Author and Columnist
I am flirting in an effort to expand my social sphere (it was a social circle, but it feels three dimensional now). I am, of course, still being OCD picky. I must maintain the structural integrity of the expanding sphere, after all.
Good. Flirt. You do well with that. It is light and fun. The way you do it, you play upon what they like about themselves; you are not a creep when you flirt.
Go make friends.
PURE should have attended the diversity day, as they are so hard up to fight the "constant discrimination" they feel they face. When I popped into PURE during an intermission, they were speaking - at length - about how class photos had to be altered because one of the class officers proudly flipped the photographer off. Yet they wonder why no one takes them seriously and they have so few members.
You will never cease having issues with other Pagans, though this does typify one of your main complaints: They want mainstream acceptance and want to freak out the squares.
At least PURE wasn't shouting into the halls about eating babies this time.
We will call her Artemis, owing to her artistic bend and resemblance to a certain goddess's attributes. Well, Artemis was not only attending diversity day, she won a prize for her poster.
I do not know that you will ever encounter her again. Given your penchant for pseudonyms, I cannot be sure who this was, but nothing must have come of it.
I snagged Todd and headed off to work.
Oh gods, Todd. He hangs himself over the summer after throwing a party you skip to have dinner with your then girlfriend's parents. You do not have the courage to go to the funeral. His death haunts you for years, mainly that he seemed to throw a going-away party for himself, and you didn't go. At first, you assume that no one went, which pushed him deep into depression, but no. It was massively attended, and Todd reportedly seemed delighted.
He is the first of your friends to die, the only verifiably by suicide (I have my doubts about another).
But that is not this day. Today, it is sunny and fair. Today, he is alive and your friend.
So Todd snagged/jump-on Dulcinea (who I now am going to ask to use her real name, since she evidently is going to become a part of this) and she started to walk with us toward the library.
I dearly wish you already had permission to use her name. The haze around the pseudonym refuses to resolve into anything other than that her hair might have been dark and wavy, but it may only be scraps of other people you have tried to weave over this near stranger.
I could find her better in my spotty memory if I had her name.
He called me a spaz and I insisted that he must not mean it in the pejorative sense. He agreed with an "I'm just sayin'."
Back to Todd. He was squinty-eyed with a high, scratchy voice. He would shout your full name whenever he saw you, "Thomm Quackenbush!" His hair was bleached and dyed -- I have no idea its natural color, but I do not feel the Todd you knew had a natural color yet. Had he survived, he might have settled into one in a few more years.
He was more a friend on convenience. If you did not go to the same community college you might have met in passing -- you did share a social circle -- but you would not have found the occasion to hang out. He mildly annoyed you at times, and, once, he shoved a cleaning sponge in your mouth in a puckish fit, which you held against him.
Once he dies, you will refer to yourself as a foul-weather friend. Had he called you up to talk about being suicidal, you would have stayed up half the night comforting him through it. When (if?) he called you socially, you would try to find an excuse to get off the phone.
You knew he was depressed and had attempted suicide before, but you did not take the threat of this seriously. You knew people who had attempted suicide before, but it was all shallow cuts and too many aspirins. You did not anticipate that anyone could actually want to die.
In the months before Todd kills himself, he will seem happier and more stable than he ever did in your company. I wonder if this wasn't because he had finally decided to end his life, and it had taken a weight from him.
You will be depressed -- profoundly so at times. You will have suicidal ideation, though you never want to commit suicide. You are at times so desperate that you call the Suicide Hotline several times a month to try to talk yourself to stability. You will discover that, after fifteen minutes of not killing yourself or giving them the actionable sentence to send the police to commit you involuntarily, they will hang up on you in deference to people with a gun or poison in hand.
If Todd knew to call the hotline that night, right after his party, I would like to believe that he would not have lost his life to a bedsheet noose. But we cannot know. A suicide deferred is not a suicide prevented.
As Dulcinea was there, I beseeched her feminine advice, which can be encapsulated by "Be confident and say hi."
I don't know why you ever felt uneasy around speaking to women. I suppose you had some social awkwardness in general, but you were madly gregarious.
Dulcinea informed me she was in a class with her and would feel out Artemis and give her my number if the moment seemed right. I was highly appreciative and realized I kind of click with Dulci. I'd be very glad to count her among my friends, especially since she volunteered to be my courier.
Doubly so, I wish I had the slightest idea who Dulcinea might have been. You would click with many if you allowed yourself to listen for it.
(You should have gotten Artemis' number. She was another person who might have changed your trajectory away from the future that I know.)
It made him believe that girls wanted the romantic, committal guy so he shaped himself to be that way (though, you know, he likes boys and all). But it was a huge falsehood, a Hollywood dream on par with fending off alien invasion. Girls want absolutely nothing to do with such men, they want the abusive arseholes who will fuck them and their little sister and leave them in the dirt.
I am not exaggerating when I say that this is physically painful to read.
One, you don't believe this. You are just bitter about Kate, who isn't interested in committing to you or anyone. The guys whose beds she visits likely adore her in their limited contexts; no one abuses Kate. To my knowledge, she does not regret her hook-ups, and they did not harm her life. Don't generalize, even when you are quoting a gay man.
Two, in 2022, people who speak this way are incels, the involuntarily celibate. They are widely considered scumbags of the highest order. They have committed mass shootings. Do nothing that echoes them. You are better than that and should not pretend otherwise.
When they do encounter a sweet, romantic, caring guy, supposedly what they are looking for, they will have nothing to do with him because he is not hurting them. It's sick, but so true.
Nice guys don't have to tell people that they are nice guys.
Women may not be looking for a sweet, romantic, caring guy, especially at your age. Now is a time for fun.
So, that is not true in almost every circumstance with nearly all people.
Obviously I am not the "hook-up" type. As we have seen physicality sans sincere, positive emotions make me sick and hurt.
You should get over this. Don't sleep around if it is not easy for you, but don't take dating so seriously.
They have all pretty near stated that they want someone to fuck them and not be there in the morning.
So let them. It isn't your business what they do. What they are experiencing now is not what they will want forever. You want to bring up Ericksonian crises? Let them confront what they want and why so they can grow into the people they will become.
While you are at it, grow up yourself. Stop throwing tantrums.
(this completely the one requisite mention of Kate. You may breathe a sigh of relief and move on).
I would love few things better than to breathe a sigh of relief and have you move on.
However, I am not about to hurt or feed into some girl's complex merely to get my rocks off, as the colloquialism goes. I want something real and evolving, not a different face every weekend.
You could have something "real and evolving" and not consider your wedding colors after a month.
You can and should leave once a relationship isn't working for you.
But you won't.
I do not buy into this polygamist over-justification that human beings are animals and animals at not suppose to have just one partner.
Polygamy and polyamory are different concepts, not that you know the latter term yet.
Bloody hell, look at swans! Look at wolves! Look at lions! Look at penguins! Even monkeys, our closest animal relative! All bloody monogamous.
What on earth are you talking about? Go look up bonobos.
Almost all animals are not hanging around mates longer than it takes to get the offspring on solid ground.
We are sentient. We have complex emotions. If you want to just shag someone and leave him or her by the wayside, do him or her, us, his or her future lover, and the whole bleeding world a favor. Stay home and masturbate, don't fuck somebody up because your mother never hugged you enough.
People are encouraged to do precisely what they wish with their sexuality because they are sentient with complex emotions.
Furthermore, no one needs to fuck half their campus to figure out who they are and what they want.
They may. That's their choice. It may not seem wise to you -- it doesn't to me -- but it is not your decision to make for other people. As long as everyone is consenting, it is their choice to make.
Figure out who you are. I'm going to bet it is not a vacuous whore.
Given you have behaved and do now, you have no right to get on your high horse and judge other people.
These gendered insults are beneath you.
If you think that is the way to go, look at any HBO special about prostitutes and you'll think better of that lifestyle choice.
Gods, are you ever intolerable in times like this. So self-righteous.
Sex work is real work, buddy.
You are not better than someone exploring a different avenue of their college experience.
To paraphrase Stevehen (well, to apply the spirit of his statement to another situation) "You aren't polygamist/looking for a cuddle buddy/the 'hook-up' type, you are just horny."
Two things can be true.
If you for a moment think fucking some random person is going to make you feel better, try befriending someone who has been raped. What you are doing is emotionally little better.
Sex and rape, despite the acts involving the same organs, could not be more different. It is at best callous that you correlate the two.
You have been friends with people who have been victimized. You owe it to them never to use them this way for your analogies.
You are not a human being and I will not give you the respect of one.
Must you dehumanize people because they feel differently about sex than you do?
I can't give in to this, I never will. What is the point of fighting if it isn't the good fight?
Sex isn't a fight. It is just how other people choose to conduct their affairs. It does not have anything to do with you.
You aren't winning this fight. If anything, you are losing respect.