Chapter 4-James' problem

    The formality of courtship demanded an un-natural thing of a man. To seem spotless and to be  cordial and sexless.  Sex was a thing James wanted. Desperately! But he found it impossible to imagine the experience of it all.  Going from the formality of courtship into the closeness that intimacy required did not seem possible. He could not seem to synchronize his mind and his body.

The intrigue of a woman from afar was all James could seem to muster.  It always began the same; an off chance meeting of a girl about his age followed by the crippling lust of wanting her.  Watching her. Learning her.  Yes, shamefully, even stalking. Pining in the privacy of his own mind and exploring shameful thoughts. Imagining things he had never done, things he himself wondered weather or not they were too unnatural to ever share with another person.  It had always been like this for James. Wanting a woman so badly, thinking about her always, throbbing inside just to look at her and yearning for her to want him back.  

This was a natural enough impulse, he knew because all the boys at school had blabbed about some girl or another for which they felt the same.  But eventually, fawning turned to friendship and a reciprocated affection which eventually led to a relationship.

But this is where the disorder of it all came in for James because in the end their were only two painful directions rejection or worse, reciprocation. It's true that some of them had humiliated him outright and laughed at his advances.  But this wasn't so bad.  Normally the sting was a welcome friend to shake him loose from his obsession. (not right off, but eventually) .

Rejection was usually followed by months of sadness and ultimately, humiliation.  The realization of not being one thing or another or being too much of something else!  Rejection left him affirmed of a thing he dreaded but ultimately was already certain...his inadequacies. His quietness, or the opposite, his exuberance in obscure things. James had an exact nature and often said thing plainly in a way that left little room for humor, mostly because of his concern for being accurate and it left him feeling outside of the pleasantries that seemed so natural to most. 

But worse than rejection was reciprocation and he just couldn't put a finger on why! But it seemed that as soon as he had won the affections of a woman, he lost interest in her entirely.  Oddly enough, it was as if the idea of a woman liking him the way he was, made her suddenly unattractive to him.

Formality fizzled out into an inability to express affection comfortably.  This left James questioning his romantic pursuit every time. It seemed the closer he got to actually knowing a person, his mind would not allow his to body to have what it wanted without thinking, analyzing and critically sabotaging James' prowess. Perhaps James' mind was a tyrant and wanted James all to himself!