His income, like the leaves on his suburban lawn, shrinks with the seasons. Ruinous. The tri-state cost of living is a predator, sharp-toothed and relentless, gnawing through what little he has. House poor—no, more than poor. In debt to walls that echo.

At 5’9, he is not short. But he is not tall. He is the median, the mean, the man people forget in photographs. Bald, too—not like Yul Brynner, commanding the room, but like the bulb of a streetlamp, faint and flickering. He hasn’t been touched since before the world shut down. Not a hug, not a glance, not even the desperate warmth of a Tinder bot trying to scam him out of a cash app transfer.

He backed Xbox. A choice made in some moment of hubris or delusion, now a tombstone for his gaming prospects. The Series X collects dust beside a stack of unopened Blu-rays, promises made to himself that he never intended to keep. He lost the console war in his basement, and no one even noticed.

Travel? He asks because he cannot afford it. He says it because it stings less than admitting he’s never left the Eastern Time Zone. Oh, you travel? He spits the words out, like seeds from a fruit he’ll never taste.

He had a Sega Genesis growing up. He thought it made him different, better. Blast Processing and all that noise. But Sonic never taught him how to talk to women. The console wars were fought in basements and bedrooms, and he emerged the victor of nothing. A blue hedgehog and a save file full of regrets.

Romance evades him like light in a dying day. Before COVID, there were chances—glimpses of connection, brief and brittle. A girl at a bar once laughed at his joke, and he thought it meant something. It didn’t. It never does. Now the world has moved on, and he’s still standing in the same place, the echoes of old hopes bouncing off the walls of his overpriced Connecticut home. The tri-state cost of living is an executioner. It drags him to the block every month, demanding blood, sweat, and tears in the form of mortgage payments and property taxes. His house, his prison. Four bedrooms for one man and his failed dreams. The walls close in when he sleeps, whispering the things he cannot bear to say aloud. He hasn’t touched anyone since before masks became mandatory. His hands are clean, his bed colder than the New England winters that leech through the cracks. He is 5’9, bald, and alone. Not tall enough to stand out, not interesting enough to be remembered. Romance is for other men—taller, younger, richer men. Men who didn’t major in nothing and stumble into something too late. He carries it all, every failure, every missed chance, every shrinking paycheck, in the hollow of his chest. He is a man in the tri-state area, and the tri-state will destroy him.

He is a man, and he is not a man. A cipher. A punchline that loops back into itself, forgotten before the joke lands.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5667467&forum_id=2).#48574179)

And I am not seeking romance, so your insults fall flat like errant arrows on the linoleum floor of your trailer's kitchenette.

Either way, I don't have to listen to this goddamn crap.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5667467&forum_id=2).#48574955)