I told a story recently and am going to tell it again tonight about how I was very bad at attempting to have sex. You should go to the show to see me tell it. I was REALLY bad at trying to have sex.

The story is specifically about a girl I was desperately in love with despite knowing her for two weeks before I came to this conclusion. I was 18 and a virgin and she shared some interests with me so that meant we were meant for each other. If you want to hear the story, you’ll have to come to the show tonight, but the important part that I will tell now is that we don’t wind up together.

It’s an adorable story of me being as pathetic as possible and still not getting the girl. I love telling these stories. I love telling these stories because I think it’s important that people hear the romantic comedy archetypical plot from the supposed hero of these stories and realize that it is not a life that should be aspired toward.

I watch Chuck on Hulu every week. It is the worst show for television because it lauds this nerdy guy as some sort of backwards sex symbol who should both aspire to and succeed in getting the super hot girl who has not similar interests to him. This is not the only show that does this. Every movie with Topher Grace or Michael Cera or Jay Baruchel or Insert Scrawny White Guy Here is about how this guy who couldn’t get laid has a heart of gold and if he just tries hard enough than a girl should respect that and start laying him. The problem with this being, of course, that women should have agency and just because a man tried really hard does not mean that a woman should have sex with him. He might be annoying, ugly, or share no interests with her. In fact that is usually the case. If you base a whole romance on one shallow trait being shared or one band as a common interest then conversations will run dry very quickly. Yet we keep making these movies and tv shows under the assumption that because the man is nerdy he is an underdog and therefore can be rooted for and you are still being subversive.

Quickly put: the oversexualization of scrawny white guys who stammer when they get nervous and get nervous when they’re near hot girls has been made more destructive because people are able to trick themselves into thinking that they are going against the status quo, when in fact they are simply living out some lonely mans fantasy where he re-writes his past and gets to hook up with a girl he created in his mind.

So, I tell stories where I lead you on a journey that you’ve been led on before. Scrawny awkward white guy likes girl. Girl is too hot for him and doesn’t want to have sex with him. He tries really hard though! But then instead of the girl finally succumbing to his patriarchy and sleeping with him – I fail in some interesting way that continues to defy the status quo. In the video that I hope you clicked on above I make out with a man in a closet.

As I began this post: I told a story that followed this formula a couple weeks ago. I was then approached by two women. They were attractive women and they wanted to talk to me. Because I had accidentally oversexualized myself by presenting myself as the hero of their teen-movie fantasy. More interestingly though, was that after listening to my story that ended with me and protagonist female not together, the women asked if the girl I was sitting with was protagonist female. The girl I was with was a friend. A good friend, but far from the girl I had devoted a year of my life creeply obsessing about and wanting to sleep with. But they couldn’t wrap their mind around the idea that that girl was no longer a part of my life.

Me and protagonist female are still friends but not sexual/romantic. We talk on the phone sometimes, but she lives in another state. But that’s not how the story is supposed to end. I had put so much effort into trying to fuck her that if she wasn’t fucking me now she must be a bitch. But she’s not. She just didn’t want to fuck me. And that is her right as a person to not want to fuck me. She deserves that right. All people deserve the right to not want to fuck me. Not believing this is the same as believing in rape. It’s stripping away sexual agency from women in favor of whatever a man wants.

It’s funny. These two girls came up to me so blinded by hearing the beginning of a story they had heard before that they forgot to listen to the end. And even if they did listen they refused to hear it because it didn’t fit their fantasy dreamworld where me and protagonist female end up together with babies and happiness. They didn’t think she had the right to not want to fuck me. She must now be that girl that I am sitting with.

I think anger and hunger have forced this incoherence. The important thing to take away from it is that you should come hear me tell a story tonight at The Fifth Estate and then NOT try to have sex with me because of it. I won’t respect you.