(Erin!!) Janet was so right she'd be amazed!
Robert Maas
idea what I looked like, kept insisting that I'm not ugly and I
shouldn't say I am ugly. I don't know how she could be so sure I'm not
ugly, maybe she's a magic spirit or something, maybe the reincarnation
of the Virgin Mary, I don't know. Maybe she just likes to guess things
then stick with them without any evidence, and she simply guessed right
in my case. Maybe she's a genius at psychology and based on what I said
about my personal experiences she deduced that my experiences are
incompatible with my being ugly. I don't know how she knew I'm not ugly
In any case, I have enough evidence from smiles and flirtations, and
verbal testamony (see below for the clincher) from women who meet me in
person, that I now truly accept that I'm not ugly, and furthermore that
I'm actually sort of good looking since I stopped shaving in December,
possibly even as good looking as the movie/TV stars that the women
(including Janet) are always drooling over.
Saturday (APr.10) after my 1PM appointment I went to Santa Clara
University to say 'hi' to random women, but because women weren't
commuting between classes, instead were mostly sitting around, I did
fewer random 'hi' en passants and more serious conversations,
especially sweet Erin!!!
First I went around saying "hi" en passent, but that activity had
gotten so natural for me that I was able to step back in my mind and
measure the parameters. My original statement of 45-degree angle turns
out to be incorrect. I actually say 'hi' with eye contact and smile
when the woman is still about 4-5 feet in front of me but heading to
pass only a foot to my left, so the angle is more like 25-30 degrees
from directly forward. If I wait until she's closer, it's uncomfortable
twisting around to get her response. Anyway, after walking around
campus, then back and forth through the student union, I had pretty
much exhausted the available women to say 'hi' to, so I went downstairs
to see who was there. As I walked past the entrance to the downstairs
lounge area, I saw a rather pretty but shy-looking student sitting on
the couch against the far wall, facing my direction and glancing up at
me. I immediately wanted to meet her, but because she had already
spotted me I was afraid of walking toward her without some excuse for
being there, so I chickened out for the moment and continued down the
hall trying to figure out an excuse for going over near her.
I saw an office with the door open and tables of magazines inside, and
out of curiosity I went in, and discovered that was just the large
waiting room alongside an inner office which also had the door open. I
looked through the magazines on the table and found two New Yorkers, so
borrowed them and headed back toward the lounge area, hoping the pretty
& shy looking student hadn't left yet. She was still there, and was
looking at me again. I decided to approach her, say 'hi', then sit down
somewhere near her and look through the New Yorkers to see whether they
had any really funny or worthwhile joke-cartoons. As I strolled in her
direction, she continued to watch me and seemed to make eye contact and
slightly smile at me, so instead of saying 'hi' I asked her about the
book she was reading, whether it was for pleasure or for a class, and
she said it was required reading for a class but was actually
pleasurable or enjoyable to read. So I assumed there'd be very little
chance for much conversation, she's busy, so I sat on the next couch
next to hers (about 5 feet to her side) and started reaidng my New
Yorkers.
I read an interesting section about MTV having a campaign of making up
new slang and posting it around the city in an attempt to get teenagers
to start speaking the MTV slang so they'd then be walking
advertisements for MTV, a sort of dirty trick that might backfire. But
up to that point I hadn't found any decent joke-cartoons, and the
student reading the book was so pretty that I really wanted to say
something more to her, so I did, and our resultant conversation lasted
more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half:
Her name is 'Erin', and she had been reading "The Odyssey" for a class.
She's somewhat shy, completely unable to approach guys she finds
attractive. If Brad Pitt and his bodyguards and agent came into the
lounge and sat right across from her (8-10 feet away), she might faint,
or might grab any available paper, even the book she was reading (then
NEVER sell it), and ask for his autograph, but she'd be too shy to say
anything personal to him. Regarding approaching guys, I think she's
just as shy as Janet is, slightly more shy than I ever was. For
conversation she's more shy than I am not but not as shy as I was
before mid-February, and possibly not as shy as Janet. I asked her
about Janet's three famous-guy crushes:
Jackie Chan: Cute little-boy look, not attractive enough to be worth
pursuing, but if they met in person and got acquainted and he really
wanted to date her, she'd probably be willing to let him date her.
Brad Pitt: GORGEOUS!! She likes his "rough cowboy" look. Erin says she
has two big posters of him in her room, plus two small pin-ups that
were cut out of magazines.
JFK Jr.: He's attractive, has nice teeth, a neat formal look but looks
snobby. He's so different from the other two that she can't directly
compare him with them.
Then I asked how I compared to them visually and she complained that it
was difficult to separate her first visual impression from her feelings
about me on account of our long conversation (more than a half hour)
already, but I encouraged her to try to separate her developed feelings
about me from my raw visual appearance, and gradually she was able to
state rather clearly how she thought I looked compared to them:
Erin said my beard is better looking than Brad's, i.e. Erin agrees with
me that Brad's beard looks scraggley (bad). My cheek bones and eyes
look exactly like Jackie Chan's. Overall I'm better looking than Jackie
Chan but not as gorgeous as Brad Pitt. Can't be compared to JFK Jr.
because the style is so grossly different (formal vs. cute is how I'd
put it).
Erin said I look a lot like Sean Connery and Harrison Ford!! I was so
flabbergasted that I grabbed her for a big sideward cuddle and embrace
at that point! So my former wife was correct after all when she said I
looked exactly like Harrison Ford! (I did *NOT* mention H.F. when
asking the question, there was no mention of his name whatsoever in our
prior conversation, Erin really did come up with those two names from
her own honest visual impresson of me.) I mentionned to her that when I
look at myself in the mirror I look like the guy in "30 years to life"
after he had gotten aged (Erin hasn't seen the movie), and like Robin
Williams (Erin agreed there was some similarity, but stuck with her
SC/HF choices for most look-alike.)
We talked about a bunch of other things, including most of the general
info about my shyness cured by Janet, and her shyness, and how we might
have different impressions of beauty and might go out sometime to a
mall or somesuch comparing whether I am attracted to a woman she thinks
is "beautiful" and whether she's attracted to a man I think would be
attractive to women, and also I offered to help her learn how to
approach men, such as "hi" en passant, before she really had to go to
meet a friend at the library. (She never did get to do any more reading
that afternoon, once our main conversation had started. Sorry Erin, if
you're reading this, I hope our friendly sweet conversation was
enjoyable enough for you that you don't mind the disruption to your
study schedule. For me it was wonderful being with you that time and
I'm so very specially glad that I met you.) I walked with her to the
library, where I asked her if she'd like a hug and she said yes and so
we hugged, and in the sunlight close up I saw her gorgeous beautiful
eyes!! Inside the basement lounge she had asked me what I thought her
eye color was, and I told her blue/gray, and she agreed. But outside in
the sunlight her irises lit up with multiple colors of tan & yellow &
greenish & turquoise and were so beautiful I was amazed and charmed and
asked to see her again. Erin wasn't ready to give me her phone number
or last name because she'll be very busy studying so won't have time to
see me anyway, except might like to see me by accident again if it
happens, so I told her how to find me in alt.support.shyness, and my
phone number, and my last name (second largest river in Holland) and
that I live in Mountain View, so if she forgets one of those she'll
remember some other and definitely be able to contact me. She said she
has some friends who know about InterNet and she'll ask them how to use
DejaNews to find the Robert who posted to alt.support.shyness. (And if
she forgets my name somehow, she can always search for her own name
where I mentionned it in several articles last night and where I
mentionned it many times here.) Anyway, I love that sweet pretty shy
intelligent open honest revealing person named "Erin". The chance of
her wanting me as a sweetheart or husband is pretty low given our age
difference, but I would marry her for sure if she ever wanted, because
she's special to me already, and she's a good person who would be good
for me. But on a more practical level, I love her for saying I look
like Harrison Ford, and for her wonderful friendship-sharing
communication, and for her pretty face and beautiful eyes (they're
already somewhat beautiful in a subdued way when looking steel-blue
under artificial indoor light, then outside they're as flashy/colorful
as fireworks!!), and for the repore (sp?) she developed with me, and I
definitely and eagerly want to be friends with her, getting together
for a few hours at least twice a month as her busy school schedule
permits, fifty times a week if I could make it so, but twice a month
seems more practical and I hope she'll accept my offer of friendship
and maybe even let me teach her how to approach cute guys.
Now for the women I chatted with later about Janet's three famous-guy
crushes and how I compare with them:
Later in the day I went to the downstairs lounge again, and sitting
over on the side near the back was a somewhat pretty young woman who
was making eye contact at me and smiling like she found me attractive,
so after a brief hesitation I went directly to her and told her I
noticed she was smiling at me so I decided to say 'hi'. Basically she
(Shannon) had been "making eyes" at me. In response to my three-guys
question, she said Brad Pitt is cute, but she doesn't know what the
other two look like. She said I'm about equally as attractive as Brad
Pitt.
Later I saw these three young woman hanging around on the couch by the
telephones near the career center, one nearest my end of the couch
being a rather pretty YL I had seen earlier, who had a wide flat face
sort of like Dutch or Norwegian, but otherwise looked sort of like the
late Mariel Hemmingway, and one looked sort of half Indian and indeed
she was full-blooded Cashmir (northern India). The Hemmingway lookalike
is actually Russian. She said she had already given more than 20 hugs
today, so I asked if I could have one too, and she immediately said yes
and turned to hug position and we hugged. Their concensus (I'm not
sure who said what, because they had to leave so I had to rush the
answer) was that Jackie Chan isn't UGLY, just OK, but Brad Pitt is real
cute, and I'm about the same as Brad, or maybe almost as cute.
Back to my new flame, sweet shy special Erin, with some misc. notes:
Erin was wearing absolutely no makeup that I could see, and I didn't
notice any jewelry either. She said she didn't think she was good
looking, and I had to reassure her that she is. Now that I realize the
lack of make-up, I love her totally-natural looks even more. She's a
real live person, instead of a perfect piece of plastic, and she's
pretty enough for me any day even if I don't count her gorgeous
colorful eyes in sunlight, only her very pretty heartbreaking
steel-blue eyes in indoor light.
When I said her eyebrows were pretty, she referred to them as "bushy",
but I said they were "semi bushy", where Brook Shields would be truly
"bushy", and she accepted that.
Erin seemed very much like I was at that age, too shy for (her now) (me
then) to take the initiative to approach anyone or take any risks, but
very open and communicative and sharing if anybody (Merlinda in my
case, me in her case) would approach me and pass through my shell and
try to really communicate with me. Maybe our conversation went so well
because she was starving for a guy to really talk to until she met me.
I hope she has time and initiative to get in touch with me so that we
can chat again sometime. Whoever is helping her search DejaNews to find
this article, please try to arrange another get-together between Erin
and me, OK? I'd like to be her friend, both to just be buddies together
enjoying sharing personal conversation as we did Saturday, and also for
me to help her oversome some of her shyness so that she won't end up
like Janet at the age of 34. By 34 Erin should have lots of friends and
some boyfriends and a husband and some children. Erin is a good person
and deserves that and I want to help.
Summary: I met a shy person, and got past her shell to establish a
friendship with her. I hope she chooses to keep that friendship
somewhat active as her school schedule may permit. And as part of being
her friend, I hope to teach her how to say 'hi' to lots of attractive
guys and eventually have the friends and boyfriends she deserves, and I
love her and care about her as much as I loved and cared about Janet.
Meeting someone like Erin, or maybe even Janet, is what life is really
about, why taking risks is sometimes worth it. I just wish I would meet
more women like Erin, and I hope Erin, or Janet, will contact me again.
My number one wish is rather farfetched, but here it is: Janet will
decide she is curious enough to want to meet me, providing the
circumstances are such that she feels safe and comfortable near me.
She'll somehow be able to arrange those circumstances, will do so, will
invite me to the meeting and I'll be able to attend, and we'll finally
meet in person. Janet will be impressed how good looking I am, more
than she imagined, but perhaps slightly less than Erin and the other
women reported, but still sufficient that she isn't sick to be around
me, and my charm/charisma/friendship will so favorably overwealm her
that she finally accepts my offer of friendship, and I finally can
really work hard at being her true friend, helping her overcome
shyness, and after a while she realizes what a great friend I've
become, and starts to love me, and one day something suddenly happens
inside her mind, the same thing that happened in my mind regarding
"Rocking in Rhythm", namely extreme like will suddenly change to
falling in romantic love, and we'll get married and have children and
live happily ever after. Given that Janet is about 14-16 years closer
to my age than Erin is, and only 3 years farther from my age than my
former wife is, as much as I love Erin now I think Janet would be more
appropriate as my wife if she ever met me in person and everything
clicked in place like they clicked over the net in mid-February (in a
somewhat different way of course).
Actually, given that I've actually met Erin and we like each other and
get along good in person, my real wish is that Erin would show up at my
doorstep tonight or tomorrow night, and she'd say she loves me and
wants me to be her boyfriend, and we'd be together from that moment
onward, including all the love and marriage and children and living
happily ever after. But because of our age difference I am shy about
wishing that on Erin, like it would be unfair to her. But if by chance
Erin does fall in love with me, I definitely would marry her, she's too
great to pass up. I'm in love with Erin, but would be just cuddley
friends any time she wants, her choice. (Erin, I hope this doesn't
embarrass you, except maybe a teensy little bit in a good-feeling way.)
P.S. Your beautiful eyes, and the way you eagerly shared them with me,
are really getting to me, the more I remember them hour after hour
today. What gets to me is not just how pretty they are, but how you
truly shared them with me as an act of friendship, without any
reservations in your sharing. I feel like you are my friend.