2/18/23

Good morning, I hope you all slept very well. It's the weekend, Midterms are over for most of us, February is coming to a close, and the days are getting longer, and warmer. Can you feel the mental stability growing in correlation to the temperature? Now personally, I'm an autumn kind of gal, but I know that for the two weeks in Arizona where it is actually a nice, decent, moderate temperature outside I'm going to thrive. 

That being said, this has definitely been an off week. I blame most of it on men not knowing when they are desired to be communicated with, the answer to which never literally leaving me alone you're the one who ghosted me why are you now trying to step back into my life when I'm actively trying to forget you exist? I also blame February. I've always hated February our beef has a history. Obviously, I think it's partly because of Valentine's day, but I also think it just has weird energy. December is two months ago, it's objectively a new year we can no longer cling to "oh, I'm not used to it yet" as a defense against the never stopping passage of time. February feels a lot like a lull in the year's progression. Nothing happens in February, it's after the commotion of winter, before the excitement of Spring, really the gist of what I'm saying is it blows. Regardless, I am very much looking forward to the change, I know I  talk about growth a lot, partly because I'm trying to speak it into existence for myself, but also because I do genuinely think it's important to be thinking about it. This is why I think Spring, despite genuinely debilitating allergies, is something I look forward to so much because it really does feel like a very significant example of change. Even if you don't like warmer weather, being able to spend so much more time outside, and going on hikes, swimming, and long walks at night just feels good. What the fuck are you doing in the Winter? Christmas is over, and there is literally nothing to look forward to, I am coming out as anti- "I prefer winter" people. 

Spring embodies, for me, personally, the real new year. The rest of winter is a hiccup we need to get over, but Spring is when shit goes down. Think back to last year, can you think of a single memory from January to February that doesn't now bring you great pain? Perhaps I'm projecting, or you're lying to yourself, but March, Spring Break for me, is when things become real. This year my wife, Katie, and I are going on a road trip and I think that getting out of Arizona for a week, is going to benefit me in a way I can't really explain. I told my roommates I feel like I need to leave Arizona to appreciate it, if that makes sense, it gives me more of a sense of where "home" now is. I grew up constantly moving houses, whether it was my mom literally moving houses or my sister and I going in between my mom, dad, and grandparents' houses, constantly, for years. Thus I think I get a little disassociated from where I currently am, so I need to go somewhere else, so I can come back to my "home base" and feel more real in it. What's more Arizona, as well as February, kind of blows at the moment. Arizona, the locations and landmarks I see every day, feel like constant reminders of the things I haven't done or have failed to do.  this is the gay shit. While I do feel like I'm progressing academically, there's a lot I know I'm missing out on. Whether it's a result of my lack of sociability or the lack of people I feel the need to socialize with, I've realized that I have once again taken up the role of the observer, mostly in my own life. Most of what I do involves sitting quietly in public settings, speaking when spoken to and simply watching everything that goes on within earshot of me. And I feel like because of this, my perspective, though probably more cynical now, has shifted as well. 

 I've very badly attempted to go in-depth on this previously, but centered it mainly around my experiences and sounded like a bitch. I have deep analytical thoughts I promise. As I've watched, I've noticed how many of my experiences are shared with those around me, as well as our thought processes surrounding them. Not that I had thought I was the only one who understood how I felt -I mean kind of- but more that it made me realize how much of a pattern everything is. I do think I have had very bad experiences socially, and others have had it worse, and also better, as most things are. But it struck me how crazy it is that it happened so many times. When you really start keeping track of all of your encounters, some of your friend's encounters, people online's encounters, everything starts breaking into a cycle, and what's more, the people all blend together as well. Men especially, maybe it's just because these are what most of the center of my experience around, in my mind have begun breaking into more defining groups of characteristics and traits. What's most evident surrounding all of them though is their disinterest in meaningful relationships. I'll start with one example: Twitter. In the queer community especially but also including everyone else, there's been an evident movement towards desensitizing the majority to sex work. On one hand, I absolutely stand behind people wanting to do sex work as there is a way of making money, I've done it, however, once again, especially in queer spaces, there seems to be extra weight put on your ability to succeed in the industry. So now we're at a point, at which a lot of people, young people making Onlyfans the week they turn 18, are competing for who can get the most likes for a picture of their genitals. And with those pictures come invites, solicitation, dirty, under-the-bathroom-stall hookups, because if you can get a sexual thrill out of a picture, what's stopping you from making a video, and then a collab, and now you're essentially your own pimp and a hooker at the same time. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. The next step is part of the bigger picture I'm attempting to frame.

We've touched on accessibility and overexposure on the blog surrounding topics such as fashion and music, a subject that becomes so easy to get your hands on that it loses the ability to feel special to you. Take that perspective and apply it to sex. Because sex as an activity, a hobby, or a project, has become so easily accessible to pretty much anyone, why would you worry about any other aspect of meeting new people? The last stage in the "Twitter" dude pipeline is the total and utter loss of personality and character depth. You're not meeting people and getting to know them, taking them out to dinner, or asking about their siblings, you invite them over at 10 pm on a Sunday night, fuck for two hours, and then maybe one of the two (or more) of you catches feelings resulting in more coming from it, or a quick and easy ghosting to drive the point across on the other end.  The death of dating is what really started it all Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, no matter how much effort the developers put into making the apps about matching personalities rather than quick bursts of physical attraction, 99% of people on them, in my experience, are still caught in the loop. And this brings me to my next key point: question marks. Unlike Twitter, Question marks have personality and depth. They have friends they tell you about that they haven't had sex with, and stories from childhood that tell you they're someone who actually thinks. An example of this archetype is someone that felt good, but somehow still didn't work out for whatever reason. You've known them, you know what they're about and the kind of role they play. They talk to you nicely, they've never even asked for nudes. When you finally get a date with them, they actually take you out. You get food and they pay, they ask about school and what job you wanna get when you graduate. You ask them about their brother and the friend they're also posting on their Snapchat story and the most recent ski trip they went on. They tip the waiter and tell them to "have a nice day" instead of just walking out the door, big deal for people from the midwest. Everything going well so why not keep hanging out, why not invite them over? You hang out, you cuddle on the couch and they have invested conversations with your roommates. When they leave you to start planning the next date in your head, next Friday there's an event happening Downtown, why not go with them? As the day comes fast, they start pushing the plans back. They're busier than they thought they were, they just need to finish one more assignment. "I'm really sorry my anxieties are just really bad right now do you mind if we reschedule?" they text you 30 minutes after they were supposed to be there. You liked them, "Of course I understand, feel better <3". And you never talk to them again. These people are ones that, objectively, something happened with. The date was good why would they want to stop texting? Maybe it was one-sided, and while you were feeling good that you found someone actually interesting they were counting down the hours until they could go home. What did you do wrong? Did you not put out enough? Maybe if your lashes looked longer they would've actually shown up. Maybe you were too fem for him and he didn't know how to break it to you so he faked it until he saw an out. It's a constant question mark. And it kills your interest in the dating scene for a good few days. Obviously, the bad ones are bad, but even the good ones end up bad, and for seemingly no reason. The final stage in my conclusion: is delusion. Lol. The first large stage was desensitization, sex losing its significance in your relationships. The second stage, and the second grouping of individual traits, are the people who think they're not a part of it. Allow me to give you a "for instance". You match with someone on Hinge, an app curated to be for dating purposes "the app designed to be deleted". The two of you are hitting it off, you love their energy and they love your dry humor. After a day or so you move to messages after they asked for your number instead of Snapchat. You're getting to know each other, they have a dog named Ziggy, some kind of hound though they're not 100% certain what kind, you told them your parents split at 14, and how difficult it was to come to terms with knowing your family will never spend a Christmas together again. Finally, they ask to hang out, "and do what?" you ask, "Whatever really, Im easy :)" they respond, quickly, you may add. As plans form you realize they dont want to get dinner or go thrifting, they wanna come over and watch a movie. It doesn't matter, you're focused on spending time with them more than anything, if they wanna do an easy get-to-know-you, why would that be an issue? So you fuck. You knew it was going to happen, nobody watches a movie on the first date and doesn't canoodle in some way. However the longer they spend in your house, taking up your space, constantly telling you you're so beautiful, saying they already know they want to see you again, you realize the attraction you felt was not the same kind of attraction as theirs. They're telling you they like your eyes, the way your lips sit when you're not talking, they're infatuated with you, but they don't see you. They dont know you. They've asked you three times already where you were from because the first time they were just making small talk on the way to your bed. It's all scripted, step-by-step instructions on how to do a first-time hanging-out night correctly, and you know you've both done it multiple times before. The difference is that while they're perfectly fine repeating the same steps over and over until it works, you don't want to be someone who gets the same treatment as everyone else. Unlike the rest. You've paid your dues and can recognize what you want, and you know it isn't that. 

Now you're at a point in which sex doesn't work, you need more emotional connection than that. You can try dating but there's no guarantee that'll be any better. If you wait to form a connection with someone before they come over, there are a million other connections the two of you can lack altogether. But the real issue is how un-emphasized all of it is. For most, there are millions of better options at all times, no need to settle, especially when you know you can do better. So everyone has settled for "playing the field", seeing what happens. This guy's not that cute but he offered to pay for dinner so why not? We all have the mindset of "Why not?", resulting in a total lack of interest in "why". None of us care to put in the energy required of us, on both sides of the dating pool. Love has become an object. It's something impermanent to cling to, an idealization of something we've all accepted as out of reach that was perfectly fine pretending it's still there. We fuck, we date, we hang out, and love is not part of the equation in any sense. 

When someone knows something is there, the desire to have it decreases. If your vape is in your pocket, vs left at home, you won't think about hitting it nearly as frequently as you would knowing you can. If you know love is there, it's just not what you're thinking about right now, you're going to do everything without it until you feel you're ready for it, letting it shrink and whither, sitting alone in a cupboard being buried under meaningless nothing. Love is dead because we killed it. We repeated a mantra of all of us are too good for everyone, that we can just get what we want without all of the anxiety of the stuff associated with it, we completely forgot that there used to be more to the transaction than there is now. 

I'm done. No media this week. Sit outside.

Love you all

~Christian Reid