The paradigms of power

Two things have inspired this post.

One is, of course, this post, which you've probably already seen. I'm most flattered that someone would go to all that trouble to respond to essentially my nitpicking. And pretty funny too :)


The second is the conversation I had with Priya the other day. I was telling her essentially in person about the six reasons I'm still single, that I posted about the other day blah di blah blah. And she goes, "Um.. dude, it's not any of those reasons." I was mid-flow by this time going on about how there was no one perfect and I was going to turn into an ice maiden type person and so I was a little taken aback, "It's not?" I asked in tones guaranteed to freeze a polar bear. "No, actually I think you should've said just two reasons: one, everytime someone likes you you stop liking them and two, you're so scared of commitment you lose interest as soon as the chase ends."

"Wibble," is all I managed for a bit and then there was long silence while she finished pottering around the flat doing whatever it was she was doing and I continued to lie on my bed, Jane Austen in hand.

It's true though. I admit it now. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a power junkie.


Power games are always delicate, always with fine lines and not very visible rules. You could do one thing wrong and have the whole house of cards topple down on you despite months of careful planning. Actually I should've said weeks. I don't have the attention span to let the "you blink first" game go on for that long. It's all very dicey, he calls twice and then you call, you message once in drunken state and agonise about it forever.


Not everyone loves the thrill of the games. Actually, I don't love it either, but I am strangely addicted to the knot in my stomach, to the rushing every two second to my cell phone, to the eyebrows raised in a crowded bar as you teeter slowly towards him so that someone can pass from behind you. It's ridiculous and old fashioned and I know I should just like make interest known if I have any. But the thing is, I WAS doing that, I was being one hundred per cent honest and laying out all my cards and it just wasn't working. Not once. The rejectors piled up and the more I confessed, compulsively, that I liked them a whole lot, the more they rejected me and the more I confessed and so on. Like a vicious circle.


But what Priya said had a grain of truth in it. There were some boys who responded to my eager "Let's do this again soon" with equal enthusiasms. And then *ping* something vanished in my head coz really, if they liked me, there had to be something wrong with them. Like ol' Groucho Marx said about not belonging to any club that would have him as a member. Instantly my defences would shoot up and you know my list of reasons? That's just like an excuse to get rid of them.


Commitment phobe? I don't think so. In my very heart of hearts, I want to be cuddled and loved and hand held. But then also, battling with that is sheer repulsion at the idea of a steady Saturday night date. At never feeling the thrill of the chase again. Of becoming all boring and all.


So power games versus stability. I'm masochist enough to subconciously choose the former, but oh, how I wish I could be in the latter.