Pretty woman sitting nearby. She does not acknowledge or seem to realize my existence is real. I was able to say hello to her one time but that’s been it. She seems unfriendly. There was one very sweet-seeming woman here who melodiously said “Good Morning” to me every single day before getting on her phone to talk to her children as they prepared to go to school. We never spoke beyond that greeting, and one day she stopped showing up. Fired or quit, I would not know. Another woman I tried to get along with seemed friendly at first but she turned into quite the bitter shrew when I got moved over to a different, semi-elite group. She cannot say anything to me now without mentioning that I got this move, which is technically not a promotion but most people see it as that.
I’ve become a bit cavalier about accessing porn on my phone while at work. I’m not aware of any situation where anyone else could possibly have observed this activity but I guess I should remain vigilant, or else stop doing it. The screen is relatively small and no one that I’ve ever seen has been lurking over my shoulder to see what it is I find so interesting. It’s not that I browse or search for fresh porn. I’m checking on certain sites where I’ve been messaging or interacting with certain women, and these sites happen to have a lot of porn on them. I’m not specifically attracted to pornographers, mind you. And not all people on these sites use pornographic content. But some do.
I just assayed my pear stems. I don’t remember which one has been in place the longest but I think it’s the one on the north side by the bathrooms. I do not get to all of them on weekdays. Some are by windows near desks that are occupied Monday through Friday.
I walked past the stripper’s house yesterday. Twice, in fact. Virtually every time I do this lately there appears, in the distance, someone who could conceivably be her, in that from-a-distance kind of recognition which makes aa portly black man look like a rail-thin white woman. There should be a name for that phenomenon. But I have not seen her on her street any time recently. I did cross paths with her on Steinway Street some months ago, maybe a year. I pretended not to see her but I detected that she made haste in making our paths cross as quickly as possible. She thinks I’m a creep and a loser, and for the most part the feelings are mutual. I’m drawn to passing her house for a number of reasons, none of them involving any desire to reconnect or have any interaction. I just want to remind her of all the lies she had to keep track of while we were together. This is a woman with a lot of lies to nourish and maintain, but with me she couldn’t keep track of them. I called her out on somethings but she pretended not to hear me.
I don’t need in my life anything she had to offer except the sex, which was perfunctory at best. She was also a nasty drunk. There was always a line that was crossed when she turned into a fucking animal. I was aware of this when entering into the relationship. It aligned with my tendency to be in abusive relationships or situations. This job has become another instance of this tendency.
Soon, though, I will be working only 4 days a week, a schedule similar to when I was in publishing. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out but it is considered a privilige, similar to having moved over to this department I’m in now. Am I special, or what… The new schedule might be pretty cushy. It’s Friday through Monday, and weekends are usually pretty quiet. So maybe I’ll do ever more of this type of mental-exhaust writing. I’ve stayed away from doing this sort of thing on company time but who cares, it’s more useful than playing video games. I actually got in on those game platforms that pay you to play. If you find the right game you can actually make a decent little side income. I bought my new snow boots and some essentials with game money.
Macadam was the first of those apps I tried. I thought it would be fun to track my daily steps, which typically cross 10,000 even on a work day. It got old fast. I knew the “make money by walking” was basically a canard but I tried it anyway. If I checked in every single day for a full year (which of course I wouldn’t) I would earn less than $5 from walking that year. Where I stayed engaged with Macadam was the games, which were actually pretty good for a while, until they weren’t.I also took the surveys until I came to distrust them. All told I might have made $100 on that app over about 6 or 7 months. The games gradually became very boring and the surveys would just kick me out without explanation, wasting a good amount of my time.
I settled on Playwell. Lots of solitaire variations and shooter games to mindlessly pass the time. I’ve slowed down on my usage of it but it’s a fun way to bring in an occasional $10. The ads can be really smarmy and deceptive, forcing you to click through to a site you have no interest in and claiming you will make thousands of dollars if you download another of these get-paid-to-play apps. Very smarmy and possibly illegal, but the smarm factor seems to depend on the game. Some of them pummel you with ads, others are less punishing in that respect. I’ve actually had a few occasions where they ran out of ad inventory so no ads were shown.
I was just outside. As I approached the intersection of Nassau and Fulton a dude on a motorized skateboard started blasting obscenities at everybody in the intersection who were ignoring the don’t walk signal. Dude was apoplectic and even scary, With no evidence besides this incident I’m guessing he has anger issues. I doubt I could ever get that angry about anything, or rather I could never exhibit anger as demonstratively and obnoxiously as that. I can certainly feel that kind of anger but I’d never be able to express it the way this guy did.
Speaking of my way of occasionally viewing porn sites at work, I just summoned an artisitc nude picture of myself in the bathtub. It’s posted on a sex/swingers site that is awash with dick picks and twat shots. I don’t do that on this site though I’m not shy about doing so.
2024 was my year of the horny girlfriend.She liked when I called her that so I’m OK to do so in retrospect. For most of the year she would ask several times throughout a day, “Do you want to lie down?” We’d have sex 5 or 6 times in a day, sometimes for hours at a stretch, but not every day, and not porn-star style. 2 or 3 days a week and we took our sweet time.
For all that she was not easy. Easy women never are. She was troubled, difficult, and angry.
2025 is shaping up to be my year of nothing. No prospects, my job leaves me little time to meet new people, and as far as sites like the aforementioned or other dating apps I am basically invisible. I am not athletic or particularly good looking, and most damningly I don’t make a lot of money. Online women at most breadcrumb guys like me. In reality it typically goes completely the other way. But this is not reality. This is online dating. This is Fantasy Island.
In app-land men are fed continuous rejection. Women are fed an ocean of dick pics and vulgar comments giving them a bizarrely false sense of desirability and attractiveness. Is meaningful contact even possible this way?
From 2019 through 2024 I was lucky to have a number of relationships that started in the real world and not through the socially strangulated means of trying to communicate online. Here I am again.
The workday is winding down. I just had a full conversation with someone and I have no idea who she was. She seemed very familiar, or rather I seemed familiar to her, as if we had bonded in the past. I don’t know who she is because masks are back. One guy I talk to sometimes is masked up just like when first we met. When his mask came off I was amazed. He looked nothing like I expected or imagined. I think of that any time I see him now, 2 years after masks mostly disappeared from here. I don’t think they will ever fully disappear, though.
