Suddenly one day you become Men Without Women. That day comes to you completely out of the blue, without the faintest of warnings or hints beforehand. No premonitions or foreboding, no knocks or clearing of throats. Turn a corner and you know you’re already there. But by then there’s no going back. Once you round that bend, that is the only world you can possibly inhabit. In that world you are called “Men Without Women.” Always a relentlessly frigid plural.
Haruki Murakami
Men Without Women
Chapter Headings:
Introduction
The lighter side of incel
The darker side of incel
Christine Chubbuck and female incel
Misogyny and confusion worse confounded
The world of the PUA and its overlaps with love-shys
How can I be incel given obvious advantages in my youth?
So here begins my perverse black comedy personal story
Narcissus in the city
The anxious child
My first flirtation, an omen of things to come
From 8 to 12 years of age
High school, setting the mood for the future
University, the great potential thrown away. The descent into madness
1991 James shakes things up
1991 The Golden Year that Wasn’t. Laura loves me even if I don’t care. Vicki the icon of the beautiful blonde
Why write your university final exams when there is no reason for living?
A date with destiny in 1992. Self-fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled
Suicide by gun is the way out, but no cojones
Trip to the Far East, beautiful girls and misery
Wallowing in the wallows
The mid-twenties, a desert of real rejection and a fleeting oasis. Alas a mirage
The Swedish Beauty in Africa: the tragicomedy of my incel life in a nutshell
Hot Indian Curry but not for me
The desert stretches on. Into infinity?
The Norwegian babe aka Scandinavian screw-ups Part 2
Hitting the watershed age of 30, the only way out must be taken. I botch the suicide attempt of course
Flatliner
Reflections
My early thirties: my twenties seem rich and full by comparison. A woman asks me out
My 36th year. Another Golden Year that Wasn’t. The beautiful, sexy Lisa falls in love with me in Paradise Village
Attractive Jenny wants to bang me, and everybody else
Hot Asian Julia. If you don’t pounce, other tigers will
The black Aphrodite Jessica at the pool
Cute English Anne offers sex in exchange for a place to stay. I demur
I fall in love with the beautiful raven-haired Irene. So do other men working with her. She rejects us all
Looking back, how is my life-long incel even possible again?
Haughty Narcissus spurns the nymphs. The last I ever see of Karen, Sarah, Vicki, Laura
Meditations on other people’s suicides. My male cousins’ love-shyness, a meaningless coincidence or not?
What good is memory if it only runs backwards?
Further ruminations and cogitations
A selective nitty-gritty overview of Gilmartin’s pioneering study, its strengths and minor weaknesses, and how it shines a light on my own personal life
Movies!
Time is a River. It just keeps rolling rolling rolling along
The dice are loaded from the start
Gilmartin’s suggestions that never came to pass, and never would have
Middle-Age Funk. Middle-Aged Virgin’s Mid-Life Crisis is of a different class and order to his normal peers. No kidding. It’s a different phylum
Do as I say, not as I have done
Old Age looms ahead. Looking back at a blank canvas of a life and the mirage oases
Update February 2020:
Inceldom goes mainstream, for all the wrong reasons
Incel movie explosion, a new genre – the Incelploitation genre?
The extreme misogyny in the incel community really is out of control
Together alone
Personal news: a family humiliation I had been dreading for years comes to pass
Attractive Diane wants me to call her. I freeze and blow it of course
Young bisexual blonde Carla moves in next door. I fall in love. It’s a torture I can’t do without. Our age gap is 25 years
New teeth, lookmaxing
Yogamaxing and the women in my studio class
Attractive Kate has a boyfriend but asks me for my number anyhow. I freeze again. But of course
Sex surrogate on the horizon. Plan to lose my virginity in my 50th year
This memoir/essay has been updated in February 2020. Just scroll down to the lower part of this essay, where a new update is mentioned at the end of the original essay, entitled ‘Update February 2020’ [and a few things added again and edited, in mid-2020, notably in the introduction]. And the additional chapters follow (listed above). I mention events since this essay was originally published in October 2017, both personal, and it’s more black-comedy-can’t-make-it-up stuff as well as some positive steps I have taken since early 2019; and impersonal, that is incel-related events/happenings in the wider world, where the whole incel ‘culture’ thing has just exploded, and gone mainstream. I also acknowledge how I underestimated the depth and pervasiveness of the toxic misogyny in the incel community in the original essay. Sure I mention it, but it is worse than I originally thought.
Introduction
This lengthy essay tells my story, a pathetic memoir for sure, but one that is surreal, strange and perversely ironic. It is the story of – at the time of writing – a 47-year-old male heterosexual virgin. A life-long love-shy and/or incel (involuntary celibate) as we are called. Given the fact that I was a handsome youth who never thought getting the girls would be a problem, my life-long virginity – I have never really even kissed a girl – is simply ridiculous. Even unbelievable. However it is all too true. My story has real black comedy entertainment value, and is worth reading for that reason alone. If it wasn’t for the tragicomic angle, I would never have bothered even writing it up for public consumption. I refer to myself as ‘Danny C’ throughout this essay. This is a pseudonym, my first name is not Danny.
I also go on about incel/love-shy in the wider society, going beyond my personal story. I mention the dark side of inceldom – Elliot Rodger and the ‘virgin killers’, and my own spin here. I write about the lighter side of inceldom, the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin and my own take on it. I even write about female inceldom, via the prism of the Christine Chubbuck suicide, even though it was decades ago now. I mention, in considerable detail that may not be surpassed anywhere else (in fact I am sure it isn’t), the bible of the incel community, social psychologist Brian Gilmartin’s book on the subject Love & Shyness Causes, Consequences, and Treatment (1987). And how his uncanny insights and discoveries here relate to my own plight. Aside from the strengths of his book, I also acknowledge its weaknesses and flaws. And how the Internet and Social Media has rendered some of his advice inevitably anachronistic and by the by.
Throughout this essay I use the words ‘love-shy’ and ‘incel/involuntary celibacy’ interchangeably, although many love-shys/incels do not. According to Gilmartin’s definition of love-shy, and he coined the term really, a (male) love-shy – a heterosexual man who desires women, but for a number of reasons, depending on the person, he has zero success in this regard – is by definition an involuntary celibate. So I go along with Gilmartin’s definition. An incel is also not to be confused with a volcel, that is a voluntary celibate. For example a monk, priest (who isn’t diddling choir boys) or nun.
Before addressing all the above, to give the reader a wider view of incel/life-long virginity, as it is related on the Internet, here are just a very few links (compared to what’s out there) relating to the anguished world of incel. Some of my commentary thereon as well.
An interview with ‘Michael’, a well-known figure in the online world of inceldom, (the ex?) moderator of the love-shy.com forum, at Elle Magazine. Disclosure: I am a member of this forum (my moniker there is ‘silvereagle’). The love-shy forum is quiet, little posting at the time of publishing this essay online. This forum has its strengths and weaknesses (occasional asininity, occasional misogyny, trolling), but it’s worth checking out the archives, up to the present day. In fact there is much that I have learned from pouring over the commentary at the forum, much of it going way back. One sees the common threads in the lives of incels, but also the differences between us all. We are dare I say it, individuals, not slabs of concrete or colonies of bacteria in petri dishes. Update 2020: that forum is now defunct, so all links to it are dead links; it has been replaced by the loveshy.net forum which remains very quiet.
An online book: https://caamib.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/virgin-territory.pdf published by a fellow middle-aged virgin, that I recommend reading, posted under the name ‘Timothy Draper’ (not his real name, but a pseudonym).
‘Draper’ is a fellow love-shy.com forumite (his moniker there is some other pseudonym). His story parallels my own in several ways, but there are very significant differences in our lives. He didn’t have the advantage of physical attractiveness as he relates, and at least he gave it a shot.
https://incelblog.wordpress.com/ Seems to be inactive.
http://www.involuntarycelibacy.com/index.html
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/involuntary-celibacy. Allusions are made to The Journal of Sex Research (May 2001) article, “Involuntary Celibacy: A Life Course Analysis–Statistical Data Included.”
This paper even got a mention in the New Scientist.
The documentary Shy Boys got quite a lot of attention in the incel community.
The documentary is darkly comic and tragic – as this subject routinely is. And it covers a lot of the bases in the dark comedy world of incel (PUAs in training or so they hope, the different personalities, the poor self-esteem, palpable desperation and simultaneous resignation, that only becomes self-reinforcing over the years and decades). A love-shy person such as myself would sooner run through the city streets naked, with my thin, late forty-something body, than admit my identity; whereas these guys are showing who they are. For the whole word to see. That takes courage.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/12/what-its-like-to-be-a-58-year-old-virgin.html
Regarding the above interview with that 58-year-old male virgin (myself a decade from now! If I make it my God), naturally as a middle-aged virgin, I identify with everything he says. I just want to focus here on a few things. He says there, even though his libido is in natural decline, that the nightmare remains a daily one. As a 47-year-old virgin I more than understand, and I understand how the decline of the libido only exacerbates the misery and pain. Because it hits you what you have lost, and can never get back. Getting older is not in your imagination. You are getting older and what hasn’t happened can never happen. It is a wasted life. It hits you more and more as you get older. After you pass 40, psychologically it is difficult to bear.
https://www.salon.com/2003/10/08/virgin_6/ Here is related the tale of a handsome, successful, professional incel man of 49. Parallels my own life in many ways. His parents remind me of my own. His ineptness around girls who liked him, as a youth, struck me. As did his willful reclusiveness. I recognize my own self-destructiveness there.
http://www.nerve.com/love-sex/the-misunderstood-history-of-incel. An interesting article on Elliot Rodger and related.
Inside the terrifying twisted online world of involuntary celibates. An article from Salon. Perhaps a somewhat unfair and selective view of male incel in the aftermath of the Elliot Rodger killings (to be fair this article admits to being selective). Yet the hardcore misogyny is certainly there in the male incel world, and it hasn’t gone away. And unfortunately I doubt it ever will.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/minority-report/201706/involuntary-celibacy Article gives a cursory overview of inceldom.
An article from The Telegraph on the rise of Japan’s middle-aged virgins. There are apparently so many of them, a new word has been coined to describe them, the ‘yaramiso’. I must admit to being baffled by this phenomenon in Japan (it’s the last place I would expect to have a serious male incel problem).
2020 update: A worthy and sympathetic article on incels by William Costello, an Irish writer, amidst all the dross on incels that has been published since 2017…
https://www.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/ is a women friendly forum for incels, apparently. There has been a fair bit of banter on reddit re adult virginity/incel, as far as it goes.
There are a fair number of MGTOW (‘men go their own way’) blogs, their youtube channels and related, and what may be the latest offshoot there, the TRL (‘true forced loneliness’) movement. If ye seek ye shall find. Have to say, MGTOW is often a cover for inceldom, that refuses to call itself as such.
2020 update: There have been a lot of new forums for incels that mushroomed in the 2010s, especially on reddit; however many of them would be shut down in 2020, such as the reddit forums r/celmates, r/shortcels and r/standardcels. An incel forum called r/braincels was shut down earlier in 2019 and was probably the most popular incel forum at the time, certainly on reddit. In fact a mere month after my original essay went online, the r/Incels reddit group was shut down (November 2017), and even made news in The NY Times. Even ‘inceltears’ would get shut down in April 2020, it may or may not have been or will be revived.
Dr Brian Gilmartin’s book on incel is available online, and it is downloadable for free, and entirely legally. SHYNESS & LOVE Causes, Consequences, and Treatment.
2020 update: This link to the book above is now dead since the love-shy.com forum is now defunct. The book does not as of mid-2020 appear available at the new forum, love-shy.net. This may be temporary and if the book becomes available there, I will add the link in time. The closest I can find to the book being available online as of mid-2020 is at scribd for now. There is also amazon and google books.
This book – and it has its critics among the love-shys – is the Bible of the incel movement, and I remark here deservedly so. It is a tour de force. I could not believe when I finally got round to reading it, how uncannily accurate it was regarding my own tragic life experience. I mean I knew I was not the only incel/love-shy on the planet, but I thought my experiences in childhood and adolescence, and my later intractable love-shyness and its peculiar associated neuroses were largely unique. Clearly not. Albeit there are aspects to my experience that are bizarre and surreal even by the standards of love-shys, but that is all in this essay itself. I will add in an update that this book is now outdated, given how the whole culture has changed, to put it mildly. Now with the Internet, dating apps like Tinder, the new generations of millenials and zoomers, hypergamy, this book is positively antiquated. As such it is now a historical curiosity, and more relevant to oldcels such as myself when looking back on our wasted youths (hence why I give it a lot of attention further down); but youngcels will find much of it no longer relevant or applicable, although some of it certainly still is.
Gilmartin’s book was published decades back (1987). I reference his ideas, discoveries and notions throughout this essay, not only because it is pertinent to my own incel experience, but clearly most male heterosexual incels of my generation (and even the generation that has followed, although so much has changed of course). Whatever our differences and unique circumstances. His book is a serious and thorough academic text (although its chapter on astrology and reincarnation can throw a lot of people off, it’s only one small part of a large text). This book was originally published to little fanfare, but it got renewed attention via the online male hetero incel community. It is long out of print and as far as I know only translated into Japanese.
On astrology, let me just mention something as a matter of interest. My mother was heavily into astrology, and when I was a teenager of about 15, she went to an apparently well-known astrologer in our city, to have mine and my sister’s charts/horoscopes done. So this astrologer recorded what she had to say on magnetic cassette. And my sister and I had our horoscopes to hand that way. I have long since lost the cassette, and I don’t remember anything the astrologer said about my personality/character/destiny. Except for one thing. That struck me then and I have always remembered it. It is the only thing I remember from that tape. Namely she remarked that I would be the type of man who would always need a woman, and without a woman I would be useless.
Gilmartin died in 2016 in his 76th year, to no public fanfare or notice from his fellow academics, sociologists and psychologists alike. Well when your masterpiece is a taboo subject…
My personal life-story – my self-destructive attitudes and behavior – form the main body of this essay, its skeleton so to speak. My allusions to Gilmartin are interspersed throughout this essay. So much of this essay has a semi-academic style to it. For those who prefer to get straight to the sad-hilarious personal screw-ups (that the reader will know are true, because you cannot make any of it up. It is simply too off-the-charts crazy and surreal to be fiction), just do a find for ‘Winona’ or ‘Laura’ (same young woman), the ‘Swedish beauty’ (this tragicomic tale is the centerpiece to the ironic madness that has been my life), the ‘Norwegian’ babe, ‘Lisa’, ‘Julia’, ‘Jessica’ and ‘Jodi’. There are others too, well all the girls and women I mention, but these females I remark on above are the girls/women whose appearances in my life have the most black comedy value. A tragicomedy of a life for sure.
The lighter side of incel
So let us get the ball rolling, and start with the comedic side of late-life virginity, namely via the Judd Apatow film from 2005, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, because it is both funny and sad and it is where the plight of the incel crossed over into mainstream popular culture. I also show up how this film has relevance to me personally, my own personal twist on it so to speak.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a genuinely funny comedy, but naturally to incels, it can be easier to watch a horror franchise than The 40-Year-Old Virgin. That film came out in 2005, when I was 35 and I knew man oh man that is me at 40. And of course five years later (in 2010), I was the real 40-year-old virgin. Although the film is a comedy, and thus doesn’t pretend to be a serious analysis or account of adult virgins, it touches on a few things from a black comedy angle that only the real 40-year-old virgins can truly appreciate.
Being a comedy, accounting for Steve Carell’s character’s (Andy Stitzer) lifelong virginity is breezily swept aside as just a few unfortunate embarrassing encounters with women in the bedroom, that scared away Andy from even approaching women. In real life, it would never be so simple. Especially considering Andy’s otherwise being normal psychologically (well relatively. His strangeness, emotional flatness and boring life is a direct consequence of incel and nothing else. Seth Rogen’s character is initially convinced Andy is a serial killer!), and being a presentable and handsome man. In real life, it is something always darker, always. The 40-Year-Old Virgin cannot be faulted for not going there (Andy say as an inhibited and anxious child, socially isolated, largely friendless; as Gilmartin uncovered in his admirable research on love-shys). It is a comedy. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. However there are things that feature in that film that has the incel both laughing and crying (often simultaneously) with recognition. When Andy is busted as a 40-year-old virgin, that is when he is shooting the breeze with his work colleagues in typical male locker room style, at a poker game when the booze is flowing and the talk inevitably comes down to women. He is asked to relate a salacious sexual experience, and naturally does his best to cover up the fact of his virginity, but only screws up (there is nothing that most all incels fear more than being exposed as virgins, especially as they get older, unless they are monks/priests/nuns but we are not talking voluntary celibates here and hence those misguided sexually repressed vocations. For the real consequences to such misguided vocations see films such as Spotlight and 1978’s Behind Convent Walls). Andy gives himself away by saying (well he’s lying of course) that the girl he was with made the kind of horny talk, that no woman outside of what one imagines a caricature of an Oriental hooker from a Bangkok brothel, actually makes. The real zinger – the give-away that he is a 40-year-old virgin – though is when he says how the woman’s breasts felt “like a bag of sand”. This makes me laugh uproariously to this day.
The scenes that follow in the film, Andy up all night worrying about what will happen the next day at work, and Paul Rudd’s character David chasing a frantic Andy through the mall where they work, yelling in front of mall shoppers, ‘nobody cares that you are a virgin’, are among the funniest in the film. But the humor is bittersweet and black comedy. Especially to the real-life virgins. We identify so much with Andy’s plight because we worry about getting found out as virgins. I know there are life-long virgins who admit to it, most of us can’t imagine ever fessing up. Not even under torture, not even if being stretched on a rack or burned alive at the stake. Except maybe to a therapist, and even then, most of us would balk (I have balked here as well as I mention further down). In fact many of us have invented whole fictitious backstories, that we repeat to ourselves, like students swotting for a heavy exam, like children inventing whole imagined worlds, so as to prevent an Andy-like ‘her breasts felt like “a bag of sand” incident’ from ever happening.
So my own fictitious, that is made-up backstory, is this: I was once engaged at 23, but we broke up, probably all for the best, and there was never anything really serious after that. A few women after that, but largely light non-serious affairs that didn’t last long. Now I am not really looking, my chequered love life is part of my past. If something happens, something happens. I no longer live in the same city I grew up in, so I can do this. If you live in the same hometown you grew up in, even as you are in your thirties/forties/fifties, well that’s a different story of course. Obviously if you have lived your whole life in the same big city with millions of people, you should be able to get away with bullshit easier than if you have lived your whole life in a smaller city or town. It also depends on whether you have stayed in touch with the people you grew up with.
I even have the names of these non-existent girls/women down pat, and how old I was when I dated these non-existent females, so I don’t ever get my stories confused and contradict myself. You cannot tell one work colleague/acquaintance/friend one story and another person (especially in the same town, or people who know one another or mix in the same circles) another story. You will get caught out in no time. In fact you need to keep your stories straight, not only with work colleagues, and friends and acquaintances, but even with near strangers, or people you just meet up with. That’s because the world is a smaller place than you realize and even if you live in a big city, people know people. And you have to keep your story straight year after year, decade after decade. I have always just chosen the names of girls/women I had genuine affection for/deeply desired/had crushes on (always from afar of course), so that it would be easy to remember the names. Just remember the years you assign for your non-existent relations. Don’t make it that many girls because it arouses suspicion. Keep it to a handful or less. Admit to not having much luck with women, just a little here and there, as it allays suspicion. Another reverse psychology tactic, admit to having lost your virginity late, say at 19 or 20. I have done this, I lost my virginity late at 20. This allays suspicion, as you are not boasting. In other words, it is easily believable. Of course here I am in my late forties, a virgin, reluctantly admitting to losing my virginity late, at 20! when losing my virginity late at 30 or 35 would have been a dream come true at this point in time! The real black comedies that are our lives are something else. Also when or if you are caught up in a guys’ or gals’ locker room talk, say your private life is private, sex to you is something intimate and special, not something you talk about to those who are not your lover/s. You may get razzed on a bit, but people respect that. And in fact that should be your position even if you are a Don Juan! And if they don’t respect your retinence, that’s their bag. And what else can they do anyhow? Plus chances are, especially once you are past a certain age, this won’t ever happen. This way no such The 40-Year-Old Virgin Andy give-away can ever happen.
There are other things in that film that make me laugh with sad recognition, such as when Andy doesn’t know how to put on a condom. That is why as a young man I made sure to try on condoms so I would know how to put ’em on! Even if I was no great shakes in the love-making department, at least I would be adept at putting on a condom and not arouse suspicion of having had zero sex experience. Well decades later, such adeptness at condom slip-on, turned out no need for it.
The darker side of incel
Anyhow let us move on to the dark side of incel, and my own personal take on it…
And this came to the fore with the ‘virgin killer’ Elliot Rodger Isla Vista killings and suicide in 2014 most notably (which a fair number of people spin according to their own personal and political agenda). Also of course there was the George Sodini Collier Township/LA Fitness shootings and suicide back in 2009. The Umpqua Community College shootings in 2015, resulting in the suicide of the sexually frustrated mass-shooter Chris Harper-Mercer, follows a similar if not identical psychopathic dynamic. It’s worth mentioning that the infamous Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard undergrad at 16, is a virgin killer – a virgin when he started his bombing campaign in 1978 in his 36th year, and a virgin now in jail, in his seventies.
Now there has been a fair bit of inevitable fallout to the tragic murders and suicide in Isla Vista, California 2014 most notably. The attention given to incels, and the selective spotlight on the transparent, unashamed and even violent misogyny and thus psychosis of a few unhinged and hateful characters in the online incel community. The PUAHate (PUA stands for Pickup Artist) and PUA online communities themselves came under the spotlight. The online, toxic segment of the incel bubble, and the misogyny therein, got nearly all the focus (whilst generally ignoring the fact that it was just a small part of the incel bubble, but we all got tarred by the same brush). This wasn’t helped by fellow hardcore misogynists (incels or not) calling Rodger “a hero”, or blaming the women for Rodger’s psychosis, as a few bad apples did. The incel community (and no most of us are not psychotic mass shooters in waiting, but some certainly give off that vibe) felt as if we were all tainted by this lone mad killer. At least one rather notorious PUAHate Forum got shut down. The shame of male incel got a lot lot worse, and who thought that possible before Rodger? Much has been written about Rodger of course: his obvious misogyny, his blaming women for his lack of success with them, his self-pity, his narcissism, his obvious lack of empathy, his need to broadcast his perceived plight and his desire for revenge against society on Social Media. Because if it’s not on the Internet, on Social Media such as youtube, Twitter, it hasn’t happened or it doesn’t matter.
So here was a young man from a wealthy home (not good-looking but not ugly), he drove a BMW at 22, who couldn’t get laid, he takes his anger out on those in his vicinity (shooting and killing men as well as women), before killing himself. Amidst much of the often heated outrage and anger at Rodger (all understandable of course), some of the most telling facts about Rodger are often missed. His manifesto and his mass shooting actions, reveal that the reason Rodger never got a girl, was missed entirely by Rodger himself, and shockingly many people (incel or not) appear to miss it too. The reason that Rodger never hooked up with a girl was his personality, or more truly his character. His narcissism, self-absorption was so severe (even by the standards of shallow California and Hollywood), he clearly gave off psychopath signals and vibes. This is obvious, not only because as we know he was a psychopath killer, but it is there as clear as day in his video broadcast and his manifesto.
His self-destructive – but he doesn’t see it – behavior at parties, setting himself up for being ostracized, ignored and rejected by the other party goers no doubt would have applied to all other aspects of his life. All social settings. Even in a shallow self-absorbed culture such as ours, Rodger was clearly unpleasant, anti-social and severely neurotic, beyond that, psychotic. A young man who couldn’t even pretend to fake any real feelings for anybody. And that is why he couldn’t get a girl. He literally scared them away. Now obviously there are reasons for this, that certainly go back to a damaged childhood and early adolescence. That is a whole other thing. Rodger’s tragedy reveals that the problems with at least a significant proportion of incels are not what many incels (unless they are unattractive and yes that is a lot of incels, and/or physically handicapped or very short, or a psychological issue. There is the prevalence of Asperger’s among incels for example) and ordinary non-incel society think they are. With at least some of us – even if it is a minority of incels – we are talking behavioral disorders. Rodger had a wealthy family who didn’t keep him short on the material front. A 22 year old driving a newish BMW is a big deal, even in the affluent suburbs of America. Rodger was not unattractive, not physically handicapped, and not impoverished. And yet who wouldn’t get psycho vibes from him. He was his own worst enemy, not the female gender as he supposed in his fevered self-pitying imaginings.
Christine Chubbuck and female incel
After The 40-Year-Old Virgin and the Elliot Rodger shootings, a third bar to long-term adult incel/virginity – that is a part of our incel cultural or adult virgin social cultural heritage/history (for lack of a better term), even though less widely known than both of the former – is the tragedy of the Christine Chubbuck live on-air suicide in Florida in 1974. And this is very much the more realistic or true face of incel/long-term adult virginity. A Hollywood comedy is just that, and a psychopath virgin killer is not the true face of incel, any more than serial killer Ted Bundy is the face of most heterosexual noncel men. The Christine Chubbuck suicide has become better known of late thanks to two movies about her life, both coming out in 2016 strangely enough. Christine where British actress Rebecca Hall portrays Christine and the documentary Kate Plays Christine which depicts the actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares for the role of Chubbuck.
Chubbuck was a news anchor at a local Florida TV station. She would commit suicide live on air during a news broadcast back in 1974. As her wiki entry informs us:
During the first eight minutes of her program, Chubbuck covered three national news stories and then a shooting from the previous day at local restaurant Beef & Bottle, at the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport. The film reel of the restaurant shooting had jammed and would not run, so Chubbuck shrugged it off and said on-camera, “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts’, and in living color, you are going to see another first—attempted suicide.” She drew the revolver and shot herself behind her right ear. Chubbuck fell forward violently and the technical director faded the broadcast rapidly to black.
The station quickly ran a standard public service announcement and then a movie. Some television viewers called the police, while others called the station to inquire if the shooting was staged.
Yes it was as unprecedented as it was shocking. The thing is she was a life-long virgin when she committed suicide on air, at the age of 29. And that is what makes her not only the true, tragic lonely face of incel/adult virginity in the real world, but surely incel’s most sympathetic public face (and female incel’s most public face). She made it so. Given the double taboo of incel/adult virginity and suicide, even though what she did was so shocking and remains so, even in the 21st century Internet and Media News Age where we are so jaded to violence and even terror, her on-air suicide remained relatively little known or talked about in the wider world. However the release of two indie films about the subject recently, has brought her tragic life and death, into a relatively larger focus in the public consciousness.
Note how she decided to commit suicide just prior to turning thirty (as I had intended to do – related further down. It is not unusual among lifelong incels/virgins). There is something depressing about turning thirty – a watershed age – without having ever gotten any. One’s youth is over, and what is there to look forward to? More lonely nights? The desperation intensifies. Will anything ever change? And how? Her choice to do it on-air is also telling. Why? Why not in the privacy of her apartment like everybody else? Because she could do it on-air? Because she wanted the world to know she existed, she lived, she was not a ghost nor a shadow, not a background piece of furniture. Nobody noticed her (not in the way that matters, as a woman to be loved), so she would make sure they noticed her. Because she would be immortal that way and live forever or for at least as long as what passes for our culture survives (and the two films about her ensure that). I am Christine and I was here. I think her aggrievement at her boss, at TV news politics and its asininity (portrayed in the film Christine, the only one I have seen) and getting back at them via an on-air live suicide, would only have been a secondary factor. For what it’s worth, I think Rebecca Hall’s performance is first-rate, she gets the awkwardness, the loneliness and frustration of a late twentysomething virgin woman, without sinking into any kind of overacting, or shrillness.
I also think this suicide has not gotten the notice it otherwise would – among the incel community – because Christine Chubbuck was a woman, not a man. Christine’s tragic life and suicide shows up the lie to at least some among the male incel community’s rationale that female incel doesn’t exist, or is somehow less excusable. Or less painful. Even though I concede Gilmartin’s point that women are able to cope with incel better emotionally, psychologically, than incel men. It is not a universal rule of course. There would be plenty exceptions. And Christine was one of them.
And here I want to make mention of female incel in general, because it appears to be overlooked and marginalized, even by a fair few male incels. And this is where there can be a double standard. A fair chunk of the male incel community (even if it’s a minority) regards female adult virginity or incel, as an impossibility. Only male incel is real.
What I mean is to many of these men, incel women don’t exist. They are either lying, exaggerating or voluntary celibates. Yet female incel is all too real. I shouldn’t even have to write that. And such women are in a lot of mental pain, just as the male incel is. What I want to get out here is this: where at least some incel males show up a double standard to which they are largely oblivious; to these incel males, all women can get laid. Even the obese and ugly ones. Because many guys will just fuck anything, even sheep, goats and the trunks of cars, windowpanes and doors. Apparently. These guys know not what is going on in the world of the female incel, they think it doesn’t or somehow shouldn’t exist.
I have known unattractive women (not always obese), who do not get laid. Ever. And never have. It is not something I have discussed with them – our mutual plight. I don’t discuss this with anybody. Ever. It is just something I noticed, and who could be surprised? There are lots of lonely women out there, fat or not. The obesity epidemic doesn’t mean fat is the new normal, even thought at some level that’s true enough. Obesity is still unattractive, it just means probably more women are doing without sex, and romantic relationships. Even though I know there are normal-looking guys who are not obese, that hook up with fat girls. Even very fat girls. I am amazed at this. But there you go. I am amazed that really obese girls get sex from guys and I, who was once a good-looking young man, thin but with good muscle tone, still wait for my first kiss. Yet many fat girls do without sex. Despite the insistence of male incels thinking they know better. Even as they don’t usually have anything to do with obese women. They don’t know them and they don’t really interact with them. If you see these obese women, they are at bookstores buying romance and fantasy books. You don’t see them outside of work or college so much, you don’t tend to see them at the bars and night-clubs (it is humiliating and painful for them, and the contrast with the beautiful women who frequent nightclubs and bars is too much for them to bear), because they are at home. Crying into their pillows. Watching TV. Surfing the net (and yes masturbating to Internet porn). Reading a book. Just like you and me.
I know of at least two women (one is the sister of a school friend, the other one a girl I went to school with), in my age group, who are in all likelihood life-long virgins. I know even though they have never said anything here. I don’t know them well these days. But I know nothing has changed for them over the years. I had a great aunt (on my father’s side) who died a virgin in her eighties. She once ran through a hotel room when she was in her thirties screaming ‘rape rape’. A hysterical consequence to her life-long virginity and sexual frustration. My old man said at her funeral, ‘imagine going to the grave without a screw’. Yeah well your son may well do so, in all likelihood (my late father thought I have been with a very few women, including prostitutes. Toward the end of his life he just thought I was gay).
A further expansion on this theme (the female incel): I used to frequent this café where three beautiful young women worked (part of the reason I frequented the café), the 3 Graces I called them. Well not to their faces. They are really sweet young women, not bitches at all (in fact the one girl’s name is Grace!). But often enough, there would be a new female employee at the café. And often enough, the new employee was not an attractive young woman, often fat. And even though the three beauties were always polite and genuinely sweet to the new girl, the new fat girl couldn’t help but notice the beauty of her colleagues, and how men responded to them (but not to the fat or unattractive girl), and it would clearly be mortifying to her. Often these new employees did not stick around for long (and who couldn’t notice how besotted the male clientele were around the Three Graces, but not the fat or unattractive girls), because it was depressing for them. I don’t know what kind of work would even have suited them better, but that’s another thing. The thing is I noticed this, because I identified somewhat with the plight of the female incel. The thing is the male incel who is convinced all women can get laid, even if very overweight, wouldn’t even notice any of this, even if he was a frequent visitor to this café. It doesn’t occur to him that plenty overweight women would be mortified of being naked in front of a man, even a man who may express interest. It doesn’t occur to him that many overweight and/or unattractive women are so unhappy with themselves, that they could never enjoy sex with a man, because they could never be naked with a man, because so ashamed of their bodies. Naturally other fat women have no such problems at all. But plenty do. The male incel who talks utter garbage when he says all fat women can get sex, doesn’t have any sensitivity in this regard. And a perverse double standard that not only reeks of misogyny, but it is downright obtuse. Male incels shouldn’t be expected to lower their standards, if they have standards (I concur here), but female incels should do so, and just fuck any creature with a penis who comes along, and shows an interest. A male incel will often admit to being in good shape, going to the gym, but he can’t get a woman anyhow; but a fat female incel, if she is not getting any, it is her own fault. Seriously? And these same guys are all convinced they are so wonderful and sensitive and it’s the other guys who are getting sex who are all the jerks. Um seriously?
With that said, I do concur with Gilmartin, that on average male incels suffer more psychologically than female incels. Men need women more that women need men, as Gilmartin himself writes.
The two female incels I have known, and they have suffered, were able to handle a life without sex better than myself. They succeeded in their careers, have friends and an active social life. They may get lonely on occasion, even depressed, but they have not sunk into the kind of depressions, neuroses and rage, that defines the falling-apart-world of the male incel. Myself included. One sees this with how widows are able to handle the deaths of their spouses better than widowers are able to hand the deaths of their spouses. Nature knows what she is doing, women are intended to outlive men. They can cope so much better with the death of their life partner. Men need women more than women need men. However there are female incels that cannot cope any better than male incels can, who are just as heartbroken and suicidally depressed. Christine Chubbick is a case in point. And that is why she is off the radar to the male incel, unlike say the banter over The 40-Year-Old Virgin or the ‘virgin killers’.
Of course, female incels are off the map to women who are attractive and get laid, get the males’ attention. In fact, is anybody more cruel to unattractive women and girls than attractive females? The occasional nastiness, the sneering directed the way of ugly and obese girls (whether they have boyfriends or not) from the cool cliques of pretty girls and women is often on a par with the cruelty of attractive alpha males toward beta males, and unattractive females. So it seems. Maybe it’s just the psychological dynamics that are different. However it is something that even teenage boys quickly pick up on, the superior attitude of a fair proportion of pretty girls toward their less attractive female peers. I noticed it with my pretty sister and her pretty friends. Unattractive girls were not really welcome in their circles and there was no reason ever given, because unstated, because it didn’t need to be stated. Everybody knew.
Misogyny, and confusion worse confounded
In the post-1960 milieu, given the sexual revolution in the West, one would expect that those of us who fall by the wayside, the involuntary celibates, should be given more attention and focus both in academic circles and in the popular culture. But what really comes to mind? The film which I have already mentioned in some detail, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. What else? I mean aside from the recent spate of virgin/incel psychopathic mass shooters/killers (that I likewise have already covered)? Elliot Rodger, etc. Greeeaaat. Nothing else really comes to mind. The frustrated teenager and/or college-age geek and/or computer genius nerd who can’t get laid, a perennial staple in Hollywood TV dramas/comedies and film, is something else (see the TV series The Big Bang Theory for example, and the character of Dinesh played by Kumail Nanjiani in Silicon Valley). I am talking the life-long incels here. Men and women over 25, over 30, who have never had intimate relations. And don’t appear to have a hope in hell of ever doing so. Clearly there is a taboo here. And that also motivated me to write my own experience up here, aside from the possible cathartic aspects of a personal confession. And the tragicomedy entertainment value for the reader. And a case study for the interested psychologist/psychiatrist, even sociologist. Also I find so much misunderstanding and asinine commentary, especially from the non-virgin adult populace, re the life-long virginity thing. However male incels themselves, in their despair and frustrations, can become their own worst enemies, and sink into counter-productive rage and self-destructiveness. And misogyny.
So for example, there was some guy who got a lot of attention from the online community of incels, and those highly critical of its excesses (including militant feminists/SJW types), when he said, frustrated by years of incel, that he had invented a new game. He called it ‘bumpa cunto’. The original link is no longer online. The only site that now references it appears to be this one (admittedly a far Left political one, but it is the only source I can find now).
Basically to sum up this guy’s psychosis: since women ignored him completely and would have nothing to do with him, he would force them to acknowledge him. They would have no choice but to recognize he was there, even as his confrontation with females would be aggressive, borderline violent, well actually violent, and hence even dangerous. He would and did walk down his city’s streets and simply walk straight into women, not get out of the way as they approached, but physically push into them, physically charge them really; inevitably eliciting angry responses from the females he accosted. Why don’t you look where you are going, what do you think you are doing etc. This was the result he wanted and of course this is the result he got. Amidst all the idiot cheering from the misogynists among the incels (all this seems to no longer be online as I write above. One of the consequences perhaps of the Elliot Rodger rampage) and the understandable outrage and rebuke from feminists and others, everybody missed the point. Namely why did he resort to this tactic?
The subconscious has it reasons that the conscious mind does not know. People took him at his word, about why he did what he did. But why we do what we do is not for the reasons we think, especially when we are neurotic or worse. The mind’s deep recesses calls the shots, and we are consciously oblivious. My God I see this in my own life, with my needless sabotage of any potential intimacy with a woman. For decades. My whole life (Strange. I just corrected a typo when I typed ‘life’. I originally wrote ‘lie’. ‘My whole lie’ in other words. Freudian slip? As if to prove my point about the subconscious!). My point about this man and his ‘bump a cunt’ game (even calling women cunts is consistent with the misogyny that saw him physically charge them down on city streets) is that he does not know why he does what he does. He had no intimacy with women, he was desperate for a woman’s touch, the feel of her skin, her scent. Even if he doesn’t admit it in that way. Any recognition from a woman that he is alive and a man, not a ghost, not a shadow, will do. By bumping into them, he gets to have physical contact. It may be rough, it may be unfriendly, very rude, violent. However it is physical contact nonetheless. With all its misogynist overtones. And if a woman won’t give him loving contact, then any other kind will do. Better than nothing at all. If a woman won’t address him with loving words (another seeming typo I just had to correct, I originally wrote ‘living words’. Yet they are living words, as they are loving words. For to love is to live and to live is to love), with sexual desire, then let her scream at him, pour scorn and contempt and rage at him. At least she acknowledges he is there! At least she acknowledges he exists and is speaking to him, even if the words are nasty and rude (and understandably so). And at least he gets to have physical contact with Women! Better that than nothing at all. This was missed by everybody it would seem. The misogynist incel fools cheering him on, because inceldom is all women’s fault apparently. And the rather obtuse crowd knee-jerk pouring scorn and anger on the guy. Not that he didn’t deserve it. My point is people missed what is going on. They routinely do.
In reading the reams of posts by incels at incel forums over the years, there are several things that stick out and need to be mentioned. Incels, excepting those that are truly unattractive, obese, very short, impoverished, physically and/or mentally handicapped or suffering from some behavioral disorder (admittedly it’s a fair number, notably the unattractive incels), can be their own worst enemies. As am I. Firstly, as I make clear above, there is undeniable and yes extreme misogyny among a fair few male incels (even as I consider it a minority). The females are to blame for rejecting me, the poor incel, is a mantra one hears from these types. Females are all shallow, materialistic, they hook up with brainless jerks and jocks. All they care about is money. As if this shallow, materialistic culture was created and sustained by women. As if women run the economy and set up the advertising industry, and ruthless crony capitalist industries, kleptocratic governments and regimes, and their endless shenanigans and tyranny. As if women are behind socio-economic injustices, the slums and ghettos of the world. It is obvious what is going on here. Incel has put Woman on a pedestal. He worships her. Then when his erotic and romantic yearnings are not returned, he reacts with rage and anger at the Objects of his Affection and Desire. So incel’s misogyny is paradoxical – he ends up hating what he hungers for, because his desires are essentially unrequited.
There are some incels who complain about women who are only into guys who are good looking and have athletic bodies, whilst insisting on only going for girls/women who are physically attractive, with good bodies. On this subject though – men and women only seeking out partners who are attractive – we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. I for one don’t even think I could get an erection for an unattractive woman if I wanted to. Well if she’s unattractive to oneself, how does one respond in an erotic way? Although I certainly have dropped my standards, especially as I have gotten older. I have lost my hair, gone very thin, I wear glasses now, other things. Never mind the fact that I have never even touched a woman in an erotic way! There is a minimum bar. Nature and hence physical sexual attraction is what it is. We are attracted to attractive people. That’s why they inspire both envy and admiration. That’s why physical attractiveness is emphasised so much in our culture. And youth. And Nature is not sentimental, nor does she care for anything but her own enigmatic whims and ways, forever mysterious. It is neither shallow nor deep to want to sleep with attractive people. It is nature. And human nature. Don’t beat yourself up too much for seemingly being superficial in this regard. You are not being superficial. And you are not being profound. Any more than eating when you are hungry is shallow or deep. Or shivering when it is cold is a shallow superficial thing to do. It is nature. Nothing more and nothing less. Have a sense of humor about it. It is funny. It is harsh and cruel too. It is in other words, the nature of Nature. And Nature has no room for human delusions such as sentiment and wishful thinking. As tsunamis and hurricanes tell us, and the bites of scorpions, snakes and spiders. And decrepitude in old age.
Yet the misogyny of a fair few incel men is something else. As if these men were getting laid, and all looked like Ryan Gosling, they would behave any differently to the way a beautiful woman does. That is keeping above the fray, and seeking a partner who matches her in the looks department, and it is understandable that women would and do seek out partners equivalent or higher up in terms of social and financial status. It’s not just (a few) incels, but men in general (at least a fair number of them), who appear to come to resent women for their beauty and the power such beauty has over men. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Unfortunately many men want to punish women (and men themselves in the process) for their beauty and the sexual power women have over men. Also does one want to share something as distasteful as misogyny with Victorian prudes and Muslim fanatics? That’s a rhetorical question of course.
All this leaped out in an otherwise thoughtful, honest, sensitive and painful blog post I was reading, written by a man who had been incel in his prime years, his twenties. He remarked how he had been a nice guy, sensitive, caring to women, but got nowhere, just friendzoned all the time. Whilst all the jerks (and frankly an incel’s definition of a jerk/asshole is any guy sleeping with a pretty woman because incel ain’t getting any) got the girls; the girls just wanted to be his friend or had no interest in him whatsoever. He changed tactics, went all hypergame, and got the girls. I believe it. Yet he fails to realize how if the tactic of being ‘nice’ didn’t work after a year or two, maybe he should have changed tactics back then. Not you know twelve years later?
I didn’t get girls/women whatsoever, not because I was playing the ‘nice guy’ (that is pretending to be a certain way, adopting or feigning various characteristics), I didn’t get the women because I have behaved like a fucking idiot who was convinced he never deserved a girl. And couldn’t get a girl. And looked like the swamp monster (yes I was handsome, but I suffered from a body dysmorphic disorder/BDD. I get into this bizarre and surreal chapter in my life, in relating my life story below). I didn’t get the girls because I was caught up in destructive self-fulfilling prophecies. Also, he expects girls to go for ‘nice guys’, but do guys go for ‘nice girls’? Did he go for ‘nice girls’? He doesn’t address this at all. It’s a non-issue! In fact it is clear he never went for nice girls (whatever that means), but attractive ones. He doesn’t apply universal standards. God forbid. Girls don’t go for beta males (and unattractive males). As a rule. They also want men with healthy self-esteem, not just confidence as one of the former idols of PUA Neil Strauss relates. Confidence can be faked. Esteem is something else. It goes deeper and cannot be faked. And girls/women pick up on its presence or lack thereof. Women have their hormones, they are as horny as guys. And then some. Thank God. Even though I have never taken advantage of it, not for a day. Not for an hour or a minute. Did this guy ever go for a girl because she was ‘nice’, because she was sensitive and a good listener? Rather than say have nice-looking breasts, hair, nose, lips, jawline, face, legs, ass, skin? The questions answer themselves. He doesn’t even pretend he was interested in girls who were not physically attractive, he doesn’t even pretend their personalities and character came into it (I am the same, most all male incels – and men in general – are. My point is at least some incels seem oblivious of a double standard here). He talks about how he acted, how he cared or pretended to care rather. He makes it clear – or leaves implicit – that he was attracted to the girls/women he was attracted to, because of their looks and figures. First and foremost.
In other words, he has one set of rules for how men do and are expected to behave, and another set of rules for women. As far as men are concerned, it’s all about the females’ looks and bodies. It’s evolution. It’s nature. It is the howl of the wolf. And the call of the beast. I am Man. Hear Me Roar. Women must all be you know just so much deeper, and suppress their own nature, their own physical desires, in favor of falling for the sensitive-artist-as-a-young-man act. This double standard on principle is misogyny. And other male incels, oblivious of their double standards here, cheered him on (well a fair number of them). And there was otherwise much of value in his blog post. He was otherwise a sensitive and probably decent man. And I know his pain. I have suffered it. Far worse. I am not saying don’t go for attractive women only, I am the same, and Gilmartin himself pointed out that this mindset is widespread among male incels; my point is don’t cry if women likewise focus on the aesthetics, on male beauty and physical strength, on alpha male status attributes (including financial status). It is biology. It is culture. And a culture that men are as responsible for as women. Definitely more so, since it is a Man’s World. Yes even now.
Note how animals don’t turn sex into a problem. They do not have a war of the sexes because they are not insane, unlike humanity. There is a paradox at play here, men and women can bond during sex in a way that animals cannot. There is greater sexual pleasure (think of the female clitoris and orgasm), face to face contact. And yet only men and women use one another, are intimate with one another, and then hate and turn against one another. Not cats, not whales, not wolves, and not hamsters. I could never understand when I was a high school kid how men and women could be physically intimate with one another, and then hate one another with so much venom and malice. It didn’t make sense to me. At some level it still doesn’t!
To reiterate: on the topic of male incels and males in general, seeking out girls/women who are physically attractive, and ignoring all other attributes that women possess or do not possess… In other words, caring only if the woman is physically attractive, and absolutely nothing else, especially when we are young men: we have our minds and bodies as Nature – totally free of gooey sentiment – programmed us. It is funny. It is sad. It is pain and it is pleasure. It is not SHALLOW and it is not DEEP to want to fuck attractive people. It is the nature of our nature. Don’t beat yourself up about it. You may as well get upset about babies crying (and plenty idiots do), dogs barking and cats acting superior, because they are btw. Those natural desires are not shallow, any more than a woman’s beauty is in and of itself shallow. It is what it is. Nature’s sheer mystery, and at a fundamental level it is incredible and miraculous. As much as it is capricious. It is not shallow when women and girls go all mushy brained and their pussies get all wet over attractive men (or women even), even if those men (or women) are shallow jerks themselves (or not). Let’s just not have a double standard about it. Let us just be honest that both men and women desire to fuck attractive mates. It’s tough. It’s rough on most of us, especially as we age and lose our looks. Who said the game of sex and relationships is easy? It’s Suffering it is. Like Life itself.
The world of the PUA and its overlap with love-shys
I now go off on a seeming tangent, but what I now relate is relevant to the lives of life-long virgins, including my own for sure, and there is something of a perverse irony operating here. That is the lives of successful Pick Up Artists/PUAs and Don Juans on the one extreme and the sexually frustrated lives of involuntary celibates, have a fair bit in common! As is routinely the case with extremes. It struck me when reading the books by one of the gods of PUA, Neil Strauss’s The Game and The Truth, that there is an uncanny irony operating in all our lives (that of incels and PUAs). So much that Strauss reveals and confesses to, in both his books – the details of Strauss’s varied sexual escapades, the PUA thrills and adventures/misadventures, threesomes, foursomes, moresomes, orgies of different types across the world, polyamory of every persuasion – is that his sexual escapades and mis/adventures are rooted in neuroses, a sense of emptiness, and a lack of life authenticity, that parallels that of many an incel.
The Truth is basically the sequel, albeit it goes on a very different track, to the best-selling phenomenon of Strauss’s, The Game, a book Strauss has since disowned. Briefly my take on what became the bible of PUA, The Game, is that everybody misunderstands it, especially humorless feminists. Even Strauss does not appear even now to see the deeper truths in the book, that is the book’s inadvertent and unintended subtext and thus why it remains valuable. It is also very very funny (as is The Truth). The subtext to The Game being the deep loneliness, the damaged childhoods of all the wannabe and actual PUAs, and how it drives their desperation to succeed with women on the sexual front, whatever their bravado pretense to the contrary. The lack of anything else real in our alienating and unnatural urban jungles, our jobs as cogs in the Machine, the lack of contact with what is real and authentic in Life and Nature, and hence the overemphasis on sex. The inevitable conflicts, misunderstandings, backstabbings, confusion and disillusionment follow in the wake of all that. The mistaking of sex for love. The seeking of self-worth and self-esteem through women desiring us, and wiping the shame and humilations from our lives in the process; rather than knowing ourselves and facing our trauma head-on. I mean I know, whilst no PUA in training (no kidding!), I know how these guys feel.
I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I am not saying that the only motivations for the kind of sexcapades that Strauss describes, are neurotic. A man, a woman, can have some adventurous, kinky experiences, threesomes, foursomes, polyamory and the like, as a healthy exploration, a pushing the boundaries of one’s sexual life. In a way that is hearty and robust. I am no prude. It depends on why they do what they do, not so much what they do.
I guess this is where I should just remark in passing that the whole PUA sub-culture thing, the gurus there and their cult-like followers, the self-help PUA books, all seemed to have peaked about a decade back. It now seems to have faded away, not only because of the inevitable in-fighting, but because it was for the most part, built on so many false hopes, insecurities and wishful thinking.
Getting back to Strauss, The Game and the more mature The Truth: the motivations for Strauss’s sex adventures, desperate and extreme as they are, that is a wounded childhood, a literally confined adolescence, his parents’ terrible marriage, his mother’s covert incest on him, his anxiety and depression, his mistaking sexual adventures that would make many a rock star blush, for freedom, for some kind of path to meaning; much of it mirrors my own tormented youth and mindset! Obviously I have and have had zero sexual adventures, I mean in terms of the thinking, the attitude, the mindset that lies behind all that. Strauss just got past his damaged childhood and youth way way better than I did (well once he became a PUA, related in The Game, when he was in his thirties. His college experience mirrors in some ways my own, but mine is just surreal by anybody’s standards). I was like all incels, who are not ugly nor physically nor mentally handicapped, caught up in a prison of inertia, self-doubt and self-sabotage that prevented that kind of PUA or womanizer adventures from ever taking off. Strauss is about a year older than me, and didn’t have the advantages I had in theory when it came to females. He is short, bald (at least once he was in his thirties) and boney by his own admission. Whilst I have become bald and boney in middle-age, in my youth I had all the advantages. In theory. I feel we both took off in our small propeller-driven airplanes, and Strauss just took his into the sky, even as he routinely stalled the engines and went into nose dives and had to do several emergency recoveries, almost crashing into the ground. I didn’t even get off the ground, just taxiing on the runway until I rode into the stream at the end of the runway, got bogged in and sunk. I didn’t know how to take off. Sure nobody told me. But nobody tells anybody. You gotta figure it out for yourself.
I remark in passing that I have noticed something a little bizarre in the online incel community. Namely a few self-admitted incels call themselves PUAs or former PUAs. That is they tried their luck at PUA, but got nowhere. Often for years. Okay but then you are not and never were a PUA. You were a wannabe PUA. Not the same thing. To put it mildly. Anymore than an eight-year-old boy who imagines he is a pilot flying a jet, is a pilot flying a jet.
How can I be incel, given obvious advantages in my youth?
There are two things I need to mention here, because they mitigated against me ever being a love-shy and yet here I am!
One was my handsomeness and two was having a younger sister only a year and a half younger than me. The handsomeness of mine, as a mitigating factor against love-shyness, is simply obvious. I don’t need to expand on it. It is self-explanatory. You will have to take my word on it (and that of most everybody I have ever known, often strangers, who remarked on my good looks when I was a child, a teenager, and a young man in my twenties). There is no way in hell I am posting up pictures here of myself as a young man. I know I would be identified, sooner or later. I mean Social Media being what it is! I have largely lived as a recluse post forty years of age, but plenty of people, in so many cities and even nations, know me. I mean aside from my family of course, and work colleagues. And from all the decades of my life. I would rather be caught naked smeared in cottage cheese with ten drugged up teen hookers, and have it flashed on the front pages of my city newspaper, than have anybody I have ever known, know that I am a middle-aged virgin. I would rather people I have known think I am a conman, lecher, beggar or what-have-you, than discover that I am a virgin.
As far as the younger sister thing is concerned, I mean that I was comfortable around girls near my own age, the age of girls I would be expected to date. And my sister had pretty friends, who were often at our house. She was part of the ‘hot girl’ clique in high school and university coming to think of it. And I don’t know of a single one of my sister’s friends who didn’t flirt or show an an interest in me at one time or another, over the years. I could be charming and sociable when I chose. I could turn on the charm, on and off like a faucet (and I was handsome of course). I didn’t realize at the time how strange it actually was, at how strange it even is. Almost as if I had several personalities. I can still be like that. A lot of love-shys grew up without sisters or were even only children (as Gilmartin discovered). I wasn’t handicapped in that way. And yet my proneness to love-shyness (heck my embrace of love-shyness!) and its characteristic severe neuroses and self-fulfilling prophecies overrode these 2 distinct advantages (good looks and a younger pretty sister, with all her pretty friends) I otherwise had. They only exacerbate the irony to my life-long virginity, leaving a bittersweet sense of the absurd to my life. Gilmartin also speaks of the looking glass effect, the social environment as a mirror. And how there are feedback effects here. I see this in my own life (in a negative sense). That is we exteriorize or attract on the outside what is inside us, the outside then reinforces the inside, and round and round we go. In a vicious cycle.
I also want to add something re incels and their ‘advice’ that I don’t pay attention to. Those who say it is easy to solve your life-long incel/virginity problem: just go to a prostitute. There are no points that they can make on incel that I pay attention to and for that matter every other topic under the sun. I just don’t pay attention to these types. I mean if some incels choose to go to a prostitute, fine for them. I don’t judge them in any way. I am not better than them. I don’t pretend to be. Not in the slightest. It is just not for me, not for lots of incels in identical or near identical straits to myself. Going to a prostitute would only add to my self-loathing and shame, for many of us love-shys that is the case. And frankly I don’t want to contribute to the very existence of that profession. You want a woman to be with you because she actually likes you, at a physical level. This should go without saying. You may even want, shock, an actual relationship. What really troubles most incels: the lack of bonding, intimacy, affection, uh love. Sex is the means to all that, the channel to all that. The means, not the end in itself. In a way that nothing else is. I mean I shouldn’t even have to write this paragraph, but the world of incel, like the wider world, is populated by these cynics who don’t look beneath the surface of things really.
The world of incel (online and offline) is inevitably riddled through with severe neurotics – it’s the nature of the beast – and borderline crazies. And full-on crazies. Well after you haven’t had sex for decades, as many of us have not, it really screws you up. I admit I am way beyond mere neurotic at this point in time. I am borderline crazy, and doing my best not to go full tilt insane.
I also realize that in private conversation with people over the years (post thirty years of age) I have given clues as to my life-long virginity, but via displacement. I did this for years without realizing it. I will explain what I mean. I have remarked in conversation, that geniuses like Isaac Newton and Nikola Tesla most likely died virgins, Henry Thoreau likewise, and perhaps J M Barrie (whose marriage to Mary Ansell was probably not consumated), Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Anderson. I don’t admit to my own virginity, but I displace it via the mention of famous virgins in our history and culture. I do it if the subject of genius comes up (Newton, Tesla) or children’s stories (Anderson, Barrie, Carroll). Revealing that people who wrote famous children’s stories have not always left their childhoods behind and become adult in the way that we all recognise. That is as sexual beings. It has of course not gone unnoticed! I didn’t even realize for years what I was doing, and why. We have no choice but to out ourselves, even if we do it unconsciously and in surreptitious ways and manners. I don’t know if anybody realized what I was doing and why. I’m pretty certain not. I now realize it is too much of a reveal, so I just don’t mention these kind of things.
So here begins my perverse black comedy personal story
I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll just begin. At the time of posting this essay online (late 2017), I am a 47-year-old virgin. Yeah, never even been kissed in fact. Unless you count spin the bottle games at parties in the seventh grade, a few pecks on the lips from a few girls. Back in 1982. The year Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released, the year of the Falklands War, Duran Duran mania, the year Seth Rogen was born, the year of ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Tootsie and Gandhi at the box office. Kurt Cobain was 15. Amy Winehouse wasn’t even a fetus. The year in other words, when I was 12. And so was Jennifer Lopez, Louis Theroux, Andre Agassi, the musician Beck (Beck Hansen), Edward Norton, Lara Flynn Boyle, Uma Thurman, Matt Damon, Matthew McConaughey, Christian Slater, Vince Vaughn and River Phoenix (who has been dead for 24 years now).
So in the 35 years since then, not even a peck on the lips from a girl or woman. Not once, not ever. If I could go back in a time machine to 1982 and tell my 12-year-old handsome boy self, that I am my middle-aged self from the future, the year 2017, confessing to being a man very much alive and able-bodied and approaching 50; that the peck on the lips I got in a contrived fashion (spin the bottle games) in late 1982, from some girl and I don’t remember who because I never thought it would be the very last kiss! – would be the very last kiss I would ever get from a girl (and not even a real kiss at all let us be honest), and there would be nothing more intimate ever (not even anything close to sex, not any kind of grope even) with a girl/woman, not ever, I would not believe it. How? Was I abducted by aliens and dropped off on an uninhabited island, left to fend for myself, digging up roots and trying to catch rainwater to survive? Was I disfigured from a car accident, from a fire? What happened or went wrong exactly? And why didn’t I just kill myself then as a consequence? But such is life. Who can even imagine the turns and bends life takes, detours and side-alleys that become your life, your personal tragedy? One sees this in the wider world, with history. It is true on the collective stage – who saw the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the USSR, 9-11 and its aftermath, the mass refugee crisis in Europe as the latter continent implodes, the Internet revolution and its economic, political, social and cultural ramifications, Social Media and its ills included? And it’s true on the private stage, that is our own personal lives. You never see your personal tragedies coming, it is routinely what you fear that does not materialize, but what you don’t fear that comes at you, through the back door you left open that you forgot all about. I never thought growing up as a teen in the eighties, that getting the pretty girl would ever be a problem. I took it for granted! even before I had it. I feared a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR most of all… Sigh.
I don’t know where to fit this, so I will just put it here. A recognized contributing factor to long-term adult incel, is the trauma, guilt and shame left over from physical childhood sexual abuse and/or psychological and emotional sexual abuse; by parents/guardians or relatives, teachers or minders of one kind or another. The resultant fear of intimacy, both emotional and physical, translates to a fear of sexual intimacy. It brings up too much deep-seated pain and trauma, that is it cuts too close to the bone. In perusing the sparse literature on incel, it is somewhat surprising that sexual trauma/shame rooted in various forms of childhood sexual abuse, physical and other, is routinely overlooked. Sexual trauma and shame is something that one picks up on among adult incels, often in the context of non-incel literature. That is in documentaries and essays or confessions by survivors of childhood sexual abuse. These people admit to having a hard time getting into intimate and sexual relationships/finding partners, and/or keeping them. I remember one survivor in a documentary I saw on peodophilia, admitting to the camera about never having had a girlfriend, because he is just too weighed down by trauma and shame.
And here I admit this may be a factor to my own incel. I was never actually physically sexually abused by my parents, but there was very very inappropriate sexual behavior by them, when I was a little boy. There was serious emotional/psychological sexual abuse by them. My parents were sexual exhibitionists. I don’t want to bring that all up here, it is still very painful to me. I was abused psychologically/emotionally, even if not physically. I didn’t even realize this was a factor to my incel, until I was over thirty. I had blocked it out. It was and is too painful to look at too deeply, to look at at all. I know I started to wet my bed as a little boy (about 5 to 7 years of age), all of a sudden, after being continent for years, and was sent to a child psychologist over it. And I’m sure I know why now. I never confronted my parents over it.
It is related in the psychological literature (Alexander Lowen for one) that mothers who are seductresses with their sons, catalyze or contribute to the development of narcissism in their sons too. The son is made to feel special and superior (sure our lives are all precious, but none of us are more special than others) by his mother, and it only encourages a narcissistic attitude by the son. As with Strauss, my mother practiced a covert incest on me.
Getting back to the relevant psychological literature here: the son comes to think that the tribulations of others shall not befall him. He is intended for better things, nobler things. I remember thinking as a boy that any girl I wanted would be mine for the taking! No other boy, no other man would be able to offer a female what I could, true happiness and bliss. I felt I was going to be God’s gift to women. At least as much as any other man. Ha ha ha. And I was always haughty with girls and women, when they smiled and flirted with me. I felt it was my due. As in, what took you so long? As if by my very presence, I was doing them a favor. I took their interest as a given, as vain and arrogant handsome youngsters can do. I don’t mean as all handsome men and youth do, because most handsome youngsters and men are not like that at all. I mean as vain and arrogant young men and teenagers do. I was Narcissus, not just narcissistic. I embodied this tragic Greek mythic figure as much as anybody could.
Narcissus in the city
I recognized that I embodied or acted out rather the myth of Narcissus as a young man; after everything went to hell in a hand basket (in my early twenties), but I didn’t realize the extent of it. Even then. That is I only knew the most well-known segment of the Narcissus myth. His drowning in a pool of water (in one version), or his dying of grief when his reflection – which he mistakes for a female water spirit – does not love him back. Narcissus being enamored and hypnotized by his own beauty, destroys himself, dying of grief for a love that could not love him back, because it was self-love. But he didn’t know it. His body upon his death is transformed into the narcissus flower (in one of many versions). I did not know – as a young man – that Narcissus spurned all women, well nymphs in his case (not due to his not liking females. On the contrary one can argue that Narcissus is hypnotized by his own beauty because of how he imagines it will hypnotize women/nymphs, to his own advantage). As a consequence of his vanity, he is haughty and arrogant and so he inadvertently spurns girls/the nymphs. I only discovered this aspect of the myth in my forties. Check up on the tale of Narcissus and the nymph Echo who fell in love with him (yes where the English word ‘echo’ comes from). And yet – from my point of view – this is the most pertinent and downright uncanny aspect of the Narcissus myth! It sums up my own tragedy in a nutshell. That is my tragic youth! Obviously I mean an interpretation of Narcissus that isn’t so literal or narrow.
I reluctantly and grudgingly admit that I was constantly told that I was handsome, by near everybody, and that it went to my head, in my early teens. I think – aside from the fact that I had been primed to consider myself so very special, through my mother’s seduction play, myself as the seductee – I had nothing else going for me. I was mediocre at school, had no interest in team sports, was physically thin and puny. I was not taught any values at all – none whatsoever – by my parents, teachers, peers; just the overarching ‘culture’ of economic materialism, the only thing that mattered was economic status. This was the background to my life. So there was nothing solid, nothing real, nothing substantial to aspire to or lean on, not even any lip service or pretense to any sense of ethics or doing good in the world. So I decided, and it was a conscious, deliberate decision taken in my late teens, that all that mattered were girls, sex; because it seemed the only thing real or authentic in an unreal world. A world of plastic lies. And if all that mattered was having sex with girls, and romantic relationships, then I had better be capable of snaring girls, of winning them over. And how was I going to do that, considering I was not gregarious, was physically puny (I would later go to gym and get some muscle tone, but I didn’t bother strangely enough with going to gym at all as a teenager, something I regret), and unremarkable in school grades and subjects (or maybe I recognized intuitively, even if I never articulated it back then, that schooling was so much nonsense. Education is more miseducation and indoctrination than anything else, turning us into automatons, destroying the child’s soul – and no I don’t think that’s over-the-top). I didn’t seem to have any talents to speak of. All I had were my looks, so I came to overemphasize the importance of my handsomeness, which makes me wince now.
All this on top of the narcissism that was catalyzed in my character (to say that I suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder is to state the obvious), in my childhood, through the emotional sexual abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents. I am not sucking stuff out of my thumb. It is there in the psychological literature. To reiterate – the mother who acts as the seductress with her son, when he is a little boy, setting him up as a rival to the father, gets the son to think of himself as special, more special than other boys. He comes to see himself as having a special destiny, everything is set up for him to triumph. He merely has to exist, to breathe, and people will notice his specialness, and how the gods have set him up for a life of blessings and triumph, without any effort needed on his part. None of this is consciously recognized of course.
I knew looks were important (to get girls), but it became the only thing that I thought I had going for me, so unlike a lot of good-looking young men and teenage boys, who are offhand or casual about their handsomeness, I became – like Narcissus – hypnotized by my handsomeness. And that would be my tragedy, along with various other neuroses, such as severe anxiety (that was there since early childhood), poor self-esteem and other self-destructive compulsions.
The anxious child
I want to say something about my anxiety here. It was always severe, even by the standards of anxious people. I mean as a child, I would almost shake and quake about well almost anything outside of my comfort zone. It didn’t get better in high school, anything just a little bit uncomfortable, strenuous exercise, a strict male teacher, team sports practice, an unfamiliar outing, I would get anxious. About nothing really. As a little boy, I remember being scared to open up my mouth in class, scared to ask the teachers the most innocuous questions, anxious about swimming practice (even though I could swim okay. I would make out I was a worse swimmer than I actually was, so I wouldn’t have to race against the fastest kids!). My teachers in junior school were not very strict, cruel or sadistic. The anxiety came from another source, the family structure. My father always treated me like a baby, overly concerned and worried about anything I ever did, to compensate for the fact that he was never around. He would be overprotective, he smothered me, he treated me like a little child even when I was well into adolescence. In fact even when I was a young man in my twenties. A panic father. He broke my spirit.
My mother was a soft and supine victim type, who herself had poor self-esteem and always wanted others to rescue her. She wanted my father to rescue her, and when their marriage broke apart, she played the helpless victim and took her frustrations out on me. I had this ridiculous guilt about my mother, made to feel as if her moroseness was my fault. And as if I had to replace my father, to save her, provide for her. Because she was my mother and gave birth to me and breastfed me and changed my nappies as a baby, I now owed her my life. And yet I was frozen by guilt, I went along with all this. I cannot believe it but I did. I did not realize at the time how neurotic I was, nor my nuclear family neither, how it was all seriously dysfunctional, unhealthy, and threatened my ability to live a full, productive and joyous life. How the prison was all around me, and labeled love and concern. I naturally didn’t see it as a child, but even as a teenager, I was too surly and melancholic and self-absorbed to really think any of it through, too callow, too naive. I knew by the time I was 13 or 14, that my family was seriously messed up (my father and mother split up when I was 13, but my old man would continue to hover around, always suffocating me and controlling and manipulating everybody in the family, including my mother who in turn manipulated him through guilt tripping) but I didn’t apply it to my own situation, or see what I was doing wrong, never mind where it would all lead. I did not have a bird’s eye view here. And 20/20 hindsight vision. It is a pity as the Red Queen observed, that memory only works backwards. I don’t know if I thought my anxiety was normal for a boy who was ‘naturally’ not tough nor thick skinned, or just didn’t give it any thought at all. I also didn’t realize that I was coming to high school all mopey and melancholic, and how this was making me friendless, and giving off bad vibes, to girls and boys alike. I was just too self-absorbed to notice or care to see what I was doing, and how self-destructive it all was.
My mother who played the seductress with me, as an adjunct to my father, a substitute even for my father, perhaps he didn’t give her what she needed. My father was such a barbarian. He openly boasted to me when I was about 20, that he used to visist prostitutes in Bangkok when he was there in ’72 on a holiday with one of his business mates (when he was aged 32), when my mother was at home taking care of myself and my sister (we would have been aged 2 and 1 respectively). He thought I would think it amusing! He never thought I could hold it against him, because he thought I would be a brutal jerk like him. As his father was before him. In fact my father once related to me, that when he was on a holiday with his father (my grandfather of course) sometime in the mid-1970s, that his father got himself a prostitute and told my father (his son naturally enough), that he could have her after he was done! How gross. Even my father thought so! Note the incestuous undercurrent to it, coming from my grandfather – the son is encouraged to sleep with the same woman as the father.
My first flirtation, an omen of things to come
You know I don’t believe in childhood sexuality, I think it one of Freud’s blunders. And I otherwise admire Freud in many respects. Like all genius pioneers, he made lots of mistakes. That was one of his biggest ones. I mention this, because I remember my first crush on a girl was at the age of 8, yet I insist entirely innocent. That is why we are all amused by boys and girls and the way they interact pre-puberty. I mention my innocent crush, because she was the very first girl I ever flirted with, a pretty blond. And Gilmartin mentions that love-shys develop crushes on average way earlier than non-shys, the latter tending to get interested in girls only once puberty hits. And this flirtation, in the third grade, was a complete disaster. It just seeems in hindsight to have been an omen. One one level I don’t believe – or don’t like to believe – in the assertion of doomed Fate, in determinism, in no free will. And yet I can’t avoid this terrible belief in how the odds are largely stacked against us. How we have to fight Fate every step of the way, every day and every hour. And how by the time we are twenty our fate is fixed, we are so heavily conditioned by then, that we can’t see the wood for the trees. We are so blinded by so many Big Lies. We don’t appear to have much of a chance, one way or another. One tragedy or another is just sitting there, waiting for you. And you don’t see it coming, except in hindsight. If you ever do. I mean my disastrous flirtation at the age of 8 is only an omen with 20/20 hindsight, and yet it still is what it is. I don’t see my disastrous life without girls and women, as set in stone when I was 8, in 1978. And yet nothing after that was to set things right; on the contrary, the inexorable slide into life-long virginity would only become further entrenched as the years passed. It is in fact a funny story, my first ever flirtation with a a girl, so let me recount it.
Back then, us little boys and girls used to perform one-act two or three minute plays before the class. In groups of three or four. Simple stuff, we were eight, in front of the teacher. I don’t even remember if it was stuff we made up (probably) or part of the teacher’s instruction. Now the girls back in my junior primary school, used to wear these one piece dresses (we had a school uniform), and they had these belts around their dresses, that didn’t hold up anything, a blouse or the dress itself, they were just a kind of decoration. Like a boy’s tie. And the girls used to hate wearing the belts, as soon as they arrived at school and were in class, they removed their belts and only put them back on when class ended and it was time to go home. So anyhow these girls were performing their plays in front of the class, and their belts would lie on or next to their desks. So when the pretty blonde I liked was performing her play with her friends, I suddenly got it into my head, to take her belt from her desk and hide it under my own desk. I was still years away from puberty. I wasn’t thinking straight (it’s not like an 8-year-old boy is thinking let me do what Steve McQueen or Bogart did and blah blah. You don’t even know who Steve McQueen and Humphrey Bogart are). So that’s what I did.
So what happened when she went back to her desk after performing the play and found her belt missing?
I don’t know because I have blocked out the memory of what happened next. I have blocked out the memory of this girl’s name (my family moved house later that year to another suburb and I would enrol at another primary/junior school the following year). No doubt either I yelled out ‘I have the belt’ or more likely, I panicked and shut up. The girl and others must have proceeded to search for her belt in every nook and cranny in the class. And eventually found it under my desk. The inevitable, ‘Danny stole the-name-of-the-girl-here’s belt’. And the inevitable laughter and teasing from the whole class. I would have been mortified and possibly ran out of the class in embarassment. I don’t know. I am speculating here but it must have been something like this. I have actually totally forgotten the memory, it is completely suppressed. I was all of fifteen before I barely and I mean barely flirted with a girl again. Strange. Strange because I had a crush on a girl at eight, before the hormomes started flooding my body, years before puberty. Gilmartin of course mentions this in his book, how love-shys routinely have deep crushes on girls years before puberty, even younger than I was, first or second grade. Heck kindergarden. And he doesn’t downplay these crushes as ‘puppy love’. Gilmartin points out that these crushes are as intense and deep and affecting as the ones you have in your late teens, twenties, thirties. They are innocent in the sense that it is not sexual, but it is as deeply emotional as anything you experience as an adult. That is why Gilmartin calls love-shys early bloomers in their way!
From 8 to 12 years of age
So when I moved school at the beginning of fourth grade (still aged 8, nearly 9), my first thought when I went to my new class and was introduced to my classmates, was – and I remember this very distinctly – ‘I wonder which of these girls I should fall in love with?’. Quite incredible really. I mean I see it as strange and incredible now, not then of course. Yet weirdly enough, over the course of the next four years of junior primary school, from the ages of 8 to 12, I don’t remember developing a single crush on a single girl. Only now looking back, I can’t make sense of it. I mean I appreciated the prettiness of some of the girls, but no real crushes on any of them.
I do remember one of the prettiest girls in my class flirting outrageously with me when we were 12. Saying that she was going to marry me and I was just mortified in response, I remember pleading with her to leave me alone. I was simply so shy that I was embarrassed by her flirtations. Groan. In the early onset of puberty itself (13 and 14 years of age), I had no crushes on any girl – at least none that I remember – and no flirting whatsoever. And this was now in junior high. I was very shy sure. But no crushes, which is odd. It is especially odd, because in the 8th and 9th grades, I was in a class of only 4 to 7 boys (it fluctuated) and about 30 girls!! The reason being it was the class that included French and Art lessons. And very few boys did Art. I was teased by some of the prettiest girls in the class, (and the girls were really naughty, a little wild, always getting us into trouble) but teased as a dork. And yet in hindsight, they also teased me because they wanted me to get out of my shell. I didn’t see what was going on at the time. I was such a dork, and so timid. And stupid in misreading the social dynamics (but who isn’t at that age?).
Yet despite my timidity and wallflower posturing, and physical puniness, there were girls who fancied me at that age – early puberty or thereabouts, between the ages of 11 to 14. I was a handsome boy, even a very handsome boy. As I mention elsewhere in this essay (without wanting to tire the readers’ patience). To repeat – I would even put up pictures of myself at that age and when I was a young man in my late teens and twenties, up here accompanying this blog essay, but I would be mortified if I ever came to be identified. My true identity known. And mentioned on the Internet. And people I know and have known, knowing it was me! And in this age of Social Media, and the global Internet village, there is a very very good chance of that happening. That is of my true identity being found out. In fact a 100% chance, probability of 1. Sooner or later. And the social grapevine being what it is, everybody I have ever known, even vaguely, would probably find out. So no pictures posted up here. Not if somebody was to offer me a million dollars to do so! Heck not a billion dollars!
In fact I remember when I started the seventh grade aged 11 (at least half my classmates were already 12, and so the whole boy and girl thing was beginning in earnest), that the day after the first day of school (so second day of the 1982 school year), so many girls were sitting on my desk waiting for me to arrive. Being so shy, I was simply embarrassed, even horrified by all this. When I used to walk home from school, some girls tried to ambush me for a kiss. I decided better to play it safe and walk the long way round. I was so shy I considered all this flirting coming from the girls exasperating and embarrassing. There was this one pretty girl of 13 who I knew from my tennis club, I was 12 at the time, who fancied me (our woman tennis coach told me, when this girl invited me to her birthday party), and I was just exasperated by it. And not a little surprised. I mean 13-year-old girls are ahead of 13-year-old boys in their development, and I was only 12 and if anything looked 11.
High school, setting the mood for the future
My high school years were a serious disaster. Very unpopular from my 15th year on/tenth grade (to my 17th year, twelfth grade), increasingly disinterested in sports, mediocre grades. During recess times from class, at least from the eleventh grade, I really had nowhere to go, nobody to hang out with. I just walked around the high school grounds, pretending I had somewhere to go and people to see. I used to hate recess because I literally had no friends (as my sister was sure to remind me all of the time, whenever we fought and argued. That would be how she would always end her argument, even though the fighting never had anything to do with my lack of friends), and would be seen all alone, by my high school peers. This just set up a vicious cycle. I would be seen as being friendless, hence nobody wanted to be friendly with me, being unpopular, and this looped back into my friendlessness. I should have just gone to the high school library and read or done homework. Looking back, why did this not occur to me? It was as if I had to advertise my shame to the school, as a flagellant would. There was never a common sense approach to my problems. There was this deep self-destructiveness, rooted in some pent-up shame and guilt. Rooted in my childhood trauma. I never went to any of the parties, I mean I never got invited to all but a handful of them at the most, throughout my high school career.
There was this girl Karen in high school, I also knew her from junior primary school, since we were 8. She was always cute but I don’t know if I really noticed her, or rather I never fell hard for her. However there was this one time when I was on a high school trip when we were about 16, in the 11th grade. We went away for like a week, it was a combination history-vacation tour. And of course, us being in the 11th grade, there was a lot of flirting and those kind of shennanigans going on between the boys and the girls. So one time, we are all out at night, a group of us boys and girls, walking somewhere. And Karen is there in the group, another girl she is friendly with, another girl I also knew since we were little, tells me to hook up my arm with Karen’s. And so I smile at Karen, and hook my arm with hers, as we walk along. We must have walked like that for about five minutes, before we stopped, having reached our destination. Nothing more ever happened between us, it seems so symbolic of my life, not just as a teenager, but in general. Girls clearly keen on me, but myself never getting anywhere with them, despite so much promise and potential. Karen would become a beautiful woman btw, I would very occasionally bump into her at university, but by then she had a serious boyfriend. The irony is that I only started to fantasize about her big time when we no longer saw one another at all really, in my early twenties (but not before at all, not when we were in high school and I saw her around then routinely). I mean she really blossomed, when we were kids she was kinda cute, but not beautiful. When we were twenty, she was simply gorgeous. When I did bump into her at university, I was kind of rude and curt with her!! even as she turned my brain to mush with her beauty. I didn’t stop and ask her how she was, what was going on in her life, that kind of thing. I barely acknowledged her existence, barely nodded as I walked past her, and one time I just walked straight past her as if she wasn’t there. All the while I thought she was an icon of feminine beauty! Why did I do this? I was off my rocker, I was messed up. I felt I didn’t look my best, I didn’t want her to see me, I was melancholic and not in the mood for a girl I fanatasized about, to see me in such a sad state. All this became self-reinforcing of course. Yes I was a fucking idiot. Of course. My screw-up with Karen (so what she had a boyfriend, I could have at least been friendly) is somehow – because I had known her since childhood, and used to go to her birthday parties when we were little – so representative of my self-destructive idiocy.
Yet I did this routinely with girls I liked! In fact it was mandatory behavior from me. She was just one of those I remember well. See what I write below re Sheenah and Sarah.
My real high school crush (and I mean I was in love with this girl, as much as an adolescent male can be in love with a girl) was with this girl I will call Sheenah (not her real name). Although I had known her since we were about 13, I only developed a serious crush on her when we were both in the 11th grade. That is when we were 15 and 16 years of age (she was about two months older than me). The year 1986. A cute redhead who the boys liked, she was coquettish without being a princess. She sometimes flirted and smiled at me, even though I was not one of the cool, athletic guys. And I responded like a typical adolescent love-shy, namely like an idiot. I felt I didn’t stand a chance with her. I was a nerd, and a lot of the cool alpha males liked her.
She would move to another school when we were both 17, at the beginning of the 12th grade. Yet amazingly enough, I continued to have such an intense crush on her till we were 20, even though I didn’t see her much at all, even as we ended up studying the same degree at the same university. So I did see her on occasion. And when I did see her on occasion, at university, at one party as well, I ignored her completely, as if I didn’t know her!! Yes a repeat of my idiotic behavior with Karen. Now this crush I had in my teens on Sheenah, would prove to be very much an omen for my future. There we go again, nothing but bad omen after bad omen, and/or destructive patterns of behavior that would only intensify over the years and decades. I mean when were were 16, she like other girls seemed to notice my handsomeness, and even flirted with me a little, but my overwhelming nerdiness, awkwardness, surliness and somberness overshadowed that. Plus people tended to know I was near friendless. It does not attract girls, it drives them away.
There were other qualities I had that didn’t help when it came to girls. I have mentioned that I was not very good at sports. I was alright when I was a little boy in junior/primary school, but I faded somewhat in high school. This in itself was strange, because I was not unathletic. I just lost interest and couldn’t be bothered with making an effort. Also the other boys started puberty before me, they got so much bigger and stronger, so much faster than I did. I couldn’t even pretend to care about chasing a football or what have you as if it was something so important and urgent. I also started to get a shortness of breath problem in mid-adolescence, but I mention that in more detail further down, in another context. I was also very skinny through most of my high school years. I only started to get some muscle and muscle tone toward the end of high school, although really only in university; but I was always slim, an ectomorph (although in my twenties I did have an athletic ectomorphic build, at least in my upper body. I always had skinny legs). Now I am just very thin once again (as I was in high school).
Anyhow getting back to Sheenah… I think she knew that I liked her. She caught me staring at her a few times. I didn’t want her to know I liked her (because I felt I didn’t stand a chance given how high school cliques work and I don’t think I was wrong even now looking back), but 16-year-old boys cannot so easily hide the way they feel. Then again can even older men? When she went out with another boy, when we were 16, I was naturally heartbroken. When she moved school, I was devastated. Yet when I saw her again at university, I was delighted, but my situation hadn’t changed. I had no self-esteem to speak of, no friends outside of my nerd circle, and I decided to ignore her. Because I didn’t stand a chance with her, or so I thought. So she would walk past me, and I wouldn’t usually say hello. Even though I had had an intense crush on her for years, heck I was in love with her. For years. I would just walk past her and barely acknowledge her existence. She must have thought, how rude. I once saw her waiting at a bus-stop where I was waiting as well, this when we were freshmen in 1988 at university. She was on a bench nearby. I saw her and she saw me. My heart froze in my chest. I didn’t even say hello or acknowledge that I knew her. At this point in time I was still very much enamored of her, even though I had never seen her much at all for nearly two years! This was the young woman who I was deeply in love with from the age of 16 to 20. Even as I hardly saw her at all from 17 to 20! You want to talk about abnormal behavior that is totally incongruent and off-the-charts crazy? Here I am. Exhibit A: Danny C. I once saw Sheenah at a 21st birthday party (this was in 1990), with her boyfriend who she would go on to marry (this was at the party of the guy who took her to her prom, this back in 1987, which made me insanely jealous at the time. Although he was never her boyfriend. Incidentally this guy’s sister was also my sister’s best friend). Anyhow this was the last time I remember seeing Sheenah really, and I couldn’t even be bothered to go over and say hello. We did talk a bit in high school. I mean I knew the girl well enough. Strangely enough, I heard from my sister twenty years later or thereabouts, that this girl’s son and my sister’s son (my nephew of course) would become best friends when they were little boys. This was in another city that they both moved to. Strange.
Talking about my sister, she is a year and a half younger than me, and was two years behind me at school. Pretty, she always had pretty friends. And as a growing boy with girls on the brain, having a younger sister only two or so years younger, is ideal. That’s because of her friends, and as a teenager, given that girls mature ahead of boys, a two year gap is ideal. Not too much of a gap, and not too little of one neither. We all know it is routine for boys of 16 to hook up with girls of 14, 15. Boys of 18 to hook up with girls of 16. And a lot of my sister’s friends fancied me over our teenage years. Pretty girls. Even very pretty. Being shy I did nothing.
In fact the very first date I ever went on (my prom/matriculation dance date at the age of 17) was with a friend of my sister (15 at the time). A very pretty blonde, a real headturner (and perfect breasts), and a sweet girl who liked me. That’s why I asked her to the dance. My sister told me that I should ask her to the dance. In fact I was starting to panic, as the dance approached, who was I going to ask? There was no girl I could think of. And attendance was considered mandatory. I mean not going to the dance would be a terrible humiliation. My sister came to the rescue, knowing I had nobody to ask, and she just suggested, ask Tracy (not her real name). She didn’t say Tracy actually fancied me, but my sister just told me to ask her, totally unsolicited on my part. And Tracy, not any other friend of my sister’s. And my sister had lots of friends. Plus I had seen Tracy looking at me sometimes, for no seeming reason, at school, and once when she was visiting our house, even as I barely knew the girl, and frankly barely knew she existed. Even as she was pretty. It was clear she fancied me at least a little.
And this prom date turned out to be a real bad omen. Yeah another one. I mean the date was not a total disaster, but it didn’t go well neither. Awkward and I just couldn’t wait for the night to be over, neither could she. I sat at the table with all the other nerds really, the ones who couldn’t get a table with any of the ‘normal’ cool people. I was handsome but a handsome nerd. My shyness, despondency, moodiness, dourness, melancholy nature and anti-social bent assured I was not a popular young man (at this point in time I had maybe one good friend – although I hung out with other guys as well, equally nerdy – another dork like myself). Thing is my date was hot, and just didn’t fit in among the rest of us unpopular nerds. I would have been better off taking some fellow nerdy plain girl (but who? There were none I even knew well enough, not being friendly with anybody really), it would have been more comfortable. Yet it proved so uncannily symbolic. So much of a forewarning, an all too telling omen of what lay ahead (not only an omen, but a persistent absurd pattern that would repeat constantly, but in different ways over the years).
That is I would always be the nerd, the outsider, and despite being good looking and having pretty girls like me as a consequence, I would ensure a self-destructive and anti-charismatic quality in my own character that would sabotage anything from happening from the outset. I was hoping I would outgrow that nerdiness, the poor self-esteem, that it was just growing pains. The caterpillar stage. As I got older, stronger, more worldly-wise, I assumed I would just end up making friends and inevitably girlfriends. That it was just a matter of time. How wrong I was! That prom date, instead of proving to be an anomaly, a reminder of the way I was in high school, an uncool nerd caterpillar, before emerging from my cocoon as a butterfly at university, proved to sum up my whole life. I never emerged from the cocoon, never even got into it. I just stayed a caterpillar. Talk about arrested development.
At the end of high school, when I was 17, and just before starting university, I went with some friends on vacation (more accurately, the one guy was my friend, and the other guys were his friends, not mine). To a popular beach town. And I remember obsessing about something: I was going to lose my virginity on this vacation. Summer end-of-school vacation 1987! Yes well thirty years later, still a virgin. Ha. Thing is even though not confident then, I wasn’t completely unconfident. The few acne spots I had had cleared up, I knew I was good looking (my body dysmorphic disorder/BDD had not yet come into existence, about which I go into details below), I had started to get a bit of muscle, even though still thin. And the environment was perfect for meeting girls (or so I thought). And I tried I did, I did not act like a wallflower. And yet nothing. There was one cute girl I met, who flirted with me, and when I reciprocated, she pulled back. She was just being a tease, I saw her do the same thing with other guys. A problem I had was that, even though I was 17, I looked 15. So I thought I would try hook up with girls of that age. But they were impossible to meet, because too young to be going on holiday just with their mates. What girls that age were around, they were with their parents, and it proved impossible to meet up with them. So the short of it is that nothing happened on that vacation. And I would never have another vacation like that really, because I would lose touch with those guys (who were not dorks really at all), and not replace then with other ‘normals’, but really nerdy guys, when I was a university student. What a mistake that was.
University, the great potential thrown away. The descent into madness
So now a rundown of my entire non-experience with the opposite sex from that time (when I was 17) down to the present, this essay’s very backbone so to speak. Just before I move on: that prom dance date of mine would later lose her fiancé to cancer (leukemia) when he was 23, and she 21. I was 23 at the time as well of course. She would later marry another man and have children. I mention this because even though her fiancé would die at 23, I envied him and still do. Yes it is a terrible tragedy, I am now more than double that age and my heart is still beating. But I have never lived, even as a doctor will tell you my vital signs are functioning. I have only existed. A man is not a machine, he is a vital mind and body. And once his mind is shut down, warped, filtering everything through a skein of painful regret, self-loathing, remorse, guilt and shame, he is no longer alive. At least this man, who died at such a young age, knew what it was to love a beautiful woman who loved him. Love in every way, physically, emotionally, mentally. A short life where a man – only a man for a few years – still gets to be a man, still gets to be inside a women, have her gasp and moan with pleasure in his arms, hold her hand, take her to dinner, hear her laughter meant only for you; that is way better than a man who lives more than twice as long, and not once gets to be a man in the way that counts. Not once gets to be inside a woman, not with his fingers, not with his tongue, not with his cock. Not to kiss a woman or girl, not once in his whole life. Not ever. Not ever to hear her moans of pleasure, not once to take a girlfriend out to dinner, or anywhere. Oh My God. How have I survived it? I mean it’s a sincere question. And I don’t always know the answer. I guess a man gets used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes his life. As Bruce Springsteen put it. And people survive much much worse. Physical handicaps, blindness, paralysis, torture, starvation. The mind boggles. One is oneself though, one’s suffering is everything. Other people’s suffering, less so. If one were open to all people’s suffering, I assume one would collapse and have a nervous breakdown. Like most people I just trudge on in my own personal bubble of misery.
After graduating high school in 1987, I entered a big university in my big city, I was there for five years. From the age of 17 to 22, really the make or break period in our lives. And this was a large sprawling campus, probably close to half of the students, young females in their prime. And as you already know or can guess, it was in fact the time that broke me. For years I thought this was when I erred big time, behaving like a complete idiot – especially at ages 19-21 – and that it was this watershed time that destroyed me, since I chose, even if unconsciously, to destroy myself rather than be reborn in a creative way. And I don’t just mean with women, I mean in all aspects of my life. And yet I did not see the obvious for years, until after I was 40. That is it was only in my university period that the destructiveness really came to the fore, was manifested, could no longer be denied. However the identical self-same psychological and emotional self-destructiveness was there in high school, my anti-social bent, my severe lack of self-esteem and assertiveness, my listlessness and despondency, my lack of interest in anything really. My lack of seriousness and no real sense of purpose. It just perpetuated itself in later adolescence and even in my early twenties in more obvious self-destructive ways. The short of it is in those five years aged 17 to 22, I only had one date with a girl. In my 22nd year. And she wasn’t even a student, but a secretary of 18 who worked for a friend of mine who hooked us up (related further down). Not of course that it matters whether the sole date I had was a student or not, but the point is I did not date a single student, not one time in all my five years at university.
1988 and 1989, my 18th and 19th years were just a write-off. It was an exact repeat of my last years in high school. I kept waiting for something to happen with the bounty of girls who surrounded me at university, but of course it doesn’t work that way. As with high school, I was surly and melancholic, did not make any friends at all; on top of which the girls my age were now really women, and I looked maybe 16 when I was 18, 17 when I was 19. It didn’t help. I do not think there was another young man in my university year, studying my degree (a business degree) who was more unpopular, and more out of the social loop. And I mean there must have been hundreds and hundreds of us, just the males, just in my year of study, just studying my degree.
In fact I will just recount one incident from the end of 1988. My one and only friend (who only called me up when his other mates were busy) called me up to hang out. I told him no I didn’t feel like it. Blade Runner was on TV, and I hadn’t ever seen it from beginning to end, so I would just stay at home and watch TV. Also fuck him, he only calls me when his other friends are busy. So five minutes later, after I have said goodbye to my ‘mate’, my mother who had overheard the conversation, comes into the TV room and blasts me for not ever going out blah blah. She is enraged and screams at me. I just put my hands over my ears and tune her out. But note how inappropriate my response was. I am an 18 year old, she is a fortysomething woman, and tiny as well. I towered over her. I should have lifted her up in my hands, right off the ground and blasted her and told her not to ever speak to me like that. It is my life and I will do what I want. I am not a little boy and how dare she speak to me as if I was. So why didn’t I? This ridiculous guilt I had (because I was as neurotic as my mother), that froze me and never saw me act appropriately with my mother. And hanging out with my dork mate would have been dull and pointless. It’s not as if we would ever meet girls. We never did and never would. I would rather have watched Blade Runner and am glad I did so.
My 19th year (1989) was more of the same. Reload. Wash. Recycle. Repeat. I mean I started to get to know a few people at university, girls included, so on the surface things improved. But everything remained very superficial. Nothing happened with girls, nothing was going to happen, given my character and mindset. Given my strong anti-social character and propensity for self-sabotage.
The ridiculous thing is that once I was 20, 21, I no longer looked like a fresh-faced kid (when I was 18 I looked 16 so the girls my age were largely a write-off really), but a lean, handsome young man. And I deliberately took classes where there would be lots of girls and a few years younger than myself too (I took these B.A. credits even as I was doing a business degree, because all the hot chics did B.A.s. Gilmartin observes that love-shy university students do this exact thing, but it makes no difference, because the love-shys are not getting to the fundamentals, their background neurotic character structure. Well those who are not unattractive). As a consequence, I was at the age of 20 and 21 in classes with so many girls, and so many beautiful girls, who were 18 or 19. The right age gap in other words.
I remember one class I took back in ’91 (basically a B.A. class), there were about 20 girls in that class who could have featured on the cover of Vogue, and I do not exaggerate. And more than a few of them gave me the eye. In fact that was my Golden Year. Even though nothing happened. That sounds like a contradiction. And it is. So what I mean is that it was my Golden Year That Wasn’t. I mean in terms of being in my physical prime, and having so much opportunity. And girls – pretty girls – showing open interest and even flirting outrageously with me. And me doing absolutely nothing in response. Because too scared, too timid, too convinced that I was ugly. Seriously. And if you saw photos of me at 20 and 21, well without wanting to sound very vain or arrogant, I was a handsome young man. I actually can’t believe it. I mean I can’t believe how I could have thought I was unattractive, when I was a strikingly handsome young man. Was I insane? Well yes in a very real way I was literally mad. Those of you who are familiar with, or have studied behavioral and personality disorders, will recognize that I suffered from a body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). A severe case. I did not remotely see this at the time, but only years later.
If you truly know you suffer from a body dysmorphic disorder, you no longer suffer from a dysmorphic disorder. Now all of you may be perplexed, must be perplexed! and say how could I have thought myself ugly, if pretty girls, beautiful girls who could pick and choose which guys they wanted, showed an open interest in me (but will come to the details)? Well I thought they hadn’t seen me close up enough, or the light wasn’t good, or they had poor eyesight and didn’t have their glasses on. I was convinced that if I showed an interest back, reciprocated to their flirtations and took them out, well once they got to know me, see me real close, they would balk and realize their error, and literally have nothing more to do with me. You may object: that’s nuts. Of course it is. But that’s how body dysmorphic disorder (the most well-known example of which is female anorexia) operates. That’s the way it goes. It is a form of insanity, nothing less than that.
You may object, and rightly so, that I am leaving something out. So I knew I was handsome at 12, at 17, but thought I was ugly at 21? How does that work? Yes I know it doesn’t appear to make sense. After all I was not maimed or left with disfiguring acne scars from my teenage years. I can’t really articulate what went wrong with my warped mind. I also find all this very embarrassing, even though I confess a lot here, and I confess stuff in this essay that still makes me wince with shame (and will make the reader wince likewise). The reader will just have to take my word on this BDD thing, and how it came to the foreground in my 20th and 21st years. I am sorry for not being more forthcoming here. Yes I am deliberately leaving some things out, not only because it is all so hard to articulate, but because its absurdity and the attempt to relate this absurdity would try the patience of the reader. It tries my patience. Also when talking about a literal madness, it goes beyond words and language. It cannot then be articulated. Not at all. It is what it is, a madness beyond words, incapable of being described by virtue of what it is. I mean one can hint, make allusions, but one cannot truly get to grips or explain the substance of this madness. One cannot explain it to oneself. One hits a brick wall. I think it best to just say: look I was literally insane, loco, out-of-my-tree, a few slices short of a loaf. I suffered from severely warped perceptions predicated on a severely warped emotional life and damaged psyche. To put it as simply as possible, even as I gloss over it all: very, very minor physical flaws (if they could even be said to be flaws) would be and were exaggerated in the extreme by my warped perceptions, predicated on my warped mind. And all my considerable positive physical traits were rendered non-existent – as a consequence – by the same warped mental processes/dynamics.
I am not asking for your pity. This is just how it was. When you endure/experience any form of BDD, you literally are in a hall of mirrors, where everything is not seen for what it actually is. Literally. LITERALLY. I was messed up in the same way or a very similar way to an anorexic teenager who is convinced she is fat, when she is rake thin. Even the childhood trauma of many an anorexic girl has parallels to my own. My sister incidentally was not anorexic and did not suffer from a BDD (as far as I know…), but she did go through a period of bulimia as a teenager.
Now there were other things that were going on re my personal circumstances that only exacerbated this problem, and only reinforced the personal madness that is body dysmorphic disorder. As I relate above, I had very few friends. In fact only one real friend to speak of (and even then, just barely a friend). I went through my final years of high school, nearly totally isolated. This of course only added to my sense of remoteness, detachment and unworthiness, and didn’t exactly make me an attractive proposition to girls. My sister – a cruel bitch aside from her prettiness, rooted in her own deep insecurities – would routinely yell at me, “you don’t have any friends”, whenever we fought, which being teenagers was a lot of the time. And the friends I had in university, if I can call them friends, were dorks, and I mean this in the negative sense not the positive sense. By positive sense, I mean science and computer geek types, brainy types who may be awkward and all that but have plenty else to offer as friends and plenty to offer society. I mean dorks in the negative sense and having no redeeming qualities at all. That is they were not science or computer or history geeks, who had interesting informative opinions on the world. They hardly read a book between the lot of them, had bland personalities, no interest in anything, except cars. Not even music. Dull and duller. They had the personalities of bricks. And yes I realize that by being in their company, I wasn’t any better. They were prematurely middle-aged men, and they were as useless with girls as I was. They were all virgins like me, and we reinforced one another’s virginity. I mean when a bunch of bland nerds hang out with one another, at some bland shopping mall, well it sends off nerd vibes for miles around. If I had a brain, I would have cut them off and said better to be a complete loner than hang out with a bunch of dorks who were also not nice people really, and super-boring and bland in a way that only a suburban existence in a largely soulless city, where it’s every man for himself, and all that matters is money and financial status, can explain. I knew these guys from high school and my friendship with them was a carryover from that, even though I was only ‘friendly’ with them in my last year of high school really. The smart thing to have done here – oh hindsight! – would have been to have cut them off, well I wish I was never even friendly with them in high school, but you know certainly have cut them off at university.
I did go on that vacation at the end of high school with guys who were not loser nerd types, but that was a weird fluke. I was kind of friendly with the one guy, and he was mates with the other guys, not me. I ended up going on vacation with them, because they needed a fourth guy, for the rental apartment they got, otherwise it would have been unaffordable. And so I ended up being the fourth guy.
Looking back on my youth, it would have been better to have been a complete loner without any friends, better to have spent my time alone in a library, or going for a hike or going to the gym, or watching a bird build a nest, than hanging out with so-called friends who were dull dullards and limit you, as they dull and limit themselves. Instead I hung out with these bores, at shopping malls, talking about things I didn’t care for. We were so pathetic that we would go to the nightclubs, bars, across the city, and not one of us ever met or hooked up with, or got the phone number of a single girl, in all that time. I am talking over several years here. In fact none of us ever approached a single girl, between the lot of us. Ever. For years. None of these guys had any confidence with girls, or more accurately much self-esteem, and they reinforced my own lack of self-worth and poor esteem and of course I did the same with them. I failed to realize how toxic this was at the time. One of them did once remark to me that if I had confidence, I would have a harem with girls of my choosing. A lot of people have said similar things to me over the years, when I was in my late teens and early twenties. These guys would eventually get girlfriends, all of them. Two of them would marry the only unattractive girls who ever went near them, their only girlfriends that is. They probably thought it was that or nothing. I think that is fairly common. Guys who only get girlfriends late in life (like the mid-twenties or later) and then just cling to their mates for dear life. Their only life buoys. The one guy (the one who said I could get any girl) would end up doing okay with girls (he wasn’t a bad-looking guy at all), but he also only got his first girlfriend late in life. He is now married with a young daughter. So I remain the only one who never got anywhere with a girl. And far and away the best-looking guy from my nerd camp (not even a contest).
You know as I write elsewhere in this essay, there were pretty girls, even beautiful girls, who showed an interest in me as a youth, in one way or another; and yet given my haughty, surly and disconsolate nature, my idiotic self-destructiveness, nothing was ever going to happen between me and any of these girls. It was all doomed from the start. I just want to give one example of a casual encounter that is casually revealing. When I was visiting my mother and sister in my 20th year, at the city they had moved to, I was actually visiting the big university there one morning, where my sister was studying. The reason being, as a student I had a big project to work on, and needed access to a university library. Since I was not in my hometown, I went to the university there, the economics and business library there, to access certain books and journals for my project (at my own university). So I am walking on campus there, checking it out and heading to the cafeteria for a meal, and I notice walking towards me, with a whole group of other students, a pretty girl about my own age. I recognize her immediately. We were at high school together and she was in my own class for about two years, in the eleventh and twelfth grades. I will give her the name Rita.
In fact not only was she very pretty with a nice figure, she was always kind of friendly with me, tried to draw me out of my shell back in high school, but failed miserably. I hadn’t seen her since we were 17. I had heard though that she had moved to this city and was studying at the university there. So it wasn’t a complete shock to see her. Anyhow so as she approaches me, walking toward me, going in the opposite direction that I am headed, I smile at her. She smiles back. She doesn’t recognize me though. She doesn’t say ‘hi Danny how are you?’. I have changed a lot since high school, she far less so. This of course is usually the case with young men and women in that age group between 17 and 21. She thought I was just some random guy who was smiling at her, because he thought she was cute. I am sure she got that a lot. She was as beautiful as she was in high school.
Thing is she smiled back, in an openly flirtatious way, as in ‘I see you fancy me, here is my smile back to acknowledge that, and I think you are cute too’. Clearly. So as she walks past me, with a smile still on her face, I call to her ‘Rita, how are you?’ She turns around, still doesn’t recognize me. I have to tell her, ‘it’s Danny C from high school’. She responds with some surprise, ‘wow Danny, how are you, what are you doing here?’ We make small talk, catch up, that kind of thing. And then we both go on our way. It actually wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to make the moves on her, even though her smiling response to my own smile, when she didn’t even recognize me, was a sign of interest. But it is telling, of how a pretty young woman clearly thought I was an attractive young man. Of course I recognised that fact as soon as she smiled back at me, it was obvious she didn’t recognise me from high school. Rita is a reminder – as much as anything – of what a fucking moron I was in high school. I can’t think of a prettier girl in high school (well there were so many admittedly), one who showed an interest in me back then, but in a way that was so tentative and cautious, because of who I was – a withdrawn, surly boy. If I had just shown a little bit of initiative, self-esteem and assertiveness back then, I realize in hindsight, I could have got her to put out at least a little bit with me. And perhaps more than just a little. But my idiocy, my poor self-esteem, my naiveté, meant that at the time I did not even consider it a possibility. Sigh.
Anyhow once back in my hometown and continuing my studies (aged 20 – the year 1990), my life remains utterly dull, no real friends except the nerds. I am not going to any parties, not meeting girls. I often sit by myself in the lecture classes and the university cafeteria. It’s pathetic.
1991 James shakes things up
Now something would happen to me in my 21st year (1991) – my fourth year at university, and it’s supposed to be my final year – that changed things on the surface, but of course nothing changed. I need to bring that up here. Circumstances were such that I became friendly with a guy who temporarily moved into my home (that is my father’s house), a suave wheeler-dealer type, from London, 24 years of age at the time. I was staying with my father and his girlfriend, and this young Londoner was the son of a friend of my father’s. My father and this other guy’s father (British) knew each other from decades back. They had met each other at an Indian Ocean island resort/hotel they were both staying at, in the early 1970s, both being on vacation with their wives (myself and my sister were left behind even as we were very little – taken care of by nannies. Make of that what you will). And our fathers remained in touch over the decades. This young man – and I will give him the name James – had left London under something of a cloud, and my father said sure he could stay with us, until he got back on his feet (my father’s house had a spare bedroom that was not being used). And this young man James just assumed I was scoring with girls whenever I wanted to, and almost with whoever I wanted to. He was convinced that my moroseness and sullenness was because I had made a girl pregnant! I was like, ‘uh no’. Not quite! And he kept on insisting for quite a while, that yes I had made a girl pregnant and I just wouldn’t admit it to him! Even as I denied it! But no I didn’t tell him the real reason, any more than I have told anybody else.
Yet he introduced me to his circle of friends, he made friends rapidly, he was the type (he couldn’t understand why I had the nerd friends I had, not because they were nerds but because they were dullards and bores); and for the first time as an adult really I was no longer hanging out with my idiot nerd friends (or solely hanging out with them). All these people seemed somewhat amazed that I didn’t have a girlfriend and just assumed that I had had a few girls in the past. And was hooking up with girls, having one-night stands and just not talking about it to people. I don’t think they suspected me of being gay, which I wasn’t and am not. Later on, people would suspect that. Throughout my life people have just assumed – if you aren’t ugly or obese or have some serious behavioral disorder (okay I had my BDD but people don’t pick up on this at all!), this is naturally the case – that I have had a fair number of girls/women. And when you are a good-looking man who has never married, it is naturally assumed that you have had a fair few women. Even been a womaniser. Lots of people – well everybody – I have met over the years, just assumed I had been with women, and even a fair number of women. The kind of things they would throw out in conversation, hilariously ironic. And people, even men (and yes mostly straight men), have remarked on my handsomeness. Friends, work colleagues, cousins, friends of friends, acquaintances, strangers.
I must add something here: pretty much the only real ‘contact’ I had with girls (that is in terms of potential sex and romantic relations), and what beautiful girls, I had in my life up to that point in time, was that year. That is my 21st year (there was a beautiful woman I met in my 36th year, my only real and deep connection and true friendship with a woman in my whole life, which itself was a bizarre and strange thing but will come to that).
I want to get back to talking about my body dysmorphic disorder, because it is fundamental to my screw-ups in my 21st year. It is my screw-up. It is me. It is the alpha and the omega of my self-destructiveness. And from there it was downhill all the way, pretty much. Even once I no longer endured the BDD (years later), it was too late, because the damage had been done; and I was now so nervous and anxious around women, because of the complete lack of experience that I had, or rather didn’t have.
If you do not address this BODY DYSMORPHIC DISORDER/BDD madness; somehow resolve it and move past it – it then degenerates into a kind of tragedy nobody really writes about much (I mean aside from professionals who study this, and those who suffer from it), because the truth of the lives of extreme neurotics is not even conceivable to ‘normal’ people.
I’m convinced most psychologists and psychiatrists don’t really appreciate it, given how most of them are dullards, and in the case of psychiatrists simply salesmen for Pfizer and Eli Lilly and Company. The rare psychologist who has some sensitivity, who has dealt with those suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorders, is one of the few ‘normal’ people who can understand or at least appreciate this insanity. Try talking sense to somebody in the throes of BDD, and they will tell you, you don’t know or see what they see. And you (the normal one) are the one with the warped perceptions, no matter if you have eagle-eye vision, and don’t miss a thing re people’s appearances. In fact people suffering from BDD may come to think other people are just being falsely polite to them, the way we are with obese people, not calling them fat to their faces. And my situation was made worse, by the fact that I didn’t admit feeling, looking, more truly being ugly to anybody. Who could I confide in? And what could they change? I must stress that when you suffer from a BDD of my type, you don’t feel ugly, it is not a passing emotion, so much as you really are convinced you are ugly. It is a fact – to you! – that cannot be disputed, like a person’s weight or eye color.
Just let me remark here that I expect neurotic tragedies like BDD to have picked up among the millenials, simply because narcissism has surely picked up big time among the selfie social media generation. Narcissism has become the background neurosis of our Day and Age.
1991 The Golden Year that Wasn’t. Laura loves me even if I don’t care. Vicki the icon of the beautiful blonde
Getting back to my own tragedy: so in hindsight, an inevitable bizarre black comedy routine materialized in a way that makes me shudder, cry and laugh to this day. Despite being a loner, having only nerd ‘friends’, and being anti-social (and then wondering why I had no real friends!), never going to parties etc; because I was actually noticeably handsome and because I was attending a big university, and classes where there were lots of pretty girls…
I was in the one university library one day, 20 years of age, just shy of 21, when a beautiful girl who had this Winona Ryder look comes into the library (and would have been about the same age as Winona Ryder at the time coming to think of it, about 18/19 back then in 1991. To the youngsters/millenials, you need to know how cute Winona Ryder was when she was a very young woman, check out films like Mermaids, Heathers and Reality Bites). She dressed in this bohemian chic way, a B.A. student, and she contrived to speak to me at the photostat machine. I could tell the photostat machine was just a pretext, she could barely hide her attraction to me (in fact didn’t bother to hide it), and I felt the same way. Now for the first time in my life really, I understood what people meant when they speak of love or lust at first sight. When people speak of a sudden burst of electricity between two people, of a mutual attraction so strong, a magnetic pull, that it’s all you can do to not start rutting away on the spot. I would come to call her Laura (that was just a name I invented for her, I never did discover her real name).
Now remember at the time my BDD was severe (and I was never more attractive than I was at 21. It was my physical high point, as the early twenties are with most all of us. That is the surreal paradox of the Dysmorphic Disorder). I had never ever made out with a girl, not even a kiss, and here was I kid you not, an even more attractive version of Winona Ryder (and I thought Winona was beautiful back then) flirting outrageously with me, a stranger. A girl who clearly had experience with boys, and who no doubt never got rejected by any guy ever. Hence her confidence in flirting with me.
And here I want to interject something, the longer this incel thing goes on, this unwanted virginity like a millstone around one’s neck, the more of a problem it becomes. Because you are getting older, and the girls you are attracted to are getting older. An 18-year-old girl is not a 16-year-old girl. When you are in high school, even pretty girls who have made out with a few boys, don’t mind a boy who hasn’t any experience, who fumbles and is awkward, because that’s high school. And not every boy is making out with a girl at 13 or 14. And girls know that. However once you are out of high school, lack of even make-out experience with a girl weighs on one, and can make you sweat with some fear and trepidation. You start to think (from about 18 and 19 years of age), well should I admit to the girl I have never really made out with a girl before, or should I pretend otherwise, and hope I can fake it. What if she senses my lack of experience? This is or was a relatively minor thing, when I was 18. By the time I was 20, it was mortifying.
Anyhow this electric connection between myself and this Winona look-alike, saw me leave the library on a high, but also on a terrible low (she said she owed me a cup of coffee, since I helped to pay for a few photostats she needed. She didn’t have small change for the photostat machine, or pretended not to. In other words, it was her way of being overtly flirtatious and establishing a pretext for a connection between us. She owed me a coffee). A terrible low, because suffering from my BDD, and my virginity weighing down on me, I was convinced that once she saw me close up, real close up, like leaning in for a kiss, she would recoil. I know this is nuts. That’s BDD. It is hardcore insanity, nothing less than that. I feel in writing this confession, a terrible shame and embarrassment; I would rather admit to once having believed, as an adult, that the earth was made of cheese and was hollowed out inside, and that aliens from the Orion star system are disguised as pet hamsters, keeping an eye on humanity, unbeknownst to us. I will come to something else about BDD, but further down.
So – and to let you know that I really had this head over heels crush on this girl, as they say like a bolt from the blue, she was all I could think about – I saw this girl a few days later, at university (well she was in my one huge class, even as I met her in the library. In fact she was in the library doing research on the same essay/project I had to do, because in the same class). She flirted like crazy and reminded me she owed me a cup of coffee. So I mustn’t forget. I flirted back but didn’t even ask her her name. And I didn’t fix a date to meet at the uni cafeteria. Which is what a sane heterosexual man would have done. But suffering from the BDD and mortified that I had never even kissed a girl (remember I was just shy of 21 at this point in time) and I didn’t want a girl I was falling in love with to be the first girl I had ever kissed, because I would probably kiss like a 12-year-old boy, which is what I was in terms of this kind of experience (she was 18 or 19. I was older than most of the others in that class who were B.A. students, as she clearly was). I didn’t see her again for like two or three weeks. Remember even though she was in my one class, it was a huge class at a large university. There were so many beautiful girls in that class, in case I hadn’t said that before.
I also need to interject something further. I had no friends outside of my nerd herd, was in this sense definitely uncool; and this girl was cool. So I was thinking, so what if we go out, and then she discovers inevitably that I am the uncool loner type (as opposed to the cool loner type), worse let’s face it, a nerd? These kind of nervous thoughts were operating in the background of my mind. Even the foreground of my mind.
Anyhow, one day – a few weeks later – I’m sitting in that class, by myself, waiting for the lecture to begin, and she comes in to sit next to me. I am terrified and paralyzed because I realize it is now make or break. What did I do? Nothing. Did not open my mouth to say a word to her. We sit in this awkward silence for like two minutes, but it felt like two years. Then a male friend (I could tell a platonic friend, she was the kind of girl who would have lots of friends) of hers comes up to her, and says – thinking I am just some random stranger she was sittting next to – come sit with him and their mutual friends. She looks at me, waiting for me to say something. I do and say nothing. So she says, clearly a little reluctantly, okay, and she goes to sit with her friends. That was the last thing that ever happened between us. I was so mortified, so depressed by what had happened, it near drove me over the edge. I mean try explain this to people: you were falling in love with this beautiful girl, you could think of nothing else, she had turned your brain to mush, and she clearly felt the same way about you, at the very least, she really really liked you. And you – in the prime of your life, at the cusp of 21 – do nothing. Less than nothing. You give off vibes that translate to ‘I am a very odd fish, please go away and leave me alone.’ I did not ever want to even bump into her again, I did not want to see any of those beautiful girls again, not only from that class, but from all my classes.
There was this other girl Vicki who I also knew from university. She was in my one class, again in that Golden Year That Wasn’t – 1991. Same class in fact as Winona/Laura. It’s how I knew her. I don’t think Vicki and ‘Laura’ knew one another, or not well at all. They had different friends, it seemed. Mixed in different circles. Anyhow Vicki was also a freshman 18-year-old B.A. student. She was in my one assigned tutorial study group (otherwise I would never have gotten to know her). Now Vicki was a stunner, an icon of the beautiful blonde babe, what a face what a body! And she did flirt with me on one or two occasions. I will never forget a smile she gave me, as I came up the stairs of the one campus building, where our tutorial class was held. She was just standing outside class with everybody else, waiting for our lecturer to arrive. She was a princess, knew she was beautiful, and acted accordingly. Fact is I fell for her so bad. This was a little before I met the ‘Laura’ girl, maybe two months before. I had never fallen for a girl like this – Vicki that is – since the cute redhead Sheenah in high school. And in fact she was the only girl aside from Laura, who I really fell in love with, at university. Yes in love with. At least unlike ‘Laura’, I knew her real name! I still dream about Vicki to this day. And Laura. I imagine having threesomes with them. Well you know what else do I have? And so much time has passed, more than a quarter of a century now.
I jerk off to lesbian porn stars like Melissa Moore, Darcia Dolce, August Ames and Kenna James, who weren’t even born back then! They are all young enough to be my daughters. Coming to think of it, 1991 was the year the delectable Riley Reid and Malena Morgan were born (yes I know my lesbian porn starlets). Increasingly and for years, I can only watch lesbian porn. I don’t want to see any other guy’s dick but my own. Thank you very much. And so much of that hetero porn is robotic, unpleasant. And the fake breasts ugh. Give me erotic lipstick lesbian porn any day, and girls who are really into it, who really like fucking girls. And watching two hot women tribbing, their pussy juices melting into one another, it’s the most beautiful sight on earth. Not even a sunset, the view of a tropical forest, a tiger on the prowl, a majestic waterfall, can match the former for pure aesthetic delight. What I wouldn’t do to be able to possess the body of a young hot woman – like some wandering spirit from medieval folklore – just to be able to fuck another hot young woman (not a man let me be clear!).
This touches on the male lesbian thing, that Gilmartin discovered time and time again among male incels. And I am a proud male lesbian. There is no man more straight and hetero than a male lesbian. We should organize our own pride parades, us adult male virgins/love-shys. Male Lesbian Pride marches. Incel Pride marches! Now that would be something! What pride? Incel Shame marches more like it. We could have our own floats, dressed up as medieval flagellants, whipping ourselves with cat o’ nine tails’. Woe is me the Virgin for Life.
Getting back on track, I wonder what Vicki and Laura look like now? Are they still attractive, married I am sure, maybe divorced, children? Are they happy, how have their lives been? They should only know how I pine for the two of them. Not that it would matter at all, but just saying.
In fact Vicki knew my sister, and my sister’s friends. I once walked into a popular cafe/bar, when I was out at night (this was a couple of months after I had come to know Vicki from my class), and I see Vicki talking to my sister! (who didn’t even live in our hometown at that point in time as I relate above, but was visiting). It’s not like they were at school together, but all these cool pretty girls know one another. Shared circles/networks.
I got so obsessed with Vicki over the course of that year 1991, that I thought I must ask her out. Even as I simultaneously thought, I didn’t really stand a chance. Yes I had my BDD, but on occasion I had bouts of sanity, when I thought why not just risk it, maybe I am not ugly after all? (no you were not you stupid stupid crazy crazy dumb fuck) So at the end of the year, after I had written my exams (that I didn’t intend to write at all – related further down. About half a year after I had screwed up completely with Winona/Laura), I am obsessing about Vicki… I must ask her out, I must ask her out. Yet I don’t even know whether she has a boyfriend or not, even though with her beautiful blonde looks, chances are 95% that she does. I don’t say 100%, because maybe she’s just gone through a breakup. And I had hardly seen her at all for months, because I wasn’t really going to university classes (about which more below). It’s student vacation time. I am walking through a local shopping mall, dreaming about Vicki (because dreaming about Laura is just too painful at this point in time, the wound is too raw), and I bump right into Vicki. She is by herself. So I say ‘hi Vicki’, trying to stay calm and cool. She replies, ‘hi, how are you?’. We make pleasant small talk. Talk about the exams we just finished, I ask her where she is going for vacation. She tells me, a popular beach town. I didn’t think to ask, ‘with your boyfriend or with friends?’. So I tell her, have a good time and maybe I’ll see you on campus next year (even though I am supposed to be graduating). She says to me, ‘have a good vacation’. It’s the last conversation we ever have with one another. And it was sweet and pleasant, and she was smiling throughout our small talk. But it’s not the last I ever see of her. In fact the last time I saw her was a wincing, terrible experience, about three years later, that is so in keeping with the love-shy self-destruct modus operandi. But I relate that further down, in its more relevant place. If you have to know now, just search for ‘Vicki’ in this essay.
Thing is, getting back to the ‘Laura’ screw-up – so about six months before I bump into Vicki at a mall, at the begining of our year-end student vacation – I am so upset and frustrated by what had happened or rather what didn’t happen with Laura, at my own ineffable stupidity; that I then proceeded, over the course of the next few months, to pretty much give up on my studies. I stopped attending my classes at university. I started hanging out at the local shopping malls and watching movies at the cinemas, when I should have been in class. I decided I wasn’t even going to write my end-of-year exams, and as a consequence I wouldn’t graduate. This was the same time I became friendly with that James fellow, who I confided in about giving up on my studies, but naturally not the reason why. He was still convinced I had made a girl pregnant and that was the reason! I could not dissuade him otherwise (of course he was projecting a pregnancy scare he had onto me. And who could blame him? I was a handsome young man attending university). Remember this was my fourth year of university, I was supposed to graduate at the end of the year. Now a few months after this travesty with Winona/Laura happened, that new circle of friends (via James) came into my life. He was no longer staying at my father’s house but had gotten his own place, and was working in real estate. Now the astute reader may object or query: surely if this more attractive version/twin of Winona Ryder was falling for you big time, other pretty girls would have shown an interest in you too? Yes! And they did, and at no time more so than in my 21st year, 1991. I mean I remember strolling on campus – and I don’t want to sound arrogant, but this is the truth – there were times when girls would literally turn their heads to look at me, after I walked past. Pretty girls too. And it happened a fair few times.
I was literally a headturner. I remember walking past some pretty girls on the campus lawn (1991), and as I approached, I heard the one girl say to her friends, ‘this guy is cute’. Not meaning for me to hear (at least not consciously, but I think at another level they want you to overhear). There were other instances. I mean it was not a rare occcurence. I once walked into a luggage shop at a mall, and the one salesgirl said to her friend, again not consciously intending me to overhear, ‘this guy is dreamy’. Strangers, attractive girls and women, would just smile at me openly, when I walked past, in the aisle of a shop, from a car, in a queue, what-have-you. On campus. It happened often enough.
Now if you have to object: didn’t this tell you that your BDD was so much bullshit, you don’t get BDD.
I knew I was handsome from afar. But I was convinced that from real close-up I was ugly. So it didn’t mean anything. All this obvious attention I got from pretty girls only intensified my frustration, my sense of melancholy, my sense of perverse irony. My psyche had yet to blossom into a full-blown state of depression, but was starting to. That very year.
I never came to learn of Winona’s/Laura’s real name as I mention further up. Interestingly enough, I did not know that Winona Ryder’s middle name was Laura at the time, or maybe I did but had half forgotten this. I also did not know of Petrarch’s Laura at the time, but only discovered his poems, and the background story there, decades later. That famous 14th century Italian poet and influential Renaissance man admired one Laura, a noblewoman, from afar. He wrote famous poems (hundreds!) about her. I did know the Billy Joel song of the same name (the allusion to Laura in this chapter title is taken from the lyrics).
On the subject of Petrarch and his famous poems, Wikipedia informs us:
Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch’s style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere (“Song Book”). Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch’s work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his “Secretum”, she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later in his “Letter to Posterity”, Petrarch wrote: “In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair – my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did”.
I think of my own ‘Laura’ near every day. So ironic, because I am the one who rejected her!! I rejected her because I fancied her so much, and didn’t think I stood a chance with her, even as she literally almost threw herself at me!!! I should have been committed to an asylum for that. My God.
I think of ‘Laura’ more than I ever did in my twenties and thirties. In the most erotic ways. I’m sure she doesn’t even remember me now, except as some kind of weirdo, if she ever even thinks of me. The thing is I once saw her on campus talking to my sister’s best friend from high school (who my sister was still very good mates with, even as my sister was now living and studying in another city), she and my sister’s friend didn’t see me. This was a few months after the Disaster in the lecture class. I sometimes did have to go to campus, but kept it to a minimum, like once every three weeks or so I would come to the university campus. I was largely skipping all my classes. Now I could never ask my sister’s best friend – a pretty girl herself who had flirted with me on occasion, and was also studying a B.A. degree – anything about this ‘Laura’ girl. In fact this best friend of my sister’s, over the years, made sexually suggestive commentary directed my way. I had known her since she was about 6 years of age, and I was about 8. She once, when we were teenagers, said I had the sexiest ass. Sometimes when she was visiting my sister, she would come up to me and give me a flirtatious hug. Admittedly she was a flirt. Once she told my sister, that when she saw me on campus one day, probably circa 1991, that I was looking so cute/handsome. My sister just remarked on this to me in passing, when I spoke to her on the phone. This friend of my sister’s was very popular with the guys, not only because she was pretty, but she was also confident and friendly, a joy to be around. I just mention this in passing. Anyhow getting back to ‘Laura’… I could never ask my sister’s good friend, who this girl ‘Laura’ was. It would just be picking at a raw wound. I mean how would I explain myself, and account for my behavior? So I have never known. What a mega-clusterfuck. I cannot recount this without simultaneously laughing hysterically, and yes moaning and whimpering like a sick dog. I mean it is a black comedy screw-up that nobody could dream up.
I am pretty certain that I am the only heterosexual man who ever rejected this ‘Laura’, certainly when she was a young gorgeous woman. Maybe she thought I was gay. Even as I was in love with her, and pine for her in a way I probably never would have if we had gone out for even a little while, and then broken up. I wonder how she looks now. Where is she living? I can’t even find out. I mean what, call up my sister’s friend who I haven’t seen in years, and ask her if she remembers a Winona Ryder look-alike from university days who she knew, because I was in love with her and she fancied me, but I rejected her because I was stark raving mad; and even though it is more than a quarter of a century later, I am just curious who she is and where she is living, if she is married, does she have children, what does she do etc. Even though there is a good chance that my sister’s friend would have lost touch with her herself, after twenty five years. And even though I can’t do anything about any of this now, any more than I can get my hair back. So no that is not an option.
The absurdity of this kind of thing – rejecting beautiful girls you actually fancy and who fancy you! because you are severely neurotic, basically out-of-your-tree-stark-raving-nuts – is never featured in books really (so far as I know) or films, because which writer or his audience/readership can even imagine this kind of thing? How can an audience make sense of it, or even care for it? After all what is the denouement, the rationale, the ending? There is no Christine Keener character who comes along and redeems us at age forty or later. Note how I write ‘redeem’ as if having sex is some kind of redemption. You start to see sex in these terms (at least if you have some sensitivity about recognizing sex as a way of bonding, being intimate with a woman, rather than just a release of pent-up sex energy and frustration into a vagina receptacle). And let me tell you, nobody appreciates the beauty of women, their ways of walking and talking and laughing, their bodies, their breasts, asses, legs, hair, mouths, their nipples and areolas, their pussies, oh my God their pussies, their strange ways, than heterosexual men who do without women for whatever reasons (and are not misogynists of course). You start to see sex in religious terms, the way a starving man starts to see food. Even if you are an atheist. Ah how we only know what we have, when we don’t have it. Like one’s health. Like one’s fleeting youth. And we cannot ever learn, because it is just the nature of things. You only know what you got when it’s gone.
Why write your university final exams when there is no reason for living?
So now back to that black comedy year of ’91. So I confided in my one friend James, that I am not going to bother writing my final examinations. James is still convinced that I am depressed because I made some girl pregnant, despite my insisting otherwise. Do you see how farcical and black comedy hilarious BDD is? A handsome young man complains to his friend who probably went through at least one pregnancy scare with a woman, that he is not going to write his exams, he is feeling really bad about something, but won’t fess up to what it is. The other man, James in this case, cannot begin to fathom that his friend is suffering from a dysmorphic disorder, and no doubt would never have even heard of it, and interprets my despair according to his own life experience. And who can blame him? I mean if a handsome young man came to you with this kind of story: I am not going to write my uni exams, and I don’t care what happens; could you begin to fathom the truth of things as this handsome youth perceived it, as I relate here? Short of telepathic communication, short of picking up via paranormal powers, the warped thought processes of a young man who let us face it, was clearly delusional, even mad; of course you couldn’t. Never mind that I was a virgin!
So I didn’t write my exams. My father then gets a call from the university, wanting to know why I hadn’t pitched up for my exams. My father is understandably furious at me since he is paying for my studies. Now I can’t tell the truth, fess up. So I cook up a cock-and-bull story about how I had been suffering from erectile impotence!! and a resultant depression. The uni forces me to go to a psychiatrist (at my father’s expense), because only a letter from a professional psychologist or psychiatrist acknowledging my depression, will see me be allowed to stay on at the university, and write the exams at a later date. I get the letter, telling the psychiatrist the fabricated story of my erectile dysfunction/impotence and resultant melancholy, not the truth of things as I imagined them, because there is no way I am going there! The drug saleslady (aka psychiatrist) then says it’s just a chemical imbalance, my impotence is clearly psychological and not physical in terms of its etiology (cause), and she gives me some anti-depressants to take. SSRIs if I remember correctly. This of course makes no sense even I was telling the truth. But everything to these psychiatrist morons is a chemical imbalance, even if you have lost your legs in a car accident, been gang raped or are convinced you are a reincarnation of Chief Sitting Bull. Anyhow I bin the drugs when I get home. Let me just stress another point: even if I had told the idiot psychiatrist the actual truth, and she had correctly diagnosed me with BDD, she would still in all likelihood, have said a chemical imbalance is responsible and foisted drugs on me.
Short of it is this: the university allowed me to take the exams at a later date. I crammed heavily and passed all of them except one subject. So no big deal, I could just do that last credit again in the coming year (1992) and it being only one credit, I could work part-time or even full-time as well. But the BDD continued to get worse. You think it impossible. How could it get worse? It got worse.
A date with destiny in 1992. Self-fulfilling prophecy is fulfilled
So 1992 comes around (don’t worry I don’t go into details re every passing year over the next quarter century, I couldn’t stand it any more than the reader would be able to. I skip over whole years), and my friend James hooks me up with that secretary of his (I mention this briefly further up), a young woman of 18. We go out on a double date sometime in early 1992 – I am still 21 – James and his girlfriend, me and this girl (let’s call her Jodi). She is real pretty as well. Cute as a button and magnificent breasts. Remember this is only my second date ever (after my prom date at 17), and I am just shy of 22. James doesn’t have a clue. Realizes I am very weird, but is still convinced I have had a fair few women in my bed, as do all his friends. Including one gay middle-aged man – who turned out to be a conman who would die in prison but that’s another story – who is clearly enamored of me. The whole pregnant girl thing is I assume just forgotten about, or rather he has cottoned on to the fact that I never did make any girl pregnant after all.
So the double date…
We all go to a movie together, Jodi is acting cool because well what else can she do? Plus she is real pretty and is no doubt used to guys throwing themselves at her. Let me add here, I didn’t want to go on the date because you know convinced I will never get a girl. Ever. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Talk about a self-fulfilling hex. But I didn’t see it then because I was equal part moron and equal part insane. Even though now it is so obvious. But James forced me to go out, coming by my room, with the girl in tow, saying we were all going out that night. So what was I going to say? No, in front of the girl? Of course not. I said sure, in the most casual way. James was concerned that he never saw me with a girl, and was convinced he could force me into a relationship, I just needed a kick up the ass. Anyhow after the movie, James and his girl go back to their place and this girl Jodi invites me up to her home, she stays with her parents. We stay up till about two in the morning, talking late. Really hitting it off. I then excuse myself, saying I have to go, and she has to get up early for work the next morning. I don’t kiss her goodbye of course, and she never hinted at me to even try, she has decided to play it cool and maybe a little hard to get. But I can tell she likes me. She wants to see me again.
Now let me just interject an obvious point, but it is worth stressing. If you think about it, this was my first real date that did not involve the high school contrivance that is a prom/matriculation dance – all rather fake and forced. In other words, this is my first date with a girl in a real social setting, that is going to a movie, or to a coffee shop or a restaurant. She should only have known! James and his girlfriend should only have known! And I am just shy of 22. For the love of Juno.
Now again we get the inevitable bizarro scenario. I don’t call her again, for the same reason I never made any moves on Winona/Laura. I am convinced she would never be attracted to me, if she saw me real close. And of course there is the virginity thing weighing down on me… The same doomed self-fulfilling madness at work. James is fuming at me, after the requisite few days wait after the date, and I haven’t called her. James tells me, she likes you, she is waiting for you to call her. I tell James, tell her I’m just a jerk. He says, hey he already did so! And James learned from that, to never even try and hook me up with a girl again.
Suicide by gun is the way out, but no cojones
The rest of the year I moped, and started to sink into a full-blown depression (a major depressive disorder for sure). I decided in the middle of the year, aged 22, that I would kill myself at the end of the year. Because I really feel there is nothing to live for now. After university graduation I intend to commit suicide. And come late 1992, I write my end of year exam (only one exam. I had worked part-time for a brief period at a video store, I have nothing of interest to remark here. And no attractive or available girls there anyhow) and pass it easily enough. I have my degree, a bachelor degree in business. I could care less. I wait till after my sister’s 21st birthday celebration party (not wanting to spoil it with my suicide a week or two before, her party would have been canceled naturally enough. I actually mulled about maybe doing it before her party, just to spoil it. But decided against it. Plus I had persistent cold feet about this whole suicide thing). Her party comes and goes.
A few days later I drive out in my car to the outskirts of the city, my father’s revolver in the glove compartment of my car, and park off on the side of a dirt road. And I cannot take the gun out of the glove compartment. I just couldn’t do it. I got cold feet. I should have known. But you only know when you know.
Trip to the Far East, beautiful girls and misery
Now still miserable as hell, seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, coming back home (the self-same day I had intended to blow my brains out), I proceed to pack my luggage – get this – for an overseas trip I am scheduled to take the very next day with my father, to the Far East. I never intended to go on the vacation of course, I intended to be dead. No holiday. Not for me. Not for my father. That is why I decided to take my life when I planned to do so. Before going on a vacation I did not want to go on, not only because I no longer wanted to live; but because I hated my old man, who only begged me to go on a vacation with him because he didn’t have a girlfriend at the time (he had split up earlier that year with his long-term girlfriend who I was fond of, and she deserved better anyhow). Just a few more pertinent things about my father: he was something of a womanizer, had a few affairs when he was married to my mother. Had no problem visiting prostitutes on business trips overseas, as I relate above. To him all men were like that. He never thought I could hold it against him because he just didn’t see anything wrong with it. Getting back to the vacation thing to the Far East, my father was just using me as a companion.
So I go overseas (to Hong Kong, Phuket, Bangkok, Beijing China, staying in luxurious hotels. My father was wealthy). And we come to blows constantly. But never mind. Weirdly enough, or maybe not so weirdly enough, because I am on a holiday, I meet lots of pretty girls at these resorts. A beautiful Australian girl of 18 who shows an interest, two other very pretty girls – 17 and 18 years of age – traveling together with their families, the one (from South Africa) makes it very clear she is attracted to me. Another beautiful girl close to my own age, who is cleary attracted to me (Chinese-American), who I meet in a bar. Others too. I blow them all off in my weird bizzarro manner. I did not pounce on this beautiful 18-year-old Aussie girl (let us call her Kim), who showed an interest (she was traveling with her parents). We even got drunk together one night. She went on about my beautiful blue eyes, she smiled at me seductively one night, when we were at one of those Phuket bars/clubs. I didn’t do anything, I froze. I mean Kim was a stunner, black hair, perfect body, a face that could have featured on the cover of a Vogue, Cosmopolitan or Elle. The kind of Aussie hottie you gaze at with longing and desire on Bondi beach (she was from Sydney coming to think of it). I saw her in her bikini after all. Once again, I couldn’t believe that such a perfect specimen of the female gender would show an interest in me. Groan. I didn’t pounce like I said, and so another young man did. Another Aussie in fact who was also staying at our hotel. Some 18-year-old boy.
The Chinese-American, an attractive girl of about 19, I buy her a drink at our hotel bar (she is there at the bar by herself, also traveling with her parents). Thing is I just walked up to the bar counter, see her sitting there, and offer to buy her a drink. As I am ordering my own. She is friendly to me, seems keen. We are talking together for about half an hour. She shows signs of interest. I panic. I just walk away from her at the bar counter, and go back to my room! I mean I give her a curt good-bye, and just leave. I mean just like that. It wasn’t even something I thought about. This after we had been talking together in a way that would have led the barman to think: lucky guy, he is getting some tonight. I started to get nervous and anxious when I was talking to her. I mean what if it actually leads somewhere? We can’t have that now. God forbid. What my first time, even if only my first make-out time, just like that! So I just got the hell out of there. If you have to ask: so why offer to buy her a drink in the first place, if you were only going to chicken out? Well at this point in time, it is clear that when it comes to girls at least, I am out of my tree, completely abnormal. Extremely neurotic, at war with myself and my own desires. A total fuck-up. A case study for abnormal psychology if there was one.
She was leaving about two days later, so I didn’t really risk seeing her at the hotel again.
This Aussie girl and the Chinese-American were not the only girls I blew off in the Far East! I remember them distinctly is all. The South African 17-year-old brunette was also very cute, gave me signs of interest, but again I did nothing; and some English boy (and I mean some kid in high school! or just out of high school, and who hadn’t even started shaving) pounced instead.
Obviously when I speak of the girls I blew off, I do not count the local hookers in Bangkok and Phuket. I am just talking the tourists, attractive girls in their late teens from wealthy families, looking to have a good time.
As many pretty girls show an interest in me on that vacation, in such a short space of time, that is in about a month time period, as they ever had before. The reason being it was a holiday and everybody is in the holiday mood, and naturally everyone who is traveling as a single is looking to have a good time (and when you are young…), and not looking for anything serious. Also back home, even when I was at university, I could hide away so much more easily. And I did. In my 22nd year and before then, I was usually friendless, never going to the parties etc. In fact for my entire university career, I was near friendless and a marginalized loner. Note all these pretty girls (from Europe, Australia, America, South Africa) who I met in the Far East, in their late teens, being keen on me, mere days and weeks after I had intended to blow my brains out – because I had no luck with girls!!!
Whaaaaat the Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck?!
WHAAAAAAAAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK??!!
This is beyond bizarre black comedy. There are no words.
And to repeat myself, if you have to ask at this point: why did I blow these girls off and never respond to their moves? Well you are not paying attention. See my commentary above re Winona/Laura and Jodi. My madness did not go away simply because I didn’t have the guts to commit suicide. Plus if you think a young man of 20 is afraid his lack of sexual experience, heck his complete lack of kissing and make-out experience will show; imagine what it is like at 22 years of age, especially when you already have an anxious and nervous temperament. Yeah exactly. Anyhow the short of it is nothing happened when I was on holiday. It was a foregone conclusion. Sun Tzu observed in his famous The Art of War that the battle is lost or won before it is fought. The pussy is lost or won before you have even met the female owner of said pussy. I came back from that holiday, filled with regret that I hadn’t had the guts to kill myself, exacerbated by my further screw-ups with girls (hence the regret at not having taken my own life), and hating my father, the psychopath, even more than I did before.
Rodger was 22 when he went on his killing spree, ultimately resulting in his suicide. I was 22 when still being a virgin, never having really kissed a girl, and seeing no hope in sight – I made the decision to kill myself. And yet I found out that I didn’t have the courage to even take the revolver out of the glove compartment of my car and shoot myself in the head as I intended. That was late 1992. It’s not that I saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Some tiny shred of hope. I just didn’t have the balls at the end of the day. And it’s not as if I decided then or ever to find something else to live for. You know like helping other people, the pursuit of knowledge, charitable causes. I knew I didn’t have it in me, and I was too stubborn and egotistical to ever change. My god I wanted pussy so bad it hurt. I wanted to hold a woman in my arms so bad, taste their skin, smell their scent, hear their moans beneath me as I penetrated them, with my cock, my fingers, my tongue, lick their nipples, their pussies, their bellies, explore every inch of them. Hold their hands, laugh together, share meals and do what loving couples do together. I could not go on without them, and yet I did not have the courage to commit suicide. I sat there in my car, not having the courage or the mental ability or resilience to live without women, that is with equanimity, and not having the courage to just end it all. I was in a limbo state, in a No Man’s Land, neither living nor truly dead (and in a limbo No Man’s Land I have been ever since). I was only 22 and I saw not how I could live. Or die. Elliot Rodger was born that very year. When he was 22 years old and I was exactly double his age (22 years later), in 2014, he would have the courage to end his life (then again so do suicide bomber terrorists). Unfortunately he was also a psychopath – as with the suicide bomber terrorists – who took the lives of several others with him.
I was also of course technically and clinically insane, but didn’t know it (my BDD). However this insanity had not only become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and would continue to do so, it became all-consuming. It warped and controlled every aspect of my life. The die was cast, the crucible was forged.
Looking back to that fateful day that was not so fateful after all, and still being a virgin at 47, still not having even kissed a woman, do I regret not having blown my brains out back then in ’92? It is difficult to say. Yes and no.
Yes I regret it, because the pain has been terrible, the frustrations only getting worse. The psychological trauma, the resultant moderate depression/dysthymia every day of my life that would on occasion become more severe and grim, and a burgeoning social and generalized anxiety, avoidant personality traits and OCD developing and taking control of my life. Incel becomes an ever tighter and tighter noose over the years and decades. It becomes a prison with ever higher walls and thicker cell bars, with every passing year (as Gilmartin observes). At 20 or thereabouts, your prison is just a local backwater lock-up (and you crime is nothing worse than a DUI, and you are only there for a night, to sleep it off) with a dopey Dukes-of-Hazard-type sheriff snoring away in the corner. By the time you are 40, the incel prison has become a Fort Knox, with a moat swarming with crocs and piranhas, surrounding twenty foot high walls, barbed wire and sharp metal spikes atop the walls. Floodlights, alarms primed to laser trip wires, CCTV everywhere. The lone dopey bumbling guard has been replaced by an army of crack special forces, fitted with all the high-tech gear including infrared binoculars, armed with fully automatic machine guns, sniper rifles with hi-tech scopes, RPGs, artillery, and hi-tech combat helicopters on call. They also have a squadron of F-16 fighters on back up. And you are the only prisoner they have to guard. And they have your prison cell under 24 hour camera surveillance, even when you go to the bathroom. Your cell is barred with a double layer of steel doors. All incels are not imprisoned together at a single maximum security prison. We are all alone and cut off from one another in our own prisons. One prison, one maximum security facility, for each and every single older love-shy.
So how do you break out?
You need a miracle.
Wallowing in the wallows
I also could never get really motivated re jobs and a career (what’s the point, always alone and never happy, not for a single day). Often unemployed and underemployed and NEVER in a job appropriate to my qualifications. Gilmartin again discovered this time and time again among his love-shys surveyed. ‘Status inconsistents’ as we are called. Notwithstanding there is now a qualifier that did not apply when Gilmartin did his survey. Namely since circa 2008 and the beginning of the Great Recession that never ends, and the massive outsourcing of jobs to the Third World and China, even the most qualified university educated graduates are routinely stuck in dead-end McJobs. So it goes.
In the 25 years and counting since I was 22 and lacked the courage to commit suicide, I have turned my back on people in desperate need for my help, when they were in desperate straits, and I did nothing for them (I am not talking family here). That’s life challenging you and demanding you stand up and be counted. Life does not care one whit whether you are handsome or ugly, tall or short, fat or thin, a genius or not, rich or poor. Getting laid or not. This is where my limbo state – neither alive nor dead, just one of the living dead – got me. That is I did terrible things by not doing anything, by not getting past the whole incel thing. By not looking past my self, the self-pity, the self-aborption, the self self self; the mind warped by never having sex and experiencing affection from a female love interest. I ended up turning a blind eye to terrible injustices and cruelty, and not lifting a finger to help people who needed me, and cried out for me, and I wasn’t there. And now it is too late. I say this for a reason (not just self-flagellation), to the incels out there. Life does not stop with its challenges, just because you are so lonely and that is enough suffering thank you very much. This is why depression, whatever the cause, is so damaging. It is not just you yourself that pays the price. So do others around you. Because depression only reinforces egoism and self-pity, and in the process you abandon any of those around you who life otherwise demands you help. I mean maybe I would have been a self-absorbed jerk anyhow. Maybe. Possibly. Probably. But the involuntary celibacy and the resultant depression and resignation didn’t help and only hurt me (and others) signficantly in this respect.
To repeat myself – I am as guilty of this self-pity and mewling self-absorption as any love-shy who ever lived. And this is a side-effect of incel that I know affects so many of us life-long virgins. Those of us who just can’t get past it. And we try! And the harder you try, the more you sink into sexual daydreams and have women on the brain. The more depressed you get, the more neurotic you get, and then you just get more depressed. A downward spiral. As such, incel’s suffering does not make him a better person. On the contrary, you can become increasingly selfish and indifferent to others. You can develop – I know I did – what psychologists call a flat affect. You are not really here. I am arguably schizoidal as well. There is a split between my mind and body. I am living in my head, there is no real contact with my body, and the physical environment.
And what of my involuntary monastic life, since I failed to take my own life back in 1992? After the vacation to the Far East?
The mid-twenties, a desert of real rejection and a fleeting oasis. Alas a mirage
The short of it is in ’93 (aged 23) I would have one date, when I went out with a girl who I had been fixed up with, a girl whose good friend was dating a ‘friend’ of mine. We all went out on a double date to a restaurant (I had been working as a clerk for a textile company btw). The girl was really sexy, pretty, smart, dark haired. I actually knew her brother (a handsome man who girls chased after), he had been in one of my university classes years before. The date did not go well at all. The attraction was clearly only one way. I should add at this point in time I was no longer at my physical peak, even though only 23. I had gotten a lot of splotchy skin outbreaks, rosacea type problems that I never had before. All of a sudden from my 23rd year on. Coinciding with the onset of a full-blown depression and listlessness that has never gone away. I am convinced that their cause was psychosomatic/psychogenic, I was long past puberty and did not have this problem during adolescence. No dermatological intervention was of any use. In a big way my BDD became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I thought I was ugly and my body said – responding to my subconscious messages and commands – fine you are ugly, and you know I then got the skin problems. Only well into my twenties. The power of the mind for health or misfortune is something else. And you cotton onto it too late, if you ever do! That date was the worst date of my life, well it was only my third date up to that point in time. The next year, my 24th year I had another date, that was kinda strange, in the sense that it was some girl I asked out, when we met via mutual so-called friends (I bumped into them all at a café). I only asked her out because somehow, I can’t quite remember how, the situation contrived itself in some way. That date was awkward, it went okay, but neither of us was really attracted to the other. And we had nothing in common.
These 2 bad dates, in my 23rd and 24th years, really shook my confidence. Well what little self-esteem more accurately that I had left, which was hardly anything really. Well it was less than zero.
When I was 24 I was working in music retail, this was in 1994, and one night I went out with some work colleagues to a trance rave party held just out of the city. A huge one. Thousands of revellers there. This was probably at the height of the rave trance craze back in the mid-nineties. So anyway I had a good time there, as far as it goes, got into my groove, dancing. And I am not, or was not then, a bad dancer. Even though the trance music is not my kind of music, the whole trance rave scene fascinated me. As did all the nubile young female bodies, sexily dressed, dancing all day and night. Hence the fascination! The reason I mention this here, is that I was just dancing there, like many people, just in my own groove, and several times, girls, pretty sexy young things, teenagers, would come and dance with me. Every one of these girls was a sexy young thing, without exception. I didn’t make any moves, a trance rave event is not that kind of place, or at least it wasn’t perceived in that way. More a scene just to let go, to be free and celebrate the rhythm of youth and its vitality. Not akin to bar and club culture, with its contrived and forced sexual interplay. My point is it was just a pleasant experience, where pretty teenage girls came to dance with me, not the other way around, without any game playing, or pressure to make or not to make a move. Just to dance and celebrate youth and its energy. Sure there is an undercurrent of sexual energy (that’s what it means when men and women dance together), but it’s way more natural, and so not forced. The short of it is I had a really good time. I had pretty girls let me know that I was a male that had a sexual attractive quality to him, or at the very least was not remotely repulsive. That’s what it means when they choose to dance with you, and without either the male or female having to take it further, and risk anything. After all they chose to dance with me, and there were plenty of other young men there, so it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of men to dance with. So I could just relax and dance and at the same time enjoy being in the rhythm of Nature (the Dance) with attractive young women, in a way that has a sexual undercurrent to it. All in a way that was safe, but not too safe. Looking back on that night of trance rave revelry, it is such a wistful memory, a reminder of something that was and wasn’t at the same time. That is I was both a part of the Young and their celebration of sexual energy in a way that is natural and free, and I was never a part of it. I am glad I have that precious memory even as it hurts. Most of my memories are only shameful humiliations.
Also I need to mention something else that happened in my 24th year, because it is so telling of how bad things were, how pathetic things had gotten. Namely my friend David’s (not his real name) wedding. So sometime in 1994 I get invited to a childhood friend’s wedding. One of my best childhood friends (I had friends in childhood and early adolescence, but not after so much). Problem is I can’t get a date. I mean there is no woman I can ask, not even a platonic female friend, because I don’t have any. So I decide not to go to the wedding. I did not call David and his wife (his high school sweetheart) to say I wasn’t coming. After all what excuse could I come up with? So I just don’t pitch up to the wedding, the place for myself and my date (ha ha ha) at one of the tables just lies empty. I call up two days later, and then visit my friend’s new wife (with my wedding present), saying I couldn’t go because I came down with food poisoning. All is forgiven.
However as you would realize, this tactic is not going to work all the time, for every wedding. I can’t just repeat this MO, and not to every friend’s wedding. I don’t really worry. In my twenties and thirties, when everybody is getting married, I don’t think I get invited to a handful of weddings. In fact I didn’t. Because I was willfully friendless, and had lost touch with childhood and teenage friends. I am not saying I was willfully friendless so I could avoid these horrors of trying to get out of weddings, because I couldn’t get a date. It was much broader than that. I was willfully friendless because I didn’t want to have to explain to everybody why I never went out with girls period. This is something generally unattractive and obese people are spared (and I’m not saying they have it easier of course not). Nobody – unless they are pathologically cruel psychopaths – asks the former why aren’t they dating girls. But if you are a good-looking or average-looking man, and seem relatively normal psychologically (the key word there being ‘seem’. I of course was anything but normal. However I could certainly fake normalness and did so), you are constantly subjected to this kind of scrutiny and people are simply perplexed. Is he gay? They say this behind your back, but sometimes to your face.
Regarding weddings, I am reminded of something. I was invited to a friend’s (well a near-friend) wedding in my early thirties. A guy who knew me well, for years, since we were about 20. He didn’t even ask me to bring a date to the wedding on the invitation! Because he knew better. I attended the wedding, but was the only one at my table without a date. It was excruciating and I didn’t even know the people at my table. I mean when you are a youngish man, without a date to a wedding, it does not look good. I ended up leaving that wedding very very early. Nobody even noticed, not the groom and his bride neither.
The next date I had was in my 27th year, though still 26 years of age, when some woman I knew fixed me up with somebody, a student of about 21, at this female friend’s (an ex-neighbor of mine) behest. So yeah a blind date really. A girl on vacation, visiting from Berkeley (she was studying there, her father was in fact a professor there). Anyhow so I pick her up, and she’s cute for sure, long black hair, nice breasts, pretty. And at the beginning of the date she is very friendly, flirting, holding my arm as we cross the street, to enter a café. She kinda cools it though during our night out, during the course of the date. And when I drop her home, she was staying at a relative’s house, she gives me a curt goodbye and doesn’t even turn her head to smile at me, as she goes back into her house. Not even a glance my way. Gives me the don’t-even-think-about-calling-me-again vibes. So a third straight date that was at the end of the day a disaster. I have even forgotten this girl’s name, because the memory of her unambiguous rejection hurt too much, so I have just blocked out her name.
The Swedish Beauty in Africa: the tragicomedy of my incel life in a nutshell
Now for a surreal, bizarre (and yes pathetic and ridiculous) incident that I call the encounter with the Swedish beauty, that was so unprecedented and would remain so for the rest of my life. So let me start at the beginning here. A few months later (that is after this date with the Berkeley student of 21 who gave me the don’t-even-think-about-calling-me signals), I am just shy of 27. I am travelling, backpacking, through South Africa in fact. It’s a long story of how that happened, but before I was supposed to start a new job (even though this new job was about six months down the line, another long complicated story I won’t bore the reader with). Anyhow the short of it is I am staying at a Backpacker Hostel in Cape Town. Naturally a few cute, young, tourist fellow backpacker women passing in and out, I don’t even expect anything to happen. Convinced I am doomed to a life of loneliness, and when thinking of that ultimately depressing date with the cute student from about two months before, it only confirms my worst fears for the future. In other words, more of my monk-like past on constant repeat. And this is how something that happened, straight out of the blue, took me by such surprise. Never before (although there are parallels with Winona/Laura) and not at all since (except maybe for the Norwegian Encounter I relate further down, and a few weird experiences from my 37th year, but none of them would be as absurd and sadly ridiculous as with the Swedish honey).
So anyhow I had gotten to know one Swedish woman there, who was my age (in fact we discovered we were both born the same month same year), very pretty, even beautiful and a perfect body, as these young Swedish and Scandinavian women are often stereotyped. And for good reason! Actually you know who she reminded me of? Remember the Bruce Springsteen video, to the song Dancing in the Dark? So the Boss is performing live on stage before a large audience, and he holds out his hand to a young pretty girl, among her friends in the audience, to come up on the stage. She goes up and dances with him for the rest of the song. Obviously it was staged, the girl was chosen for the role, for the video of the song. For her beauty. The girl of course is a very young Courtney Cox, years before she achieved fame on Friends. In fact her dancing with Bruce is considered something of a joke. The girl can’t dance. But my oh my was she stunningly beautiful, even more so than she was in Friends. And she is very attractive in Friends. So imagine a Swedish version of a late teen Courtney Cox, lighter hair, hazel brown rather than black, same or similar body, but a little bigger breasted than Courtney – and you have a good picture of this Swedish woman. Even as the latter was older at the time – 26 years of age – than Courtney was when she danced with Bruce.
And we hit it off – that is myself and the Swedish Courtney. Got on well, hung out a lot together, even if just watching TV together in the hostel lounge area. But I swear it did not once enter my head that I had a chance with her. After all I was still a virgin, never been kissed, and this girl was beautiful, could have the pick of any and all men she deigned to choose. And just my previous date experience from not a few months back was as bad as all of my then total of 5 disastrous dates in my life (with the exception of that Jodi girl. And not one second date with a girl ever). In fact whilst we were both staying at this Backpackers’ Hostel, there was a funny incident one night. She had gone to some bar or nightclub, met a local man there who had tried to chat her up. She turned down his advances. A day later, this same man tried to enter the Backpackers’ Lodge at night, to get to see her, despite her insistence (from the balcony of the Lodge) that she wasn’t interested. This young man, and he wasn’t bad looking at all, was crushed, heartbroken. It was like a scene from Romeo and Juliet, but all going wrong. A train wreck. He was clearly smitten by her. And I couldn’t blame him, she was beautiful. And she didn’t put out with any other guy who was staying at the Backpackers’ Lodge. She was anything but easy. Clearly the exact opposite of an easy lay. So it never even entered my head that I had a chance. I mean she had rejected a handsome young man, so what chance did a 26-year-old virgin have?
Maybe it’s because I didn’t expect anything, maybe because I wasn’t actually ugly (well I wasn’t); but the short of it is that one night, a couple of us backpackers visited a local bar not far from the Backpackers’ Lodge together, with cornball rock and pop music playing from the bar speakers, so people could dance. Myself and Swedish Courtney naturally go along with the group. So me and this Swedish babe are dancing together, and I’m not thinking anything of it, we are just dancing after all (and had been dancing together for some time). I don’t even imagine it leading anywhere. And what happens? She literally jumps on me, I mean as much as a woman can jump on a man when they are both dancing together. I mean she grinds her body against mine. Her wonderful, perfect breasts pressed against my chest. Her crotch pressed firmly against mine. No it wasn’t some dance move, it was a blatant come-on. If you were there you would have known. Of course a normal hetero man would have been delighted, and responded in kind. Namely kissed her, and you know later that night, it is the bump n’ grind, sex. The whole shebang. But I am not and was not then a normal hetero man.
I was a life-long virgin who had never even kissed a girl. And that was only the case because I was, or had been insane. Technically I had been racked and mentally sickened from the BDD, but you know that’s still a form of unambiguous insanity. Now I didn’t really suffer from my BDD anymore, but the damage had been done. My virginity hung around my neck like a murdered albatross, and had completely warped me. I was very anxious about this incel status, at this stage of my life. More than I had ever been before. It was and is a cumulative thing. I was haunted by my past failures and couldn’t get past them. And my self-esteem did not exist. I had none. I was a broken man. And I didn’t ever expect anything like this – a beautiful young woman making an unambiguous pass at me – to ever happen in a million years. I mean I would sooner have expected to be abducted by aliens, to win a lottery, to grow a horn from my head. I mean it literally never even entered my head as the tiniest, tiniest possibility. I mean imagine a Courtney Cox look-alike in her prime making the moves on a scared-to-death-twentysomething-virgin male? Hard to imagine, but real life is stranger than fiction. And you don’t have five minutes or even twenty seconds, three seconds to respond the way a sane hetero man would have responded. So what do you think I did? That’s right. I literally froze. Did nothing. Acted as if she did nothing or as if a young, beautiful, Swedish stunner throwing herself at you, basically saying, let’s fuck no strings attached, is not anything to get excited over, and just you know pretend it never happened.
We continued to dance, and in fact hung out a little together over the course of the night. But it was all so awkward. God knows what she was thinking. As with Winona/Laura, this Courtney Cox lookalike would never have ever ever experienced any rejection from any man. Unless he was gay or a eunuch. Or in my case of course, fucking insane and delusional, in a way that equals or even surpasses the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics (well that’s how it feels!). A nervous wreck that was and is the life-long virgin. The thing is next day she was taking a flight back to Sweden, thank God. It did occur to me that she just wanted a nice no complicated one-night stand before she returned to Sweden, and of course we would never see one another again. But even so, why me and not any other guy? I mean there were plenty of young men around, at the Lodge. And as with a young Ursula Andress or a young Anita Ekberg or a Swedish version of Friends’ Monica character (insert Scandinavian goddess name in here. I realize these names may not mean much to the youngsters out there, maybe not even Monica!), she could pick and choose. She must have been somewhat attracted to me, even if all she wanted was a one-night stand, I mean that is what it means to want to fuck somebody. And no she wasn’t drunk or on drugs. She hardly drank in fact. And remember this girl was anything but easy. So we go back to the Backpackers’ Lodge, her jumping on me, we just don’t talk about it. We talk a little into the early hours of the morning, it is all so super-awkward though. The elephant in the room that is my rejection of her, always there, but we naturally avoid all mention or allusion to it. Anyhow it comes time to say goodbye. Forever of course. I kiss her on the forehead and say goodbye.
Just before I leave – because she clearly cannot comprehend my rejection of her, and who can blame her! – she asks me when was the last time I had been with a woman. I reply (because I have zero time to think of some answer, and even now after twenty years I wouldn’t know what ‘good’ answer to have given her): ‘ten days ago’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That reply could only have made her feel worse. As if she was unattractive, as if she was dipped in shit. That’s the last thing either of us say to one another. Even as I said it, I was thinking to myself, ‘my God what have I just said?’. But too late. I do know what I should have said, something that put the blame on me, not her; which was the truth of course. Just not to tell her the real truth! I should have said I was either impotent or gay. What would it have mattered? She was leaving back for Sweden a few hours later and we would never see or hear from one another again. Anyhow what was done was done. I never had such an answer ready of course, because I was naturally not prepared for the scenario of some hot Scandinavian beauty jumping me, and being characterologically incapable of responding in a normal, sane fashion; because I was a severely neurotic 26-year-old virgin. Anymore than you imagine, what would happen if you crashed your car into an alien space-ship parked on the side of the road, how would you respond? Because it’s simply not going to happen. I swear I never ever ever thought it remotely possible. I mean at this point in time, I was just shy of 27 and was now aside from my life-long monkhood, experiencing the kind of rejection I did not experience when a university student (read my allusions to the total of three dates I had from 23 to 26 years of age).
Now I didn’t proceed to have a meltdown, get drunk or decide to jump off the hostel’s roof. I was so shocked, surprised, by what had gone down (and what hadn’t gone down) that I think I was just numbed. My perverse sense of black comedy humor kicked in. At least nobody else at the Lodge had a clue, they didn’t witness what went down, otherwise the other guys and gals there would have whispered that I must be gay or something. Maybe a war wound on the genitals like Hemingway’s Jake Barnes (the tragic lead character from The Sun also Rises/Fiesta). What war though? I think because I was hanging out with other backpackers/tourists, seeing the sights around Cape Town etc. it kept me sane (not that any heterosexual man who rejects a Swedish beauty in the prime of their lives could really be said to be sane, however one may spin or rationalize it).
So the thing is, my response to this latest tragi-comic disaster, as I mulled over it, during the course of the following weeks, was – maybe I have a chance with attractive women after all? I mean if a 26-year-old Nordic beauty, a near Courtney Cox double who rejected other handsome men, tried to jump my bones – that is a good sign. It’s actually a very good sign. I mean ignoring the fact that I was stark raving mad (for rejecting her). My confidence did get a temporary boost, even as of course I was wracked with remorse and shame about how I handled it all.
Hot Indian Curry, but not for me
So here is the place for me to recount one further incident from my stay in Cape Town that is so telling of what is my life-experience, and my twenties specifically. I am still at the same Backpackers’ Hostel. I become friendly with this one English guy (let us call him Jason) who is travelling through – a man of about 23 – and one night he and I and another two backpackers (both male) go out for drinks at a local bar/pub not far from the Lodge/Hostel. So we are drinking our beers, shooting the breeze, and in walk three girls from the Lodge, who we all vaguely knew from there. They had all been traveling together through South Africa, winding their way to Cape Town. All three are cute young things, in their early twenties. A hot Indian-English girl, a cute American blonde, and another English girl, not as attractive as the other two, but certainly pretty.
So they sit down at our table, all very friendly, and order their own beers. So we all proceed to get a little tipsy, and remember there are four guys and three girls in this set. Do you already see where this is going? Remember the other three guys are a little younger than me, two of them in their early twenties, and the one guy is only 18, a German. On the surface, because of his extreme youth, this would count against him, but he is also handsome and I am the mid-twentysomething virgin. The odds are truly stacked against me. As in ten thousand to one against. And indeed… So what happens exactly?
So we shoot the breeze, laugh, joke and dance, as there is music playing in this pub. So then me and Jason (who I am personally fond of, as a friend) start dancing with this hot Indian-English girl. We don’t say anything, but we all know what’s going on, and she dances seductively with both of us. Truth is even if I wasn’t so lacking in self-esteem and racked by nerves, because I have never even kissed never mind fucked a woman; fact is Jason is a good-looking, tall young man, charming and intelligent, and so my odds here are always going to be tough. Even if I was as confident as him, as sexually experienced as he no doubt was, my odds on getting hot Indian girl would have been no more than 50/50. Jason was very stiff competition for any guy. So now the dancing goes on, the music is playing, and I have a smile planted on my face, but truth is I am terrified. Hot American (from California) girl has already hooked up with the one backpacker guy, and the other English girl is making out with the teenage German. Indian girl is not going to want to be left out of the action, and why should she? – she is hot hot hot, and she has two guys begging for her attention, who she knows she is mesmerizing. One of us will have to act, will have to do something.
So some song is playing, and Jason makes his move, he pulls her close, and she initially resists playfully, he pulls her close again, and then she kisses him. It’s over. The Virgin is out for the count. Technical knockout. So we all go back to our table, everybody has paired off. I am now the spare wheel to the 6-wheeler. After a while, we head back to the Lodge. Hot Indian girl, to her credit, is smiling and laughing with both me and Jason. But we both know who she will be fucking later that night, and it’s not the Virgin (who naturally none of them know is a virgin). In fact they were both staying in my dorm room! I go to sleep eventually, it must be about three in the morning. I wonder where are they going to fuck? The showers? No it wouldn’t remain a mystery. Shortly after getting into my bottom bunk, I see hot Indian girl geting into Jason’s bed, the top bunk against the one wall. I can see everything from my bottom bunk diagonally across from them. I don’t want to but you know that’s how it is. I mean unless I bury my face in my pillow, and I cannot sleep like that. They fuck softly during the night, rocking their top bunk-bed and the bed below them, where some guy is sleeping, oblivious. Next day the guy below them, told me – having no idea about the fucking that took place on the bed above him, Indian girl quietly got out of Jason’s bed before sun-up – that he had a dream he was on a ship going through rough seas! I said yeah I know why you had that dream.
I was really depressed the next day and week, even as I was happy for Jason. I liked him as a friend, as a human being. Rather him getting hot Indian curry, than some jerk I couldn’t stand.
The desert stretches on. Into infinity?
And the thing is I did have interaction with lots of young women post Swede, for months afterwards. I was still backpacking through South Africa (and in fact stayed in Cape Town for a while), eventually making my way slowly up the east coast of South Africa, unto Swaziland. And anybody who has ever done the backpacking thing, as a young man or woman, with fellow youngsters, wherever in the world, knows how things are. Plenty drinking, drugs, and screwing around. And in South Africa the marijuana is super cheap and strong! Yet I got no unambiguous interest from any of the young women after that (aside from the Norwegian near naked babe I mention further down – in the city of Durban. Just read the pathetic account). Yeah sure some were friendly enough, but that’s the backpacker vibe. And I mean from all these European, Australian, British, North American girls who frankly are often quite promiscuous. Once again, it was all rather bleak (the Norwegian cutie aside, and at the time I wasn’t really sure… I am a fucking idiot but once you read it, you will know what I mean). I got firmly rejected by a pretty Kiwi girl, when we hung out together at a bar, after seeing a movie together. It was Titanic I remember (in the city of Durban). She gave me the ‘don’t even think about it vibes’. Admittedly her Australian boyfriend had died a few months before in a tragic accident, but even so… So my confidence went back to where it was pre the Swede Incident. A flat zero.
The Norwegian babe aka Scandinavian screw-ups Part 2
So here I need to mention what happened when I was staying in a Backpackers’ Lodge/Hostel in the city of Durban, during the same trip of course, back in ’97. So two Norwegian girls (traveling together) came to stay there. Both were cute, about 22 years of age or so, and bodies to die for. So for two nights the girls are staying in my dorm, and it’s just me and the two of them. In the one dorm. And Durban is sweltering hot in the summer, sub-tropical. And they sleep just in their panties, no bras, no t-shirts. Yes topless. I just sleep in my shorts. And I cannot sleep, because this is agony. They are lying there, on their backs, on their beds, in a small dorm, with their breasts exposed. Just in their panties. I cannot sleep! I am dying there. Just the memory of it pains me. They sensed that I was not the aggressive type, more sensitive – and it would be fine for them to just sleep like that. There was nobody else in the dorm as well. So I act cool, like it’s nothing. Meanwhile it’s all I can do not to cry and whimper like a sick puppy, not to have a heart attack.
The second night (and I don’t think I slept an hour the night before) they are there, the one girl is up all night just talking to another guy at the Lodge, in the salon/TV room area, leaving me and this other girl alone in our dorm. All night. Just the two of us. So she is lying there, sleeping or pretending to sleep. On her back, just in her panties. Yes topless again. Her body and breasts glistening with sweat from the sweltering heat, even as we have a fan going in the room. I lie there in my shorts, in my bed, I realize I am not going to be able to sleep for a second night in a row. And remember I am a horny 27-year-old virgin (I had turned 27 whilst still in Cape Town). So I am just lying on my back, looking at her out of the corner of my one eye. I can see her even though the lights are out, through the reflected moonlight, through the windows; she then during the course of the night, proceeds to moan and cry out as if she is having a nightmare. Or a sex dream! I mean not just once or twice, but non-stop. Tossing and turning a little in her bed.
So I start to think: is she having a nightmare, or is she pretending to have a nightmare (or a sex dream) but is actually awake? What I mean by the latter scenario, is she moaning and crying out, because she wants me to get out of my bed and come on over and wake her up, and tell her she has been having a nightmare, and I felt the need to wake her; all so she can then say, ‘oh yeah I must have been having a nightmare, thanks for waking me’, but all the while it’s the ultimate cock tease. Or is it more than a cock tease thing she is doing? Does she want me to wake her, so she can say thanks for waking her, and then you know try and contrive a move on me, or get me to contrive a move on her? I mean she is basically near naked and fucking gorgeous and I am just in my shorts! All these scenarios are racing through my head. I actually have nothing to lose, by going over to wake her. And I know it. Even if she is just pretending. Or not. The worst that can happen, is that I wake her from her nightmare/sex dream, real or not, and she then says, thanks for waking her from her nightmare/sex dream, turns over and goes back to sleep. And yet I swear her moans and cries are if not very loud, certainly not in a soft voice neither. It sounds as if she is having sex!! more than a nightmare. I am going crazy and don’t know what to do. Of course a normal guy, well he would have tried his luck, and gone over to her bed to ‘awaken’ her, and feign concern, and then see what happens… But of course I am not a normal guy, I am a pathetic pathetic scared wuss who has never even kissed a girl (I mean I am not counting spin the bottle games from the 7th grade).
And I know this, and can’t forget this; even as this 22-year-old Norwegian babe is tossing around on her mattress (because of the heat nobody made use of the sheets) and making what are really sex noises, near naked, for all I know her pussy wet and glistening, her breasts and nipples visible to me in the moonlight, on the next bed over. Nobody but me and her in the room. Yeah eventually she ceases her gasping and moaning, and falls asleep. In fact it occurred to me later, that her mate may have deliberately stayed out of the room the whole night, up all night talking to some other backpacker in the salon TV room, so her friend could have alone time with me that night! You think Danny you fucking dunce!! This girl only came back into the room about seven the next morning, and I know she didn’t sleep with the other guy, because I heard them talking all night. Goes without saying that I didn’t sleep a wink all night. Second night in a row. Of course I did nothing. As if the guy who froze mere months before in Cape Town when another Scandinavian babe jumped him, was somehow going to do the right thing now, with another hot Scandinavian babe; the sensible heterosexual red-blooded thing. This time around. Not on your life. Hey I never said I wasn’t PATHETIC.
So the two of them leave the next day (traveling up north). They say goodbye, polite, but I don’t know what that Norwegian girl was thinking. Maybe she thought I just slept through her moaning and groaning or was gay or whatever. She did appear a little miffed, even as she feigned politeness with me in the morning. So maybe my instinct that she wanted me to fuck her was correct. In fact that was probably the case, even if I cannot be 100% certain. I don’t want to be 100% certain, even as an intelligent reader reading this, knows it was a cert! I don’t want it to have been an obvious come-on, because the memory of this will pain me even more than it already does, if I admit it to being in the same class of clusterfuck as Swedish Courtney. I hadn’t even thought about it properly, only when typing it up here, I had almost forgotten just how idiotic I was that night! Because too painful to recall, and not as clear-cut and unambiguous as the Cape Town Swede screw-up. Well that’s debatable! As I recalled all the details, typing this up, I can’t help but groan at the memory. Heck I am starting to wonder if writing up this memoir is not so much cathartic, as the exact opposite – utterly excruciating, only exacerbating the memories of loss and how unbelievably fucked up I am.
That was the last thing that happened with any girl on my African trip. There wasn’t even a hint of anything after that, and I remained on my trip for another month. And I continued to meet backpacker girls, but nothing, no hint of a pass from any girl.
Hitting the watershed age of 30, the only way out must be taken. I botch the suicide attempt of course
Now once I went back to normal life, and normal work, and ended my African backpacking adventure, well not a single date. Nothing. For the rest of the 20th century. A big fat zero. A desert. That’s the next three years. A monk-like existence. The only existence I have ever known. I did have one woman call me up in my hotel room, that I was staying in back in 1998 (in some big ugly city I was visiting, long story); she worked at the hotel and had booked me in. She was clearly interested. She called me up in my room on the most ridiculous pretext, she clearly wanted me to invite her out or even back into my room for some sex. And no she was not moonlighting as a hooker on the side. If you were there, you would have known this. She called me (on the phone) after her shift was over, which was a big clue about what she really wanted. I realized I was not the first man she would have done that with. Even so it was flattering and she was youngish, about my age at the time, and if not very attractive, more plain than anything, but a really nice figure. Certainly not unattractive. But I balked and pretended her call was work related and just kind of froze her out.
Another time, same year, I was walking in a park, and one pretty young woman sitting with her friends, gives me the eye and smiles. I am in such a funk at this stage of my life, that I assume she is giving the eye to the guy behind me. I turn around to see who he is, and naturally he is the invisible man. She laughs, recognizes straight away my beta status, and lack of confidence. This incident is so symbolic of my young adulthood. I mean it says so much!
I also began to live as a real hermit at this point in time, avoiding family, avoiding friendships (and yes avoiding friendships because I cannot handle their curiosity about my not being with a woman ever. Also people are jerks. Hell is indeed other people. It’s also oneself but I digress). So it only exacerbated the life-long incel thing. It was all so self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing. A spiral of despair, self-loathing, frustration and depression.
Now the year 2000 coincided of course with my 30th birthday. And I decided, enough is enough. I am not going to be a 30-year-old virgin. And no end in sight. So I decided to take my life, but it took me months to work up the courage. By which time I was 30 already. So I made an attempt (pill overdose) that in retrospect was doomed to fail (didn’t take the right type of truly potent killer pills for one). At a subconscious level, I clearly didn’t want to commit suicide. Not really. Now as many a suicide attempt survivor will tell you, it’s just another humiliation, you can’t even succeed in killing yourself. Weirdly enough, I was discovered as having a certain endocrine disorder – when recovering in hospital. Maybe not so weirdly. I am convinced that my glandular disease was associated with my depression, and related emotional trauma. There is a medical literature in this regard, the psychosomatic nature/etiology of many glandular/endocrine illnesses, but it goes against the grain of corporate allopathic medicine, so it’s swept under the carpet really. A whole other thing. Anyhow my illness (zero symptoms btw) was picked up on a blood test and it required surgery.
Gilmartin remarks that curiously enough, none of the love-shys studied for his book had ever had a major surgical procedure performed on them. This is indeed a surprise. So I am an exception here. Apparently.
Flatliner
When recovering post surgery, that very day of the surgery, I went into cardiac arrest. Twice. Over the course of a few hours. Nurses had to defribillate me. Otherwise I would have died. Flatlined twice (first time about 10 to 15 seconds, second time I can’t quite recall but about 20 to 30 seconds! As the doctor and nurses related to me later). My surgeon and anesthetist were in a panic. Couldn’t figure it out. Did all these tests. I was otherwise in good shape. And only 30. Eventually got discharged. I want to say something here, and not all of you will accept it, but that’s how it is. I went into cardiac arrest because I deep down wanted to die. And it was entirely a psychosomatic thing. Yes this time I really wanted to die. I know it. I am as sure of it as I am of my own virginity, my own name. Before I went in for surgery, and I mean for weeks before I went in for surgery, I was thinking to myself, I hope I die under the knife. I don’t want to live. I don’t want to go on. And I have nothing to live for. And then a few hours after waking up from surgery, I go into cardiac arrest. Twice. A few hours apart. I never mentioned this belief of mine re my subconcious mind causing my cardiac failure to my surgeon. After I was discharged I mean. And I didn’t ever do so.
If you have to ask – how does the subconscious mind cause the heart to stop beating? Who the fuck knows? Psychosomatics is mysterious. The placebo effect is a mystery, but it is all too real. Most people don’t have a clue about the power of the subconscious. Even as it is my subconscious mind and its unresolved trauma that wrecked my life! Although it is evidenced all the time. I have seen men and boys calmly walk over hot coals and broken glass when I was just a boy (at a Hindu festival), because they had faith they could do it. I have seen people at a famous hypnotist’s stage show (when I was 17) do the most amazing things, whilst hypnotized. I saw one man have a metal spike put through his arm whilst hypnotized and not cry out or moan, and no blood whatsoever. He was simply told under hypnosis that his arm was as strong and as resilient as forged steel. No it was not faked. Freaks me out to this day. Human consciousinsess is a mystery. Its powers for good or ill or just plain inbetween are a mystery. So much in Nature is just explained away.
Reflections
Back on track now… Anyhow I also went to see an idiot psychiatrist (an attractive woman in her forties) in the aftermath of my failed suicide attempt (and before my surgery). I didn’t tell her the reason I attempted suicide. But I did say something that gave away to her the fact that I had been impaired from a BDD. She didn’t fill me in. I knew I had a BDD in my late twenties. To repeat myself: does my life not resonate – admittedly in the most geek-like and pathetic fashion – with the Greek myth of Narcissus? I recognized this – like a bolt out of the blue – when I was in my early to mid-twenties. She didn’t even begin to delve into why I attempted suicide. She seemed to think it was because I was in a career/job dead-end. Like the typical moron psychiatrist, she mistook a symptom for a cause.
Why were my career/job prospects going nowhere, despite all the ample opportunities I had? Anyhow as if to prove my suspicion, that she was just like all the rest, a drug salesperson, she tried to foist some anti-depressants on me. I stopped seeing her. Because anti-depressants are going to get me a girlfriend are they? Anyhow so now I am thirty. And I don’t know how I am going to get through the rest of my life. I mean I don’t have the courage to commit suicide, and I don’t have the courage to live for anything else, outside of my own needs and desires. It’s not like I can give myself to some cause. I am way too selfish and self-absorbed for that. Thankfully I cannot become a religious fanatic or a political ideologue/activist. I am not that stupid. Sure at some level it would make life easier for myself. At another level, it just makes things hell. For everybody. See world situation.
At this point, let me just interject something. After I found I couldn’t commit suicide, back when I was 22, I found an escape I didn’t have before. I became a big reader, a real bookworm. I wasn’t one before. And I read everything, generally serious stuff. Novels. Non-fiction. Science, history, anthropology, psychology, biographies etc. It is what gets me through the days and years even now. However I often find it very difficult to read. When my depression hits hard. It becomes difficult to concentrate and my mind wanders. Something else (God there is always so much to say). Work. I have worked odd jobs over the years, a fair few near-Mcjobs (not quite, but close enough), even though with a business degree from a major university, I was working way below my pay grade (once again Gilmartin discovered this. Incels routinely work in jobs that are dead-end, and below their qualification level. They are routinely underemployed. Status inconsistents). My family was both outraged and perplexed. My father especially was enraged but then become resigned to this. My so-called friends, the very few that I had, could not understand it neither. I often did not work, when I could get away with not working that is. I had no motivation. For what? In fact, I am not letting on just how often I was unemployed or underemployed. I mean it was a lot.
How did I survive? That’s a whole other thing, I survived. I often scrounged money from my old man, ended up living with my mom for years, which I regretted then and regret now. Gilmartin discovered that love-shys were routinely dependent on parents for income, well into adulthood. This only adds to the black sheep status of incels within families. I tick off all the boxes here. A black sheep twice over. One for not being able to get a girlfriend, another for being a loser in jobs/career. Who am I working for, in a brutal competitive every-man-for-himself-kill-the-poor culture (I don’t want to be misunderstood here, I am not a communist/socialist/anarchist, I’m not even a liberal), just so I could come home to an apartment, where the only company I have is myself? I think it would have been difficult for me to have been motivated to become some go-getter anyhow, because I am not a big believer in our idiotic and absurd economic systems, on top of which I had no real technical skills (a business degree is meaningless for the most part, unless you become a stockbroker or a financial analyst or similar, or go into banking); but being incel, it just killed whatever little motivation and ambition I had.
I mean I could have been ambitious in other ways, having nothing to do with money making, but incel killed that for sure. I also hated hated hated and hate hate hate having to deal with work colleagues who wondered and still wonder why I was never with a woman. I didn’t socialize much with them, or anybody. I know they all talked about it behind my back. I moved on a lot, from job to job. I was most always friendless. I liked it that way. Not only because I wouldn’t get the third degree, why don’t you go out with a girl? (again Gilmartin: love-shys are largely friendless) But really, I don’t like people much. I think they are mostly all crazy. I’m not saying I’m not. I’m not any better that’s for sure. Well having anguished under a BDD – who am I to throw stones from a glass house?!! I’m just saying that I think people are basically nuts, delusional, nasty, cruel and manipulative. Often Hateful as all get-out (against blacks or Jews, gays or what-have-you. I don’t mean the PC left-wing baloney of anybody who criticizes the Muslim Jihad being labeled a bigot). So many people like this.
My early thirties: my twenties seem rich and full by comparison. A woman asks me out
Anyhow my thirties… So nothing happens. Surprise. For years. I plod on. What else can I do? Like so many people I am living for nothing. Middle age looms ahead, and there appears nothing to look forward to. I become increasingly morose and withdrawn. I am a robot with robot emotions. My neuroses intensify. They get worse. Especially my anxiety. And I had thought that impossible when I was in my twenties. I shut myself off from people as much as I can. I live as a near hermit, a recluse. I have no friends at this point in time. None. Not one. I barely have acquaintances. The only ‘meaningful’ contact with people that I have is family and work related. And the less said about my work life in my early thirties, the better. Nothing to write home about. I was often unemployed.
There was one incident (note how I write up about any even vague potential romantic or sexual contact with women, as a loaded ‘incident’ – as if they were nuclear radiation leaks or meltdowns, a chemical spill that compelled a hazmat team to be scrambled, and intervention by the military and the UN. You know like the 3 Mile Island Incident, Chernobyl, Bhopal India) I need to mention at this point. I mean my fear of women, of intimacy, and my putting them on a pedestal at the same time is palpable. By incident I mean a uh date. A woman asked me out. An attractive woman. As with the sexy Swede, this completely threw me off.
What happened was this: I was visiting my mother, who unbeknownst to me when I arrived, had two visitors. A friend of my mother’s, and her daughter. The daughter was about 28 or so. I was 34 or 35. I forget exactly the year. Anyhow so we are all making polite conversation. The young woman (who I will call Leyna) is on the other side of the room to me. We talk a lot, get on fine. Very well in fact but I don’t think anything of it. I mean I have long stopped kidding myself that anything will ever happen with the female sex. See a stupid pattern here? She is fairly attractive, blonde, nice breasts. But I don’t even think anything here. They leave after a while. Two or three days later, I get a call. It’s Leyna (she got my number easily enough of course), asking me out. For dinner. I am shocked. I say sure. I am trepidatious in the extreme. Not only because she is my mother’s friend’s daughter, which is just awkward. My virginity hasn’t gone anywhere, it hangs around my neck like a dead Komodo Dragon at this point in time, befouling streams and rivers, woods and dales with its stench.
So we go out. For pizza at an Italian restaurant. It is the only date I ever had in my thirties by the way. It was awkward, because she came to realize I was something of a loser, no real prospects, a beta male, she sensed my lack of drive and direction. It was clear early on that it would be our first and last date. I breathed a sigh of relief. For one she was my mother’s friend’s daughter, for another there was the giant Marshmallow Man that was my Virginity stalking the city, and crushing whole buildings and causing people to flee in all directions. Always in the background, always in the foreground. The whole ground. The alpha and the omega. Hey Leyna, how about a kiss? The first real kiss in my life? No don’t think so. Plus it was clear that she regretted asking me out, but then couldn’t get out of it. Clearly she was thinking with her hormones!!
I knew there would be no second date, so yeah a relief really. And at the same time of course it depressed me. We said goodbye at the end of date. All polite and friendly. But we both knew – even as it was unstated – that we would never be seeing one another again. Not in a romantic context. I am reminded of something, all of a sudden. She wasn’t the only woman who asked me out. Another woman would do so. When I want apartment hunting in my late thirties (about three years after my date with Leyna). I went to look at some apartment to share (I didn’t want to share but had no choice financially). So I went for an interview (there were two other young women staying at the apartment, they were looking to rent out a third bedroom to save on rent). After the interview with the two women, which went well, I called up a day later to ask if the room was still available; the one woman I spoke to – who asked most of the questions during the interview the day before – replied no, unfortunately not. Another young man – in the military – had been confirmed to take it. He went for his interview just before me. However she then said, before saying goodbye, I should call her some time again and we could go out, if I wanted to. Made it very clear she was interested in me. I wasn’t attracted to her, I mean she was okay, average looking, but I wasn’t going to call her again.
This date with Leyna was the last date I have ever had. Circa 2004/2005. 12 years or so ago, at the time of writing this up. I have not been out with a woman on a date, not once, in the dozen or so years since then.
And yet something happened when I was 36/37, that changed my life. I mean it changed and it didn’t change. But it was a real drastic change to my life circumstances.
I would meet a very beautiful, sexy woman. In her late twenties. And this woman fell in love with me.
No kidding.
She told me so herself. It’s how I know. Not she loves me like a brother. She fell in love with me, as a woman falls in love with a man.
And I would fall in love myself. For the first time since I was 21 years of age. With ANOTHER beautiful woman, who this OTHER woman – who was in love with me – saw as a rival.
But let me not get ahead of myself. Let me relate all this from the beginning.
My 36th year. Another Golden Year that Wasn’t. The beautiful, sexy Lisa falls in love with me in Paradise Village
An opportunity came up in my 36th year, for a job far away from the city I was living in at the time. A life change. I seized it. I wanted to get away, to where nobody knew me. A fresh start. Even though I was no longer really even kidding myself about ever getting a woman. And so I ended up working in an unusual environment, well unusual if you are used to living in a big soulless city, that’s for sure. A small village-like environment where people largely lived and worked together. And a small enough place, where everybody knew everybody. Well almost. I am not saying where this was, because I do not want to ever be identified (it’s a very small place). So I am not giving the name of the village, not even the general area/county/state/province where it’s situated in. I do realize that if somebody who knows me well (but that is hardly anybody), a relative say, ever reads this essay, they could cottton on to who I am, but that is not very likely to happen.
Okay so back on track, so now I am 36 and working a job I actually like (heaven!) with twentysomethings and thirtysomethings. And plenty women among them. And naturally plenty of romances, both light and serious, are happening all the time. This one woman (who was also not a local, let me just say she is European) who I come to work with, well she and I then get quite friendly over a period of time. Let us call her Lisa. Slowly at first, but then we become fast friends. She comes to see me as a confidant. Now those of you who are up to speed on your PUA/The Game playbook, modus operandis and jargon, know that this is considered a mistake. That is to be friendzoned is a big no-no, a trap from which you can never escape. You can never get out of it. You are a brother/father figure, and will never be seen as a potential lover. I knew that intuitively, and yet I didn’t care. It was so nice just to have a real friend. And an attractive woman too. After years of such horrible loneliness. I have never had a real long-lasting friendship since high school. Okay, more accurately not more than one or two real friends since high school (I don’t count my nerd herd). And with one exception up to that point in time, I had never had a female friend in adulthood. Not really.
The one exception was this one woman who was a good friend (when we were in our twenties), notwithstanding I wasn’t attracted to her. She would later become a lesbian, but it had nothing to do with me! However we only knew each other for a relatively short time before I moved to another city. Actually I recall something I once said to this lesbian (let us call her Rebecca), that was just um strange. I may as well mention it. One time we went out for dinner together (just as friends of course), and somehow the topic of sex came up. As it does. And I don’t know why, but I remarked to her that I once had been in a threesome!! Well maybe I know why. I just let my fantasy life slip out and passed it off as life experience! She said in reply, in the most nonchalant way: ‘what another guy and a girl?’. I replied: ‘of course not! Two girls and myself!’ She nodded as if I just told her I prefer coffee to tea. I mean Rebecca had no problem believing me. She thought I was telling the truth. Like everybody else, she assumed I had had a few women, even as she never saw me with any. Then again we didn’t see each other that often, it’s why I could easily get away with my bullshit. And I did not discuss my private life with her. Well okay what private life?! Like most women, she liked to do the talking. And that suited me just fine of course.
Now getting back to my 36th and 37th years, when I was at this small village: there were other young women there who also saw me as a kind of older brother/father figure. I didn’t understand what was going on at first, but only later. And I was fine with that, I saw it as flattering. I liked the attention. And I realized that these young women (some were in their late teens), saw that they could trust me, and valued what I had to say. This meant so much to me. It means so much to me still. The cynics here may say: so what? They were never going to fuck you. Yes I know. And I didn’t care. Even a man as warped by life-long viriginity as I am, actually enjoyed the company of young women (which I avoided in my twenties out of fear of rejection!!), just as friends, as if they were younger sisters. Rather my daughters. That I was never going to have. I miss them now. And hope they are well. A man needs friendship, and yes female friendship, not just a lover. Especially if he doesn’t have a female lover. Others may object, if you don’t have a female lover, why add to the misery, with female friendships that will never go past the just friends thing? But if they are not going to fuck you, and the only alternative is some recluse-like existence, you may as well go with the friends thing, especially if you have something to offer them. A man needs human contact, he is not a fucking island, even as I have tried to live as an island. And it has been a disaster. There is this terrible Emptiness there, as a consequence.
Even as I did all I could to avoid friendships, since late high school really. I did it unconsciously at first, giving off bad anti-social signals. And then consciously later. When I decided that hell was other people. It didn’t help that I was friendly with all those bland nerds at university. When I did have friends, it was with the wrong people. So do I contradict myself? Sure. So it goes. I contradict myself. A lot of people you don’t want to be friendly with. Others are worth being friendly with.
Let me get back to that one young woman Lisa who was about 27 at the time, but looked 23 or so, and how she and I became firm friends (even as she was sleeping with other guys over the time period I knew her, yes guys plural). Initially she was just friendly with me, but I sensed a sexual tension between us. Then again this woman was beautiful, perfect face. Short short hair as well but it suited her (because of her perfect chiseled face, and jawline), small breasts but a body that was perfect, and no wallflower. She was unafraid of her sexuality. And men responded to it. I mean men noticed her alright. And routinely made passes at her. She rejected a lot of them. But she always did hook up with a few of them. Now this is where it gets really weird, and I don’t mean when she told me she was in love with me. She did that only after she moved on, back to her country. A lot later. Via e-mail. But will come to that. Over months (and I had turned 37 in the interim), she started to show an interest in me. Probably as much because I didn’t show an interest in her (which intrigued her because a beauty like Lisa is definitely not used to that. Incidentally she was a divorcée, no children). The reason I didn’t show an interest in her? Not actually, or rather not solely my life-long virginity which of course froze me with women altogether, but another reason that’s a real whammy, but will come to that.
She flirted with me on occasion, and one day made a very brazen pass at me. She said she would be the best sex/fuck I ever had. She did this whilst in her bikini when we were at a public pool together, and what a body she had let me tell you. Well she would be the best fuck I ever had, wouldn’t she now? I mean it would be the first sex I ever had! If I had fucked a virgin nun, that nun would be the best sex I ever had. Hilarious. Let’s face it this black comedy SNAFU could not be dreamed up by a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters. Not in a milion years. Not only because it is so unbelievable, but because its very psychological dynamics – from her end and mine in combination – are unbelievable. Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. She assumed naturally that I had had plenty of experience with women. Everybody did. One attractive married woman there at the village, my own age, wanted to introduce me to her younger sister. Young women in their twenties flirted with me. I was long past my prime, and had started to lose my hair. But I was still a fairly good-looking man, even as my self-esteem was at minus twenty kelvin. And I was so mentally, emotionally messed up and socially awkward with Asperger’s traits (I do not have Asperger’s. It is something I can easily control, turn on and off like a faucet. Thing is I feel my Asperger’s self is my real self and I have to suppress it in order to get on with people. Asperger’s is not a disorder, even as it is sold as such, it is a personality type. Many of our leading historians, scientists, computer geniuses and mathematicians have Asperger’s and their gifts are inseparable from that condition. This is the opinion of Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading expert on Asperger’s, and I concur). Let me repeat – I do not have Asperger’s, it is an aspect of my personality I can totally shut out and shut off. Easily. I do have to be self-aware though, in this regard.
A further aside – a 48-year-old woman, a divorcée with eight children!! made a move on me when I was away on a brief getaway in a nearby city. I was 37 at the time. It was so awkward, she asked me out for a walk in front of all these other people, at the hotel we were both staying at, and I felt it would be rude to say no. We had just been shooting the breeze a bit before she asked me out for the walk. So I relented. We went walking on the city beach, at night. And she kept waiting for me, trying to force me even, to make a move on her. Sitting next to me on the sand, talking about sex, men and women. Silence then descended, things got awkward. We eventually went back to our hotel. I said goodbye to her. She was silently fuming at me. But I never showed an interest in her. She pretty much entrapped me. And no she was not attractive. I was just not attracted to her, and bluntly speaking could not have got an erection for her. I don’t regret not sleeping with her.
Now back on track, let met tell you why I couldn’t sleep with Lisa, even after the public pool incident, even if I were not a scared pathetic 37-year-old virgin. Even If I was a womaniser, who had slept with more than a hundred women, I could not have slept with her. Not ever. At least not without going to therapy for twenty years. Are you ready for the whammy? It’s actually hilarious. And very strange. Lisa looked almost EXACTLY LIKE a woman I have known my whole life. Since the day I was born. Yes my mother. I mean every time I looked at her, I felt as if I were a boy of three again looking up at his mother, when Lisa was the age my mother was then, in her late twenties. Just about the only differences between my mother when she was in her twenties and Lisa – and I mean really the only differences – were that Lisa is taller than my mother, and Lisa is small breasted, unlike my mother. That was it. Bizarre but I swear life is strange, and just plain hits you with weird, weird doozies.
Now I put off telling Lisa this (that she was my young mother’s double), until a while after she made that brazen pass at me. I didn’t know why I kept putting it off, but in a way I am glad I did. So once I told her, she knew to forget about anything between herself and me. Thank God I have never even fantasized about her! However let’s face it, I probably wouldn’t have been able to work up the courage to sleep with her, even if she didn’t look like my mother. Like the other girls who had shown an interest in me over the years. At least this let me off the hook, and it did translate to me having no sexual interest in her whatsoever. We actually became very good friends, and she confided in me a lot. I will always love her in a way. She would move on (she has her problems, her issues, is a little crazy but aren’t we all?), and we remained in constant e-mail contact for awhile, before it faded out after a couple of years. So I would say she was the only true female friend I have ever had in my whole life. Even as it was never and could never be sexual. My only true female friend who could have been my mother’s daughter! My sister! Well I see Lisa as my real sister. My biological sister looks nothing like me or my mother. My real blonde sister looks Danish or Swedish, whereas my mother and myself look more Eastern European, dark haired as well (that’s because we do have Eastern European ancestry). I have no idea where my sister gets her looks from. Not from her father neither. Some throwback to a Viking ancestor I reckon.
Anyhow getting back to Lisa… About two or three years after we no longer worked at the same village, heck were no longer in the same country, after we had both moved on; she sent me that e-mail saying that she was in love with me back then, but didn’t think I realized it. I was shocked, flabbergasted. Sure she made a pass at me, she showed blatant sexual interest, but in love with me? She had made passes at a few men. She slept with them (no man would reject a woman who looked like Lisa). She told me when she was married, she had had several affairs. Even so. In love with me? WTF?? Of course no woman had ever said that to me before, heck I hadn’t even gotten a kiss from any girl or woman my whole life. I had never even gone on a second date with any girl or woman in my whole life, and still haven’t. And here was this beautiful woman who made men turn their heads, incidentally comes from a wealthy European family, a chic European beauty, with an incredible body and a chiselled face, perfect – she could have been an artists’ model – and she confides that she was in love with me! A woman out of most all men’s league. And I just took for granted out of my own, even though I didn’t want to flirt with, never mind sleep with a woman who every time I looked at her, I thought I was a 3-year-old boy again, looking up at his mother. And here she is telling me she was in love with me (there was no reason for her to lie. It is not like I had many great job prospects or any wealth; and her circumstances in Europe were better than anything I could offer her). So I sent her an e-mail back, and um being who I am, it was a rather thoughtless knee-jerk one, that was actually rather wincingly ridiculous. I didn’t say what I should have said, I just remarked in a rather stupid way, that yeah I knew she liked me, making a brazen pass at me at the pool. Blah blah. But you know so what? She showed sexual interest in a few men. It’s not the same as being in love. It was a rather silly, insensitive reply to her. At the time, we had largely lost touch (when she sent me the e-mail I mean), and barely e-mailed one another maybe twice a year. If that. So I sent her the e-mail back, and that was the last of it. It was a few years back, and I have never heard from her again, nor did I e-mail her again. I think though it was also her way of saying good-bye. I love you and good-bye. She assumed I had a fair few women in my life. She was one of the ones I told, that I had lost my virginity late in life, at twenty!
So let’s get this straight: the only woman, a beautiful woman, who falls in love with me (or at least the only one who tells me as much), shares an uncanny resemblance with my mother, when she was the same age. My mother who let us not forget, practiced a covert incest on me when I was a little boy. What does this even begin to mean? If anything. What is life trying to tell me? Or is it just a case of one attracts people, circumstances, that feed off unconscious turmoil? Is it just a case of life is a Trickster with a capital T?
Attractive Jenny wants to bang me, and everybody else
There was another girl at this village (let us call her Jenny), back when I was 37, she was about 21 at the time, and she wanted to bang me. She said as much. And other people there told me about it. She was upfront about which guys she fancied. And she was kinda cute, very nice body. Now for the kicker: she was so so so promiscuous. I mean she slept with everybody. One night, she slept with one of our co-workers, and not being satisfied, she fucked another guy later that night. She boasted about it. Yeah that kind of girl. No thanks. Clearly she had her issues. And on some level, you gotta respect that. In fact when I met up with her at a bar (after she kept calling to pester me, this was months later and she had moved on. She was no longer working with me, but was still staying in the same general area), when she was with some other friends as well, she said she was mad at me for not fucking her. Although I should add she said it in a sweet way, as if it was my loss as much as hers. I should have replied, ‘Jenny, would you really want to fuck a 37-year-old virgin?’ She would have choked on her beer, I tell you that much. I should add there were some guys she wouldn’t fuck, but it was a tiny minority. One guy who was really fat, and another guy who everybody knew was a crazy crazy nutso, and we were all amazed he hadn’t been committed, and hadn’t been fired. And she came close to sleeping with this crazy man anyhow, before she balked and backed off. So just to let the reader know just how fucked up Jenny was (and for all I know still is in all likelihood).
Hot Asian Julia. If you don’t pounce, other tigers will
Now when working at this village, there was this one woman in her mid-twenties, from an Oriental background, attractive, nice body, smart. Let us call her Julia. As with any other and all other attractive women there, I felt I didn’t stand a chance. I no longer languished from the BDD really, but my confidence was shot, my esteem after a life of monkhood was sunk beneath the waves, buried beneath the ocean bed. I didn’t even think that I stood a chance with this woman. To repeat the point. Plus she was going out with this other guy, also in his twenties, even as their relationship was tumultuous. So one day she comes into the local bar, runs over straight to me, lets me know that she and her boyfriend have broken up. Hugs me, and is very friendly and flirtatious. Later that week she had a one-night stand with another guy, and then a few nights later comes to talk and flirt with me, at a barbecue we were all at. Her ex-boyfriend then sees this, is clearly jealous, seeing his ex put the moves on me, and she was indeed putting the moves on me, so he comes over and says hello to the two of us. He joins the conversation, clearly not wanting any other guy to be with Julia even as they have broken up. The talk was naturally stiff and awkward, but he certainly succeeded in shutting me out. I mean short of a fist fight there was nothing I could do. A few days later they are back together as a couple. Until they broke up again, this guy then leaves the village.
So now Julia is single again, and there is no guy there to cock block me. But because my self-esteem is still at less than zero kelvin, even as she has shown a real interest in me, I don’t do anything. It’s as if I don’t know how to go about it, as if I am still the same 8-year-old boy who steals a girl’s belt in class, and is at a complete loss at how to behave with the female gender, when it comes to sex, relationships and dating. Well yes! One night I see her at the local bar, and she is talking with a guy we both work with; I don’t think anything of it, because this guy is not attractive, not ugly but not far from ugly frankly, albeit big and strong. Next thing he makes his move, he reaches in for a kiss, starts French kissing her and she responds passionately. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t have thought he stood a chance. I didn’t see him as a rival, I thought she was out of his league. So they hook up and actually have a serious relationship, she even moves into his apartment. I couldn’t believe it. That convinced me that I really did stand a chance with her (heck she was a sure thing but I was my usual idiot self), but you have to grab it because there are always other guys out there ready to make the moves on an attractive woman. If I – the 37-year-old virgin – had made my move as soon as her previous boyfriend had left the village, she would have been mine. Just another missed opportunity for as self-destructive an idiot – Danny C – who ever lived on the planet.
The black Aphrodite Jessica at the pool
So when I was working at this village, there was also this other woman working there, mid-twenties, a black girl, and stunningly beautiful, aquiline features, body to die for. I didn’t even think I stood a chance, well I didn’t think I stood a chance with any attractive woman really. At this point it should go without saying. Plus she had a boyfriend, a big Russian guy. Twice my size. So you know she was off the radar for that reason alone, even if I wasn’t a messed up love-shy. Let us call her Jessica. Thing is – and this was really very very out of character for me – I let her one friend who I worked with know that I thought Jessica was beautiful, beautiful. So her friend says to me, smiling, ‘but Danny she has a boyfriend’. And I reply, ‘I know I know, but still she is so beautiful’. Now it should occur to the reader – if you have read the rest of this confession – that I would normally never do something like that, in fact I never had before, and never have since. It doesn’t get more out of character for me. Yet I did all this without a second thought, without regret and without any anxiety.
I mean I would normally never risk some pretty woman, beautiful in this case, knowing that I like her, because I then fear getting the don’t-even-think-about-it alerts/tip offs from the girl, and making sure to let me know that I don’t stand a chance with her. Who needs such a humiliation? I think it was because she had a boyfriend (who didn’t work with us btw, neither did Jessica) that I knew it was safe to let her know that I liked her, knowing nothing could ever come of my mention of it, and it was just my way of letting her know how beautiful I thought she was. It wasn’t as if her boyfriend would beat me up for just remarking that his woman was beautiful, he wasn’t the insecure big bully type at all.
So I was totally flummoxed by what happened next, a few months later maybe. It was mid-summer. I was at the public pool nearby. And I got into the habit of swimming twenty minutes of laps (freestyle), to stay fit and maintain the muscle tone in my upper body (which was actually pretty good at the time). I always did this late in the day, when the pool was pretty much empty and near closing time. So I’m doing my laps, I am the only one in the pool. And nobody else is on the deckchairs on the patio area, except for one superhot woman in her bikini – yes Jessica. Now I know that she knows that I fancy her, obviously her friend, my work colleague, told her. But I didn’t think much of it, so what I didn’t stand a chance and there was her big Russian boyfriend to think about, he with his biceps twice the size of mine, maybe three times the size of mine; even though the two of them didn’t seem that serious and he didn’t work in our village at all, but some place further away. He also didn’t stay with her in her apartment complex. So I didn’t think anything about the fact that I was alone in the pool swimming crawl at a leisurely pace, and she – a black Aphrodite – was lying on the deckchair in her bikini, and nobody else was there. And I don’t remember having seen her at the pool before, so first time I saw her in a bikini. My God. Legs and breasts and a figure that were perfect perfect. I mean not a flaw. This woman could have been a model, easily. I mean a stunning beauty. See a ridiculous pattern here? Again and again? Oh yeah I need to interject here that she had always been polite and friendly with me (even after she knew that I liked her), but we had never really spoken much, we didn’t work together and after work hung out with different people.
Okay so back on track… So anyhow what does she do? I am still swimming, in the one aisle right against the side (the length) of the pool. She leaves her deckchair – remember there is nobody else around, not even a lifeguard, the sun is setting low in the sky, there are only the two of us there and nobody can see us – and she drops into the pool. Somebody would always come around a few hours later to close up the pool area, in case you are wondering about that. So anyhow, where in the large pool is she? She is standing vertically in the water (although her feet can’t reach the bottom because she is near the deep end), with her arms on either side of the paving edge, to keep her afloat. Facing me, that is her back against the paving edge. The same paving edge of the pool, where the aisle I am swimming in, is right against. So every time I swim past, I have to go right past her, not three inches from me. And she is standing afloat in the water, just in her bikini, her bikini top barely holding back her bosom, which is ample, not too big. Just perfect. And her legs going up to the sky I tell you. And she is just looking ahead. Not to the side, not to the sky, just ahead, which means straight at me when I swim past. I don’t exaggerate any of this. Okay there is the Russian boyfriend to think about, but on top of that I am the 37-year-old virgin! So what do I do? You all know what I did already. Fucking nothing. That’s what. I just kept swimming my laps as if she wasn’t there, just going past her, sometimes my face as I came up for breath, inches from her breasts!! Fuck me. Bloody Hell. The memory of it is killing me as I type this up. Eventually as I am about finished doing my laps, she gets out of the pool and goes back to her deckchair to dry off. I get out of the pool, pick up my towel in the most casual manner and head back home to my village housing complex (I have my own apartment there). I don’t remember what I did next. I assume I just went into the shower and jacked off.
Of course what I should have done was this: as I passed her swimming, immediately stopped, come right against her and pressed my body against hers, and my arms over her, hands on the edge of the pool. Told her how beautiful she was, kissed her and bent down to kiss her one nipple or both her nipples (it would have taken a second to lower her bikini top), and put my hand inside her bikini pants and fingered her right there. I mean it does appear it’s what she wanted me to do! I would risk the on-again-off-again Russian boyfriend for this sexy, stunning, black beauty. But of course I was never going to do that. Did I say I thought writing this would prove cathartic? Maybe the opposite. I am whimpering and moaning as I type this. Of course that was it between us. I mean nothing changed on the surface, she continued to be polite with me, but there was a frisson, a tension between us, that was now gone. And I never saw her at the pool again. It was near the end of summer anyhow. Maybe she thought I was scared of the (on-again-off-again) Russian, maybe she just thought I was a strange and pathetic creature (yes). I mean I had let her know that I liked her via her friend, she knew that I knew that she knew. She is in the pool with me, in a skimpy bikini, giving me the fuck-me-here-and-now vibes, ‘let’s be wild and get on down in the pool with nobody else around, after all I know you want to fuck me bad’. And I do nothing. I act as if she is a leaf floating in the water, nothing to get excited about. Oh for the love of Ishtar, what the fuck is wrong with me?? Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.
And if you have to object: maybe she was just cock teasing you? No I really don’t think so. If you were there, I think you would concur with my own belated assessment of that encounter (that was not).
Cute English Anne offers sex in exchange for a place to stay. I demur
There was another girl working at the village that I need to mention. An English girl we will call Anne. She later quit her job there and moved to a nearby city, where she worked. I was visiting some old work colleagues in this nearby city, when she met up with us as well. So Anne was cute, amazing body, in her early twenties, and a recovering heroin addict. I didn’t think much about her, because she had left the village, and after my weekend stay in the city, I never expected to see her again. About a year later, I get a call from a woman (Natalie) that I knew (just a friend who had been sleeping with a guy I knew), to meet her and her mother at a beachfront bar in the city (where I am staying for quite a while. It’s a long story and of no relevance to the matter at hand). To hang out. So I go there. And who is there? Anne. They knew each other, my friend and this girl. Anne was going back to England soon enough, she wasn’t working. She had about two weeks to go, and then she was leaving. Until then she was living rough, she didn’t have much money at that point in time. And anyhow – whilst we were at this beachfront bar – I saw that she could down the booze. That’s for sure. She didn’t get too drunk, but she was more than a little light in the head. She then hit on me, I can’t quite remember what she said, but for years I did remember it. I just smiled but said nothing. I mean it was some blatant pass. I want to emphasize that she was living rough at the time, sometimes even sleeping on the beach, and she knew I had my own place nearby (I was staying in the city for a while). I reckon she was offering sex in exchange for a place to stay, until she took her flight back home. Well okay she was. I mean it was obvious. She would later that night, hook up with another guy, also a friend of Natalie’s, and stay with him, until she left for England. I reckon she would have hit on any man just about, in order to have a roof over her head. I don’t blame her for that.
I fall in love with the beautiful raven-haired Irene. So do other men working with her. She rejects us all
I want to backtrack just a little… When I was at this village circa 2007, at the same time I knew and was friendly with Lisa, I got to know another woman who worked with us. A raven-haired beauty of 30. I was 37 at the time of course. Let us call her Irene. And I fell in love with with her. I mean I fell in love hard. In a way that I hadn’t since I was 21 (with Vicki and Laura). And she knew it, because despite my best intentions, I couldn’t hide it. When she once flirted with a very handsome young man who we all worked with (who all the girls liked), I was devastated, insanely jealous and couldn’t even try to hide it. And she saw. She gave me the don’t-even-think-about-it-you-don’t-stand-a-chance tip offs. I need to mention here that she rejected a lot of men in our workplace. As far as I know all the men. And all the men over 30 especially were besotted with her. And competed for her.
And she rejected all of us, as far as I know. No she was no prude or priss, she had been engaged. She was aware of her sexual power, and didn’t try to hide it. However she was clearly waiting for a man who was at her level, a man who had everything. And none of us were up to scratch. Looking back, I think she rejected me because she saw that I was too beta, too timid, too neurotic. I don’t think it had anything to do with looks, which is what I thought at the time. I always overemphasized the looks things, because when you have agonized under BDD, and the associated vanity and narcissism, you overplay the looks angle. I overlooked the psychological angle. I am not saying she was a gold-digger type, because I don’t think she was really. She was a stunning sexy woman of thirty who took advantage of her assets, and was looking to settle down with the best alpha male specimen she could find, and who could blame her? So she was looking for a husband, for marriage material, a go-getter, an alpha male, one with real prospects, not a life-long slacker like myself. A man who would offer her a secure environment, and a man who she could see as a father to her children she wanted to have soon enough.
Irene could get any man she wanted, and she knew it. And I was not able to offer her, in the financial circumstances I was in, any good prospects coming my way. She was looking to settle down and have children before she got too old, and a man who hadn’t too much ambition and prided himself on living like a student – as I did – even as I was seven years older than her, is not marriage material. I know this was a major factor in her rejection of me, because she rejected another male work colleague of mine – in fact there was some tension betwen us over competing for her affections. And this guy was fairly good looking and confident. However Irene clearly felt that he also didn’t measure up as a potential husband. This got back to me via the grapevine (the women all know everything about everything. Us guys are usually oblivious to everything). You know this guy was really pissed off with me at one stage for competing for her affections. He saw me as real competition, he should have only known his rival (and I was older then him, he was 30 at the time) was a virgin who had never been kissed. In fact Lisa was clearly jealous of her and the affect that Irene had on the men there, including myself. Lisa clearly saw Irene as her great rival. They had such differing personalities, as a matter of interest.
When this woman Irene left our village, for better prospects! I was so heartbroken, even though she rejected me. I got so drunk the day she left, and I never drink. It was the first time I got so drunk since I was in my twenties. Weirdly enough, I thought I would be plunged into a depression for months over it. Didn’t happen, not for more than a day or two. Why? Because Lisa was still there, and she took all my energy and attention. And affection, even as it was a platonic affection. I was amazed that I didn’t even start to miss Irene too much after a while. I dont really think of her too much at all now and never even fantasize about her which I find strange. But surely the pain of her rejection is a factor here. Also what Lisa gave me is something I have never experienced, not before nor since. So that acted as a big boost to my personal life circumstances and day to day living, that is it sucked the energy (in a good way) that would otherwise be diverted to my pining over Irene, her rejection and her departure from my life.
Also think about it, if Irene had shown an interest and made a pass at me, how would I have responded? I would have frozen as with Laura and the Swedish beauty. And the Norwegian stunner. And Jessica. I mean I know this now. Back then at the time I didn’t even think how would I respond if Irene made a pass. I was so besotted with her, I wasn’t thinking at all. My brain had turned to mush and my life was a beautiful painful hell because of it. Ah the hell that I gladly lived in and couldn’t do without, because better to feel the pain of her rejection than feel nothing at all. The emotional numbness that was and remains my de facto state. And if I had no interest in her, I would have truly been a dead, dull, asexual man. Thank God she didn’t make a pass at me. Thank God she rejected me! Hey I never said I wasn’t fucked up. And simply pathetic.
I want to stress again something very obvious: women – and attractive women who can pick and choose – look for men who have strong self-esteem, and are not timid and weak and BETA (I mean mentally, emotionally, psychologically); men who can assert themselves when the circumstances and the situation call for it. Yes of course! Yes it’s obvious. So self-evident I didn’t see it for decades. And I failed to see how this was shaping my whole life, how my anti-social sorrowfulness, poor self-esteem and lack of charisma made inevitable my friendlessness and involuntary monkhood. Because one tends not to see what stares one in the face.
It was my lack of self-esteem, my timidity, my beta male status, that didn’t see me get anywhere with girls in high school and university, even though I was a good-looking young man. Aside from the spanner in the works that was my BDD. I don’t want to irritate or exasperate the reader, or make the reader think I am vain or arrogant in this respect, by writing that I was a handsome young man repeatedly, but it is simply the truth. And yes it only exacerbates the bitter black comedy angle here. I have barely related all the missed opportunites from my teens and early twenties. I mean girls constantly gave me the eye (and no not the guy standing behind me). In high school, my sister’s friends did flirt with me on ocassion, at least one of them developed a crush on me over the years, and my sister had some beautiful friends in case I hadn’t mentioned that before.
Looking back, how is my life-long incel even possible again?
Some girls in my own year in high school showed an interest, flirting, smiling, that kind of thing, despite the fact that I looked a year or two younger than I was. And was a nerd. Admittedly most of the interest from girls did come from those in the grades lower than me, from girls younger than myself. I didn’t even think about it. I took it for granted that girls would have an interest in me. As do all handsome youth. There was interest and flirting from girls coming my way, in class, out of class, at the mall, whenever you are in whatever way out there in the world. After a while, you tune it out, because it is just part of the background, like birds chirping, or children screeching. You don’t even notice it after awhile. You take it for granted. I mean there were girls – so many who fancied me at one time or another, in my youth, I wouldn’t even have known their names really, or just barely registered their names. I wouldn’t even remember them for the most part really by the time I was past twenty. This is not because I was an arrogant, self-absorbed youth (although yes I was a little arrogant and vain, despite never having kissed a girl in my life!), this is just the experience of handsome youngsters. People (not just nuclear family which doesn’t really count for much), relatives, friends (the few I had), friends of friends, friends of my parents, acquaintances, often strangers, my peers, remarked over the years on my striking good looks. I was actually embarrassed by it. It happened routinely.
Even in my 26th year, I was briefly working in a restaurant, my bisexual middle-aged boss said I shouldn’t even think of trying to seduce him, just because I was handsome, and getting favors from him as a consequence, because it wouldn’t work. Maybe he was speaking from bitter experience! One of his regular customers remarked to him (within my earshot) that with my good looks, he understood why he (my boss) gave me the job ahead of so many other applicants. That reminds me that gay men were often besotted with me, I noticed. Gay men are going to be attracted to good-looking men, duh. As women are and for the same reasons. If you are a straight man, you should take it as a compliment. One of my female high school teachers (in her thirties at the time), I think kind of fancied me, and I was only 15 at the time (or fancied herself as a teenager again going out with me). This brings up the whole taboo thing of how men and women in their twenties and thirties still have sexual desires for teenagers (and people older than that let’s face it have desires for adolescents). They do but we don’t talk about it. Women perhaps hide their desires better than men (because it’s a man’s world and there is a double standard here), but that is a whole other thing.
I took it for granted that once I got out of my shell, girls and women were there for the taking. I knew that life was suffering, but I thought I would suffer other travails, whatever they would turn out to be. Even the travails and sufferings of broken love affairs, of divorce, of falling out of love, of cheating and that kind of thing. Not the sufferings of a sex-starved and sex-crazed monk!! Not because I was an arrogant jerk, but when you had my good looks and the female sex responds accordingly! In fact I was amazed so many pretty girls showed such an interest, not because I didn’t know I was good looking (when I wasn’t suffering from my on-again-off-again BDD in my twenties), but because I was such a dork. And at that age, cliques override so much else. Yet female hormones override all that, their horniness is at least on a par with boys. At the least! In fact I think they can be way more horny than us. I may have been a nerd, but I was a really handsome nerd. And here I am going to contradict myself somewhat, but this gets to my seriously screwed up personality and character (it’s almost as if I had and have a multiple personality disorder): I could be a surly nerd, but I could also be very cool, and charming. It depended on the situation and the mood.
At university (when I was a senior, no longer a freshman nor a sophomore), when I was older (20 and 21), and looked a man not a boy, I had put on some muscle, and was far more worldly wise; I could be very charming and fake confidence (no I still had no self-esteem. If I had had self-esteem, even if only for 24 hours, I would not be a virgin to this day!). I swear I had girls – beautiful girls – if not eating out of the palm of my hand, giving me the eye and smiling their I-am-interested-in-you-in-a-sexual-way smiles. Guys I knew from university classes (in other words males who knew me relatively superficially, not well at all) sometimes gave off jealous vibes, not because of all the girls I wasn’t scoring with!! but because they just assumed I was scoring left right and center and I didn’t see why I should set them straight in this respect!
In fact I recall now an incident when I was 20, and I had almost forgotten it. I once went to meet my one cousin who I had grown up with (we were the same age) at a coffee shop one morning, after having not seen one another in almost a year or so. To catch up and shoot the breeze. So we meet up, and take two seats at a table. At another table nearby sit two young women of about 18. The one is a cute blonde, her friend is black haired and a little fat. The blonde is giving me the eye, smiling, showing indisputable interest and giggling with her friend. I talk to my cousin, pretending I don’t see the blonde giving me a blatant come-on, even though they are in my line of vision. A sane red blooded hetero man would have told his cousin, ‘don’t turn around but there are two girls at the table behind you, in my line of vision, one of them is a cute blonde who is giving me the eye, making it clear she fancies me. She is with her friend, who isn’t that attractive, a little fat. But lets go over and introduce ourselves, so I can get the blonde’s number. Let’s just be polite to her fat friend of course, not leave her out of the conversation’. All I had to do to succeed with the blonde was behave like a normal friendly young man, and I would have had her sucking my cock in no time. Instead I continue to act as if they aren’t even there or as if the blonde isn’t giving me the I-want-to-fuck-you signals. We end up paying our bill and leaving, and I don’t even glance in the blonde’s direction. My cousin was oblivious all the while, since he was not facing them.
That same Golden Year that wasn’t – 1991. In the same class as Vicki and Winona/Laura, there was another girl in my tutorial class (with Vicki in fact), a really smart girl, not a blonde princess like Vicki, not bohemian chic like Laura, but more pretty librarian type. Amazing body and whilst not beautiful beautiful like Vicki and Laura, she had an attractive face, nice hair, nose, mouth. Pretty. An English Jacqueline Bisset type, if not as beautiful, pretty for sure. Let’s call her Sharon. So one day I arrive late to the big lecture class, there are no empty seats left that I see. I notice one empty seat next to Sharon, who is sitting alone. I go over and sit there and say hello to Sharon who of course I vaguely know from my tutorial group. So in the midst of the lecture, she starts to make small talk with me, desperate if anything to make conversation with me. Clearly this is the case because there was otherwise no need. The lecturer was talking and we were supposed to be listening and taking notes, not furtively whispering to one another. So she makes small talk and I smile politely back at her, but don’t bother replying to anything she says. After a while she gives up, and is clearly miffed. At the end of the lecture I say a polite goodbye to her, but she is clearly angered at me that I didn’t respond in kind to her probing conversation. I could have probably made out with her, even fucked her, that very day. A few days later at the most. I mean I almost completely forgot this incident. It only came back to me as I was typing up my bizarre and pathetic experiences or non-experiences from that same year, with Vicki and Laura. Needless to say Sharon never bothered with even making small talk with me again.
There was another girl in that same tutorial class of Sharon’s and Vicki’s who flirted outrageously with me one day, outside of our class, when we were waiting for our tutorial lecturer to arrive. A plain girl, but not unattractive, she didn’t even pretend to hide her interest in me. She did all this in front of the other girls, who looked on in bemusement (including Vicki), as this other girl asked me all kinds of questions about myself, how was my holiday, small talk but you know, if you were there you would have known she was showing blatant and brazen signs of interest. I was polite with her, answering her questions, and asking about herself. But a young man like myself was saving himself for the beauty queens, even as I was sabotaging all that with my BDD fruitloop delusions. I had almost forgotten this girl, the memory only came back to me when typing up about Sharon. Now I would walk over hot coals for the chance at a plain twentysomething woman with a good body, and yet plain twentysomething women now don’t even see me; if they got and get to know me I would at best be a father/uncle figure. Karma’s a bitch. I mean these kind of flirtations/signs of interest from girls, were routine when I was that age (20 – 22). I am leaving out so much else, so many signs of interest/flirtations from more than a fair few young women over the years!
I remember that same year (my 21st year to remind the reader) once going out to some restaurant to meet up with some ‘friends’, acquaintances really (well not close friends at all, I had none). So there were some male contestants/entrants to a GQ ‘sexy male model of the year’ type contest (not actually sponsored by GQ but that kind of thing) – the equivalent of the female beauty contests – eating there at the restaurant. And I mean these young men were entrants for some male beauty/beefcake/fashion thing at the national level. Not some suburban backwater contest in some lame shoping mall (and not some tawdry Chipppendales kind of thing neither), but a national contest. In other words, handsome young men with model good looks, the kind of men that grace the adverts in GQ and Esquire. They were all eating at a table together at this restaurant. The young pretty hostess there – after I just arrived at the restaurant – starts leading me to their table, she assumes I am with them!! In other words, she thought I looked the part. I was amused by her error (and no she didn’t think I was part of their management crew – who were not there anyway, or the accountant coming along to get the restaurant invoices – I was only 21 remember). I had to point out to her that no I was not with the Sexy Man Beefcake group (these men really looked the part. These were all the finalists). I am only 5′ 10 and even then wasn’t very muscular, but I had a wiry build with good muscle tone. Yet I guess 5′ 10 isn’t short, even as I would have been the only man at the male beefcake table shorter than six foot in all likelihood. Also I was 21, but looked 19. Even so, there were guys who were in this contest, who were as young as 19 and 20. And all this time mind you I suffered from BDD!!! In fact it was the high point – or maybe that’s the low point – of my BDD! When I was at my most attractive. For Fuck’s Sake. Even after being mistaken for a male model to all intents and purposes! And not by some old granny with fading eyesight, but a hot twentysomething restaurant hostess! You cannot make this up.
If you are a truly unattractive incel/love-shy, I understand that you may want to punch me, if you could! Trust me, I hate myself over this, you have no idea. But hating myself over this, only reinforces the self-loathing and the associated self-destructive sensibility I have given off. It has all contributed to my life-long incel and recluse status.
I mean I never went to the parties really, not at all in fact. I was anti-social, and had few friends, sometimes none at all. During high school, during recess/break-time from classes I was often enough all alone. I was a dork and gave off dork signals. I was grouchy, sulky and melancholic. I had zero charisma. I did notice even then, I mean at 16 and 17 years of age, that a few very average-looking guys were scoring big time with the girls (I noticed this with two guys in particular in my class); yet they had such confidence, such healthy self-esteem, you would think they were Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood. They acted the role, the part, and they weren’t faking it. And girls responded accordingly. Girls flocked to them, like bees to nectar. And I should have realized then, self-esteem and charisma are worth more than mere handsomeness, even very good looks. I didn’t get this at the time. Without self-esteem you may as well be a blob of jelly, even if you have the face of Tom Cruise or Johnny Depp in his youth. If you are filled with timidity, self-loathing, self-loathing and self-loathing, you can have an athlete’s body, be tall, and have the face of Ryan Gosling or Zach Efron, you can just forget about it. You are not going to get anywhere with girls. Nowhere. Now many of you may object: why would a man who looks like Ryan Gosling have zero esteem, and be timid and filled with self-contempt? Yes it is very rare. But it does happen. Childhood trauma, being so mentally fucked up as a consequence, you can make people suffering from multiple personality disorder seem well adjusted by comparison. And if you are a beta male (and I am), good looks take a back seat to that. And you can’t blame women for giving beta males a wide berth. Nature, the Animal Kingdom and all that.
A lot of you may think I am exaggerating anyhow. Come on you will object (those of you who are not handsome or pretty): girls will throw themselves at you, dork or not, if you are good-looking and claim to be able to turn on the charm if need be (as I do). A handsome dork is still handsome! But girls have thrown themselves at me. Literally. I froze. Need I remind the reader of the Swede? Of Laura? Of Jessica and Julia? The near naked Norwegian babe torturing me with sex noises? All the others I have mentioned, and others I don’t even remember! Also if girls get negative signs from you, if you are unpopular, if you are dour and morose, well there are other guys out there. Girls will and do respond accordingly, and give you a wide berth. This is what happend to me of course. It all becomes a vicious cycle. Self-loathing giving off bad subliminal signals, girls respond accordingly, self-loathing and poor self-esteem then intensifies, and so you automatically perpetuate the negative effects/affects. After years of this, you become a recluse, a near hermit or an actual hermit. And you are untouchable, you touch no one and no one touches you. Cue the Simon and Garfunkel song.
Maybe that’s what you always wanted all along? Deep down. The fear of intimacy, of a real human connection, is what got you there. But it was all so deeply subconscious, you never saw it. I don’t want to keep repeating myself, but if I put up photos of myself from my youth here, as a young man, I mean people would respond with ???? What The Fuck is wrong with you? What indeed? So much is wrong with me. I am so fucked up. And it goes back to childhood. It always does. Our parents fuck us up they do, said the poet Phil Larkin. Some of us just deal with it better, or become neurotic in ways that at least don’t prevent them from getting sex or what-have-you. More than anything, there is a very deep-seated fear of intimacy, that I have harbored since I was at the least, a teenager. A fear of physical and emotional intimacy with girls and women, and I felt the need to prevent anything from ever happening there via subconscious self-sabotage. Even as consciously, I desperately desired intimacy with them. I was at war with myself. I did not see this for decades.
I also want to add something re long-term incel: if you are really ugly or obese, people don’t act surprised that you don’t have a partner, and leave the subject alone, just avoid mention of it. But if you are reasonably good-looking and socially/intellectually normal or more accurately can fake normalness, people can’t figure out why you don’t have a partner. And it is a nightmare to deal with, they may try to fix you up with somebody. They ask if you are gay (this has happened to me on several occasions). Uh if I was gay wouldn’t I have a boyfriend you idiots? Why would I hide it in this day and age? It is no longer illegal in the West, for the most part at least (I am not living in Honduras or the West Indies where they still mistreat/criminalize gay men). I live in a city which is very gay friendly. I have always lived in big cities in the West, in which there are big gay subcultures. It is not 1960, and I was born in 1970. This is one of the reasons why I have become a recluse or nearly so. I hate having to deal with this crap, why don’t you have a girlfriend, they all say. What do noncels/normals know about it? I don’t have a girlfriend because I have never had a girlfriend, you ‘normal’ people. I can’t just pretend I am a 14-year-old boy, even an inexperienced 20 year old, and go out with some woman as if my past non-experience with women, as in a big fat zero (that is thirty adult years now), has never happened. I mean should I get a false memory implant, like the characters in Blade Runner? Would any woman want to go out with a virgin who has never kissed a girl, and is now well into middle age? No I don’t think so. They would run a mile. They would think – they would know – there is obviously something so messed up about me. A freak. And yes late-life love-shys are freaks. By definition. As Gilmartin himself points out.
Haughty Narcissus spurns the nymphs. The last I ever see of Karen, Sarah, Vicki, Laura
I am just reminded of something, by tangent. In fact it is important to mention. I was routinely so haughty and rude to girls I liked, that the very last times I ever saw so many of my crushes (from my teens and early twenties), they refused to acknowledge my very existence! Oh Narcissus again! This was the case with Karen (the girl I mention further up, who I knew from school days and who later blossomed into a real beauty) who I last saw in our early twenties, when she was with her boyfriend, when I walked past them at a mall. I said hello, and she just ignored me. Well after I had ignored her for years, who can blame her? I mean I fantasized about this girl for years, I imagined her as my wife.
Same goes for my sister’s one friend from high school (let us call her Sarah). This girl I met through my sister when I was 15, and she 13. A very pretty brunette. And we hit it off. She had come by to our house one time, that’s where I met her. And even as we talked with my sister there, we were never alone together, I was immediately attracted to her and I could tell she was not disinterested in myself. In fact that was the first time in my life I remember hitting it off with a girl, in a way in which there was a clear sexual undercurrent (at 13 and 14 years of age, I didn’t even flirt with girls). Thing is later that year, when she saw me at school, I wasn’t that friendly with her. Just said hello, when she once greeted me in an openly fliratious manner, and didn’t add anything. I was in fact a little rude to her. I froze, I got nervous, anxious, not knowing what else to say. I felt that was the time, I had to seize it, I didn’t and so it was gone. A year later, when I was 16 and she 14, when walking past her once on the high school grounds, she ignored me when I said hello to her (although I may not have said it audibly. I always spoke too softly). She never came by our house again, she and my sister were not such good friends, so it wasn’t like I would see her in that context as I had before. I mean she had tried flirting with me before, and I didn’t respond, so who can blame her? Fuck fuck fuck. I once saw her at university, years later, about 1990 or 1991. I walked past her but only saw her out of the corner of my eye. She was one of those beautiful B.A. students back then, but strangely or perhaps not so strangely, because even then I was a loner and not going to the parties and what-have-you, I never saw her at all, on or off campus. Never seen her since.
Same goes for the beautiful blonde Vicki, who of course I vaguely knew from my university years. This was actually the worst unofficial good-bye in my life. I saw her once out with a guy, sitting in a café, when I came in with two mates from work, when I was about 24. I couldn’t believe it, I hadn’t seen her since university days (in fact the day I bumped into her at the mall), about three years before, when I was 21. Instead of just saying hello, how are you, you graduated yet, I kinda stared at her from our table. My one work colleague saw me staring at her, as did Vicki. She then told her boyfriend, let’s move outside to another table, in response to my staring. It was easy enough for me to overhear. Fuck. I couldn’t help myself. What was I thinking??! You know if I had been an alcoholic or a drug addict, I could not have been more self-destructive than I actually was in my youth. I mean it’s one thing never having gotten anywhere with these girls, it is another that they think I am a fucking creep. Great. I was in love with this girl, still fantasize about her. And that was the last of it. More than twenty years ago. Oh for Fuck.
And then there was the last time I saw Laura. Oh for Fuck. So I’m on the university campus, it’s sometime in 1992, probably the middle of the year (so about two years before the last time I saw Vicki). And I hadn’t seen Laura since that screw-up freeze of mine in class (when she came to sit next to me and I did nothing). A year or so back (that is mid-1991). In 1992 I go to the campus on the very rare occasion, since I am only doing one subject, and skipping most of my classes since I have the textbook and the lectures are just straight from the text really (and I am working part-time at a video store. Remember those?), and I see Laura. She is sitting on the steps in front of one of the campus buildings. As beautiful as I remember her. And she is talking to a friend, a girl. She sees me, looks at me for a second or two, the recognition is there, she turns away and goes back to talking to her friend. I see her looking at me for that second or two, and she sees me looking at her; and my face, I know I have a look that can best be articulated as ‘yes I remember you, you showed an interest in me and I didn’t reciprocate, this is awkward’. Now you may object, how can I have that written on my face? Well as much as one can, let me put it that way. I go past, giving where she is sitting a wide berth (I am not going into that building where they are sitting anyhow). It is the last I ever see of her. About a quarter of a century back now. For the love of the Mayan pantheon and the Nordic gods too. She was my Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Those few seconds – the last I ever saw of Laura – define my tragic wasted life as much as anything. My wasted wasted wasted life in a nutshell. The fucking loss. The fucking waste. For fuck.
And remember what I relate further up about the last time I saw Sheenah (at the one birthday party we were both at). And even my very last e-mail to the beautiful Lisa (related further up as well in the relevant chapter), it follows the same psychological dynamic.
Looking back on my mega-stupid self-destructive youth, far more self-destructive than even a heroin addict or alcoholic (because at least they get high and there is an entertainment/chic factor to their downward spirals), I am really amazed I haven’t killed myself. Sometimes I think, why haven’t I again? I think it is because – I know it is because – I am scared to death of death. Because I am scared to death of living. Because life and death are inseparable. And yet by not committing suicide, by not having the courage, I have actually ended up committing suicide anyhow. That is the living suicide that is my life, and has been my life for at least thirty years. I mean I have in actuality committed suicide near every day for years and decades. I have committed suicide thousands of times (in Greek myth, Narcissus only commits suicide once). And I have done so because I haven’t had the guts to end my life physically. Nor have I had the guts to give my life to some real passionate cause. Suicide is not the coward’s way out, it takes real guts. I am impressed with anybody who has the guts to do it.
Meditations on other people’s suicides. My male cousins’ love-shyness, a meaningless coincidence or not?
In my 22nd year, when I had already made the decision to take my own life (but naturally failed to follow up on), I met this one young woman who I was briefly friendly with (my father went out with her aunt), whose brother had committed suicide a few months before. He was 19. I never knew him of course. But he had friends, a loving family, had girlfriends, as his sister related. She showed me a photo of him, a good-looking young man. He was studying at university. And nobody in his family could understand why he took his own life. And I don’t neither and even if I knew him, I doubt I would have understood why. Strangely his death has haunted me to this day. A young man I never knew. He who had no seeming rational reason to commit suicide, and yet commits the act; and there is me who meant to commit suicide the same year, had a good reason, namely chronic failure with girls that would prove to be life-long, and yet I didn’t have the courage. So here I am 25 years later, still ‘alive’ but you know, anything but alive. I mean 22 year olds who commit suicide now weren’t alive when I was 22, when I intended to take my own life! How absurd. How unbelievable. Such is the way of things.
So many people commit suicide you know, I am amazed. I know of a fair few people who have committed suicide and often relatively young. And I hardly know and have known too many people, being a loner with a capital L. One ex-work colleague of mine blew his brains out in the backroom of a store he worked at, when he was 28. Nobody was surprised, he had been depressed for years. I once (with others) found my neighbor in her swimming pool, floating, the rigor mortis having set in, after having swallowed a bunch of pills. She had a boyfriend and a successful career. Her man told me his other ex had, years before, blown her brains out in front of him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him his life reminded me of the poet Ted Hughes but at least no kids were involved. One attractive woman who my cousin knew, when we were all in our 28th year, she paid some gangster to shoot her. He did so too. Think he went to jail. She had a job and a good-looking husband who loved her. She was depressed. That’s all. It’s enough. Quite a few other people I have known over the decades have taken their own lives or attempted to do so. One was a wealthy man of 35, good looking too, younger than myself at the time, he succeeded in ending his life, with a pill overdose.
I mean I cannot believe those who commit suicide when they have so much to live for, or so it seems, whilst the rest of us caught in a fog and void of deep isolation, zero love-lives, depression and meaninglessness just plod on year after year; even though we have nothing to live for. And not because we are stoic or brave, although some of us are, but because we are scared stiff of actually dying. Because scared stiff of actually living. There is a Paul Weller song, the lyrics stay with me, I am tired of living but scared to die. Heck I am tired of dying but scared to live. And then people my own age I have known or know of, fall by the wayside, killed in car accidents, cancer, one guy I went to school with was thrown off a cliff at the age of 22 or 23. And all the genocides that have taken place since 1992 alone! From Rwanda to Darfur to Syria. And I plod on. Like a ghost I repeat the same motions, day in and day out. In a limbo world of fog and mist. The Western World will collapse in flame, chaos, revolution, mass terror and pestilence, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse will bestride the earth; yet the Incel will plod on. The incel will survive. Along with the cockroaches. And then being incel, he will not procreate and that is the way the world ends! Not with a bang nor a whimper, but the sounds of virgin men whining like the sick wounded puppies they are, masturbating to fantasies of girls they simply stared at in the blank canvases of their youth. And they will as ghosts repeat masturbatory motions in some kind of Dantean hell, observing orgies all around them that they are barred from participating in. And so get no release.
There is a lot of suicide in my family. Especially on my mother’s side. My one cousin threw himself in front of a train when he was 44 (this was the same guy who I met at the coffee shop, where the one blonde cutie ogled me). The same age as myself at the time. We grew up together. He was my only real friend but we largely lost touch. He was living on another continent. And he became increasingly isolated in his last years as he sank into depression. And he never had a real girlfriend his whole life, although he had a fair few attractive female friends during the course of his life. He wasn’t gay. At least he wasn’t a virgin, but his sexual experience was very very limited.
His older brother (just shy of 50 now) would end up marrying the only woman who he ever fucked. He lost his virginity to her in his early thirties. And as a consequence, she wears the pants and he is totally under her thumb. He has two kids now. He has always been weak that way. Supine. Weak and soft like me. Between the three of us, only one girlfriend. And this woman/wife is no great shakes in the looks department. Okay looking, average. But it’s not like she’s got some kind of amazing personality or character. She is okay in that department, although something of a neurotic mother. My cousin settled in other words. And he even converted to Catholicism to please his wife. Pathetic. I would rather have had the life I have actually had, with beautiful girls giving me the eye, flirting with me, falling in love with me!! but never even having kissed one of them, than live the life of my married cousin. And others like him. Betabuxers in other words.
I had what he never had. The looks of lust and desire from pretty young women is worth more to me than fucking an average or rather, more to the point, less than average Jane, for years. Decades. Gilmartin covers this theme, how incels are more obsessed about pretty girls – looks that is – than non-love-shy/normal men who actually get laid. Certainly true in my case. As a young man, I would rather have done without then go out with the plain Janes. And I did go without of course. And I haven’t even hinted at how many plain girls and slightly pretty girls I just rejected, at university in particular. I mean there were so many, I don’t even remember!
But in a real sense of course, all three of us – myself and my two cousins – failed terribly with women. What do we have in common? Our mothers are sisters. Their mother, not very attractive – unlike my mother who was beautiful when she was young – was in a miserable marriage and was constantly angry, bitter and enraged (she eventually committed suicide after many failed attempts). Never showed her sons any affection really, only anger and a short temper (again Gilmartin touches on this re the mothers of love-shys, mothers often irascible and thus reducing self-esteem among their sons). Their father was something of a brute, but not physically violent. Hence they did not get on with their father at all, who also showed his sons no real affection (he died of cancer in his early fifties). They didn’t have any sisters. At least they had one another, and my one cousin who committed suicide, was a really good sportsman. But at the end of the day they were so messed up by their parents. They never stood much of a chance. Just like so many of us. Our mothers and our fathers screwing us up. From generation to generation. The only one out of the four of us (myself, my sister and my two maternal cousins) who turned out ‘okay’ was my sister. The girl. Again this touches on themes that Gilmartin covers. Boys are more damaged by their parents’ neuroses in terms of the children’s adult love lives or lack thereof, than their sisters. As a rule, although there are exceptions (I am not talking about when there is overt PHYSICAL sexual abuse of children by parents).
My sister was lousy at sports, couldn’t catch a ball, but it didn’t matter. Guys didn’t care. She is pretty! And shapely. And she hung out with the cool pretty girls. I was way better at sports than my sister, it wasn’t even a contest. I wasn’t bad at tennis and I was a fairly decent middle-distance runner (until I got shortness of breath problems in mid to late adolescence, and then sports just fell by the wayside. I relate this elsewhere in this essay). However because I wasn’t a good sportsman in the teams sports and didn’t care for them, I was not up to snuff. My sister teased me about not being good at sports – projecting her insecurities out on me. Even as she was positively useless at sports. And a real crybaby. She was still not ever going to have a problem getting a boyfriend. I was good looking, way better at sports even if not good at the sports that mattered to a brainless macho culture (see Gilmartin again. How did he discover so much?). However I was unpopular, never went to the parties; and as such, girls even if they were enamored of my handsomeness, and flirted with me, even fancied me, my beta male status, despondency and low self-esteem saw me doomed to failure. To not even trying. It may be a man’s world but the self-same men have rigged the game against a lot of us. I sometimes feel when reading Gilmartin, bloody hell, and I thought I was somewhat unique!
I need to reiterate something re myself and my cousins. Two of us were virgins by the time we hit thirty (of course I still am), and my other cousin (the one who took his own life) most probably still was, or had very little experience, maybe one or two sexual encounters at the most. I mean he may have had sex once or twice in his life up to that point in time, maximum. Maybe nothing even. So what are the chances that all three of us would be virgins basically by the time we were thirty? I mean if maximum 5% of men in the Western world are still virgins at age thirty, and that’s a generous stat (it’s probably closer to 2%, if even that), that means the odds on all three of us being virgins at thirty, that is love-shys at thirty, and we were all love-shys, was one in eight thousand! (5% * 5% * 5%) And that is of course a generous figure. If approx. 2% of men are virgins at thirty, the odds balloon to one in one hundred and twenty five thousand! This cannot be a meaningless coincidence. Our family dynamics were very different, and yet our mothers were sisters, and we all ended up love-shys throughout our teens and twenties. And two of us, beyond thirty. Pretty much. My one cousin who committed suicide was a fairly good-looking guy when young, but always had behavioral problems, and low self-esteem. My other cousin (who settled for the plain and a little fat Jane) was average looking, but not ugly, but never confident, and always suffered from very poor self-esteem and zero charisma. He has since gained a lot of weight. The common denominator of our mothers, who were raised in the same family of course, is the dark shadow here.
My maternal grandfather jumped off a building when I was a year old, after he went bankrupt. My mother was in a road accident in the early 1990s, got some brain damage, and whilst she can now function fine, cook, drive, shop and go to the bank, watch TV, even use the bare bones of the Internet; more than these kind of survival functions are routinely beyond her, and she tunes out routinely. I feel I have to walk on eggshells with her (my sister and myself oversaw her convalescence). She is protected from my wrath, because how can I confront her now, what with her condition? And it is also how she perpetuated her helpless victim please-take-care-of-me role playing. I would go as far as saying she engineered the accident, not deliberately but at a subconscious level, because she got what she wanted out of it. She paid a price that’s for sure. No free lunches. I realize few readers can appreciate this, because it comes across as very radical and way-out and it is. I believe, I know, we engineer and contrive things at a deeply subconscious level, that our powers here are incredible, literally paranormal; and in our secular culture where everything has been explained away, the extent and reach of the subconsious mind is not properly recognized, but scoffed at and dismissed. Such musings as these are fairly taboo. My own tragic life has this dimension to it, radically destructive in a deeply subconscious way (my conscious mind and will here are barely blips on the radar) and bringing in all sorts of tragic mythic resonance (oh Narcissus), that one wryly recognizes in hindsight. If ever. And when I say I see this now, I mean in my forties!
What good is memory if it only runs backwards?
In hindsight I do think that my social isolation from high school on, was as big a factor as any other, in my life-long virginity tragedy. I understood that in university I needed to get friends before I could get a girlfriend. I was thinking why should this (making friends) be a problem, and yet it proved intractable. I lacked nerve, gregariousness, extroversion, the same qualities that saw me freeze with girls. I was and still am of a melancholic and dour temperament. And especially in our culture, where plastic smiles and pretense are actively encouraged and sustained via social mores, people of a more somber frame of mind are shunned. I was also pathetically timid, but didn’t always see it at the time. In a scientific experiment that Gilmartin recounts with Rhesus monkeys, those monkeys who did not socialize with others (as the experimenter forced them into social isolation) failed to have coitus, even if presented with the opportunity. The males would just sit and stare at the females but do nothing. That’s my life in a nutshell. I don’t think a man alive daydreamed more about women and girls than I did. No man longed for women more. From a distance. And I never mantained strong bonds with male peers in adolescence and beyond.
The thing is you don’t really meet up with other love-shys, because you are by nature anti-social, even with other love-shys. This appears to contradict what I write above regarding my own nerd herd. However nerd herds tend to be small bubbles of isolation. Outside of these pathetic self-enclosed circles, there is no real contact with others in social settings. And aside from their small sizes, if one is part of a nerd herd, one doesn’t want to look too closely at any of the shared qualities of the members therein. It’s all so pathetic and depressing. So you don’t make these connections that Gilmartin covers in his book. Plus you don’t want to be tainted by other love-shys’ bad luck and their own unpopularity, and they feel the same way about you! I remember once on a high school class outing for the day, I was all alone being Mr. Unpopular. And there was another boy there, who really was the most unpopular boy in my year at school. I mean he was kinda ugly, poor kid, did not play sports and didn’t have to. I mean he didn’t even have to do Physical Ed. I don’t know why, but he had some ‘medical condition’. The other boys didn’t actually tease him, he was just ignored. A parriah more than anything. And on this class trip, we were the only unpopular kids and we both ignored one another as well, rather than team up. We just remained alone, walking by ourselves. And even then I knew why. I didn’t want to be tainted by him, by his parriah status, and he didn’t want to be tainted by mine. We would just drag each other down. I often wondered what happend to him. Is he also still a virgin, did he find some woman, maybe he did? Maybe like my cousin, he found some woman, probably relatively late in life and settled for her. I wonder if I am the only virgin from my high school year? Surely. One of the most handsome boys in my high school year.
You know imagine starting a group Virgins Anonymous modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous? Gilmartin mentions it in fact, what he calls Shys Anonymous, and yes modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. He thought feedback, role-playing and mutual support could see love-shys aid one another and get out of their prisons. This of course was pre-Internet. In hindsight, the Internet has shown that perhaps if anything love-shys only reinforce one another’s bubble status, whining and self-pity (some would say misogyny). As harsh as that sounds. Plus can drowning men really help one another? They just end up drowning each other. Anyhow, there ain’t no talking cure really for our social disease. In fact there is a contrast between the impression one gets from incels in Gilmartin’s book, to the incel mindsets and attitudes as revealed on the Internet today. In Gilmartin’s book, one gets the impression that incels are all thinkers, poets and sensitive iconoclasts. The life-long virgin’s pain and suffering, his anguish, is compensated by his becoming a thoughtful and sensitive artist/philosopher type. This is not the case, the impression one gets when reading love-shy/incel/PUAHate forums and related, on the Internet! Maybe it’s a generational difference. Maybe it’s the nature of the Internet bubbles to bring out less than the best in people. Maybe I’m being overly harsh. I have found a fair bit of value from the input/ranting/wallowing of my fellow love-shys on the Internet.
Should we – the love-shys – also appear to a higher power, just like AA, to deal with and cope with our lifelong virginity? How many incels become alcoholics because of their problem? Drug addicts? It actually doesn’t seem like many of us do. I am basically a teetotaler. It’s as if the temperament that makes us lifelong virgins, dispirited, disconsolate and inhibited, withdrawn, also mitigates against us being of the alcoholic temperament, which is often gregarious and not averse to risk and danger.
As far as friendships go, considering that I am approaching fifty, I simply don’t want them and regret so many ‘friendships’. If anything I just made the wrong friends, my lack of judgement and thoughtfulness being to blame. I know this is repetitive, but really it is quite incredible: as Gilmartin discovered, incels are generally not interested in male friendships. There are of course exceptions. I wanted friends as a youngster, as a teenager when I didn’t have any really, or all too few for too brief a period of time. I didn’t really have any friendships to speak of from the age of 16, eleventh grade. In fact that year 1986 was a disaster. I just faded on every front and never recovered. I see this in hindsight. I became increasingly dejected and down in the dumps (as my mother took her frustrations and self-pitying depressions out on me). I sabotaged several friendships, and just stared at the girls like a guppy, my head in the clouds. And it was all downhill from there. And my intensifying social isolation ruined it for any social life with girls (aside from the fact that the other boys were getting taller and stronger seemingly every passing day, and I remained puny. I fell off sharply in sports and knowing it was a factor even if only indirectly with girls, it did affect me).
I started to struggle to breathe when exerting myself, I mean when sprinting, going on a hard run, but I never had this problem as a child. And all this at the onset of puberty when I was supposed to be getting fitter and stronger. I still have this problem (and hence why sport was largely a write-off from then on). I have never had it diagnosed, but there is nothing wrong with my heart, lungs, blood. My diaphragm? Do I have a constricted ‘tight’ diaphragm? Maybe. I don’t know for sure. I only now start to think my breathlessness during physically intense exertion may have been a physical response to psychological trauma. I also have a problem with projecting my voice, which is always too soft. If I speak for long periods of time, my voice goes hoarse, my throat hurts. I cannot scream (as I cannot laugh really). I think this lack of vocal strength is inseparable from my difficulty at breathing in general, that is struggling for breath when I run or sprint really, or try to run/sprint. There is some kind of tightness in my anatomy and physiology, that is abnormal, and that I was certainly not born with. Nor did I suffer from it in childhood. I am convinced it is somehow rooted in my neuroses as a child and adolescent. I was smothered as a child (‘I cannot breathe’), I got asthma quite a bit as a kid but outgrew it once I started puberty, only for me to get this shortness of breath problem, at an age in which I was becoming a man, and should have been getting stronger and fitter.
The developing mind affects the developing body, for better or for ill. And then the body in turn affects the mind, and so we have all these feedback loops. Orthodox medical science is scared to death of all this, for reasons that are complex and multi-layered. I just may as well add here that my body type is ectomorphic, and I am thin in the legs. Thin calves and thin forearms. No other men in my family, not on my father’s and mother’s side, are or were thin like me. Not my father, cousins, uncles and grandfathers. None of them. Just myself. Anyhow this is all beyond the scope of my essay really.
And yet now I don’t really want male friendships at all. I don’t think this is all bad. I mean even if I had a girlfriend, even if Scarlett Johanssen or Mila Kunis were my girlfriends, I wouldn’t really want male friendships. As boys become men they start to imitate and model themselves on their elder brothers, fathers, uncles, and in our brutal barbaric every-man-for-himself culture, men tend to be jerks, thuggish yahoos and insensitive brutes. Endless games of one-upmanship. Every friend is a potential enemy, a rival, for women, money, power, status. Even more sensitive men, what are they going to do for me? And what can I do for them? Gilmartin writes about how he discovered that his love-shy subjects had no friends of either sex really, and spent their time watching TV, listening to their stereos, and had an interest in psychic phenomena and the occult. Strange, but I don’t have any friends (except one overweight woman – related below, a few acquaintances but that’s it), haven’t had any for a decade now really, and yes distract myself by listening to music, reading, watching films, and I have an interest in the occult and the paranormal. Of course the advent of the Internet (never mind Interent porn) means we now have taken self-distraction and entertainment to new levels. The Internet has changed everything for the incel, and paradoxically, it has changed nothing for him. He is still incel after all.
Further ruminations and cogitations
I sometimes think the only way out of my pathetic life-long virginity mess, is some kind of occult rite or initiation, an Aboriginal-like Walkabout or a Native Indian-like Dream Quest, a descent into a shamanic underworld. I need the help of the supernatural – I am not kidding – in order to get out of a situation, that to me is not so much mundane or secular, but a failure of a religious kind. I always see things in religious terms. I do now that is – not in the orthodox sense – but in the sense that the world/nature is a sacred place and man is something of a devil. Metaphorically speaking. His evil is of a demonic nature, none of Man’s folly and brutality, his persistent mass psychoses can be understood except as a turning away, from God, Nature, Himself. My failure has impacted on the world around me. I have failed in a way that I feel almost damns me. And I am not religious in the conventional sense at all (I don’t care for organized religion. I despise all the Churches). I don’t believe in heaven and hell (except on earth). In other words, this nightmare that is my life, all our lives, I see in religious terms, even as I mean it in the unconventional sense of the term.
At the time of writing, I have only one friend, a woman, a few years younger than me. She has a pretty face and looks years younger than she is, but she is overweight (although she has lost quite a lot of weight the last year). And as a consequence I am not attracted to her in a sexual way. I also don’t think she has any sexual attraction to me. She is divorced and has no children, and yet she has no problem getting men. Male Incels do have a point, women have it easier than men. As far as getting a partner is concerned. As a very broad generalization. However I could never have sex with a fat girl. I just find them so unattractive. I couldn’t even fake such an attraction. Let me state here that this overweight female friend, well I am glad I have her as a friend, even as she is perplexed at my monastic existence. And it is a pain, I tell her it is just a temporary thing, just because of stresses in my life etc. We have only known each other for about two years. At least we only see each other maybe once a month, and she is often overseas. Other than her, there is nobody.
I have been somewhat friendly with two men over the last decade. Both were good-looking, younger men (about ten years younger than me), who were sensitive and decent (both had good-looking girlfriends as well), but those friendships did not last, nor could they have. Nor did I want them to. The contrast of their lives with mine was too painful, and I cannot keep engaging in all kinds of evasions and lies re why I don’t have a girlfriend. Now that I am in my late forties, what do I have in common with men and women my own age? Heck many of them have kids in their teens or older, who have sexual relations themselves! Bloody hell people my age have sons and daughters who have girlfriends and boyfriends, who are adults not just teenagers, and I still wait for my first kiss. That will probably never come I know. I have decided if even I make any friends, not that I want to, but who knows, my tactic will be a repeat of the necessary lies I have told for some time now (and to work colleagues): women are part of my past, I had a few relationships, not many. I was engaged once when I was 23. I don’t see women as part of my future, just much more difficult now, and I am not rich (although not poor neither). I don’t need women as much as when I was younger (physically this is true. Emotionally and mentally I need them now more than ever. My lack here is literally making me mad. Okay made me mad).
I want to summarize something about BDD. What causes it, as a broad and loose generalization? There is a literature on the subject of course, the interested reader can look it up. Naturally everybody is unique and has their own self-destructive and deeply subconscious reasons (because if conscious or truly aware, no BDD!). I also think female anorexia, whilst related to male BDD of my type because BDD, the former case doesn’t possess the same variables or factors contributing to it as the latter. Although there are parallels and overlaps. Just my five cents here re my own BDD…
Briefly, and in many cases – including my own – the root cause or contributing factor: NARCISSISM. Sure I have already hinted (more than hinted!) at this further up. Also related to the former, self-absorption, superficiality. I don’t think any of these factors are removed from the broader shallowness and materialism in our society. Psychology cannot be separated from sociology. A lack of real or authentic values, a lack of compassion and seriousness in our society, a lack of meaning, a lack of contact with nature, and any authentic or profound contact with people; and the resultant escapes into rather shallow and materialistic pursuits. As a consequence we see in the wider world, a pervasive sense of listlessness, boredom/anomie, cynicism, alcoholism, drug abuse, corruption at every level of our society and in myriad ways and even violence (legal and illegal). The most inane escapes, inane blow-em-up Hollywood baloney and mind-numbing TV shows, Reality TV, the multi-billion dollar sports-industrial complex as if it is something that matters, Internet Social Media rubbish, facebook included. An epidemic of suicides and attempted suicides, depression, behavioral disorders, neuroses. I sensed all this as a youth, but never articulated it. I see this in hindsight, and just like so many young men with my opportunities and good looks, I decided at about age 18 or 19 that I was just going to give my life to having sex, pleasuring women and being pleasured by them. A life of hedonism in other words. That was to be the meaning of my life.
Not just sex, but more to the point, romantic love.
Everything else including a career would be secondary. At best. Because in a culture where the only think that matters is buying and selling, work work work and serving the corporate state as if it were a god, propping up a rather absurdist status quo (once again I am not a communist nor a socialist, I am not even a liberal), going home to some soulless suburb, and looking forward to mindless, vacuous TV shows. Oh My God. I mean actually looking forward to all that! All I saw was sex as the only real thing. And I thought it would just be a matter of time before I was scoring with girls big time. And if you had known me as a teenage youth – because I was handsome and I could be charming when I chose – anybody else would have concurred. In fact adults and my same-age peers did remark to me, how I would get girls so easily. It was just a matter of time. Ha how one can never take anything for granted! I have never enjoyed myself for an hour, for ten minutes. I don’t just mean I have never enjoyed myself with a girl, not for five seconds. Not for three seconds I swear (I mean aside from some dancing with some sexy young things). I mean I have never experienced a single true hedonistic experience at all. Nothing. I mean I have hardly done drugs even. And I don’t drink. And the few times I smoked some weed and/or got drunk, it was not any kind of bonding or even a vague, pleasurable experience with anybody else. Certainly not a woman. I was always isolated, alone. Even when in the company of others. Even when high.
Maybe the first time I get laid I will be – at the very youngest now – 47. Or 50. Or never. And of course I am resigned to never. Never Never Never. Fuck. At least my rational mind is resigned to Never. My body and my cock and the irrational side of my mind have their own demands and insist on fucking, or at least on the hope of fucking. There is a war here between the body’s instincts which remain steadfast, even if never satisfied, and the pragmatic ‘realistic’ mind. I can’t even believe all this has actually happened, but the unreality of one’s life is often enough the reality. I can’t believe the world I am living in after all, but there you go.
Anyhow that is where I think the big mistake – among others – was made. That is deciding to make girls and women the center of my life. The ONLY thing that mattered, and assuming my shyness just growing pains, a passing phase, rather than a characterological neurosis. I see it now. Twenty-twenty hindsight.
The shy thing that Gilmartin constantly and rightly harps on about, I thought I would grow out of it. So did my parents. So did everybody else. I thought it was just a passing phase. Who doesn’t? Can’t blame them or me for not understanding how serious and chronic it actually was. One only sees this in retrospect.
If I had decided that no the meaning of life is to try and do at least some good in life, to be helpful and have some compassion, to develop an interest in the world around you (I don’t mean stupid and counterproductive political activism. My God do we see that in the toxic and mindless political environment today), and that you know sure one wants relationships with women, but you know not to make that the hub of the wheel, the pivot around which everything else revolves, would things have turned out differently? If I had done that, then maybe just maybe, I would not have wrecked my life so badly with women. Maybe. Maybe not. I know this seems strange, but at some level that I can’t quite articulate, I sense that it is true. I mean sure you could object: other men make women the center of their lives, and they get women. No problem. Think of the PUAs. But I sense at some level I was looking for an out, and an out to life. I wasn’t really here, not really living. Not as a young teen, and never later. I was not in contact with my body, with life. And if the central meaning of my life was taken away, in my case the availability of sex and relations with women/girls – then having nothing to live for, I would be forced or compelled to commit suicide. I would have a justification, a rationale for it. I couldn’t just have done it otherwise, ended my life that is. I would need a good reason. So at a subconscious level, I started to sabotage things with girls and later women, because I was looking for a pretext to commit suicide. I have never stopped sabotaging my life. Hence why I contrived the situation and circumstances – at a subconscious level – to commit suicide at the age of 22. But then lacked the guts to actually follow through. I didn’t count on that (lacking the courage to follow through when I felt I couldn’t get a woman ever, and hence had no reason to keep on living). I see that now. I shouldn’t have been surprised that I wouldn’t have the guts to commit suicide; why would I have the guts to die, when I never had the guts to live? When I was so super-anxious all the time. Scared of shadows.
I know the above paragraph is weird and will invite skepticism from even many a sympathetic reader, but life is weird and supremely tragic. Often enough in the most ridiculous ways. And yet as Gilmartin shows up, girls are the central hub of the love-shys life, even when is he is still a child, pre-pubescent. That is the cruel irony of it. And the more and more it is denied him, or he denies the girls at a subconscious level (in my case), the more obsessive he becomes of the female sex. The nature of deprivation. The more one is deprived of something, the more it overwhelms one. So the love-shy, by his very nature, cannot simply relax, and focus on other things. If he could do so, he would never have had the temperament to be love-shy in the first place (at least in the case of love-shys like myself, who are not unattractive). It would be like telling a poor man in a deprived ghetto not to focus on his poverty, and think and focus on other things.
My father was seriously narcissistic (very extreme: his one house – which he had built in his late forties – was covered by floor to ceiling mirrors on cupboard doors), and even as I hated him, I became like him in that way. I don’t think my BDD, my own narcissism and my father’s for that matter, can be separated from a fake and plastic ‘culture’ and society. Yeah I see this now. Wisdom comes too late. I cannot believe how I became so much like my father, the thug, the stupid barbarian. I thought that impossible. But how often does that happen? One ends up becoming like the parent one hated (and hated for good reason). On the surface, he appeared very different to myself, gregarious, extroverted, a womaniser, sociable, ambitious, a go-getter, superficial. In that way, yes we were very different. But I shared in his narcissism, even as our respective narcissism played out in different ways. I didn’t see this until I was past forty.
Just the other month, my only woman friend (the one I mention further up), confided in me about how she feels guilty about having an affair with a married man, and how she needs to break it off. I say I have done worse. Thinking about non-relationship things, you know the people I have let down in life when they were counting on my help, people in desperate situations. She naturally just assumed I was talking about the man-woman thing, and enquired of me, ‘so you have had affairs with married women then?’ Uh no not quite. We then start talking about you know relationships (and of course it is always a bluff or guesswork on my part) and I say how I was an asshole in my youth with women and didn’t appreciate them (which is the truth of course!). And she then replies ‘so you were a player and treated women badly?’ And I reply, ‘well no I was not a player, I was just an asshole’. Yes the 47-year-old virgin was a player! This kind of thing is routine among any friends/acquaintances or colleagues. It makes me more batty than I already am. It’s actually hilarious. This whole life is one black comedy routine after another.
In my late thirties, a couple of guys I knew and hung out with, could not figure me out. Before I went near full recluse. They would flat-out ask me when was the last time I was with a woman. And I would reply, ‘it’s been a while, but I am not in a good place emotionally, mentally, I need a break from the whole women thing. I will get back into the game (that I have never been in for a day in my life) when I am in a better headspace (like my next life)’. If I was an unattractive man or fat, or handicapped or mentally off, people wouldn’t bug me in this way. But because I am or rather was handsome, and fairly charming (if I want to be), people are just perplexed and can’t figure me out; and then they ask all these questions that are of course always misplaced and misguided. And then you have to dodge these arrows. It is why I hate having much to do with people (that and the fact that hell is other people), as anything more than vague acquaintances, and even that is a lot too close for comfort. However as I have gotten older and am now approaching fifty, the pressure to be with women becomes less and less.
I am not talking about my family here, which is now just my sister who lives on another continent and my elderly mother. They gave up on me a long time ago. My sister and I have never spoken about it in fact. Nowadays we barely speak. But she knows I have never had a girlfriend, through my father who knew. Strangely enough when I was in my early twenties my sister just assumed I was seeing girls, one-night stands, but not telling anybody. I distinctly got this impression. Later she came to know the truth. I admitted it reluctantly to my father, when he wanted to know why my life was going nowhere. And he would have told her. My family members all assumed back in the early nineties that I visited prostitutes (I once deliberately gave this impression to my father). My sister and mother still do not know that I am a virgin. There was one seemingly touching scene between my sister and myself. In our adult life. The only one. It was my 35th birthday, and my sister came over with a present for myself. A nice book in fact. And she gave me the present and she started to cry. I said thanks for the present. I didn’t ask why she was crying or ask her to stop. I didn’t say anything. But I knew why she was crying and she knew I knew. She was crying for the way my life had turned out, and at 35 – a watershed year – she knew nothing would change for me. I think she thought – especially when I was still in my twenties – that I would turn things around eventually. However 35 is an age in which reality hits, and can no longer be denied; and I think it just hit her then, that her brother would be alone for the rest of his life, as he was before then.
A selective nitty-gritty overview of Gilmartin’s pioneering study, its strengths and minor weaknesses, and how it shines a light on my own personal life
It is here where I get into Gilmartin’s book in some nitty-gritty details, and how it applies or does not apply to my own life experience (aside from what I write above re Gilmartin). I also mention what I perceive are the few minor mistakes, the naiveté in Gilmartin’s seminal study. Prior to closing this essay with more autobiographical content.
I have to say that when reading Gilmartin’s book, it struck me that I touched off so many of the bases, ticked off so many of the boxes of the love-shy character structure, family dynamics, childhood and teenage years, that Gilmartin discovered in his survey. It is kind of depresssing though. In hindsight you feel, like other love-shys, that you never really stood a chance. That is it was all rigged against you. Some things leaped out at me. Just something that is so downright uncanny and incredible even, that I mention it at the outset: the melancholic, inhibited and anxious personality on the Eysenck scale, who is prone to love-shyness. Gilmartin also mentions the famous cultural critic and psychoanalyst pioneer Erich Fromm, and the latter’s allusion to parental upbringing of children. Namely, how there is a difference between providing for a child’s material needs (milk), not merely food, clothing, shelter, but presents and holidays – that kind of thing – and providing love and affection to the child (honey). I got plenty of milk and no honey, such as expensive clothes I didn’t care for but no love and affection, no emotional support, from my father. A father who was gregarious, brutal, thuggish, materialistic and shallow. Manipulative and controlling. He was not happy that I was not sporty, sociable, that I was withdrawn. Toward the end of his life, when I was about forty, he would complain behind my back that I must be gay. This ticks off so many of the boxes of the fathers of love-shys, as Gilmartin elucidates. I find it downright eerie. My mother in some respects, more loving and caring than my father (well my father not at all), but also withdrawn and moody. Introverted, and in my teenage years a serious depressive and mope after her separation from my father (when I was 13). Also very self-pitying, the victim type.
Gilmartin cites the decades long research findings of Jerome Kagan; namely shy kids become shy adolescents become shy adults. And how it thus appears the Game of Life is rigged against us. It’s why I repeat the point again and again. As if we are doomed. It is not just us love-shys. What chance do most people born in the ghettoes and slums of the world stand? And even non-shys born in the Western world, the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us. Illness, accidents, misfortune are always there waiting. Life and Love itself are vales of tears, and we are all broken by this impenetrable mystery that is Human Existence. Sooner or later, in one way or another. The love-shy suffers in his way, which is impenetrable to non-shys and which the latter misunderstand. And others suffer in their way.
Gilmartin recommended practice dating therapy as a way for love-shys to break free from the chains of love-shyness. Surely the social media revolution via the Internet (and the smartphone revolution) has rendered much of that obsolete. That is Social Media: Facebook, Tinder, Snapchat, online dating etc.
One wonders though how practice dating therapy addresses the fundamental trauma of the love-shys, and how it could weed it out? On practice dating, Gilmartin observed that male incels were less attractive than female incels, some of whom are surprisingly attractive. I must admit this surprises me. I have never personally known an attractive female who did not get male interest. I mean even if she was crazy.
Let me say here that social media has been a disaster for male-female relationships. It’s been a disaster for non-shys, as cynical hook-ups and empty promiscuity only reinforce the worst tendencies of a neurotic, narcissistic culture – so how could it possibly be of help to love-shys? My advice is to avoid all social media altogether, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, what-have-you. Thing is everybody is hooked up to it, so this makes it more difficult for love-shys to even get a look in from the ‘normal world’, given how that normal world is all hooked into a social media bubble. It signifies ever more deteriorating relations in an increasingly isolated and vacuous culture. Is this the so-called normal world that incels should adapt and adjust to?
Social relations are thus even worse than when Gilmartin first published his book in the late ’80s. It is thus more difficult for even non-shys to meet with the opposite sex in a potential romantic setting (not involving social media), given how everybody is now a pod person glued to his or her smartphone. So what chance does a love-shy have? So now it is more trying for love-shys to get over their problems – given the ever intensifying hi-tech alienation of our so-called culture – than back in the 1980s. His ideas of therapy dating in a university setting unsurprisingly never came to pass, and I don’t see how it would have been feasible even if Gilmartin’s book was a bestseller, rather than inevitably neglected (inevitably so because the whole topic of love-shys is taboo). I mean that love-shys are just too taboo, everything about them, their very existence and the implications, the ramifications of what it tells us about our society (marginalized young men and boys, marginalized by a hypermasculine macho culture, the whole taboo about intimacy and sex which remains steadfast in our culture, if not seemingly as repressed as in times past). Yet the changing nature of university life, the fact that traditional dating has been superseded by hi-tech hookups, means Gilmartin’s recommendations now seem positively anachronistic. And they are. As were his SF dreams of genetic cloning and splicing (in Gilmartin’s imagination, he thought that genetic cloning would make every male handsome or at least reasonably good looking, and reduce the love-shy problem significantly) which was always naive. Genetic cloning has turned out to be a big puff of hullabaloo, much ado about very little.
Gilmartin was not a geneticist and did not appreciate how he was hooked up on the scientific reductionist claptrap that is sociobiology and more specifically evolutionary psychology, an overemphasis on genetics as the alpha and omega of human behavior and psychological development and neuroses. It has bamboozled and hoodwinked otherwise intelligent people, caught up in a combination of wishful thinking and scientism. Where genetics are seen as determining everything from homosexuality and obesity to schizophrenia. Gilmartin believed in an inhibition gene which no more exists than an extrovert gene or a fat gene or an aggression gene or a genius gene – it is scientific reductionism taken to an extreme. Of course if the reader is the kind of person who is a staunch scientific reductionist, you may beg to differ.
The irony here is that this sociobiology/evolutionary psychology and the related philosophy there is inseparable and indeed an inevitable consequence of scientific materialism. And yet this scientific materialism and scientific reductionism runs counter to Gilmartin’s own philosophy, which is more spiritual/ism friendly. In his book, Gilmartin makes it clear he not only takes astrology and reincarnation seriously, but psi phenomena and the occult likewise. Such an outlook or mindset is in contradiction and mutually exclusive to scientific reductionism of which gene mania and evolutionary psychology are inevitable consequences. And yet Gilmartin was hypnotized by this gene mania and sociobiology which peaked in the 1980s and 1990s (hence his talk of an inhibition gene, and genetic cloning and splicing as a solution to love-shys’ problems). He was clearly hoodwinked by a kind of desperation to solve the seemingly intractable problem of love-shys. And he hoped advances in genetics would provide an answer. Advances in genetics, including the whole new branch of epigenetics and the sequencing of the human genome, actually pour cold water on sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and their tangential SF dreams. In other words, like so many others, and in the same way, Gilmartin contradicted himself; but wouldn’t have seen it, not having an adequate knowledge of genetics (even back then) and not understanding the ins and outs of the philosophy and sociology of science, and related. None of us can know everything about everything. There is too much to know about more and more topics and disciplines.
Getting back to something I bring up earlier in this essay, on love-shys and their obsession with physical beauty, let me quote Gilmartin here:
Some of the other questions I asked pertinent to physical attractiveness yielded considerably greater differences between the non-shys and the love-shys. For example, I asked each man: “During your teenaged years how did you tend to rate your overall physical attractiveness?” Fully 65 percent of the older love-shys along with 61 percent of the younger ones rated their teenaged physical attractiveness as having been “below average”. In contrast, not one single man among the 200 self-confident non-shys similarly rated his attractiveness as a teenager that poorly. Indeed, 53 percent of the non-shys rated their attractiveness as a teenager as having been “above average”. Only 5 percent of the younger love-shys and zero percent of the older ones rated themselves similary.
This to me is striking, and what most separates me from my fellow love-shys. It was only at 20 that I got my BDD. And so, whilst still young (age 20/21) I would perceive myself as coming to be unattractive. And there is the rub. It is in this chapter of Gilmartin’s book, where he talks about the possibility of cloning as a solution to unattractive love-shy men, sometime in the future! Well aside from the fact that cloning is not going to happen, and animal cloning didn’t pan out as successfully as it was first oversold to be, I am living proof that even if every love-shy was magically transformed into a handsome specimen, well it doesn’t always rid oneself of love-shyness in each and every case. Not in mine. And there are other handsome men who end up as love-shys, despite the genetic advantages they appear to be blessed with. This notion was surprisingly naive of Gilmartin, and is contradicted somewhat by other things he mentions throughout his book. Such as the anxious, withdrawn and friendless child, with strong beta male tendencies overriding other variables, in determining adult love-life (or lack thereof) status. There are men like myself who are so fucked up mentally and emotionally, that we could have the face of a young Warren Beatty (to the millenials – when he was young okay), and we would get nowhere with girls and women. Also there are other attributes, height, physical body type (many men are too thin or portly – and there is some evidence this may be affected by personality in one’s childhood and adolescence. Above and beyond one’s genetic inheritance. This is a whole other controversial thing, way beyond the scope of this essay). Yet in passing let me mention that William Sheldon, the psychologist who coined the terms ectomorphic, mesomorphic and endomorphic re body-types, was himself convinced that personality played a role in body-type development (aside from the genes passed on from one’s parents). The scientific establishment tends to differ, thinking it – if valid – the other way around (correlation is not causation). Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps a combination of the two, feedback loops may be at work here. However I certainly have the temperament – withdrawn, inhibited, anxious, timid – that is associated with the ectomorphic type.
Gilmartin writes of the impatient father of the love-shy (my father was impatient, and had a panic personality). Incels tend to prefer sports that are not rough team sports, such as tennis and that was the one sport I was quite good at, for a while. Once I was in high school, I fell off a lot there, and other boys I was way better than at 11 to 13, were whipping me at 14 and 15. I lost heart very quickly as a consequence.
Gilmartin speaks of the tragic cases of love-shys constantly staring and even following their objects of distant affection, especially when university students. This has resulted in interventions by the authorities, and Gilmartin recounts even one expulsion from university, and several beatings by concerned brothers of the girl! The girl naturally misunderstands the situation and thinks she is dealing with some psycho stalker, rather than a harmless lovesick man, too shy to do anything other than stare and follow his object of affection, in a hypnotized fashion. Well since the Elliot Rodger killings, these girls will understandably be more alarmed. I myself have never really followed anybody I don’t think, but I have constantly stared and stared at girls, and then looked away when the girl looked up. My screw-up with Vicki, after not having seen her for years, fits into this behavioral mode.
Gilmartin writes of love-shys suffering from chronic fatigue/low energy levels, hypoglycemia, excessive sweating (hyperperspiration). I have certainly suffered from low energy levels, contributed to by depression, in turn caused by love-shyness. And certainly excessive sweating, since at least my thirties. I think sadness, depression though is the major factor behind low energy levels and fatigue.
Gilmartin speaks of the childhood infatuations of incels – love-shys are early bloomers in this respect. Certainly true in my case. Gilmartin speaks of the need for boys to be accepted by their peers, and build up social networks in their youth. Boys need to be popular with other boys, in order to be popular with girls. This is not the case with girls, it does not apply to them. In hindsight, I see why the few times as an adult (after university) that I often came very close to scoring with girls, is when I was on holiday, or at the village in my 37th year where everybody was in the same boat; when peer networks and social popularity or lack thereof in your hometown, school, college etc. are neither here nor there.
Gilmartin, writing about “love in the middle childhood years” says love-shys differ from normals in 7 ways. I go on about this in some detail and quote Gilmartin here, because I think it really revealing; and it shows how sadly, the love-shys’ persona is there from the get-go, from early childhood. The dice are loaded from the start.
Firstly, Gilmartin writes that love-shys become deeply interested in girls years before their classmates, long before puberty. As little boys really. In my own case I was 7 or 8, in the third grade (1978).
Secondly, Gilmartin observes: “they rarely transcend the point of unrequited infatuation. Thus, they never actually socialize in any way with the object of their affections.” How true this was in my case. Always!
Thirdly, Gilmartin writes: “They are usually social isolates, whereas boys of normal psychoemotional health sustain many male friendships.” Sheesh. Yeah again all too true in my case. I remember in kindergarden and at birthday parties at that age, I routinely hung out on my own, observing the other kids playing from a distance. I mean it’s as if you don’t stand a chance! I mean how to account for the distinct personalities of boys and girls at kindergarden, often very different from their siblings? It is mysterious.
Fourthly, Gilmartin states: “the need to daydream about and the yearning to be near the object of their infatuation represents a dominating, driving force in the love-shys’ lives; they care about very little else. Male peers, parents, schoolwork, etc., simply do not matter to them. All that matters is the love object.” Yes again, I tick off this box. This is just a further irony and paradox even to the love-shys’ tragedy. His putting the girl on a pedestal, seeing her as a goddess driving his life mission, is what makes the girl so unapproachable, so out of reach. So more than human. Yet she is a girl, not a goddess. Thank God. But tell that to a love-sick love-shy boy.
Fifthly, Gilmartin again: “love-shy boys both prefer and need a coeducational environment for all of their activities. Love-shy boys don’t like their own gender much, whereas non-loveshy prepubescent boys enjoy ‘boyish’ all-male activities quite in spite of their romantic interests in girls which, again, are reciprocated.”
I didn’t mind my own gender at all, so long as they were not too rough or bullying. But yeah again notice the irony of the boys who don’t even care to obsess over or try to win over the girls, who succeed in such a casual way in that respect, almost as an afterthought. It’s almost Zen-like. Zen and the art of succeeding with girls and women.
Sixthly, Gilmartin observes: “the love-shy preadolescent boy tends to be strongly infatuated with just one girl at a time, whereas his more ‘normal’ male peers tend to develop romantic interests in a lot of different girls.” And I thought this was normal! I just assumed all boys were like me in this way! Like a child who doesn’t know he is color blind, because he has no way of knowing – he thinks everybody sees like him – until it is diagnosed.
Lastly, Gilmartin writes: “the loveshy occasionally become deeply infatuated with television and movie actresses of their own age or younger, whereas the ‘normal’ boy confines his romantic interests strictly to accessible girls.” I don’t remember if as a little boy I felt this way about some actress/es, perhaps, but I really don’t remember. Certainly in adolescence, this was true enough. Again, I thought this normal, that all boys were like myself in this regard.
I started to wear glasses at the age of 10. Gilmartin suggests myopia is a result of intense academic study in high school, as compensation for poor social skills and friendlessness. In my case, no I don’t really think so. I couldn’t be bothered with study in high school, nor junior school, and I wasn’t much of a reader as a youngster. In high school I thought my friendlessness was just temporary, always a few weeks or months away from coming to an end. And I would have the pretty girls soon enough. Magical thinking but I could be charming and I was handsome. I was more of a daydreamer as a kid and adolescent than a bookworm. Later on – after I felt I could never have a girlfriend, aged 22 – I became a bookworm type.
I was a late starter wrt puberty. Gilmartin relates love-shys are normal in this regard, on average. No evidence statistically of late starters among love-shys. So I am an exception here, apparently. I don’t know if this made a difference long-term to my own virgin desert of a life, but in the short-term perhaps. When I was 14 I looked 12, and when I was 16 I looked 14, and so girls my age looked at me like I was way too young for them. But as it is, most boys in high school hook up with girls a year or two younger, because girls mature ahead of boys naturally.
I was amazed that fully 100% of love-shys had seen a psychiatrist, according to Gilmartin’s findings! Yet unsurprisingly they were disappointed. As Strauss relates in his book The Truth, psychiatrists tend to be about their own ego gratification and income security. I concur. They are just a bunch of drug-sales people. And they prattle garbage (with a few exceptions here and there). The scandals of psychiatry are another thing, they fill whole books. As I relate above, after my failed sucide attempt at thirty, I went to a psychiatrist, an attractive woman in her forties, who couldn’t possibly appreciate my love-shy condition. I didn’t even tell her why I attempted suicide, she just made assumptions. And she could never have imagined me being incel all my life, I was not a bad-looking guy after all. She was sure to try and push drugs on me to treat my depression. I just took the drugs from her, but never took ’em. I threw them in the trash. And never went back.
Gilmartin relates that incels are more sensitive to extremes of heat and cold, hot summers and cool winters, and to the wearing of wool. How did Gilmartin even think of asking these questions?? All true enough in my case.
Love-shys have greater physical sensitivity, according to Gilmartin. I certainly do.
I was amused by Gilmartin’s discovery that most love-shys despise rock music on aesthetic grounds. I liked and like some of it, but of the Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Neil Young variety. I always hated really hard rock and heavy metal, even as a youth.
Gilmartin discovered that fully 38% of older love-shys had blue eyes. 36% of younger love-shys had blue eyes. Compared to 21% of the self confident non-shys. I assume his love-shys surveyed were all, or nearly all Caucasians (as am I). I have blue eyes. In fact girls have often complimented me on my supposedly striking blue eyes. Well in my youth. No more. My eyes are now tired and dull, they reflect the sickness of my soul these days, without trying to sound melodramatic. Also my left eye is now a different color to my right eye. I spent near two weeks in hospital in my late thirties, after I got an eye infection in my left eye (caused by a contact lens I stupidly didn’t sterilize properly). As a consequence I cannot wear contact lenses, only glasses. I also have blurred vision in my damaged eye (the cornea is now scarred), I only have one eye effectively. I can have a corneal transplant, but I can’t be bothered.
Gilmartin speaks of extreme self-consciousness among the love-shys. Ain’t that the truth. Even in high school, I knew it was a problem. But there was nothing I could do about it! My self-consciousness made me withdrawn, disconsolate even, and I would even come across as haughty. I thought it was a temporary problem. I thought everything was a temporary problem – my friendlessness, my lack of success with girls, my lack of assertiveness (well human life is temporary, so I guess in that sense it’s temporary). In the near future, things would be different. I mean I was thinking when I was 16, that things would change, always in a few weeks or months tops. Same when I was 17 and then 18, 19, 20. I mean you would think by the time I was 18 or 19, I would have realized something was wrong with such magical thinking. But no. I didn’t have enough self-knowledge, self-awareness and life experience to see what was going on. Also even knowing what I do now, it would still not have been easy to change! Now I live for a past that never even was. If you stop to think about it, it makes no sense to think that things just change in and of themselves, without any work from your end. As if Time somehow solves things on its own. This is akin to thinking governments will be less corrupt in the future, because the future.
Gilmartin mentions the lack of a sense of humor among incels, given their bitter, negative past experiences and self-consciousness. Incels don’t laugh. Real men don’t cry and incels don’t laugh. I never really laugh. I mean I do, but it is very very rare. I laughed when watching Tommy Wiseau’s The Room and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Even in high school I never laughed. I was so morose even as an adolescent. On the loneliness test that Gilmartin scores the respondents on (the 20 item scale developed by Letitia Peplau at UCLA), I scored the maximum 80 points (the mean score for the older love-shy men was 73.2). However this result is complicated by the fact that I and other male love-shys have no interest in having friendships with men. Even though the scale items are all gender neutral, love-shys interpret it in strictly cross-eyed terms. As did I. The strange or maybe not so strange thing is that, as with many older-shys, I have no interest in being mates with men. As a teenager and young man, I definitely did want friendships with males, my friendlessness was a nightmare, and it impacted heavily on my non-relationships with girls. It is why I can still be so socially awkward, misread social cues. I never really forged any real friendships after my mid-teens, and those I did forge, were with equally timid nerds like myself; and all we did was mirror and reinforce each other’s neuroses. And they were never friends in the true meaning of the word anyhow.
Gilmartin discovered that older love-shys came to accept their lot more than younger love-shys, who experienced more painful bouts of loneliness. He quotes a 47-year-old man who says he is now more angry than sad. How true this is of myself (at 47 years of age likewise, at the time of posting this online). There is a deep sadness there as well in my psyche, but that is also a reflection of the general tragic state of things in the world. Now I am certainly more angry than I am sad. I have a short fuse, and most of my anger is directed at myself. In fact I am routinely enraged. I can easily snap, it doesn’t take much to set me off. My blood pressure is high. However my neuroses, including my OCD and social and generalized anxiety, are way way worse than when I was a frustrated twentysomething.
According to Gilmartin, as of the early 1980s, 16% of the older love shys were unemployed, another 9% were underemployed. At the time only 3.6 % of college educated men were unemployed (1982). I myself have routinely been underemployed and unemployed. Not something I have been proud of. All inseparable from my love-shyness, because my ambition and motivation went to zero as a consequence. I would go on about it more, but it’s just depressing. I scrounged money here and there (including from my old man), it doesn’t bear relating, it just makes me sigh. And I have a bachelor’s degree in business, as the reader knows. I also don’t think it helped that I don’t care for the corporate culture, when that is what I am ‘qualified’ for.
On Places of Abode: Gilmartin discovered that all of the older love-shys resided in small bachelor apartments, usually one room. Living quarters tended to be cramped and cluttered. That is indeed exactly how I live now, and have done so for years and years. In speaking of ‘childhood socioeconomic status’, Gilmartin discovered that the older love-shys had become downwardly mobile. They came from the middle class and the upper-middle class, even a few from wealthy homes. ‘Status inconsistents’ are what sociologists call men and women whose work and income are lower than their background education and upbringing. Man ain’t that the truth in my life. I come from a wealthy family. My father made a fortune at one stage (when he was about 40 and I was about 10), never so much later on, but he was always wealthy; even as he came from a lower-middle class family himself. I grew up in a mansion. And I wouldn’t wish that curse of a wealthy family background on anybody, any more than I would wish them poverty. There is a deep emotional and mental poverty among the rich. Rich suburbs are, for lack of a better term, deserts of the heart and mind. Desolate Wastelands. As a child I was stuck at home with a severely dysfunctional family (not much public transport where I grew up, if mommy and/or daddy can’t give you a lift, you can hardly get around). And there was nowhere to go really, oh wait just the churches of capitalism, the shopping malls (sure it’s a cliché to say that, but it’s true). Even my sister, who emerged ‘okay’, a successful psychologist, married with two children, was never really okay, and still isn’t. Hysterical, she suffered from a bout of bulimia in her adolescence (as I mention further up), lacking in self-esteem, neurotic, and smothers her children too much. She never admits to any wrongdoing, to any faults.
On Employment: Gilmartin relates that love-shys suffer from nerves and anxiety, and so it is difficult for them to be salesmen, it is impossible for them to make ‘cold call’ contacts with executives who can place them in jobs. Entails too much nerve and boldness. Hence the low-pay jobs they often end up working in. Vicious cycles set in. Love-shy personalities lack the charm and interpersonal skills to get the white-collar jobs that do not require technical skills. This is amazingly true to my own life situation. As I relate, I graduated with a business degree, but unless you become an accountant, stockbroker, banker, financial analyst or economist, this degree can be worse than useless. In fact the very nature of commerce/business is go-getter, extrovertish, and gregarious. The love-shy personality, all other things being equal, is the last type of person to succeed here. More than anything, he can’t be bothered.
Also lack of social networks do not help love-shys get a job. A vicious cycle then sets in, re income and financial status and lack of success with females. Certainly applies to myself.
Gilmartin misses something wrt the whole work culture, and how love-shys don’t fit in there. Is the problem with the love-shys and their lack of adjustment, or is the problem really the brutal, absurd, every-man-for-himself rat race competitiveness re employment and careers? But that’s a whole other thing. Should a love-shy man adjust himself to a mad house?
On Politics: Gilmartin found that more than 80% of love-shys saw themselves as “uncommitted” or “independent” regarding politics (USA). Parallels my own worldview. I cannot stand politics, across the spectrum from the far Left to the far Right (what is the difference between the far Left and the far Right? They are both hardcore fascist). I am not a liberal, I am not a conservative. I don’t see that much difference between them. They all have their delusions. I don’t know if this is true of other love-shys these days, even as politics becomes ever more toxic and stupid.
To the query/assertion posed by Gilmartin: “Mind and brain are two different things, brain just a channel for the mind“. 85% of older love-shys agreed with this statement, much higher than among non-shys. Yes I also believe that the brain is a channel for the mind, the mind cannot be reduced to the brain.
On broadly related topics, that is Psi (the paranormal) and mysticism, Gilmartin discovered that fully 100% of older love-shys believed in “life after life”!! 38% of the older love-shys believed in reincarnation. Way higher than non-shys. This is quite remarkable. This is true in my case as well, and was even true with myself as a young man (a belief in reincarnation and the paranormal). I don’t know where I got it from really, but I have always been open to these kind of beliefs and attitudes, as far as the paranormal and reincarnation are concerned. I don’t see this being true of love-shys in the present day though. Of course I may be entirely wrong in my own beliefs.
According to Gilmartin’s survey, 75% of older love-shys believed in the concept of OBEs (out of body experiences). 97% of older love-shys believe in the reality of ESP!! 79% of non-shys believed in the reality of ESP. Quite amazing really, in the Age of scientific and economic materialism. Once again, I doubt these kind of stats would apply today among love-shys. That at least is the impression I get. On the other hand I may be wrong of course.
Gilmartin reasons why this is so. He writes there:
In sum, the love-shys appear to be quite a bit more “open” than the non-shys to an “other worldly” type of orientation and world view. To some extent this may be a byproduct of the fact that this world has not provided the love-shys with the range of rich satisfactions and experiences with which it has provided the non-shys. Long term deprivations have forced the love-shys to look in unusual directions for the possibility of satisfactions. And in hitting upon the psychic and occult, many of them felt privileged—as though they were in possession of a secret knowledge and awareness which the majority of people are “too dense” to be able to share. In essence, the non-shy men were experiencing a sufficiently rich life right in the here and now; and many of them did not feel any special need for a higher spiritual world, or for personal immortality.
Yes, I think Gilmartin hits on something there. In fact the living in the here and now, is why non-shys/normals do not invest as much energy into other pursuits such as films and TV shows, and perhaps nowadays computer games, as love-shys and other neurotics may do. Films (and computer gaming) are a vicarious thrill seeking, escapism from a dull and mundane reality.
Movies!
Gilmartin writes: “films and music appear to be very important in the lives of most love-shy men”. Gilmartin noticed younger love-shys go to less movies than non-shys who go to less movies than older love-shys! I know the reason why. Youngsters who are love-shys go to the cinema less than their normal peers, because they have fewer friends, if any, and of course are not going out on dates. When older, and settled into one’s life habits, the older normals are busy living (career and life partners), and as a consequence do not have the need to live vicariously so much. Incels still need a vicarious escape because they never did get and don’t get to live a normal life, no women, no real thrills. Of course the Internet has changed things here anyhow, with people watching films and TV shows on their computer devices.
Gilmartin relates how love-shys may watch a favorite film repeatedly, obsessively. Yes I know how true this is.
As far as myself is concerned, favorite films I have watched a few times: Hair, Boogie Nights, A Little Romance, Lucas (a film that would resonate as much as any other with love-shys, starring the tragic Corey Haim who was apparently raped on the set of this film by a producer or executive, and Winona Ryder in her first film role), The Graduate. As a youngster I watched the film Can’t Buy me Love (starring a young Patrick Dempsey) three times in a single night. I think fellow love-shys and yes PUAs would love The Tao of Steve if they are not familiar with it (even if for different reasons). There is also Lars and the Real Girl, whose plot is of a lonely man who gets a sex doll as a substitute for a girlfriend. Gilmartin mentions the actresses love-shys obsessed over, and the films they were in. His survey was done in the mid-80s, so now even the older love-shys would obsess over different female actresses. He mentions actresses like Goldie Hawn, Katherine Ross, Catherine Deneuve, Olivia Hussey, Mary Steenburgen, Jodie Foster, Sandra Locke and others from ’70s movies.
I was too young to develop an infatuation on any of these actresses naturally enough, but was struck by Goldie Hawn and Katherine Ross when I saw them in films, decades after these movies were originally released (namely Butterflies are Free and The Graduate respectively). Diane Lane struck me as a young teenager. I worshipped her after seeing her in Streets of Fire (and I loved her in A Little Romance). As far as my own generation is concerned, aside from Diane Lane, Winona Ryder sure, Molly Ringwald from her The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink days, Alyssa Milano, Brittany Murphy (I was deeply shocked and saddened when she died). Later Natalie Portman (who is considerably younger than me, about 11 years younger). I was struck by all of them.
Gilmartin observed that love-shys did not like the films Mash and 2001. I loved these films. Gilmartin relates popular films with the love-shys – some films he mentions that struck me, because I am fond of them too. Namely Butterflies are Free, Romeo and Juliet (1969), West Side Story, A Little Romance, Kramer versus Kramer, Goodbye Columbus, Time after Time, Alfie (1967), My Fair Lady, Straw Dogs, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Never saw the movie The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, but loved the book.
Gilmartin says something re the film David and Lisa (a popular film with love-shys way back when, from the early 1960s. It is set in a psychiatric facility, treating people suffering from behavioral disorders), that I think really important to mention. So I quote it here:
The essential theme behind DAVID AND LISA, however, was to show how love itself (including all the compassionate communication of caring and concern that this entails) can serve as a powerful therapeutic (causative) force in giving rise to the loss of neurotic thought/behavior patterns, and to the movement towards emotional health, happiness and self-love. Expressed in more scientific terms, love (when it is mutual and reciprocal) is a powerful independent variable (cause) giving rise to the dependent variable of emotional health and effectiveness. Thus, a key reason behind the feelings of exasperation which most love-shy men had felt regarding the psychiatrists who had treated them, was the implied assumption that “only after you get well can you have a girl; you’re not entitled to one now”. More succinctly, conventional psychiatry may be putting the cart before the horse! Heterosexual love appears to be the most enormously powerful of all therapeutic forces.
Just before posting this online, I saw the 2016 Greek Film Suntan, which has themes which resonate with middle-aged chumps/love-shys and the mid-life crisis spinning out of control.
Perhaps this is the place to state that in the increasingly dumbed-down culture, this dumbing down is possibly reflected in the incel community. That is our inane escapes are proliferating, ever more stupid Hollywood blockbuster movies (with their advanced but hollow CGI), ‘Reality’ TV, facebook, Twitter, popular music has never been more fluffy, lightweight… The millenial generation appears hypnotized by all this crap (admittedly foisted on them by my own generation), and so I assume the incels among them face the same pressures to go along with this general zombification. So it is hard to imagine how they measure up to the incels of yesterday (the time of Gilmartin’s survey) in terms of sensitivity and intellectual curiosity. Of course I may be mistaken. This is mere speculation on my part.
Time is a River. It just keeps rolling rolling rolling along
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz
Gilmartin writes something on the nature of time and the relevant psychodynamics of the love-shy, that struck me. Here it is:
I have found that time means something very different to the love-shy than it does to most people. For example, a year represents a long time to most Americans. To the love-shy it means next to nothing. If loveshyness entails no other virtue, it at least teaches patience—perhaps too much patience!
How true this is! A year is less than nothing to me. Ten years is like a few months, a year tops. Because nothing is happening in your life, it is just a desert. Just daydreaming and melancholy and further daydreaming followed by more wistful melancholy. And then you act shocked when you look in the mirror, and you are no longer a young man. You feel cheated because you do not even have the experiences of young men. You are amazed, because time did not just freeze for you, simply because you did not get your act together. As if Time will forgive you for your folly, your blunders, your wasting of a life and just give all those lost years back to you somehow!
The dice are loaded from the start
Gilmartin noted that love-shy men sign up for Bachelor of Arts filled classes, filled with girls (literature, psychology usually) in college, at the expense of business/engineering classes. And it turns out that it makes no difference! I know that from bitter experience. I did a business degree of course, but was positively delighted at doing B.A. credits (which I enjoyed more anyhow), to meet the girls. And it made no difference of course. I swear before reading Gilmartin in this regard, I assumed I was largely unique here. Namely that I would go out of my way to do B.A. credits to meet hot girls, and so many hot girls in these classes, and yet nothing materialized as I proceeded to sabotage any potential for anything romantic ever happening. I mean, I thought who else could relate such a tale? Turns out my fellow love-shys who attended university. The dice were loaded from the start and I had no idea. And of course these hot B.A. girls were routinely fucking other guys who didn’t attend their classes, and didn’t even do the same degrees. And surely in more than a few cases, guys who weren’t even students at the university. For fuck’s sake.
Gilmartin’s suggestions that never came to pass, and never would have
Gilmartin suggests that pairing off males with females in co-ed dorms at the universities may be a way to resolve or reduce the incidences of love-shy proneness. In fact Gilmartin mentions the 1966 Robert H Rimmer pedagogic novel, The Harrad Experiment “which sold somewhere in excess of five million copies. In addition, two motion pictures were made which were based rather loosely on the novel.” The novel deals with sexual experimentation by college youngsters, going beyond the enforced monogamy of bourgeois society, the latter percieved as prudish, narrow and confining. Interestingly, this novel seems almost completely forgotten today.
Gilmartin writes in this respect:
Today the idea of routinely pairing young people off with opposite sexed roommates whom they’ve never met before appears inordinately controversial to most people. However, insofar as our world is a coeducational one, the idea of opposite sexed roommates may actually be far more “natural” than the idea of same-sexed roommates—except, of course, for true homosexuals who would certainly do far better living with other true homosexuals as roommates. Further, there is no reason to assume that any particular pair of male/female roommates will necessarily decide to have sex; they might in time decide to have it, and then again they might not. Personally, I cannot think of any better way to prevent severe and chronic love-shyness from developing in the first place than to provide a program of coeducational roommates for all college and university students—excepting homosexuals and religious fundamentalists. As is the case now with same-sexed roommates, incompatible roommates would be separated, and each would be assigned to a new, more suitable roommate. Over the course of a four-year college career, the typical student might experience living with as many as six or seven different opposite-sexed roommates. And many romances as well as many marriages might well develop from these relationships. But most importantly, I believe that some genuine, life-long friendships would develop from them. Right now cross-sexed friendships are very rare in our society. I think that with the onset of widespread “Harrad-type” dormitories, such friendships would become far more prevalent.
Yet clearly this never took off. I think that whilst the sexual repression in our society has certainly lessened over the decades, it is still there though, it has just changed its dynamics. The sexual repression – whilst much reduced in secular Western society in the post Word War 2 milieu – still remains present in the background, so to speak. It has just become more sophisticated, more cleverly disguised, more subtle. That is the adhering to rigid bourgeois norms remains (to a significant degree), despite all the broken homes and broken communities, the falling away of religious authority, and the strong anti-authoritarian bent among the millenials. Internet Porn and sexual permisiveness and promiscuity just disguise the repression. It is a reaction to it, but does not go beyond the repression. Modern-day sexual overload via the Internet, and ever more explicit sexual imagery in films, TV shows, books and magazines etc. is not necessarily a breaking free from the past. It is anything but that. If it is mere reaction, on principle such sexual-liberation-that-is-not is chained to the past. And then you have counter-reactions… This reminds me that love-shys can be mistaken for sexually repressed people, rather than recognized for what they are, just sexually frustrated. I myself have been accused of being sexually repressed, by an idiot ‘friend’. However more than a fair few incels come from religious Christian backgrounds, where their parents, relatives and ministers/priests instilled in them a belief in the dirtiness and sinfulness of sex. I have picked up on this myself, from the commentary of love-shys from a strict Christian background, on the Internet. Often commentary that is inadvertently and unintentionally revealing. I was not raised in a Christian household myself. Thank God. I mean I wasn’t handicapped in that way, but at the end of the day what difference did it make?!
Gilmartin suggests that sorority girls be used to help love-shys at university, rather than the aged that the girls spend their volunteer time with (where their help is perceived as condescending and forced). I don’t think this could ever work. The fact is that there would never even be an interest from faculty, and non-celibate normal students, to solving the issues of student love-shys… I mean it is all as taboo as it has ever been, and normals themselves consider love-shys – so far as they even recognize the existence of the latter – to be a species from Mars. Also I only see misunderstandings, confusion, mixed signals, just a general SNAFU allround, if this kind of thing was even attempted, even with the best intentions.
Yet once again, the Internet and Social Media has superseded all this. Anyhow, would all these recommendations from Gilmartin even work? I went to a co-ed high school, had a younger sister, and so came to know her friends, went to a university where there were thousands of available young women, and was sigh a handsome young man; it did not make any difference whatsoever. So in my case at least, it wouldn’t have mattered. At the end of the day, there is deeply buried childhood trauma (if the love-shy is not unattractive), and it hampers and sabotages one routinely.
Middle-Age Funk. Middle-Aged Virgin’s Mid-Life Crisis is of a different class and order to his normal peers. No kidding. It’s a different phylum
Okay, moving on from Gilmartin, getting back to my own life-story…
I am no longer a handsome young man. I am apparently still somewhat decent looking, but my looks have definitely faded. I mean even by the standards of a man in his late forties. I have lost most all of my hair, I am bald and bespectacled now. I have lost muscle mass and gone very thin. My skin is a little blotchy now, and pallid. My eyes lack any spark, reflecting the sickness of my soul. I relate here once again that I am convinced that my skinniness is related to psychosomatics. A consequence of my intensifying neuroses, anxiety and nervousness. I know it. I still go to the gym and have some muscle tone but I am skinny now. Young women do not look at me the way they routinely did when I was a youth. I am too old for them anyhow. But even middle-aged women, well most of them are married, or harried in way or another. It is difficult to meet them, even if I wanted to. And I don’t have the lifestyle, the economic status, as an attractor (although I am not poor). And don’t talk to me about those terrible apps, Tinder etc. Online dating. I have already related above, how woeful and counter-productive I think it all is. My God I think it is terrible for attractive young people to use them, they debase the culture, or what’s left of it. They debase relationships, they debase sex. Like so much of the wired world, facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Social Media as a whole, I think it a disaster. Making everything in our society so much worse than it already is. With that said, maybe I should start an app, the incel/life-long love-shy hookup app! Only virgins 25 years or older can register. Hi I am a 47-year-old virgin, never been kissed. What’s your story? Um maybe not.
However with all that said, I am not an unattractive man. Just no longer the man I was. That’s for sure. And all that unfulfilled potential has gone down the drain. I need to mention certain experiences I have had recently, to remind the reader that perhaps all is not lost, or at least the perverse irony of my straits remains.
Now in keeping with the strange, absurd life pattern of mine, with girls and women, but I thought I was past it… Anyhow let me relate. So one day, aged 46, so recently now, I am walking down a pedestrian boulevard in my city, daydreaming about girls (what else?), thinking back of the past that never was, probably Vicki or Laura or Karen. Maybe even the Swede. Anyhow so I have a smile on my face, the kind of smile a man has when he is with a woman who he desires and who desires him, well I live in a dream world. Okay so I am not taking notice of my surroundings, and I don’t realize that there is a young attractive woman walking towards me (in her twenties), a pretty librarian type with the glasses. And I have this smile on my face that men reserve for the women they desire. She smiles back in a flirtatious manner! She thought I was smiling at her. And she was cute. The pretty twentysomething woman, the kind who flirted with me or showed an interest with me when I was in my twenties, even into my thirties. But I thought those days were long long over! It came as a shock. A pleasant surprise. As I was typing this up, I was thinking this was the last time an attractive women, and a young woman at that, had shown an interest in me. But I realize as I write this up, that there was possibly another incident, even more recent.
This year, just shy of turning 47, I was at my local gym. As an aside, I am certainly one of the older men who work out there, most of them are twentysomethings. But it’s a pleasant, smaller gym. So anyhow one morning I am on one of the machines, and the one female staff member there, an attractive woman in her twenties, who I have otherwise never even spoken to, looks my way and gives me a broad friendly smile, even a flirtatious smile. I don’t even know her name, and I mean she has no reason to smile at me (and she smiled at me in that flirtatious come-hither way, not at all the fake smile of an employee vis-a-vis a client. If you were there, you would have known. In other words, you will have to take my word on it), we were not interacting in any way. We have never even exchanged one word before. There was no other person near me, no man no woman. I am literally amazed, stunned. Is she flirting with me? Why me? I am in my forties, have lost my hair, and am skinny. There are good-looking twentysomething men in this gym, with hair on their heads and muscles at least twice the size, three times the size of mine. All this of course is not something I actually think through, it is all there in my head, pre-packaged and processed. I don’t need to think about it consciously. The short of it is this – I don’t even smile back, I pretend she is the invisible woman and nothing has happened, as if she isn’t even there or as if I am deaf dumb and blind and haven’t taken cognition of her smile directed my way. I mean if I smile back, I mean what then? And what if she is really smiling at the fly on the wall behind me? You must understand that at this point in time, my late forties – where I am now at – I am beyond fucked up. There are no words. I could have an attractive woman come up to me and say I want to fuck you, suck your cock, make love to you all the night and day, take your semen inside of my pussy, in my mouth, I want you to come on my breasts; she could then start grabbing me and stripping herself naked, put her nipples in my mouth, and my response would be: is she for real or is she having me on, is she pulling some con on me? (or as the British say, is she taking the piss?) Is she a prostitute or is she planning to slip me a pill in a drink, get me unconscious so she then can rob me later? I mean I would think this, even if the circumstances ruled out the latter. I mean there would have to be a con at play. That’s where my mind is at, this is where my self-esteem is at. This is why I need more than therapy, ain’t no talking cure for this. I need to descend into the underworld and find my soul again, my heart, hidden as it is in a steel cage enwrapped with barbed wire, even as to steal a line from folk singer Rodriguez, it has turned to dead black coal, and guarded by a three-headed hound from hell. This was the last time – at the time of writing – that any woman has flirted with me. If indeed she was flirting with me!
I know even if a miracle took place and I somehow picked up a woman (and somehow I managed to get past my past here, I mean it hangs around my neck like a rotting giant pteradactyl. Maybe I should just do a lot of acid. Maybe that will help? I mean even if it kills me what do I have to lose?); and somehow we had sex and somehow it was okay, and she didn’t pick up on the fact that I was a virgin – lots of men are lousy lovers, so you know I could just pass myself off as a mediocre lover – it is just too late. The past cannot be undone. The thirty years of a blank canvas of a life is there, an Empty Empty Empty Life. It cannot be undone. There are no time machines, to go back into the past and undo all the damage, all the stupidity, all the self-destructiveness. All the cowardice. It seems cowardice most of all. I cowered. And cowered. I ran from intimacy and in the process ran from life. Or did I run away from life and in the process from intimacy? Thanks mom and dad. Our parents fuck us up they do. But my being fucked up led to life-long love-shyness. Other people’s traumatized childhoods catalyze other neuroses and psychoses. And does it matter knowing all this now? The past will always be there. The shame, the terrible waste of a life. I may as well have been in prison. Well I was (sans the male rape). All incels/love-shys will known what I mean. Plus I have to accept personal responsibility. I mean every tyrant and dictator can complain that his parents fucked him up, but really the buck stops with each and every one of us. Being a man means fessing up, and owning up to one’s mistakes and blunders.
The thing is one gets older – well every incel is different – and we all handle this differently, so I can only speak for myself. I don’t want to alarm any young twentysomething incels or even thirtysomething incels out there reading this, but the pain does not go away. Not for me. It has gotten worse. Way way worse. The anger. The deep sadness. It has been an accumulative thing. The regret, the frustration, the despondency, the neuroses, it all just piles on. And I am starting to crack up. I am not exaggerating nor trying to be funny. I mean I am starting to talk to myself a lot, I lose my temper all the time, I sing to myself. On the streets! Yes with people all around. I don’t fucking care. I dance in my apartment – I need a physical release, and one with rhythm, that reflects the rhythms and pulse of Mother Nature. Dance music is simulation fucking, of course it is. Why do you think the Church tried to shut all that down? I dance like a crazy drunken youth. I don’t drink. Maybe I should. But I have to watch my money. I don’t drink because I am too cheap to blow money on booze. And then I know I would sink into oblivion. And it would all be over. Better just to commit suicide in a faster way.
Even if women were to start throwing themselves at you, you can never fuck them the way you could have as a young man, heck even as a man of forty. And there is your utterly wasted youth. It is difficult to even stay sane, in fact at some level, you are not sane. One can argue that nobody in our modern society is really sane. But a middle-aged incel goes off the road, veers offtrack, goes loco in a way that nobody else does. You feel that you are skating on such thin ice, that there is a deep dark cold blue abyss over which you hover, and one slip and there is nothing to stop you going into free-fall. Ending up like those bedraggled, homeless people screaming at themselves and the sky, with extreme personal ticks, and endlessly muttering gibberish, when not screaming at doors and walls. And that mad mad look in their dead eyes and broken faces. You feel you need an anchor to keep you on the straight and narrow. And you do need an anchor. You have to have one, no matter what it is. Because you are already semi-insane. But manage to fake it, going through the motions, able to work and do the laundry, cook and shave. And sometimes you can’t. But you always feel just one slip away from a very dark place. I mean you are in a dark and somber place as it is, but I mean a black night beyond the deadness of misery and fog. Where you are already at.
I mean the thought of going to my grave without ever touching a woman, yet such a handsome youth! AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH
Ain’t it just agonizing? I want to scream. I need to scream and cry. And cry. And even if I do, it is no catharsis, or not enough of one. The thought of getting old, of old age, which is not far off, and having nothing to look back on, just an empty canvas of a life – like one of those ridiculous overpriced paintings you see in museums of modern art, blank canvases. It ain’t art. And the blank canvas of a life ain’t a life. In middle age (I initially typed that muddle age I swear), looking back on a wasted youth, on a wasted life, it is unbearable. My desire for sex and women is stronger than it has ever been, even though of course my libido ain’t at the same level. Time heals all wounds is the biggest lie. A bigger lie than any. The wounds fester, they get infected and the poison spreads throughout the body, and it gets to the heart, and it stops the heart beating. And you die. Metaphorically speaking. Even if your body still technically ‘lives’. Even as you eat, breathe, talk, walk and sleep. You may have your vital medical functions, but there is no vitality there.
Since this is a confession, to hold back now would defeat the whole purpose of this essay. And I need to let younger incels know this. I am now so haunted by women and their beauty that I literally cannot think of anything else. I walk past women in the street – I live in a people/community friendly city (not like the one I grew up in) and we have sweltering summers, and the women walk around with short skirts and short short pants, and low-cut blouses, and they show their cleavage – and it breaks me. And it is killing me, more than it did when I was a 20-year-old twit at university. I cannot walk past an attractive woman, and I want to bury my face in her pussy, lick her like an ice-cream cone. For some reason I want to eat pussy more than I want to fuck, and yes I want to fuck. Is it because I can no longer get as hard or as frequently hard as I could as a young man? Is it because cunnilingus is a greater intimacy than fucking, showing that you really like the woman? – you want to bury yourself in her, with your face, where your eyes and tongue and nose are, really get truly intimate. I imagine her moans, her gasps and cries, how she sounds when she comes, the color of her nipples, the hardness of them as she is aroused, the shape and feel of her breasts, how she likes to fuck, the taste of her skin. So this is happening every day, for hours sometimes. This is how I respond – in my head – to every pretty woman who I walk past. Every day.
My fantasies are probably more elaborate and detailed than in my youth. I mean nothing freakish at all, standard male fare. You know like fucking five girls at the same time, and watching them fuck, lick, suck off and finger one another. Heck I haven’t even kissed a girl but let’s get ahead of ourselves. And all I think about before going to bed, when I am lying in my bed, are the girls I have known, and simultaneously not known of course. At one and the same time. From decades back. I watch a lot of Internet porn of course (as I allude to further up). And I sometimes hate myself for it, but it is all I have. Without it I wouldn’t even know where the clitoris is and what it looks like, it would be like a lost ruin in the Amazon otherwise, totally inaccessible (well okay it is inaccessible!) and unimaginable. Yes to be pedantic, there are always sex manuals, but you know… At least I think I know how to finger a woman and lick and suck on a woman’s pussy if it ever comes down to it, and maybe even how to fuck. Maybe my instincts will just take over. Yes I know we are talking about a miracle at this point in time.
However my real vicarous thrill is overhearing neighbors having sex. I live in an apartment, and have usually lived in apartment buildings. And sometimes you can overhear your neighbors having a good time. Especially when the shared walls are thin. As I am sure many of you know. So at my one current apartment, the walls are thin, and I had a beautiful twentysomething neighbor some years ago and I used to sometimes hear her coming, when she was fucking her boyfriend. My god it did it for me. I would always masturbate (quietly!) to this kind of thing. It is all I have. I know it is vicarious. I know it is pathetic. Yet this is the reality of life-long incel. And this vicarious experience of sex is more real and authentic than watching porn. Sure porn you get to see everything, but it isn’t happening in real time. And you know your neighbor, even if not well at all. So anyhow she moved out, and I have had several neighbors since then. My current neighbor is a young man who largely fucks his girlfriend at her place. Damn him the bastard. Still he fucks her – and she is cute, that matters! – on the rare occasion next door. Bless him. I am always hoping that a new neighbor is an attractive female, fucks and isn’t afraid to make a noise (I won’t complain I swear, on the contrary!). And other people (incel and normal) complain about hearing the neighbors fucking! Are you kidding me? It’s such a turn-on, well when it’s all you have. In fact I know it would turn me on even if I was getting laid.
I really miss the young woman I would hear moaning and coming through the shared thin wall. I pine for her as if she was my old girlfriend. When all you have are pathetic vicarious sex thrills, because there is nothing else and never has been; they actually become in your warped mind, the sex thrills themselves. The girls you got off to vicariously become the girls you pine for, because there is nobody else. No real girl ever. Never has been. I miss the beautiful young woman who moaned, gasped, cried out and climaxed next door, when fucking her boyfriend, as if I were the one who was fucking her all those years ago! Because that’s all I have: a life lived vicariously from early adolescence to the present day, my middle-age. And yes this is why you don’t want to end up a middle-aged incel/love-shy. It is so fucked up. It is so extremely pathetic. If you are going to confess, confess. Otherwise don’t waste the bandwidth. How much longer can I stand this? Men (and women) stand for anything. That’s the problem.
Do as I say, not as I have done
To younger incels/virgins reading this, and thinking maybe they should just end it now, look I don’t want to encourage suicide. How I ended up here, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I couldn’t let go of the past and it sabotaged me. It was always self-sabotage. It doesn’t have to be this way for you. I know this now. I write this as a kind of warning. You don’t have to end up like this. And if you do, look maybe you can find something else to live for. You had better. Unless you want to end up a total nervous wreck riddled through with all kinds of severe neuroses and blue blue blue. All the time. And pathetic. And let me tell you, you don’t. (Incidentally I am working restaurant jobs now. It’s okay. I got a decent inheritance after my father died, not a windfall because split among a number of inheritees, but it makes a difference. There is no sexual interest from much younger female work colleagues, half my age or thereabouts, who look at me as a father/uncle type figure. It is only heartbreaking to me because I never had a youth. If I had a youth, I don’t think their lack of sexual interest in me would hurt nearly so much)
How do you change, if you can? You cannot repeat the same thoughts, emotions, day in and day out. If you do, guess what? You will get the same results. You put chocolate, flour, eggs, milk and cake batter in the baking pan, into the oven, you get chocolate cake out of the oven. Not roast chicken in a honey sauce. Who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result? The difficult thing, and I admit it is difficult, is that the problems lie at the level of the subconscious, and it even affects the body inevitably, via tensions, stress etc. Your body starts to change in accordance with your subconsciously buried trauma. There is a literature on this, the more radical psychology, naturally it is controversial. You have to go real deep into yourself, there is no superficial change that is going to work, not once the incel becomes entrenched. But what does one mean by getting real deep into oneself? I admit I hit a brick wall here, because there is no talking cure. Love-shys, as Gilmartin pointed out, think too much.
I am saying do as I say, not as I do and have done. I know. But I have to change. Even if I remain a virgin to my dying day. I am literally going crazy, and just cannot enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Just to do that, I have to change. I don’t know how, I am at a loss, but I have to change. I am in an impossible situation, but the impossible has to be attained. That’s just how it is. People do impossible things all the time. I am neurotic beyond neurotic, my OCD is handicapping me severely, my rage and anger are literally poisoning my body and making me ill. Seriously ill. My blood pressure is high. I am finding it difficult to function, the everyday things and annoyances that people just take as a given, become a cause of severe anxiety and tension for me. My anxiety is crippling me. I need to change radically, simply to function in everyday life.
And I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but I haven’t given up hope of being intimate with a woman! I mean to repeat myself, I have at the intellectual level. At the level of my rational mind or what’s left of my mind. But I have my desires, and they are not going away and I don’t want them to! And that overrides often enough, the realistic, rational side of my nature. I know anyhow that unless I do something about these severe and extreme neuroses, I am completely fucked. Well I am not fucked. That’s the thing.
What of (drug free) therapy? A sex surrogate? Don’t talk to me about therapy, ain’t no talking cure at this point in time. I have taked myself blue about all this, no matter how many layers of neuroses and shame are shown to the light, one never gets to the core. To get there, it is beyond words, beyond language. As for the sex surrogate thing, I have not ruled it out, but I admit I balk at this… It may however be the only way out of my virgin impasse. I hope not, I got to say.
Old Age looms ahead. Looking back at a blank canvas of a life and the mirage oases
For fuck’s sake I am 47. I am older than F Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, Albert Camus, Anton Chekhov, Lenny Bruce, Freddie Mercury, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Elvis Presley, Billie Holliday, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing, John F Kennedy, when they died. The current President of France Emanuel Macron is 7 years younger than me, Justin Trudeau the current Prime Minister of Canada is the same age as my younger sister. I am older than Lawrence of Arabia (T E Lawrence) and D H Lawrence when they died. I have outlived, in age, both Lawrences. I am the same age that the prematurely aged Judy Garland, Edith Piaf and Jack Kerouac were when they drank themselves to death. By the time the 27 Club – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain – were my age, they had all been dead twenty years. Amy Winehouse was born the year I started high school, she has been dead more than six years now. Kurt Cobain has been dead more than twenty-three years now, and he was only born three years before me. Ian Curtis, whose immortal song lyrics close out this memoir of mine, did not make it to half the age I am now (suicide at 23). So you know I am not kidding myself! And yet my body demands what it demands. And my shattered broken mind. Fuck reality, fuck sanity. I left sanity behind decades ago. When I rejected the more attractive Winona Ryder look-alike! as a youth. And fact is I had left sanity behind long before then. I just didn’t know it. Perhaps we all do. The day we come into this mad world. I feel like a man from centuries back running off a cliff and flapping some man-made wing contraption, hoping to fly like an eagle. But knowing that he can’t and won’t and will plunge to his death instead. But there is nothing else he can do. His destiny has been set by the whims of mad bored gods. And so he runs to the cliff edge, flapping his wings. Knowing his fate. But there is nothing else he can do.
I do not want to make it to old age. Like this. I won’t I know it. Please God. Even to make it to 50 like this, the 50-year-old virgin. My God. There is nothing to look back on, not one day of happiness in my adult life. I am serious, not one day of happiness as an adult, post 18 years of age. I mean there have been moments of happiness here and there, but not a whole day of happiness, for a whole 24 hours. Ever. I just can’t think of one. I have suffered from a persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia) for three decades. And I am starting to fall apart. It is hard to keep it together. Then again, I never planed to make it to 30 – I remember thinking there is no way I am turning 30, and still being a virgin! And that was the year 2000. That was before 9-11. Heck I never intended to make it to 23 years of age a virgin. I intended to be dead in late 1992! I intended to lose my virginity at the end of high school aged 17. I thought it was a sure thing!! And here I am, 30 years later, aged 47, and I have never even been on a second date with any girl/woman in my life. Not even in the most casual way. I still await my first real kiss.
At least Narcissus dies young, commits suicide really as a youth. Narcissus did not make it to middle age, never mind old age. In that sense, I betray the myth! Later edit – no I don’t! I subseqently discovered, a few months after I published this original essay online, that Narcissus, in at least one version of the myth, pines for years and decades by the pool of water, fading away slowly, until nothing is left of him, but an empty shell. From the link:
How is it that centuries later, Tiresias’s prophecy is still not understood? [For Tiresias, consult the article itself] Tiresias’s prophecy was: He will have a long life, if he never knows himself.
Now, what could that mean?
Oh, he was right: Narcissus did live a long life– though not a happy one. He spent his life alone, dreaming, and gazing into a pool, waiting to die. But Tiresisias’s prophecy seems… wrong, counter to the Greek spirit, an affront to logic; shouldn’t “knowing thyself” be the highest virtue?
He will have a long life, if he never knows himself.
But it’s so simple, the explanation. It’s so simple that no one has ever thought of it, and the reason no one has thought of it is that it is too terrible to think about. Forget about whether the prophecy is true. Ask instead, “what would the parents have done once they heard it?”
When Laius and Jocasta were told that Oedipus would eventually destroy them, they pinned his ankles and abandoned him in the woods, ensuring that he’d someday have cause to do it. And so when Narcissus’s parents heard the requirements for their child’s long life… they would have done everything possible to ensure that he didn’t know himself.
No one knows what Liriope and Cephisus did, but whatever they did, it worked: he didn’t even recognize his own reflection. That’s a man who doesn’t know himself. That’s a man who never had to look at himself from the outside.
…Narcissus was never allowed to meet real danger, glory, struggle, honor, success, failure; only artificial versions manipulated by his parents. He was never allowed to ask, “am I a coward? Am I a fool?” To ensure his boring longevity his parents wouldn’t have wanted a definite answer in either direction.
He didn’t even recognize his own reflection is btw BDD in a nutshell!! What the heck!
This essay is not a suicide note. Well it’s a living suicide I suppose. If I was going to commit suicide I would have done it, when I was 22. When I was 30. My perverse sense of humor has kept me alive (not truly alive, just barely existing) and curious. But a sense of humor is not enough. As the French writer Michel Houellebecq observed. It is not enough.
The trickster hangs over my life like a giant shadow. The trickster is me. Actually he is all of us. Each in his way. I look in the mirror, and trickster coyote looks back, grinning. He always has the last laugh, because he is the one who invented laughter. Certainly sardonic laughter. And irony. The Cosmic Jest.
And yet I have to emphasize something really important wrt my life-long virginity. And I know I state it up above regarding my one still living cousin and his life in contrast to mine. I would rather have had all the experiences, or more accurately non-experiences I have had – Winona/Laura, the pretty girls at university giving me the eye and flirting with me, having an interest in me, and in high school before that, the comely Swede, Jodi, Lisa, Julia, others, and I swear a fair few I can’t even remember really – than be a less than average-looking guy who settles for a woman he is not that attracted to, fucks her for years, but never even had a single pretty girl ever give him the eye. As with a lot of good-looking young/ish men, I didn’t always notice or remember all of the interest pretty girls showed in me over the years, because it was a lot! Better all that than settling for some girl I was not attracted to, simply because it is better than being alone. As so many men do. And no it’s not better or preferable to being alone. Not to me.
My one cousin, at least two of my so-called friends from university, all of them ended up marrying the only women who would fuck them. It should go without saying that their women are not attractive, or even very interesting. None of these guys have ever had pretty girls show an interest in them, not ever (I don’t say that to be cruel and nasty. It’s just the truth. We all know how cruel life is). All these guys assume I have been with a fair few women btw. I mean they used to see the girls looking at me. I would rather have had a Swedish goddess Courtney Cox type grind against me, Laura look at me with lust, and an icon of the smoking-hot blonde – the beautiful B.A. princess from university Vicki – how she looked at me that one day. I will never forget it. Back in 1991, the Golden Year that Wasn’t. All the pretty girls who flirted with me or just turned their heads as I walked on by. I would rather have had all that, than no interest whatesover from attractive girls and women. I would rather have had that, than get weekly sex for years from a woman I had no real passion or lust for, but was just somebody I settled for, because I couldn’t do any better. And either that or nothing. I am not knocking or being willfully nasty to such men and women who settle for the only specimens of the oppositive sex (or same sex) who they can get to be naked with. And there must be millions, tens of millions of such people. Hundreds of millions perhaps. I mean I just think of my one cousin and two high school friends. And I have hardly known that many people in my life. I have largely lived my life as a recluse. And am one now. It is just my honest feelings. Because the smile from an 18-year-old girl with a beautiful face and a beautiful body, looking at you and desiring you, as a young man; not caring about what you do for a living, how much you earn, what your social and economic status is (well we were students!), but just looking at you and desiring you for what you are, a young man who pleases them, physically – there is an honesty to it, a beautiful rawness, that we share with the Animal Kingdom. And yet a lust and desire, a connection, that goes beyond our animal kin as well. That partakes of something else.
But to paraphrase Hemingway: life breaks everybody, it breaks the very good, the very gentle, the very brave. And it breaks the life-long virgin and the womaniser alike. The sun shines and the rain falls on the adult late-life virgin and the Don Juan. There is no discrimination. People in Mosul have been eating grass, those who have survived the slaughters there. Children in Sierra Leone have seen their parents murdered in front of their eyes. Yazidis and Kurdish girls have been raped, their families massacred by Islamic State (who have burned people alive). Assad drops barrel bombs on his fellow Syrians. Genocide in Darfur. Native Indians/Americans in Latin America continue to be dispossessed and murdered. Starvation across Africa, Latin America, Asia. These are all drops in the ocean of human anguish, war, genocide and torture. The nightmares that are living history, literally unfathomable and horrifying. Beyond words. And this is just the present day. Never mind the past. And the future. So poor incel in his Western city, in his bubble of loneliness, what makes him so special or unique in his suffering? For that matter how is his suffering even nearly as bad as so many in the literal hell-holes of the world? And the so-called noncels – whether they have or have had loving partners – have their own excruciating pain.
The self-pitying incel sits on a bench in a mall and watches people go by, he sees the loving attractive couples and is riddled through with rage, envy, despair, self-pity. Does he notice the handicapped young person in a wheelchair, the victim of muscular dystrophy, the person with cerebral palsy, the albino, the midget/little person who walks on by? The hunchback, the low-functioning autistic person with his parents who are broken by their child’s tragedy (I have a cousin on my father’s side of the family who is a low-functioning autistic. Still a child, he will never even talk). The super-obese, and yes a lot of them are alone. To even notice these folk is to shatter the bubble of the love-shys’ self-pity and self-absorption. And so like most people, he blocks out the suffering and pain of these other kinds of people. Maybe he entertains thoughts of other people’s misery for a few seconds or minutes, but you know being all too human, it is not long before he is back to his self-pitying ‘why me’ rage and shame. I know. I describe myself of course.
As a younger incel/love-shy, as a youth, I lived for the future. Now I am stuck in a dream past that never even was.
And that is the older late-life virgin/love-shy in a nutshell.
Hey I got my problems. Don’t we all?
So this is permanence, love’s shattered pride
What once was innocence, turned on its side
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move
Deep in the memory, of what once was love
Oh how I realised how I wanted time
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find
Just for one moment, thought I’d found my way
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away
Joy Division
‘Twenty Four Hours’
Update February 2020:
Inceldom goes mainstream, for all the wrong reasons
It’s clear that whilst writing up my memoir in 2017, living and writing all this up in a bubble, I was oblivious to how mainstream ‘incel culture’ was becoming. Sure I knew and wrote about how the incel killers had brought the incel tragedy into mainstream news, but I hadn’t realized how mainstream (and by this I mean given attention and exposure by the media and on social media, internet forums and related) so-called incel culture had gotten. And it’s only gotten so much more exposure in the years since 2017, exponentially it would appear. So many incel forums, youtube channels, media articles, podcasts and even comedians making jibes about us, since then. I mean it has really exploded. There is the Incel Wiki (maninthemango suit is listed there. Thanks). I am staggered at how extensive and comprehensive it is, I am quite gobsmacked and amazed. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. There is naturally a lengthy entry on incels per se at Wikipedia. And numerous talking heads in the media have spotlighted incels. And naturally being the media, it is largely superficial gloss and largely devoid of serious psychological and cultural insight. To give one an idea how mainstream incels has gotten, the BBC broadcast a doccie in 2019, ‘Inside the secret world of incels’, rather woeful in fact.
As far as the media coverage of incels is concerned, an exception to the usual run of glib and smug put-downs – and there have been a (very) few to be fair – is this Vice article, based on a special screened on HBO as well, fair, sympathetic, and yes harrowing. Another really good article on incels is this one entitled ‘Hope, cope and rope: the sad truth behind the incels movement.’, acknowledging the extreme misogyny in the community but sympathetic to the emotional plight of the incel, the disdain we get from normal society, and also pointing out the superficiality and inaccuracies of the media’s coverage of incels.
Incel movie explosion, a new genre – the Incelploitation genre?
And then in 2019 the huge blockbuster film The Joker was released. Joaquin Phoenix’s beaten-down-ostracised-no-friends-and-no-girl-lives-with-his-mum-turns-to-vengeful-murder Joker was welcomed as a voice among many in the incel community. Yeah great, an unhinged character, a clearly insane killer who even murders his own mother, is embraced as an icon of the maligned incel community. That said, I do understand how incels perceive the Joker, he was destroyed by his parents (abandoned by his father), he was beaten, he was lied to, he gets screwed over time and time again as an adult, he is seen as an easy dupe. He is anonymous, nobody gives a damn about him, and when they do notice him, he is simply made fun of, an object of ridicule. So of course he snaps, sure he loses his mind. And if he does, where do we point the finger at? And he gets his revenge. Unlike the incel in real life, who just stews at home in his anger, his rage, his humiliation. No ‘cleansing’ outlet for incel rage in real life (not counting Elliot Rodger and his copycats). And no mob of put-down peasants ready to take up the cause. So The Joker is a wishful thinking revenge fantasy. It’s Charles Bronson’s Death Wish for incels.
It’s worth mentioning here the explosion of incel movies, aside from The Joker (if we are going to interpret it that way), there have been a spate of smaller budget films revolving around inceldom. One very good one – which I briefly mention in the original text above, and mention again in more detail – was Suntan, a 2016 Greek film whose middle-aged protagonist is a failed doctor who gets sent to one of the Greek islands. He falls in love with a young Greek beauty, whose life is one of free love, partying, a sharp contrast to his own lonely and sad life. Inevitably it all goes wrong and it takes a violent turn. The LA Times reviewer didn’t like it though. He wrote (see link), “Following a pathetic, self-destructive antihero who lacks redeeming values or emotional growth proves a thoroughly unsatisfying journey in the dismal Greek import Suntan.” Pathetic, self-destructive anti-hero who lacks redeeming values and emotional growth? He could be writing about me and many an incel naturally enough! That’s why the film is spot-on and why the review is very obtuse and misses the point.
A somewhat similar film from 2018, but even more gruesome (and shockingly so) was another European one, A Young Man with High Potential, dealing with a young, isolated, genius-computer-nerd virgin student at an unnamed northern European locale (film is in English btw). The young man is approached by a beautiful female student who wants his help on a project she wants to work on. He is initially reluctant but of course is opened up by her feminine charm and her good looks. So naturally he falls for her, but she does not feel the same way. Violent tragedy results. Yet strangely this film, despite playing on the incel killer motif, is also sympathetic to the lonely, desperate life of the tragic incel. There was a B (or C grade) slasher-type movie, also from 2018, called Virgin Genocide. A frustrated male virgin goes on a killing spree, murdering females, his revenge for their rejection of him. Could we call such a film incelploitation? Long before inceldom went mainstream, there was the 1999 French film Whatever, based on the debut novel of Michel Houellebecq. The nightclub scene is often mentioned on incel forums.
Interestingly enough, there is a quality 1952 film called The Sniper (check the Wiki link for the interesting backstory to this movie) which tells the tale of a lonely, frustrated man who goes on a killing spree, targeting women in San Francisco with his M1 carbine. The first Dirty Harry movie from 1971 is definitely influenced by this film (I mean even down to the location, Telegraph Hill in SF). Yes from 1952!
The extreme misogyny in the incel community really is out of control
Incel/frustrated adult virginity has such strong negative connotations now – going beyond the freak nature of it and our social ostracization etc. – even being perceived as a potential terrorist threat, and thus implicitly deserving of social marginalization, contempt, and it would appear FBI surveillance. The linked article details how the Texas Department of Public Safety considers “listing people who have trouble finding a girlfriend as a worthy of being listed on their Domestic Terrorism Threat Assessment”. We are all Eliot Rodger apparently. Since I published this original memoir in October 2017, Alek Minassian would go on his killer van rampage in Toronto in April 2018, and that would really – it appears in hindsight – be the last straw. Mainstream media would then paint us all as a public threat, and there doesn’t appear to be any going back from that. Of course none of that – as in incel mass murderers – helps, nor does the cheering of these murderers by yes lots of incel idiot psychotics on incel forums; and specifically, as far as the explosion in online self-admitted incel forums, youtube channels etc…
I do have to say something here…
I downplayed the misogyny of online incel forums in my original posting from 2017. Not intentionally. I just didn’t really recognize how bad it was. How bad it is. Especially among the young incels. One of the most popular incel forums appears to be incels.co, there is also incels.net, Forever Alone on reddit, and its various outgrowths/sub-reddits.
Forever Aloners have been passed off as not being the same as incels, thanks to the terrible label that is attached to incels. They are not misogynistic, to their credit, far more mature than many of the raging incel men and teens one finds online, but anybody saying they are not incels when they are not getting laid, against their will and desires, is simply kidding themselves. They are incels plain and simple. Hey many probably tens of thousands of self-identified incels, minimum, probably millions, say what I say – we would like intimacy and bonding with women too, affection, holding hands, cuddling, somebody to talk to, romantic dinners etc. but sex is foremost in our minds because the innate natural desires are so strong, and they are frustrated. If you are not getting sex (not counting escorts) and you want to have sex and yes a romantic relationship along with that, if you are celibate and your celibacy is not to your liking, it’s involuntary, then you are an involuntary celibate, an incel. Duh. How hard is this? It’s not rocket science.
In fact there are incel folk who go on social media and blabber that they are not incels. What a bunch of self-deceiving twits. They are so afraid of the label of incel with all its toxic associations, its misogyny, its mass killers such as Eliot Rodger, Minassian, Harper-Mercer, that they knee-jerk pretend and deny they are not incels, even as they are. As if plain English is beyond them. Plain uncommon sense certainly is. Uncommon sense would tell them to say yes the incel community is filled with stupid, misogynistic haters and we’ve had a few murderers and we may have more; it doesn’t mean all incels are misogynists and alt.righters, and stocking up on guns and rifles to blow people away at shopping malls and colleges. Just as if a serial killer or three has blue eyes and black hair, it doesn’t mean that all men with blue eyes and black hair are serial killers. If a rapist is from Belgium, Brazil, America, Sweden or Russia, it does not make all Belgian, Brazilian, American, Swedish and Russian men rapists. There are rapists everywhere. Yes the online incel community has become toxic, and bears no resemblance to the kind of incels/love-shys Brian Gilmartin interviewed back in the 80s and who inform the contents of his book on love-shys published back in 1987; but if you are an INVOLUNTARY CELIBATE, you are an INCEL by definition. For crying out loud.
Gotta say that there are so many niche forums within the incel culture now, such as r/shortcels. I don’t even pretend to keep up here. And yes the misogyny is hardcore on many of these forums (such as incels.co), I mean it is the norm. Women and girls are not women and girls. They are foids. Not really human. And Eliot Rodger is a saint held in high regard. There is also plenty of anti-Semitism. And general racism, even as so very many of these incels are ethnics, so many are currycels (Indians, Pakistanis) and ricecels (Chinese, Japanese, SEA). Because if you are not getting laid, the women and the Jews are to blame. Not everybody who posts up at incels.co and other incel forums are misogynists and/or white supremacists. But plenty are. Pepe the frog is a common symbol and avatar used there, and in Europe and North America, Pepe the frog is a symbol of the fascist alt.right. (albeit not originally, to start with it was a benign comic creation). Extreme misogyny is so bad among the online incel community that reddit was forced to shut down a few forums (including r/braincells). There is now one on reddit called r/incels without the hate. The fact that this reddit forum is forced to disclose that it’s an incel forum where extreme misogyny will not be tolerated (one supposes), shows one how bad online incel discussions are and have been. How extremist and radical. To the incel alt.right misogynists, saying all this here, makes me a cuck (a cuckold) and the useful pawn of radical feminists. I think I’ve been left behind by the rage of the youngcels, the nature of internet social media bubbles in bringing out the worst in humanity, a vicious cycle is set up, where the vocal haters reinforce each other via internet echo chambers, setting a standard that the naive and gullible get swept up in, and it becomes the norm, the standard. The fact that female incels are not welcome in these all-male incel forums – since femcels are considered impossible creatures, like unicorns and centaurs, so any self-confessed femcel is considered a liar or a volcel – is the proof in the pudding, of the stupid misogyny that is proudly on display therein. Female incels are considered impossible-to-exist creatures because it’s reckoned that even the ugliest, fattest female has a good chance at getting a man, but not vice-versa. Men may well have less discriminating tastes than women, perhaps, in fact this does appear to be the case, but why blame women for the fact that many men will fuck just about anything that has a heartbeat? Coming to think of it, some men will fuck anything that does not have a heartbeat, including a corpse. Women to blame for that as well?
Yet this misogyny and general prejudice are not just problems within incel culture, they are problems in the wider world on other internet platforms and forums, in the world of internet political culture; and of course society in general, from Left to Right; there is increasing radicalization and hate in the wider world. So it’s a little hypocritical and self-righteous for the rest of the world, media included, to froth about incel hate (and I admit all this incel hate up front in this very essay and in this update), when the hate is everywhere, and that is inclusive of but by no means limited to misogyny. The white supremacist Right and left-wing fascism are increasingly mainstream in the USA, Latin America, Britain and Europe. In other words right-wing fascism (eg. Pat Buchanan, Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes of America First and so many others) and left-wing fascism (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jeremy Corbyn, the BBC, socialists and communists in general) are the norm in many respects. Regular folk, students, university professors, professionals, NGO workers, politicians, journalists etc. who take for granted their sexual liaisons and relationships, one-night stands and holiday flings, are as likely to hate, froth and hate and indulge in the same very old prejudices as any in the online incel communities, the alt.righters included. The alt.righters are just more honest about their hatred and don’t hide behind cover terms. What sets the incel community apart is the toxic, no-holds-barred misogyny (although it doesn’t usually come close to, or is of a different variety to the clerical misogyny in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran). That is the online incel culture is exacerbating the worst traits and tendencies of males who are rejected by women and girls. As Jim Morrison sang decades ago, ‘women seem wicked when you’re not wanted, women seem wicked when you’re alone’. Then online incel culture takes that line to heart and really cranks it up to full volume.
Have to mention a strange reddit forum called Incel Tears, well-known among incels, that mocks incels over their plight in general, but supposedly about mocking the excesses of Incel Radicalism and misogyny. Many of these IT folk appear to be incels themselves. That’s how big inceldom has gotten online, which is of course depressing, that there’s now even an anti-incel forum mocking incels (sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, always glibly). There is a general lack of sympathy for incels per se among regular folk who do get laid. The high school dynamic of mocking and dismissing freaks and outsiders never ends. People are cruel and nasty and can no more understand the pain and hopelessness of incels than those of us who don’t worry about our next meal and a home to stay in (including myself of course) can begin to appreciate what the starving and homeless go through. I’m not talking about mocking incels for their misogyny, which is fair game; I’m talking about mocking incels because they don’t ever have sex and usually have never had sex, in other words mocking incels for simply being incels.
Let me add in a later edit that in defense of the incel, and especially the ugly truecel, they are treated terribly by women/girls, not just ignored as to be expected, but looked at with contempt, scorn, undisguised loathing, so being human the truecel is going to respond accordingly. I myself have no idea about the truecel experience, I only know because of what I have read about their horrrible lives on the forums, because of course I was never a trucel, just a very messed-up mentalcel. For example, truelcels have girls openly cry and complain when paired with the former in high school class projects, girls and women making ew and groan sounds and pulling a face when an uglycel walks past, more in that vein. So without excusing or justifying the misogyny, this is the terrible reality that truecels have to deal with, from youth onwards, without a break. Naturally something snaps in the mind of an incel in the face of this relentless cruelty. Females can be very cruel and so nasty, just like men. Whether the buck for such excruciating cruelty stops with humanity (females and males) or with Mother Nature’s seemingly mysterious whims, I leave it to the reader to decide.
Also let me mention that to be fair to the angry incel, in the 21st century, with the ‘dating’ apps to the fore, completely upending normal social relations between men and women, the hook-up culture is now all skewed in favor of women, not men. The tinder stats show the truth of much of the incel blackpill. There are now way more male incels than females. There are female incels, but they do appear to be outnumbered by males. There are female incels who even if yes they could get laid – because so many men will fuck just about anything female – themselves refuse to fuck just anything male, simply because male. Just because said man is attached to a penis is not good enough for many a femcel, and if said male is ugly or unpleasant, or has mental health issues, that’s understandable. Men on average are not nearly so discriminating, hence why male incels heavily outnumber female incels, and why many male incels consider so-called femcels to be simply volcels. Whilst I do understand such a sentiment, I do think it unfair. I don’t expect male incels to sleep with obese or ugly or mentally unstable women, so why expect the reverse?
I admit to adopting the lingo and jargon of the online incel community (I use terms like Stacy and Chad and other jargon), but there is nothing wrong with using insider jargon that is not misogynist and prejudicial in general. Calling hot women ‘Stacys’ does not make you a misogynist, calling semi-attractive and average but still fuckable women ‘Beckys’ likewise does not make you a misogynist. It just makes you a heterosexual man who desires women. Of course if you are a humorless radical feminist, such jargon from a niche group of frustrated male virgins does make you a misogynist, but such folk are crazy and third-wave feminism (at least as represented by the Farrakhan-loving Women’s March movement and odious Sharia Law supporting figures such as Linda Sarsour and her like-mindless fellow haters; and social media mob hysteria) has utterly lost its way. Incels are a terrorist threat. Jihadists are to be embraced. Just ask the radical Left, inclusive of radical left-wing feminists. Likewise the use of the moniker ‘Tyron’ to describe a good-looking athletic black man is not racist. Even as many an incel is racist and would use the term ‘Tyron’. I do identify with the incel community because I am an incel. Don’t I know it! So I will use their jargon because all niche communities (and freaks like incels are no exception) have their insider jargon. Paleontologists, psychologists, dentists, engineers, ballet dancers, and incels. It’s unfortunate that the online incel community is pervaded by toxic misogyny, but inceldom is real and it has its own distinct dynamics, a club which nobody wants to belong to, and which inevitably creates its own language/jargon. So I am stuck with the jargon and lingo. And a lot of it is really funny, in a black comedy way. And yes a lot of it isn’t. Some of it is so dumb, then again so many incels are very very stupid. As people are in general. So there’s this one term ‘roastie’, which refers to a woman who has had a lot of sex with a lot of men over the years. Some incels appear to believe this stretches the labia, making it appear like roast beef. Hence the word ‘roastie’. This is of course complete nonsense, and yet this uh notion seems to be derived unconsciously from deep-seated misogyny (what else?). Even though many incels used this term in a sardonic way, and realize it’s not literally true, why use it at all? There is other terminology that incels use that is in every way neutral and I make use of these words too. Framecels (sigh I am one, being thin, ectomorphic), wristcels (ditto, meaning having really thin wrists and forearms), norwooding (going bald, again I tick off that box). There is other lingo, but that’s enough for my purposes.
Together alone
I just want to add something about incels.co. I have sometimes lurked at incels.co. And despite all the idiotic misogyny and horrible Jew baiting, there are posters there who do post up some pertinent content. They sometimes have intelligent things to say, and a lot of what they say (because l am an incel too) strikes a chord. Stuff about incel traits, about how lonely and depressing our lives are, empty, devoid of meaning. How suicidal, and yet scared to death of actual death, too cowardly to actually rope (incels always speak of roping for suicide), how prone to NEETness (not in education, employment or training), how we are black sheep in our own families, how our parents and siblings are ashamed of us, often refusing to recognize our plight, thinking we are gay or just socially awkward or we just need to meet that special somebody. How are parents give up on us eventually, and hate us for our failure because it reflects on them. How normal people mock us, how we have no friends, live as hermits, or how our ‘friends’ make fun of us or are incels themselves. Our proneness to seclusion and reclusiveness, friendlessness, and the mental illnesses that gestate out of years of loneliness, frustration and isolation. Incels older than thirty know what I am talking about here. The depression, anhedonia, the social anxiety, OCDs, avoidant personality disorder, the numbness, the flat affect, the rage and anger, the wishful-thinking-fantasy-living-in-daydreams, the Asperger’s, the high-functioning autism in general. The self-destructiveness. The self-loathing, self-loathing, self-loathing (often revealed in incels’ online usernames).
I am not a truecel and never have been of course. A truecel is an incel who is genuinely ugly and/or very short, sometimes having a serious disfigurement, and socially incompetent with serious autism/Asperger’s etc. They never stood a chance. As a truecel is fond of saying, it wasn’t ever over, it just never began. I on the other hand was good-looking, could be charming, I had it all going for me. Enough going for me at any rate. Or so I thought. I was actually something of a Chad (a good-looking guy), albeit always too skinny. I just threw it all away as I relate in detail in this very memoir. Now most incels reading this (especially the truecels) would dismiss me as a fakecel or a volcel or a LARPer (a dissimulator), and even want to punch me in the face. Heck I understand why truecels would feel that way, but I really am as authentic an incel as any incel alive. And there’s no incel like a middle-aged incel (the only thing worse is of course a post-60 incel). I am just a mentalcel. But a mentalcel is still incel. And mental is what humanity is all about – it’s what defines us and sets us apart from the sane animal kingdom. It’s what makes humanity what it is. All the madness, folly, war, slavery, genocide, plunder, greed, barbarity, glory, creativity, all the mass delusions. I admit that the pretty girls liked me and flirted with me and showed signs of interest over the years, when I was younger at least. Sigh. Actually attractive middle-aged women have even shown a rare interest in me in middle-age!! (see chapters below on Diane and Kate). But my screwed-up mental state, my warped psyche – to repeat the theme of this whole memoir – doomed me from the get-go. The road to inceldom is a pathless land, we all get there in our own way. The road to inceldom from a mentalcel who at least in his youth was a chadcel (this seems to be a contradiction, but then again man is a contradiction, so many conflicts…) is simply bitter and ironic, a black comedy.
And as Michel Houellebecq put it somewhere (and Houellebecq would write the definitive incel novel Extension du domaine de la lutte, his debut novel, published in English as Whatever, and filmed as Whatever in 1999 as I mention above), ultimately comedy fails because life is at bottom tragic. It isn’t funny. Hence even the best comedians fall short, because there is no ultimate redemption in comedy. Because life is not funny. Black comedy is by definition not really funny. It’s tragic. Yes tragicomedy, but the tragedy sinks the comedy, because of what it is. A tragedy.
Personal news: a family humiliation I had been dreading for years comes to pass
Anyhow, moving on… Since it’s been more than 2 years since I posted up my black comedy memoir, I thought why not update it with events of the last 2 years, because things continue to spiral, and more what-the-fuck-black-comedy-can’t-make-it-up happenings continue to happen in my life. Yes still a virgin, at 49 years of age, almost almost 50. Yeah the big 50 and a virgin. Sigh. And when you waste your life, the time flies by even faster than it does for everybody else. My life froze in 1982, when I was 12. And it’s still 1982 to me, I am still a 12-year-old boy. In the body of a near 50-year-old man.
So life has continued pretty much as the reader and myself expected after I posted up my memoir in October 2017. Jerking off to lesbian porn, doing my coping (a very common incel term because we all cope) like I’ve been doing for thirty years, reading, listening to music, going for long walks, watching movies, surfing the net, daydreaming.
Anyhow something happened that I had feared for years, around the time I published my original memoir back in October 2017, I didn’t mention it then but I do so here in this update. What happened in late 2017 – my sister was visiting with her husband, and 2 children, my nephew and niece, from Australia. I never really see them as a consequence, living on the other side of the world. My nephew who I will call David, and my niece who I will call Nicole, were aged 14 and 9 respectively at the time. Now as I mention elsewhere in this memoir, my sister knows I have never had a girlfriend. And of course as a consequence her husband and children would know too, there is no way she wouldn’t tell them, given that my sister is a bitch and given that it’s too much of a weird, tragic story not to relate to her family. And if my sister wouldn’t relate my incel tragedy to her children, her husband certainly would. So I knew they all knew. Anyhow one day I was visiting their place, an apartment they rented in the city, and all five of us are sitting in the lounge area, when 9-year-old Nicole asks me, the way a 9-year-old girl would, if I have a girlfriend. Shit. I reply, because her parents know I don’t have one and have never had one, so I can’t lie here even though I otherwise would, that no I don’t have a girlfriend. She then asks if I have ever had a girlfriend. Again I reply no. She then asks if I am gay. I say no. All the while my sister and brother-in-law have frozen smiles on their faces and David, who being 14 is old enough unlike his guileless sister to know just how embarrassing this is for me, just looks down. Damn.
Elsewhere in this memoir, I relate how I have built up this impressive backstory to cover up my life-long inceldom, a whole invented history of girlfriends, their names and the dates of my liaisons, to fool anybody and everybody, to cover up my ‘crime’ of life-long sexual isolation. In the face of the relentless laser-like focus and guilelessness of a nine-year-old girl, my solid defense all falls apart. In less than half a minute. Sure she already knows thanks to her parents, but nobody other than a little child would bring it all up; because she is too young to know how she is humiliating me in a way I have never experienced before, in front of my sister, her husband and my nephew who is no longer a little boy. Too young to know what she is doing. It’s not her fault. It’s mine for even being incel to start with. Can I even blame her parents? I feel humiliated of course. My shame is there for all to see, where otherwise the elephant in the room, the albatross round my neck, is just willfully ignored, like a taboo. And it is a taboo. But little kids don’t even know what taboo is. I had feared this happening for years, and then it did. And there was nothing I could do about it.
When I go home, I am reeling, almost crying. I don’t blame Nicole who as a nine-year-old girl is not only too young to realize what she just did, but at that age, cannot comprehend of a man who in middle-age has never had a girlfriend. Doubt she would know of a man who has never had a girlfriend, a man older than her mother. To her it sounds beyond weird, incomprehensible. So she is just trying to make sense of something she cannot make sense of. She has way too little life experience to appreciate not only the tragic turnings that many lives take, but is too young to know about social taboos and how we are not supposed to talk about embarrassing things to the family black sheep concerned. That’s little kids for you. Why they scare us to death. And why they have to be destroyed and made to confirm to adult pretense and insincerity and game playing, but I digress.
Anyhow it didn’t end there neither! The next day I am visiting again, and we all go out for breakfast at a restaurant nearby their apartment. I tell my family that I know the owner of the restaurant, a youngish woman of about thirty. Little Nicole then pipes in, ‘maybe I can make her my girlfriend’. Sigh. I point out that she is married, which she is. It ends!
My nephew and niece are all I have. I don’t hold their mother’s crimes against them, that is their mother’s bitchiness and nastiness to me my whole life long. They are innocent here, and not having children of my own of course ha ha ha, as is the case with many an aunt and uncle without children of their own, my need for loving somebody is so strong, urgent, and not having any intimate relationship with a woman, the only people left for my affections to go toward, are my nephew and niece. Aside from cats and dogs. Anyhow that’s that story, another inevitable side branch, in retrospect, to the tragic tree of my life.
Attractive Diane wants me to call her. I freeze and blow it of course
Moving on again… Something totally unexpected would happen sometime in mid-2018. I did not have a good day, I was bawled out by some woman in my building after I complained about an alarm that kept going off in the downstairs basement of our building, her father is one of the owners. So I complained to her to fix it, she did get it done by calling in the handyman, but then it started up again about 2 weeks later. So I complained to her about it again, and she said she would fix it again. Then when she was downstairs in the basement with the handyman, I came down there to take a look at the problem myself and she lost her temper, frothing that she would get it fixed and that I should stay out of it. I replied, okay fine I’ll leave (yeah she got it fixed and it has never been a problem since). What made it worse was that she’s a hot young twenty-something, the only time a young attractive woman pays attention to me is to scream at me. So I was in a foul self-pitying mood at the time.
Later that day I visited one of the local second-hand bookstores near where I live (sure hardly any of them left these days), I know the owner, and like to browse around there. Sometimes I even buy a book or two. So when I walk in there is an attractive forty-something woman talking to him near the entrance, he introduces me to her as I walk into the store. We say hi and I don’t think much of it, I mean she’s attractive but so what, I’m the 48-year-old virgin now (this was in 218 remember), never touched a woman. We literally just say hi and that’s it. I am in her company for maybe 20 seconds max. So I am browsing in the store, not thinking anything about it, the woman has since left (let’s call her Diane), when the owner comes up to me and says, ‘Danny can I speak to you alone in private’, out of hearing from any other customers. I think what have I done now? So I go with him to one of the corners of the store and he tells me that Diane asked him if I was single, and he told her yeah he thinks so, he will speak to me… She then leaves the store. So he tells me she is keen on me and he can give me her number. So my mind is reeling now, I can’t believe this is happening, just like I couldn’t believe the Swedish Courtney Cox beauty that jumped on me 21 years earlier. Total surprise. So I have to think on my feet. So I tell the bookstore owner that I am not single! I tell him that I am seeing a woman on and off, a neighbor of mine.
He says okay he thought I was single but wasn’t sure (he doesn’t know me well enough thank God to know that I have never touched a woman or girl in my life!). If the reader thinks I am stark-raving crazy, a fakecel, a volcel, I understand such a sentiment. But it wouldn’t be true. I mean at this stage of my life I am a 48-year-old virgin, I can literally shake in the presence of a woman I am attracted to, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to behave. I don’t know how to hold a woman, how to fuck, how to touch a woman, plus things are much worse personality-wise than when I was say a thirty-year old. I now have all these quirks and neuroses that have only been compounded over the years. I have obsessive compulsions, extreme anxiety, my neurotic traits have worsened. I can’t fake it in other words, the older you get as a virgin male, the more of a problem this life-long albatross round the neck of an incel becomes. Anyhow I eventually leave the store, all the while acting so casual and when talking to the bookstore owner about Diane I was acting as casual as it gets, as if attractive women always approach me and I just find it so tiresome because I am so used to it, as if I have fucked a hundred women in my life!! My black comedy life is not over yet (and yes the blackness sinks the comedy), by a long shot. As I am walking back to my apartment, I am reeling, my mind is just doing somersaults, I simply can’t believe it.
I mean no woman has shown an interest in me in years and this woman is attractive, nice face, long hair, decent body, nice breast rack. Then again I never meet women, living as a recluse. Sure I am invisible now to young women, but middle-aged women my own age I don’t meet and I don’t know them. I mean most of them are married or living for their children, I mean I don’t really have a clue how middle-aged women who are single even perceive me. Well they don’t perceive me because I am a recluse, a hermit with no real friends really (just the one platonic female friend who I see rarely). I don’t know what they would make of me, I assume not interested, since I couldn’t get these women in my prime, why now that my looks have faded? This Diane woman teaches at a local university, her father is in fact a professor at another university. Diane is a divorcee with two teenagers of her own. Anyhow I never see her again, and the bookstore owner doesn’t really bring her up again that much when I see him over the next few months and years even (a few words here and there on what she’s up to but nothing much really); except maybe one time when I think I saw her in a cafe about a year later, but couldn’t be sure it was her. I only ever saw her once and for less than twenty seconds, so I couldn’t be sure. But Diane is just another of the latest in a line of attractive women I had rejected because I am mentally ill, let’s face it.
And Diane wasn’t the only one. But will come to a woman I will call Kate further down, in the context of the year 2019…
Young bisexual blonde Carla moves in next door. I fall in love. It’s a torture I can’t do without. Our age gap is 25 years
Before talking about Kate, something else happened that year of 2018 that just blew me away, and still does. I got a new neighbor (replaced the young man I tell you all about further up, the one who on rare occasions fucked his girlfriend next door, and I jerked off to it of course) in July 2018, a young twenty-something woman, then about 23, blonde, sexy, voluptuous, wonderful breasts, blue eyes, nice complexion. The night she moved in, she fucked her boyfriend, they had music on to cover the sound of their love-making (it was only about nine at night after all, and no the music didn’t drown out the sounds at all). Naturally I jerked off to her climaxing. I didn’t even know if my new neighbor was the man or the woman or what either of them looked like. A few days later I see two young women, both hot (one blonde and one brunette), sitting in the chairs on the courtyard outside my neighbor’s apartment. It faces the street so I can see them easily enough, as there is no fence or wall between the sidewalk of our building and the street. I approach them and ask who my new neighbor is. The blonde says she is, I introduce myself and she says her name is Carla (not her real name naturally). She tells me she recognizes me. She works at a nearby restaurant and remembers me coming in on a few occasions (to get take-out). So I reply, yeah I recognize you too from the restaurant, I say welcome to the neighborhood, see you around. And I do recognize her, I remember seeing her on one or two occasions and thinking I wouldn’t mind fucking her, and for that matter coming over her beautiful breasts. She seems sweet enough. Cool I think. I have a hot new neighbor next door, young, frisky and she fucks her boyfriend next door, so I can jerk off to the sex (which I had already done the night she moved in), my only real sexual thrill, vicarious as it is. It’s all I have. The best sexual experiences I have never had. Fantastic. I would continue to jerk off over her having sex with her boyfriend of course, this is the best thing going on in my life, but she would only rarely have sex with him at her place. Most of the time she was at his place fucking him there, I know because she would go out late at night and not come back until the next morning (but it would turn out that it wasn’t just a boyfriend she was fucking away from home… I relate all that below). Naturally this infuriated me, I couldn’t sleep while she was out all night, fucking no doubt but not next door dammit. This girl Carla is just making my insomnia worse. Heck I have to pay such a price for a VICARIOUS PLEASURE, not even real pleasure. Sheesh. But then something interesting happened.
September 2018, and Carla had been there, as my next-door neighbor in my building, since July 2018. So it’s a few months later. And she would give me the best night of my life. The best sexual encounter I never had. When you are a virgin, vicarious is all you get. Here is what went down… So one night, I am coming back from the local coffee shop I sometimes go to, of course sitting by myself drinking a hot chocolate, because of course always by myself. Anyhow I am coming back from the coffee shop, it’s a weekday night, and as I turn up the street where my building is, I see Carla about forty meters ahead of me, with three girlfriends, some beers in their hands. They are surely heading back to her apartment. They would be coming back from the restaurant from where Carla works most probably, since it’s just up the road from our own street, and it’s the direction she and her friends (and myself) are coming from. I make sure to keep my distance, they don’t see me, and I jokingly think to myself, I wonder if these girls are going back to Carla’s apartment to have a lesbian sex party… Not thinking they would!! Anyhow I keep my distance from them, and they do enter Carla’s apartment. I enter my own apartment like two minutes later, very quietly. Our tiny apartments are right on top of one another, and have only a thin wall downstairs and upstairs between us. I can hear everything next door, and vice versa of course. As I relate further up in this memoir. So I quietly take off my shoes and move like a panther, as silently as possible. I hear the girls next door, downstairs, playing some music, talking, laughing. After about twenty minutes or so, they all head upstairs to Carla’s bedroom. I go upstairs then to my own bedroom. So all the while moving like a panther, I listen in upstairs, am lying on my bed right against the shared thin wall. And these girls continue to shoot the breeze and laugh. I don’t make out what they are saying exactly, but it’s clearly a party atmosphere. After a while, there is a sudden silence, you can hear a pin drop, just like that. And this silence just lasts and lasts, not a word or laugh or sound from any of these girls, all four of them; and let me tell you, from what I saw from the street, all four including Carla naturally, are attractive. One was gorgeous, a megaStacy, but all are Stacys. And in their prime, their early to mid twenties. So I’m thinking to myself, are these girls doing yoga or some silent meditation session, what’s going on? And then… Oh my God and then…
So after maybe ten minutes or so, I don’t recount, but it must have seemed like an hour, I feel the vibrations of the mattress next door. There is only a thin shared wall separating our two beds, both our mattresses pressed against our shared wall!! So when her mattress moves, I feel it next door on my own mattress. And this September night, it is moving/vibrating, I feel it through the thin wall, with a persistent rhythmic pulse. In other words, only fucking or masturbation can explain it. I quietly whip out my cock and start to masturbate. I come. Still silence from next door, other than the vibrating mattress. And then, I will never forget it… Seared into my brain forever.
I hear moaning and gasping, a sharp brief cry of pleasure. Oh my God. And then silence. And then the talking (breezy, a light tone) starts again, from the girls. After a short while, they all go downstairs again and I hear them leave the apartment. Oh my God. What just went down? Well clearly lesbian sex. One of the girls had sex with another, whilst the other two watched. One girl ate another girl’s pussy and/or fingered another, maybe even a strap-on dildo was used (or dildo without a strap). I don’t know. I never will. But I know hot lesbian sex just happened next door between two girls whilst another 2 girls got wet watching. And I have jizz over my stomach, lying on my bed. I just am wowed. My fantasy for over 30 years has finally happened, for real, not two meters from me, at my neighbor’s upstairs bedroom. I am blown away. Shattered. This really was the best sexual experience I never had. I know I will never be the same again. Sure it’s pathetic and a lot of my readership must be thinking, Danny you should have blown your brains out back in ’92 when you had the chance. Heck don’t I know it. But here I am. It is what it is.
Anyhow over the course of the next week, my mind is just reeling. Okay so Carla is bisexual, great. Thank God for the sexual revolution, and sexual liberation. Just wish I was a part of it. Now I’m thinking – does her boyfriend know? Well I would find out soon enough. One night – about 3 or 4 months later, so it’s 2019 now – she comes home late at night with a girl, I hear them coming in and talking next door. They head upstairs. They are talking and then after a while, silence. Again I think what are they doing? Then after a while I know. I hear Carla gasping and moaning (I know how she sounds when she comes, so I know it’s not her girlfriend), and then crying out with an orgasm. Bloody hell. I naturally jerked off to all this. This would repeat about two weeks later, when she again had sex with her girlfriend next door. It dawned on me that her boyfriend does know. She is clearly in an open relationship with a man and a woman. Good for her. There is no way she could hide this from her boyfriend, all these youngsters in my area know one another, live nearby and they all know one another or know people who know one another. In the age of the smartphone, it’s harder to get away with cheating. Her boyfriend doesn’t come by when she’s with her girlfriend and vice versa. Carla has the best of both worlds. And she has given me three of the best nights of my life. Three of the best nights of vicarious pleasure, three of the best nights I never had. Sure it’s pathetic, sure. But this should go without saying really when you are talking about the life of a forty-something virgin.
The thing is the last time she slept with her girlfriend at her place was more than a year ago at the time of writing (January 2020), during the rest of 2019 she hardly had sex next door. Not with her boyfriend and not her girlfriend neither. She routinely left her apartment in the evening and only returned the following morning, or even later. In other words, she would be fucking her boyfriend and her girlfriend at their apartments, not hers. The asset from my perspective of both our beds being crammed against a narrow, thin, shared wall is a liability from her end (she knows it too after all, there is no way she cannot, even as I try to be as quiet as possible). That’s why I am amazed she had that lesbian sex party, and it wasn’t late at night neither. It was one of those one-offs, a miracle in my life, well as close to a sexual miracle as I have gotten. So throughout 2019 (aged 48 and 49), I was climbing the walls next door. Like a heroin addict who can’t get his fix. She would go out to fuck her boyfriend and girlfriend, at their apartments. Her girlfriend is also hot, I would see her sometimes hanging out with Carla, around our street. I recognized her voice as that of her lover. And sometimes they would hang out in her apartment. She even slept over a very few times, but I never heard them fucking. I can’t sleep. Carla is killing me and she doesn’t know it. I am just the bald, bespectacled middle-aged guy next door, twice her age. Sigh.
She even makes sure to give me the don’t-even-think-about-making-a-pass-at-me signals (she is polite to me but nothing more than that. We just greet each other when we see each other. More rarely we talk about common concerns re our building). I try and avoid the restaurant sometimes where she works, just because I don’t want her to get the idea that I am some kind of beta orbiter, and that I am interested in her. I want to hear her next door, preferably having sex, but I don’t want to see her even though I do. These conflicts in my psyche sometimes see me wavering about whether to go past the restaurant or not. I also realize (about the middle of 2019, early summer) that I am falling in love with her. Have fallen in love with her. Fuck. Her blue eyes, blonde hair, voluptuous body, magnificent breasts, great legs, and her open bisexuality and libertine ways just bowl me over. I am finished. She is the best thing that never happened to me. She and Lisa. She is half my fucking age and is probably too young to remember 9-11 (she would have been six or thereabouts). I have never felt so old in my life, and still a kissless virgin. When I think about it, I wonder why didn’t I just have the balls back in 1992, aged 22, to blow my brains out? And I was so close, so certain I was going to go through with it. I just needed ten second or less of courage. But no. And here I am, 27 years later in 2019, almost 50, and in love with a woman who wasn’t even alive back then, still almost three years away from being born, the year I intended to scatter my brains on my car’s windshield with a .38. How on earth have I let it go on for so long? Easy. I didn’t die, I didn’t have the balls to rope, and the years passed by at the speed of light.
Need to add that so far in 2020, she has been fucking her boyfriend fairly often at her apartment, and he often sleeps over, even if they don’t have sex. Thank the gods that she has gone back to having sex with her boyfriend at her apartment. This is a big change from 2019. She is still seeing her girlfriend, I hear her coming over and she even slept over recently, but no sex. But Carla certainly seems to be getting sexual satisfaction from the hetero sex over lesbian lust of late.
It’s also so strange, absurd and symbolic really, of how I sleep at night just a meter or two away from the woman I love. I hear her coming during sex, I come when she comes, I try to orgasm when she comes, not making a sound. Aside from herself I am the only one who has heard her climaxing with both her male and female lovers (interestingly no threesomes, at least not next door); there is just that thin shared wall separating us. She is so very near me, like a lover almost, yet so far away. The literal cheap plaster wall between us is so symbolic/metaphorical of my adult life: the emotional/psychological wall that separates me from intimacy with women. The wall around my heart and mind, the wall I erected during my childhood and adolescence, but I didn’t know it. A wall built on foundations of fear, trauma, narcissism, a deep-seated masochism, a fear, a fear, a fear of some terror, something I have not penetrated, because the depths of the self run so deep. And because I don’t want to go there, I’m afraid of what I’ll find.
Let’s move on…
New teeth, lookmaxing
Yet 2019 was a year in which I got my act together in many ways. I lookmaxed (as the incel lingo goes) in a big way! I needed to, and I could afford to. What happened was my teeth deteriorated rapidly, rotted badly in my forties. And it happened so fast, although of course the rot had been building from the inside for years. Short of it is I had major dental work done, root canals, bottom and top. 13 new zirconium crowned teeth, all over the course of several months in 2019, July to November. Cost me a lot, but it was worth it. I also had three teeth extracted on the bottom (right at the back including a wisdom tooth, so not visible), in addition to the 13 new zirconium teeth I now have, and screws put in for the titanium implants which are yet to be fitted, at the time of writing (February 2020). Yet I can smile again, my teeth are once again an asset, not a liability. If your teeth are fucked, you can forget about having a chance with women, even if you are tall, well-built and otherwise handsome. Even if I never get laid, at least I can smile. It really makes me feel so much better. The best money I ever spent. Thank God I can afford it.
Yogamaxing and the women in my studio class
I also took up yoga in the middle of 2019, about June. And wow. I only wish I had taken it up twenty or thirty years earlier. Yeah a cope. But what isn’t? But what a great cope. It really makes a difference to your mind and body. And my mind and body are so damaged by a wasted life, a frustrated life and a broken life. Still a broken life of course. And yoga is not going to change that but it does perform little miracles. Of course I can’t move my body, flex it, the way so many others in the class can. Not only because I am a beginner, but because my body is really damaged after three decades of stress, tension, frustration and rage. My back, my neck, are so tense, so rigid, my neck is knotted with tension. You cannot separate the incel mind from the incel body. I can barely move my back, bend it over, I can’t in fact, unlike most everybody else in class. I had no idea until I took up yoga how much tension there was in my back, but of course! How much tension in my body.
Seven or so months later since starting yoga, the tension is still very much there. I cannot do all the yoga exercises as well as I should. It’s tough, but I do what I can. Yoga is not a competition. I recommend it to everybody. In my class of course there are plenty of young Stacys half my age, some of them are gorgeous. And yoga allows middle-aged guys like myself to perv out the bodies of young women (and some of the yoga postures called asanas are just perfect for perving!) without being perceived as pervs, as creeps, because hey I have to look where my head and body are facing. Of course it can be torture. But I need it! Mostly women in the class, but a few men. Some of the young men are real Chads, the bastards, and they sometimes take their shirts off to show off to the young women. Whilst we all pretend that’s not what’s going on, and it’s just because they are sweating (even in winter mind you). I am invisible to the young women naturally. As all middle-aged men whose name does not start with Brad and end with Pitt are. They don’t even say hello.
The elderly women are friendly enough (I am talking in their sixties, one is in her seventies, she was a dancer in her youth, and can still bend her body like a sixteen-year-old gymnast) and have even doted on me. The middle-aged women? There are none my age. Well only one who sometimes comes to class. And she is actually friendly enough, but I am not attracted to her. No I am not being unduly fussy or my standards are too high, I just don’t feel any stirring in my heart and my cock when she’s around. I don’t even know if she is being friendly because that’s how she is with fellow middle-aged folk, or if she is actually physically interested in me. I just don’t know. I wouldn’t even know if a woman is sending me signals. My self-esteem is so far gone, it is not there at all. Absent without leave. Unless she actually physically jumped on top of me, the way Swedish Courtney did. Not that it would make a difference. It didn’t with Swedish Courtney of course!
Still I am so glad I am doing yoga. It is literally a lifesaver. It may not be enough, it isn’t, but nothing is. It’s an anchor, it’s something real in an unreal society. My body, my mind, tells me this is good. Unlike the life I have actually ‘lived’. Actually this one very recent time (January 2020), a young Stacy in yoga class (Asian) was friendly to me, she smiled and said hello, ‘we are neighbors today’ she said. I smiled back at her. Couldn’t believe it. Don’t know when last a young Stacy was friendly to me. My heart races. But that doesn’t mean she wants me to eat her pussy and fuck her brains out. Maybe she’s just not like all the others, in that a middle-aged bald guy is not completely invisible to her. Anyhow that’s my yogamaxing. And yes, one white supremacist, probably incel killer Scott Paul Beierle, did target people in a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida in 2018. He managed to kill 2 women before killing himself.
Attractive Kate has a boyfriend but asks me for my number anyhow. I freeze again. But of course
Now the same year 2019 is also the year of Kate, as I briefly alluded to above. I mean like every year in my life, it was a desert of course and yet when there is a woman, an attractive woman who shows some interest in me, it stands out. Like an oasis in the desert. So here’s what happened…
One night, sometime in June or July, I was out walking in my neighborhood, near a market stall area, where at night even as the market is closed, people chill out in a pedestrian thoroughfare area, on benches and at coffee shops. So I hear a man calling out my name, ‘Danny’. I turn around and see a guy I know, a man in his mid-thirties sitting on a bench with an attractive woman, also appears to be in her thirties. I come on over and say hello. I will call this man Gregory (not his real name). Gregory introduces me to his friend, Kate. So we banter a bit, making small talk. Important to stress that Kate was not Gregory’s girlfriend. Gregory has been in and out of mental homes ever since he was a teen, and in fact is clearly schizophrenic with paranoid delusions, when he is at his worst. Other times he is almost normal. You never know which Gregory you are going to run into, from one day or hour to the next. He is supported by his parents, but is actually a very well-read, even brilliant young man (not yet 35) who is fluent in several languages and talented in painting and sculpture. His life therefore has a strong tragic dimension to it. Anyhow so talking with Kate, who is certainly attractive, nice body, still firm, nice breasts, pretty face, a brunette, we are getting along well. She is a student of literature, doing her master’s at one of the local universities. It turns out she is forty, which surprises me as she looks younger. Her parents are supporting her, now that she is back at university. She tells me she has a boyfriend, a musician my age, she tells me this in a very offhand way. After about ten minutes, we all have to leave. As I am saying goodbye, and in front of Gregory, she asks me for my number. I am a little shocked, not only because I am the man with zero experience with the female gender, but she has a boyfriend. Acting casual though, I give her my number and get hers in the process. We say goodbye, and she is very friendly. All positive body language from her.
Gregory seems amazed by what just went down and appears a little flustered. Gregory then says goodbye and that is that. Now I am reeling. What just went down? Not only is she attractive, she is in fact easily in the top 5 percent of women her age, and remember that’s nine years younger than me. Not only that but she has a boyfriend and didn’t let that stop her from asking me for my number. She did tell me that she has only been going out with her boyfriend for a few months, so who knows how permanent she sees that arrangement? I am in shock, I can’t believe this happened. Yeah here we go again, but really I am just gobsmacked. Of course if I was a normal man, I would call her, even if a few weeks later, tell her I want to see her, boyfriend or not, have been thinking about her, and in a sexual way. In the way that men think about women. Because such a circumstance, a context, demanded that kind of aggressive, go-for-it action. But of course I am not a normal man. I am a broken, pathetic, middle-aged virgin. So I do nothing of course, I never call her and she wasn’t going to call me. I am the man, I am the one expected to show the initiative, and of course.
About six months later, when bumping into Gregory (who has no idea – just like everybody else – that I am a virgin. He thinks I have had quite a few girlfriends over the years!) at a local cafe, I ask about Kate. I ask is she still with her boyfriend, and he replies no they broke up. So yeah if I were a sane man, there you go, the green light to call her and fuck her brains out. But we know what I am. I don’t call her, I was never going to call her. It was all foreordained decades ago, if it was foreordained at all. And that is that with Kate. Never see her again (she doesn’t live anywhere near me). Gregory does tell me later that she quit her master’s degree, and had something of a nervous breakdown. But I have no idea if this is true or not since Gregory is literally insane and routinely projects his own life onto everybody else, and Gregory is always having mental breakdown/delusional episodes. I mean he once told me he is in contact with the police in his area, about the local drug dealers, and he lets the police know about what’s going on with the drug peddlers, via his uh shoes and the way he ties his laces, it’s a kind of code. He once told me that his parents were involved in a child prostitution smuggling ring. No they certainly were not. One time he told me he had found God, 2 weeks later he was a communist. He recently let me know that he chairs astrophysics meetings. Uh no he does not. I expect him to tell me one day that he is an astronaut now. Or a smurf. So much else, I just tune out. When he is sane he is actually very lucid, brilliant even. When he is nuts, he is full-loco, raisin-cake nuts. His insanity has seen him lose all his friends really, who cannot deal with it, and girls of course ain’t around because he is crazy. He’s a good-looking guy, but you can see his craziness in his eyes and even in the way he walks, his demeanor. He then complains that he can’t get girls, well gee I wonder why. Poor guy. Sometimes though he lies here and indulges in this kind of wishful thinking/projection, where he says other people are saying he has slept with half the girls in the city, and he then adds that it’s not true. Well sure it’s not true but nobody is saying that to begin with, of course. It’s just a kind of projection of his frustrated desires onto others. The astute reader may wonder if Gregory was lying when he said that Kate and her boyfriend broke up. Yeah sure. But he told me this in one of his lucid states. But who knows really? Thing is even if they had not broken up, she was game. She could have seen me on the side. She was mine for the taking and I just fucked up. Like I have always done.
So as far as women go, that has been it so far. As always I fuck it up, because that’s incel nature, or rather a mentalcel’s nature. I mean I am middle-aged now and have never touched a woman, so freezing now is second nature.
But then a sudden thing, a sudden change of attitude…
Sex surrogate on the horizon. Plan to lose my virginity in my 50th year
I did on occasion, over the last few years, think of a sexual surrogate as a means to rid myself of my virginity, it’s probably the best way to do it, if not the only way. At this stage of my life. There is occasional mention of sexual surrogates in incel circles, but it’s rare since these guys usually blather their rubbish of ‘just go to a prostitute bro’. I have already detailed in this memoir, why there is no way I am doing that. And no I do not consider a real professional sexual surrogate, one who is sensitive to the plight of an incel, as a prostitute. It’s in a different ball park altogether, whatever the cynics may say. However I thought well there is no sexual surrogate in my city, so unless I travel somewhere, it ain’t gonna happen by that route. However how did I know there was no sexual surrogate in my city, which is a large one after all? I just assumed it based on my know-nothingness. On totally unwarranted assumptions. So I did a google search and lo and behold there is a sexual surrogate in my city and doing research on her, it seems a very professional one (working with a psychiatrist, never mind I can’t stand that profession), sensitive etc. Been doing this for some time. So there you go. So then I decide, well this is it! I have to call her, make an appointment, and admit to the first person in my life, not anonymously on the Internet, my plight. And in the process lose my virginity to a woman who knows what she is dealing with. And there is thus no reason for me to hide or try to hide rather anything at all. I can be what I am, a wreck, an emotionally messed-up middle-aged virgin. And I can be that way, naked, naked physically and naked psychologically, with a naked woman who knows this and doesn’t judge me by it. Relief. I can afford her services (not cheap at all). I am going to do this, psych myself up and make the call…
Stay tuned.
Man in the Mango Suit 