Now I’m a college student in
Rapid City, SD. High school senior cockiness has been replaced be college
freshman meekness. The beard was gone, only to be replaced by an atrocious ball
cap that I had been wearing for ten years (what it lacked in cleanliness and
structural integrity it made up for in sentimental value). I had also been
wearing nothing but shorts and white tee shirts (symbolically appropriate color
wise) for a few years now. I was prepared to meet new and interesting women,
and then repel them just as hard as ever.
We can basically skip my first
two years, because they were uneventful even by my standards. Living in the
dorms made me even more anti-social than usual, and I was big into escapist
video gaming at the time. I did develop a crush on a geology major who was in
my Chemistry 101 lab group, but I never did anything but pine after her for the
rest of my college career. I should also mention that my college had something
like a 7:1 boy to girl ratio, so it wasn’t exactly a target rich environment.
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| This picture actually has an atypically large number of girls in it |
In junior year, my best friend
transferred schools and we got a place together, so my social attitude was much
improved. I started to make some actual friends in my classes, but mostly the
non-traditional students since I have always been precocious, and wasn’t about
to go mainstream with my socialization or anything. One of my friends happened
to be a single mother with a job, so we developed a mutually beneficial relationship where I would help
her with school and she would introduce me to women. This led to a couple of
misadventures. First she introduced me to her cousin who seemed like a good
match for me. The problem was that she was leaving on a Peace Corp trip in a
few weeks, so there wasn’t a lot that I could do with that.
The more interesting match happened in the summer after junior year. I was interning in Pierre, SD, and
that happened to be the location of the Girls’ State Softball Tournament. My
friend was on a team and invited me down to meet people. There were hundreds of girls there so the odds of finding a girl who would talk to me were good. One girl flagrantly said hello to me as I walk past her and her friends, so I was feeling confident. My friend eventually coaxed a shortstop into talking with me, since I am completely unable to cold approach women. We chatted between games
throughout the two day tournament. We were able to keep a steady conversation with the help of competitive sports as a topic, but their weren't exactly fireworks between us. At one point, some of the lesbians present
warned me that this girl was tripping their gaydar, but I choose to ignore this
and attributed her slight standoffishness to my awkwardness.
After the tournament ended we
agreed to keep texting and she went back to Rapid City. I figured that this
would work well, since we could develop a conversational rapport over the
summer so that things would be less awkward in the fall when I returned to
Rapid and we started dating. I was able to learn a lot about her, some
rudimentary conversation skills, and how to text adequately (I got a cell phone
when I went to college finally). She was a Radiology Tech intern at the
hospital and was from Montana. She liked her peanut butter smooth and had
strong feelings against white bread.
A few weeks before school
started I was in town to move to my new studio apartment (my friend was getting
an apartment with his girlfriend). I asked if she wanted to go out while I was
in town, but she gave me a semi-shady excuse. It was at this point that I began
to believe that the fabled lesbian prophesy of old might be coming true. Anyhow, we
kept texting until school started and then I was back in town to stay. The jig
was up and I asked her if she was interested in dating me. She responded with
something like “I don’t want a boyfriend right now”, so either she really was
into women or she just wasn’t buying what I was selling and wanted to let me
down gently (not unlikely). It is also entirely possible that she was telling
the complete truth, and was just busy with her job/school life and just
didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Our conversations were never more than
friendly, so I didn’t exactly charm her (mostly “how was your day”, and no
“here is a picture of me in my underwear”). I got some talking to women practice
out of it so no hard feelings.
I didn’t do anything with my
entire senior year, since at the speed I move I probably need more than a year
to get anywhere. I also don’t really have any interest in just for fun
relationships, so I didn’t want to get a girlfriend just so we could break up
when I moved after graduation. I did fall in love with a girl who I saw listening to some Hall and Oates, but I never saw her again after that so it wasn't really a big deal. Now college had come and gone, but my chastity
was still holding strong.
After graduating I started a
full time job in Pierre, the same job where I interned the previous summer. I
hate to say it, but Pierre isn’t exactly a cornucopia of young single women. On
top of that, civil engineering is a terrible profession for meeting females
(unless you count the occasional rugged construction working ones, but I would
rather not). It has been over a year and a half now, and all I have succeeded
in doing is to become even more eccentric and undateable (I started a blog and learned how to solder, LADIES). I stopped wearing my
old cap, but have started wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses and Hawaiian
shirts, so I’m still driving away women like champion. My current infatuation
is a girl who works across the street and rides a bike to work. I’ve started
riding a bike to work now in an ingenious a lame attempt to get her
attention. I don’t even know her name and haven’t seen her in a while now that
the weather is getting cold, so I give it about a 99% chance of not going
anywhere. One the plus side, riding a bike to work is totally worth it on its
own, and is still fun even though I’m not twelve years old anymore (riding
through sprinklers is one of my favorite things ever).
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| What a jerk |
In conclusion, most people have
had more romantic experience during a first date than I have had in my entire
life. While writing this I got the impression that my fumblings as a youth were
amusing, but as I got older just became somewhat sad. The thing is, I don’t
really feel sad about it. I don’t know if it’s just my ego trying to defend
itself, but I like the way that I am. For one, my lack of experience makes me different
and unique, and that is something I probably put too much value in. Secondly, not needing
to maintain complex social relationships also gives me a huge amount of time to
do all the things that I want to do. What scares me is that I would like even
more alone time than I already have (if I could just stop needed to sleep), and
I worry that this could be a problem if I do get into a relationship. Anyway, I'm happy with the way my life is now, but I also think I would be happy in a
relationship, so I win either way.
TLDR: I’m
going to die alone, but it’s totally cool.
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