There's no such thing as "Casual but consistent"

Dating is cooked and so are we.

Photo by Michael Dam on Unsplash

I know I'm not the age, body type, or mentality to be out here anymore. I just...can't be out here.

I open the dating apps to browse the flesh market, with my old pics and my different haircut, and I know I'm lying way too bad. For one, I already have a companion. Or three. New York is too big for anyone breathing right to be lonely. There's a lid for every rat-proof trash can. For two, I call myself polyamorous.

Writer's note: Am I polyamorous or am I too scared to break up with people? Am I polyamorous or am I sexually deviant? Am I polyamorous or am I not right with the Lord? Things to consider.

But I know I'm absolutely not supposed to be out here when I see this one phrase on profiles from age 26 to 44 (my search setting):

"Casual but consistent."

She wants a casual...but consistent lover. Decoded, this means 'I am willing to spend the least to get the most.'

Intimate love and sexual intimacy needs the bulk of us. That's hard to admit but, there's not one thing I can do well that I also do casually. Care, trust, attention, tolerance, patience, joy, and responsibility need one thousand attentive breaths each.

"Casual but consistent" means we surveyed the lonely city, desperate for a matching broken shard to make our little vase and decided, 'You know what? I can't.'

And trust me, beloveds, I am exasperated. I'm afraid I won't meet you where you are. That I'm too hard to be with. That once you see what's behind my well-placed lies, my clever little bio, we're toast. That the limp, dreadful creep of childless mortality will start to look more like palliative care than aftercare.

But what I'm not gonna do is start parading my mistrust as a philosophy. Or a method to the madness. I’m not going to start declaring my lack of intent as a “preference” when it is a cowardly surrender.

"Casual but consistent" means the economy of love became hyper-capitalist. It isn't neatly transactional. No, someone wins because someone loses. And you don't want to come out on the bitter end.

I was listening to the new Drake and some of the new Megan at the gym. Their lyrics were aggressively pitiful. Each of them, innately, believes love and connection and sexual matching is an exchange they have to win. They were joyless in their self-serving values. Love is a battlefield. Love is a losing game. Trap music does us no good when trying to open ourselves up.

So now, we're on one thousand apps, swiping as if the roster construction in and of itself is a worthwhile substitute. For bonding. For “your person.” Imagine my un-replied texts. My canceled dates. My "I don't think I'm what you're looking for"s whispered after gushy unions and wet underwear. Imagine our nights alone, fending off the darkness with a good opener. A disgusting meme. A disappearing voice note.

I'm not casual or consistent or serious or flaky. I'm looking for a single, undeniable reason for my heart to beat. You can pretend you’re not. But I'm consistently remembering what I want to forget and forgetting what I want to remember.

There was an artist. We went to a museum together. Later, we fucked on her studio floor, and her passion jolted into me enough to make me realize I hadn't ever lived before that moment. There was a sketch exhibit from an 18th century master whose name I need to know. I could always go back to the Met. But what if that brings back all the pain of that casual-but-consistent 6 weeks?

There was a writer. We never fucked. I talked to her from the kitchenette of a hotel suite on a work trip. She kept trying to convince me that I was dating multiple people because I was making mistakes with my heart. I had no real intentions, she said, otherwise, I'd pick a lane and be in it. That wasn't her call, but she was right. She unmatched me.

There was a "casual but consistent" version of me struggling through the thick, laconic gel of a bio. He had a lot to say and much less to give.

His opener should've been about that.