May 27, 2014

• The Women Are Not To Blame

  “There’s a killer on the road.  His brain is squirming like a toad.”- Ray Manzarek, “Riders On The Storm”

  I love women; always have.  Even when they were girls, I thought they were beautiful.  My Mother was my first best friend, and I tried to be hers.  My relationships with girls and women ever since have been friendships first, and, in about five or six cases, they were more than that.  The friendship, then and now, is the, most important element.  It is what held my marriage together, even when I was making a mess of my life, in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, and it was what gave Penny some semblance of quality of life, in her declining years, later in that merciless decade and in the first fourteen months of this one.

  I’ve had friends of both genders, and of all ages, before and since.  Beautiful women are among my best friends now.  There is no romance, to cloud the vision, and when a few of my women friends have started seriously dating, I am among the first to cheer them on. It’s a happiness thing, a means of some fulfillment.  More important to me are their dreams, their goals.  Don’t get me wrong.  If someone special comes into my life again, it’ll be just fine.  This is not a priority right now; that’s all.

  It was therefore with profound shock that I read and viewed news reports of the carnage in the Isla Vista area of Santa Barbara, on Saturday.  The deranged assailant/killer blamed rejection by women- in a pseudonarcissistic rant, which fooled no one. Santa Barbara was, and is, one of my favourite places in California.  I was last there in 1997, but keep abreast of  more seemly events there, through an online friend who has ties to the area.  It is, like many places in our modern society, a fast-paced and sometimes anonymous community.  When making connections, one must be patient with those around you.

  I am somewhat of an outlier, myself.  I do not blame anyone else for that.  I live comfortably, I make friends more easily than I used to.  In my youth, I did not have women throwing themselves at me.  I was considered “an individual” by those of the elite who were thoughtful.  I was seen as a bit weird, by the rest.  That was never something for which I cast blame on others.  We all rail at our plights, now and then, and I did, just before meeting Penny.  Figuring that it was the way I was going about meeting people that was the problem, helped me right my social sailboat.

  So, buying expensive clothing and driving a BMW didn’t work for Elliot Rodger.  Is anyone surprised by this?  If anything, it confirms what one of my beautiful friends from the early 1970′s had to say- “No personality, no date.”- Lisa was gorgeous, but never shallow.  Apparently, neither were the three young victims in Isla Vista.  My condolences to the families of the dead.  My entreaties to the Elliots who are still out there:  It is not the woman’s fault if she doesn’t find you attractive.  Each of us has a personality, and the tools for determining whether chemistry exists between us and others.  No personality match, no relationship.

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