Aaron M. Fortkamp

His dong hit the bar. The French pole vaulter failed his pole vault because, on his way down on the other side—he’d made it, he’d cleared the height—his junk got caught and visibly dislodged from its spandex resting place. It appeared no other part of him would have touched it, but his member slammed down on it like a shot glass on a bar. The slow motion replay revealed the contact was solid, the dick-n-balls carrying the flexible bar down a few inches before releasing and everything snapping back towards its respective desired rest position, which of course launched the bar upward and ultimately off the supports, the dingus presumably unaffected in the long run.

Coverage of this event ranged from the tongue-in-cheek to the blatant “look at his penis” variety, with most excusing themselves for this utter clickbait story coming at the man’s expense by also complimenting his size. My question is how does he feel about all this coverage of his losing vault. One would traditionally associate Big Dick Energy with not giving a flip about how other people may regard your member because you feel assured in your own right that you’re carrying a hammer in your toolbox and you can count on it to get the job done. But does BDE make you immune to having the world’s attention called to your failure? Whatever the reason, you did not succeed at the one thing you have spent countless hours training to do, and the press is not flocking to the winner of the event but to you, all eyes on you, the loser. Whether or not they give a shit about the pole vault (they don’t), they are still shouting for all to see, check out Frenchie over here! Hey everyone, look at the loser! See how funny it is that his event is the pole vault, perhaps the most phallic of all the Olympic events save for the two-man bobsled! Marvel at the irony of how usually a long pole is the ticket to victory, not defeat! Should I mention how big I think it is again, or have I done enough to ease my conscience about essentially being that bully in the class that pantses the nerd and then points and laughs?

I haven’t seen anyone use his name yet, either. Also it probably hurt like a B. The slow motion replay being used almost exclusively doesn’t do the impact justice.

I have unwittingly joined a club, it seems, of single folks who are lonely but see that as the better option than searching for someone to watch movies with who will then inevitably turn out shitty in some other way. I know people in this club, some for a long time, most of whom I never understood why they would opt for this existence. And I still don’t know why they did, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out they were opting for the lesser of two evils. Really, all I want, what I miss the absolute most, is having someone to whom I am allowed to be near during passive entertainment (like movies, or sports, or the occasional Buffy marathon which is sorta both). Someone who doesn’t mind (too much) if I quote the movie, or share my opinions on why the plot is stupid. I don’t watch a whole lot of movies anymore. I don’t see the point. It’s nothing but trees falling in the woods, the solo movie experience. I’d sooner be the only person in the audience of a play. At least the players would know you were there, would be aware of an audience-actor relationship going on, even if there’s no audience-audience dynamic you tend to expect in an auditorium. I’d rather watch the same movie one hundred times with my five-year-old—and I believe some of them are actually approaching that number for us—than a single movie just once by myself. I love it when I laugh at the movie and he tells me not to. It’s either a serious request or almost reluctant because he found it funny too but still I was proving a distraction. Either way it’s an experience, it speaks to me about him, about me, about the movie. If I’m by myself, sure, I might laugh at something. But what does that tell me? Do I understand anything new about me? About the movie? How do I know if it’s good? I can, if I want, still comment on the plot, out loud, to myself, and sometimes I can’t help give my spontaneous opinion to the void, but was my comment apt, or am I missing something obvious or failing to appreciate the film on its own terms? Bad movies alone are just bad movies. With other people, with the right people, bad movies can be super fun. Same with sports, I get to critique every little thing and feel smart and good about myself for knowing what sucks about the performance in front of me. But oh god—what if the movie turns out to be good? Like really good? And I’m all by myself? What if the movie is a true and unique experience, like Everything Everywhere All At Once, and I cry several times and laugh more times and occasionally cry-laugh, which is exactly what happened? Am I supposed to keep all that to myself? Do I know if I would’ve reacted the same way if I’d had an audience of my own, someone who wasn’t just a someone but a person whose opinion I value, whom I trust enough to see my vulnerability? Or was I just in the mood to cry at the time, some wave of depression that had exposed a nerve, and the additional presence of someone important in the room, someone who matters, who is integral to my otherwise daily ins and outs, who I will soon be interacting with over the choice of what’s for dinner, would that presence have caused me to ground myself, steel myself more firmly, cover up the raw? Or would their reactions have only amplified my own? I do not have the same emotions privately that I do in any other situation. I write in public sometimes, which is good for me because I do not have perform for myself (writing at home always feels like I’m trying to make a statement about what a “writer” really is and I can’t often escape the meta lens and stop feeling too self-conscious to actually produce anything of worth), and while I do not care enough about the opinions of strangers to want to try to impress them, I am subject to a sort of social anxiety of a panoptic variety in that if people see me here just dicking around on the internet or something instead of with a word processing app open and my fingers flying they may possibly carry a nonspecific negative impression of me with them, which of course means that if *I* see someone else set up to work at a coffee shop and instead of working I see them on their phone or browsing Amazon or worse Facebook then I invariably if subconsciously judge them like why are you wasting space here when other people could be using that table, go use your phone on the toilet. Which, when the situation is reversed, makes me care just enough to keep on task, but not so much that it becomes paralyzing, like when I try to write with someone accompanying me on the trip to the coffee shop or what have you, someone who will know if I’m actually writing or just faking it, much less (god help me) someone who is also a writer and would know the difference. I don’t want to date another writer. Maybe a musician. A singer or something. Don’t come write with me but do come sing with me, watch a movie with me, come ride in a car with me, listen to music or podcasts with me, exist passively in my general sphere. Read my writing (after the fact! not real time! let me polish it smooth before permitting your eyes to absorb the intricate thought gymnastics I’m trying to demonstrate!), in fact crave my writing, be my primary audience, the person I write for, if I complete another novel I want you to be the de facto dedication, like obviously it’s you, who else could it be. But crave it as a passive participant, as a fan, share my opinion on what makes any art good and thereby encourage me to create specific examples of it without, you know, verbally encouraging me specifically, because cringe. I’m just kidding, you can be a writer too, and if so I would hope to be your biggest fan in return, but that’s where the transaction ends, we do not need to work together or help each other improve, I don’t need your advice and you don’t need mine, thank you.

I don’t think any of that is too much to ask. A lot of it is just basic companionship. It should be common as toast. And that is worth something, but comparatively? If I’m weighing pros and cons? Perhaps I am devaluing it, this brand of companionship, but right now I’m a card-carrying member of the no-thanks club, because even if I would find someone to give me all of that, I do not trust the rest, practically every other dynamic of a relationship sounds torturous to me, even a moderately successful relationship where most of that other stuff goes okay, the remaining 10% sounds godawful, unendurable, and this is only based on my past experiences btw, ways that relationships have failed and tormented me before, there’ve been a fair few, some failures I specifically remember and some that just left a lasting impression, the specifics of which I may be repressing but left me emotionally scarred nonetheless—which is to say, I’m not even taking into account this hypothetical new relationship’s heretofore unexplored avenues of shittiness. It’s not like I’ve seen it all, is it. I could still be surprised, in fact most likely I would be, by the path this new knife takes to my brain stem.

The only argument for the other side, then, is that there could also be positive experiences out there I have yet to dream up that could tip the scales the other way. So, yes. I exist on a dating app. I’m there. I swipe. Maybe lighting will strike.

But probably I’ll still be sitting on my couch in five years, alone, wondering what all this is for.