flâneur

Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection: A Novel for Dating Defeatists

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Someone I was texting once told me I had “volcel energy” — as in voluntary celibate, as in the stolid aura of a woman who doesn’t bother to fuck. This is a hilarious but horrible thing to hear from a person with whom you’ve been flirting. Shortly after, during one of our regular bedtime conversations, they found it opportune to complain about a previously unmentioned girl they’d been sexting. Well, damn. It’s not that I wanted to escalate from the talking stage, necessarily, but I was slightly miffed to be passed over for consideration. They were a temporary figure in my life, a minor pen pal aggrandized by pandemic boredom. But their remark has haunted me these last few years as I confront the irrational squeamishness toward dating I’ve exhibited on and off since college. For the bulk of my 20s, I’ve been single, borderline hyperindependent — qualities that intensified when an ill-advised relationship forced me to interrogate whether I had actually loved the people I’d dated or just l

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty Someone I was texting once told me I had “volcel energy” — as in voluntary celibate , as in the stolid aura of a woman who doesn’t bother to fuck. This is a hilarious but horrible thing to hear from a person with whom you’ve been flirting. Shortly after, during one of our regular bedtime conversations, they found it opportune to complain about a previously unmentioned girl they’d been sexting. Well, damn. It’s not that I wanted to escalate from the talking stage, necessarily, but I was slightly miffed to be passed over for consideration. They were a t

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