9 Reasons Why I Won’t Be Dating Any Time Soon

1. Nobody wants to date a Lowland Silverback

What’s a Lowland Silverback, you ask? It’s a gorilla, but not just any gorilla: it spends most of the day glued to one spot, eating immense quantities of carbs. For all intents and purposes, it is my spirit animal, and I saw it staring me in the face one day when I was on a 4-hour Animal Planet downward spiral. It really helps to know one’s true self. After making peace with the perpetually single ape within, like a proper gorilla, I turned off the television, made myself a comfortable nest, and bedded down for the night.

2. I’m a pig

Outside of George Clooney, no one wants to take a pot-bellied pig to bed. Why? Because they’re messy. And I have some piggish habits. I like to munch on crunchy Frosted Flakes and Oreo cookies in bed. Even though it’s gross, I let the crumbs pile up around me until I ended up covered in what looked like layers of exposed sedimentary rock with enough crumbs to make the bottom layer of a Paula Dean Christmas cheesecake. It’s a disgusting, revolting, piggish display, but way easier than getting up and getting a plate. And, it’s fun to see how grubby I’ll let myself get before I’m like, wait a minute, now I’ve really done it – one more layer, and I’m ready to be roasted like a pig at a Hawaiian luau. Once, I did nine layers, just like the calorically infamous dip at Chili’s.

3. I hate shaving

Stubble and necking do not mesh. Someone always gets hurt. My ex hated kissing me when I was unshaved. Around 5 o’clock, when the beard of doom poked through my epidermis, I had to pull a Cinderella and disappear. He did not like that. I guess I could shave, but razors suck. Scraping the face with a sharpened blade is like watching Taylor Swift freshen up her acceptance speech: unmitigated torture. A friend once told me I could do like the hipsters and work a dark beard, but I told her that I’m not responsible enough to have facial hair. It’s a luxury, like having a pet. Beards itch and need to be trimmed. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

4. I have a vision board

I said I would never fall prey to one of those bald new-age gurus on Oprah who hype up the crowds with funny ideas about wishing their problems away and “thinking” a Ferrari out of a car lot and into their garage. Still, I own a hunk of plywood from Home Depot covered in red felt and adorned with my wishes. Mind you, this activity filled a lot of weekends I could have spent dating. One Friday, instead of tackling my bio on some dating site, I spent the hours nursing my wish list, deeply personal notes about the caviar lifestyle I wanted, and not the Egg Mcmuffin life I had. Basically, the board is crammed with way too specific pages ripped out of glossy trades like Dwell, Dog Fancy, Redbook, and People Magazine. One look and the world could see the house, husband, pooch, and fantasy ten-pound hamburger with truffle mayo that haunts my dreams.

5. I loathe diets

Me, on a diet? I become a miserable human being, much less a miserable date. On days I start a diet, I split into two people. One part of me is like, today’s the day, yahhhhh! And the other part of me is like, eat everything, leave no man, woman or child, or light pole standing. Usually the bad guy inside me who wants to be impaled by a mango flavored icicle wins, and the good guy, the respectable chap who wants to chew every bite of kale 23 times and drink six tubs of Kabbalah water before every macrobiotic meal is like, I’ll just start over tomorrow. Nobody should be subjected to dealing with a Jekyll and Mr. Wide like that.

6. I’m wishy-washy about God

In my neck of the southern woods, a stone’s throw away from a very big church complex, a lot of the gay-legible bachelors I meet happen to be religious. They want me to believe in a higher power, and I don’t mean Judge Judy. But I have a hard time making up my mind about Him. This is the deal: when my half of my friends talk to me, I’m like, no, I don’t believe in Hereafter, and then, when my other friends corner me, I say, I believe. In theory, a relationship is made on more details than whether or not you believe in God, but I’d stress whether or not to get married in a religious ceremony way too much to know if I should date somebody who’s religious or not.

7. I’m spoiled rotten

I crave the red-carpet treatment. And when my knight in shining armory can’t get me into the VIP room, I feel rejected. Nobody worth his weight in Valentine’s candy wants to date the overgrown bitter guy with a chocolate chip of disdain on his shoulder. I know it’s lame to be a human parking meter. Basically, I’m just like my dog, a shaggy rescue mutt from a shady part of town. My dog is all hugs and wet-nosed-kisses and waggly tails when I’m eating a cheesy slice of meat lover’s pizza, but the moment the pepperoni is gone, so is he.

8. I’m a head-case with severe case of agoraphobia

I’m not exactly a good plus one to a wedding soiree or a high school reunion. Forget dating, I have to get out of the house. For help, I once went to a well-known psychiatrist and fibbed to her to get the pills that would help me lose weight and get the guy. But she had her own agenda. After listening to me vent about my unusual habit of setting a plate for my imaginary boyfriend, she took off her bifocals and steered me to her pop-all-the-pills-you-can plan. At first, I said no, but I guess she won in the long run because she got me hooked on three pills that I didn’t even want in the first place: one to get up, one to go to sleep, and one to feel better about the first two pills.

9. I’m easily terrified

Most people want to feel safe with the person they’re snuggling with, and I can’t help with that, I’m a weakling. So no romantic drives or walks into the dark woods of doom for me. In fact, If you ask me, I think the scariest words in the English language, other than “Congratulations, you are still in the running to be America’s next top model” is, TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER. If the aliens ever get their crooked humidifiers and misshaped landing gear up to code and land this side of Haifa, I don’t want anything to do with them. I will haul ass out of there, and leave my potential romeo in the dust. So much for love. I’d rather snuggle in my layers of chip dust. The aliens can’t get me from there.