[This will ramble, I'm just too wired from caffeine to sleep...]

Had dinner this evening with Shiva, Shademan, Rob and Elham. Pleasant dinner, though there were a few conversational threads where I had nothing whatsoever to contribute. The wedding video was playing much of the evening.

Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary up to that point. The thing that gave me pause to reflect (on the way home) was that Elham had pointed out Marjan's strikingly well developed abs (abdominal muscles). I couldn't figure out how she could know that Marjan had them. Sure women notice other women's figures more than men (well, more than me), but how could she know what Marjan's abs were like from watching a video of her dancing, especially given that she'd been wearing black that evening? So, being too socially crude to wait a few moments until she came back into frame, I asked how Elham had been able to figure that out.

Turns out that Marjan was wearing this rather stunning (once I was instructed to look) dress where the entire midriff was composed of a wide-spaced fish-net material. I danced a few dances with her that evening, btw, and was rather taken by her at the time, so it's not like I just missed the dress in the video.

I'm sure it must have registered at some level, because I certainly came away from the evening thinking she was a stunningly beautiful woman (but then, probably 80 percent of the woman that evening were markedly beautiful, it being an almost entirely Persian crowd), but somehow I missed that she was wearing this confection and thought she had worn a "basic black" cocktail dress.

It's not that I'm particularly upset by having missed this particular dress (though it was, from the video, a very pleasant effect, certainly). I miss obvious (to normal people) "sexual" things all the time.

I imagine part of it is because I had no social life in grade school (what with getting beaten up and ostracised the entire time), so I never got that "training" of going through crude, then progressively more refined "practice courting".

By the time I was in high school I was so guarded and defensive that I couldn't even begin to recognise interest from a female... I was too accustomed to having women pretend to be interested in me in order to draw me out just enough to mock and humiliate me [With the benefit of hindsight, I realise the motivations behind those girls' actions, so I don't actually despise them any more, but that doesn't undo the damage they did, and I was still bitter all through high school] that I just assumed all interest to be an attack. You don't tend to get many dates when you expect every woman to laugh at any interest you might express... and without at least some interactions with females, you don't pick up on the niceties very quickly.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with all that, and I miss obvious things simply because of my rather abstract mental processes. Maybe even if I'd had lots of friends, and necked under the bridge in Poplar Hill like all the others I would still be missing stunning women in provocative dresses. Must be careful about blaming origins too much.

Anyway, what really gave me pause was that I probably should have acknowledged how stunning the dress was (to Marjan). Seems I'm forever fated to send... inadequate... responses to females, and as a result to offend them. Women, it turns out, though not normally as socially tortured as I was in school, generally develop rather poor self esteem, and don't automatically understand that you consider them beautiful... they seem to want an active confirmation.

Oh, the video also shows me dancing (though, interestingly, not for the first 20 or 30 minutes of the dancing segment, which must have required some pretty involved editing, given that I was all over the dance floor)... I've only ever seen videos of myself dancing to western music (and then only very short clips)...

My movements are very fluid, more fluid even than most of the women (and keep in mind, mostly Persian women, normally fairly fluid dancers) who were dancing. It would look much better if I were a female, IMO. I just don't have the curves or the looks to make the fluidity sensual or erotic.

It sort of reminds me of a sidewinder, motion that shouldn't have the final effect it has; repeating, but not quite exactly, so you can't quite catch how the order is structured, but hinting that it should be simple to understand. It's interesting from an artistic standpoint, I suppose, but not really beautiful or attractive.