Defining the Alpha Female

In a previous post I discussed a workable definition of identifying alpha males that most non-delusional people would have no problem agreeing with.  Here I will set out what defines the alpha female.  In some ways, the alpha female is a mirror image of her male counterpart.  Where quantity counts heavily toward a man’s rank, quality does so for women.  Where notches boost a man’s score, commitment boosts a woman’s score.

The amount of variables that go into determining a woman’s sexual market value is considerably smaller than it is for men, thus making the determination of the alpha female quite a bit easier.  The reason for this has to do with the inherently imprecise and heterogeneous nature of male power versus the comparatively objective nature of female power.  A boring rich man, a starving artist, and a charismatic rapscallion can all do well with women, so individual measures such as wealth, creativity, and dominance, on their own, fall short as inclusive definitions of alpha male status.  We have had to use indirect evidence of a man’s alphaness — his success with women — to come up with a male ranking system that allows for very few exceptions to the rule.

Women, on the other hand, can be ranked more directly (though not entirely).  Unless she’s got HIV or is missing a vagina, a 9 will in almost all cases be more alpha than a 6, regardless of how many men she dates.  This stems from the fact that men are not as diverse as women in what turns them on in the opposite sex.  Men dig beauty.  A feminine personality and sexual adventurism follow in a distant second and third place.  Smarts takes up the rear in fourth.  Men’s simple attraction programming means that we can rank women by their hotness without worrying about too many exceptions that violate the integrity of our ranking system.

But that is not the whole story.  Besides hotness, there is one other factor that influences female rank — the maximum level of commitment she can extract from her best option.  Her personality, charm, sexiness, character, and nurturing ability will make the difference here.  The best option rule is essential — men who are below her first choice offer unwanted commitment while men who are too far above her are guaranteed to put less effort into the relationship.

So the two variables defining female rank are:
Female hotness (sorry girls, but beauty is 99% NOT in the eye of the beholder).
Maximum level of commitment from the top suitor (this is what really separates the contenders from the pretenders; committing up is trickier than dating up).

Male partner rank is included as a reference point showing what pool of men is normally available to a woman of a particular rank.  This will on average be a little higher than the woman’s rank since women date up.

What is not included —
Number of partners means little to a woman’s rank.  Even a 1 can get fucks dumped in her by a drooling parade of Quasimodos.  Of course, a 10 will have way more males desiring her than the 1, but since men are more willing to occasionally dumpster dive and women don’t lust for variety as much as men do, we will leave that irrelevant variable out of the equation.

Female Rank     Hotness(F)   Male Rank    Max Commitment Level
Warpigs*                0                    0,1          30 seconds through glory hole
Lesser Omega       1,2                  1,2,3        15 minutes, moonless night only,
                                                                  contacts removed, never sober,
                                                                  doggy style with nothing but
                                                                  genitalia touching and a vomit
                                                                  bag nearby
Greater Omega      2,3                2,3,4        one hour with aid of mexican
                                                                  wrestling mask and stick to
                                                                  bite down on
Lesser Beta            3,4               3,4,5       4 weeks and nobody knows
                                                                  except you and your god
Beta                        4,5,6            4,5,6,7     6 months – 5 yrs, no flowers, no
                                                                  poems, no nights out, zero foreplay,
                                                                  she never comes, ultimatum spurs
                                                                  marriage proposal, divorce a messy
                                                                  but welcome denouement,
                                                                  housework is 70/30 favoring the man
Greater Beta          6,7               6,7,8         5 – 10 years, marriage tainted by
                                                                  at least one affair, passion fades
                                                                  after first year, marriage becomes
                                                                  comfortable compromise, chance of
                                                                  divorce slightly beats the odds
Lesser Alpha          7,8               7,8,9        10 – 15 years, she convinces him
                                                                  to marry right away instead of
                                                                  cohabit, first 5 years of marriage are
                                                                  magical time of animal sex and sweet
                                                                  romance, kids are never resented,
                                                                  husband works ass off to support
                                                                  family, super hot mistress
                                                                  precipitates divorce
Alpha                       8,9               8,9,10      10 years of faithful cohabitation,
                                                                  followed by 15 years of progressively
                                                                  unfaithful marriage (hey, hot people
                                                                  are constantly tempted), affairs
                                                                  ignored, sex always good, romantic
                                                                  gestures clever, original, and heart-
                                                                  warming, family portrait painted by
                                                                  norman rockwell descendant
Super Alpha           10                10           foreva eva, a polyamorous eternity,
                                                                  love stays strong (or at least until she
                                                                  hits the wall)

*Water cooler bonus: there are twice as many dregs as warpigs.

Exception argument:
What about the rare female 4 who snags a male 8?  Doesn’t that make her an alpha?

No.  Let’s turn it around to show why.  If a male 4 snags a female 8 his ranking goes up, maybe even as far up as a male 8.  Other women see and hear about him with his hot girl and the phenomenon of female preselection assures that he will now be more attractive to a bigger pool of women.  Not all female 8s will suddenly find him attractive, but enough will that it will make a difference in his alpha ranking.

Conversely, if a female 4 lands a male 8 her sexual status ranking will barely nudge up, if at all.  That is because male preselection does not work.  Other men won’t become more attracted to a female 4 despite seeing her with a much higher status guy.  They will be curious, but their crotches won’t stir.  Her basic package of looks will still dictate the amount of attraction she can generate from men.                     

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Defining the Alpha Male

I knew a guy who was alpha by most people’s definitions — an Army soldier and lawyer by trade, built like granite, he was a fearsome warrior with a taste for fighting who could knock a man out with a punch that landed like a piledriver.  He walked with purpose everywhere and immediately cowed men into deferring to him when in social situations.  He had a taste for cruising his apartment butt naked, company or no company present. He was, according to my traumatized metrosexual roommate, hung like a Clydesdale.  Despite his strong manly presence he misspent his alpha capital picking up a parade of bar skanks and fatties in nightclubs — I never saw him with any girl better than a 5 — and pining for a lost ex-girlfriend (and by pining I mean seeking out the new boyfriend of his ex to deliver a flurry of violent blows.)

I had another friend, a good-looking successful businessman with a sharp wit and effortless charisma, who was always the center of attention in that very alpha way of not trying hard to be the center of attention.  The girls in our social group we used to hang out with all told me how much they wanted to date him.  And yet, in the couple years I knew this guy I don’t think he slept with more than three girls and never had a girlfriend.  Some flaw in his character hobbled him from reaching his full potential.  He eventually married a hot blonde, but for many years in his prime he completely squandered his alpha capital in the only way that really matters.

I mention these guys because they illustrate the confusion that arises when people attempt to categorize alpha and beta males.  These two guys weren’t perfectly alpha on paper — one had a beat up face and a half-empty wallet, the other was emotionally vacant — but they had enough of the important alpha qualities that they could have done a lot better with women than they did.  And yet, to an outside observer who didn’t know about their troubles with women, they would be considered archetypical alpha males.

Many want to believe that getting girls is ancillary to being a true alpha male; that the real measure of an alpha lies in his ability to dominate other men, or his command of his environment, or his thirst for swashbuckling adventure.  While these are admirable alpha traits, they are nothing but a means to an end.  Make no mistake, at the most fundamental level the CRUX of a man’s worth is measured by his desirability to women, whether he chooses to play the game or not.  Pussy is the holy grail.  That is why the obese, socially maladroit nerdboy who manages to unlock the gate to the secret garden and bang a 10 regularly is an alpha male.  And that is also why the rich, charming entrepreneur who because of an emotional deficiency or mental sickness lives mired in parched celibacy is not an alpha male.

Due to this enduring confusion about what makes an alpha, I submit the following system, in the form of a handy chart, to help clear the air.  It hits on the three major factors influencing male rank — how hot are the women he can attract, how strong is that attraction for him, and how many of those women find him attractive.

Keep in mind that there is no line in the sand that separates betas from alphas — the distribution of men by their attractiveness to women follows an uneven continuum where at the extremes a small percentage of alphas monopolize an immense number of quality women and a much larger blob of omegas struggle to rut with warpigs.

Male Rank        Hotness(F)    Strength of Attraction     # of Women
Dregs (lost souls)     N/A          Actively repulsed                Grinding celibacy
Lesser Omega          0,1          Will never feel love;              Dry spells >5 years
can’t keep a girl longer
than 3 days
Greater Omega       1,2,3       She loves houseplant more;  Dry spells 1-5 years
gets dumped for cat
Lesser Beta              3,4          She’s somewhere else          Gets lucky twice;
during sex                               marries hog
Beta                        4,5,6       Romance died after               6 month dry spells;
second date;                  marries dumpy hausfrau
relationships last forever
because no other choice
Greater Beta         6,7          Can do it with lights on;      5-15 lifetime partners
once got a BJ in an alley;
girlfriend cries after he
proposes
Lesser Alpha         7,8         Consecutive long term         15-100 lifetime partners;
relationships >1 year;              2 affairs
enjoys occasional fling;
girlfriend faints after
he proposes
Alpha                     8,9         Concurrent multiple           100-500 lifetime partners;
long term relationships;              10-20 affairs;
love at first sight;                         2 threesomes
videotapes homemade porn;
girlfriend scared to
pressure him into marriage
Super Alpha         9,10       Multiple long and short                     Limitless
term relationships, flings,
and one night stands; orgies;
crazed stalker love; women
willing to do anal at hello;
maintains de facto harem;
never cheated on, never dumped;
hires contraceptive assistant to
make sure his condoms don’t
have holes punched in them

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Female Rapists

Reading about these horror stories left a bad taste in my mouth:

Patrick Connaro, a 42-year-old robotics engineer living in Colorado Springs, was sitting in the bleachers one warm Saturday afternoon in 2003, watching his son’s Little League game, when the ground opened beneath him.

“My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, ‘Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!’ And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical.”

After the ball game, Connaro ordered a paternity test. The results came back 2 weeks later. “I opened up the letter from Labcorp, and it said, ‘ … 99.9 percent chance you are not the biological father of this child.’ I started crying. My head started spinning.”

Patrick, good provider beta male, dutiful husband, and doting father, was cuckolded by his wife and spent years of his life raising another man’s child.  Would his wife, whom he knew so well and loved so deeply for her outer and inner beauty, ever own up to her monumental lie?

Connaro admits that the possibility had crossed his mind before, given his son’s dissimilar facial features, but each time he questioned his wife about it, she vehemently denied the suggestion. Even when he showed her the test results, she still denied it. “She said, ‘You forged this,’ ” Connaro recalls, shaking his head in amazement.

Ethicists are baffled!

Cuckoldry is, at least from the gene’s point of view, the worst thing that can befall a man outside of getting killed.  We are here on this earth to serve one purpose — the propagation of our genes.  Everything we do is either designed to push us toward that goal or is a byproduct of that purpose.  So when a wife cheats on a husband, bears another man’s child, and then monopolizes the time and resources of her husband toward the raising of that child, she has stolen his reproductive sovereignty just as surely as hers would be stolen if she got pregnant by a male rapist and was forced to raise a child she didn’t want.

She has committed the equivalent of female rape.

While rape is associated with horrible physical trauma which mercifully lasts for minutes on average, cuckoldry embodies the lower-intensity but longer-duration physical trauma of exerting oneself for years to accumulate resources for child rearing.  Psychologically, both are traumatic.  In fact, cuckoldry is actually worse than rape in one noteworthy respect — opportunity cost.  A woman raising a rapist’s child is still propagating her genes, unlike a cuckolded man who propagates nothing for the time he is deceived into raising a bastard child.

Keep in mind that a man’s resources are equivalent to a woman’s body.  Both are the bread and butter of their respective sexes for fulfilling the prime directive of DNA replication.  Rape is universally despised because the violation cuts right to the core of a woman’s essence.  Cuckoldry does the same to a man, so why is it not nearly as universally despised?  Where are the marches and policy discussions and gender studies departments to right the wrongs of cuckoldry?

The answer is simple.  In genetic terms, men are expendable, and this deeply rooted awareness trickles up into the social and political sphere where indifference to male issues rules the day.  If you think the indifference stems from the low incidence of cuckoldry, think again:

And research shows that it’s a lot more common than we might believe.

After recently reviewing 67 studies on the subject, University of Oklahoma researchers found that PD rates tend to be much higher among men who have reason to believe there’s been more than one dog in the yard. No surprise there. But leave out these men and you end up with a number that can safely be assumed to represent the rest of us. That number is 3.85 percent. Another review of 19 studies by a group at Liverpool John Moores University backs this up, putting the figure at 3.7 percent of dads. It may not seem like a lot—until you do the math. According to a 2005 U.S. Census Bureau report, there are 27,940,000 fathers nationwide with a child under 18. That means over a million guys out there are taking care of some other man’s kid.

This number is about 10X higher than the number of forcible rapes committed against females in 2005.

So what are we, as a just and moral nation, doing about this epidemic of reproductive theft?  Well, according to the article, forget about doctors giving their help to the forces of light; they are in on the fix.

The fact is, the overwhelming majority of physicians will not tell a man the truth about PD.

“Most doctors are going to say to themselves, Jeez, I don’t want to cause a problem in this family by disclosing this information that I just stumbled across,” says Alan Meisel, J.D., director of the Center for Bioethics and Health Law at the University of Pittsburgh. “Why create problems if I don’t have to?”

And the law?  Men are being forced to pay child support for children not their own.  As usual, the law is an ass.

My solution to the scourge of cuckoldry is quite simple, which means it will never be implemented.  A marital pre-nup should require all mothers submit to a paternity test upon the birth of any children.  If paternity is verified, pass the cigars.  If not, the man has the legally sanctioned choice to immediately leave his wife with ZERO obligations, financial or otherwise, plus the wife will be required to remit his portion of the investment in her during her pregnancy.  A deal is a deal.

If the law raises the stakes for women intent on committing cuckoldry, there may be some blowback in the form of women opting to forego marriage to a beta provider entirely if she cannot exercise her historical option of getting him to foot the bill for the product of her indiscretion with the bass player.  While this structural change in the mating system may be bad for the health of society as a whole, for the individual unfortunate betas, this side effect at least affords them a chance to improve themselves as men without being saddled with unwanted fatherhood.

Like rape, cuckoldry is the soulkilling dis.  Women who commit these vile acts and then perpetuate them with lies piled atop of lies ought to be shunned — culturally, legally, and financially.  They do not even deserve the courtesy of a kiss while getting pumped and dumped.  If they don’t experience painful consequences for their actions, nothing will change.

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Help Not Wanted

“Damian, don’t bother.”

“I’m not going to sit here and watch this.”

Damian and I had been enjoying an evening of camaraderie drinking beers on the trunk of his car in the parking lot.  According to Fodor’s, this particular parking lot was a popular destination for camaraderie and drinking; well, it was for us, until that evening.

A man and woman were arguing vociferously about a hundred feet off.  They looked exasperated with each other.  Lots of aggressive hand motions punctuated their heated row.  His voice quickly got angrier and he grabbed her forearm with great flourish while berating her.

fuck you, cunt! you’re a fuckin worthless whore! you just follow your pussy! maybe you should suck that guy’s dick.

Then the slap.  Right across her cheek, bullseye.  I used to think that face slaps in the movies were way too loud; that the soundman was having fun exaggerating the effect for the audience’s shock and awe.  But this real life slap echoed throughout the empty parking lot like a crack of lightning.  I put my hand to my face in ghost sympathy.

Damian is normally a guy who takes amusement in the foolishness of humanity.  His philosophy (well, one of his quite frequently contradictory philosophies) is “I don’t care what people do to each other as long as I can sit back and ridicule them for it.”

He wasn’t laughing this time.  This got me worried.  He stood and put down his beer bottle.

“Dude, do NOT get involved with this.  Trust me, it’s pointless.”

“Get my back in case there’s trouble.”

Oh boy.  No time to talk him out of it.  He was dead set on white knighting.

I watched as he marched purposefully toward the fighting couple.  A few words were exchanged.

what’s your deal, motherfucker?
“Leave the girl alone.  Cowards hit girls.”
why don’t you mind your own business and go fuck yourself.

Damian got in his face.  “You’re a fucking loser taking it out on a girl.  I’m not leaving.”

The girl was crying and stamping her feet.  The loser took a step back from Damian and shoved a hand into his back pocket.  A split second later a metal object glinted from the lamppost light as it slashed a downward arc through the air.  Damian’s hand went reflexively up to his face.

I ran to them, my veins pumping with delirium.  The girl screamed and the guy jumped in his car and peeled off.  Blood seeped between the fingers Damian had pressed against his left cheek.

“Jesus, man, are you OK?!”
“I’m fine.” He looked at the girl. “Are you OK?”
She had hysteria in her eyes. “Why did you do that?”
“Huh?”
“You shouldn’t have come over!  This wasn’t your business!”
I spit at her “That’s the thanks my buddy gets?  Go fuck off!  Your loser boyfriend is going to jail.”

At the periphery of the parking lot I saw Knife-Guy’s car idling.  He had driven around and stopped there.  She turned and ran toward it and got in.  They drove away.

Damian stared blankly at the nothingness in front of him.

“Hey, man, I’m taking you to the hospital.”

We drove in stony silence.  Bleeding face wound or not, Damian finds it hard to keep his yap shut for more than five minutes, so this was extraordinary.  A little too extraordinary for comfort.

“I guess you were right.”

“Hey, look, you did the right thing.  She was fucked in the head.  Don’t let it get to you.”

“Sure, whatever.”

I wanted to believe my own words, but I couldn’t.

Many police report filings and stitches later, we mused about that night.

“I’m disappointed.”  Damian did not look disappointed.

“Why?”

“The cut was not deep enough for me to impress the ladies with a cool scar.”

I sympathized.  “Perhaps you can impress them with the story instead.”

“I’m done impressing.”

He was wrong.  The cut was deep enough.

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Sexbots

Forget flying cars and interstellar travel, the next big thing to radically transform society will be sexbots.  Japanese girlfriend substitutes, lifelike dolls, porn saturation… all signs are pointing toward a technological coalescence of immense implications for relations between the sexes.  It’s a horny new world on the horizon of men having sex with the artificial women of their dreams.  Mein Gott.

Much has been written about the sexbot phenomenon, with the skeptics focusing on the technical limitations (men make this argument) and the insistence that sexbots would not satisfy male sexual desire like real women would (women make this argument).  It’s possible the technical hurdles to creating a sexually pleasing mechanical woman that could compete with real women might be too high, but assuming those hurdles are jumped, I offer the following future scenario.

A robot that is an exact replica of your favorite supermodel and that has feedback to sound and touch (for example, she’ll move her limbs and gyrate during sex as well as talk dirty and respond to commands) would supplant all other masturbation tools as the preferred method of getting off for men who can afford it.  Once sexbots become affordable, internet porn consolidates to one or two websites for spank snobs who insist on “authenticity” and proles who must suffer the humiliation of not only being too poor to afford real women but fake ones as well.  But, outside of self-pleasure and procreation, would sexbots replace real women?

For some men, yes.  The replacement would be total, at least until the dating market adjusted to the new reality.  For other men, sexbots would be a part-time replacement.  The result will be a shift in the mating landscape that will put selection pressures on humanity equivalent to a massive plague or a catastrophic famine.

Sexbots are a very real threat to the established order because men’s sexuality is so visually driven.  Compared to women, it is a rather simple affair to create an alternative sexual outlet for men.  Think about romance novels which are the porn equivalent for women.  It’s a mentally-taxing affair to write a book, even a trashy, plot-by-numbers one.  But displaying photos of naked women for the consumption of men takes a few mindless seconds.  Now imagine a Natalia Vodianova sexbot in every bachelor pad.  The raw visual and tactile appeal of that will keep men holed up in their bedrooms for weeks straight.

Some of the changes I foresee:

Omegas (geeks, nerds, dweebs, trolls, dregs, dullards, bums, street filth, etc.) – will finally have a satisfying release for their pent-up horniness.  Crime will likely drop as a result.  So will rape.  Widely available sexbots are analogous to cheap, legal prostitution, minus the STDs and needle tracks.  On the whole I think it is a social good to distract the losers from their grinding misery.  Since these guys weren’t getting laid anyway, availing themselves of sexbots won’t have much impact on the dating market.  Sexbots could also be compassionate.  Giving a homeless guy a sexbot will do more for his happiness than $5 for liquor or a sympathetic smile from a cute soup kitchen volunteer.

Betas (niceguys with a heart of gold and zero sex appeal) – the more frustrated betas will retreat from the dating scene to be with their sexbots.  They’ll not opt out completely, though.  Having a decent job and a willingness to help raise a family is still a form of buying power.  I see sexbots for betas dissuading them from learning the art of seduction, thus making them even more ineffectual in the field as their already-meager skills atrophy.  He might think to himself, “what’s the point of dealing with the frustrations and delayed gratification of dating mediocre looking women for subpar sex when I have a Rachel Weisz sexbot waiting at home for me?”  A big negative feedback loop could result, where the lower status betas exercise their sexbot option with increasing regularity until they have excluded themselves completely from bothering with meeting women.  This will open up room in the dating market for

Aspiring Alphas (betas who know a thing or two) – As low status betas and omegas retreat from the dating scene to be with their sexbots, aspiring alphas will be more in demand than ever.  It’s a simple numbers game — more women for every man willing to expose himself to the whims of dating and rejection from real women means these men will have an easier time honing their game and achieving sexual satisfaction.  Even a guy willing to put in minimal effort shaping up his game will find the pickings easy.  The consequences?  Less commitment, more casual sex, and more partners.  Not to mention more first date anal.  You can stop taking salsa classes now.

Alphas (guys who won’t have to martyr themselves for 72 virgins) –  will reap a tremendous beaver bounty.  The direct and indirect benefits of the sexbot revolution will flow to the alphas.  The direct benefit?  Although he is the guy who won’t need sexbots because he gets plenty of quality real ass for little investment, he will probably have a few in the closet for those times when his girlfriends have a collective headache.  Plus, the off button is very appealing to the inveterate womanizer.  The indirect benefit?  More women vying for his seed.  I predict that over time the smothering ego-boosting attentions of the fangirls will make the alpha soft, paving the way for lower ranking males to usurp his position in the bangarchy.

Ugly Women – drop out entirely.

Plain Women – put out on first dates.

Beautiful Women – choose harem initiation with a super alpha.

Marriage – uncertain.  Either marriage will take a bodyblow from which it will never recover, or paradoxically divorce will decrease as husbands inclined to stray fulfill their cravings for variety with non-human mistresses.  With the sequestering of betas to their sexbotatoriums, the price of alphas on the market will skyrocket.  They will call the shots in matters of marriage — I see a regression to sanctioned polygamy and overt adultery.  This will herald the end of Western civilization.

Love – The virus in the borg.  Love may save the day.  A man’s need for love will keep him in the game.  But not in the same capacity.  He’ll be roused to go on a few dates but he’ll feel no pressure to get laid and will probably have unrealistic expectations about what kind of women he deserves based on wistful comparisons with the hot robot he fornicates with daily.  Ladies, if you think guys are selfish, egotistical pricks now, just wait until they start showing up to dates basked in the afterglow of sex with their Jessica Alba robots.  It is going to take a lot more to win over a guy who is that sexually satisfied.

Conclusion – The entire market structure of dating will shift seismically in the direction of men becoming choosier and less willing to please and women becoming looser and more willing to please.

The basic premise I have outlined above rests on a simple observation — the more physically satisfying choices men have to sate their lust, the less needy they will be with women.  And non-neediness translates into a slight downgrade in the asking price of single women.  Because women are more loathe to settle than men, there will be a rush to the top as the dwindling number of acceptable male prospects commands the attentions of an ever-growing pool of women.  Polygamy will rush in to fill the need.

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Movie Review in Poem

one trilogy later j. bourne still on the run
can’t figure out where he’s from
walks away from ten car crashes
with just a hollywood cut on his eyelashes
action intense, girls burning in their crotches
who doesn’t dig flawed good guys with kill notches?
matt damon getting a little pudgy in the face
but ladies love him how bout dem apples, ace
he’s rockin’ the CIA black ops guys in style
ps: best BJ lips in the biz on julia stiles
word of warning to those with vertigo
camera shaking make you dizzy avoid the front row.

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Window Stories

When I was a teenager, I kept in shape running along the boulevard-wide streets of my placid suburban neighborhood.  Unlike my runs around the city, I never had to look over my shoulder to make sure a car or bike messenger wouldn’t careen into me.   A car drove by once every half hour, tops.  There is nothing like running in such quietude that all you can hear is the slap of your feet on the asphalt and the chorus of late-August crickets rising from the manicured lawns.  IPods didn’t exist back then, but if they had I would’ve used them and been robbed of a cherished memory.

Running can be boring, especially to a teenager with a hyperactive mind fueled by supercharged hormones, so I had amused myself by pondering what was going on behind all the windows with their lights on.  Passing by my next-door neighbor the living room bay window glowed yellow through the curtains.  I wondered if this was the night they talked in hushed tones about divorce.  She was a horrible nagger and he always looked unhappy.  A block later I might see the bedroom light shine through the window in the house where the cute girl I had a huge crush on lived.  I was innocent back then so I imagined her writing in her diary about waiting impatiently for me to ask her out.  One late evening I caught a glimpse of her silhouette peering out from her window as I ran past.  I thrust out my chest and ran a little faster.

Now I entertain myself the same way when I run past urban apartments and condos.  The difference this time is in the density of windows.  So many more scenarios to dream up.  The suburbs hide secrets, but the city vibrates with them.

There’s a path I like to run, one that eventually takes me down a bridge and then over another bridge, where I pass by a lot of stately apartment buildings, their randomly distributed window lights flickering like cats’ eyes in the twilight, framing the stories of anonymous lives.  I mentally sketch out vignettes.  Here is a couple arguing about kitchen utensils… there is a guy blankly watching TV with his dog laying in his lap… and three floors up is a girl who starts her first job in two days just noticing the stain on her new skirt she’s modeling in front of the mirror.

Down the street more glimmering windows pop into view.  In one of them, maybe that one over to the right with the old silver-handled white refrigerator I can see through it, an ex is being slowly lowered onto her bed, unknown hands pulling up her shirt, a flash of skin followed by a moan.  She arches her neck and pulls up a leg.  Her nail polish color hasn’t changed.  For a second I wished the light would go out.  Another window and maybe I’ll see my silhouette girl.

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