Is this what it means to have a guilty conscience? I’ve buried two dads in the space of three months, but at the first opportunity, I’m making googly eyes at a stranger and trying to gauge the size of his dick. I guess it’s been so long since I’ve been the focus of any hot guy’s attention that I’ve let it get to me. That and it’s far more pleasant thinking about Yujun than about two dead dads.

I’ve never been good at connecting with people. In high school and even the early years of college, I was too overeager, latching on to the first person who showed any sign of interest. If a girl complimented my lipstick choice, I presumed that we were going to be exchanging those interlocking BFFs heart necklaces and then I’d be crushed when I got skipped over for that girl’s trip to the nail salon or the post-prom party at the Embassy Suites down by the river. In college, it was much the same way. I’d take the most innocent of overtures and blow it up into a lifelong friendship before we’d even had a meal together. I’d end up hurt, but wouldn’t admit it. By the end of my sophomore year, I learned to stop making the effort.

The last real relationship I had, if you could call it that, was with Travis Bloom. He was a jock insomuch as a nonscholarship college athlete could be called one. He was fit, looked good in a pair of jeans, rocked intramural sports, said that he rushed but didn’t want to conform. Later, someone told me that he never even received an invite to join a fraternity. It sounded about right. He often made small boasts that could never be verified—was the best player on my high school football team but am not going to brag about it—but I thought he was cool in the way stupid virgins who didn’t have boyfriends in high school think men in college are cool.

He was bad in bed, although I was no better so I didn’t complain. Our two-semester romance didn’t make it past the summer between my sophomore and junior years. He went home to St. Louis and hooked up with his high school girlfriend, a former cheerleader if I remember correctly, and I learned how to make a chocolate raspberry mousse with my mom at a new kitchen store that had opened up in the East Village.

After that, I had a few random hookups but nothing serious. I slept with a lab partner for a semester mostly because we were both bored and it was easy. I hooked up with a minor league baseball player whom I met at a bar the summer I graduated from college. These experiences were pretty soulless and unsatisfying, so when I started working, I decided that my time was better spent as a single female. Men were too much effort, and friends? Well, I had my coworkers if I needed someone to hang out with, and there were other things in life that fulfilled me. Books. Binge-watching sitcoms made ten years ago. I took up knitting once with Mom. We tried to make a blanket together. It turned into a very large, very ugly scarf. I wonder where the monstrosity is right now. In the three years since I’ve been out of college, I’ve sort of retreated—to my apartment, to my hobbies, to my television.