Maintenance Required?

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
Henri Frederic Amiel

I went to get my hair trimmed today. As I was sitting in the salon, I watched the little dramas unfolding around me. Every time I go, it feels like I've stepped into a Eudora Welty story. It's a great place if you are a person who appreciates the absurd.

So many of the women who float through the cloud of hairspray are divas. The whole world turns around them. It's interesting to watch the various orbits collide within the small space.

Watching these high maintenance women clash sent my mind back to a conversation that happened very late during the trip I went on recently. Two of the other adults and I were sitting around and for some reason we started talking about relationships. I don't know why that happened. We were obviously up past that magical time at which the conversation always heads off in weird directions.

The premise put forward was that guys are more attracted to high maintenance women. I don't remember the reason why, exactly. I guess they're all sparkly or something. Today, that flashed back to me, and I wondered again why it's true.

I have a friend whom I dearly love, and who will tell you herself that she is high maintenance. When we were growing up, she charmed and captivated about 90% of the guys we met. When we went to summer camp, she always had more guys interested in her than the rest of us combined. I always wondered how she did it.

I am not a sparkly-high-maintenance kind. I have always been the quiet one in the back of the group. I am vastly uncomfortable in parties where I don't know anybody. I am the world's least accomplished flirt. I am the Queen of Geekdom who was always interested in history, computers, sci-fi, and books. This is not to say that I never had any contact with guys, but by and large, I was blessed with guy friends, not boyfriends.

Part of me kind of regrets this. Not the guy friends, mind you. I was really blessed with some great friendships BECAUSE I was (and still am) Geek Queen. I regret not being a little more sparkly. What would my life have been like if I had decided to be a Diva and not a Geek? Would I have cut a swath through the male population like I've seen some of them do? Would I be happier now?

As the aging divas pranced around today, I looked at my life sort of like one of those old Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels. Would I have chosen differently if I could do it again? To be honest, though, I don't think I'd go back and try to be high maintenance. I can't understand why a guy would want a girl who treats him like crap. (Not that this is a phenomenon solely of the male of the species, but that's a different topic.) I couldn't hurt somebody deliberately and then think they deserved it. People deserve respect. If I like somebody, then I don't want to play stupid games and screw with his head on purpose. Games bore me. They take away from the truth of things, and isn't what's true more important in the end?

On the other hand, maybe we're all high maintenance under the surface. Maybe I am high maintenance, but in a quieter way. After all, I do have very strong preferences for things that I don't mind telling people about. In my old age, I've gotten much more outspoken. I have a temper that is the stuff of legend. It takes a long time and a lot of crap to set it off, but God help the bystanders when it wakes up. I get grumpy and moody and need personal space. Are these high maintenance traits, or just the traits of a poet? Are poets and divas the same thing? Maybe I can be the first Geek Diva. ;) Somehow, I doubt the guys will be lining up for THAT combination....