I'm Not Going to Call You

I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t really find you very attractive. You are a little bit chubby and you have white spots on your teeth and your teeth are a little bit crooked. You have a cute face, but it’s that baby cute that I don’t really go for. I’m also not really interested in hanging out with you. When we hung out at Starbucks I didn’t really have a great time. I mean I laughed because you and your friend/coworker were fairly amusing, jumping around and dancing and clapping, but it wasn’t really enough for me to be intrigued. Your friend is cuter than you, anyway.

And I know that I was the one who suggested that we go out, but I was tired and kind of lonely and I had this old idea in my head that I liked you but when I hit “refresh” I realized that I’m not interested in you any more and that’s that. So after I tried to cancel on you last time, but was thwarted by you canceling on me for some reason outside your control, I had hoped that it was over. But then all of a sudden you called me in the elevator and I hoped it was this other girl I know who I am interested in, but instead your name came up on my phone and I went “oh man” and I answered and feigned interest while you asked me out again. And I accepted, because I’m bad at turning people down. I always have been, I guess I just don’t have any practice and have some kind of subconscious fear or aversion that I need to eliminate via conditioning but am afraid to because I so desperately want people to like me! And now I’m not calling you even though I said I would, which is a jerky thing to do and makes me feel like a jerk but hey, maybe I am kind of a jerk, there’s no helping it. But no, I’m not a jerk, I am just a human being caught in a silly human situation and there’s nothing for it, I’ve gotta just cope, which in this case apparently means never going back to that particular Starbucks and having to go out of my way to another Starbucks which isn’t that hard because there are Starbuckses everywhere! So hopefully you won’t call me. But if you do I will probably just play the ditz and act like I forgot because I’m a little bit sick, and I am a little bit sick, and ask what you want to do and then we will have to deal with the obvious fact that we don’t know anything at all about each other except that I come in to Starbucks once in a while and order the same drink that I order at every Starbucks I have ever been too, all over the country (and not just the continental country, either). Then I will play like I am totally boring and instead of inviting you out to a jazz café or proposing a film or suggesting that we just hang out and go for a walk, which is plenty of fun when both individuals are interested in having an exchange but is just awful when only one person is, and I will suffer the damnation of the stringer-alongers which is to be haunted for eight-hundred years by those we strung along and to be strung along ourselves by people who are much more interesting and sexually attractive than we are, because karma’s not just a bitch it’s a cranky bitch and ugliness breeds ugliness. Please don’t call me.

I have been strung along in the past by people who said they would call, and they never called! They never called and I hated them for it because I kept asking and they kept saying maybe or sending not-so-subtle hints and I totally didn’t get it. And I was like “why are they lying to me? Why don’t they just tell me if they don’t want to hang out?” And the answer is that they couldn’t because they’re not terrible people and they were thinking the same thing that I’m thinking now, which is “I don’t find you particularly interesting or attractive and in fact you’re a little bit strange,” and if they said that to me I would play it off like they were a bitch or like “hey that’s ok! There’s no accounting for taste and some people just aren’t made to be friends or lovers” which of course is true. But inside I would wonder what is wrong with me, like I have wondered my whole life what is wrong with me, and because the question presumes that something indeed is wrong with me I would start to find things about myself that were wrong, like you do when someone breaks up with you, and I would look in the mirror and I would focus on the imperfections and asymmetries until I had convinced myself thoroughly that I was ugly and boring (so boring!) and plain and that no one could ever love me, and that I have no reason to go outside because I will be shunned! Shunned by the world, and it wouldn’t matter how much proof there was to the contrary because that’s not how emotions work god dammit, and so I’m not going to call you and I’m going to just go about my business and do the things that I have to and want to do because that’s what I want to do and I’d rather do them than hang out with you which is the real reason that I don’t want to hang out, because I am selfish with my time because time is so precious and I have so much that I want to do and be and if I scatter it all about then what will I become? A man with many friends and nothing at the core. And that won’t do at all.