Andy #1
If I had to choose one word to describe the entirety of my dating life, it would be mediocrity. Mediocre men. Mediocre expectations. Mediocre interest. Of this, I am certain. Where things get hazy is how exactly I got here.
That’s a lie. I know exactly how I got here. It was fatphobia all along.
From a very young age, I’ve known that the world hates fat people. I’ve heard all the bullshit about how men will fuck a fat girl but not date her, how they love to get head from a fat girl because of something Drake (and all the pathetic men before him) said, how fat women are simultaneously hyper sexualized and de-sexualized in nearly equal measure. I know all about the self-hatred of the men who love (the bodies of) fat women.
But I also know about the men who love (like really love) fat women. Who aren’t afraid to claim us, who look deep into our eyes just to tell us how beautiful we are, who see us as more than a body—to those men we are people with personalities and feelings—whole, complete, precious.
So while I know there are the men who hate us, and there are the men who simply don’t check for us, there are also the men who cherish us. That’s why I keep dating. That’s why I kept dating and wading my way through the mediocrity. And also why I accepted the mediocrity. Because I was passing the time. Because every so often you’d run into a really great guy, or a really great story, that made all the mediocrity worth it.
I didn’t accept less because I deserved less. I accepted less because it was what was available to me. As a fat woman, living in a wildly fat phobic (read: thin and materialistic) city like Vancouver, my options were limited. It really was that simple.
Whenever I talk with other women about dating, it’s about finding this one great love, a partner, a companion, and I’ve spent most of my dating life just trying to be seen as a person, respected as a complex human being. Why was it so hard for men to value me (when I knew I had so much value within on offer)? I wasn’t desperate to be loved by men but I was certainly desperate to understand them. I’m still waiting to meet even one eloquent enough to explain himself to me. Dating, and the behaviour of men, was full of riddles I couldn’t unravel.
Andy #1 was a nightmare from the start. The first time he messaged was on plenty of fish somewhere back around 2011. We had good banter, so when I googled him and found an article online about how he’d been involved in some sort of cocaine scandal which had caused him to lose his job as a firefighter, I ignored it. We all have a past right? He had bounced back and was now working for the city in a slightly different capacity.
sidenote: it’s truly amazing the way white men can bounce back from anything (and continue to prosper).
Aside from general white-man-success, Andy also had charm going for him. When he suggested a phone call before meeting, I (privately) sulked. I hate talking on the phone—I’m a millennial in all the worst ways (don’t you ever show up to my house without texting first). Even though I was already sweating through my shirt, I agreed and we ended up talking on the phone for two hours. Laughing, banter, by the time the call was over, Andy had charmed my pants off (metaphorically speaking).
Unfortunately, as excited as I had been to go out with him, I was just as quickly disappointed by his inability to make it happen. We made plans twice (which is one time too many). When Andy flaked for the second time, regardless of the excuse being that he got called into work, I was done (or was I?).