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If you like me,
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Men are funny animals. I don't think I'll ever understand them. Not that I really understand women all that well, either—not when it comes to sex, or relationships, and especially not when it comes to business relationships. But at least with women I have some inkling of what's going on inside their brains because, well, I'm one too.

Non Sequiter City: Just in case you needed more proof that Microsoft is the domain of greedy evil bastards: Microsoft sues the owner of MikeRoweSoft.com

Every once in a while, I'm reminded of the differences. At first, when I was playing the field (as my mother likes to call it) this past summer and fall, I noticed how men like to pay for things. Now that I'm in deeper, into something that might be called a real relationship (if six months a real relationship makes), I'm noticing something else. They really do like to go into their caves. Not that I ever read that heinous book, nor do I really ascribe to the theory that men are one way and women are another—despite the words coming out of my fingertips at this very moment.

Which brings me on more shoddy footing back to the point I was trying to make: and one I suppose I will have to revise. This particular man and the last particular woman I was in relationship with had two different styles when it came to intimacy.

She was enfolding, engulfing, constantly present. She wanted me there, she didn't have much time left on this earth. She wanted to get on with the business of being married, building a life together, having children. But even in that warm nest we created, there was an arm's-length, a lack of true intimacy. Characterized by a lack of sex, which—let's face it, people—really frickin' matters in a relationship. I tried to pretend it didn't, but ultimately, that was what did me in.

He, on the other other hand... we really do have intimacy. We go through waves of it. And then he runs away and hides in his cave for a while. It kind of hurts, in the same way that it kind of hurts when you lay on the beach at the place where the water meets the sand, and it's warm out, and the water washes over you and you feel its softness and smoothness and the roar of something deeper below you. And then it draws back and leaves you a little chilly, or maybe you feel the sunburn that's beginning to develop on your cheeks.

Yes, I guess that's what it's like.

Thing is, the waves always come up to meet the shore again.