Suffice it to say that I’ve seen my fair share of flakes. We all hate them, and we all are flaky sometimes despite our best efforts.

Junior and I hit it off. I thought he was very cute. We tindermessaged for a while and then texted.

Junior: Do you live in one of the dorms there or an apartment?

Me: Apartment. I won’t call it glorious but my room itself is pretty nice.

Me: And a lot of the dorms suck

Junior: I don’t believe you you’re gonna have to prove it and show me you’re room sometime 😉

Me: Fineee

Me: Be that way

Me: Come

Me: And cuddle

Junior: Fine. I will.

 

Me. I’m Watching criminal minds. Cuddling with my pillow.

Junior: What you’re doing rn sounds so perfect. But I should replace the pillow 😛

Me: Umm no I think I’m happy with just the pillow

and the flirtation continued. The problem was that we did not go to the same school:

M: Omg the calzone is so tasty

J: I want some

M: I want some of you :*

J: You’re so cute

Me: Ugh whyyyyy

M: So far

J: I was just thinking the same thing ugh. If you lived on campus I would probably be in your bed cuddling rn 🙁

M: Awww don’t be sad. We will cuddle. I promise. And it will be wonderful.

J: 🙂

M: And I will hold you tight

J: Why are you so cute

M: And kiss you

J: Please

M: Did I mention my massages are wonderful

J: You did not. I don’t believe you though you’re gonna have to give me one to prove it.

M: So needy. I think we can work something out.

The flirting continued for days. We made plans to meet each other the following weekend and talked about everything we were going to do.

Suddenly the Thursday before we were supposed to hang out, and with absolutely no warning, he just stopped responding.

What the fuck. I just moved on to be honest. I was curious as to why it had happened but I’ve just developed the understanding that some people just do that.

But then something strange. Two weeks later: “Hey. Sorry for taking like 2 weeks to respond”

We chatted for two hours and I asked “So what else is new?”

Nothing. Radio silence.

2:58AM 5 days later and out of the blue:

J: You should visit me soon

M: Duh. Just say when 😉

J: 🙂 Lol now?? 😛

M: Hahaha literally I was just woken up by a posy of yelling Koreans outside my room. I would be so down

The conversation fizzled as his responses became more erratic. It looked like he was only interested when drunk.

Then late one Friday he asked me to come visit. It was a fairly long drive but I told him I’d be down to drive later, then he stopped responding again.

It was distressing: he was so into the conversation and then would abruptly stop responding and then pick up a few days later.

We began talking again October 29th and we FaceTimed for about an hour. He was very cute and dressed up as a construction worker because halloweekend apparently lasts like five days. We made plans to hang out on Halloween because he had friends staying over the following evening and that was the first night he’d be free. It seemed like I would actually get to meet him.

We texted furiously for the next few days and he drunk texted me on Halloween eve. The following morning:

M: Still want me to come? I have bad news I might not be able to get there till like 7:30 so it might be a later dinner or we can just do brunch tomorrow morning.

J: Wanna just do brunch tomorrow?

M: Like come tomorrow morning or skip dinner tonight?

J: Probably tomorrow

J: Cause I have another friend coming up

M: Ok :'(

M: Look if you can’t be straightforward with me this just isn’t going to work. I understand if something comes up but like the least you can do if you bail out on me is apologize.

J: Sorry I was replying and my phone died, I’m actually really really sorry I just should’ve told you before but I just don’t wanna have you visit and not give you my full attention

M: I mean I’d rather meet you and have to share your attention for some of the night than not. But I mean I don’t want to impose. I’m a flexible guy I don’t like need constant attention 😉

And then he stopped. No reply. A few hours later I sent “…” and made new plans for the evening.

Whatever. He can go to hell.

Then suddenly eight days later: “I’m literally a horrible person lol” No shit, Junior.

I regaled to him the story of the first flake I had a crush on. Matt who couldn’t decide what he wanted from me. Matt who would hook up with me one evening and then tell me he had no sexual attraction to me the next morning. He didn’t make the connection.

He began explaining to me that he had had a really bad experience with a guy who was a dick to him. I told him the truth: that he deserved someone who wasn’t a fuck and that the guy who was being a dick to him was the real loser in the situation.

M: You know you could have just said this last weekend instead of ignoring me

J: I know I’m so stupid

I was within about two seconds of telling him to go to hell, but he told me how much of a mistake he’d made by doing what he did to me and how much he regretted it and then begged me to forgive him. And I gave him that. Forgive, but don’t forget.

M: When do we cuddle?

J: Okay this is a promise we’re meeting next weekend. Sound good?

M: Yes

J: I promise I won’t say anything last minute and back out

J: I swear

J: Promise

Establishing that for some random reason Wednesday was a federal holiday that week, he agreed that I would come meet him then.

But I kept my plans for the evening. At this point I just knew what was going to happen.

But I genuinely was drawn to this. A part of me wanted it to continue — that vain hope that something might work out. The genuineness was there and real and we were definitely compatible. That was the most frustrating part, that it totally could have been an awesome relationship save for some ambiguous poorly-explained phobia of following through on commitments.

He told me exactly what we were going to do. Dinner. A friend’s party. Drunk food. Cuddling. Sleeping in. We worked out details. We flirted for days.

We had agreed to meet on Saturday night. We had three days and we talked continuously. And then it came:

J: Okay I know this is gonna sound horrible and I’m a really horrible person for only realizing this now that’s it’s so late and I know I’ve done this so many times but I’m seriously so so so sorry and I sincerely mean it but I feel like I really connect with you and I really want to meet you and for this to work but I just feel  like the timing right now won’t work, I’m really all about vibes and I’m just not feeling good about the timing, I just feel like this would be hard to do during the semester and I don’t want to start something and really really want it to workout, but not be able to work it out, if you aren’t irate with me I’m really interested in postponing until winter break 🙂 but if you hate me after reading this I completely understand I just hope you can understand you seem like such an amazing person and it sucks saying all this but I feel like it’s important for me to be straightforward with you and this is the last time I’ll make plans without feeling 100% good about them

Ah yes. The vibes.

M: At a certain point life is full of uncertainties and you have to make a decision and commit to it. There’s no guarantee that anything will work out the way you want it to, but even if it was clear I didn’t like someone I’ve met I’ve never regretted doing so.

M: The problem for me is trust. If I can’t trust you to make plans then I can’t trust you, period. If I’m being honest here I kept my plans for tonight out of anticipation that you’d do this. So look I really appreciate that you were honest with me and I totally understand where you are coming from. But this is your third strike. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

M: And I try not to be insane.

M: So I’d really like to take you up on your offer for some time in the future. But the fact is that you’re not going to get over your phobia to commit in the next month nor will you suddenly realize the value of living aesthetically and taking chances.

I’d say the most patent lie there was that I was trying not to be insane because I already knew he was going to do this.

I had a date planned with a guy that evening so I went along and had a great time but the wrenching of my stomach hadn’t left. I had a tendency to get addicted to guys like Junior. He was really great to talk to and seemed perfectly compatible. But for some reason he was so spineless that he couldn’t commit to anything. He hadn’t the fortitude to follow through on even dinner.

He kept texting me. I was in a restaurant without cell phone service and he thought I had blocked him when the message didn’t deliver so he sent me a facebook message apologizing.

J: I don’t know if it sounds like I don’t mean anything I say but I promise I really do

I texted him back the screenshot of his promising me that he wouldn’t bail on me this time.

I told him how the guy I was on a date with that evening was reliable and that that meant a lot to me. I told him we were about to cuddle.

J: Let me know how it goes.

J: Sitting by the microwave waiting for my popcorn to be finished so I can eat it all alone in my room

J: Regret that I’m not making this to share with you

J: Currently eating Cheetos in my bed thinking about how inconsiderate and dumb I am

Seriously go to hell. I told him more about Matt. He still didn’t make the connection.

He told me how bad it made him feel talking with me that night, how much he regretted it all. He kept talking to me and I started replying with one word answers, then:

J: 🙁

M: you’ve kinda been a dick to me

He begged me to facetime him so I agreed to do so later that night. Above and beyond his inability to decide he was really starting to annoy me. He told me he hoped I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time:

M: I was within an inch of telling you to go to hell on Saturday but you literally begged me to forgive you and promised me like three times that you would not pull the exact bullshit that you did, again, for the third time, on Tuesday.

The most ridiculous part is that you’re so concerned over (not any commitment of anything substantial in nature) but literally the opportunity to meet me and hang out for a single evening. I can barely fathom a universe in which that would not be an awesome time, you seem to agree with me, but here you give me some intangible reason which didn’t apply on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, then applied by mid-day Tuesday and you regretted by the evening.

If you change your mind that quickly as it is why should I be led to believe that any aspect of a month from now will be, in any way, better? Because all that I see is another ten three day periods for you to have second thoughts and change your mind.

I’ve cleared two evenings for you. It’s hard to feel like I’m not wasting time.

I’m not trying to be a dick to you just understand that I’ve had a knot in my stomach for the past 48 hours and these sorts of situations have an usually large toll on my overall happiness. It’s just not healthy for me to be in limbo like this.

As you can tell one of my character flaws is that I’m sufficiently principled and/or addicted to people like this that I will continue to try and educate them for their benefit long after the realization arrives that they’re simply incapable of understanding.

J: Again I’m really sorry. I just don’t know what I should do. What do you want me to do?

M: If you want to meet me, meet me.

J: I want to

M: We can talk tonight

So we FaceTimed that night and talked for an hour and a half. He was very cute, clearly enjoyed talking to me, and I was still pretty annoyed at him. He really enjoyed riding the roller coaster, apparently. If only he could just make up his mind.

It was like 2AM before we finally went to bed because, like it or not, FaceTiming with him was really fun and he was cute and we were definitely compatible.

The next morning we were talking fervently again. I brought up the man sitting next to me and Starbucks at 10AM on a Friday who was clearly already drunk.

Then later that afternoon:

M: Do you want to get dinner tonight?

Abruptly there was another radio silence. I was done.

M: So

M: It’s clear to me that for whatever reason you don’t want to meet me/can’t make up your mind/whatever. That’s fine.

You clearly can’t help but ignore me and lie to me and just generally be a dick to me. You clearly don’t have a conscience or sufficient empathy for you to understand what you’re doing to me.

No amount of my spelling it out for you, letter by letter, has been anywhere near sufficient for you to give a flying fuck about how I feel. You continue to pull this bullshit practically every day. And it’s clear to me that the best and only thing I can do for myself is to protect myself from you.

So I wish you the best. I sincerely hope that your happiness in life will not be derived to such a detriment of others. And you can go to hell

I concluded this with my first genuine use of the new iOS 9.1 middle finger emoji. I was pleased that I’d had the opportunity.

I suppose I’ll never know what can lead a person to be so spineless, insensitive, and indecisive. I fathom some near entire lack of will and a significant failure of empathy or understanding for what they’re doing to other human beings. I suppose, though, that’s the optimistic interpretation — the other possibility is that he’s just an inconsiderate asshole. I guess that distinction is probably not my problem. Though I maintain some level of frustration on this point: I sincerely wish he’d make up his mind or be angry or show anything definite. But he seems unable to be absolute in almost every regard.

I was truly blown away by the indecisiveness. It was chronic and predictable, even in the face of clear articulation on my part about how I felt, clear understanding of what he’d done, and his statements of regret. But it meant nothing. His firmest promises and most definite assertions weren’t sufficient even for himself.

I wish there was something I could do to make him understand but I can’t help but believe he’s a lost cause. It’s definitely an unusual circumstance — this simultaneous intersection of the qualities I desire with the world-championship level of flakiness and my personal addiction to the combination. I’d hazard to guess its my subconscious view of it being a “hard to get” flirtation play that makes me so drawn to it. But it’s not; it’s very distinct and genuinely asinine and aloof. So I sent that message and felt significantly better about myself.

I half expect him to drunk chat me again. We’ll see.