I had a rather long and protracted discussion with a young lady in my life. It was deep and cathartic and one of the reasons we men love you women so much, because you can say the things that our male compatriots cannot. This lovely lass told me that I shut people out too much. I only let people connect with me on a surface level. I only let people in skin deep.
Maybe.
I always thought that If you wanted to know a little about someone then you should just ask them but if that isn’t true then let me share a little about myself with you.
I am an only child, therefore I enjoy my privacy, but I’m also terribly lonely sometimes. I grew up lonely, and often I still eat alone.
Recently I took a job as a host at a restaurant. Ironically I am the face of a popular restaurant. If they only knew what lies beneath. Upon starting this job, I met three terrifically bubbly teenage girls. For the sake of their own privacy I will avoid mentioning their names, though know that each is strong and ambitious. Hosting a restaurant is only a temporary stop for these young ladies.
Training was understandably smooth. There isn’t much art to hosting. Really you just walk people to their seats for a quarter above minimum wage. I decided to start testing the boundaries of these young ladies once the initial novelty of having a new employee wore off.
The three girls have a story to tell, but that’s to be left for another day. I want to talk about the one that I broke. I want to talk about the home-schooled girl. From the moment I started working I could tell this girl was attracted to me. She would pretend fight with me and kick and body block and often just invade my space. It was easy to tell that she was interested. I was not, but I sometimes pretended as if I was. The other two girls would call me cruel. Anyway in the weeks that followed my start at this restaurant, I would constantly treat this girl like shit. I would tease and call her names. Those were the beginning phases. As I began to spend more time with this girl, I would also berate her upbringing, criticize her decisions, chastise her belief system and generally do all the things to make a female dislike you. It reached a point where the girl began to hurl insults at me every time we worked together. I could tell her initial attraction was being replaced with hate and anger. Her tone and inflection became stoic and cold towards me. She was starting to despise me. I was just having fun.
The other two girls watched in amazement as this relationship of pure contempt was being formed right in front of their eyes. At the same time that I treated the home-schooled girl like scum on the bottom of my boot, I treated the other two girls like princesses. I listened to them as they complained about their boyfriends, school, work, and families. I walked them to their cars. I gave them rides home sometimes. I did everything I could to make them like me. They couldn’t understand why I was treating the home-schooled girl the way that I was. As the weeks went on the home-schooled girl would try to insult me, but I just smiled back. She couldn’t hurt me, and she knew it. I could hurt her though. I found all of her insecurities and exploited them. It reached a point where she came to work and immediately went to the closet and cried about what was happening. Nobody who knew confronted me about the situation. I was hoping somebody had the courage to stand up to me, but alas no one did.
I decided from that point to stop the onslaught. I never became friends with the girl, but I do still work with her. I never quite treated her like a princess like I did the other two, but I did start saying a kind word here and there. I even shared some food with her. Through it all the relationship is changing for her. I started as the guy who treated her like shit and now I am semi-trustworthy. I even walked her to her car. Through it all, the girl is still interested. Perhaps even more so than when I first started. Recently I cursed at the host stand, letting a few “f*cks” slip. Her exact words to me were “You don’t cuss that often, but when you do, it’s cute.” Through it all, she is still attracted to me. I could manipulate this female as much as I want, because she is a willing victim. Even though I treated her as I have, she is still interested. I just had to flip the switch and put on a nice, charming, face and she fell for it.
That is me, in a nutshell. I am a sociopath.
