

And what I think, particularly considering his actions afterwards, is that this is all about him. He's unhappy with where he is in life. He's angry, afraid of being alone, afraid of being considered undesirable. His "what's wrong with you?" is really a "what's wrong with me?" question.

This is sad. And it's also the reason I hated teaching little kids. Kids will come into the classroom and dump everything that's going on in their home lives on you. But of course they can't articulate it.

You won't have a 7-year old say, "I'm misbehaving and a complete pain in your ass and totally attention needy because I'm neglected at home." Or, "We have 11 people living in two rooms and I don't have my own bed and am perpetually tired and hey, that's why I kicked her and took her notebook."

That stuff you learn slowly, through stories. They made me so sad. And classroom management was so hard for me. I didn't get any intellectual stimulation from them, and got a whole lot of emotional challenges. The whole thing exhausted me. I just don't have the right personality to teach children.

But now I'm beginning to think that we all do it, everywhere, to varying degrees. In the office, on dates, in interactions with the cashier at the supermarket. The amount to which you affect people negatively with your own baggage is going to depend on level of self-awareness, how much you've dealt with your issues, and how secure and happy you are with yourself in that particular time and space.

This is not where I thought I was going to go with this. And now post-date stuff doesn't really fit here. But I think my assessment is correct.

Maybe I’ll play it for you, Sam

I never claim to have good taste in music. I get teased about it regularly.

As I’ve said many times, I grew up overseas with a father who listened exclusively to opera and show tunes. I wasn’t raised with any musical awareness or appreciation.

What I love love love are 80s tunes. Some of it is liking the music, but most of it is nostalgia. I loved high school, loved Delhi, and some of those songs, cheesy as it may sound, are like a childhood blanket. A reminder of safety and fun and amazing friends and having no responsibilities past getting good grades.

What I am leading up to is this. I got the most hilarious, fantastic present from Kelli last week. She’d said she wanted to send me something. It was something I wanted, something that made her laugh, and I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

It was a CD. With several versions of a song called Superstar by Lydia Murdock. Never heard of her? Me either. But once I put it in and started listening, I had to jump up and down and clap my hands.

By the time she got to the chorus I was dancing and singing along.

I haven’t written much about high school in India. We had this very weird social life, in that there was no drinking age, and if you were Western, you could go into any of the bars or discos in the big hotels and nobody batted an eye. Even if you were 14 years old. And looked, oh, 12, at the oldest.

And so, when I was 14, even though I wasn’t allowed to go out and do anything, I started going to the Number One disco at the Taj hotel. The following year everyone started going to the Gunghroo, which we called the Gung. This was where we were at least one night every weekend of my high school life.

Mom and Dad, this is going to make you apoplectic, I know. Since I wasn’t allowed to do anything, I mostly spent the night at the houses of friends with more lenient parents. Or we snuck out.

I drank more in high school than I ever have in my life. We’d get very dressed up – mini skirts, heels, makeup, probably even off the shoulder shirts and a lace glove or two, as it was the 80s, after all. And we’d go out. And grown-up men would buy us drinks.

But the weirdness of the social life is a different story entirely. This is about the music.

So Delhi in the 80s wasn’t exactly on top of the international music scene. We didn’t hear a lot of American music, or what we got was a year or two behind. We heard a lot of Britpop, but even that wasn’t immediate.

Because remember, we still used cassette tapes and sent things through the Post Office and things like that in the 80s.

So we would go to these discos and drink gin and tonics (except that I drank gin and soda – fewer calories, of course) and dance our little teenage asses off. To 80s pop.

Michael Jackson was internationally huge, and Thriller is still one of my all-time favorite albums. I think they probably played every song on the album every weekend. And so we regularly danced to Billy Jean.

And then this response song came out. “I’m Billy Jean and I’m mad as Hell. I’m a woman with a story to tell. Superstar, you know just who you are.” She tells the story from Billy Jean’s perspective. She raps. It was an all around delight.

This, of course, is a song that nobody else that I know has ever, ever heard. If you weren't at the discos in Delhi in the mid-80s, apparently it didn't exist.

I decided at some point I’d made it up. Until Kelli and I were talking about high school when I visited her in Chicago. We were talking about the Gung, about our social lives and how grown up we thought we were. And I asked her if she remembered this one weird song.

“Do you remember an ‘I’m Billy Jean and I’m mad as Hell’ song?”

She absolutely did. And she’d never heard it since. And nobody else had ever heard it, ever.

So after I left, she Googled those precise lyrics, ordered the CD, and sent it to me. It’s not like it’s a quality song. It’s not deep or meaningful. But it is a reminder of experiences (admittedly not deep or meaningful either, except in a teenage angst and Best Friends Forever kind of way) and friends and a particular time in my life that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

And, also? Proof that I didn’t randomly make it all up.

“And I know you might be a big superstar
And the whole wide world knows who you are
But the next time we meet
If you don't want a scene
Tip your hat with respect
'Cause I am Billie Jean”

Heh.

The kind of day where even M&Ms wouldn't do the trick

Do you ever have days where you just wake up irritable? And you stomp all the way to work? And glare at just about everyone who crosses your path, even the people you really like? Just because they're, I don't know, breathing near you or something?

And I'm not only annoyed for no reason, I'm confused. I can't make up my mind on things. I'm fuzzy. I'm indecisive. I wrote a post, posted it, read it, modified it, read it, and then got annoyed with myself and deleted it. A lot of effort for nothing.

It's the kind of day where I might say mean things just to say them. Which makes me not want to interact with anyone.

That's how my entire effing day has been. And it's not improving even though I've been trying.

Grrr.