Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Climbing Every (Wrong) Mountain
From: jkusters@zeus.calpoly.edu (Chrome Jester)
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 01:27:04 GMT
Organization: California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

While sitting around in class lately, I've had a lot of time to think and
write.  Here's something I wrote today, and while it's not particularly
insightful or even relevant, it helped me to recenter things that are going
on in my life...  I'm posting it in the hopes that someone finds it either
amusing or entertaining...

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        It's a pity.  With all of the money spent these days on 
education, you'd think there would be at least one class on life 
and love.  Perhaps the reason for the lack of such a class can be 
attributed to a lack of qualified teachers.  Or perhaps some 
greater wisdom has decreed that there are some roads we must travel 
and some hills we must climb for ourselves, and that this is one of 
them.  Most likely the realistic reason is that there is so much to 
learn about the subject that no curriculum could be written to cover 
it all.  Can you imagine what the mid-terms would be like?
        With this aspect of life left so precariously to capricious 
fate, it is no little wonder that we find the paths of love and 
relationships to be so full of dead-ends and double-backs.  So 
often we climb several thousand feet over dozens of miles of 
switchbacks only to find we've climbed the wrong mountain.  And 
then, there we are, stranded on top of Mount St. Helens, looking 
back upon the path we have climbed to get where we are, and looking 
with despair forward to the path yet to come.  As we begin our 
descent, we wonder if the effort was worth it, and if we will be 
able to scale the next mountain that comes our way. 
        After climbing several such mountains, we start to get 
clever.  "A Ha!" we say to ourselves, "I must try to learn 
before-hand which mountains will be worth my while to climb, and 
which ones won't be."  We cast about for a road-map for a while, 
only to find out that there is no road-map to love.  The best we 
can do is to establish a set of rules and guidelines to help us 
choose a little more wisely.  We learn to start distinguishing 
between those relationships that lead only to a rocky cliff and 
those that lead to the summit.
        And yet, here I stand at the bottom of yet another mountain 
and wondering which way to go from here.  My own personal 
guidelines are woefully incomplete.  I stand tired and weary and 
confused.  The question that keeps running through my mind is 
whether or not it is worth trying to climb those mountains which are 
already familiar to me;  whether it is worth trying to establish a 
romantic relationship where a friendship already exists.
        I remember one such mountain climbing expedition I once 
embarked upon.  We had been good friends for several months.  I had 
always been attracted to him, but never said anything (I always 
seem to approach my mountains expecting to be either buried by a 
landslide or plucked off the slopes by a stray gust of wind).  One 
day, he threw a party at his house.  All of us were invited, and I 
showed up expecting to have a good time as I always did at these 
kinds of parties.  Well, the party was a success; everyone had a 
good time.
        I remember it was getting late, somewhere around two to 
three.  He and I were in his bedroom messing around with his 
computer.  He was showing me some stuff he was working on for his 
classes, and I was showing him some ways to make his machine more 
robust and efficient.  At some point, we left the topic of personal 
computers and moved on to the topic of personal experiences.  At 
the time, I was terribly naieve (as if anything has changed).  So, 
when he put some romantic music on the stereo (I still have 
problems listening to Elton John without feeling somewhat sad), and 
started talking about a former lover of his, I started getting kind 
of nervous.  After all, here was someone I was very much attracted 
to, making what I thought to be romantic overtures.  When he 
started holding my hands and talking about things that he found to 
be romantic, I thought to myself, "Oh my god, he feels for me the 
same way I feel for him!"  As we lay before the 90's equivalent of 
a roaring fire (the stereo system), listening to love songs, and 
holding each other, I was in bliss.
        What I didn't realize at the time was that what I was 
interpreting as romance was actually one friend needing support 
from another friend to overcome the last steps of losing a lover.  
But where had I made the mistake?  Where did I take the wrong fork 
and start climbing the wrong mountain?  I obviously mistook 
friendship to be true romantic affection.  I went through several 
weeks of hurt and hate, and managed to treat my friend very badly, 
even going so far as to snub him and his new lover when he 
introduced us.  I am very fortunate to still count myself as a 
friend of his.  But I'll never forget my mistake, and though I've 
left that particular mountain behind, I hope to remember the trails 
that led to it, in the hopes of not repeating my mistake.
        There is another mountain that stands out in my 
recollection, a journey up the slopes of familiar territory only to 
find it was yet again the wrong mountain.  Again, we had known each 
other for quite some time.  I wasn't really all that attracted to 
him; he was far to much of a "queen" for my tastes.  He was a 
natural blond, and worked hard to maintain the stereotype.  I knew 
he was very fond of me for some reason or another, but I kept my 
distance.
        All of a sudden, though, I saw him maturing, losing his 
queenish tendencies, becoming more "butch", and in my eyes, more 
attractive.  He became responsible, something I never expected.  I 
became a closer friend of his, not intending anything more.  Then, 
one week he asked if he could visit for a few days while looking 
for work in the area.  While he visited, we grew very close, and 
eventually found ourselves doing things I never imagined I would do 
with him.  Here I was, suddenly at the summit of a mountain I had 
never imagined climbing, nor even desired to climb.  And now that I 
was at the top of it, I realized it was yet again the wrong mountain.
        In the process of falling off that mountain, I managed to 
completely destroy what friendship we used to have.  We not longer 
talk for hours on the phone like we used to.  We rarely see each 
other any more.  I often feel I have driven him out of what groups 
we both used to belong to.  I do hope to repair the bonds of 
friendship we used to have, but the prognosis is doubtful.  He has 
a new man in his life now, so I am content to leave well enough 
alone for now.
        So I'm left with the question.  Which mountains are the 
right ones to scale?  Which friendships, if any, can be developed 
into more than friends?  Can a friendship blossom into love and not 
be doomed to quakes and erosion?  As I put the pack on my back, and 
prepare yet again to tackle the upcoming mountain, I will always 
ponder these questions.

JOhn.
-- 
/-John A Kusters, jr.----------------------------------------------------______
| jkusters@ares.calpoly.edu & phule@bbs.fubarsys.com                     \    /
Silence keeps us all in darkness, We can't change things overnight;       \  /
But we can shed a little light, Be Political not Polite! -Romanovsky & Phillips
Newsgroups: soc.motss