People think I need a girlfriend. Friends say it\u2019s unhealthy to roll into my 37th year without a girl on board. Despite countless train wrecks, they\u2019re probably right. I\u2019ll soon be moving into an age where it\u2019s oddly creepy for me not to have a girl around. Like my motherfucking neighbor across the courtyard from my apartment. He looks to be about 70, and he always stands at his window staring across at me. Sometimes the lights are on, but sometimes I just see the glint of binoculars or the burning end of a cigarette. Worst, sniper, ever.<\/p>\n
I, of course, always stand naked at my window, drinking, mouthing threats. Last Halloween I went through all the prep to cover myself in fake blood and stand there with an axe, but then I think I got really drunk and watched Doctor Who<\/em> DVD\u2019s instead. I never carry through with the important stuff. Anyway! Girls. I\u2019ve decided to give up on actually meeting somebody in real life. Like at bars and stuff. I hate going out and, when I do, I\u2019m the guy sitting at the back bar confessing to a nervous bartender about how my life plan is to be a night watchman at a morgue and let\u2019s get another vodka tonic and PUT SOME FUCKING VODKA IN IT THIS TIME YOU FATHER-FUCKING DONKEY SHIT and how about them Ravens, eh? Gosh, I like cinnamon buns.<\/p>\n Probably something that doesn\u2019t make for a great first impression.<\/p>\n On occasion, friends will try to hook me up with their single friends. I used to entertain this idea, but I now realize the fundamental flaw. All of my 30 and 40-something married friends only have single friends like me. i.e., the fucked up college buddy who has become a misanthrope and stands at windows naked, watching for the UPS man who\u2019s overdue with brewing equipment and Doctor Who<\/em> DVDs.<\/p>\n On the surface, that\u2019s kind of cool in a girl. There\u2019s the whole idea that, gosh, if she\u2019s like me we\u2019ll get along famously. So I fall for a trap and end up with self-abusive geeks who carry throwing knives around and are banned from every single chain bar in the Maryland suburbs.<\/p>\n The opposite is no better. That\u2019s been tried, as well. The small group of friends who believe that order and stability are the name of the game. Counterbalance. But I don\u2019t trust those women. The sober, functional ones who aren\u2019t able to act out the Riparian Entertainment episode of Keeping up Appearances<\/em>. Can\u2019t trust them. They know something. I don\u2019t know what they know, but I know they know it.<\/p>\n The crazy girls \u2013 my usual go-to when my ship is docked and I\u2019m out carousing on the town with all of my fellow Russian freight workers who are international fugitives and serial killers \u2013 have started to get boring. I used to find great solace in crazy girls because (a) they made me feel better about my position in the world and (b) they\u2019re usually sexual deviants. This was certainly true across the board in college and those fine post-college years where I hadn\u2019t yet started taking real life seriously.<\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m in my late 30s, and life has brutally danced on the grave of my 20s, I\u2019m supremely disappointed in crazy girls. It\u2019s not that I\u2019ve matured, or become less tolerant of deviant sex acts and a struggling death spiral of emotional collapse. All that is fine. The problem is that crazy girls don\u2019t survive past 30. And, if they do, they turn into Zoloft bunnies. What was once a refreshingly masochistic lack of clarity becomes a dull, shuddering lack of clarity. The most prominent side-effect being the ability to realize that you\u2019re a rapidly aging ex-crazy girl who\u2019ll forever be tethered to chemicals and past sins. <\/p>\n Humanity is a terrible thing. Our brief, sad decades on this stinking, dreadful planet with all these fucking horrible people jostling us on the train is a nightmare if you\u2019re given even the slightest glimpse of the truth. There are those of us who know the truth and realize that the only way to survive is to carve our own place in the fray with an emotional machete and a certain level of defiant spiritual territorialism \u2013 and then there are those who know the truth (or are forced to see it) and are overwhelmed by the sad facts of their pathetic lives. Thus passes the crazy girl.<\/p>\n With all this in mind, my requirements have become finely tuned and impossible to match. I want a girl who\u2019s fashionably crazy, functionally lost, blindly driven, drunkenly sober, and doesn\u2019t stab me.<\/p>\n Friends and family alike suggest that I take the plunge and try online dating. I refuse to pay for the service, though. I look at eHarmony and I think, well, for $29 a month I can get four Netflix movies at a time instead of my current belt-tightening one-at-a-time plan. Frankly, I see a longer term payoff with Netflix. Paying for a dating service is like some queer form of gateway drug. Here I\u2019m losing money to spar with women virtually and, if there\u2019s a click, to go and blow a bunch of money at dinner or one of these goddamned million dollar 3D movies or whatever the fuck it is people do when they\u2019re not standing at their window staring at their neighbors.<\/p>\n Then what if it doesn\u2019t stick? Play the field with no rewards? Yes, maybe I\u2019ll meet the love of my life \u2013 like many friends and friends of friends who went online. But they also lead perfect lives and have been personally blessed by Our Lord and Savior Rutherford B. Hayes (who also visits people in dreams and impregnates them). <\/p>\n Maybe I\u2019ll change my mind once I\u2019m done paying off the tremendous debt I accrued whilst publishing niche books. But for now, I just can\u2019t justify yet another monthly bill, no matter how small.<\/p>\n
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