2015: Or Realising I Was a Fuccboi

I’m not usually one to engage in the dialogue of ‘new year, new me’. I got a lot from 2015, and I would want to say that I was a good person throughout. But something weighs heavy on my mind. I have become a fuccboi.

Originally, a fuccboi referred to ‘a person who is a weak ass pussy that ain’t about shit’. It has now been appropriated to refer to males who are defined by entitlement and fecklessness. A fuccboi is the kind of guy who will hang out with you for sex without telling you what he wants, the kind of guy to fuck you and not contact you again. Nomenclature of the age of dating and hook-up apps, it is a useful term to describe the social illiterati who use see these apps as a useful window to a fuck, unthinking when it comes to the actual people involved.  

Now, admitting that you come within the definition of such a contemptible class of people ain’t easy. Sometimes the evidence stacks up though. The first time someone on Tinder told me that she didn’t want to waste her time with ‘a mother fuck boy’ (spelling variations occur) I thought it was laughable. It’s no crime to have sex with people who are willing; I shouldn’t be ashamed just because this girl wasn’t.

Lately though, I’ve had cause to review my escapades in the land of sheets and pillows. Chloe lamented that ‘you’re just using me for sex’, and Rachel mournfully told me ‘every time I am getting over you, you come back into my life’. Again I was affronted and defensive. I don’t use people for sex, it’s a two way street anyway! And the idea that I was leading Rachel on completely ignored the fact I had told her I didn’t want a relationship.

One thing I could be sure about, the way I was treating people was making them feel like shit. ‘Do I need to surrender all sex that isn’t part of a loving relationship?’ I wondered. Workable casual sex was fast becoming some unattainable goal. Isn’t life complicated?

In my younger years, Jade, who had been messaging me in just a friendly way asked me to grab a drink with her after midnight. ‘Booty call’, I thought. We ended up back at her house sitting on her bed at about 3, both pretty wasted. ‘I’ll go for it’ I thought, leaning over for a kiss. She stopped me. ‘Oh no MAN, sorry I’m not into you like that’. Feeling misled, I made a quick escape.

I recently recounted this puzzling episode to some friends. ‘Surely that’s a definite booty call, what did she think she was doing?’ I questioned. One of them came back to me on New Years Eve. ‘I should have told you straight away, but I felt like that story was incredibly entitled’. She was right. The fact someone wants to hang out with you but doesn’t want to fuck you isn’t bewildering. I hadn’t even made it clear to Jade that I was into her in that way.

About an hour later when I awkwardly tried to explain to a girl that I was single and that Rachel wasn’t my girlfriend, I added an anecdote about a failed relationship with Renee. ‘You’re a fuccboi, aren’t you?’ I resigned myself to the truth of the statement. 2015 was a year where I had widely mistreated women, and felt entitled to casual sex without ever really making anything clear. I expected women to realise what I was thinking without telling them, and when it wasn’t even that clear to me.

An earlier conversation with Chloe finally made sense to me. ‘You don’t need to stop having sex with people, but you need to tell them what’s going on. I felt used by you because I thought we had something that wasn’t there. You may have thought it was all clear that it was just sex, but you never said that to me’.

On Rachel, she pointed this out again. ‘Just because you say “I don’t want a relationship” doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. If you keep hanging out with her and sleeping with her, like a proxy partner, it looks like you’ve changed your mind’.

Of course, trying to juggle sleeping with a friend who is becoming increasingly close is hard. I didn’t make it easier by not telling her what I wanted. We were hanging out, sleeping with each other, and. The fact I once told her ‘I don’t want a relationship’ was vague at best in the circumstance, and didn’t mean I could just come in and out of her life when I felt like it.

I felt entitled enough to think it would be fine to use women like emotional and physical ring-ins and when it took me a long time to recognise that they were right to be angry with me for that. I was a definite fuccboi, and a shit human. I was a clear misogynist. I blamed women for my own faults, and ignored their wants while demanding they bend to mine.

So I will change in 2016. A New Year, a new me. I will be less of a dickhead to women. I will keep communication open and honest, not relying on others to divine my intentions from the ether. I won’t use people if I know I can’t give them what they want from me. In short, I am no longer going to be a fuccboi.