983 Flirting?

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

I went to dinner last night with Angela. She wanted to know about the gath3ring, and when I told her about The Officer, and that I was so frustrated because I don't know how to flirt, I've never known how to flirt, her chin dropped, and she about fell off her chair laughing.

She said that I do! too! know how to flirt! That I'm about the most flirtatious person she's ever met. That I flirt constantly, with everyone, all the time. That I flirt indiscriminately. Male or female. That if she swung that way, she'd have long ago taken me up on it. She was very emphatic and definite about it.

I didn't understand.

I've heard that before, although never so succinctly put. But if it's true, then why are there so many men in my past who wanted me, and whom I wanted, and whom I tried to flirt with, but they never got the message? They never knew I liked them, until much later, in a different life situation, when we talked about the old days.

I asked her to tell me what I do when it looks like I'm flirting.

She said it's the way I use my hands. The way I move my body. My posture. The way I look at people.

She said that I exude sex. All the time.

Nobody ever said exactly that before, but it explains a lot of other comments.

(Note to the world - exuding sex is NOT the same as flirting.)

My analysis:

• Hands: I have graceful hands. When I touch or handle something, I seem to fondle it. It's apparently seen as very sensual. It's actually just nerves. If I touch someone, perhaps their hand, it will be a light stroke. It's because I'm not confident of their permission.
• Eyes: When I'm unsure of my reception, I'll tilt my head down, and look up at the other person. It's something a child would do. I'll express shared amusement by turning my head slightly away and glancing from the corners of my eyes. This might be genetic - my mother did exactly the same thing. I guess it comes across as very kittenish. I tend to look people in the eye when I talk with them, perhaps too intensely. It's because I'm unsure, and I need to gauge reactions.
• Posture: I've always had a heavy bust, and I have severe badly-healed back injuries. I have to hold my shoulders back and stand straight or I will suffer. So I'm often rolling my shoulders back and down. Perhaps this is misread as display?
• Hair: I fiddle with my hair a lot, tucking it behind my ears or behind my shoulders. Rather than trying to draw attention to it, I'm trying not to be shamed by it. It's pretty unruly. Sorry. Mostly it's a nervous habit. One habit I did break was twirling it. I used to, when I was nervous, twirl a lock in my left fingers, or draw it across under my nose, like a moustache, until my psychiatrist asked me to please stop that, because when I was doing it, he couldn't hear a word I was saying. When he told me why it was so distracting, I stopped that very day, and I try very hard not to do it ever. Sometimes maybe I still do it unconsciously.
• Walk: "They" say I wiggle when I walk. Lots of hip sway. Roman accused me of carefully cultivating it, because I have the "model walk", where the feet swing in front of each other, so the footprints would form a straight line, and "that's just not natural". In the Orlando hotel, there was a long hallway with reflective doors at the end, and I watched me walk the hallway to see what I do. Actually, what happens is that the left leg swings straight from the hip, but the right leg swings around to almost in front of the left, which makes my weight swing to the left to compensate/balance. But keeping my shoulders and head in line means it's the hips that swing. So actually, I'm sort of lopsided. I don't know how I avoid falling down. It may have something to do with the fact that the nerves in my lower right leg and ankle are dead, and I have no innate sense of where that foot is.
• Talk: When I come off with a naughty comment, it's obvious, 'cause I'll have an evil little smile or an exaggeratedly innocent look. But a LOT of what I say is taken as having a double meaning. It doesn't. I think that because people expect it from me, they hear it when I didn't say it. Sometimes it's even a far stretch. I don't engage in small talk. Partly it's insecurity and social ineptitude, partly it's that talking about things of no consequence annoys me and I don't understand why people do it (The Kid said almost the same thing Saturday evening). Men who are used to women who natter apparently find this extremely sexy. Duh? Maybe brains are sexy?
  

I guess a lot of what I am and do is misunderstood. But maybe I am in fact flirting with everyone, because maybe I'm still afraid of getting beaten. Piper said pretty much that at lunch today (and it surprised me because I don't think I ever told him any details about my childhood. He's very perceptive. Or he has a better memory than I.) Maybe all these little habits started innocently, but became ingrained and habitual when they seemed to soften people toward me.

Until they tried to rape me, that is.

In my 20s I was often forced into sex, in what then was considered the girl's fault, but much later came to be recognized as "date rape". Many times. Many many times. I have often, when the guy didn't forcibly prevent me, and I wasn't completely lost, climbed out of a parked car and walked miles home in the dark (very dangerous, inviting stranger rape), or took a bus home. Almost invariably, when I said no, the guy would say, and it was almost always these exact words, like they got it from a book or something, "Oh come on. Nobody can walk around looking like you do and not want it all the time."

Huh?

I never understood what they meant.

Well into my 40s, I couldn't keep female friends, because as soon as they got a boyfriend or husband, they accused me of trying to steal him. I suspect that's why the old girlfriends from high school and college whom I've recently located won't reply to me, maybe because one of the first things I mention is that I'm a widow.

I never went after a friend's man. I never flirted with them. I never understood why my female friends got mad at me.

"Exuding sex". Explains a lot.

Flirting comes from me. It's an internal action. Exuding sex is NOT the same as flirting. That's an external perception.

I think. I've got to think about this a lot more. It's all new to me. It also explains perhaps why I didn't mind gaining all that weight after Jay died. It insulated me.

But it doesn't fit with the other perceptions of me - that I'm a bit of a prude, that I am withdrawn and unapproachable, that I am not to be touched. Isn't that a contradiction?

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On a lighter (or maybe not) note, later last night Angela told her boyfriend what I had said about not knowing how to flirt. Quote from her email to me: "And [he] agrees with me: you know how to flirt. Which makes me wonder how he knows you know how. Hmm... "

Sigh. I swear, Angela, I never, ever, not once, not even thought about....

Thank goodness she's smarter than most.