New Years 2005

Last year I posted a short summary of the calendar year 2003. Although I'm a half-year late, it's about January 1 in the chronological flow of my catch-up posts. So let's pretend it is New Years 2005 and I'm writing about 2004.

I had visited Whistler for the holidays. Being without family means that holidays are a different experience from those friends with spouses and kids. And being at an age and social situation where most friends are married with children means you are often striking out alone. Of course many professional ladies are in similar circumstances, which can allow for interesting vacations. But I wasn't really in the mood for that, so I just skiied.

So, reflecting on 2004, let me use the template I used last year:

I am in Whistler, contemplating the scene below of the Candian Rockies. The vast beauty of the rock and snow is overwhelming.

2005 is upon us. 2004 was an even stranger year, full of irrationality and disappointment in the world, but for me personally the economy rebounded in a big way.

My spending on girlfriends, whether rented or owned, has been pretty consistent over the last several years, but 2004 was a good year, even though I was without a regular girlfriend of either type for a while. I did try characterizing the attributes I wanted, though, and did meet a fantasy girl.

2004 was also a year of new acquaintances and new experiences. I did not see as much diversity as 2003, in fact, FAR less. But I spent more time on average on each encounter. I also enjoyed many new experiences as I expanded my horizons a bit. I experienced true decadence. I threw some decadent parties, including a birthday party among others. I had a fascinating journey of discourse and self discovery with mistresses. I picked up a woman for the first time, and then tried a few more times with some exceptional women. My introduction to Asia was unforgettable. I mixed business with pleasure, and even engaged in some risky business. And to mix the bad with the good, I also was stalked.

I said in my 2004 New Year post that I feared that I might "throw myself into the sybaritic joys of female flesh." In some sense I did that in Asia, but at the same time I was very productive on the work front. My hope of finding a regular woman shows some promise in Jenny, although it's very unclear how that will work out. There are even more asymmetries between us than in other cases which have failed, and I am very cautious about asymmetries because I believe them to be the root of many relationship failures (covered somewhat here, but more in other online posts elsewhere).

Resolutions? I avoided them last year. This year the only resolution is to try my experiment. It isn't a Dr. Evil kind of plan, or an experiment in a loveless, selfish, non-romantic sense. It is, however, a resolution.

Catching Up: Risky Business

I had met one girl, whom I had referred to in an earlier post as a potential mistress candidate. We had occasion to travel to Tokyo together, where I stayed in a corner suite at the Grand Hyatt, Mori-san's immense commercial, residential, hotel and shopping development on Ropponggi Hills.

On another occasion I would meet Arnold, the Governator, in an elevator there, but this is not about Mr. Muscle.

I have an interesting risk profile in business. I do enter businesses with ideas that many people would find insane, or at least very risky. On the other hand, I conduct the day to day and face to face parts of business very conservatively. I understand the value of wearing a suit. I understand how to wine and dine. I make sure accounting is done very very carefully. I am careful about contracts.

But for some reason, in November 2004, I threw caution to the wind. This lady, who I will call Sanura, is an exotic, well-educated and well-read woman, with long limbs, model-like features, and a very professional demeanor. Though Caucasian, she spoke Japanese well, knew their customs, and knew several prominent businessmen in Japan. She was probably one of the most business presentable women I had met that year.

One day we decided to mix business with pleasure, and have her pose as a business associate in several meetings I had in Tokyo. Just for fun.

I had three major meetings. One was a dinner with a Fortune 500 vice chairman and former division president, Mr. Y-san. Another was dinner and drinks with a Fortune 100 current president and vice chairman, Mr. A-san. And a third was with a pair of entrepreneurs who wanted to partner with me on a project, Bob and Doug, both of whom were well-known Caucasian ex-investment bankers in Asia (in fact Bob appears in a breathless book about the heyday of Asian investment banking).

Insane to play this game? Yes, in retrospect it was totally insane. Hundreds of millions of dollars of business were potentially at stake. But I admit at that point I was under a lot of personal pressure, and some of the businesses I was working on were really kind of "what the fuck" stuff. And these guys weren't really critical anyhow (or so I thought at the time.) In any case, I fell into this idea in the following way:

Sanura and I had talked in an offhand manner about how much fun it would be to play act her being a business associate. We were both mischevious people, after all. But we had only tossed the idea around, without any particular intent to really implement.

I was with Mr. A-san at one of his favorite restaurants. When he was in NYC, he regularly went to the NYC branch of this restaurant, and the current manager had come from there. So he was treated only slightly worse than the Emperor of Japan at this place. I had brought him his favorite drink, and we were tipsy on some wine, when he decided that he wanted to invite a few of his female underlings to the dinner. Two of them arrived, pretty but smart professional women.

It became clear within the first few minutes of their arrival that Mr. A-san was definitely a Japanese executive. If he were in the United States, he would have been slapped with twenty sexual harassment lawsuits. It was all verbal, and none mean-spirited, but I admit I was shocked by how blatant it was. He confessed that he was an equal opportunity harasser, so nobody should really feel bad. Hmm. Not a strategy I've ever tried, mostly because legal paperwork gives me hives.

At some point he extracts out of me that I am not alone in Tokyo; I lamely claim I'm with a co-worker, and then finds out it is a "she" rather than a "he." He is insulted that I would leave her behind and demands that I call her and have her show up. Remember, to him a female co-worker is a different relationship than to you and me.

Well, there is no denying this man, he is insistent. So I call Sanura, brief her on the situation (that she's a co-worker), and she arrives.

Within the first few seconds it's clear that A-san is smitten. Of course, I tend to believe he is smitten with anything that is young on two legs, maybe even four legs, but he is going out of his way to show me how it's done. He is flattering, complimentary, and attentive, all the while trying to give me "tips" on appropriate behavior.

We go drinking, karaoke, and have a night out on the town. The fact that Sanura can hold her liquor, sing in Japanese and English, and manage his female underlings deeply impresses A-san. In fact, without my knowing it, he makes a pass or three at her toward the end of the night.

Sanura finds the whole thing amusing and brushes it off. I find it raises my testosterone level.

After that incident, we decide to try it again with my other meetings. We use the magic of Kinkos to produce business cards, and set up an interim email account.

Mr. Y-san is a more genteel and charming person. He takes us to a private dining room and talks business. Sanura is good at bluffing her way through these discussions. I introduce her as a protege of George Soros, in fact. I think she pulls it off.

It's exciting.

The third meeting is the toughest. We have a meeting in my suite, and the two people will be there without food to dilute the experience. One is an investor and the regional head of a large investment bank. Once again, Sanura pulls it off. One affectation we demonstrate, purely thought up on the fly, is that I refuse to drink anything with them until after Sanura first tastes it. The others clearly notice this, but refrain from saying anything.

We nearly bust a gut laughing.

There is a repeat of the third meeting later. Again in the suite, and this time I arrange a catered lunch. Sanura prepares all of my food and takes a bite out of each part before serving it to me. All the while we are talking financials as if nothing odd is happening. I swear if Bob and Doug's eyebrows could climb any higher, they'd crawl off their foreheads.

The funny thing is that I end up having enduring business with all three.

Other employees of mine have met with all of them (separately), and in fact I met with Bob last week. I will meet with A-san next month. One of my employees told me that Doug had asked him if he had ever noticed anything odd about my eating habits...

The danger of taking that business risk was immensely exciting, although entirely foolish. It was the first time I've tried that. Will it be the last? That I do not know...

Getting Jaded: Massages Here, There, and Everywhere

I wrote about an amazing massage experience with May last year.

I should catch you up, although this is out of sequence.

May wasn't my last visit to that location, and others. There are approximately a zillion massage places in Asia. They are disguised as spas, sports facilities, barber shops, bars, karaoke rooms, taxi services, driving services, cleaning services, and almost anything else you can imagine.

No, I haven't tried them all. Haven't had the time.

But in terms of the high end massage places I wrote about, yes, I tried it a few more times. But I never had an experience as dramatic as what I had with May, although on average the experiences were quite good. Park raved about another gal, Kola, but I was never able to meet her before she retired. Now she's back in action, but I'm out of play. He swears she is the best he's had in Asia. More on that later.

It is so amazing how easy it is to get sexually serviced in Asia. It really is quite mind-boggling. Okay, it may be a little tougher if you don't speak the language, especially in Japan where they discriminate most heavily, but it's still possible.

In fact, it is so easy, I argue it takes a lot of the fascination right out of sex.

Yep, I said it.

Around November or so of 2004, I started to have a very different view on sex, and it wasn't a good one. For one thing, it was so easy to obtain mind-blowing sex as a service, that I started to participate less in the pleasure of my partner. It was too much "lay back and enjoy the ride."

It was a subtle thing at first.

Part of the issue came from the transactional nature of the sex act. If you have two or three hours, why not use it all for your pleasure? The gal certainly seems to want that. You can get an extra wash, massage, facial, pedicure, or whatever in that time.

It's a dangerous thing. For one thing, it would seem that civilians can't compete with the sexual skill and (maybe) athleticism of these pros.

As an aside, many years ago I met a woman in the San Francisco area. She was talking about how a friend of hers went to an Asian massage parlor in the Tenderloin area. His comment to her was that the Asian gal got him off within minutes, despite his trying to hold back. Her comment to him was, "Of course, she's a professional. You're an amateur." I bring this up because those same girls in San Francisco were unable to get me off. So I was skeptical about the skills of so-called "professionals." As I noted elsewhere, the real difference is whether there is sufficient stability for the women to really get trained. Without the training and the seniority system, whether paid or not, it's just natural talent. To go beyond that, you need training.

So nobody was quite like May. For one thing, Park was always trying to impress me by getting me the youngest, prettiest girls. But they were often the least well-trained, or least interested in training.

But back to the jadedness...

I was becoming quite concerned that I would be unable to have a civilian relationship because I would be utterly addicted to the "May experience." Would this difference, between the rent to own and payment plan, be my undoing?

I'll jump to the end: the answer is no. What it does, however, is drive a huge separation between physical sex and emotional sex. It is easy to be emotionally confused about physical sex, and vice versa, but as I will describe over the next few posts, for me they can be made quite distinct.

I am convinced it is the only way to survive in a world where sex is so easy to obtain. No, not just easy to obtain, but pushed upon you...

Interlude: May and June Updates

I wrote earlier about my encounters with the very smart Angels.

Jill Monroe, the young gal who interns with one of my companies, sent me an email yesterday. She is off again to visit her relatives before coming to work. She asked me if I wanted anything from her hometown. It was couched in a "coffee, tea, or me" tone.

Personally, I'm staying away from that time zone entirely this summer. Although she may come to Asia for a work-related site visit. I intend to never be alone. Temptation is a bitch, a topic I'll write about later.

Sabrina Duncan, the medical whiz, had recommended an anorgasmia therapy that several commentors echoed, that is, Wellbutrin. She had even sent me a supply. In short, even after giving it "some time to work", it only serves to lengthen the time to orgasm. There are other related therapies that have a common mechanism of action that I may try.

Maggie, my first love, left some voicemail saying that she was starting to forget the sound of my voice. Ah, if only the Vulcan Mind Meld could erase that memory entirely...

Haley, the reporter, asked me for some job advice, is now travelling in Europe, and is sending me an average of ten emails or voicemails per day. She cheerfully ignores my requests to stop. She called today from a club where she had scored a "whole bunch of E" and wondered if I wanted her to bring some back. Um, no thanks. Though it briefly crossed my mind that I should tip off customs...

Park told me that Susie, the other SMS-weilding gal, was studying to join an airlines, a very competitive business I'm told. Her patron is giving her living expenses during that time.

A mutual friend tells me that Laura, the mentoree, has set her sights on somebody else. Unfortunately it is somebody I know. I'm not sure if I should warn him.

I am being strongly coerced into seeing May again, and another gal, Kola, who is even more fantastic. Temptation is a bitch. Or did I say that already? But I am resisting.

And that's the update so far.

Commitment, the Three Party System

I just posted a description of an experiment where I tried to make a stable relationship by making contradictions explicit. In there, I say:

So this system trades off a little short-term personal flexibility for an ability to build longer-term expectations. It seemed the right approach for a long-term relationship, although probably unnecessary overhead for a short-term one. That short-term flexibility is just emotional randomness anyhow, right?

This is worth a sidebar. Conventional wisdom tells us that a long-term relationship requires commitment from both parties to each other. But I think that's a necessary but insufficient condition. You need a three party system.

1) You. 2) Your partner. 3) The relationship.

Let's face it, in a relationship there is only one stable thing you can commit to, and that's the relationship itself.

You are going to change. Your partner is going to change. So the nature of your commitments to your partner and what it takes is going to change as well. With a 100% probability. And commiting to a moving target is hard.

I remember a wedding service I attended some years back. The minister basically said, hey, you're going to fall out of love some day. Hard to believe right now, but it's going to happen. But even if you don't love your partner, boy, you had better love your marriage. Because otherwise nothing will hold you together during that time. It was an unpopular service, I recall many people complaining about it. But I found it very interesting.

Oh, and the couple divorced within a year.

But I agree. You have to be commit to the relationship abstractly. Maybe it's with pride, since many difficult promises are only held together by pride. Or maybe you love the idea of a relationship and won't let it fail. But once you internalize the fact that you and your partner will change, you have to patient and work hard for the relationship.

Now I have met some people with this philosophy. Apparently it's a popular marriage counseling philosophy. That and a 12 step program.

But one common mistake among these practitioners is that people use memories to cement their commitment to the relationship. Ah, all those happy memories of that vacation, those halcyon days of romance.

Big mistake.

The problem with memories is that there are bad ones too. And like trying to blank your mind on a sleepless night to get to bed, well, you can't really control those thoughts. So don't even allow your relationship to be poisoned by memories. Attach them to the other person, attach them to yourself, attach them to the wall... just make sure you keep the relationship abstract and clean.

I do this naturally by keeping all my long-term memories in a computer, and upgrading every six months. Can't recall a thing. Except the photos, but you usually only keep the good ones anyhow.

So you start with this three party system. In my experiment I explicitly discussed this. Could we commit to a relationship? What are the invariant properties of this relationship? This is important to define since long-term relationship is a poorly defined term, more so than marriage.

Given that, we could proceed with my experiment.

Explicit Contradictions, An Experiment

Okay, I'll get back to catching up soon, I promise. But I'm in a mood today...

I have written off and on about my mixed desirefor an independent woman and a dependent woman. Likewise I have implicitly discussed my own desire to both remain independent but also find somebody to depend upon. I've also off-hand mentioned many other related (but not the same) contradictions in relationships: Confidence and insecurity. Assertiveness and shyness. Dominance and submissiveness.

There are other contradictions as well: Experience and novelty. Selfishness and selflessness. Cute but impressive. Strong but soft. Fast and slow. The list goes on.

European romanticists glorify the perfect mate where all these contradictions exist, but somehow magically match your moods. There it's a matter of timing which side of the spectrum you're on, to match your mate's needs. This non-explicit give and take is sometimes called sharing. Largely this expectation is not fulfilled, especially in the long term. It's easy in the early days of a relationship when both partner's assumed expectations are usually also correct. Be romantic. Be sexy. And yet, as intimacy develops, the spectrum is more complex and therefore guesses are more likely to be in error. The conventional wisdom? Communications. Tell your partner. Yet a frequent complaint about explicit communications is that it is not romantic.

Much of Asian relationship culture takes a different tact. The fundamental philosophy of ying and yang (although usually over-simplified) partitions roles more explicitly. Confucian roles are a visible example of this, but culturally this goes deeper, for example into language modes.

It is widely believed that language modes in Asian cultures make those languages more complex than Western languages. Some Asian languages have as many as a dozen forms of address pervading the language syntax depending on relative roles of the speaker and listener, and the type of subject or object. These are the most common mistakes made by foreign speakers, who are usually taught simplified modes of address. Yet there are complex language modes in Western languages as well; they just aren't syntactically defined. You can tell a respectful or gentlemanly mode of address in English when you hear it. There are many variations. You can recognize a well-bred speaker quickly. But in an Asian language, there is the crutch of syntax -- the mode is made explicit in the rules of the language rather than in the personality of the speaker.

The language reflects the point I make above. The West made relationships implicit and based on personal context. Asia made them explicit and based on role and topic. Because the western approach is based on your variable and individual feelings, constant communications is needed, but there is a high likelihood of continuously negotiated compromises which can cause relationship stress (for example, keeping track of who is compromising more or more often). Because the Asian approach is based on a relatively invariant role and shared context (something both parties can see), you can create expectations, but there is a high degree of conformity that can create individual stress. (The oversimplified version of this would be individual vs. society, an Asian stereotype which I dislike because it discounts the close relationship between individual reward and social reward.)

In this day and age, Asia has a rich mixture of Asian and Western cultural influences. So in a recent relationship, I experimented with this. My experiment was in making several of the aforementioned contradictions explicit, yet taking into account personal context. I wanted to create a hybrid of the Asian and Western systems, to see if that made things work better.

The thinking went like this. The biggest issue with the Western system was the overhead of constant communications, and the biggest advantage was romance and adaptability to personal needs. The biggest issue with the Asian system was personal inflexibility, and the biggest advantage was the ability to build on a foundation of expectations.

My proposed solution was simple: less frequent communications, but the communications had to embody contextual expectations, or rules. The whole system rests on three foundations: 1) creating rules; 2) making and keeping promises, and 3) no lies to each other, not even white lies to the benefit of the other's feelings.

The foundation of rules enables the personal flexibility. Forcing the articulation of these rules, like communications, is a useful tool for self-awareness. But making them rules (conditions and actions, i.e. "when this happens, do this") means they can be stored and used later, reducing the frequency of communications.

The foundation of promises creates a trust around infrequent communications. This is because communicated rules are explicitly verified (by a promise), result in relationship expense (the commitment of promise, which reduces frivolous rules), and carry force. What force? Since this system has no social pressure for conformity, it substitutes pride, which I have found to be a strong (and often negative) force in relationships. Breaking a promise is a loss of pride.

The foundation of no lies substitutes for the Asian roles that keeps expectations very reliable. You can count on role-based expectations in Asia because they are very visible, including visible in the language, and therefore something upon which society and relationships can be built. The no lies creates a similar kind of transparency.

So this system trades off a little short-term personal flexibility for an ability to build longer-term expectations. It seemed the right approach for a long-term relationship, although probably unnecessary overhead for a short-term one. That short-term flexibility is just emotional randomness anyhow, right?

So how did it work out? Stay tuned.

The Price of Luxury

I have about a dozen posts to go before I'm caught up with the present day. I had a busy year. I'm beginning to worry that having to write so much in arrears lends to verbal diarrhea and loose, watery quality prose. And then there are the current events!

So this is just an intermission.

I have posted about money: a little bit about living off government cheese, giving most of it away, and its effect on relationships. Indirectly, all of these were about what money buys emotionally. Isn't it odd how it can buy opposing emotions? Confidence with women and yet insecurity in relationships. Guilt at a meaningless and jaded existance and yet a charitable conscience. Of course these are all reflections of what is inside me, and it's enlightening to use money as a telescope into the soul.

My observation is that I am much more interested in money and its emotional impact than its practical impact. That's a luxury, and one that I definitely appreciate.

When do you know that you are well off? When you don't have to worry about the practical impact of money. You just don't.

Now that doesn't mean you don't worry about it. I know billionaires that incessantly worry about money. But they don't really have to, and ultimately what they really worry about is its impact on their pride, or arrogance, or confidence. Emotional impact.

Conversely, you are poor when you must worry about the practical impact of money.

Everybody else inbetween is tied to the relationship between emotions and materialism. They are struggling because they have to balance the practical impact of money with its emotional impact. For example, will buying that expensive watch that helps my self image affect my ability to pay for my housing? This is necessary budgeting.

By way of contrast, I only budget because sometimes it makes me feel good that I didn't waste money. But I don't have to do it. And anyhow you might think I am wasting money. Note that these definitions of well-off, poor, and struggling are relatively independent of how much money you have.

• You could be a $7/hour wage earner but have very low practical material needs. You're happy living in a tree eating nuts and berries. You are well-off. (You may want to check in the mirror and see if you are a monkey, though.)
  
• You could be a millionaire who did one too many drug deals in Central America, and you just gotta pay off that drug lord. You are struggling. (You might even be poor by my definition. Certainly you are stupid.)

We tend to focus on morally questionable ones, like branded fashion, but what of charity to needy children or protecting the jobs of your employees? These can cost a lot of money, are really about satisfying an emotional need, but aren't considered morally bad.

My definition of a luxury, is logically related. The definition of a luxury is based on how the good or service is perceived by the buyer. If it principally fills an emotional need, then it's a luxury.

There are a few interesting examples of high-ticket pragmatic spending. For example, a private jet may be a very pragmatic time saver that can enhance business. And sometimes that is truly the main reason why a person buys a jet. So by my definition, that jet would not be a luxury. But an individually-owned high-touch-outfitted GV SP is almost always a luxury; more than half the reason you chose that had to be emotional, since you could buy far less expensive used jets.

Likewise, branded items are almost always luxury goods. Since their markups are high, and their price generally set by desire (mediated by media), they are rarely justified by any pragmatics or necessity. So you bought those Jimmy Choo's because you needed footwear?

So if you are buying implants to make you feel better, or you are buying a yacht to show off around the Med, or buying a date to show off at your high school reunion, those are luxuries.

So what is the price of luxury?

By my definition, you do not look at the price not in dollars, since we've ascertained that doesn't matter. Instead you must look at the price in what the luxury buys in worth: the emotional impact. And there, the economics of luxury are quite interesting:

Scientific evidence shows us that the unchecked emotional fulfilment of materialism is a vicious cycle, like virtually all brain reward-center items that have been studied to date. That is, satisfaction creates more desire, and yet also stimulates a need for variety. So you don't tend to stay satisfied with the feeling (what I am calling the emotional impact), so you seek something more.

This used to be called addiction, but these days the boundry between addiction, compulsion and desire seem to be related to convenience. Put another way, if you remove too much of the emotional cost of acquiring goods by making it too convenient, then you've removed the check and balance that kept the brain reward system from spiraling out of control. This appears to be true whether its pornography or shopping.

This brain chemistry reward system was a good evolutionary trait to keep our societies internally and externally competitive, but in a resource-rich environment with mass communications it also creates our emerging socio-economic troubles: the pyramid of wealth, the excessive impact of brand, personal debt management crises, and the rising levels of anti-productivity sentiment in workers.

Think of it for a moment. The haves have a lot, continue to want more, yet are dissatisfied. Media continuously exposes the have-nots to the material lifestyles of the haves, and advertising (the financial fundamentals of media) make it seem emotionally satisfying. This makes them more likely to be dissatisfied and resentful. And yet as workers gain wealth and material (as have-nots become haves), they realize they are not gaining happiness, which leads to hopelessness and anti-capitalist, anti-productivity, and anti-money sentiments. And finally, because mass communications makes the world "smaller" by fusing many individual societies into one massive one, the base of the wealth pyramid is very large indeed.Which means there are a lot of pissed off resentful people.

All too often these socio-economic travails are blamed on money. But money is a linear, non-contextual value system. It's our own emotional reward circuits that cause these problems. Others blame it on irrational emotions. I don't agree with that either (sorry, Ayn Rand). There is an underlying rationality to emotions (science is slowly discovering underlying processes of emotions, and it is a mechanism). It's not that emotions are irrational, it's that emotions are contextual.

Several people recognize something is wrong and try to develop new measures. For example, Bhutan's metric of Gross National Happiness. Or the paper (PDF) about the value of sex and happiness that I posted last year. But these measurements are misguided because they fail to recognize the contextual nature of this economy. Others partition the problem differently, distinguishing between purchasing material goods and purchasing convenience, without recognizing the systematic effects of continuous arousal from those purchases. (Maybe I'll do a survey of this work some day, but I don't have time right now.)

But all this means emotional price is not as straighforward a metric as monetary price. Not because you can't put a dollar equivalent to emotional satisfaction, but because the exchange rate fluctuates contextually.

So what does this say about the price of luxury? If it is rendered as a personal definition, it makes it difficult to create a global economy from it. Yet eventually I believe this is what science will be able to create, as the underlying principles are discovered. Already we are exposed to some of the first issues from the relationship between this science and the current economic system. For example, the trust spray. Improved lie detectors. Functional imaging, and IR versions of imaging that some day will be portable. And so on.

When we really can measure emotional impact and long-term satisfaction... then what will happen? What happens to relationships, advertising, brand, and goods and services when we have the ability to strip away the cultural and current-economic artifacts and myths and expose our underlying reward circuitry? Will a new global economic system arise with new tradable monies, or will it become balkanized into individualized reward economies that are stitched together by old (or new) cultural artifacts, roles and etiquette? In other words, will emotional currency be the new gold standard, or will we have six billion personal standards?

A century from now, we will know. Economics and human nature make it inevitable.

Thoughts for a future posting.

And thanks to Inifinite Bowel and Jet Set Lara for the inspiration for this topic.

Silk Stalkings 5: Some Thoughts

It may be merely a side effect of my early inexperience with women, or it may be, as some people have recently claimed, something else, but I have accumulated four stalkers in the past few years. A first love longing for the past appears in Endless Love, Dedicated Reporting stars a reporter obsessed, The Dark Side of the Always Connected Mobile Lifestyle features a club girl looking for a ticket out, and a former protege seeking fulfillment of a long-standing fantasy about a sexual and intellectual mentor is the most recent case in Mentoring Brilliance.

There is a danger in batching up these stories together, that makes them sound too fantastic. Keep in mind that they occur over the span of a few years, but batching does serve to underscore that I had zero such incidents prior to Maggie.

Jenny comments that she believes that I underestimate the effect of kindness on certain women. She cites the increasing effect of material comfort, security and intelligence on the mating choices for women as they grow older. She says I must be mindful of what I am signaling.

Perhaps what she says is true, that I can too easily be regarded as the path towards unfulfilled dreams... I have some strong opinions and feeling, but am generally very easy going, and perhaps this makes me appear too easily fit into the fantasy molds of different potential mates. Frankly I don't want the responsibility ruining anybody's dreams... ruining them by taking the responsibility, however implicit, for fulfilling them when I cannot.

Yet I ask the question: "why does it happen," even outside the context of the suffix: "to me?" I am suddenly reminded of the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby: "All the lonely people/Where do they all come from?/All the lonely people/Where do they all belong?"

Bringing myself back into the equation, I feel sad. I consider myself a compassionate pragmatic. It is a sad thing to see, since these women, somewhat unlike some of my previous experiences, have done little wrong or bad. I should stop short of pity, these women deserve better, but it is difficult. But despite compassion, my pragmatism wins.

Another common thread, although perhaps fortunate for me because it forces me to keep my distance, is that I cannot trust these women. In some cases because they lied, or they are married, or they lack independence. Underlying this trust is the need for truth, pragmatics, and independence. Without those, there are too many factors that can get in the way of what we wish were the case -- the realities that will defeat us no matter what romantic notions may have been programmed into us.

I've written before about the importance of independence in women to me, including financial independence. It is an important enough topic that I may revisit this later.

So what happens next? Well it's out of my control, really. Although Maggie is bright and did that weird thing the year before last flying to my conference, for whatever reason I am less worried about her and Susie than I am about Haley and Laura. Maybe it's because Maggie and Susie are Asia-raised Asians. Haley and Laura seem more unstable, more resourceful, and less predictable. Laura is too smart, too rich and has too much free time to be easily dismissed.

Parenthetically I can't help but think Laura needs a particularly gifted lover. And Susie needs a rich one. Any volunteers? Later I may write more about how sad these stories really make me feel, but I am struck by an ironic thought: these stalkers are women with whom I haven't had sex (or much sex, at least.) I haven't been stalked by any women with whom I've had sex. Yes, I must be THAT bad at it...

Ah, but that path leads to danger...

Silk Stalkings 4: Mentoring Brilliance

It may be merely a side effect of my early inexperience with women, or it may be, as some people have recently claimed, something else, but I have accumulated four stalkers in the past few years. The first one was my first girlfriend, the second a reporter, and the third a drinking establishment girl. This post covers the most recent and fourth one.

I worked for a while at a major media company in a technology area. At the time it was a high-flying company with huge growth, and it made me some good money. More importantly, however, it taught me some real world project and people management skills, and business in industry experiences that I have found invaluable, especially given that I was able to learn them at a young age. For example, one of the most valuable lessons I learned was that I am not suited to management. Despite my employees generally rating me highly -- I just don't like it.

While I was at that company, I managed many different teams. But one team that was particularly interesting was a team of women working on a new project fusing media and technology. The project grew to well over a hundred people in engineering, but most of them were men (not counting administrative and support staff). There were maybe ten women in the project, and seven of them worked for me. This was one of my early management experiences, and because I had no idea what I was doing I took people management very seriously. One area I spent a lot of time working on was the personal and career growth of my employees.

One of my employees was a woman I will call Laura. She was a standout engineer, gender aside. She graduated near the top of a top-five engineering school with a Literature minor at the age of 18, with great aptitude. And she was very pretty. Believe you me, she was very popular at the company. She had male artists and engineers lining up outside her door after work hours, and she clearly enjoyed the attention. At one function she dressed as Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a short cheerleader outfit, and I am pretty sure there were several injuries from aggressive males rushing across the drool soaked floor.

Laura was one of the top recruiting candidates to the company, and I helped to recruit her to the company. At the time I was between teams, so she initially went to another group, but when I formed my project she applied internally and I gladly accepted her.

I made no personal advances to her whatsoever, nor to anybody else in the company, having had a strict moral code about not dating coworkers... and being chickenshit with women besides. (okay, I kind of broke the moral code thing with Jill Monroe, although I waited until after she worked for my company so cut me a break!) And frankly Laura showed no interest whatsoever in me, having maybe a hundred eligible and well-off male coworkers to choose from.

She was brilliant, though. Although not the highest rank in creativity, she was in the top echelon of smart and clever engineers and hackers. So, just like my other employees, I helped her out. I don't think I helped her out any more than anybody else: I sent her (and others) to presentation skills classes, art courses, Toastmasters, gave her opportunities to present to executives, and gave out measured advice in group meetings. Oddly, she was probably the employee I met the least one on one, pretty much confining that to performance reviews. But Laura was a very good and productive employee. Eventually I handed that team off to another manager to go work on my next project, as is my habit.

Several years later, I left the company to work on my own companies again. I managed Laura seven years ago, when I was about thirty and she was nineteen.

Fast forward September 2004.

Out of the blue I receive an email from Laura. She heard that I'm moving to Asia and wanted to get together with "the old gang" at an old pizza place we used to go to for lunch. So I figure I can get down there for this, although it isn't really on the way for my travel schedule. Eventually we get it scheduled for November.

So I show up.

And Laura is there. Alone.

I have to admit that my first reaction to seeing her is, "Man, she looks great!" Indeed, the last seven years has graduated her from cute to a real looker. But my second reaction is, "Hey, where the hell is everybody else?" and this is the one I verbalize.

Laura looks uncomfortable and confesses that she deceived me. Nobody else was invited, because she was uncertain I would come to meet just her. So now my brain is in "WTF?" mode.

She then proceeds to enlighten me. Ah, how I wished for a meteor strike that day. Or a car crashing into the front door of the pizza place. Or a sudden, non-fatal, operable aneurysm. It would have saved so much trouble.

She cashed out and retired about a year ago. About a year before that, she married a man who also used to work for me, although in a different group. She divorced him after a year, and all had been finalized two months ago. She had worked in several different groups at our former company. She had many different managers, some the very best our former company could offer, but said that none of them could understand her and mentor her as I did. And then, here was the unsolicited, knock-me-off-my-feet kicker: she has dated lots of guys and gals, but it is me that she has fantasized about having sex with since she was a teenager.

Now that's a lot to process over lunch. I nearly cough up a tonsil, but it is tough with my jaw on the floor and all.

I confess to her my utter surprise. That I never even suspected she thought of me that way. That I enjoyed mentoring her, to develop her potential, but it was nothing more than that. And I tell her that I am in a relationship and can't see her.

I watch as she mentally upshifts. Laura asks me if she is attractive. I say, basically, "Well, duh." She then tells me that she is very good at sex. No man or woman has been unsatisfied, and most have gone crazy for her after sex. That she doesn't mind if I have a relationship now, she just wants me to try the sex. She guarantees I'd be happy, that her skills are very impressive.

I should take a minute to savor this moment. It's like a fantasy dream I've had since I entered adolescence. But my resolve hardens.

Okay, I admit that other things harden as well, but give me some support here.

So I tell her that this kind of attitude turns me off. That I am disappointed that she would do this to me. And I leave before she can call me on that. I think that's the first time I have walked out on a woman like that. How ungentlemanly!

And that should be that. I, lacking the traditional garb of a priest, am unable to offer her absolution for her outrageous confession. Or perhaps I fear that she would enjoy penance too much...

I catch a flight to faraway destinations. Upon landing, I have email from Laura. She is contrite. I tell her to bugger off, and eventually I stop replying to her emails. And this starts the by-now-familiar-to-you-the-dear-reader long cascade of email and phone calls. Yeah, in order to schedule the pizza lunch she had asked for my phone number, and I had given it to her.

Did I fail to mention that I am a slow learner?

I have to confess, some of the emails had some pretty interesting paragraphs. I enclose some here, rudely without permission, to illustrate the variety of tactics Laura employed. Her pursuit was breathtaking. Early on she tried a philosophical approach:

But rather than responding with moral outrage, I know there is a creative, experimental and entrepreneurial side of you, perhaps you could regard me as a new and exciting kind of project? You will recall that I respond well to creativity, and I am myself very creative.

Then she mixed it with faint praise:

Who knows? Maybe [name of pizza place] was a test, a final test to see if your character was as strong as I thought. If so, you passed because no man has put up this kind of resistance.

She gradually moved toward calling my entrepreneurial manhood into question:

Meanwhile, let's consider your risk. There isn't much to lose [...] and there is soooo much to gain. There is nothing wrong with having fun in life. I know you aren't a puritan in ethics, although you are very moral. At the very least let's talk about it. You are strong enough to resist my wiles, so we can make this very platonic. I will try to convince you. You can resist or not, but I only ask for an open mind. There is much I can offer to you that you do not have, and I presume you will want. Let's discuss it. Don't be closed minded and shut me out.

At some point she switched to a management or mentoring tact. She confessed that even if we did not meet for sex, she desperately wanted guidance:

Once you told the group that there are few people like us. That we are special and although many people would not believe, you would help us prevail. You were looking at me when you said that. It has stayed with me forever. [...] I worked for so many other people as a company superstar, thanks to you, but none measured up to you.

She elaborated on this paternal approach:

It [her plan] grew when you managed me. I have lacked that feeling of security and direction ever since.[...] That's what I want.

If not for the sensitivity I had from my previous three experiences, I might have found that very complimentary. But I was very suspicious of motives. She continued with this Electra theme:

But since you left, there is a hole in my life. I want you to lead me again. Lead me to greatness, and I will support you every step of the way. I will support you in ways that nobody else can, far better than you have had, and in ways you cannot imagine. I will make you my focus, and I will be what you deserve.

Wow. Now that's nuts.

Meanwhile, she also tried elaborating on the more carnal proposition.

I know we will enjoy each other. I am good. Very good. You know I don't exaggerate. Men melt in my hands. I know I will please you. Whatever you want to try, I am willing. A menage a trois? Or a more uncommon fantasy?

Fortunately experiences in Asia have elevated my scepticism on her skills claims, and vastly diminished the number of fantasy experiences I have yet to try. Laura also tried spicing it up in an interesting way:

The second part is harder to say, since I'm talking to the ether. Maybe this will amuse your email administrator or blocking software. But here goes... I have fantasized about you almost since we first met. Yes, I was young at the time, although experienced sexually. But I never had such a craving. When I was wound up from work, thoughts of you, along with my wandering hand, would be my lullaby. [...] Perhaps a daily fantasy for six years has skewed my view of you as a human. [...] The fantasy is not just sexual. It's really about being controlled. About being a housewife. Or a programmer. Or an apprentice. Whatever. For you. And I crave that for some reason. Could it be in my nature? Could it be a phase? Either way, can you help me explore it?

I'm starting to channel The Secretary, and it's one of my favorite movies. And here is a powerful summary that appeared as a postscript in one email, shortly before Jenny strongly advised me to block Laura's messages entirely:

Shouldn't you call me and talk about this? I have a lot to offer you, a brilliant mind, a young and beautiful body, and a creative and dedicated soul.

Laura is another kind of sad story. A brilliant mind that may have been too popular and too sexual too early. Could she go the way of Kelly Garrett, the ultra-smart Asian executive? Some combination of too young, too beautiful and a woman in a male dominated industry... perhaps it leads to this form of jadedness and the too-easy confusion between sex and power. How sad that would be.

Around this time, the truly ugly nature of Laura's stalking became apparent. Not only did she send emails and phone messages, but she also was in the audience of a speech I gave, creepily not drawing attention to herself. She spoke with mutual friends to find out my activities. She allegedly paid a private investigator to discover my activities. Too much free time and too much money can turn focus into fire.

And most recently, I found that she had applied for a job at two of my companies.

Well, at least I can head that one off at the pass.

She is too smart and too rich to brush off. I can only hope she'll get bored of failing. Fortunately my logs indicate she hasn't sent me anything for over six weeks. (Although I found out about the job applications only in the last two weeks, she applied as much as two months earlier while her communications were still fast and furious.)

In a funny objective way, this is all very unfortunate. Had I not Jenny's advice (and I promise more on her later) and had Laura taken a different approach, I might have fallen for this. On paper, she has all I've asked for: brainy, beautiful, creative, few limits, open-minded, financially independent, lots of free time, and interested in me. Hard to beat. On paper... but sanity is important as well.

Silk Stalkings 3: The Dark Side of the Always-Connected Mobile Life

It may be merely a side effect of my early inexperience with women, or it may be, as some people have recently claimed, something about my personality or ways I choose to meet women, but I have accumulated four stalkers in the past few years. This post covers the third one... Endless Love is a story of a first love that never leaves, and Dedicated Reporting is a story about a very focused journalist in pursuit of, well, something involving me... I'm not sure what, and I know I don't want to find out.

Obviously due to a subconscious desire to replace my aging liver, I have visited many drinking establishments in Asia, which I tried to justify in a prior post. A few places I go to more than once. A regular can gain some benefits, I suppose, but since I am usually taken there rather than going there, I don't always get a choice.

The higher-end, so-called "A level" establishments are quite nice. They are decorated tastefully, and look like a really big room with little nooks of couches and chairs that can seat between four and ten or so. You can pull up a chairs if you feel cozy. There is usually a karaoke system augmented by one or two musicians (pianist, guitarist, saxaphonist, or, at least in once case, one person who could play all three.) The ambiance is like a club where you can hear (and support) the singing of others.

They also have women that serve you drinks and can make conversation, or not, as the occasion may warrant.

Because there are usually only four to eight seating areas, not anybody can wander in at any time. Usually the patrons are part of a similar extended network: professors, diplomats, corporate executives, musicians and actors, or general movers and shakers across professions.

So it's quite different from a bar.

There are also places that are a warren of karaoke rooms. These are more famous on the Internet because some of them will allow sexual activity with the women. They are considered B or C class places. And I'm oversimplifying, there are a variety of other places in between, including ones that are family oriented and places for nightclub dating. But I digress.

I am mostly attending these A level drinking establishments. One that I have attended a few times has a woman named Susie. She pours drinks and engages in conversation, similar to what Jenny did at a different establishment.

Most of these places are owned by women who successfully found men to sponsor them. As described in my previous post this is the career path for a woman who works at such a drinking establishment.

Given that a huge proportion of young women are working in such places, the competition is fierce to be in the higher end establishments that have richer clientele. Most of the girls will trade sexual favors with businessmen to make money on the side. Some of them do quite well this way. Park and Young told me they had mistresses this way, buying them condos and establishing their first businesses.

This gave me all kinds of paranoias about Jenny's background in a similar high-class drinking establishment, as I will write about later, but this post is about Susie.

I met Susie late last year. Susie looked a lot like an anime character, in a good way. She was twenty four, a sleek young woman with large anime-character eyes, a drop-dead gorgeous face and long hair, and nice legs. She was an aspiring Singapore Airlines stewardess, spoke four languages, and was raised in Russia. Her looks were outstanding. In fact, Park, the person who took me to this place, wanted her badly, and he was pretty picky. Unfortunately for him, his former lover was the owner of this establishment, and would sit with him whenever he came.

Susie was the #2 girl; there was a special term for this position, which was usually occupied by a younger girl with the largest number of regular clients. In order to retain her loyalty, the owner would mentor her and cut her in for some profits.

The drinking group was led by Park's older brother, a famous diplomat who routinely stayed out until 5 AM drinking. It was an off day for him, as we wrapped up around 4 AM, but the point is that Susie was drunk by the end of the evening.

All the remaining girls were at our table, since there was nobody else at the establishment. Susie was clearly interested in me; she would request my singing some American songs and would press closely to me to sing with me when I was up at the microphone, and when we were seated her hands would roam just a little bit, touching my hair, my arm and hands, or my leg. Although it was subtle, it was unusual initiative for an Asian woman in a semipublic area. It was enjoyable, as I was pretty tipsy myself, but I didn't think much of it afterwards.

A few days later Susie sent me an SMS saying that I should take her to dinner for her birthday. I was surprised, as I had explicitly not given her my phone number, despite her requesting it a few times. But she had pulled the abandoned handphone trick, and gained the courage to proposition me. After I figured this out, I replied, quite curtly, that I was too busy. I had assumed that she would demurely give up, given the traditional sterotype of the non-aggressive Asian woman. But this turned out to be wrong.

Yeah, I am not a fast learner.

Susie sent me daily SMS. They were relatively innocuous, justifiable as an English lesson more than an SMS-driven flirting. But of course I wasn't picking up on the cues very well in these very short messages. This became apparent when I next went to her locale. I made mild objections to the location, wanting to avoid meeting her again, but Park's brother insisted. When we got there Susie immediately sat with me and resumed the touching behavior. This was our second establishment we were visiting that night, so we all had a little to drink. By the end of the night, Park's ex-lover was showing off her singing talents and doing some dirty dancing with Park, and Susie was trying her best to seduce me. But unsuccessfully.

By this time I had my relationship-altering kiss with Jenny. This had not made me a believer that I loved Jenny, not at all. What it made me believe was that alcohol had an aphrodisiac effect on me, and my instincts were not be trusted. So I controlled myself and told her no.

As we stumbled out, Park said I must be insane.

Actually, rather than any jealousy Park was strangely pleased that Susie took a liking to me. I think it's a hobby for my business associates in Asia to try to set me up with women. Some kind of odd challenge for them after they "adopt" me as a "younger brother." Young, for example, tried to set me up with Jenny. (I'll preview a fact I'll address in a later post: Young does not know I continue to see Jenny.)

But that really started the torrent of SMS messages. Susie had a lifestyle typical of attractive girls at these A-list places. Generally they wouldn't get to sleep until nearly dawn, and they would wake up around 2 PM. Then they would shop, grab dinner, and go to their drinking establishment. On the weekends or day off they might meet their patron or patrons. They would be constantly answering SMS and phone messages from prospective patrons.

Sadly, this cycle made it difficult to make much personal or alternative career progress, and in Susie's case that was advancing her likelihood to make it into Singapore Airlines.

(By the way, this lends some context to the magnitude of achievement of Jenny's focus in order to attend both work and teaching certification classes while she was doing thrice-weekly stints at her drinking establishment and being tempted by offers for fast money -- although she confessed she would fall asleep in class. More on this later. I promise.)

Nor was it easy for them to date people of their own age and circumstance. Part of the issue was the way their schedule worked, another part was the nature of their job (how easy is it to have a girlfriend that drinks every night with rich men?), and yet another part was the difficulty for a young man to compete with these elite customers. Another related issue was also the outlook on men that women would gain from work like this. The men were generally arrogant and drunk, and when not discussing business would engage in what I call "fraternity flirting", which although usually not explicitly demeaning to women, would certainly show a chauvinistic sexual outlook.

Anyhow, Susie's daily schedule gave her sufficient free time to call a half-dozen times in the afternoon, and send a dozen SMS messages in the evening; and as the night wore on and she got more influenced by the alcohol at work, the messages would become more suggestive or more desperate. It was getting to the point between Susie and Haley where I was so jumpy that I wanted to run away from my handphone whenever it rang. Its tones became sinister and fearsome.

This whole situation illustrated the kind of desperation that would normally start hitting women in her profession around their early thirties, the urge to start making their career work, otherwise to face growing old alone and without material support. It's a cruel society, but it is the society they are in. I wonder if it hit Susie a little earlier than normal because she worked in an establishment mostly with older women, and she was also very close to her boss, Park's ex-lover.

Susie wasn't a very smart person, but she was tenacious. Her instinct was to grab hard and hold on, and her understanding of how to turn men on was geared to men raised in a different society from mine. I dislike the feel of entitlement, for example, which she was very good at giving the illusion of providing such to a man.

Another sad woman, looking for a relationship in the wrong place.

As of early May Susie stopped sending me messages. According to Park, she quit working, and he said that his ex-lover claimed that she had found somebody to support her. It's interesting. Maybe this is her dream come true. But then again, maybe it will ruin the only dream she has.

What does this say about society and relationships?

Silk Stalkings 2: Dedicated Reporting

It may be merely a side effect of my early inexperience with women, or it may be, as some people have recently claimed, something about my personality, but I have accumulated four stalkers in the past few years. This post covers the second one... the first one is described in a previous posting: Endless Love.

About a year ago, my rich and powerful friend Michael introduces me to a circle of his friends. They belong to an exclusive club in Asia. No, not the kind of club he introduced me to in New York. This is a social supper club of younger up and comers, that include people in line to inherit their parent's corporate conglomerate, rising academics, and political and diplomatic movers behind the government.

There is only one woman in this group, recently invited. She is also young and looks even younger. Many would guess her to be under twenty-five and some might even guess under twenty, although she is over thirty. Even among Asians she is surprising. She is a branch reporter in Asia for a very well-known international weekly. You'd know it if I named it. And she's quite cute. I can see why she is granted otherwise hard-to-get interviews. She was culturally raised in the US starting from the age of six until sixteen, and then moved to Asia for her last years of high school and university.

Michael makes a quick introduction to Haley, maybe ten minutes tops over dinner at a big table. She doesn't make a very big impression, other than the fact that she stands out among the 40-ish year old men in the group, and by being by far the most junior in achievement (although she did collaborate on an article that was on the short list for a Pulitzer, but did not win).

Later that year in Manhattan, in fact during a trip I documented, I meet Micheal again in New York. He has arrived separately and asks me to meet him at the Four Seasons lounge. There he is sitting with two Asian women, a tall art dealer, and Haley. Haley, as it turns out, has been pulled into the New York office by the editor in chief, and is scheduled to spend at least a year in New York. Since she doesn't know anybody in the city, Michael is hoping I can be a resource to her. He is also hoping the tall art dealer will help out Haley, but I can already tell that they don't get along. If only I was as sensitive as the art dealer...

Michael and I take her out one night to Hiro's, a Japan-themed bar, in the basement club. She gets a little drunk. She dances provocatively. She wants E badly, but I figure that's up to her. It was a nice evening, nothing special. After that night we go our separate ways.

She uses SMS and email copiously. So on my next trip to New York, I arrange to meet her at 3 AM, after my other activities, at a late night eatery. We have a good discussion where she confesses that she hates New York, cries almost every night, and doesn't understand why anybody would rave about it.

Then and there I make it my mission to show her that New York isn't so bad. That involves a Broadway show, a visit to the Met, a few museums, a few clubs, and so on. She is favorably impressed. Later on, while I am in China, she has a friend coming over to visit in NYC and can't obtain tickets to Avenue Q (which I had seen with Paulina). So I obtain them for her, long distance. The day is saved and she is grateful.

Before Thanksgiving, I go to New York again. I am very busy, but Haley wants to take me out to dinner in recompense for the tickets. I agree. We go to dinner at Spice Market and have drinks at the Ritz Carlton. Haley is adjusting to New York, but still longs to return to Asia, where she finds people to be friendlier and life to be more convenient.

I start to notice that she enjoys complaining a lot, and whining a lot, but doesn't seem to do much about it. So I point this out. Although I thought she might find that rude, she takes the feedback well and solicits more.

Meanwhile, she gets a bit drunk.

We backtrack to a club kitty corner from the Spice Market that she insists I visit as recompense for my showing her some interesting places. It becomes clear at the club (and perhaps at the lounge as well) Haley has spiked herself on E. She becomes increasingly dreamy and affectionate. She also continues to drink beyond her capacity (and complain of overheating.) So although she is dreamy and affectionate, she also shares a lot of opinions on life that make me think she is unrealistic and self-centered.

Now at this point I have had an experience with E, but it seemed overrated in general. And I really don't like recreational drugs on principle. To get to the point, I do not indulge with Haley, and perhaps due to resulting the surplus of E, Haley, I think, overindulges.

Since she is in no condition to go back home alone, I put her up in the spare bedroom in my place. I myself am a bit tipsy from drink, but put her to bed and then put myself to bed.

I wake up a few hours later. Haley is still sleeping. I do a little work, and then go back to sleep to try to fight the jetlag.

A few hours later, I wake up to a pleasant sensation and see that a naked Haley is all over me. I am aroused, I'm human after all. I'm a little fuzzy, but I have sufficient wits, even with her mouth enveloping me, to know this is not what I want. I tell her that. Given my condition, I'm not about to orgasm quickly, so there'll be no Single White Female scene. So I have time to gather my resolve and push her off me.

She is incredulous. And a little pissed. And then a lot pissed. She leaves in a huff.

And I'm relieved. You know that feeling of relief when that police car is parked at your parent's house, and you think the jig is up, and you are filled with dread, but then it turns out they are there for your sister instead? No... neither do I. But I imagine that's what that feeling is like.

But then the nightmare begins. It starts with lots of email and SMS. Sometimes I would receive more twenty per day. They would start apologetic, then go to conciliatory, and then to demanding and manipulative. Then it would cycle. She wanted to meet. I owed it to her. I was a bastard for not meeting her. She was sorry. She needed my help. I was her only friend. She wnated to meet. I owned it to her... you get the idea.

It was so weird it was scary. Meanwhile, she admitted that she was on a veritable cocktail of drugs ranging from Xanax to Halcion, all self-prescribed and filled by a friend. Great. Another thing to add to the profile of things to check.

Before the New Year she moves back to Asia, fed up with New York. She has been booted from the club, but that's okay with her since they are "all arrogant and conceited bastards" (not entirely untrue, I admit), and she doesn't need them.

Well.

Meanwhile, she is bugging Michael about me. And other contacts I have made in Asia that are part of the club. Not to mention the concierge at my Manhattan place, as well as my driver. Several of the club members outright apologize to me for introducing her to me.

Meanwhile, she "keeps the cards and letters coming" with her torrent of SMS and emails. This all culminates in a phone message where she refers to me using such a rich library of invective so artfully arranged, that I cannot doubt that she is capable of Pulitzer material. Her single minded pursuit also demonstrates her drive for a story, all good attributes for a reporter.

Eventually her obsession subsides, as she claims to have found Christianity. God apparently has no block blacklist. But I do. And I've used it.

One interpretation of how this happened: Clare Boothe Luce's quote, "No good deed goes unpunished." (She has many great quotes, I'll start using them more.)

The other one: I am the bug light for psychos. Not the knife-wielding Glenn Close boil-your-pet-rabbit psychos, but a gentler, less harmful kind. More like potato-peeler-wielding boil-your-chia-pet psychos.

What do you think, dear reader?

Silk Stalkings 1: Endless Love?

It may be merely a side effect of my early inexperience with women, or it may be, as some people have recently claimed, something about my personality, but I have accumulated four stalkers in the past few years. This post covers the first one...

She was my first real dating experience. Let's call her Maggie. She lived abroad, and we had a whirlwind summer teenage romance when I was fourteen. No sex, mind you.

I stayed with a student's family, a homestay. This girl was his cousin's best friend. She was a year older than I. She was the number four student in her all-girls school. She was studying both art and pre-medicine. She was the fifth and last girl in her family, whose father gave her a name that meant: [yet] another girl. Yes, the world can be unfair.

We met at his cousin's birthday party, an innocent affair with the two of us and at least ten women. Mind you, this was when dating in that country, especially between students of this age, was verboten. Military roamed the streets to supress rioters, and the general government situation was repressive. It was quite unusual for my homestay and I to show up at a girl's birthday party, but I was brought along for the novelty value.

And given that I was the shaggy haired, free spirited American boy, there for only the summer in an age of great uncertainty and unrest, I imagine the social risk seemed managable, and we dated in defiance of the local wags.

After a teary airport farewell, we exchanged daily letters. In the natural course of things, these letters gradually dwindled from daily to monthly, and then either she or I forgot a birthday or a holiday, and soon there was no more correspondence.

Meanwhile she had become a doctor of some reknown. I went on to do whatever it is that I do.

One day about two years ago I receive an email from my father, who says that he received a phone call from Maggie asking for my contact information. He gave it to her. And that's how it started: an innocent mistake.

Mind you, it's 20 years later when she calls me. I dislike the phone, so I direct her to email contact, and we correspond over the next few months. Maggie is married and has a ten-year old girl. She travels all over the world to present her research. Career wise, she is happy, and I am happy for her.

She requests a meeting in the US, and so I arrange lunch after a walk in Central Park. This was the second mistake.

At lunch she hands me a large hand-decorated box, about the size of a box for boots. In it, I kid you not, are a hundred letters, hand-drawn postcards, and handmade giftlets like bookmarks, pressed flowers, and other such things.

Along with that comes an eventually tearful confession: the home life is less than wonderful. Her in-laws live with her, and she hasn't had sex with her husband for years although she claims to love him and know that he loves her. She misses me.

Did I mention we hadn't met for twenty years?

Now this is what is called, "Too Much Information", on top of which I'd add, "A No-Win Situation."

I am sad. As a first love, I sympathize with her. I want to help her. But I don't want to feel sorry for her, and I don't want to have a relationship with her. So I give her a little verbal sympathy, for example telling her that I was certain her husband wasn't ignoring her because she was unattractive, and that her daughter sounded wonderful and a worthwhile cause for her family focus. I gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead when she leaves. It isn't until later that I realize that it is the first time I have ever kissed her.

But this fact isn't lost on Maggie. This is the third mistake. Perhaps a better thing would have been to be cold to her. That's what I would have told myself if I could go back in time.

A torrent of emails ensued. She wanted to meet me again, to rekindle something. After a few weeks of this, I told her no. I told her that I wasn't a fix for her family issues, that she should focus on them with the same intensity as work, and anyhow I wasn't interested personally. I believe that being brutally honest is the right approach. But it isn't enough. She is not convinced. She attempts to convince me that a short meeting would have no harm. She sends me gifts and letters, which, on the advice of a friend, I return unopened. The same friend advises me to stop returning emails, which I do.

She emails me copiously. She tries to pull emotional strings, she talks about suicide. At this point I break down and email her that she needs to seek professional help, and shortly afterwards put her on my block list.

She finds my work email, starts harassing my parents, and bugs my secretary to divulge my travel schedule so she can arrange to be there to meet me. At one point she sees my name on a conference schedule in Hong Kong and flies there to see me. But there is a freak event that diverts my plane and I never attend. I hear about it from the panel coordinator, who tells me that she was looking for me. He thought she was a particularly hyperactive press person...

At that time, it gave me the chills. My theory at this point is that I have done nothing wrong, although mistakes were made. As sympathetic (or pathetic) as her situation may be, I feel for her but cannot do anything about it.

So for the next two years, I merely am silent while she slowly gives up. Now I receive maybe one letter every three or four months. Recently she discovered that I moved to Asia not too far away from her. She has suggested meeting, but again, only episodically.

Dear reader, did I do something wrong? Was I too kind? Maggie is no psycho-stalker, but there is a sad psychology there, and I feel bad because I do pity her.

Friends forever?

I have a small number of good friends who are men. I know many successful people who have hundreds of friends. I don't. I have very few. That's because I'm choosy. Or unpopular. Take your pick.

At any given time, during school and early work days, I would have more friends. But I divide them into enduring friendship, situational friendship and distant friendship.

I'm not saying situational friendships are bad. They can be great, and you can be very close. You can easily pick up the friendship later. But in my world, where my situation changes quickly and quite significantly -- with wholesale changes in country, industry, and activities -- many friendships are left behind.

The enduring friendships are pretty special. These are the four (so far) friends I've had since I was an adolescent (I'd like to think "since I could think like an adult", but many would claim I have yet to attain that status.) As I'm getting older, I can start thinking of a broader definition of enduring friendship, which might be a friendship that covers over half my life, or one that maintains through three sea changes in my life. With those definitions, I may be able to a couple of more people into this category in the next five to ten years.

Distant friendship is a very platonic friendship. It could be orthogonal to the enduring-situational categorization making a two by two matrix, but when the friendship is distant, it's hard to tell if it's situational or enduring anyhow.

Interestingly, I have yet to have a female in the enduring friendship or "nearly enduring friendship" categories, and yet I have more women than men in the distant friendship category.

I think part of this is most of the women who might have fallen into the enduring friendship category (and fallen is the right word -- it certainly isn't elevated!) focused their energy into marriage or career or both in a way that wasn't consistent with a continued close friendship. Other were romantic interests, which created its own distortions for enduring relationships; after close emotional bonding, its easier to go platonic (some distance apart) than to keep that closeness, but without the romantic love.

But in that former subcategory of woman friends, it is puzzling. For whatever reason, I've observed that it's easier for a man to carry on a "long distance (non-romantic) relationship" with a man, than for a woman to do that with a man. The emails, calls, notes and visits, although episodic, are more likely to be misconstrued in the woman-man case. And so distant friendships are possible, but close enduring ones are not.

I wrote before about the charming Jenny, and how we ended up at the end of summer deciding to be friends. And that was all good. On the pragmatic side, it gave me some a teacher to learn the language. On the less pragmatic side, I liked her company.

The first real date (as friends) we went on was late last year. By real date, I mean that we both knowingly and willingly arranged the event. Unlike most dates, in this case I did not make any arrangements; Jenny did all the work. We met at a upscale jazz supper club, Blue Moon, for dinner. It was a lovely evening, with two surprisingly good imported jazz groups. One was from the US and had commented that their tour of Asia was so much more rewarding than the United States. "People here really appreciate jazz, and they really are nice to musicians," said one older fellow.

Jenny and I had a good talk. She had quit her work at the drinking club after she received her education certification, and had started seriously planning her child education project with her sister. (Obligatory disclosure: I was not an investor in this project.)

There were remarkable similarities and stark contrasts between our backgrounds. She graduated top of her class in junior high school (despite missing nearly a year due to sickness). This allowed her to go to the top regional high school where she spent too much time distracted and too little time studying. The worse she did at school, the more rebellious she became. Although she didn't do that badly, being accepted in the second best school in the country, when she moved from her bucolic town to the big city to go to school, she admitted that she went a little crazy.

Mostly this entailed smoking and a whole lot of drinking, along with hanging out with unsavory music and acting types (recall that she was in a band.) On the way she won several dancing awards, nothing major mind you, but some recognition and prizes. Meanwhile she kept her head with a career. She went without much sleep, and bullshitted her way through most of work, which she described as "never challenging, always political." She claimed she had cut back on drinking (tried to have her last drink by 3 am) and quit smoking entirely several years back, but admitted that before that she drank and smoked a lot.

The next time we met we went to a light informal dinner. She took me to a cultural show, which was nice. I had asked her what a high end bar was like, so she took me to one. It wasn't that great (loud, too trendy), so we instead went to a waterfront club that had not-too-loud live music and drank Hennessy XO congnac.

During this time I was having a lot of health issues with my parents, and Jenny was as well. On top of this, work stresses were quite high, also for both of us. Part of the enjoyment we had together was the ability to sympathize and support each other without seeming a bit patronizing, and yet being different enough that any such support never seemed encroaching.

It's also possible that the language barrier was helping (more on this effect later.)

Probably due to the stresses, the discussion became a little emotional, and then almost brutal in its honesty. For whatever reason, we just tore open our hearts and bled in front of each other. I'm not shy about sharing facts about my past (this blog, for instance,) but here we shared feelings. And the feeling of support and acceptance was amazing. Having this kind of deep fulfilling discussion was the first problem.

The second problem is that we danced. Understand that I am a terrible dancer. At least the kind of pop dancing that is popular in clubs. Think about my background, my awkward adolescent years, my even more awkward adult years. All those years wherein you, dear reader, might have learned to dance, well, I did not! Ok, I will admit I did take ballroom dance. It was a requirement in a private school I had the misfortune to attend. Fortunately the music at that point was a bit slow, so we ballroom danced. Jenny took my lead extremely well. She had taken only one ballroom dancing class, but dropped it due to time pressure.

Back to the point: the second problem is that we danced. We danced together, in synchrony. And I had never danced so well, or so it seemed. We danced fast, spinning across the floor, and we danced slow, feeling our bodies pressing together.

It was a remarkable feeling... which was the second problem.

The third problem is that we sang. We moved upstairs to a karaoke place. And we sang together. I wrote about that before. But the music we could make together was, well, it was something good.

By that time we had consumed sufficient alcohol that we danced and sang and talked at the same time. A lethal operatic combination indeed.

Then there was one kiss on the couch of that karaoke place. And it was amazing. The incredible physical sensations I had noted at the last kiss were there, but they were magnified by something else. But, we had agreed. We had promised not to let this interfere with friendship. So when the kiss ended, we both simultaneously broke into a flurry of apologies.

But it was too late. Something had changed. Had I fucked up another potential enduring friendship?

Clearly it was the drink...

Addendum

Thanks to a misconfiguration, my last republish operation removed the line breaks from my postings. Apologies to those who had to wade through the unremitting torrent of characters. It should be fixed now.

I also wanted to add a few observations to my Genius Loves Company post that I had thought of, but had managed to forget to type in.

Firstly, if you had asked me how many of the Angels I would have bedded, I would have guessed maybe one out of three. Secondly, I would have guessed it would take a protracted effort. So you can imagine my surprise that it did not.

This is something that my conservative upbringing did not anticipate. My utter and complete lack of success with women as an adult gave me unlimited amounts of doubt about both the libido of women and my ability to kindle such thoughts in them. The events of the past 18 months has really been changing my perspective on this.

Another thing I have noticed, although the statistical significance is small: highly intelligent women have highly developed sexual appetites. Or put in a cruder way: smart means horny. I used to think it was "beautiful means horny," but that adage seems to have a weaker correlation. Not a bad thing, although I have seen how it can create sad situations. In particular, I now begin to feel that early exposure to sexual activity, particularly in the context of power transfer, can have negative impact. Ok, that sounds like cheap pop psychology. Or maybe it helps me deal with the fact that I was left out of that early activity, a sad and horny bystander.

Call me Dr. Phil.

I was reading an email comment I received, along the lines of a fraternity-like back-slapping on how I had "scored" three for three. And it made me sad. Is that not the path to being jaded? I wrote about that fear before, and sometimes I wonder if I'm losing sufficient objectiveness to realize into which land I have wandered (or fallen!)

Interlude: Wireless Love and Phone Prophylaxis

So I learned an interesting and valuable lesson in Asia. Protect your phone!

Asia is in love with SMS, that is, text messaging between cell phones. Nearly everybody has a cellular phone, and the average life between upgrades is well under a year. Email is considered cumbersome, since it's hard to carry a computer around, so text messaging is the way to communicate quickly and efficiently.

Text entry can range from challenging to quiet simple, depending on the Asian country and language, but in general people get by.

But the interesting phenomenon is how dating and mating behaviors are now wireless. This ranges from checking on your date by having him or her send you live photographs of where they are and who they are with, to sending little love messages as voice or text messages (all phones have text messaging, most all phones support sending a voice snippet and photographs, and many phones support video.) There are even movies about SMS love. Then there are webcams, which are less popular, but due to the widespread availability of broadband in Japan and Korea, they are used between couples.

Multimedia love. It's a long way from postcards and roses...

An interesting observation is that SMS notes are a common way of introduction. It is less personal than a face to face conversation, and the compact message medium allows for amusing flirtation with plausable deniability in commitment. It's just a short message, after all. And given the perchant for puns in the Asian languages, there are lots of possible flirtatious double entendres to spice up those short messages.

There are even features in handphones for marking certain contacts as "secret friends." Secret friend messages have a separate ring setting and do not show up in your incoming or outgoing log. Their messages show up in a secret inbox that is password protected, and sometimes does not even show up in the menu interface. Hmm... wonder what that's for...?

So a SMS message is often how friends will set up other friends. That, followed by a lunch, or a small group of friends going drinking together. So in this context, let's talk about less savory set ups...

Girls in drinking establishments, especially the higher end ones, are very aggressive. Their path toward success is through successful men, either by marrying them, or, more frequently, by gaining sponsors allowing them to enter sustainable businesses like retail, real estate, or managing drinking establishments.

As a consequence, much of their future is tied up in their ability to contact you and persuade you to invest in them. They, too, are network driven and need to add to their rolodex.

This causes interesting politics inside the drinking establishment, but that's not what this entry is about.

One day I received a call on my hand phone. It was an unknown caller ID number, so I did not answer it. There was no voicemail message, but shortly after I received an SMS message from the same number. The message was in the native language, and therefore a bit difficult for me to understand, but it seemed to indicate that somebody wanted to meet with me. Now the odd thing is, this was not the first time. I had received three unsolicited messages from strangers who appeared to want to meet or talk.

My first thought was this was SPAM. But how did I end up on a SPAM list? I asked around. I showed my friend, Park, one of the messages.

He laughed.

He told me it was one of the girls we had met in a previous drinking establishment, a drop-dead gorgeous woman who had lived in Russia, spoke four languages, and was continuously applying to Singapore Airlines to become a stewardess. I protested that I had not shared my handphone number with her, although she had asked (the reasons for this unusual behavior on my part -- not sharing my number with an interested woman -- will become clearer in a later posting).

Park told me that women would routinely capture handphone numbers by waiting until their target male went to the restroom. Then they would quickly take the man's cell phone, call their own number, and save the caller ID that appeared on their phone. If they had time (and the phone supported the feature), they would then erase the call from the man's phone local log.

It reminded me of an incident many months ago when one of the newer gals in a drinking establishment passed out in a car outside with my cell phone in her hand. The proprietor and several girls were sent searching for my cell phone, which I thought I had lost, repeatedly calling it until she woke up and brought it back. She was pretty embarassed, and in fact I never saw her in that establishment again (being able to handle your liquor is a pre-requisite in the higher end establishments.)

Park recommended that I not leave my phone unattended.

Lesson learned.

Of course, little did I know that my lack of oversight on my phone would lead to even greater complications... but that's another post.