Unfortunately, largely thanks to my parents keeping me back and discouraging me from socializing and/or dating from my teenage years onward (not to mention me being stupid enough to parrot their values, which made me further ostracized because their largely religion-based conservatism is incompatible with Bay Area society in general), I've literally been single all my life. I've never had a girlfriend. I've never even kissed a girl.
So what the hell am I doing writing what that little boy from The Princess Bride would call "kissing books?" Wish fulfillment, partly, along with my heavy use of flight and super speed motifs to represent the freedom I crave. (I promise, though, some of the deadlier stuff that happens in Red Rain, etc. is NOT wish fulfillment. More like a reflection of how I think my parents would treat me getting into relationships in real life.)
As it happens, that girl I tried to ask out (let's code-name her LA - it's where she comes from) bears a certain resemblance to Fionna Lee. Not only are they both half-Asian, but Fionna and LA have similar fashion sense, similar builds, and most importantly, similar personalities. They both have a certain fiery spunk, but can also be quite shy and reserved when they want to be. Of course, the resemblance was totally coincidental - I started writing Fionna almost three years before meeting LA - but it was enough that I actually attempted to use it as a flirting tool.
Yeah, look how well that turned out.
This has simply proven to be the latest, and worst, in a string of heartbreaks for me. Heartbreaks before I've even had a relationship - how fucked up is that?
My main problem is, again, my parents, who not only don't seem to want me dating, but also think I should meet a woman the way they themselves met. Dad made a friend or two, they set him up on a date with the woman who would be my mom, and the rest is history. I've told them countless times that even in my inexperience, I know dating today just doesn't work that way. For proof, I could call up all the times I've so much as attempted to make enough of a friendship with a girl that I could eventually ask her out and call her my girlfriend.
There are way too many of those, so I'll just go with my most recent experiences over the last year or so.
Winter 2016. Met a girl in my Graphic Novel class. Not only did she have great taste in just about everything (other than music - she liked Taylor Swift but not Coldplay, and I'm just the opposite, but I thought we could have potentially made it work), but she was, like me, a lapsed Catholic. Of course, I soon discovered she had a boyfriend. (But hey, she at least got me to listen to the complete Book of Mormon soundtrack. Too fucking funny!)
Spring 2016. Met a girl in my Shakespeare class. You might remember I wrote a poem about her - "Lady Smith." This girl, she was into Attack on Titan, to the point where I went and got a copy of the first book at the library and made it a point of reading it in front of her. I soon found out she had a boyfriend - to whom she's since become engaged. (And after a while, I stopped reading Attack on Titan too.)
Summer 2016. Long and lonely. Didn't get to go out and meet anyone.
Fall 2016...well, that was LA. From her, I'm moving on, slowly but surely. But with a full week of classes left this quarter, it's gonna be awkward af, especially if neither of us addresses the elephant in the room.
It's clear now. I absolutely, positively, undeniably suck at getting the girl. I not only consider it a sign of my ongoing immaturity, because I feel stuck at 17 mentally for so many reasons, but I also feel very bad about the fact that I often find myself wanting to date women just to say I've got a girlfriend, a Netflix viewing partner, a lover...hell, even a one-night stand. I ought to know better than that last one - I've got at least one online peep who speaks from experience when saying that's for no - but I'm also a very thirsty geekboy, desperate to feel like an adult for once in his life.
Again, I'm going back to the "blame my parents" well. Sure, I'm a socially awkward young man, being mildly autistic and all, so my undateability is somewhat on me too. But to my perception, my parents are also quite culpable, because they would have my hyperlexia define me. They've long used it as an excuse to hold me back socially and stunt my emotional growth. I've said before that they want me to be more of a Tobey Maguire Spider-Man than the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man I know I should be, but sometimes, I think they want worse. I think they would have me die alone and depressed, rather than spread my "defective" genes to the next generation. A bit of subtle eugenics that I don't think they're above, frankly. They've made it clear to me that they don't care enough about my mental or emotional health - probably thinking that my disorder makes me a psychological write-off. Why change now?
Okay, now I'm getting into territory I don't really care to tread. My point is, I need to step up my game if I'm ever to so much as date a woman, let alone eventually marry her or have kids with her. I can't just rely on meeting a woman with whom I click well in class, or perhaps at work, or anywhere in the narrow circle I get to exist in on the real-world, terrestrial plane. I can never find a single woman willing to date me this way, so I'll have to turn to the internet, somehow. Whether it's by a dating app, or if I someday wind up together with another writer I've met on Twitter or Wattpad or whatever, who knows?
Honestly, I'm sick of feeling so constantly, crushingly lonely. I play it too safe, and I want out of my claustrophobic shell. (Preferably on a route that takes me to Vancouver - outside this increasingly gone-to-shit country, and where I can potentially work as a TV writer. The Flash better still be in production three, five, even ten years from now!)
For now, I'm just a speedster boy, waiting for his Supergirl.
Till next time, Pinecones...
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| #FeedTheRightWolf |
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| Remember - Denis Leary is always watching. Always. |
