Dreams of Totty: a love story.

Post Reply New Topic

[Extracted from some-mails sent to a cousin, it has been broken down for easier reading, and elaborated on where required. Though it corresponds well with what remains of my memory of the actual events, and is true to my nature, it is a recounting of dreams, and may not be accurate.]

After shutting her out of my conscious thoughts for over 30 years…

[After 8 months or so of enjoying lots of friendly banter with Totty, at the bar where she worked, I heard she’d split from her long-term boyfriend, and woke the next morning to the realization that I’d loved her for months. Though it was a long hike from where I lived, I went there every evening from then on (]perhaps not the best idea I’ve ever had…) in hopes of asking her out (we got along, and made each other laugh, so I thought I had a good chance, and didn’t even consider if she felt anything for me) but several days went by before I next saw her. Oblivious to everything else, I made a bee line toward her, only to see her turn away as if she hadn’t seen me. Undeterred, I was about to call her name when a pretty little thing, with a hundred watt smile, leapt between us with a “Hi, what can I get you?” (Prearranged?) so, unthinking, I ordered a pint, fully expecting Totty would be her usual friendly self when she saw me, little suspecting that it was the last best chance I’d ever get to talk to her!

From then on I hardly saw her, and if she was behind the bar, she always positioned herself so that there were always other bar staff between us. The only other times were when she was in a huddle with her emotional support group around a corner table, knocking back drinks and blubbing (I presumed she was grieving the loss of her ex; wouldn’t you?) and so equally inaccessible. From a start of joyful optimism, I spent the next ten days or so hoping for a few words, until one evening she wasn’t to be seen, so I got my thinking cap on to see if I could devise any stratagem that’d get us talking…and failed, miserable. Then came a sharp clang to my side, and after a pause, I decided I should check it out, so I pulled myself out of the abyss and turned full circle, to see Totty walking towards the usual corner table where her friends were waiting. I guess she slapped the counter top with a finger ring, perhaps intending it to be a “I’m here, come and get me” invitation, but all I knew at the time was that she had just walked right past me, without saying a word. It all suddenly seemed utterly hopeless, so in the toughest decision of my life I wiped away the sudden tears, finished my drink, and walked away in utter despair. As I headed for the door, I heard a bar man say “Well that looks pretty final”, in an I-told-you-so kind of voice, and then I somehow blanked it all out. There were no drunken binges, I got to work, and performed as required, having returned to so kind of numb normality, but I never even considered going back to that pub, nor giving a thought to Totty, until the dreams started, around the end of last January.]

…the most gorgeous/likeable woman I’ve ever met is back in my dreams! Such dreams: after painful reenactments of the misunderstanding that separated us, some four or five times, I eventually caught on to the fact she hadn’t been blubbing tears of grief among her emotional support team, but was actually in a rage! A few weeks of elimination left me with just the option that she was furious at me, presumably because I hadn’t swept her of her feet (how, when I never got close enough to say hello?) Even if I was so inclined, she’d surely known before I did, that I was potty about her. Being careful not to pay her too much attention, whilst completely overlooking the fact that I wasn’t paying the other barmaids any attention whatsoever, was a bit of a giveaway. That got the cogs spinning, and the dreams developed (some quite pleasant, of how things might have been, or might still be) over the following months, until in one dream I could just hear someone (sounds like the landlady) explaining:

“She’s head over heels in love with him, so she’s feeling vulnerable.”

“Does he know that?”

“Probably not.”!

This has been easily the longest subconscious cogitation of my life (figuring out that the General Relativity Theory is invalid took a mere 20 years, in comparison) but otherwise is not a rare event, so I’m inclined to believe the dreams are at least a good reflection of what happened (my actual memories are much vaguer) and that the conversation did take place, but what to do? I never knew her real name (everybody called her Totty…) I can’t remember the name of the pub, nor does the street it was in show any pubs at all in the street maps I’ve looked at! It was Leicester, in the UKs midlands, and as near as I can recall, it was along a one way offshoot of Braunstone Gate just before it meets Western Boulevard, where it makes a triangle. The pub opposite is still there under another name; I believe it was previously called The Winston, and catered to skinheads in suits who thought drinking beer from the bottle was sophisticated!

Note to autism researchers: In case you missed it, my emotions are, in fact, present and correct, and every bit as rich as yours. The difference lies in how much we are driven by them.

I think if she was avoiding you while hoping the whole time that you would make a move on her, she was playing extremely hard-to-get. Women who do that cr@p are NOT good matches for those of us on the spectrum. We are very direct & straightforward & we need our partners to be the same way with us.

I'm a bit curious if this is only in your dreams, or if you have other real life input aside from the happenings at the bar? It looks a lot like the communication I have with a girl.

I think service staff can be tricky. They are, per their job, friendly and engaging. In addition to it being a job requirement, I suspect that people who are naturally friendly are drawn to these types of jobs. I don't think it is wise to read too much into these types of interactions.

In my experience, when a woman is interested in me, it's obvious. They can honestly be kind of annoying about it sometimes, and ironically such times are some of the rare occasions when I feel like it is them who can't take the hint! They will insert themselves into your conversations and follow you around.

I find that the way a message is delivered is as important as the message itself. If someone is hot and cold, or does not always reciprocate, they're probably not ultimately interested. At best, they may feel bad for an awkward soul and just want to brighten your day a bit, or at worst they are using you for a brief bump in validation. I don't know your experience, but I know that I have spent years at a time feeling loneliness. It is all too easy to latch on to any pretty face that shows some compassion. When I have come on too strong or misinterpreted, these people often all of the sudden shut me out.

A good rule of thumb with regards to romance is: f**k yes!, or no.

For it to work, they must view you as a 'f**k yes!', and you must also view them as a 'f**k yes!'

That's right to some extent, but I can totally identify with gwynfryn's experience, as I tend to get on well with most women (at least until what I'm saying doesn't correspond with their misinterpretation of my body language; a frequent problem) until I start thinking in romantic terms, at which point they suddenly became "difficult", and it's not just service staff. I see so many guys get a polite yes, or no thank you, when asking for a date (or sex); me, I usually either got ignored or yelled at. As I've never been adept at reading non verbal cues, that has usually been the end of it for me, not having a clue as to were I stood..

Nick, bear in mind she wasn’t her usual self. Previously, she’d been very chatty and sociable, and we got along so easily, I suspect that she has quite a strong Autistic component too, with a fair bit of Manic. The later tends to mask the awkwardness of the Autistic, and would explain her popularity.

Rdos, given how isolated my room was (slum area; most building boarded up) and its distance from the pub, and with my place of work being in the opposite direction, there was no interaction other than in the pub. I never saw her, or any of the other staff or regulars anywhere else.

TO, I take your point, but our experiences could hardly be more different. The only time any woman showed obvious interest was at a college party, when a girl appeared under my arm, who I hadn’t noticed previously. Otherwise, it usually had to be pointed out by one of the girls in the gang that any one was after me, and they usually turned out to be someone standing several feet away, with her back to me (which never came to anything; how do you start a conversation with the back of someone’s head?) who I wouldn’t have even noticed. Then there was lots of footsie from girls who were with their boyfriends, but who’d walk right past me when alone.
Yes, service staff will try to appear friendly, but to different degrees. I’m on dodgy ground here, but sometimes I seem to get flashbacks to occasions when one of us made the other laugh, when the eye contact seemed a lot more intense than would normally be expected. Maybe I’m imagining it, but if true, then we really locked on, albeit for less than a second at a time. That never happened with any other barmaids that I remember.

Oraq, an off the wall question for you. You may have noticed, as I have, that women who interact with Autistic boys in any way, often describe some of them as “beautiful”. What do you think such boys would become as adults?

gwynfryn, are you a mind reader? I had noticed that, but never from males, nor anyone at all once the boys reached puberty. There appears to be a distinction between "beautiful" and "handsome" and it's not always gender consistent; a teacher once told one of the girls in class that her face was handsome, and it fitted! She was a good looker (I fancied her) but not what I'd call pretty. So do "beautiful" autistic boys become "beautiful" adults, which women are loathe to complement? Could it be a kind of "beautiful" that only women can perceive?

Drifting away last night, it occurred to me that it was some visible display of passion (1) that was wanting, but the how is still mystifying. I’d hoped and expected this thread would attract input from some women (I expected p!sstakers, too, but responses so far have been gratifyingly serious) and any such insights as you may be able to provide would be most welcome.

Bear in mind that this was a decade or more before the fat bloke in Coronation Street sang love arias (I don’t know any) outside the window of the ugly ginge. I could perhaps have shouted her name and tossed a bunch of roses her way, but I think we can all imagine how disastrously that could have turned out. I think we can rule out semaphore or smoke signals, as I somehow always managed to end up in that part of the room she never looked at (2). Tap out some Morse code on the bar top? Even if Totty was familiar with such, crafting out a message with the four letters I could recall, would have been extremely challenging, to say the least.

Can anyone suggest anything else I might have tried?

(1) The state I was in, she’d have seen plenty of that, if only I could have got close enough to talk to her!

(2) Only once in all that time did we make eye contact; she was right across the room on the busiest night I remember, looking at me with slitted eyes. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to try and read her expression, back then, and now that I’m more conversant with that, her expression in the dreams was stone faced, I could discern no encouragement or invitation there; in fact, it chilled me!

Nothing that would of helped cfuz she was very clearly not into you. You need to move on gwynfryn & quit dwelling on a girl who wanted nothing to do with you & actually seemed mad at you for being into her.

Nick, my motive here is mostly curiosity, so there’s no need for concern.

Some further (and probably final) developments. The wording is no doubt arbitrary, but the sentiment, which I’ve always remembered with greater accuracy, seems right:

I’m now of the opinion that the “…having a cry” observation was directed at the landlady, who responded with a low “Oooh nooo; Totty’s overdone the hard-to-get”, so well done nick, you seem to have read it correctly in your first response. To this, the barman responded with a surprising tone of anger (he never struck me as a caring sharing type) “but why did she have to do that; it was already obvious how much he wanted her to go out with him!” If it was so obvious to a disinterested barman, then certainly the other barmaids and landlady would have got it. It continues with the “She’s head over heels…” which seems a bit odd in terms of context, but if understood as a last ditch attempt to deter me from giving up, then it fits the bill. Regardless, it didn’t register at the time, so that was the end of that.

So what do you think, ladies; was it a good result?