But then she had to walk through my door.

I've been listening to "Hard Boiled Detectives." CDs of old radio detective shows. They are so over the top and bizarre by todays standards. They left in some of the advertising, which makes it almost surreal to listen to. In every episode, and keep in mind these are a variety of different shows spanning a near twenty year period of time, the detective is standing right next to someone that is assassinated right as they are about to give up the information. There are so many femme fatals. And the detectives are either hard drinkers or British. And once, both, oh, it was quite a show.

I was writing something about something just now and I looked out my window and I saw this guy in a small leather coat with chains coming off, a tattered beard, 70's tight jeans (with more chains!) and a truckers hat. When I first looked I couldn't see his face since it was covered in a cloud of smoke he had just blown from his cigarette. I don't know why this was an important moment, and probably wouldn't have been if I hadn't been sitting here writing just as I saw it, but it completely derailed my line of thought. Suddenly I questioned everything I've ever done in my life. Suddenly I felt inadequate. And it wasn't that I thought I wanted to be that guy, or that I would want to be that guy, or that I think he's had a better life than I have. There was just something, like theres a whole world out there, and I can't seem to catch up to it ever. I've been on the road almost a full week and I can't think of anything I've done that really makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile. I question my motives for being out here. I question being out here. To many it may seem as though this is just some vacation I'm taking. I take big vacations all the time, so why is this one different? It's not, I suppose, but it is at the same time. I don't know where I'm going from day to day. I don't have anyone with me. I'm not having a series of wacky adventures like I suppose I assumed I was going to. It all seems so different from what I was expecting. And yet, like when you go see a movie that is completely different from what you thought it was going to be, yet its still good, I don't really want to walk out of the theater. I've thought about it, wanted to pack it in, turn around. But there could still be something out there. I feel like I'm missing something. I feel like there has got to be something somewhere. I think thats why I started. I can't expect to find what I was looking for on the first day, the first week, hell, maybe not within a month. But I know that there has to be something out there that I'm meant to find.

For a while I thought it was this girl thats working the front desk at the hotel I'm staying at. Maybe it was just that she was the first pretty face I'd seen in a few days, but I thought there might be something there. But after persistant bugging by me about everything I can think of as a reason to go to the front desk, I've gotten the two distinct impressions: 1) she's engaged, thus making the uphill battle of my ability to woo girls a vertical climb of about 2,500 feet, and 2) she does not seem the least bit interested. To others she may not look like much, shes about five six, maybe 150-160, noy fat just more full bodied. Like I like my women. And my coffee. If that is a fair description of coffee. Robust, thats better. Thick glasses (on her, not the coffee) and dark hair pulled into a bun. Today she was wearing a sports coat and a tie. If I were the type to get weak in the knees, there could have been a moment of that. Fortunately I keep my poker face as much as possible when dealing with people I don't know all that well. Or maybe thats a bad thing, makes me seem cold or something. Or just strange. Or something. I heard once that blonde people (such as myself) tend to favor brunettes. It's a genetic attraction, apparently the combination makes for good genes. I suppose that would explain, too, why I like a hippier woman. Thems' child bearin' hips, my subconcious points out as my eyes linger on the area in which come together to have a meeting with the back.

Forgetting this girl for a moment, I wonder a lot, and have wondered a lot as I drive, about my problem with women. It has to be just a lack of confidence, but then when I do work up confidence, or at least fake it well enough to pass for the moment, I still can't get anything working. Something I have noticed is that I tend to go after girls that are available, yet not really available. I don't go after girls in relationships, but I want girls in, say, Canada, when I'm just passing through. Or right before I'm going on vacation I'll try to get a girl. There are two conclusions that I've come to regarding this. One is that I'm a natural procrastinator and therefore won't bother to go after a girl till it is almost too late, just as I do everything at the last minute all the time. The second, and the one that seems more accurate, is that I don't really expect it to work and I'll have an out. A sort of natural time table for me to try, fail, and then run away. When I return things will be slightly different, and I'll be in the clear. This, of course, is a horrible way to go through life. Of course I've been trying to correct this, as much as possible. I just really got a clear idea of what I was doing to sabotage myself recently and so I've not been working on the correction for that long, but now that diagnosis is out of the way, I have the luxory of trying to fix the problem. It hasn't been going so well. In fact its been going fucking awful. The girl I was trying to go after has proven a formidable opponate, and I haven't been able to slip past her defenses. But I'm working on it. Still, I guess, even though I'm far away. I feel like I've been trapped in a chess game for months and neither one of us is a clear winner yet. Although, it does beg the question of what her definition of a win would be. Would it be for me to go away? Or would it be for me to break her defenses? I suppose either way it doesn't change my definition of a win. It just leads me to question my game plan. If I break the defenses, is it because I'm just playing better than her, because she wanted me to, or because its a trap? I could probably rule out the last option, really, since I doubt she's an evil genius, though I've been wrong about such things in the past. Also, I really suck at chess.

Part of it, too, though might be that I really just wanted a reason to stay in Reno. Right now I don't have one aside from people I know there. But I can maintain friendships over distance. And everyone is probably going to be going their own way pretty soon anyway. I was thought of something I knew when I first started college. It was that the only thing that would keep me in reno longer than it took me to graduate was a girlfriend. And maybe thats why I was so intent on getting into a relationship before I left. Because I knew that as soon as I got in my car and headed out of the state I was probably never going to really return to Reno. I mean, I'll be back, but I'll be there only as long as it takes to get set up with wherever else it is I'm going to want to move to. I don't know where that is yet, and maybe I'll stick it out in Reno a while longer when I get back, but I'm going to need a job soon and if I take one in Reno I'll probably resent it and quit after a month or so. I think reno's done with me. Or I with it. Its sad to think that a place I've lived for nearly a fourth of my life has nothing to hold me there. And sadder still to realize I'll probably never go back to the only other town I've lived in. I mean, aside from visits of course. I said before that I was a wandering soul. Now I just think I'm a lost one.