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Tuesday, Apr. 06, 2004 - 9:58 p.m. BLUE II This past weekend I went on a religious retreat. It is not that I am an overly religious person or anything, but it is my feeling that a religious retreat might be a great place to meet woman with palatable values. Especially on a retreat predominated by colleged-aged women, as this retreat stemmed from my involvement on that college campus. Actually, I had been on this same retreat before at this time last year, but I never wrote about it. Only, this time, my retreat was different. You see, once you go on it the first time, you are invited back to staff future retreats. There are different types of staff you can join. An example might be that you come back as a group leader, a musician, or a cook. In my case, I came back as a prayer corps member. The prayer corps is a group of staff that stay at a location totally separate from the retreat and do nothing but pray for the retreaters all weekend. On Sunday, as the retreat ends, we unveil ourselves and meet the people we prayed for. The prayer corps works 24 hours a day, with someone praying at all times. At other times we sing and work on a variety of religious crafts that are presented as symbolic gifts to the retreaters. As you can imagine, a retreat can attract some severely religious people. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it is just that some of these people could quote the bible verse by verse, number by number. For a normal person to be able to do that, and not be some type of minister, I find it a bit unusual. Nevertheless, I spent the weekend with these people on the prayer corps, heard all of their religious rantings, and did my best to play the part of a pious young man. There were sixteen of us on the prayer corps. About five of them I would place on the off-the-wall Jesus freak list, seven men and nine women. The men were all your basically very nice, quiet types, who carried various levels of religious devotion. There were a clownish college student named Dave, a curly-haired artist named Bernie, a quiet, plain-speaking rodeo-rider named Paul, the leader who once belonged to a seminary named Louis, and a huge “gentle giant” we called Teddy. The women consisted of two paralytics, another woman who was the closest thing to a nun you would find outside of a convent, a woman who had a child out of wedlock who was “born-again,” another woman we called B that was nice, but I found a little weird, three other women who were nice, and one drop-dead gorgeous 20 year-old that was an improved version of Neve Campbell. All the rest of the women were old and, in my opinion, not in the least bit attractive. At the beginning of the retreat, we were all assigned a fellow prayer corps member to pray for. On Saturday night we had to reveal who it was that we prayed for and how their presence has helped us to pray. I was assigned the “born-again” who was raising a child. I said something generically Christian about her like, “I see God in her smile,” much like everyone else was saying about those they had been praying for. Then on came a litany of crying women, especially the “nun,” who kept on harping on how beautiful my eyes were and that they saw the face of Jesus when they looked at them. None of the other men present received the emphasis on their looks that I got. I saw completely ulterior motives in what each crying woman was saying, which genuinely pissed me off. The ulterior motive? Most of these poor women, which exception of the Neve Campbell girl, were completely ignored or hurt by men. On comes a nice, charming guy like me, who at least appears to share the same beliefs they have, who they feel completely comfortable opening up to, who has a pair of blue eyes that I now realize mystify most women I meet, and the ones who are most hurt all develop some sort of weird crush on me. And believe me, I could tell by some of their advances that some of them liked me long before we all revealed our “prayer-mates.” Then they have the nerve to compare me to Jesus because they find me attractive. They do not even know me! In contrast, the Neve Campbell girl manipulated every guy in that room. After hearing what they said about her, it seemed obvious that every man in the room had their own ulterior motives as well, as she shed not one tear after all the earth-shattering compliments made toward her. At one point in the retreat, both Dave and Bernie were laying on her lap, and I could see in her mind that she was loving every minute of affection she was getting, while she knew the guys in her lap could never get her as a girlfriend. I saw right through all this, and she knew it, and she kept her distance all weekend, every now in then testing my water, just to see if she could flirtingly toy with me. After hearing all the commotion about my eyes the night before, she made a point to completely ignore me and compliment Paul’s eyes to every female retreater she saw whenever I was nearby. I genuinely found this entertaining as I saw exactly what she was trying to do. She was all over every guy on that retreat but me. She knew she could get any guy she wanted, but none of those guys she was toying with could get her. But in my case, she was scared to death. She knew that I was not one to be toyed with, so if she made any affectionate suggestions toward me, her vulnerability would be exposed, and it would appear obvious that she liked me. Her only option was to play “hard-to-get” and try to get me to come after her. If this was her tactic, she failed miserably. As many good qualities as she had, her whole production proved to me that she was just too immature. If I had just a few more days in that environment, I am willing to bet my indifference would have driven her insanely in love with me. Of course, everything I have written about her so far could be completely wrong. The other women were almost in tears to see me go. In contrast, when she left, she said goodbye to everyone in prayer corps but me, until I popped out to talk to someone and I saw her walking to her car. She then gave me a phony “Sorry, I forgot” with a hug and then left. Believe me, when you spend an emotionally intimate weekend with a group of people, you do not just forget to say goodbye to someone. I do not know how to read into that, nor am I going to try to read the mind of an immature manipulator. I have date with a pre-school teacher this upcoming weekend through e-harmony and have been on a date since the last one I wrote about, this time with another librarian. This other librarian was a lot like the other one--I simply had no attraction toward her. But I am optimistic about this pre-school teacher as she seems to have the best personality of any of the women I have met so far on this dating service. Also, I have a co-worker who is working to set me up with her friend’s younger sister. Since I appear to be getting dates now, I may feel empowered to take more risks. In fact, I was doing just that on that retreat, and met one drop-dead gorgeous retreater that turned out to be living in Baton Rouge, who is involved with the campus church, but we simply never ran into each other. I would never forget a girl that gorgeous if I had met her. Nor would I have approached her so nonchalantly if I knew where she was from and that I might see her again. Next time I run into her I am asking her to coffee. We shall see. |