He’s just about to insist she shouldn’t devalue herself like that, that she’s just been violated and maybe shouldn’t be out tonight, should go home and practice self-care—and is astounded when everyone, including her, starts laughing. He joins in, figuring that this is all part of the cathartic process, even though it sounds to him like a clear case of SA. He’d asked her out once before; a literal
rapist is more appealing than him? But he keeps silent as another female friend says, “Men are dogshyt.” And sure, fair, he understands they mean the patriarchy and not him specifically—but why’d she say that with him standing
right there, unless he didn’t count as a man? Not wanting to seem fragile or impugn their judgment or center the conversation on himself, he instead files this incident away in a thickening dossier of unfairness, privately reasoning that if they’re going to keep dating a$$holes, what do they expect.
He gut-checks himself to make sure his concern for his traumatized friend is legitimate before texting her later: “Hey, I’m around if you need to talk about what happened. or even just watch trashy TV
whenever wherever!”
She doesn’t reply.
Dragging his virginity like a body bag into his midtwenties, he watches a certain amount of dom-oriented porn, probably due to internalized sexism, but he’s read that porn is a safe, healthy venue to explore kink, that sexuality is neither a choice nor shameful, especially if the studios follow good labor and aftercare practices. His female friends agree, though he does not mention that he seeks out actresses that look like them, which he deems acceptable as long as he consumes it critically, demarcating fantasy from reality.
He’s more worried about
physical desensitization: he doesn’t use lubrication, because his roommates would overhear it. He comes to prefer the intensity of this “dry” method, but feels the friction is somehow eroding his psyche, and possibly dulling his penis nerves. He resolves to masturbate with a condom to wean himself. He wonders in what other ways touch, or the lack of it, has warped him. He’s read about that study of baby monkeys who were denied soft physical contact and grew up disturbed and sickly. It’s hard for him to believe chastity was ever associated with purity, when it feels like putrescence, his blood browning and saliva clouding with pus, each passing day rendering him more leprously foul to the senses. What about those venerable virgo intacta like Kant, dikkinson, Newton? Their virginity was a matter of will. They believed God loved them for it.
At lunch one day, two of his male coworkers offer unsolicited dating advice, relishing the chance to showboat their sexual proficiencies. He’s too honest and available, not aggressive enough—friend-zone shyt, they say unironically. Just don’t be a fukking p*ssy is all! You gotta challenge them, be a puzzle for them to work out, that’s just how girls’ brains work, it’s evolution. They offer grotesquely specific advice about eye contact and hair touching. Learn palmistry, they say, bytches love getting their palms read.
Then they ask him how he makes a move; he says he just asks. “Wait, you
ask if you can kiss them? My man,” one says, laughing and slapping his back, “you don’t
ask.” With jagged touchiness, he calls them out, insisting that consent is nonnegotiable, that even if they’re joking, it’s textbook rape culture.
“Well, what makes you think you can speak for them,” one says, smirking. “You’re a guy too. Why do you know better than us what women prefer? Especially considering they’re dating us.”
He’s
not speaking for women, he says—unsure of how he’ll answer, but certain he has something to say—he’s . . . speaking
against men who’re speaking against women.
“Go ahead then,” his coworker smirks, “ask your
female friends what they think.”
Bristling, he calls his QPOC agender friend from his college co-op, whom he’s always gotten along well with, in part because he’s never been attracted to them. He repeats what his coworkers said, using a “dumb guy” voice. His friend says, “Well, that’s gross,” and makes him swear never to become a mind-gamey a$$hole. They say that the friend zone is obviously a sexist canard that lets losers (like who, he wonders) blame their own unattractiveness on women. He agrees; then asks if it isn’t true that some guys lack charisma or attractiveness, and are thus more prone to getting befriended? “Maybe,” they say. He asks his friend if mind games work. “Sometimes,” they say, “that’s why it’s so common. But it’s not good.” Never, he asks? “OK, yeah, shyt’s complicated. Some people are old-fashioned, or mistake abuse for affection. Doesn’t mean we should
encourage it.” He asks if it’s wrong to ask permission to kiss someone. “Depends more on how you ask.” He asks if they personally would prefer it. “No, but I’m not all women. I’m not even
a woman.” He asks if they believe most women would prefer it. “Maybe, maybe not, but things are changing. Listen, I’m not sure what you’re trying to get out of me here. Again: I’m
not a woman.” Of course he knows that, he replies, but it’s important to him, especially as a privileged white man, to avoid placing the burden of educating him about women’s experiences on a woman, which was why it’s so great to have friends of other genders. His friend says, “Yeah, I guess.” He thanks them for taking his call so late at night.
Despite the ambiguous advice, he decides that sheer experience and exposure will improve his odds. So he resorts to online dating, cropping out his narrow shoulders from his photos and carefully wording his bio:
He / him. Unshakably serious about consent. Loves books, Thai cooking, a glass (or three) of Vinho Verde on my balcony, endless conversation . . . did I mention books? ;) Trans women are women (duh). All body types very welcome!
He suspects some of it risks sounding tryhard, but he prefers clarity over fake mystique, and why wouldn’t women prefer a vocal ally? He sends brief but thoughtful, grammatical messages, like a link to a
Psychology Today article about limerence, followed by: “Fascinating topic. I’m a total sucker for the intersections of psychology and romance. Would love to talk it over at the venue of your choosing!” The few dates this brings only yield more rejection: three postpone indefinitely, then ghost; three more are no-shows. One leaves while he’s in the bathroom.
Dating online, he realizes, one has to choose either fraudulence or honesty that can’t compete with fraudulence. But then he thinks: Isn’t the idea that women don’t know what’s best for them sexist, informed by his own petty resentment? Troubled by this paradox and unable to sleep, he texts his QPOC friend: Be honest: has he actually been a creep this whole time? Is that why he’s been single for thirty years? His friend texts back, “okay but can you really count the first 16 years,” then says that he
should feel weird about his concerns, but that he hasn’t done anything, and a creep probably wouldn’t agonize so much over whether he was a creep, good night. He’s still unnerved, but relieved that someone who was once female-identified has given him a pass.
He withdraws into work. Whereas before he only went out in hopes of meeting someone, now he stays in so he won’t have to see the couples, the inaccessible women, the broad-shouldered men; even a passing whiff of plain aloe lotion on a woman’s skin makes him feel structurally unsound and shivery through his linings.
At age 32, he has sex. One day on social media he catches a photo of the girl—the woman—he rejected in high school. She’s cleaned up; her body type is no longer curvaceous, and he likes how she always wears a skirt and leggings, a thin dark cardigan over a blouse—a personal uniform suggesting fidelity to figured-out principles—but dislikes how her dyed red hair pinches off in a tiny bun that reminds him of the meaty tail-nubs on docked pit bulls, though that’s fixable. They live in the same city. He messages her and suggests they meet.
She arrives at their date forty minutes late, which he tolerates, knowing that women’s time is taxed by the pressures of female grooming. For about fifteen minutes their catch-up chat is small but promisingly pleasant. He insists on paying for drinks, joking that it’s not chivalry, it’s reparations for sexism. But he regrets it because, on her third whisky ginger (and his first), she starts rambling about a guy who dumped her years ago. Jokes about her eating disorder. Every few minutes her face scrunches like she’s about to cry, then reverts weirdly to normal. Her blouse untucks, and when a guy playing pool nearby positions his cue close to her face, she slaps it to the floor.
Lonely as he is, does he deserve someone unstable? He’ll have to reject her again, like in high school. What will he say? That he doesn’t want to waste her time, that he thinks she’s super great but isn’t feeling a vibe . . . whatever he says, he wants to make her reaction feel valid.
But hours later he has not figured out a compassionate enough way to phrase it, and at this point, as they’re leaving the bar, he decides he might as well kiss her good night for the sake of casual experience, and let her down over text message when he finds the right phrasing. So he asks if he can kiss her. She says, “Uhhhh, no.” He asks why not. “What do you mean
why not?” she says. “Because I don’t
want to. Who the fukk asks ‘why not’? fukking a$$hole.”
He wonders if she is testing him. He asks if she is testing him. This time she gives him a two-armed shove, sending him to the ground, and instead of yelling, her mouth opens into a smile and she says, “Oh my god are you wearing
shoulder pads?”
Getting up, he briefly considers shoving her back, which would only be fair. But she is doubled over and clutching her calves laughing, and then says, with unbelievable nonchalance, “OK, wait, I’m sorry dude, I didn’t mean to push you that hard. Come on, is this happening or what?”
The sex disappoints; her moans and arches feel contrived, and something—maybe his dulled nerves—keeps deferring his orgasm; she gets impatient and pushes him away. He acquiesces, not having finished, his embarrassing frustration mitigated only by the unburdening of his virginity, and the prospect of telling everyone about it. To reassure her that his sexual awkwardness was not her fault, he tells her he thinks she’s beautiful. She waits nearly ten seconds and replies, “Yeah, well, uh, you have a beautiful mind.”
After this incident, he develops thoughts of self-harm, which are curbed by his awareness that rejection, loneliness, and sexual frustration are nothing compared with institutional and historical oppression. He knows sadness is a symptom of his entitlement.
Being a thirtysomething, he feels too young to give up and too old to adapt. His self-reliance has ossified into a lifestyle of craved, defended solitude. He can’t imagine having to share a bed every night, not being able to read or stay in or leave parties when he wants. Solitude is fine, unwantedness is not. And as he’s aged, has his intimacy with his female friends deepened? Did these friends, who always maintained that romantic love is overrated, provide an alternative to monogamous romance? No. They’ve all found partners and moved on to mature, cohabit, fukk, get married, spawn. Even if they’re miserable, at least they’re living real lives, with partners who prioritize them. Lately he sees them once a month tops, even though he’s known them
far longer than their partners. They’ve stopped inviting him to dinner parties because
It was a couples thing and you would’ve hated it, which, while true, was still exclusionary, backed by the hegemonic, regressive institution of monogamy. He realizes that these female friends have, at last, completed their long-term rejections of him; that, without ever having had a girlfriend, his life is strewn with exes, friends without benefits. But he can’t complain about his friends to his friends. His male friends would roast him, or pretend to sympathize but secretly think he’s a p*ssy. His female friends might think he’s passive-aggressively implicating them, and also think he’s a p*ssy.
people want cliffs on 30 second videos and u post a story that is estimated to take an hour to read
