Okay, so the whole point of the Mortality Blog is that I have less then 80 years to live, and I think there’s a few things that I’ve run up against in my life that might be good for other people to see my thoughts on.

That said – how do I put this? I experienced an intriguing conflict of interests today. It’s a pretty stellar example of something that I’ve really only had the privilege of being exposed to a few times – a girl more or less explicitly asking me to sleep with her. In this case, it was someone attractive, someone smart and funny and cute and all that, but a girl nonetheless – and despite being comfortable in my relative lack of interest in that sort of thing, I realized that I felt bad, in a ‘I’m letting someone down’ sort of ‘not meeting expectations’ sort of way. Which is total bullshit – how many times have I protested that responsibility can only be accepted, not assigned, and that I feel that I’m under no circumstances obligated to follow cultural conventions regarding romance?

And yet – not saying, “Yes!” felt bad. In my head, I know that it wouldn’t have gone well – it would’ve just been disappointing to both of us. And yet there’s this sort of distinctly masculine cultural responsibility that I found myself aware of, where a guy is supposed to sleep with a girl especially if she really wants it. And I was failing at that duty.

It’s times like this that make some of my gay friend’s humorous accusations that I’m a straight man with a penis fetish seem just a little bit accurate – there are plenty of girls with whom I would gladly flirt if only there wasn’t this more or less inescapable reality of a vagina laying in wait. It seemed like a lot to explain to this particular girl, considering my general reluctance to bring this sort of thing up due to my cultural obligation aversion, but it was striking – how many times do I actually have reason to momentarily regret my sexual tastes? Not very often.

Anyway, it seemed interesting, and like I said, if anyone feels like taking a peek into my head, this is the sort of stuff that tumbles around like a wet load of clothes in a dryer.