There is a common belief that the reason that we feel things is because they mean something, because no one could stand to live if they thought of themselves as just a dancing marienette. The division of people into genders is a clear line, visible, flouted, etched into every strand of DNA. The division of genders into different kinds of men and women is just is clear -- just not as evident. Different kinds of men need different things. I am one of those men who is programmed to measure my happiness by someone taking me as special, loved, equal, a counterpart to me. For many years I blamed myself for this, strove that somehow if I would rise up that I could exceed this and find that kind of happiness in, say, the words on a page, or reflections in a screen. There are people that do....different kinds of men... But as truths of my human nature have further unfolded to me, I have realized that this is not the way of things. That is how I'm programmed to feel! Perhaps, as an enlightened being, I would look back with only a faint sadness at this, perhaps deriving some other joy from distant sources I cannot guess. But that feeling -- the feeling of someone else loving me, of being singularly special to that person -- it what is etched into my genetic code and which flails me, like a puppet, through this pointless quest of self-sustenence, my genes never to be imparted, my contributions to society to be none, to vanish traceless in a world that never touched ... me.