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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I find myself single.

This was inevitable, and the writing was on the wall that the two of us weren't compatible, even if I loved her dearly right from the start.

Little fights would snowball into battles, she had a hair-trigger temper and you'd swear her name, which incidentally could have passed as Latina, made her one. As lovely as she could be, as smart and talented as she was, it wasn't meant to be.

I'm at fault. I'll gladly shoulder the majority of the burden for it all. I could make excuses about ADHD, depression, the enormous amount of stress I'm under as the knives chop away inexorably at the strands of the future, but for all that they're true excuses, I was a pretty crappy boyfriend. I'm very lucky I'm smart and funny enough, that I could make her laugh and temporarily forget my myriad flaws. It's not like I didn't care about her, even if I struggled to show it in the way she craved.

She'll be fine. She always was a fighter.

I think I'll be too. After all, this was a shared decision. Like two cacti hugging in the cold desert winds on a moonless night, the sweetness of the dripping nectar couldn't keep at bay the building pain from all the pricks and scabs we couldn't help but scratch at.

On to more practical things.

I've given enough (good) dating advice here that I know the ropes. Currently, work and exams makes even the apps appealing, for all that they're meticulously designed by psychologists (and the incentives of mammalian evolution) to be a gauntlet of suffering for the male of the species, all to squeeze out your hopes, dreams, and more importantly, money.

But I've aged like wine. I've got a dozen good pictures carefully curated. With a dog. In scrubs. With friends, so women can rest assured I'm not a psycho. In decent clothing and proper lighting. I might not be as handsome as my brother, but I'm certainly not repulsive either. Most importantly, I'm older, and for a man, that's a good thing, right till the male pattern baldness or the paunch hits. Two matches in less than two hours, whereas the last time I tried, as a med student, it took days or weeks.

I'd love to date more in person, but I'm not going to hit the clubs alone. Most of my friends have long since fled to fairer shores. Thankfully flirting with patients (or at least their family members, I don't swing towards 70 year old ladies with cancer) is not illegal in India, we haven't cucked our doctors that badly, but that's not really something I'm inclined to do either, let alone how fucking tired I am at work. Oh well, at least I know I can slide into DMs like I was lubed, 7 years of steady relationships don't lie about that. They didn't pick me for my sterling good looks after all.

But if anyone has any advice. I'm all ears. I'm tired of dishing it out and could actually use some myself.

Before anyone suggests the usual, I am, or intend to:

  1. Get a good haircut (already done).
  2. Hit the gym.
  3. Buy clothes? Nah, I haven't bought new ones in like a year, and I've got enough good fits to make it work.
  4. Lawyer up for our shared investment of a cellphone charger and a vape pod. Well, she does owe me a sizeable amount of money, but I trust she'll pay me back.

I'm tall, charming, with a beard that's far less scraggly after some (poorly adhered to) minoxidil, in a promising career (hahahaha), so please skip the kind of blue pills (psychiatric variant) you'd feed the dearly departed Skookum and the like.

Go on ahead, hit me with your best or worst. I have a beer in hand and a flint in the other to strike and light Tinder. I'm receptive. I have time to kill and the things I need to do can wait.

(The biggest motivator to study for me now has become the observed fact that hot young med students and interns love them an older Resident or Consultant. Time to grind and get that bag.)

I have a years supply of Costco brand minoxidil I got got free. How long till you actually saw results ?

I don't really need a more dense beard, but I might as well use it before it goes bad. Thanks for the reminder.

The standard consensus is that it takes 3 months or more of regular, twice daily use to get a respectable beard.

I think the maximum I've used it that consistently is about a month, and then intermittently whenever I can remember to. It is still a noticeable improvement over what it used to be, and I was already old enough that if I was going to grow a respectable beard it would have happened.

My brother has been using it for at least 6 months now, maybe even longer, and he's been religious about it. He keeps his beard trim, but barring a small patch below the chin that just won't go away, it's denser than mine is, and he's both younger and started worse off.

Just to be clear, you have liquid, topical minoxidil right? I mean, the pills will grow hair. You just won't like where.

(Dosage is about 3 drops or 1 ml per cheek, rubbed in. Trim your beard if you want to maximize the amount making it to the skin, though once again I haven't done that because if keeping my beard short is required to make it bigger, that's (temporarily) defeating the point.)