Will offer tea

So he says “Hello,” and he comes bounding down the stairs, big wide-eyed missionary smile plastered on his face, and says “Hi! You must be [deadname]! It’s SO good to MEET you, I am SO excited to get to know you, but before that, just a ~couple~ thingssss, here’s your space in the fridge and because I’m doing CROSSFIT I basically own the pantry but you can store stuff in there too if you want.”

And because I’m depressed and tired and trying to be nice I just nod along as he explains how to live in his apartment, which fine, whatever, good to set boundaries right away (actually tho it does help, at least for me) and he was just getting under my skin because he talked like he was just about to burst into song, like he was in a Dear Evan Hansen universe and nobody but him knew. He finishes his spiel, I say “Cool, thanks for letting me know” and start to walk up the stairs when he starts asking “get to know you” questions “Where are you from? Where’d you go on your mission? What are you studying?” And I answer them one by one and then repeat them to him, starting with the first one:

“Where are you from?”

“Well, originally I’m from HEAVEN! But then God loved me SO much he sent me to live with my super cool mom AND dad in southern Idaho where I was born in the Covenant! I'm so grateful for that!”

I'm not kidding, that is WORD FOR WORD his response. I have witnesses (my mom). it was WILD. And because I’m emotionally connected to my mom we were able to silently, telepathically, look at each other and say “Holy shit this has to be a joke” but it was NOT a joke AND it got worse because he started to tell me his entire life story and as he continued it became more and more and more and more and more and more and more obvious that he was attracted to women against his will because he had a HUGE chip on his shoulder about all the women who had turned him down on dates. His life story included the phrase “friend zone” at least 8 times before he even got to his mission, and after his mission Hoo Boy I lost count.

I figured he may just be awkward and bad at greetings – as a fellow awkward malefailure I was totally there with him tbh so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, although later that night my mom and I did vent about him and my mom DID say that if I wanted to break my lease she’d help me do it because that was a lot.

I told her I’d power through and maybe he was just having an off-day.

He was NOT having an off-day.

He actually got worse, somehow.

Over the next week, I learned that he likes to sing – not by himself, not to himself, he likes to sing AT you, like, getting in my face and dancing on me while he sings. And to make all the WORSE it was singing Disney songs acapella, so I’m not just getting danced at like I’m a Shark and he’s a Jet, but it’s accompanied by “What can I say, except, you’re WELCOME” slightly off key, and it happens at least 4 times a day.

Our shower had something like 6 laminated paintings of Jesus taped up on the shower walls (which in Mormon culture is meant to be an anti-masturbation trick, like you can’t jork if when Jesus is ogling you, but they also go out of their way to give Jesus ‘Daddy’ vibes so…) and he still managed to take 45-minute showers every night at 11:30 PM while belting out Disney tunes to let us know that he wasn’t masturbating, but then kinda trailing off for 20 minutes, then restarting for the last five minutes. This was a nightly routine, btw, and he never missed a night.

I know he was probably autistic, because I’m probably autistic, and while that helped me be patient there were still times where it got aggravating – he was just SO Mormon and SO sanctimonius and also SO oblivious to everyone’s feelings about that, it was just, like, UGH. I know it’s unfair of me, but I’m being self-indulgent in letting myself be annoyed with him despite my better judgement.

The thing that topped off his annoyingness, to me, was that he constantly complained about being friendzoned – like, at least once a week he was bitching and moaning to everyone in the apartment about the new woman who’d friendzoned him. Eventually the siren call of curiosity seduced me and I started looking these ladies up and they were, above all else, fucking GODDESSES, but they were also all over 5’10” and he was 5’2”. That’s not necessarily prohibitive – it limited his options, sure, but as a tall woman myself I’ve never been dissuaded from catching feelings based on height. He could have still been saved by his personality, by intensity, by passion about something, by any other thing, but he was not. Instead, he just persisted in flirting like a belligerent gopher and whining about how not a single one of the 5’10” athletic queens he was head-over-heels for would ever see him as more than a “friend.”

Because I was an undercover woman, I was severely annoyed with him, but one day I had a Jimmy Neutron-esque brain blast – this man is down BAD for anyone he needs a ladder to make eye-contact with, he has the charm and likeability of a grocery bag full of warm raccoon diarrhea, and the hobbies of a Mormon strawman. Despite all of this, there was ONE (1!) woman in our ward who actually got along with him. She was a total sweetheart, ambitious, smart, and she enjoyed hanging out with him! Unfortunately for him she was 5’8” and didn’t play volleyball competitively so he had never noticed her.

I thought I’d throw him a bone – a bone he didn’t deserve because he took my presence as a personal insult to his faith and heritage – but a bone that MIGHT get him off my back. So one day, after complaining about being friendzoned by a 6’0” member of the BYU women’s basketball team, I asked him why he had never asked out the one person who seemed to be able to tolerate his presence. His stopped, thought about it for a second, locked in to think about it for another 10 minutes, then paced around the apartment muttering about how I was a genius and how he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it. I was glad he liked my idea, and also worried because he has NO chill and NO ability to see, understand, or respect a boundary, so I reminded him that she was a person with a history of relationship trauma so he needed to calm down and take it slow. They had a weekly “friend date” of going to the temple and then getting Vietnamese takeout and I told him that the only possible approach that could work for her was to be chill, casual, cool, calm, and collected – something along the lines of “Hey, I love doing this every week, we get along well, what if we make the next one a date? Nothing different, we just call it a date and see how it feels?” and he was like “Yeah, yeah, that works, great idea!” and left to his room, probably to masturbate with more vigor than he had ever masturbated before.

Well, the fated day comes – they are going to the temple to do baptisms then grabbing Vietnamese takeout. He gives me a conspiratorial thumbs-up before leaving that made me think he had found a way to fuck it up, but I reminded myself that she had known him for years and still spent time with him on purpose so there was no way in HELL he could fuck this up because she already knew him enough to know the red flags and still hadn’t run.

Well, I settle in to study for a test, I watch some Stranger Things, and sure enough two hours later he comes in like clockwork. I turn around to ask how the ‘date’ went and he’s just like…SO deflated. Like, popped. No wind in his sails. So I immediately know he fucked it up.

“She friendzoned me,” he says

In a different world, that would be the beginning line of what would turn into a frantic and sweaty boyremoval because at this point his only chance at happiness is to give into the hand nature gave him and transition – he’s 5’2”, nerdy, awkward, autistic, skinny, one prostate exam would probably be enough to convert him to the bark side and fully become the puppy girl God made him to be, but I am, first of all, also a bottom, and second of all, fucking CONFUSED as HELL because HOW did he fumble this? Legitimately, how? Like? Ack? What? I was too confused to do my duty to the trans community, so I just asked him what he did. And he launches into the story:

“Well, we went to the temple to do baptisms but they were cleaning the baptismal font so we did sealings instead” (oh no) “and during the sealing the guy officiating them said we were a good couple and he could marry us for real if we wanted” (oh no) “and she laughed, so I thought she liked that idea” (OH NO) “so on the way to get our food I said ‘hey, we’ve been friends for a long time, and I always have a good time with you. I love the way you make me feel, I respect you, and I think I’m ready to man up and recognize my feelings for you” (OH NO!) “[Name], will you do me the immense honor of being my girlfriend?”

¡¡¡¡¡¡OH NO!!!!!!

Like, bro, first of all, that’s how you propose, not how you ask someone with abandonment trauma out on a first date. But second of all, he torpedoed that relationship and fumbled a cutey because she laughed at an old man’s joke? And he thought “Oh, she laughed at a joke, guess she wants me, no need to pace myself or slow anything down!”

I chastised him a bit for deciding to ignore her own feelings and needs, then gave him a hug and told him to go to bed. Following that interaction they continued their friendship, but it was never really the same after that, and she moved out when her lease was up.