one in love
takes every risk
the hero in love
is known for doing
and daring
one in love
lays his heart on
the bed of nails
for the glossy black heel
to trample it down
to kick it away
to turn its heel upon
one in love takes
every risk
one in love
swallows his fate
as his destiny
flies from his hands
Before I began this diary, I sat for two minutes staring at the white screen on my laptop. Helen. Girl 3. Potential Girl. Maybe even all three of these women are reading my diary. They are sitting there reading my thoughts about them (although I avoid writing about Girl 3 and Potential Girl for various reasons – including the fact that I don’t see them for about five minutes a month like Helen and I don’t need to communicate to them like this). They know that I like them. It is not a secret. But do they care? Nothing is happening (although, to be fair, I haven’t actually asked Potential Girl out and I am not sure if I should or not yet).
I have started wondering if I am too old for all this stuff. There is nobody in a reasonable age range to me that I actually know and talk to and that I am attracted to that is actually available. Every woman I know is younger than me. They come from a different generation, aside from the fact that they are all from a different culture. The ones in my generation are too old to have children anyway. I have tried events. There are no women there. I have tried dating apps. That is not working how I want it to work – the women that are interested in me, I am not interested in. If they are strangers, they have to be beautiful. Otherwise, I am not attracted to them. The beautiful ones show some interest, and then it fizzles out. What should I be doing? I am not going out to pubs and clubs and hanging around those drunken women. I’m just not going to do it.
People tell you sad things sometimes. Someone told me something quite sad today. And I understand her. And I understand the other side too, how the others saw her. Human relationships, when they end badly, are some of the saddest things in the world. I feel sorry for her and how much she had to suffer. And I understand it. She is going to suffer what happened for the rest of her life. This is the nature of love. It is absolute violence and carnage when it goes wrong. Because for some people, love is about control. That’s how they express their love. You have to learn to be a love and live, live and let live person. You can’t control someone else. You can’t force them to become you. But who learns this lesson in this society that we live in? It is a society of control freaks that can’t live and let live, people that have to feel exactly the same as each other before they can love them. They can’t love difference. Hence my situation right now. Because I am difference. And I won’t let anyone control me.
Today, I helped my friend with her dream. It was a dream of education. I went through my comments with her for her writing. Do you know how many women I have helped with their dreams? Even though I am busy all the time? So many. And then, do you know what I got for my care and attention? Just because I think that if I were a woman, I would prioritise my family and children, like I even do as a man, over a career, I am told that I am against women. That’s reality. It doesn’t matter what you do in life. That is how you are judged by the people in this society. Because you are Indian and they make assumptions about you.
I have been told to talk to everyone that comes in the galleries. So that is what I have been doing all day. Some of those women with little babies are literally desperate to talk to someone adult for a change. They just won’t stop talking. There were two like that today. Then, the other one that wouldn’t stop talking was a French schoolgirl because she wanted to practice her English with me. She was actually perfectly fluent and really showed up her classmate who stared at us talking without saying anything.
Today’s highlights from the tour about women artists I created: taking around a father with his two little girls. That tour has been written for women. When I told them at the end to keep on making art to share the thoughts in their head, the father started asking me if I made art. He thanked me for being so kind. The other highlight was that I gave my tour to about twenty young schoolchildren and made all the language and the ideas very simple. Later, the teacher came up to me to thank me for taking them around the poster gallery like that because they wouldn’t have known how to talk about the posters. I don’t need to say it – the tours are always the best when there are the little children there for the future. You plant the seed and see if it takes.
I was shopping for lunch tomorrow at the Marks and Spencer’s since I have a day off. I was looking at all the people rushing around at that time. And what I was thinking to myself was that these are the same people that have created this world around me. A world where I can’t just sit around and read and think all day. A world where the thing that I am the best at and that makes me special, my cleverness and ability to see the things that no one can see, my ability to put things together that no one knows go together, my originality, my creativity, my mind is all redundant and unused. All those massive ideas I have that would change how people think and what they read are just sitting stockpiled in my head. I don’t have time to write them up. Because I have decided to chase this family. And this family is not happening. I am wasting my talent for the dream of love. For money for the family that isn’t there. I have sacrificed my ambition for love. I did what I say that everyone should do: put the family first. The question is, how long? How long before I give up on that dream and just buy the children? At some point, I am going to have to accept the situation – I am not like the other people in this society.
Someone said to me today (I think she was joking) that I was flirting already with the new women that have come in. Is it flirting when you are being friendly with a woman if you are a man? Was she just joking? I am a man. I like beautiful women. I like talking to beautiful women. It is a fact. I’m not going to deny it. Why should I? If you don’t harass them and bother them, you are not doing anything wrong. Even if I am flirting – and I would say that I don’t know how to flirt – there is no law against flirting, as long as you don’t make innuendoes and insinuations and offend them. How do you even flirt with a woman? Is joking around considered flirting nowadays?
diary of a lone man 