Dear Josiah: Man or Woman?

– He Who Shall Not Be Named

Dear He,
Man. On the off chance that you didn’t stop reading after seeing those three letters, I need to tell you off, because I do not know WHERE you get off. Certainly not with the female staff on my team that you send that exact message to, sometimes repeatedly. Did you think writing it here would somehow warrant a response? 

Well, I suppose it does. You listen here you little twat: I know exactly what kind of game you’re playing. It’s not about getting a date. If it was, you’d be going out and talking to girls, trawling the depths of Hinge, or maybe I’d see you in the Nelson. But no. You go fishing on Sidechat. They say there’s many fish in the sea, and you might argue that you’re casting a wide net, but to you, it’s not about getting a bite, is it? You love the feeling of making girls uncomfortable. It makes you feel powerful, like less of a sad, lonely sea cucumber. You’ve got the appeal of a gillnet to an endangered vaquita dolphin. 

Go drown in the Drake Passage. And don’t even THINK of looking at a woman again unless you can see her as an equal, not an object. Hey, maybe you could even try going to church! I hear God does astounding things there.

Dear Josiah: Josiah… I read your words. They were kind of like a wake up call to me. I need to be a better man! You were right. I was acting like a sea cucumber, because I felt sad and lonely. Every girl I ever love eventually leaves me, because I just can’t open myself up to be emotionally vulnerable with her. You can’t even imagine the loneliness of being abandoned like that over and over. It made me feel dehumanized. I wallowed in my own despair for a while, before it calcified into cynicism. That toxic bitterness infected the way I saw everyone around me, especially the women in my life. Rather than take the risk of genuinely talking to someone new, I got my kicks from making random women on Sidechat feel as dehumanized as I did. I felt entitled to their attention. Josiah, I want to be better! This time, I really want to try to make a real connection with someone. And I want that someone to be a well educated, mysterious, nautically-inclined grey fox newspaper editor! So… I only have one question for you: Al Forno’s or Gracies?

Dear He,
What can I say, I know a few things about ending the male loneliness epidemic. I can fix you. So I’ll pick Al Forno’s, and you’re picking up my tab. Maybe if you’re lucky… Well, we’ll see how the night goes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: After writing this article, Josiah went missing. He was last seen in a honeymoon suite at Sandals, Jamaica. He is still at large. His fourth cousin three times removed, Juliana Escuti ‘27, has ghostwritten in his stead for this issue of The Carberry. She knows too much about fish.