Chris Stevens; Sadomasochist?

I must be. I put myself through so much pain with the opposite sex that I must enjoy being hurt everytime I turn around. It's a frustrating thing to know that in 10 days I'll be 25 years old, and no closer to being treated like an actually human being by women. You never really think that you'd be reaching your mid-20s with no real relationship or first love to speak of, but that is the case with me. And it hurts so damn bad.

I'm still trying to figure out if I've done something in the past for me to be so snakebitten, but I truly can't think of anything. I guess if there's such a thing as multiple lives, maybe I was a vagina-chasing, lying, no-good, promiscuous dog in my last life. And the reincarnation, an average dude living an average life, is paying for the previous spirit's transgressions. Or it could be the fact that I'm not exactly anyone's male model dream leading man or something like that. Over 6 feet tall? Nope. 165 pounds or less? Haven't seen that since grade school. Add darkskinned complexion, eyeglasses, and not enough hair to braid into the mix, and you have me.

Surely people are going to wonder "well, what about your personality?" To which I respond with this simple thought; women care about as much as personality as R. Kelly cares about seeing ID. So while folks can lavish me with compliments about my sense of humor, the fact they like to be around me, and yadda yadda yadda, and as nice as it is to hear them say those things, they are in the extreme minority. While it is true that we men are the more visual creatures, women are far more ruthless about their aesthetic preferences. It's not uncommon for me to be called a "fat, black so and so" or being giggled at while walking across hell...I mean the campus of Delaware State University.

It's almost funny to hear women say that they are tired of men treating them like shit, mainly because there will always be another member of their gender to say "Girl, I feel you." Yet, when these same chicks pick me apart based on appearance, I'm supposed to block it out and keep on truckin'. It's not that easy. At all.

It's so bad, I literally expect women to just fall out and laugh at me. I'm literally bracing for it, and 75 percent of the time, it happens. I guess the control to that experiment is my sense of humor. In Physics class, this one girl found it funny that I was singing "Fifth" in the back of the class when the professor thought everyone had the fifth edition of the book instead of the fourth. So I see this girl again while I'm walking to my second job and she politely says "hey." Nothing mean or ignorant after that. But that's just one fluke experience.

The rest of my life from about 13 on I guess has been one cruel series of inside jokes and sight gags at the hands of women. Yet, I continue to be hopeful that not all women are like this. I guess I must really like pain.