Though I still have fits of laughter about it, I find myself unable to shake the whole Melis Incident sufficiently. It rattles around my head, popping up like a demented gopher, throwing bizarre implications and corollaries at me until I have to bash it upside the skull with a logic hammer a few times.

As I said, this is not the first nor the most painful rejection I've endured. (If it was, I'd be a pathetic bastard, wouldn't I?) However, it seems to have come at a time when I'm apparently mentally vulnerable to this sort of self-doubt, moreso than usual anyway. If I wasn't, though, I probably wouldn't have gone on the date (although I've previously shown myself more than willing to endure humiliation when I think it might yield material) given all the misgivings I had prior to the event. I just can't seem to come up with a reasonable reason why "Melis" (who I've taken to calling "The Troll") would have rejected me so suddenly and definitively. The possibilities are endless and too tempting for my fragile psyche not to ponder. Was I...

• ...older than she expected?


• ...much older?


• ...much, much older?


• ...threatening somehow?


• ...reeking of B.O. and/or bad cologne?


• ...uncomfortably similar to her brother?


• ...completely unlike the description and pictures I posted?


• ...the wrong sex?


• ...the wrong species?


• ...obviously not hung like a bear?


• ...obviously out of her league?


• ...obviously not attracted to trolls?

I could go on, but you see what I mean. The whole thing just makes no sense whatsoever, and I suspect that no answer she could give me would be wholly satisfactory. Much like how no reason a lover gives for a break-up can be satisfactory; there is still the overwhelming tendency to think he or she is lying and believe the worst regardless. Somehow, in the span of a few e-mails, a phone call and one abbreviated (and that's putting it conservatively) meeting, I've run through nearly the entire cycle of a complete relationship with this woman. (Shades of the answering machine scene from Swingers...) A fucked-up, surreal relationship, but one nonetheless.

Why I've let the Troll situation get to me is obvious I suppose. My brain has always hated me, and always will. Or a part of it does. There's a Mr. Show sketch that springs to mind about the "four voices within us all": an impatient Old Lady, backed up by a Biker, a Gay Guy who "takes it personal and makes it personal," and a Japanese man who "utters nonsensical advice that only our Biker can translate." I'm not sure, but one of them (I suspect the Old Lady) has always kept well on top of the whole Aware-of-My-Flaws-and-Idiosyncrasies thing, sometimes to the point of paralysis. At which point my inner Gay Guy smacks me around until I snap out of it.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work. And lately, it has. I haven't let the Troll thing bother me too much, but I do catch myself looking in the mirror at my hairline a bit longer than usual, or fretting about my skin more, or whatever.

The hardest part, though, is trying to fight the urge to contact her to find out exactly why this happened. This has festered to a degree where my response would either be absurdly antagonistic (I've pondered sending her an e-mail that addresses her as The Troll and says simply, "You're insane, aren't you?") in an attempt to wreak equal psychic damage on her, or pathetically submissive in an attempt to get an honest answer from her. But like I've said, no answer I could get would really be satisfactory, and I just have to let the damned thing go. I refuse to let the Old Lady win, dammit.