“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of hot babes.”

Happy Independence Day!

It seems fitting that my credit card balance would be cleared in time for today’s celebration, and hopefully by this time next year my car and college loans will be paid off as well. Hard to believe my credit card debt was as high as $8,000 only a few months earlier, partly because I had to pay for the costs of new hearing aids, but I just kept furiously paying it down as much as I could, until by some sheer miracle the balance finally read zero for the first time in 4 years.

Once my car and college loans are taken care of as well, I’ll be completely debt free and enjoying a near perfect credit rating, especially since I will have paid off the car loan at least a year and a half ahead of schedule. So, debt-free, no ugly history with exes, no kids to complicate things, stable job with superb medical benefits, and I drive a sleek black fully loaded SUV. Girls should be lining up the door here, and yet nobody wants me. At least nobody sane that is, and just that one criteria seems to eliminate a good portion of the female populace.

*Sigh*

That’s part of the reason why I want to travel, and once my debts are cleared I’ll have to decide then whether to throw caution to the wind and quit my job so I can roam the country as a working nomad. I’d like to believe that there’s a place in this vast nation of ours where I can truly feel like I belong, a place I could finally call home, because it sure as #@$%ing hell isn’t this sewage dump of a New York town. I’m never gonna know for sure though until I start putting myself out there.

At the very least I’d be free from the shackles of a dead-end office job, with no ties to anything and the freedom to pursue any course I desire, and embark on any adventure I wish. Maybe then I’ll finally find…. her, and by then I wouldn’t have to worry about the trials of a long distance relationship, because I’ll be able to go to wherever she is. Unless of course, she’s in Australia.

Ah well, for now I’ll just celebrate this little victory over VISA, in the hopes that this will signify the beginning of my very own personal independence.

I recently watched the entire miniseries of John Adams last weekend. Tres Awesomeness, dude. John Adams is unequivocally my hero, primarily because there is just so much about him that I can relate to.

For one, he had a big mouth. Seriously, he couldn’t shut up for nothing, and it got him in all sorts of hot water. He always spoke what other people could only merely think, and for that he was much maligned by his peers. He wasn’t one for small talk and idle chatter either, his words always cutting right to the point, and if you didn’t like what he had to say, well that was just too damned bad.

He was also a plain and morally upright person. He didn’t care for riches or showy displays of affluence, preferring to dig into manure to help grow his crops than count money. During his diplomatic mission to Paris, he was offput by the decadent lifestyle of the French, who loved to party and engage in all sorts of lewd behavior. His rejection of their immorality and his headstrong pursuit to secure French naval support put him at odds with Benjamin Franklin (who was perfectly fine with having several mistresses) as well as the entire French court. Eventually he was unceremoniously dumped and forced to travel to Holland, where he remained until the American war ended.

But perhaps what I found most appealing about Adams was his wife, Abigail. It was she who kept his foibles in check and gave him sound advice when he sorely needed it. She was truly, as he once fondly referred to her, his “ballast.”

As for myself, When I look at my own life, especially absent of my own Abigail, I can feel myself teetering on the brink. Those who think my blog is over the top sometimes, you really have no idea. It’s all I can do sometimes to keep myself from going absolutely ape nutty and raging against all of mankind, to such an extent that I wouldn’t merely put people off: I’d make them deranged with fury and determined to see me shipped to the South Pole, preferably without my clothes. In a way, I’m just a fuse looking for a match.

It feels like I’ve been dropped in a world that is not my own. I can relate to no one, and none can relate to me, especially when it comes to women. When I’m confident, women see arrogance. When I’m nice, women see weakness. When I’m raging against the machine of life, women don’t see a wild animal that can be tamed, but rather a lost cause that needs to be committed.

The disconnect could not be any more severe, the rift any more wider. As each passing year goes by where I find myself without my ballast, I can feel myself unraveling, getting more and more bitter and filled with despair. I’m beginning to truly believe now that I have been born into a world to which there really is no better half who is able to tame this wild animal, and foment the love that I have longed for all my life.

If that is how it must be, then be prepared: you will see a side of me that will make Dante’s inferno look like Disneyland in comparison. The world will soon see what it’s like to have a John Adams, minus his Abigail.

Ok, so I’ve been playing around with OKCupid for the past couple of weeks, sifting through literally hundreds of profiles, trying to find someone, ANYONE, with a good head on her shoulders that I could talk to. I’m so lonely.

I actually did find a few nice ones though. Pretty, morally upright girls, one of who mentioned her distaste for OKCupid’s lewdness (she gets 20 points for that) and her love for 80s music (she gets 5000 points for that).

They were all active and visited the site on a regular basis, so I decided to send them a friendly email commending their profiles and asking them if we could be penpals or friends.

I got completely blown off by everyone. 2 weeks of obsessively checking my inbox every ten minutes to see if they responded, and… nothing.

Now before I start going off and calling them rude, icy-cold hearted spawns of Satan and earnestly hoping that they would spontaneously combust and explode into a fiery pus filled death, I’m willing to concede that all the women I contacted just lead busy lives, and may not have had time to get back to me yet.

Therein however lies the reason for why I might be royally screwed.

I’ve been thinking about this: these girls seem happy enough, living busy and productive lives, with loving families and a large circle of friends. Why would they need me then? Unless of course, they’re only interested in a sperm donor to help them make babies, in which case once the child is born they would then go back to refusing to acknowledge my existence (except for the paycheck, which they’ll happily take of course.)

But let’s pretend for the sake of argument that women are not that conniving and evil. Or rather, let’s assume the women I contacted are basically good and caring folks. But the fact is, their lives are so busy they simply don’t have time to give someone like me a chance. They may check their inboxes maybe once or twice a week, meanwhile I’m checking my inbox once every ten minutes. I yearn for companionship and wubs so badly, but for them it doesn’t seem to be a priority at all. If we ever had a relationship, they could wind up being aloof and distant, meeting me only when they can fit it into their busy schedules, while for my part all I can do is cry into my pillow at night, knowing I’ll never be truly loved. Truthfully though, it would be a severely unbalanced courtship, where I would yearn for her more than she’d ever yearn for me.

It’s times like this when I really start to despise this Internet thing though. I know people would say get off of it and start putting myself out there, but it’s not really that simple.

For those who don’t know, I have a profound hearing loss in both my ears that severely crippled my ability to have a social life. As I grew up, my attempts to participate in conversations and groups almost always resulted in embarassment. I would miss key bits of phrases in a conversation, and when I would try to contribute, people would end up laughing at me because I had completely misinterpreted what they were talking about. It never failed, and it wasn’t long before my intelligence itself would be questioned too. People would just assume I was an idiot and thus unworthy of their attention. Eventually I just drifted away and no longer tried to socialize anymore. My hearing loss certainly played a large role in my becoming a loner, though I still did ok in tightly knit groups and in one-on-one situations. But whenever we went someplace noisy (which was all the time), it really crippled my ability to engage in conversations with the people I was with. Part of what makes it so hard is that when you have a hearing loss, you can’t passively listen and pick up voices easily. You have to exert a considerable amount of mental effort to follow a conversation, and after a while you can get pretty fatigued.

That’s why I gravitate to using the Internet all the time. Here, conversation is easy, and people can’t see me at first so they can’t quickly pass judgment on me because of my disability or looks. Unfortunately though, I made it my whole world, and it’s not a world I want to live in anymore. It’s all MySpace and Facebook silliness topped off with a generous load of unhinged insanity.

Statistics say most couples find each other through friends and family. All my friends though have drifted away, and I’ve been cut off from 99 percent of my family. My parents ironically enough don’t have any friends either (well at least not any with single daughters my age.)

I could go back to school, which would be the easiest way since they are popular dating mills (or to save money, I could just hang out on campus and pretend I’m a student.)

Or, I could join interest groups like a photography club, but I don’t know. Same thing with church, which I really can’t stand (specifically the local ones here). I’d go if I knew there’d be a lot of girls there, but I’d have no interest in any of the church services (except maybe the singles group.) Charity organizations might be a good idea though.

Still, this is a pretty big hole I’m in. I may have to consider the real possibility that I am never going to meet anyone, and that life will continue to conspire against me to ensure that I will always be alone. That’s one of the reasons I want to travel so much. There’s something romantic about the idea of a lost soul travelling around America, looking for the girl of his dreams. Someday, maybe.

In the meantime though, I’ll be checking my inbox. (checks again… still nothing, *&^%$#@!!!!)

I love this site.

Longtime readers might remember my brief experience with Uptown Girl, who I had met through a dating site and was just getting to know when she blew me off unexpectedly, this after sending her flowers for her birthday too, but of course. I never understood why, but I should have figured she would go cold on me sooner or later. She was a Christian after all, and you know how warm and fuzzy them Chrischuns can get, a’ight?

This site however attempts to provide closure for people like me who constantly get blown off by the opposite sex. They work by acting as an intermediary and sending the… (Blower-Offer?) a friendly and easy to fill out survey so they can explain their actions, but without having to deal with the Blower-Offeree(?) directly.

It would be nice at least to know if there was something specific I might have done wrong to scare her off, that way maybe I can learn to avoid making the same mistakes next time. I submitted my own investigation request, so let’s see what the little bitch has to say for herself.

If she still doesn’t respond, I could always send her a bill for the flowers instead.

I got into a conversation with a clerk at work, which eventually broached the topic of dating and went something as follows:

“So Linc, I told my daughter about you!”

“Ok…”

“I thought she’d think you might be too old for her, but when I told her you were just north of 30, she said, ‘Oh that’s not too old!’”

“How old is she?”

“She’s 23!”

“Oh cool, and she’s not seeing anyone?”

“Nope, not anymore. And she only has one daughter, but don’t worry, I’m sure the father is completely out of the picture now. You should give her a call, I think she’d be just perfect for you…. Linc? Linc?”
 

But I had already left the building.

I recently got an email from a reader who said I was the perfect match for her sister, so I sent her sister an email and we shared a few things about ourselves. Here’s what I learn about her:

She loves to fish in Alaska and went to college on a football scholarship. Even worse, she’s from Tennessee. No offense to the natives of the state of course, I just think you’re all a bunch of donkey hicks (though I’ll make an exception for this gal here, only because she knows me and if I didn’t she’d hunt me down like a dog and saw my legs off.)

Anyhoo, after inquiring a bit further about this football thingie in the vain hope that colleges also extend football scholarships to cheerleaders as well, evidently she got the scholarship as a result of being the equipment manager for her team, and has been entertaining a life long dream of being a contracts agent. She majored in sports admin and now works as a… paralegal.

My final “Oh My God Get The &^%$ Away From Me!” note to her went as follows:

Dear “Meg,”

You’re either a man or a very, very ugly looking woman. If you’re wondering why you might be having trouble finding guys to date, the spitting and scratching your privates (of which you have none) while you hang out with your football buddies might clue you in somewhat. Maybe it’s not your fault though, just the fact that you live in a state with an in-bred population that rivals only Utah in numbers, and as a result it’s often hard to tell the gender apart.

I’m not sure why your sister thought I’d be a good match for you though. Maybe she felt I’d be able to help you discover your feminine side by offering you the love that only a fine, studly man like me could give. Yet despite the fact that I have been known to work miracles every now and then, sad to say, I simply cannot bend the laws of physics to my will in order to transform you from a hairy, lumbering, mountain man-thing to a soft, doe-eyed work of womanly art that I would be proud to roll around in the hay with.

So, best of luck to ya, hope you do fulfill your dreams of being an agent, and who knows, maybe I’ll read about you someday in Sports Illustrated, though it quite obviously won’t be the swimsuit edition.

Much Love,
Lincoln