(Ed. Note: I started thinking about this entry on the Sunday before Valentine's Day, but it took a while to sort out into an entry I felt like making public. Like a lot of these entries, I'll probably screw with it a bit more at some point.)

They had this article recently on the radio program "This American Life" about this Hispanic girl named Catalina who had an obessive crush on a high school classmate. Catalina narrated her own tale. She started out with a crush on an obscure TV actor. Pretty typical, but she did admit that during an argument about him on a email list server she told someone that they were a liar and they didn't stop lying she was going to slice open their belly with a knife.

One day in school though Catalina discovered a girl in school with the exact same face as her male movie star crush, and her crush instantly became transfered. Catalina became infatuated with this girl. She thought about her crush constantly. Her heart would flutter every time she was near. She wrote love poems on her desk. However, Catalina never got any sign that the girl returned her affections, and Catalina was way too shy to ever tell the girl how she felt.

Catalina's feelings for this girl bordered on obessive. She scratched a scar into her thigh in the shape of a "K", for "K-licious", Catalina's nickname for the girl. Catalina was constantly talking to her older sister about K-licious to the point that her sister told Catalina that she would not listen to her anymore unless she had done something with K-licious. But Catalina needed some outlet for her feelings, so she would make up lies about K-licious just to keep talking with her sister.

Catalina realized after a certain point that her obsession was not healthy for her, and she used tricks to stop herself from thinking about K-licious. She would reward herself with treats or TV if she was able to focus her thoughts elsewhere, and she would find other things to distract herself with. Although her feelings never went away entirely, they pre-occupied less of her time.

Catalina's story brings to mind the story about a decade back about the highest judge in our state. He was married, very successful, a possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court. Then he became obsessed with another married woman. They had a brief affair, which she broke off, but he couldn't get over it. He kept calling her, leaving messages at odd hours of the day, sometimes just calling and hanging up. I guess he also sent some strange notes. It was a pretty big scandal. I think he ended up in jail. Catalina and this judge make an odd contrast. Both were infatuated with people who did not return their affections, but while Catalina was able to get her feelings and thoughts under control, this obviously very bright, organized judge could not and ended up in jail.

I myself have had maybe seven or eight unrequited crushes of various intensity. I'm not talking about lust, or thinking that a movie star is cute, I'm talking about seriously wanting to be with a person who didn't want to be with me back. The first was that red headed girl a grade lower than me from high school. I think her name was Lynn, but I can't remember her last name. She was tall and slender, had a thin, long nose, and high cheekbones. She was very quiet, but sort of snooty. I think she ended up married to Kevin Fitch, the class president from my grade. I don't think I ever spoke to her the entire time I was in high school. In college, I remember Karen, a blonde with the most beautiful blue eyes. Like Catalina, when I realize that a relationship is not going to happen, I consciously discipline my thoughts and wean myself away. There is always something that lingers though.

Perhaps the difference, between a person like the judge and people like myself and Catalina, was that the judge was a person who was used to getting what he wanted. As a very sucessful judge, he had a history of achieving the goals he had set for himself. He may not have been able to accept his own inability to suceed at something because he had never failed in something important.

I've also had at least five women who have had crushes on me that I could not summon up any interest in. All very nice, pleasant ladies who just did not work for me. It's flattering of course, but also slightly awkward and uncomfortable.

I have very mundane taste in foods. I don't like most cooked vegetables, with the exceptions of corn and broccoli, although I do like a lot of them uncooked, like raw peas or carrots. I don't like non-vetebrate meat or sushi. I won't eat tomatoes or peppers. I can't eat cherries. I'm not fond of wine or liquor. I like my coffee weak, and I can't stand flavored coffee. I have a sweat tooth, and I like greasy fat, salty and starchy foods.

I'm not in charge of what I like or dislike in terms of food. It would have been much easier for me at the dinner table as a child if I had been able to eat those peas, instead of sticking them to the bottom of my chair. I know vegatables are good for me, and that sweets have absolutely ruined my mouth. The fact is though that I have a persnickety palate, and I can't really change it.

What I find attractive and don't find attractive is also beyond my control. My body doesn't respond to women who are more than slightly overweight, or who don't fall within certain other parameters. If I could make myself find overweight women attractive, my life would be sooo much easier. There is a guy in a case I am involved in who always dates overweight, unintelligent women. He doesn't bathe, doesn't work, and has orders of protection keeping him away from a large number of children. Still, he's been married four times, and has about a dozen children. He may be scum, but he has his pick of the type of women that he finds attractive.

I'm also not in charge of who I fall in love with. It would be really nice not to have to moon over women I can't have, while ultimately rejecting women who have wanted me. I've tried though, believe me. I can't make myself love someone, and no matter how much I like them as a person or how much they feel for me. Things just fall apart.

Taste and desire seem similar both in how they develop, and in how little control we have over them. They are both influenced by culture. People of different ethnicities like different foods and have different preferences in who they find desirable. These preferences are set in our youth and then become hard to change. There are genetic components as well though. Facial bilateral symmetry is something almost all people find preferable to facial assymetry. I wouldn't be surprised if it were discovered that feelings of affection and our tastes for food involve similar mechanisms and evolved around the same time.

I know that cats can become very attached. See the entry Rhino Love for example. Birds also form strong attachments. There is a reason we talk about lovebirds. My sister remembers how a pigeon at a farm she was on fell in love with a sheep. It became very possessive, not letting other birds anywhere near the sheep, and taking care to pull out stray bits that stuck in the sheep's fur. I also read a book about a parrot that decided its owner was actually its mate, and around breeding time each year would build a nest and try to get it's owner to (impossibly) fit into the nest. In a slightly disgusting section of the book, the parrot orgasmed onto it's owner hand.

If birds fall in love, and mammals fall in the love, then their common ancestor lizards must also have fallen in love too. I think it could be a mechanism that evolved some time in the past that gets activated at various strengths depending on evolutionary pressures, and is related to a mechanism about preferences in general, like those for food. Our primate ancestors had the mechanisms, but their activation became stronger in humans when child rearing began to take longer and having a male more actively involved became evolutionarily advantageous.

So there is nothing wrong with the five women or so who had crushes on me, or me because of the eight or nine crushes I've had on various women. It's just a very normal human thing. More than human, it's an animal thing that we share with cats and birds and probably lizards, and it has probably been a part of our genetic makeup for a few hundred million years.