An Open Letter to All Single Women: I Give Up

I just don't know what to do about you women. I am besides myself. I am verklempt, for crissakes.

How many times am I supposed to put my heart out there, unprotected, for you women only for y'all to casually dismiss me? If you even notice me in the first place...

Blake Lively, Melanie Iglesias, Amber Heard, Angela Lansbury, Rosamund Pike, and, now, Taylor gawddam Swift...

All of the waitresses and bartendresses I leave 40% tips for when I go out six nights a week...

The randos I buy top shelf liquor for each night...

The one really pretty, ginger barrista over at Kudu's who calls me 'hun' when she hands me my double-soy half-mocha latte but always pretends she can't understand what I'm saying when I ask for her number...

I'm not good enough for ANY of y'all?!?! 

You gotta be kidding me.

I clearly don't know what women want because it sure as shit isn't perfection. 

Because that's me, baby: fucking perfection.

I mean, I'm not some nancy-boy model, but that's the point. I'm a real man. I have most of my hair and some of it's grey, because I'm not a child. Know how else I'm not a child? My eyebrows are cordlike and menacing. My face isn't sun-damaged; it's weathered. Weathered is to faces as aging is to wines, dumbasses.

And don't even get me started on my body. 

Look, a man's muscles are supposed to be there for when he needs them, not to look pretty in a mirror. 

And that's how I have the platonic ideal of a modern man body: I don't have much muscle because I don't need it. Seriously, nearly everything I'd need muscles for, I can press a button and some machine does it for me. 

And don't give me that crap about needing muscles and cardio for sex. A) You're the ones who pointlessly spend hours each week pilate-zoomba-yoging so you can do all the thrashing around required and B) I don't really need cardio or muscles for the three minutes of sex that you'd let me have with you twice a week anyways. BOOM! (DROPS MIC)

Also, I have a natural pimp strut. This limp is macho as hell. And if chicks dig scars, they'd need a backhoe or an industrial mining drill for the gruesome seven-incher down my leg that looks like a nightmare version of one of the millipedes from Temple of Doom.

And let's get real about my body.  Here's the truth:  I'm 36. I'm middle-aged.  Unlike the other guys my age who have gained 50lbs in the past few years,  I've methodically added four pounds each year since college, like clockwork, so I get all the positives of a sexy-ass dad-bod with none of the tiger-striping grossness of stretch marks.  I'm like an adorable, smooth-bellied buddha.  

An adorable smooth-bellied buddha with most of his hair, and fierce eyebrows, and a weathered, manly-ass face. 

I rest my case.

No, I don't really, because that's the thing. I'm not just an object.

I hate how shallow women are about little things like "success" and "career potential".  Don't y'all realize how little we all control what happens to us? I mean, I did all the right things; I technically have a doctorate-level degree after all.  Shit happens, is my point.

It's not my fault the economy tanked and I am living on a tiny sail boat that's older than I am. 

I mean, sure, I could have "tried harder" to find a "traditional job" that "paid my bills", but I'm an artist, baby.  I gotta be me. 

And right now, being me means living on that dinghy.  Well, it did, until I hurt my leg and had to start crashing at my mom's place. 

You know, to hold that against me is kinda sexist because I shouldn't have it be a black mark that I have a healthy, reciprocally beneficial relationship with a woman (mom). I get a place where there's a bathroom that I don't have to pour over the side of the boat, and she gets to help me with my bills a few times a month. It empowers her. 

But fine, I admit I'm not top shelf right now, but I'm one hell of a buy low opportunity. You have to admit that.

Also, aside from success, let's talk about personality. I've got one hell of a winner here. Because I keep it real. And by "real," I mean "moderately depressed." Any man my age who's an optimist has had a lobotomy or access to all the best drugs for over well over a decade.  

A real man should have a personality that reads like a PTSD checklist. Am I bitter? Check. Do I hate groups? Check. Do I not talk about my feelings? Check. Am I highly apathetic? Check. Do I drink too much? Check. Do I blow a fuse at the drop of a hat? Check. Do I fear change? Super-check.

Nowadays, candy-asses think those are negatives. When I was growing up, those were considered virtues.  

Also, because nothing matters to me, I'm more than happy to let you do whatever silly, pointless crap you want. We can get a mini-van and go on a wine tour of Napa and I'll wear the $200 asshat shirt you bought me and insist I wear and I'll go to a "stylist" for my haircuts.  It's all fine with me because none of it moves the needle. At all. Seriously.  How is this not the biggest PRO in my favor? I don't get it. 

Not that I care much whether I get it.

But I really would like someone to coddle me and pay attention to me and look at me with intense unrestrained longing and I just don't know what else I can do to make that happen. 

I guess what I'm saying is, y'all need to step your game up and get your shit together, ladies. Because I'm not going to stay on the market for long.