JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

There seems to be a scarcity in the number of straight males who ask you for advice so let me reverse this trend.

I am 27, currently between jobs, waiting for my certificate of registration in a career that involves the ill, the dying, and the walking dead. As far as I can remember I have never ever been close to getting into a relationship. My high school and early college years are accounted for, I was into Star Trek (particularly Deep Space Nine), Douglas Adams, and Dungeons & Dragons (having been the DM of a cabal in Diliman). I know how girl-repellent these can be. And, no, no matter how hard cosplaying girls pretend to be geeks, there is just something odd about their brand of fanaticism. It is like staring at the Uncanny Valley, there is just something off. As for those female true believers, all of the ones I have met are taken.

Of course, the other thing that probably marked me as someone to be avoided when it comes to intimacy was my foolish habit of writing “poems” to girls I am attracted to. Those were painfully misguided years. I have done enough penance.

The closest I can say I ever got to having a girlfriend was during the closing days of my undergraduate years. At the time I met someone in an elective class who had the same taste in books and, generally, the same interests. In the few months or so that we knew each other, we had a friendship that can only be described as tempestuous. We would be revealing secrets one day, then the next day completely ignoring and not talking to each other and then back to talking. It was a cycle. This went on for months after graduation when our paths diverged as I continued studying while she started working. Then we had a huge fight. I will be honest enough and confess that I started it because I was exhausted with my efforts at trying to chase her when it was clear in her head that she could never see me as more than a friend.

We have reconciled since then, but as with such reconciliations, things could never go back to the way they once were. During the process of catching up, I discovered that the whole time she and I were talking about leo@fergusrules.com, acceptable breaks in reality, and friendship in the age of Friendster (this was half a decade ago) she had been seeing men who can only be described as bastards, assholes, and deadbeats, whose career plans were either non-existent or were limited to whatever handouts their parents gave them. The worst part of my rejection: finding out that she had chosen someone who had a history of violence against his girlfriend over me.

My story does not end there. I am currently infatuated with a former colleague, which I find a bit tiresome because years earlier when I had obliquely admitted I had feelings for her, she struck me down by telling me straight out via text message that she was not interested. In spite of this, I never really lost my attraction.

It is traditional that in this kind of letter one has to point out how normal or even superior the letter-writer is to the general population in order to make the lack of significant other a total mystery. So I will just state plainly that I bathe twice a day, brush my teeth regularly, have no facial deformities, and, in spite of being temporarily jobless, I consider myself a responsible person and I do my job well.

I point this out because in my line of work I’ve met women who have incurred physical injuries from assaults by other women after some Casanova in their barangay became reckless in his two-timing; women who have had children (averaging at about 4) with men who were already married; and women who swallowed 20 tablets of acetaminophen or ingested warfarin over men who did not love them back.

So this is where I not only ask the question why I do not have a girlfriend, I also ask why are there so many deadbeats, men without any ambition or future to speak, of who have women jumping all over them.

The usual answer to the first question does not apply. I am and always will have eyes only for women. And, no, this question does not bother me enough to cause me distress, at least not anymore. I would just like to have your input regarding these mysteries.

Having read your letter I get the impression that you are a witty, funny, intelligent, decent and, as you have explicitly pointed out, straight man. Unfortunately my friend, these are not enough to snag you a girl or even a boy (boys are actually more picky than girls when choosing boys).

I once had a roommate who had a thing for foreign girls. After months of distant longing for an American girl, he put on his striped long-sleeved polo, puffed up his chest, gathered what confidence he had and approached the girl of his dreams in broad daylight and in front of the whole school. He introduced himself, declared his undying love, and offered her a brand new copy of The Silmarillion. To say that the girl was taken aback is an understatement but at least she had the decency to not accept his gift and to politely decline his affections.

We were not yet roommates when it happened but he told me about it during a moment of frustration about his non-existent lovelife. “I’m a decent guy” he told me with a pained expression and his suffering was evident in his eyes. “Why do good, decent girls go for guys who do not amount to anything? I have a degree (it was more of a certificate for a two-year course) and these guys that they go after will never even finish college!”

I did not have my Auntie Janey powers back then and I was more interested in the fact that he offered the girl a copy of the book I had been longing to read than concerned for his emotional well-being.

Now that I have seen some of the lands that lay beyond the fairy mists that bordered my homeland, I can tell you this: Good, decent girls go for uncouth deadbeat men because these girls are tired of being good and decent and they want excitement and unpredictability in their lives. Yes, this is true even though a lot of educated high-achieving girls would go “Eeeeeeeeewwwwwww” at the thought.

It is a fact, and I can show you examples in my workplace, of girls who have college degrees, who graduated with honors, or even have post-graduate degrees, falling for janitors, drivers, security guards, and utility men. Some of them have been impregnated or are in the process of planning their weddings. I know of one girl who went to one of the top universities and ended up with a fisherman.

A lot of our ladies, especially the purportedly good and decent ones, are oppressed by the role and image they have to portray. All of us also know that being good and predictable all the time is boring. Well-behaved women also want excitement and danger yet they have no opportunity to experience this since they are imprisoned within the routines dictated by society, their parents and their peers. Then an uncouth man comes along embodying danger, adventure and the forbidden. Humans have always been fascinated by the forbidden. Eve was so bored with Adam and the predictability of Paradise that she was seduced by the sinuous and large snake who offered her a taste of something she never had.

We all have our primal urges and desires. We have been taught to suppress them as giving in to them would be disruptive to our lives and society. Our system of education focuses on the dominance of the intellect over the senses. By the time we have gotten our degrees most of us no longer have any idea of how it is to be primal and sensual. What these “uneducated” men have over the degree holders is that they are more in touch with their primal selves. And they know how to arouse it in others. Girls, who never had the opportunity to explore their sensuality, are taken aback when strange feelings and desires are awakened. And so they fall into a world where pain and pleasure are the same. Logic and reason are just flimsy and artificial creations of man and they can easily be swept away by primal forces.

Bathing twice a day, brushing your teeth regularly, having no facial deformities, and being a responsible person will gain you friends, but not lovers. You have to be a little wild, playful, naughty, aggressive, and raw at times. Learn to loosen the seals that are suppressing the forces within. After all, what a good girl really wants is a bad, bad boy.