Things were looking up for me this summer. I hit the sweet seven-inch growth spurt every man in his early 20s yearns for, my socially debilitating acne finally disappeared, and my workout playlists now included female artists. But something was missing, there was a hole in my heart that I needed to patch. I needed a beautiful inamorata to fulfill my romantic, cinephilic urges. Preferably a woman in her prime, yet still a virgin. Someone with a wondrously innocent take on life that hasn’t been crushed with the realism of the world due to her sheltered upbringing, and most importantly, someone who gives me the motherly love I crave.
But this painfully real world filled with real people won’t allow me to find the love I need. On every dating app after swiping left and right and up and down endlessly, I’m rewarded with an endless stream of rejections. My profiles show me for who I really am; a shy guy looking for simple love. But even as I “slide into their DMs” with poems, verses, and sonatas of their beauty, it is to no avail.
Why would society be so cruel as to fill my impressionable head with dreams and unrealistic expectations of love, and only provide shallow hugs, kisses, and hookups? Years of ingesting media depicting the ideal couple resonated in my heart but now it’s all come crashing down. I’m forced to endure the loud truth that my love life will be just like the rest, a mediocre start, then settling down and facing the 50% chance that my marriage ends in divorce.
Is it so out the realm of possibility that me and the gal of my dreams bump into each other as she is carrying a large stack of papers and I help her pick them up then later we grab a coffee at a local coffee shop where I find out she’s “The One” but we get separated since her family doesn’t like that I’m of a lower class than her so I move out since there’s nothing left for me in this town but eventually we run into each other in the big city where she’s following her dreams of becoming an actress and our undying love for each other is still there and we grow old together until we die? I’m truly asking for the bare minimum.
