You've made a fool of everyone.

Everybody fits in these weird little molds.

I seduced a girl last night.

I'm not sure I should call her a girl. After all, she was my elder by a decade, and had been teaching high school for as long as I had been taking college classes.

She was 31. For the purposes of this update, her name shall be "Lisa" (names may have been changed to protect the drunken). She was single. I should admit that I am moderately single myself, if my current state can be classified at all.

And I suppose this is the point where I should clarify: I didn't sleep with her.

So, Loyal Reader, I'm sure you're wondering how you can claim to have seduced someone if you didn't get them into bed.

Well, let me put it this way: When have you broken into a house? When you step across the threshhold? Or is it as soon as you've shattered a window or picked the lock on the door?

I met Lisa at a party, being thrown for people more than three times my age, and attended primarily by people older than my parents. If you exclude the catering crew, Lisa was the only female under 45 in the house, as far as I could tell (I did almost pick the mousey catering lass. She was adorable but seemed far too timid to coax from her shell in just four hours while she was trying to work). Excluding the aforementioned catering lass, Lisa was the only straight single female. (90% of the attendees were gay, the remaining 10% were married, with the exceptions of myself and Lisa).

Both of us were a bit out of place. She had sortof gate-crashed the party as it was. And I was young enough to be the child or grandchild of every other party guest.

But what is sad about this is that every moment that evening just served to re-enforced that opening statetment from the top of this update. Everybody fits in these easily discernable molds. When I started talking to her, I knew I could win her. If I wanted to seduce her, to intrigue her to the point that she would willingly abandon any pretense of reserve in favour of my affections, I could do so.

And so, for the hell of it (as far as I can tell) I did. After all, it's nice to be noticed and appreciated, even if it is shallow and mainly caused by outsider's-syndrome, and it's been a lonely 4 months. Why not enjoy that someone likes your attention, and reciprocates?

From here I'll be skipping moment to moment to make my point without making this into a salacious field-guide for seducing the early-30s American High School teacher.

We started talking about teaching and I paid enough attention to her opinions and opened up enough connections that she thought I was on her level. During the course of conversation I bring up life lines (my own has enough of an aberation that it can be a conversation piece) and this of course opens up the physical touch angle (necessarry to any seduction, really).

Skip an hour or two. The guest of honor arrives (4+ hours late. Long story about bad weather and airplanes), and I'd manufactured a persona for myself that she was inevitably drawn to. I played my immaturity card. I turned myself into the quasi-rebellious college student by curling up in a corner on some discarded pillows, and she (of course--any girl under 40 [and many over] would) admitted that looked incrediby comfortable, so I invited her to come pretend to be a college student (as was I) for a while.

Fast forward further, to the point where her drinks from early in the evening are kicking in (I admit it would have been more a challenge to seduce her if she'd stayed completely sober, but hell, if the professionals can dope a bit, certainly some chemical aides to accomplishing your goals can't be all bad) and we're discussing the attractions and detractions of age, and she's already admitting that she feels like I'm older than her (this is not a new feeling to me. I feel ancient around everybody these days, so I'm unsurprised) and curling up to me as if for warmth and connection.

Again, skip a bit, she's getting her things together to leave with her friends (having been declined in her invitation to an impromptu make-out session in a quieter corner of the house where the party was being thrown), and I walk her to the curb. I had managed to decline her offer without appearantly making her think that I was uninterested, which I was proud of. Because the last thing I want is a girl thinking I just played a game all evening without any real interest in her at all -- even if it is true.

If you've read this much of my writing, I'm assuming you're aware of how much of humanity's communication is substance derived from the nuance of body language, subtle aural cues, etc. Using all of the methods of communication available to both of us, it's basically made clear that there would be no complaints from her if I went home with her that night.

Period. 4 hours and a handful of conversational skills and there you are.

So I kissed her goodbye (bringing the grand total to 3--Hey, I had to add at least one who was older than me) and she left. I'll admit I probably overdid the kiss. I still enjoy kissing way too much to be subtle about it, which is a shame really.

End of story.

The point here is that humanity is continuing to prove me right at every opportunity I give it to prove me wrong.

I knew when I was introduced to her that there were no significant obstacles. The majority of Humanity that I deal with is so predictable as to be nearly transparent in their intentions, and their desires.

So where does that leave me? Well, I didn't go home with her. I instead went back upstairs and engaged in the rest of the party (where a dear friend and very wise man called me "21 going on 40" which is the new title, if you haven't noticed). I didn't really think too much about the seduction, or it's success, except in terms of a vague but unexpressable dissapointment.

I can't figure out if I was more dissapointed in her, that her desires by the end of the evening had degenerated to little more than escapist fantasies of being 'won' by the young man in the sharp-yet-retro suit, or in myself, for deciding to seduce a girl essentially at random because I found it entertaining and pleasing.

And that's the scary thing: It was a fun challenge, not because I wanted the result (though sleeping with her would have been no chore, I wasn't really in the mood or possessed of the right mindset to really desire sex that evening--or at least I didn't want all the things that come along with it), but mainly because it was just one of those "casual parties." You know, the kind that everyone discusses in some ethereal neverland of imagination as part of 'culture' but no-one really attends, and this was one of those absurd setups for the imagined 'one-night stand' that no-one actually engages in, and there it was, as plain as day, as if a myth had turned to fact before my eyes. I'd have been no less intrigued or pleased if Peter Pan or Mary Poppins had popped out of a cubbard.

How could I not find it enjoyable to play that path out as far as I desired in order to increase my understanding?

Sadly it seems the myth and the reality are exactly identical, and there was no need to bother trying. Because trying yielded results with no surprises or complications, and once again it's like being at an emperor's parade where EVERYONE is unclothed except you.

You get this horrible feeling that you're the only person willing to admit that nobody can escape themselves, or improve themselves, and that the molds into which they are poured they will continue to inhabit until they die.

And it makes you sick. Again.

and it gets you thinking about the girls you left, or that left you, and the things you've let fall apart, in grand 7 year quests, and in pathetic, 4 hour dalliances, and that maybe you're just too bitter to admit that there's a mold you're poured into as well. That the clothes you think you wear are as see-through as the next man's, and that you will find yourself unable to escape your own persona, and will die alone, with a thousand wonderful memories of a time that you thought you had found someone interesting, only to drive them away because you knew in the end they weren't right for you. Each memory a bittersweet one. Each about a girl you loved, and will love, and each also about a girl you lost, and can never win back.

Maybe Jet's right.

"Look what you've done.
You've made a fool of everyone
Oh well, it seems likes such fun
Until you lose what you had won"