Why I don’t have a girlfriend.

People ask me all the time, “Alex, why don’t you have a girlfriend?” (Alright, no-one ever asks me that, but bear with me anyway), to which I sternly reply, “Because I don’t wear deodorant…” Not only has that reply saved me the trouble of crafting a half-assed excuse countless times, but it also gives people the impression that I’m just naturally good smelling. But, that question really gets me thinking , why the fuck don’t I have a girlfriend? I mean, I’m fairly good-looking (sometimes), I’m funny, charming, smart, and most importantly, I drive a bitchin’ 1993 Camry Sedan. Is this some kind of a conspiracy?

The short answer to that question is ‘no’. I mean, I’m a complete conspiracy theory buff, but even I figure that if the Russians are trying to make my life miserable, they probably would just have me killed, rather than pay every half-attractive woman living within a 50 mile radius of me to find me repulsive.

Hell, I’m a pretty level headed guy, and I try not to delude myself. I know exactly what’s wrong with me: I act like a dick, sometimes my jokes come off as mean-spirited, some days I don’t look incredibly attractive, I have thousands of freckles and when extremely bored I make up ‘Freckle Constellations’, I enjoy embarrassing people by yelling their name in public, I’m surprisingly shy around people I don’t know, I can burp the alphabet, sometimes my jokes don’t come off as funny and I look like an idiot, I’m a huge closet fan of the song “Working for the weekend” by ‘Loverboy’, I almost never seriously talk about myself, I have bad teeth, I need to lose a bit of weight because I have somewhat of a quasi beer-gut, I spend too much time on the computer, I drive a bitchin’ 1993 Camry Sedan, I refer to the immense amount of hair on my legs as ‘the forest’ just to piss off my friends who are disgusted by it, I’m ghostly pale, I’m big into video-games, etc.

But really, everyone has their numerous flaws, and so to explain the root of this long standing ‘failure-ship’ with women, we’ll have to travel back in time!

The year is 1994, and a young Alex Traynor steps on the schoolbus to Pine Grove Elementary School for his first day of Kindergarten. As his young, youthful face gazes into a crowd full of strangers, one face in particular stands out from the crowd. She had long brown hair and a teenage mutant ninja turtle’s backpack - the woman of my dreams. I was in love.

Over the course of the year I started working my Kindergartener mojo on the girl (building better block towers than the other boys, successfully spelling my name right, showing off the ‘guns’, etc.). Going into March of ’95 I felt solid with the progress I’d made, feeling closer than ever to asking the girl out. I was on top of the world, that is, until April 14^th, 1995, a day I’ll never forget.

That was the day she broke my heart, and instilled a sense of bitterness that’d last for nearly a decade. When I heard the announcement that she was going out with a pal of mine, Drew, my heart figuratively sank to the floor. ‘How could that whore do this to me?’ I asked myself, and struggled to find an answer. Throughout the rest of the year I mired in a cloud of self-pity and loathing, occasionally taking time to pile copious amounts of dirt into her Ninja Turtles backpack, and deliberately sabotaging her feeble attempts at learning the alphabet.

There were only two weeks left in school when I finally got my revenge. All of us Kindergarteners were hanging out on the bus ride home from school one day when we started showing off the various things we had acquired over the course of the year. When it was my turn to share, I pulled out a sheet of stickers I had received from my teacher, but these weren’t just ordinary stickers, they depicted bunny rabbits and were fuzzy when you touched them. Now we all know Kindergarteners are amused fairly easily, but these kids completely freaked out when I showed them. It was as if I had stolen a suitcase full $100 bills and was showing it to a busload of Jews. Everybody wanted a sticker, and being the opportunist I am, I started taking offers. Turning down almost everyone who offered less than a full pack of crackers, by the time it was turn for my former soul-mate to make an offer, my backpack was completely full of snack items. The look in the brown-haired girls eyes was intense, she wanted a sticker and there were only a few left,
“I’ll be your girlfriend if you give me the rest.”, she offered.

It was what I had been hoping for months, yet somehow it seemed less appealing. Because now I knew, she was no longer the sweet, cute girl on the bus with a Ninja Turtles backpack, but rather a prostitute willing to accept stickers as payment. I turned ‘sticker-whore’ down in front of the whole class, leaving her speechless.

Of all the lessons I learned about women from “Sticker-whore”, one above all has stuck with me throughout the years: All women are whores. This rule is true for all women, some more than others. While not all are going to ‘tickle your pickle’ for a sticker, every woman has their price. Sometimes it’s not even material goods they want, sometimes it’s an image. Wear a Def Leppard T-shirt and drive a Camaro and there’s almost always a swarm of girls chasing you, even if you don’t really like Def Leppard and you think Camaro’s are over-rated. Hell, Johnny Depp could kill copious amounts of kittens, and beat old ladies to death with a lead pipe, yet still, women everywhere would continue to fantasize about the guy.

That brings us to 2002, the year that brought us premiere of The Anna Nicole Show, the first anniversary of September 11^th, but more tragically, Alex Traynor’s very first bitch of a girlfriend.

Her name was… well, I honestly can’t remember her name, but for the sake of this article we’re going to refer to her as Bitchy McBitcherson. Bitchy McBitcherson seemed sane when I first met her (which is now the quality I look for most in a girl) and there was genuine chemistry between us. When word broke that she had a thing for me, I was actually a little excited. I hadn’t had a girlfriend before and I figured that within a few weeks I’d finally be ready to stop making out with my pillow.

We went out for two days before I realized that I hated her guts. I hated that bitch like the Jews hated Hitler. Even to this day, I still consider her the most annoying and shallow person I’ve ever met. The kind of bitch that throws a birthday party specifically for the presents. She would call me up on the phone constantly, and she never had anything particularly interesting to say, at one point I had just had enough.

Actual transcript of our last conversation:
Her: “Hi baby, what’s new?”
Me: “What’s new since we hung up 5 minutes ago?”
Her: “Yeah.”
Me: “Nothing.”
(Awkward Silence)
Her “I’m hungry”
Me: “Then get something to eat.”
Her: “There’s nothing to eat here”
Me: “Then go to the store and get something”
Her: “But I’m hungry noww…”
Me: “Then what the hell do you want me to do?”
Her: “Come here and get me some food.”
Me: “What are you kidding me? You live 15 minutes away”
Her: “Then run really fast… *teeheehee*”
Me: “FUCK YOU WHORE!”
*click*

That was the last time I spoke with Bitchy McBitcherson, other than the several times she called me at 3am and screamed “I HATE YOU!” into the phone shortly before hanging up. Her friend called me the next day informing me that SHE wanted to break up with ME, which I found interesting because, what part of “FUCK YOU WHORE!” doesn’t mean “We’re through”?

Which brings us to the next lesson I learned through experience: most women are annoying cunts. And I say ‘most’ only because the history books mention nothing of Mother Theresa being an annoying cunt. Sure, I can imagine a woman who I actually like and doesn’t annoy the shit out of me, but Bitchy McB took away my ability to hope that such a woman actually exists.

Now, let’s hop back into our proverbial time machine and skip through 4 years of mostly uneventful crap, to wind up right back where we started, the present day. Now, what was the point of this whole time travel exercise, you ask? Well, first and foremost, it provided some insight into the subconscious triggers and instilled beliefs that drive my day to day actions, but really because this is the closest to ‘Back to the Future’ I’ll ever get. Now stop asking questions or I’ll beat you down with my proverbial flux capacitor.

I must be honest, the time travel adventure we just took was a little incomplete, mainly because it focused solely on women who liked me (or my stickers). I know it may be hard to believe, but there are a lot of women who don’t like me. And the question I want to answer is: What’s not to love?

1. I have no sense of fashion. If my mother hadn’t stopped picking out my clothes for me when I was 14 (she said it was getting pathetic), I’d probably wear nicer clothes than I do now. My outfit for the day usually is decided and implemented in a grand total of 45 seconds, 35 of which I may still be technically considered sleeping. Oftentimes I don’t put my shirt on until after I get in the car to leave for school. It also doesn’t help that when you may technically be asleep, your judgment suffers (Seriously, who in their right mind would think wearing a green tank top with orange sweatpants would ever be a good idea?)

2. I’m a paper boy (although my business cards say “Paper distribution specialist”). And, contrary to popular belief, paperboys do not get copious amounts of poontang.

3. I’m not a badass. Honestly, women aren’t attracted to nerdy guys with blogs anymore, maybe I should get a tattoo. But, not just any tattoo, a Garfield tattoo. Because it’s a widely recognized fact that Garfield is a motherfucking badass.

4. I don’t care what other people have to say. This is probably one of the things I’m most of ashamed of, my lack of the ability to give a shit about other people. I mean, I’ll listen to what you have to say in a conversation, mainly to make jokes out of it or continue talking without looking like a jackass, but do I really give a shit about ‘what you did over the weekend’? Nope.

5. I’m only attractive half of the time. You see that photo of the incredibly handsome man in the top right corner of this blog? Well, sadly, he’s only that incredibly handsome half of the time. I’m not completely sure what makes me not that attractive the other 50% of the time, but I assume it’s some sort of combination of sleep deprivation, my ghostly pale complexion, the billions of freckles, my crappy posture, and the green tank tops and orange sweat-pants.

6. I’m a jerk. Sure, there are times when I can be a sensitive and caring young gentleman, but I have a feeling that being the only person in the school who can do picture perfect impressions of all the retarded kids qualifies me as somewhat of a jerk.

7. Some people just don’t ‘get it’. Believe it or not, there are a lot of stupid people in this world, and none of them laugh at my jokes. Which basically crosses 75% of all the half-attractive women off the list. I guess some people just don’t appreciate the humor in loudly threatening to dig up someone’s dead Grandmother, anally rape her, videotape it, set it to shitty techno, and then turn it in for my semester project in my ‘videography’ class. Morons.

8. I’m nerdy. While I don’t consider myself stereotypically nerdy (I’ve never seen an episode of Star Trek), I seems it’s just an attitude I project. I guess it just goes along with the territory of being smart, wearing glasses, and not really giving a shit what people think about me.

While that list was fairly comprehensive, each woman has their own reasons for not wanting to ‘ride the A-Trayn’. Some turn me down because I’m immature, and others turn me down because I threatened to fuck their grandmother.

Now, I don’t consider myself afraid of rejection, but I’ve never been that big of a fan either. People always used to tell me, “The worst thing they can do is say no”. That’s complete bullshit, take it from me, the worst thing they can do is start laughing hysterically and after two whole minutes of rolling around on the floor being barely able to breath, they manage to cough out a “Hell no”.

Now it’s time for one last trip in our proverbial time machine, back all the way to 11 months ago! (I would’ve taken you back further, but the Delorean’s running low on proverbial fuel right now)

It's now junior year in high school for our protagonist, and there's a new love interest in his life. She was hot, yet wasn’t out of my league, She laughed at my jokes, yet wasn’t mentally retarded. And more importantly, I thought I had a genuine chance.

Which begs the question, why did she turn me down?

First of all, we had nothing in common (except the fact that we think I’m hilarious), and it takes all of my self restraint to keep from describing all of her hobbies as ‘excruciatingly gay’. Secondly, I probably came off as somewhat of an insensitive dick during the time we regularly spoke, (“You know, I work at a soup kitchen during my spare time.” “Really?” “Nah, I’m just kidding, fuck the homeless”). Thirdly, and most importantly, I didn’t have a car back then, and to be honest, even I wouldn’t fuck me if I didn’t have car.

How did I react when I realized she didn’t want me? Bitterness, the deadliest tool in the Alex Traynor arsenal. Whether it was a simple joke alluding she was a bitch, or a genuinely mean image comment on her myspace, I’d like to think - in my own delusional way - that I made her life utter hell.

Which segways perfectly into one of my major problems: Delusion. Actually, it’s quite possible that the girl never actually liked me; she could’ve even overtly called me “Freckled Hitler”, and if she did, those memories have long since been repressed.

I consider myself a bad influence on myself. I’m like one of those jackass friends who tries to sabotage your life.
“A girl slapped me in school today…”
“Well, you know what that means, right?”
“That she hates me?”
“Nah man, she slapped you because she’s secretly in love with you.”
“Really?”
“Of course, now get her number out of the phonebook, call her up, and profess your love.”

My subconscious is quite possibly the worst influence on my life (Right behind the violent videogames and gangsta rap music). Not only has it been able to convince me the most outlandish things, but talking about it routinely makes me look like a crazy person.

So there you have it, a full and thorough explanation for the sad fact that is my relationship status. An explanation that dragged out to 6 pages long, whilst my supportive friends argued that it would only consist of two words: butt and ugly. Oh, and in case any half attractive women read this, I am no longer above dating girls who want me just for my stickers, just thought I’d let you know.