To All The Girls I've Loved Before - College

It was the damnedest thing: in the middle of the college snack bar, surrounded by dozens of witnesses, my body tried to kill D.

I believed at the time that the major part of why this happened was that D was sleeping with M and I was obsessed with M. Mature reflection over a period of decades tells me that this was, at most, a contributing factor, not the main reason. The main reason was that I had, without proper guidance, reached the level of an intermediate student of violence. It was widely known in medieval Japanese martial arts texts that an intermediate student had achieved sufficient skills to be dangerous without the control which a more advanced student or a master possessed. Indeed, much of the training a beginning student receives is intended to erode whatever controls he already possesses in order to allow the student to survive a life and death struggle. And, as a self-taught student of violence, I had managed to erode the controls my parents and society had instilled in me without providing new controls which would allow me to function as a member of society rather than a solitary killer.

So when a man who I disliked anyway (partially for sleeping with M, partly on his own merits) gestured with a knife to make a conversational point, my body reacted as though he had attempted to attack me with that knife. My body tried to drive the bones of his nose through his brain. In the meantime, my mind was screaming: NO!!!! and trying to override my reflexes while simultaneously planning an escape route. I had absolutely no intention of spending a single day in jail for killing D.

The punch landed and I waited for him to drop: he shook his head and stared at me. I had misapplied the blow and pulled it.

He did not die and I did not go to jail.

Indeed, the effects were far worse on me than on D. I believed that this attack was due to my irrational obsession with M. I believed that this obsession alone made me willing to kill. I lost all faith in myself as a decent human being.

It got worse.

I had fantasies about saving M from one or more large brutes, and having her see me in a new light. One day in the snack bar, I walked up to her and various other members of our student group, including M and D and made a stupid joke. D told me to back off, because M was suffering from a migraine.

D had taken over my fantasy, with himself in the hero’s role, relegating me to the role of the large brute. I suddenly realized that that was exactly where I fit: I was a monster, a brute and a thug, not a hero at all. I realized that I would always be the monster, never the hero, always the creature which women needed to be protected from, never the protector which women loved.I do not recall ever hating anyone half as much as I hated D at that instant.

So I made a snide comment and walked off.

I did not realize at the time that this was actually a positive thing: although trembling with rage, as upset as I have ever been, I did not physically harm anyone, did not kill anybody. I just shot my mouth off and acted like a jerk. At the time, I considered this the final nail in my coffin. It was actually a sign that I was beginning to develop the controls that someone like me must have in order to live in human society.

The only good thing about this whole mess was that one morning I woke up and no longer loved M. I did not hate her, did not like her, did not want to have sex with her. I was absolutely indifferent to her. I spent almost an hour just lying there, enjoying not caring anymore.

It was very like a fever breaking.

This was my college dating experience: a mitigated disaster.