{"id":1833,"date":"2009-08-16T22:57:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-16T22:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/16\/awkward_chit-ch\/"},"modified":"2024-11-29T14:51:26","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T19:51:26","slug":"awkward_chit-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/16\/awkward_chit-ch\/","title":{"rendered":"Awkward Chit-Chat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>More than once lately,<\/strong> I have been making small talk with someone I\u2019ve just met \u2014 usually a guy, usually one that\u2019s interesting in some way \u2014 and he\u2019ll ask if I have a boyfriend, which is easy enough to answer. (No, in case you think I\u2019ve had a mystery man stashed away somewhere. It\u2019s been a while.) But then there\u2019s a follow-up: \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Seriously? What the fuck kind of a question is that to ask someone? I suppose it would be simple enough to answer if I\u2019d made a conscious decision, and I could say something to the effect of \u201cI reject heteronormative coupling because I find it politically and socially oppressive.\u201d Really, though, there\u2019s not an answer. If there were a clear reason, then it would probably one that I could address in some fashion.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In my head, I quickly run down a list of reasons, and realize that any or all of them would be dreary conversation-killers, and expose slightly more bitterness and less self-confidence than I prefer to reveal in casual conversation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Perhaps you should ask the small handful of guys I\u2019ve really, really been hung up on this past year who have sweetly, politely, and very firmly indicated their lack of interest.<\/li>\n<li>Guys that hit on me that I really get along with tend to have boyfriends already. Bless them for being upfront about it, and I guess it\u2019s flattering that I\u2019m like catnip for couples in open relationships, but seriously: that\u2019s just being greedy. (Note: these guys also tend to ask why I don\u2019t have a boyfriend, even though they are hogging precious resources.)<\/li>\n<li>HIV panic? When this one has come up, I can\u2019t really blame a guy for not wanting to put himself in that situation, and to be fair it tends to come up long before any serious feelings are involved. It sure stings a lot, though.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019m kinda short, scrawny, hurtling towards 40, poor, and average looking? (While I have particularly bleak moments where I moan about all this, I don&#8217;t actually think it\u2019s true. Well, it all is, but I usually acknowledge that I\u2019m not so bad.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For the first couple of years I lived here, there were easy answers that circumvented all those issues. At first, I <i>did<\/i> have a boyfriend, but he lived in America. Athough that gave way to the reality of never seeing one another, I was still living like a hermit because I was a full-time student \u2014 <i>in Reading<\/i> \u2014 and generally too poor and busy to get out much. Once I moved to London, it was really just that I was new in town and didn\u2019t know many people.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the story now? Who knows. The reality, of course, is always going to be subtler and drearier than any snappy answer could be. There <i>will<\/i> always be someone else who\u2019s hotter, smarter, more interesting, younger, or whatever around, beside whom I will pale by comparison. That\u2019s true for just about everyone in a big city, though, isn\u2019t it? People just don\u2019t always click, even when it works on paper. That goes both ways: I\u2019ve had to admit to some very lovely guys that it just wasn\u2019t working, just like I\u2019ve been told the same. Man, though: it hurts like hell when you think you\u2019re onto something and it seems like you never even get a chance to give it a whirl.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve lived here almost three years at this point, and the loneliness is wearing on me. Granted, I know a lot of magnificent people here now, but you can\u2019t make old friends, as they say, and I haven\u2019t gotten as close to anyone as I\u2019d like. And that\u2019s the thing, when you get down to it. I\u2019m not looking for a boyfriend. That is, I\u2019m not distressed that there\u2019s a boyfriend box that hasn\u2019t been ticked, because it probably would be simple enough to just find someone who\u2019d stick around if I that was my only concern. Rather, I\u2019m more troubled that things keep going nowhere on the rare occasions when I stumble across someone who I like being around, who has all these things that really align with or complement my admittedly eccentric interests. In fact, I have a tendency to become good friends with guys I\u2019m really attracted to, since the things that turn me on go so far beyond just looks.<\/p>\n<p>That leaves me with a grim question that tends to undermine what has been otherwise a growing sense of self-confidence: what <i>is<\/i> the fucking problem, anyway?<\/p>\n<p>[NB: That\u2019s a rhetorical question, and I probably don\u2019t want to hear the answer to it, if you have one.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than once lately, I have been making small talk with someone I\u2019ve just met \u2014 usually a guy, usually one that\u2019s interesting in some way \u2014 and he\u2019ll ask if I have a boyfriend, which is easy enough to answer. (No, in case you think I\u2019ve had a mystery man stashed away somewhere. It\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2009\/08\/16\/awkward_chit-ch\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Awkward Chit-Chat&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultragay","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74551,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions\/74551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}