At 6'4", towering over the median populace like some anomalous column thrusting incongruously skyward from the barren plains of my social life, I am not without physical stature. And yet, despite this considerable height—a characteristic that in the animal kingdom might function as a signifier of reproductive fitness—I have never had a girlfriend. The labyrinthine corridors of modern dating seem perpetually to thwart my every tentative advance. It is not that I do not try, nor that I am categorically rejected, but rather that I am perennially caught between inertia and misfire, oscillating endlessly between the unmarked passages of loneliness and the blind alleys of self-sabotage.

This quandary evokes another myth, that of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who became enamored of his own reflection. Narcissus’s tale, often misconstrued as a cautionary narrative against vanity, is, in fact, a tragedy of unattainability—an allegory of desire that cannot transcend itself. He does not love the reflection for what it is, but for what it represents: the spectral promise of a love that is always withheld, always deferred, forever tantalizing and forever out of reach. In this sense, my dating life bears an uncanny resemblance to Narcissus’s fate. I have never fully succeeded in bridging the gap between myself and the Other, perpetually gazing into the mirror of social encounters, caught in a vortex of yearning and estrangement.

Could it be, then, that I am, like Narcissus, ensnared by an image of desire that I can never actualize? Might this interminable solitude be less a function of external circumstances—such as height, status, or personality—and more a symptom of some internal chasm? It is this thought that leads me to an uncomfortable question: am I, in some unspoken way, inverted? Could it be that my frustrations in heterosexual courtship stem not from external limitations but from an intrinsic disorientation—a sublimated homoeroticism that I have been unwilling to confront?

The thought occurs sporadically, like a slantwise wind cutting through the labyrinth, teasing but never clarifying. It is not that I have any definitive evidence—no clandestine moments of forbidden longing, no secret infatuations with other men—but rather a sense of profound unmooring, an uncanny suspicion that perhaps my inability to form attachments with women is not simply circumstantial. After all, does not the failure to pursue a coherent romantic path suggest some deeper incoherence? Yet, if I am gay, why does the thought elicit no great epiphany, no sudden surge of recognition, but only a vague, unsettling ambiguity?

Ambiguity, of course, is the defining feature of another archetypal figure from classical mythology: the prophet Tiresias, who, having been transformed into a woman and then back into a man, possessed the singular knowledge of both sexes. Tiresias’s insight was both a gift and a curse, a source of wisdom that estranged him from both men and women alike. In the same way, I find myself trapped in a liminal space—not between genders, but between sexualities, caught in the interstices of the normative and the deviant, unable to affirm or deny any fixed orientation. This ambiguity, however, rather than providing clarity, only deepens the labyrinth. Am I simply maladjusted? Or am I so thoroughly alienated from desire itself that even this most basic question remains forever unanswered?

At times, I contemplate whether I am merely too cerebral for the whole sordid enterprise. Like the famed Hellenistic philosopher Diogenes, who eschewed social convention in favor of an ascetic life spent antagonizing the citizenry of Athens, I, too, feel an almost perverse disinterest in the rituals of dating. Where others appear to navigate the maze with an intuitive ease, flitting effortlessly through Tinder, Bumble, and hinge upon hinge of digital courtship, I find myself paralyzed by a paralysis that defies comprehension. Diogenes, when asked where one could find an honest man, is said to have wandered the streets of Athens with a lantern, searching in vain for such a specimen. I feel that I, too, am holding my lantern aloft, searching not for an honest man, but for some unnamable intimacy that remains obstinately undiscovered.

Perhaps, in the end, the problem is not so much a lack of a girlfriend but the lack of desire for a girlfriend—or, more insidiously, the lack of desire itself. After all, what does it mean to desire? Is it merely the raw, animalistic impulse to copulate, or is it, as Plato suggests in his Symposium, the longing for a transcendence of the self through the union with an idealized other? If it is the latter, then perhaps I have been doomed all along—doomed by my very height, by the very stature that paradoxically sets me apart, marking me as a presence but never as a partner. The height that should be an asset is in fact a hindrance, a perpetual reminder of my alienation, my otherness. Like some latter-day Ajax, towering above the battlefield yet condemned to ignominy, I am too tall, too remote, too detached from the earthbound desires of those around me.

And so, I wander these labyrinthine corridors, neither fully Narcissus nor wholly Tiresias, caught between the Scylla of heterosexual expectation and the Charybdis of homoerotic uncertainty, forever searching for an Ariadne to lead me out, only to find that, perhaps, there is no exit after all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5603482&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=4295921",#48144366)

cringejak.soy

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5603482&forum_id=2\u0026mark_id=4295921",#48144384)