He’s So Vain

DISCLAIMER: 

All names of male interests have been changed for privacy and security reasons; names of friends and family have agreed to be listed. Mention of NSFW activities but not explicitly stated or described, still highly do not recommend for you to read this, Mom. Mostly for your hopes of me having grandchildren any time soon. 

A few days ago I got home from hanging out with my best friend and I started going through the motions of getting ready for bed. Taking my makeup off, washing my face, brushing my teeth. I lay down and begin the death scroll on Instagram. My feed is primarily book memes, racoon memes, my cool friend jipping off to Greece again, and pop culture. And yet, somehow, in the less than six minutes I’m scrolling through my feed, I see three people I went to high school with get engaged. What the actual hell. Every time I turn to my friends or sister positively AGAST about everyone getting married, I get the same response “Well, we are at that age now.” Excuse me, what? I have it in me to take care of my cats, go out for martinis with my girls, and read a book in less than a day. I do not have it in me mentally to put up with a grown male for the rest of my life. Have you seen the dating pool lately? No? Well, good for you, not all of us are that lucky.

Dating in your 20’s in the 2020’s is actually horrifying. Hugh Grant is not making me blush with his quirky charm. Ryan Reynolds is not running from LAX to the place I work at. Ryan Gosling is not lifting me like Baby in Dirty Dancing after a whiskey neat. No. No, no… I’m having hinge dates stand me up at a coffee shop (while I look incredible, by the way) and then making multiple attempts at arguing with me about how it’s my fault. I’m having 40 year old strangers at a bar tell me I owe them my phone number because they bought my friend a drink. I’m having male friends tell me that “[I’m] promiscuous” and that it hurts their feelings because they’re ‘in love with me.’ And this is just the guys I HAVEN’T gone out with yet. The dating pool is not what it was in the 90s. Dating is no longer as it’s portrayed in early 2000’s rom coms. Currently? It’s a battle to the death to find a male who is first of all, not a murderer. Let alone treats you with respect or god forbid, has a job. 

This is coming from the woman who is perpetually single—both by choice and by limited options, see above for reasoning—but whose closest friends and family are serial monogamists. I have only ever been surrounded by those in loving, healthy, long term relationships. It’s not as though I’m bitter and am saying it can never happen, just that to achieve it these days is quite the chore. Believe me, I am also aware that I am not a person whose face screams “DATE ME! I’M NOT A PSYCHO!” I get that, I do. I am impatient and unwilling to go past 3 dates with someone if I even just think they’re boring. After a single drink, I become verbally aggressive towards any male that annoys me, I just have no filter. Last night a guy tried to tell me why I just had to give him my friends number and as he waxed unpoetic, I just put a hand up and said “Your face is annoying me” and walked away. I know exactly who I am, I do. And yet, I am still not the problem in this scenario. Maybe it’s that I have seen He’s Just Not That Into You and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days too many times, I pop romance novels like they’re M&M’s, and my standards seem unrealistic to the male eye. Except that the bar is the ground, and you brought a shovel. 

I could go back to the beginning. I could lament the losers I met in college, the idiots that blocked me, the dirtballs camouflaged as ‘nice guys’ just to get in my pants. I could, but I won’t. We were all young once, right? And I wouldn’t want to be judged for a moment I wasn’t portrayed at my best because I was hormonal and just starting to go to bars and finally in a city rather than my hometown. So, I won’t. AndSPo many males should have released such a tense breath reading that. I’ll start where it really gets funny, when you graduate college and begin the transition into the ‘real world’. 

I should start with Archer and Freddie. This tale begins six months after I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. My sister and I went to a Fantasy Ball where we danced, we frolicked, we found a dragon egg, we laughed the night away. And I met a masked man who to this day reminds me of a mix between The Mask of Zorro and Inigo Montoya, mustache and all. I think it was the crushed red velvet suit he was wearing? Or the fact that I found the mask alluring? But when he told me his name and I told him to call me Lady Scarlett (I have multiple alter egos, I am an actor) and he DID, I was enamored. He took me to an alcove of the main floor and we ballroom danced to the playlist for what felt like no time at all and hours at the same time. We went to the faerie garden and talked and kissed, and with the dimmed lighting, I lived out a movie montage in one night. 

I left the next day for a weekend trip and the day I came back, he left for New Zealand so we texted all the while. He wrote a sonnet about me and I thought it was so charming and special, whereas all my friends said “hey, maybe he’s a serial killer for that?” We set a date to go out for dinner, he said he wanted to take me somewhere special. Archer pulled up to my apartment that day to pick me up and as soon as I saw him walk up with no mask covering his face, I said on no… You are not attractive. But I said it in my head! Not out loud! Props to me for that. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and he drove us to the restaurant. It’s close to my apartment and when we walk up and he asks for a table for two, the hostess tells him it’ll be a 40 minute wait since we don’t have a reservation. No problem, I am not high maintenance, I love to sit at the bar! We sit down and order a drink each and as we wait for the food, we get to know each other. Well, he asks me questions and then as soon as I answer he interrupts me with an anecdote and the comment ‘I’ll understand more when I’m older’. This man was 28 and I was 22. He was not that much older than me. Now, this just sounds like an awkward date, right? Archer may be a little weird and not as attractive without a mask covering his entire face, but this isn’t that ‘horrifying’ term I mentioned earlier. But now I’m not attracted to him, he makes a big fuss about wanting to ‘take me somewhere special’ and yet doesn’t make a reservation, makes a fuss about sitting at the bar, berates me for my age, swallows his entire plate within minutes and then begins on MINE, and then drives us to his apartment instead of taking me back to mine where he proceeds to maul me and rips my earring out—during what I assume is an attempt to kiss me. I absolutely ghosted him after that. I even wore a brand new dress that evening! I’m just lucky he didn’t see the tag sticking out that I forgot to take off, I still came out on top. 

The dates with Freddie happened simultaneously. I met him before Archer, he was a regular at the brewery I worked at and we often chatted for hours. He asked me out for a Valentine’s Day scary story event which was lovely. Our next few dates were delightful as well. He took me axe throwing, he would come by at the end of my shifts and help me roll silverware, we would grab a drink at a brewery (one that I didn’t work at). He was 6’3, buff but not in a Dwayne Johnson kind of way, he was 33 and an engineer, and he could talk nerd with me like the best of them. Perfect, right? You’d think so. Freddie was sweet but had a few red flags. One day he decided he didn’t want to have to carry so many keys at the same time to unlock everything so he created a streamlined option. He sliced open the top of his hand near his thumb and inserted a microchip into his muscles, then sewed it back up again. All by himself. This microchip unlocked his door, his car, his laptop, his phone, and his security system. Which, by itself I was willing to ignore. My favorite movie is Trolls, we all have quirks. Then as soon as he heard I was moving to Los Angeles in the future, not even right then, he ghosted me just to send me periodic texts asking if I’ve been on any casting couches yet. A classic ‘nice guy’ sadly. He was honestly a contender until he became weird. Sigh. 

Arizona was a difficult dating pool because it’s full of party boys, but California posed its own problem. All the same f*uckboys, but now a larger state. God help us. 

It was difficult moving to a new state and not knowing a single person your own age. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s true; how do you meet people without knowing the people or the places or the things to do in order to meet those people or places or things? So when I finished moving, had furniture, and was ready to start actually living, I downloaded Hinge and set up five dates for five days in a row the following week. The problem with this is that I have anxiety and I hate dating. That makes this article ironic, huh? I don’t like the format of it, I think dating apps are cringey, and I have a (valid) fear of being murdered. So each morning I would wake up and text my sister “I’m actually going to go on this date today! Wish me good luck!” And without fail each day by mid afternoon I was texting the dates that something came up and I couldn’t make it. And I deleted the app. Some people say that’s karma and that my dating experiences are so wild because I bailed on those in my early LA days, but I disagree. Each of them ended up saying something creepy! Can’t trust dating apps. Or, males in general. 

It was through my serving job that I met Bob. I met Bob the same day that I met Jill, I didn’t hit on him, I thought if I’m right and he’s making eyes at me, then he can come to me. He would joke with me at work, make fun of me, flirt with me and make comments about having a thing for me. It didn’t become anything more until Jill and I had a drink with Bob after work one day and she asked if I could drive him home so he didn’t have to take the bus. We both had to go grocery shopping and Jill said, what a coincidence! You live near each other, you should go grocery shopping together! I drive him home, he texts me after, I blush and giggle and text Jill that I have no idea how to text a potential suitor anymore and what in the world am I doing. The day arrived that Bob and I were going to go grocery shopping and I texted asking what store we should go to, just to find out that I’m the only one who actually thought we were buying groceries. It was a bit that we were supposedly all doing… I didn’t clock this because I actually think that’s a cute date. How better to get to know someone than to find out what they absolutely have to have in their house?? We ended up grabbing tacos, which did end up being our one and only date. Despite being in a three and a half month long ‘situationship’, that was the only time Bob wanted to be seen with me in public. He was cruel but pretended it was a joke, he made me feel insignificant and he did it on purpose. Despite us working at the same restaurant, he barely submitted shifts and was even more broke than me. Not a problem, though! Except for how he went about it. Despite being older than me and having a car and having moved to LA slightly before me, Bob always had me drive. Instead of going for a walk or literally anything else, the majority of the time we spent together was him having me drive to a Taco Bell or McDonalds to get him food, which I would pay for, just to go back to his apartment where we would immediately go to bed and watch what he wanted. Every time. Which I didn’t mind, I get that sometimes people get into a rut and it’s difficult to escape that. I did my best, I am always fully there for the people I care about. But it’s difficult to keep that mentality when there are situations like the one day that I tried to surprise him in lingerie under a trench coat and he instead has me drive across town to pick him up, then turns me away, has me drive to a McDonalds where I sit next to him in said outfit as he tells me all about how he would love to have sex with one of our coworkers. If I was looking at it from the outside I would tell that girl to run. Run as fast as you can, as far as you can, and never look back knowing full well you deserve way better than whatever the hell that is. Except for the very few times when Bob treats her with respect and picks up after the first ring when she gets into a car accident at midnight and says how attractive he finds her. Then it all feels like a gray area. 

It took Bob attempting to ghost me at the restaurant we worked at TOGETHER for me to just laugh and say this is ridiculous! You are ridiculous! I dropped the dead weight and moved on with my life so happily, so easily, and with the strength that I understand what I deserve. 

With that said, what is a situationship? That’s literally dating. It’s not a relationship, but it’s exclusively dating. Maybe it’s old fashioned or old cat lady of me to say that ‘the kids’ are making up the dumbest terms these days. Every day is a new thing. I refuse to use the term situationship in an unironic setting. If you’re in a situationship then you’re not meant to be seeing each other and I mean that wholeheartedly. There is no ‘talking’ and there is no ‘situationship.’ Bob was a grown 28 year old man that I was dating exclusively for several months who was actually the worst. Other than dredging up the past for this article, the only other time I’ve thought of Bob since I cut that cord was when I was in a dutch version of an IHOP in the Red Light District a few weeks ago. I had the nagging feeling that nine months ago I was dating Bob who would watch F1 documentaries on Netflix (on his laptop in bed, not a real TV) before going to sleep every night. And yet the night before I was at a karaoke bar in Amsterdam on the trip of a lifetime flirting with a British lead mechanic for an F1 team competing at the Grand Prix that weekend. Oh how the turn tables. 

It did take some time before I got over all the insecurities Bob instilled in me in such a  short time span though. I invited a guy over with the intention of an NSFW hangout and it took me two shots of tequila just to buck up the courage to pretend I didn’t feel gloriously incompetent. Of course, the guy I invited over ended up being married with children but I didn’t find that out until six months after that one night and neither did any of our friends or coworkers. So, there’s that. Scumbag. 

I really jumped back into the saddle with Cowboy Paul Rudd, though. I met him through Jill’s birthday night out that her boyfriend and I took her out on. He was a guitar player in the band that night and Jill’s boyfriend, Jake, kept encouraging me to go up to him. I two stepped my ass off that night until the bar closed and I was bold enough to tell Cowboy Paul Rudd to dance with me. Not ask, I told him he was going to. Numbers were exchanged, a date was planned, texts were sent back and forth. I genuinely never once called him by his actual name to anyone but him, I only referred to him as Cowboy Paul Rudd, I think you’d agree if you saw him. We grabbed a drink and talked while taking a short walk. He made me dinner and I absolutely fell into his bed, and not by accident. I had the best time. I finally felt back to myself, I felt rejuvenated. Where’s the negative, you ask? There wasn’t one that night. There is something icky about a 35 year old divorced man being a playboy and sending the country cowboy version of “U up?” texts and playing the guitar/singing songs about his ex-wife to pull girls—but that’s none of my business. 

I wish I could tell you those are the worst stories. Unfortunately the males that came after are just incels and boring. Axel was a 30 year old who I was friends with. We hung out in a group setting twice before going to a networking event together. As he drives me home after the event he drops the “So can I come up since we just finished our third date?” Um, no dude. What planet are you from? I literally had never flirted with him a day in my life prior to this moment. I definitely called him out, told him no, and made fun of him. After that though, we flirted a bit, kissed once, and when things fizzled out he told me we needed to talk immediately. I called Axel thinking something was wrong and he needed help, but he just wanted to talk about why we aren’t “a thing” anymore. I told him we had a little flirt but now it’s over and we’re just friends and there’s no rhyme or reason, it just ended naturally. He said “I don’t agree to that though, why can’t we just be friends who are more?” And this went on for an hour and a half. It was very reminiscent of my college ex saying “You can’t break up with me because I don’t agree to that.” This isn’t a democracy, I don’t want to and no is a full sentence. But whatever, incels will be incels. Axel then proceeded to talk shit about me and try to get with the other two younger twenty-something redheads we work with. There’s something to be said for having a type. 

I’d like to say Nathaniel and Liam had something wrong with them. Unfortunately, they were just boring. I met Nathaniel on my own and Liam is one of my best friends coworkers. Despite going out with each of them three times as well, they only ever would go to a bar with me. Dates to them were buying me a few drinks and talking for a couple of hours. Personally, sitting down and talking is not a good date idea for me. First of all, I’m more inclined to NOT like you after a drink because my patience will wane. Second, I can talk to anyone for any length of time. I could literally come up with things to talk about until the end of the world, that is not a good gauge of who I am or how to get to know the other person either. A good way to get to know someone is to fly a kite, to go grocery shopping, to go to a comedy show and find out their type of humor, to play a board game and see how mean they can get during Monopoly or Uno. Like, lets get original. Just because we legally can drink, doesn’t mean that that’s all we have to do. Not to mention that after our third date, Nathaniel didn’t want me to get my red lipstick on him when he kissed me because it was a Friday night and he wanted to go to more bars after I left near midnight. Say it to my face. 

I think the real judge of what single males in California are like in the dating pool though is Allan. He and I went on a double date at a fair with Jill and Jake. He won me a stuffed animal playing a basketball game, we rode some of the twisty turny rides, we had a few margaritas and looked over the city on a gondola. There were red flags throughout the night (don’t ever say Zendaya isn’t talented around me) but he was nice (if a little dumb) and he seemed really into me. Mind you, this is one date four days before I leave the country for almost three weeks and he lives an hour and a half drive from me. As I’m sitting at the gate for my return flight post trip abroad, he calls me at 2am (his time, 4am for me) after drinks with the boys. He tells me he likes me, he misses me, he told his boys about me and they looked me up on Instagram. And they were “shocked to find out that [I’m] a nude model!” I stayed dead silent and just waited for him to dig his grave and dive into it. I bided my time and very calmly, very rationally, told him the following: I am not a nude model, I dabble in boudoir modeling with photographers that I trust and respect. But even if I did, good for me! That’s incredible to have that much self confidence! Regardless of what style of modeling I do, it is no one’s business but my own. It’s a body and we all have one, no one gets to verbalize an opinion (unless it is startlingly positive) on it in my presence. And, hear me out, Allan just kept digging his grave. He just kept saying his “fans” were taken aback by it and he didn’t feel comfortable with me posting things like that. That I could be playing him like a fool and yadda yadda yadda, etc. Reader: the way I was so over it. The second I got him off the phone my friends’ inboxes blew up with audio messages from me about incels and the audacity. 

I’ll stick to my romance novels, thank you. I’m willing to go out again and I’m willing to try if I find someone I like, but damn if I am not actively wading through this kiddie pool of potential suitors. I’ll even continue to go for it when Jill and Jake play the game, “Hi haaave you met Sam?” They make for a great story over drinks with friends and I hope it makes you feel better about your experiences, but it’s much preferable to be a twenty-four year old cat lady than to actually attempt to date in your twenties. The 2020s are an unbearable time full of stupid new words for things that already exist, dating apps used for stalkers and catfishing, and a constantly evolving tipping culture. I’d love to say that I’m hopeful for the future, but I’ve seen every Leslie Mann rom com. I know that the options slim exponentially every year you get older. If only it was socially acceptable to chug champagne and scream-sing “You’re So Vain” while glittering with diamonds every time a male pisses you off or embarrasses you in a public setting. That has so much more finesse to it than ghosting! Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong decade. But oh well, that just means the primary amount of romantic male interests in my life are the ones written by women. And whatever was so wrong with that? Personally, I hit the jackpot.