Free A Change of Needs by Nate Allen Page B

road” moment of indecision, he would take his best shot to get the nut , and succeeded with surprising regularity.
    He understood his behavior wasn’t normal, not in an aberrant way, but nothing to brag about. It was more aptly a sad reflection of the fact he had come to some acceptance that he was simply not of the monogamous variety, and had a strong aversion to the lies and drama that trying to pretend to be demanded. It was either that, or in a less flattering and more accurate sense, he just wasn’t very good at relationships except those of the temporary and disposable variety. And relationships are work, and he either didn’t have the energy for them, or the desire to be burdened with the associated responsibilities.
    Whether by nature or nurture, he was definitely a bit of a stray, and one of the collateral side effects of his childhood was the fact that he had grown up to be a man who didn’t require the constant company of others. He wasn’t anti-social, he simply wasn’t uncomfortable being alone, but he was definitely a sexual creature, and one of the nicknames that Chunk had for him was Jake Dawg, and it fit like a collar. He came from a long line of prolific men, his grandfather and great-grandfather siring children well into their sixties at a time when the average lifespan of a man was probably forty-five, he almost seemed predisposed to an obsession with it.
    So for better or worse, our boy Jake was a bit of a loner, and invariably for some, the hunt is more gratifying than the kill, the chase more exciting than the capture, the journey more enjoyable than the destination …the kill, the capture, the destination offering mere evidence and validation of the pursuit, but once satisfied and accomplished we plan anew. Set out to hunt another trophy for the man-cave, and Rae Anne Johnston had that aura about her, and he was tragically romantically dyslexic , an overachiever constantly pursuing the unavailable and unobtainable women, or those simply beyond his level of attractiveness pay-grade and she was the ultimate representation of all the above…
    In the sum of things, what would become so magnetic about her was that he could have her in all manners of lovingly sordid ways …but he couldn’t have her in the way he would come to desire her most, entirely …she belonged to someone else. Like some obsession with capturing Sasquatch or the Loch Ness monster, it created a terrible paradox for the man, a seemingly endless, futile pursuit …to “want” something he couldn’t have , to “have” something he couldn’t keep . It was an emotional cluster-fuck that would require him to prostitute his self-respect in an attempt to maintain some proximity to her …like a drug addict, and make no mistake it pained him to do so.
    If love is a drug, then affairs are its “crack,” the excitement surrounding the illicit nature of it, the limited availability, the episodes and trysts characterized by periods of short intense highs and long periods of anxiousness and “jonesing” between fixes. And always on the clock, just as he imagined a crackhead to be, conscious of the fact it was going to end the moment it began, already thinking about the next time she would call. And as contrary to his code as it was, he would contort himself to maintain some value and utility in her life, and manipulate hers to keep others out of it. And just like an addiction, unhealthy, it would unavoidably have a negative impact on all other aspects of his life, and the decisions he would subsequently make. Not to state the obvious, but in some cases gettin’ what you want ain’t a good thing, and that reality would come to aggravate the situation and he’d find himself off the proverbial reservation. He would lose sight of who he was, and it would not be pretty for anyone concerned. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves talking about something as if it’s already happened …like Wilfred Brimley narrating a movie.
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