I started playing guitar when I was 12. And 23 years later, it’s yet to deliver any of the female attraction I was hoping for. Oh, woe is me!
Maybe I blame all those VH1 Behind The Music episodes.
They got me all excited: Every guitarist raved about their popularity with the opposite sex. As a hormonal middle schooler, I had no confidence to, you know, go up and talk to girls. Guitar would be my rejection-proof way in.
Fast forward through middle school, high school, college, and now into adulthood: I’m waaaay good at guitar now. But my guitar-playing alone has yet to woo a single lady like those rockstars promised.
Only my upbeat personality and self-confidence has been successful in attracting cool women, but tbh that’s a lot of work when a simple guitar strum can make it happen like on Behind The Music?
I’ve even started my own bands, but no success…
All I got outta them was fun, laughter, liberation, stress relief, a creative challenge, and deep connection with bandmates from all walks of life.
One of my bands even placed 2nd at a Battle of the Bands. A huge win? Yeah! But did any of that matter? No. I sulked away with merely a trophy and a sense of personal pride. Zero phone numbers from any girls.
Exactly… How disappointing.
- Who cares if I’m now really good at an instrument I can lose myself into for hours.
- Who cares if it’s the only activity that brings me true liberation and flow, where I lose all sense of time.
- Who cares if I get so much pride from watching how far I’ve progressed in my skills.
- Who cares if my guitar-playing is something that’s connected me to my brother during this quarantine, since he started playing guitar for the first time in May.
- Who cares if I get an indescribable sense of brotherly satisfaction to teach him the tricks I’ve learned, as we jam for hours on Facetime.
- Who cares if this has brought us closer than any other time for us.
- Who cares if that time with my brother is one of the few things I thank this crazy year for.
What matters is: Guitar alone hasn’t gotten me a single girl.
That’s not what Behind The Music promised.
I can only hope MTV’s The Real World doesn’t disappoint me similarly; and that, on my horizon, there’s a pre-paid mansion awaiting me without having to work for it.
