Fitzgerald's Third Decade

Feast or famine.

Such is the life of man.
Top of world or starting over at zero.
6 months ago I was the healthiest I'd been diet and drinking wise since I was a teenager.
I was working on many projects.
Fast forward to I'm 30 and working on my divorce.
But as it is, sometimes, one must clear the desk of old ties and expectations to devote themselves fully (that and go on a 2 week bender to properly tithe to the Vice Gods).

These precipices I continually face...each tougher than the last...leave me colder, more taciturn, yet more profoundly moved when I do see a girl that strikes me.

It's a strange inverse I've happened upon.
The most recent girl fucking blindsided me like I hadn't seen nor felt in years.
I am impressed with her feminine wiles and how easily and surreptitiously she snuck beneath my rather guarded expert (so I foolishly and narcissistically believed) woman rader......despite my disappointment it came crashing down as expeditiously as it soared.

I remember the first time I read those lines by Fitzgerald, "“Thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” 

As much as I love the guy and find his lyrical insight into the reflections of new infatuation spot on..... Fitzgerald was always a Beta in the truest sense of the word.

That and the marrying age for men, in particular the highly desirable men, I am beginning to believe is inching its way upwards past 24 or 25.
Sure I have friends who married that age. A number of them are living post-first marriage and picking up the pieces. Those that aren't are largely removed from the dating pool as more girls push their marrying age higher and higher yet still with advanced degrees and time abroad and martini nights and the like.

I wonder when will come my tipping point.
I have still managed to bang some young(er) girls and pick up young(er) girls in the prime 19-21 range but I wonder when my age will make that no longer probable if not entirely possible. It's already begun. The slide into adulthood. That and I rarely have much to discuss with a girl who's not even finished college.

My tastes are maturing as I tend to sense much earlier on the girls that are and are not what I want.
I also spend less time on girls that despite their level of interest in me I can sense are not my style in bed.
When you are young you seek the prey simply b/c it's what you do.
It's a commitment to the quest no matter what signs she throws your way that she's not a long term or even beyond tonight type of match.
As you mature, and the disappointments mount, you begin to grow (hopefully) more adept at scouting out the girls that are or are not your flavor.
I've actually begun to pass on the easy lays from girls coated in desperation. That cold, sinking feeling of her, afterward, with those pleading eyes, it turns my stomach and brushes abrasively against my soul and I always hate myself afterward.
Dare I say it....I'm looking for a meaningful connection these days....and with a discerning eye as well. Who would've thought?

At least, this has been my experience.

But every now and again...you get ran over by a locomotive like I did.
I could be all bitter...and yet, I feel disappointment only.
I'm glad to know that a modern day chance encounter can still explode with such power that it can completely override all of my hard-earned and consciously aqcuired stoicism.
It gives my inner romantic some faint hope that keeps me pressing on in the face of a world I do not wish nor care to know or understand.

Good luck and happy hunting.