Scrub Status

November 17, 2008

I sat depressed and alone in my dorm room overlooking NYC’s cherished Union Square, with Radiohead’s “Creep” sulking in the background.

I looked down with longing at the plethora of social interactions and couples that plagued that rugged Square, as musicians jazzed, bikers and skaters flew, and farmers and artists came to proudly display their respective masterpieces as the autumn leaves decorated the brick floor. Down there was a vast and diverse multitude of colors, art, vegetables, music, leaves, painted even more beautifully with human interactions that engender the most authentic emotions such as anger, depression, hate, joy, curiosity, and more importantly, love. Simply put, the square teemed with life…

But I sat, looking down, alone, void of emotions, in the darkness…

When I started college, I thought I was going to be a “baller” or a “player”. I thought I was going to have so much fun and get so many girls. Especially since I was entering a school in NY, New York, which is famous for a diverse set of the most beautiful women in the world. Since most of the male population going to my school is gay, I thought the chances of getting the girls that I used to only dream of in high school increased tenfold.

But after a pretty lame freshman year, I realized that NYC social scene was a totally new and mysterious world, and when I did go out to bars and clubs, I would be trapped on the side, watching people have fun, as I tried to pretend to be busy looking at my phone or pretended to be too tired as I sat in a corner radiating negative social energy or in PUA terms, demonstrating lower value. In class (and various other academic settings), in the gym, in the cafeteria, or in other social gatherings, I would be the guy that minded his own business and talked to my own friends. All I could think of when talking with girls was school work. (What a Loser!) If it was a pretty girl that I liked, I would keep the conversation very safe and formal, as if not to offend her. I was happy by the fact that she was taking her time acknowledge my presence, but relieved when she left because when she was around, I would be so tense. Worse off, I would go home and think about her, frustrated, knowing I could never get a girl like that to even be a friend. I oozed neediness, desperation, and depression, like I have a sign on my back with AFC written on it. Every weekend, I would have to depend on my friends who were a little better with girls to find where the next party was and be ready to drop mad money, because there was probably no way I could bring girls with me. After a couple weeks of leaching off my friends, they started to not pick up my phone calls. Two years have gone by in college, and I am no where near having the fun I thought I would have when I began as a eager young freshman. I found myself becoming more desperate and more frustrated with myself. To mark my inner depression and disappointment with myself, I started wearing hoodies covering my face, didn’t shave, smoked pot all the time, and started to stay in on weekends to play computer games, listened to depressing and slow rock and R&B about rockers and singers who had their hearts broken or just cried out in sexual frustration. Who knew that the complexities of the feminine mystique could so utterly break a soul of a man? I had officially hit the lowest point in my social life ever. I am a tool. This was absolute scrub status.

I had always been cool in high school. Everyone liked me, as a friend. I was a three season athlete, pretty good looking, tall, wide shoulders, kind of scrawny, and doing well academically as well. One huge selling point was that I had the whole house to myself senior year of high school, and I threw mad parties, but looking back, I felt like I was being used to throw parties and thus started the makings of one of the biggest tools/scrubs in history. I realized that when all of my sudden new found friends left me alone to clean the house by myself after almost every party. In the day, I realized I did not make an attempt to go out with friends, but stayed in and played computer games. I never had a girlfriend, but there were always some cute girls that showed interest in me, but whenever it came time to socializing with them, I was a failure. To hide my fear and pretend like I had something to offer them, I said I partied with college kids a lot when I really didn’t party or know that many college kids, and created this identity for myself as a “way too cool for school” kid. This resulted in never having a girlfriend during high school and not even having a prom date. I pretended like the girls were too low level for my taste, and played it off like I didn’t have any money for prom. Inside though, it stung like a bitch. But whatever, I thought that once I got to college in NYC, I would make cooler friends and meet hotter girls, and my high school friends would beg to visit me in the city and take them out. Up till now, none of my high school friends have shown a remote interest in visiting me.

That is absolute scrub status.

I tried to use the same game that I used in high school for college, pretending like I had a lot of offer, to friends and girls so that they would look up to me and respect me, when I really didn’t. And when compared to the promoters and millionaire parents’ children I was up against, there was no chance in hell. That was when I finally acknowledged that I was a scrub, a tool; someone that had been hiding behind a false mask of greatness when in reality, all there was behind that mask was a fearful boy who just wanted to be loved.

One of my few close friends started talking about “the Game”, and how these methods have improved so scrub status men into stars with women. I didn’t believe it at first, but in my desperation, I hoped something like the game did exist, and decided I would work on it in hopes that just possibly, I could accomplish my dreams. That was when I finally decided to get this area of my life handled. I saw an ad for “Conquer Your Campus”, priced reasonably, and decided to buy it. Seeing my credit card being charged for something that I might not be able to trust, written about an elusive topic by an unknown author was probably, in my mind, the most degrading thing I had ever done. It was like a proud acknowledgement to the financial institutions that run credit card companies and whoever was on the other end selling these self-help books that I am officially scrub status. After reading through the book, and re-reading it, and after a few months of trying to implementing the theories in the book, I realized that I didn’t improve that much. I blamed it on the NYC setting, which was very different from the campus college settings of the CYC e-books. But once again, I was trying to find a way to justify getting a refund for my money.

In fact, everything that the book said was true and I hated it. It exposed me for the coward I was. I realized I had been living a lie, a life with no substance. When I viewed myself as something not cool that I had to create a false identity with those I considered my friends, then something had to be wrong. In the process of trying to be this elusive cool, I had decayed into a scrub. But now that part of my life is over, and my mask is coming off. I realized that cool is a subjective thing. All my life, I had been trying to be cool according to other people’s view, when in reality, it was I, and only I, who had the power to define something as cool. So over the summer I spent a lot of time with my real friends and family just being me, exposed as naked for them to see, and I realized that to them, I am cool and they love me just the way I am. Now, with the help of some friends, Christian Hudson and Nick Sparks, I want the world to see how freaking cool I really am. And I know they’re going to like what they see…

Scrub Status

Related Posts (by tag)

Comments

Posts by Author

Topics

Archives

Recent Posts

Friends and Inspiration