Darwinism in action

I am single. Incredibly single. Painfully single. So single that I sometimes consider rubbing up against people on the bus just to have some amount of human contact. But recently I realized something that made me not worry about it so much. There is an underlying logic to my singleness. It's actually quite simple, and looking back it helps explain an awful lot of my past life. It all basically boils down to one thing: I am an intellectual slut.

Allow me to explain. A normal, or "physical", slut is someone who will give away some amount of their body (i.e. love you long time) for free. If you are lucky enough to encounter a physical slut, you can partake of her physicality without worrying about anchoring yourself down with any kind of commitment to said slut. An intellectual slut, on the other hand, is someone who shares their mind or personality with you for free. An intellectual slut will entertain you with their brain in the same way that a physical slut will entertain you with their body. Intellectual sluttiness is probably just as common as physical sluttiness, yet people are less conscious of it, which is why you don't get arrested for paying someone to have a vigorous half-hour chat with you.

I recently realized that I, too, am an intellectual slut. It all became clear to me at a party while I was watching a friend of mine chat up a girl. I immediately wrote off this girl as being way too hot to have any redeeming personality traits. But my friend was having pretty good luck chatting her up, because he was getting her to talk about what she did for a living, and what she thought about politics, and whatever the hell else SHE felt like talking about. He was totally giving her an intellectually stimulating conversation for no charge, and she spent the whole night metaphorically staring at his mental cleavage.

There is nothing new about this technique. Cavemen probably used it to lull cavewomen into a false sense of security before they clubbed them on the head and dragged them back to their one-bedroom studio caves. The point is, guys like me and my delusionally optimistic friend basically have no other tricks up our sleeves. We can be witty, we can be charming, we can try to make you feel like you've got something interesting to say. If that's not enough for you, we're boned.

I'll let my friend off the hook for a moment and speak for myself. I'm not good-looking, I'm not athletic, and I'm not rich. I realize that the only thing a woman could possibly respond to is my personality, so I lay it on pretty thick. I basically tell as many jokes as I can and try to show her what a clever and witty guy I am. But here's the horrible truth that I only recently figured out: women don't give a crap if the guy they date is clever and witty. It's like 50th on their dating priority list, right after "has original teeth" and "doesn't steal from my purse". A woman can get her intellectual fix from a guy like my chatty friend, and then go home with a guy who can benchpress 300 pounds and will almost definitely cheat on her (why cheat? because he can, that's why). This works for her because of the aforementioned intellectual sluttiness. We're giving it away for free, and it's hard know when to quit. What am I gonna do, turn off my personality? How can I tell if she's interested or if she's just amused? You expect me to stop when the pretty girl is smiling at me? The whole setup is perfect from her end, and kind of horrible from mine. She gets the best of both worlds: she can have her cake and not have to eat it too.

So, here's my new plan for meeting women: don't be interesting or amusing in ANY WAY until they have proven conclusively that they are interested in dating me. There's no way this plan can fail...