Today isn't a great day. I get it, there are a lot of things in my life to be content with. Nobody in my family is struggling with anything dire. My job is the closest thing to a breezy zero-stress sinecure I could ask for, and it pays so well that if I got serious about savings the word "millionaire" in a few years isn't unthinkable. I get along with my coworkers. I'm not sick or deformed or on mood stabilizers or whatever. I'm coming off a lazy streak after I had a grandparent die. Getting back into shape. Never been even close to obese. I have a nice car. I shower, take care of my skin, etc. I'm not a square-jawed 10, but I clean up to "boyishly cute".
Got ghosted today. Again. Yeah, yeaaaah "Shrug it off", "He doesn't know what he's missing", fish in the sea, I've heard every cold comfort stock back-pat phrase in the rolodex. They stopped making anything feel better a long time ago. The few guys who occasionally hit on me don't want to be boyfriends. They want to latch onto me like barnacles. Slovenly, obese, video game addict, couch potato Peter Pans who see me as a tugboat or a quick fix for their own glaring rudderless need for a mommying figure instead of a partner. I'm not so desperate for affectionless companionship that I'd do that to myself. The ghosts are the ones I see a glimmer of self-respect in. That spark of Chad energy, someone who takes care of himself and likes who he is. Doesn't need to be some rich CEO or porn fantasy hot; it's not like I'm one of those weirdos who pines after celebrities. I haven't been on a dating site in over ten years, but the story has been the same lame tween drama over and over you hear from those places anyway. I run into a guy, we click, I do my due diligence and find out he swings the right way, is single, etc. We exchange numbers, usually talk for a month or two, decent conversation, flirting, then he just stops replying with no clear reason. Our last conversation ended pleasantly, "talk to you soon", same old. It's a melodramatic soap opera moment the first time it happens in your teens. It's an "oh, okay" accompanied by some haunting depression the hundredth time. So I'm going to resume Groundhog Day, keeping in great shape, making piles of money, spoiling my nieces and nephews, crawling into bed alone at night and sometimes staring into space until morning instead of sleeping.
"You're such a catch, I don't know why nobody's scooped you up yet!" or "Hey you did everything you could! He's just a dick." make me want to scream. "Well you obviously just need to be *~okay being single~*!" or "Things always fall into place when you least expect it!", or "Maybe you're too picky!", "Maybe your intelligence and success are intimidating!" make me want to walk into traffic. Every foray into flirting with someone fails spectacularly right out of the gate, and the only reason I'm not convinced I'm some sort of hyper-socially retarded autist missing something obvious is that it confuses even my closest happily paired-off normie friends who've watched it unfold in front of them. In some ways it feels like I'm childishly complaining about one small thing like an incel in an otherwise unbelievably successful life. On the other hand, fuck it. I deserve better than ghosting, but deserving things and getting them aren't the same. I hate being gay. Gay men never grow up. I want to go home to whatever planet I'm from. I'm sick of the men on this one. Tired of the well-meaning advice. Tired of being the guy you fix up with your fat narcissist cousin because "you're both gay!". I want to be pursued by some tall handsome charming stranger who's actually into me just once for fuck's sake. It's animalistic emotionless sex, attention vampires who lie to you for a few weeks of chatting, or behaving like an eternal 12 year old with gay men. There's nothing else. And every time it happens, I beiefly consider jumping off a bridge. I'm bone tired of this terribly-written show. I want to keelhaul the next friend who tells me to "keep being your amazing self". Yeah, because that's worked.
Halloween