Skulldrinker
No bio...
User ID: 1874
Eh, I've got a personal story to share.
A few months ago, I ran into someone at the pub I'm a regular at and worked for during the span of a festival. She was tall with grey eyes and a strong jaw, a spacey stare-right-at/past-you expression and a throaty dreamy voice with a tiny hiss in it; a few sideways teeth. Kinda Debra Morgan-looking. She was also a regular and barbacked occasionally, otherwise she did merch distribution at festivals and venues. We both sperg'd out on eachother about this-or-that subject. Her stuff was Electric Cello, Cannibalism, Fullmetal Alchemist deep lore (what the fuck is Father? Our conclusion: the closest analogy would be a luciferian fallen angel). We were talking about Tieflings throughout the editions and character trope stuff, I said I like the Half-monster-guy-who-hunts-monsters-and-is-conflicted-about-it schtick, like Hellboy. Turns out Hellboy is her favorite/comfort movie that she throws on when she's down. I immediately know why. She shares some music she's working on with me, says she hasn't shown it to anyone else, even her best friend. Says I'm easy to talk to. Says she'd wondered if she'd run into me that night. I'm more a Show, Don't Tell sort of person, but I'm obviously internally smitten. In case you can't catch the hint, she's not 100% neurotypical. Neither am I. I mean, I post here.
I got her phone number so she could tell me when she'd be doing a cello set somewhere, but her set didn't pan out and she didn't reply past that, so I didn't keep at it, but she kept Liking my instagram posts (nature/wildlife/bugs and RPG sessions).
She posts about going to a House of the Dragon S2 watch party at another bar for her birthday, and I formulate a plan: Turn up at that party and give her a laser-guided gift. I have an extra copy of the Hellboy paperback that's the main source for the film (she hasn't read the comics). Inside the front cover, I write "all us freaks have is each other" (Like I said, I know why we both love the film, and DelToro in general). I also fire up my filament printer and print out three full-size tooth faeries from Hellboy 2 in blueish-green plastic, assemble them, and color in the eyes and teeth. (This isn't that big of a project for me; I've played Warhammer in the past)
I turn up to the watch party, which is full of goddamn Kneelers who shout "woo, matriarchy!" which causes me pain. But it's still a decent time, a kid gets his head hacked off. Afterwards I run into her; she'd arrived after me and I intentionally wasn't looking for her during the episode. But we both make a big deal of running into eachother. I run back to my car and come back with a cardboard box full of faeries. She loves them, she's cooing over how cute they are, how they all have different heads, she's giving them names, she's showing them off to everyone around her. She spontaneously hugs me when she sees the dedication inside the book.
As an amusing aside, after the watch party this bar had an open-mic stand-up event. And everyone was terrible. Like, reddit-tier generic terrible. There were boos and groans. Some boilerplate edgy jokes (I think one guy joked about Gays for Palestine getting thrown off of buidings. It was just fucking inept). At first I think this is a huge windfall; I'm actually funny. But it'd be hours before I could get on and school these fools. My crush and her crowd get up to head to a different bar, because they're so affronted. I'm invited along, even though I'm slightly worried about the prissy reaction, I steadfastly hold to their work being bad because it's bad, not because its offensive.
The company my crush keeps is slightly worrisome to me. Many are fat feminists of the "Men, amirite?" sort, but I don't have the impression they're close friends, just acquaintances. I later find out that she's a preacher's daughter and was an activist from an early age, part of OG Occupy (she's in her early 30s, I'm in my mid-30s). I carefully talk around the subject and express my own frustration that activism these days is more about being seen having the right opinions and hating the right people than furthering a worthy cause, which seems to resonate with her a bit. There's a careful future conversation to be had, but at least she remembers a time before IdPol infected every cause.
She goes outside to smoke and asks if I'd like to join her. She smokes American Spirit; the same cigs I smoke, which I only do socially (too much time at bars in the smoker's pen; that's where all the cool people and cool conversations are) They last forever. She talks about how she loves pretending she's in a noir story when she smokes. I ask "Yes, but in this context, who's the jaded alcoholic detective and who's the dangerous dame?" She smiles as I take a cig, I reach for a lighter, but she beats me to it. "Pretty people don't light their own cigarettes" she says, with that same smile.
A few minutes later, I kiss her. We spend a little time just holding eachother, enjoying the closeness, and head back inside.
The evening continues. I try not to monopolize my crush and let her hang with the rest of the people there. We go back outside for another cigarette, I kiss her again, she pulls away a bit when I get over-enthusiastic, we talk more, I decide to dial it back. Typically my conversations with women are like pulling teeth; I ask open-ended questions and get yes-or-no answers. They never volunteer information or start a topic or ask me about myself or even talk about themselves; I get the impression that they're playing dead to make me go away. Maybe that's just what normal people are like. This evening isn't normal, we're chatting. She says things that surprise me, which is disappointingly rare in my interactions with people. We can talk about stories and ideas and random science facts. She gets my jokes. She makes her OWN jokes. We're both creative in our own ways. She talks about her job, how it forced her to learn social skills, which is something she struggled with for a long time; she's had to put the effort into learning stuff that other people seem to just do without thinking. The feels feel so feel I have to fight to stop my eyes from getting wet. I'm very much being hit where I live.
My crush starts mentioning how tired she is, people have been buying her drinks all day. I note she's acting even spacey-er than she typically is, and resolve to not push for anything. I also find out she's just landed an awesome tour contract where she'll be handling merch at a succession of festivals all summer and autumn; she'll be gone for six months, and she's got to pack tomorrow. But there's a few shows that are happening in the city, so she'll be back in town a few times.
People start clearing out, she's very tired, she talks about calling an Uber. I offer to drive her and save her $10, since my car is nearby and I haven't had any drinks for a few hours. We walk back to my car arm-in-arm, all cutesy and formal. There's hand-holding. There's continued verbal telegraphing of tiredness, and she's not escalating anything. I get her back to her place, unload the box of faeries, kiss her one last time and say "I wish we had more time together," then leave. Send a text the next day expressing how great it was getting to know her, how nice a time I had, how I'll miss her and hope to get together again when she's back in town.
A day later, I receive a reply:
Just so you know, I'm unhappy that you made out with me while I was drunk. That wasn't how I wanted my birthday to go, and I'm really upset about it.
I reply saying I'm sorry, I might have rushed things when I realized you'd be leaving town for a while, how would you like me to comport myself towards you in the future? I'm trying to say "If you never want to hear from me again, please just say that." I never receive any further reply. She hasn't unfollowed me on instagram; I've hidden her posts so I don't see them unless I go looking, so as to avoid further pain. I'm confused in addition to shattered; is there a rule that you're not allowed to flirt with women when it's their birthday? She wasn't so drunk that she couldn't have cogent conversations about wide-ranging topics, I sure as hell felt encouraged. I thought I was being gallant by not asking if she'd like to show me her place or otherwise head inside for "coffee" or to see etchings. Fuck, how much worse would this have been if I had?
I wonder where those tooth faeries are now. Thrown out? In a box in a closet? I can't imagine her scattering them on shelves like she planned if they're just going to remind her of that time she got molested.
This is what my life is like. Nothing ever, ever works out, and whenever I think I'm making an emotional connection with someone, reality itself seems to realize a mistake has been made and steps in to correct things. I have a day or two of emotional torment as I accept that I am going to continue to be alone and to feel arbitrarily alienated. I am not allowed to do the things regular people are allowed to do. I don't get to be human. If I try, even other weirdos reject me once they sober up and invent new rules regarding birthdays.
Someone else in this thread complained that a girl didn't text him back, and I thought to myself "Hold my beer."
Edit: I appreciate the condolences, but I kinda despair at the caliber of some of the replies, and its damaged my view of the remaining userbase of this place. I don't need regurgitated /r/Redpill advice about shit tests. I'm lucky enough to have spent most of my (albeit limited) intimate time with women in actual relationships with another human being that I like and respect and who likes and respects me, instead of some retarded power game with a bratty child. You can miss me with that gay shit.
Several times now, I've had text conversations with women where they seem to scare themselves off.
One kept pushing me to ask her sexual compatibility questions, which I answered as delicately and dryly as I could. She'd rave excessively about how attractive I was and how she's looking forward to seeing me again (we met once, briefly, and she tracked me down on social). Since I know it's a bad idea to build up a date this much and set sexual implications, I complemented her back but kept it light and fun.
Then the day of the date, suddenly a co-worker got fired and she has to work a double. Also "You're not expecting sex for this meeting, are you?" Well no, I was not, despite everything you've said being suggestive of that, because I was going to take it slow. I reply "Light canoodling at most." There's mutual availability tuesday, and thursday, but she suggests thursday, mentioning "she'd like more planning, usually." Now I haven't heard anything from her since.
Before this, the shape of the exact same thing happened. She started talking as though she was already assuming we'd be in a relationship with her "adding spice to my life and shaking things up." This is way, WAY more than I'd typically send when I haven't even met someone in person, it assumes too much. Then suddenly she was astronomically ill from "allergies," which continued for several days, her apparently being home from work, yet replying less than when she was at work, until I stopped texting.
I want people to turn up for an in-person date. I very carefully don't say things that create too much pressure or assume things about compatibility, because it comes off as pressuring and dishonest ("OMG I'm so into you" ...we haven't actually met yet, miss, maybe save that for after the first date). But then they themselves do that exact thing, bail the day before.
Fucking everything I do is tiptoeing around not triggering anyone's anxiety so as not to be treated as a threat, then they trigger their OWN anxieties, treat me like a threat, and presumably pat themselves on the back for having spotted a manipulative predator who was Only After One Thing.
What the fuck is going on here?
When I interact with someone in real life, I get really confused and anxious whenever they start praising me. Then they get confused as to why. This is why. Because whenever someone gives me unprompted compliments or raves about me, they swiftly ditch me, which is why I don't believe what anyone says anymore.
Edit: we made plans on Monday for Wednesday, I was ghosted on Tuesday.
This was not online dating, btw.
This is mainly a vent.
I find myself withdrawing from 'trying' with women, socially. I used to attempt to strike up friendly conversations with with people in general, but naturally with an emphasis on not-unattractive women. Not in a particularly flirty way, either.
And I find myself constantly disappointed that they keep finding a way to get in a reddit-y snark along the lines of "Men, Amirite?" I try to be non-argumentative in this context, but I increasingly have the urge to go meta-therapist and say something like "I feel like there's a lot of implicit hostility in that statement. I have my own frustrations with, you know, girls and stuff, but I'd consider it rude and a bad look to bring it up in conversation with a stranger. Are you trying to hint I should go away, or do you just think this is how people talk in #currentyear? Because I really can't tell anymore."
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
I've been reflecting lately on how downright unhelpful and unpleasant my experiences with dating/flirting/sex were earlier in my life, and what a weight around my neck the still are. In my previous life, there was no such thing as flirting, women were just "being friendly," and would curl their lip and give you a glare if you let slip that they'd been socializing with someone heterosexual by doing something so crass as asking for a phone number. "Ewwww, a man is speaking to me, make it go away" was what happened if you spoke before being spoken to. The attitudes of the women I knew socially bounced between "Just talk to people silly, it's not that hard, you're so nice," "chuh, why do you feel the need to not be alone, there's something wrong with you," and "Fourteen out of twelve women will be sexually assaulted by eyeball-contact at frat parties by niceguys before they even get a job that pays them 70 cents on the dollar compared to a man."
I once had a woman approach me at a new years party at a bar (small, bob cut, I can still remember the contours of her shoulderblades), something about trying to find her friend, but the friend never got mentioned again. We got another drink, she asked to dance once she got back from the bathroom. While she was in the bathroom and I was holding her drink, a fat redhead got in my face, demanding to know who I was, who I was here with, if I even knew her (bob cut's) name. I was taken aback, said her name is [name], I'm holding her drink for her, then we're going to dance, oh, there she is now, bye. BobCut came out of the bathroom, didn't acknowledge fat redhead, took her drink and my hand, and dragged me out onto the dance floor. It was 11:50pm. At 11:56pm, security appears and separates us, the fat redhead is screaming in my face demanding to know who I'm with, a security guy is asking the same questions while she screams at me. Bob cut is nowhere to be found (probably being given a foil trauma blanket while still trying to figure out what happened), no I'm not allowed to speak to bob cut, no I'm not being kicked out, no I can't speak to bob cut, who am I here with, no, bob cut doesn't count, no I'm not being kicked out, who am I here with. I'm getting increasingly frustrated, I'm not particularly sober, fat redhead is still in my face, her head jerking around on her flabby neck like some kind of righteously affronted parrot. I can sense a blowup looming, the front door is conveniently nearby, and the future of me doing the new years countdown and making out with someone has evaporated. I leave, and I ring in the new year of 2017 walking down the snow-dusted sidewalk of Milwaukee, cursing my awkwardness and cowardice.
The bar was a nerd/geek/gamer pub, of course. Nowhere else would the act of a man dancing with a woman be treated as some sort of crisis in need of calling security. I never ran into either of them again, the pub itself closed shortly thereafter. Since then, every time a woman flirts with me unprompted in a social setting, I go into a quiet panic and look over my shoulder for whatever third party will arbitrarily decide I am not worthy of happiness or love.
My point is that I keep failing to get phone numbers or contact info, or I collect contact info and do nothing with it, even when women are blatantly eye-fucking me, because I still have the lingering trauma of living in 2010s geek culture. And I still run into snippets of it every now and then, but with a current-year leftist flavor. (I've been in conversations where women will make some reddit-y crack along the lines of "straight white men, amirite?" but turn out later to have been into me, scrabbling for contact info or a kiss as I try to politely take the hint and leave.)
I just want to go for a stroll in the park with someone and bang them later, then do that again with the same person for the foreseeable future. And I hate that the world and I both conspire to make that much more difficult than it should be.
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
All my friends rarely date these days for that reason. These issues are all we talk about when we get together.
So their conversations don't even pass the Bechdel Test.
I get that this is a different country with its own rat-race social problems, but I roll my eyes at the fear of men who hate women. Most men who hate women hate them because women won't get anywhere near them, so they never have an opportunity to hurt a woman apart from mean comments on the internet. Sexually successful men dont hate women, they just don't treasure them, and treat them how [sexually successful] women treat men; as disposable. Abusive men don't hate women, they hate the world and women just can't resist being around them for some mysterious reason.
Or by "men who hate women" does she mean that don't soyfully agree with generic feminist talking points? I once ended a relationship over watching The Imitation Game, of all things. "Ah, here's Kiera Knightly reprising her role as a modern woman trapped in the past" was apparently such a hateful comment that it got me a continuous diatribe about women's suffrage until I flat-out got up and left. I wonder if that was proof that I hated women.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
How did Trump's Rogan appearance hash out? I don't have the heart to listen to it; I used to really like Joe, but he's picked up too many conspiracy bugs. The parasite load is starting to show, and I'm kinda tired of hearing about vaccines and the possible dangers thereof.
To the degree I'm angry at vaccines, I'm angry that the covid vaccines DIDN'T end the pandemic.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
neurodivergent
This one really, really bugs me, I see it as stolen valor. Also, they're still unforgiving of the neurodivergence of others.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
Every young Canadian I've met thinks "America, Amirite?" Is the peak of humor and social commentary. They aren't going to move somewhere with guns and racism, which of course define the US.
The other day I had a conversation with someone who used to work for a Non-profit who's whole thing was getting Asylum-seeking migrants in Chicago as many resources as possible. She left that job because most of it was telling them (the Migrants) to lie to get more stuff, and coaching them on exactly what to say. Her take was that the whole thing was just moving people around and extracting money from the city so the Non-profit could continue to pay its directors their cushy salaries and justify the non-profit's continued existence, while dumping Guatemalans in the city's shelters and public housing so the men could be layabouts or thugs while the women deployed their kids to sell candy in Fulton Market (trendy restaurant district).
So not anything we didn't already know. Just funny to hear it from the horse's mouth. Especially an ethnically-mexican horse
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
I won't belabor the point around pandemic response, but there is simply no reason to believe that the Dems would have done categorically better than Trump, and some reason to believe they'd be worse.
Without Trump, there might not have even been a pandemic...because the media and institutional apparati wouldn't have been so motivated to belabor the crisis and keep it going. The COVID Death Counter only got removed once he was out of office. Under Trump, every event got magnified into a crisis to keep people wound up and deranged.
Skulldrinker
4d ago
The bulletproof suit enables lazy writing.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
My solution would be to use the preferred pronouns but somehow mark them as being specifically-requested pronouns. That way when you say She it can be read as sarcastic.
Or include both versions of the pronoun; so a cis woman is She but a trans woman (or a woman who puts her pronouns in her bio) is She/Her. Never call a They/Them They or Them, always call them They/Them.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
I recently had a pretty negative experience with a woman who genuinely WAS neurodivergent, moreso than my awkward ass. I found it incredibly disheartening to find out that she didn't have the same "resents normies but desperately wants to be accepted by them" complex as me, almost as if despite her awkwardness the world had still welcomed and cherished her.
Me and neurodivergent women:
"Oh, what I thought was eye-fucking this whole time was just you being slightly autistic."
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
I was going to ask a related question:
How much of the market drop and the apparent crisis(es) are the result of negative media coverage? Anything and everything the administration does is seen as a violation of something or other.
"News Today: Fascist still in White House doing things, when will the carnage end? Breaking Update: during a vital meeting, trump used the bathroom and delayed lifesaving aid to [minority]>."
I'm still convinced that this happened during COVID. With any other administration, the media wouldn't have been motivated to keep hammering on the fear, the vaccines would have been an excuse to end the lockdowns, and you wouldn't see masked-up leftists to this day. Being deathly afraid of COVID was bound up with being a good little resistance member.
That said, I didn't even vote in this election and don't personally like Trump; he melted my dad's brain, among other wrongs. I'm disappointed at the Musk lying and tomfoolery; this isn't even good trolling. It feels like someone somewhere made a monkey-paw wish to defeat wokeness and this is what they got. I worry it might have been me.
I really just wanted the crypto market to go up, thanks to fair/reasonable/clear regulation and institutional buy-in. A Bitcoin reserve is fundamentally a good idea. I want a future where putting 5-10% of your assets/investments in crypto is boring safe, conventional wisdom that it'd be irresponsible not to follow, like bonds or whatever. Trumpcoin doesn't further that goal.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
Likes the Infinite Jest?
Odd, literally the first time I even heard of Infinite Jest, it was a talking point of the Perfect Organism in his demented efforts to become maximally appealing to college-educated women. Since 2020, has Infinite Jest become badwrong, along with Teslas?
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
He's charitably describing even the best-case scenario of someone who was at least functional before going to prison, something blue-collar or menial, had a wife he slapped around occasionally and kids he'd over-discipline when drunk. Not a great human being, but a step or two above the functional scum they are now.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
Height is something that everyone has that you can't change. So anything mentioning height will get rage-engagement in the Internet attention economy. Race-bait, gender-bait, height-bait, they can all be taken as personally as a generic "your mom" insult.
It's not that great to be tall; I still spent most of my life painfully alone, with women often being performatively afraid of me.
Skulldrinker
11mo ago
Most credit cards have a 6 or even 12-month zero-interest financing period. Amazon store cards have this.
I sold carrier phones for years. I'm on Mint and buy my phone outright and pay it off over 6 to 12 months, usually buying a ~$500 A-series pixel or Oneplus something-or-other. This is what I tell other people to do. Just about no one does. Instead they buy carrier phones.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
I assume she was convinced I was up to no good, as an unattended male.
I was new to the city and was at the event precisely because I hadn't made friends yet.
I've been specifically trying to to be more outgoing lately, I just keep getting anxious flashbacks to shit from almost a decade ago.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
...does canoodling mean something other than what I think it means?
This chick is talking about sexual preferences and how handsome I am and the sorts of shit she gets up to, yet I'm scary for talking about sitting next to eachother with our heads together chatting?
Skulldrinker
7mo ago
No, openly flirting gets you a lecture about straight guys always assuming they're not queer, or rates of sexual assault, and engaging with a "Men, Amirite?" quip with anything other than soy appeasement immediately labels you as an anti-feminist chud trump-voting something-or-other, with a possible reference to internet bogeymen from 2016.
Skulldrinker
8mo ago
It's a bit spooky how much he's being glazed up-thread.
Skulldrinker
9mo ago
I first ran into it among low-IQ co-workers at a terrible job I once had, male and female. They couldn't wrap their minds around my disinterest in discussing it; I dug in my heels and refused to give them my birth date. I was affronted.
A male friend of a female friend at a dinner party brought it up, and between me slightly disliking him based on secondhand info I got from my friend, and off-the-cuff surprise, I was not kind when he casually brought up astrology as a conversational topic. My default assumption was it was a tactic to appeal to women, and the only thing I dislike more than people who actually believe in astrology is people who pretend to like things for social brownie points.
Skulldrinker
6d ago
A random person in real life described Sinners glowingly then talked about how it was about how evil white people are. Im disinterested watching it now, I'd rather see Near Dark again.
I get the same thing from Jordan Peele films.
These films are for white people who for aesthetic reasons want to see black people. The Peele stuff in particular gets a lot of mileage out of showing black people in peril to distress white liberals without actually hurting a Black Body.
The last new star Trek movie came out, what, 10 years ago, and they weren't particularly woke anyways (by Star Trek metrics). The beef with them was they were shallow James Abrams action-fests, not that they were too woke. Star Trek has always been progressive. It just wasn't always so #CurrentYear.
My beef is with Star Wars, anyways. I very specifically got accused of "being against strong role models for girls" when I said The Last Jedi wasn't very good, and I've kinda never forgiven the world for that.
There's still a set of critics and influencers who will clap like circus seals at anything that vaguely alludes to capitalism bad or hwiteness bad,
More options
Context Copy link