No thank you

It feels like an extremely privileged thing to complain about but after a certain point being chased after, romantically, is just a hassle. I’m not an especially beautiful person but I do possess a series of traits which some people find appealing.

I live in a small town along the coast, one of those tiny towns indistinguishable from dozens of others dotted along the shoreline. Tourist towns, where any newcomers are noticed immediately and after a while, the gene pool becomes more of a puddle. Therefore, anyone who isn’t directly or indirectly related to you becomes very appealing.

I came to this rinky-dink town a few years back as a primary school teacher, I wanted a fresh start away from the big city I grew up in and it seemed like a good idea to move where nowhere knew my name. Like many small towns, they had a big focus on holidays, fairs, markets, anything that brought the community together and the biggest celebration on the calendar was Christmas.

If you didn’t decorate the outside of your house you were shamed and snide comments were common for those who didn’t fully embrace the ‘Christmas spirit’. One of the most romantic things that you can do over Christmas is proposing to your significant other and considering the rather limited gene pool, anyone new to the town tended to receive a fair number of proposals.

It started early this year, the first proposal came soon after I awoke. The town is small and insular enough that it prides itself on things like ‘civic pride’. This manifests in surprising ways, including very convenient services, like daily newspapers, and milk to your front door. 

The milkman, Mr Turle, was a nice enough man all things considered. He had a stable job, a strong sense of sensibility and good hygiene. When he proposed at the ungodly hour of 5:00 am I must confess that I hissed at him. Despite those decidedly vanilla benefits, he was also far too old, lived with a large (and loud) expanded family, and I strongly suspect that he’s gay. I’m not particularly interested in being anyone’s beard.

After I recovered emotionally, I steeled myself for the rest of the day. It was only a few days until Christmas. Luckily, the school was already on winter break but I still had ‘social engagements’. I literally moved to this town so I didn’t have to talk to anyone, and I was busier than ever. I was expected to have tea with parents of the children whom I taught, in order to ‘fully integrate’ myself with the community.

That’s how I was burdened with proposals two and three, older children who were visiting their parents during the holiday season saw this as the perfect opportunity to ‘settle down’ in their community. It was profoundly awkward to have to reject both Ann Bridge’s and Cathy Taylor’s eldest boys in quick succession in front of most of their extended family. 

I vowed at that moment that next year I would spend the holidays far away from this insane town. Somewhere hot and tropical where no-one knew my name and more importantly didn’t want to use me to secure their goddamn legacy.

After I extricated myself as gingerly as possible from the throng of disappointed and desperate extended family, I determined that the best course of action would be to hide in my house until the new year. I had already stocked up on food for exactly this reason, all I had to do was walk home avoiding eye contact with every man of marrying age and I would survive this godawful experience.

I had a distance of about three miles to walk if I went the most direct path. Unfortunately, that path also took me directly past the only burger joint in town, and by consequence the only half-cool place to hang out and most of the towns ‘eligible bachelors’. Therefore, I needed to take the safer but more winding route which avoided civilization.

The downside being that the path was significantly longer than the three miles. But hey what’s a ten mile walk between friends. I had factored in the longer walk before I left this morning. The path winded up against the hills on the westside of town and looped back around through a greenway to my house. 

It’s a bit sad that this was the best part of my day. I do like people I promise, I like my job and most of my neighbors most of the time. It’s just Christmas is not a good time of the year for me, and there’s a lot of expectations about how to celebrate. 

If I could just act like it’s a normal day that would be one thing but all of the pressure to the “merry” is just oppressive. 

I was halfway along the path before it happened, the nightmare scenario. I came across another nature enthusiast, another unmarried teacher from the school. Not a stranger so I’m obliged by the social contract to walk along with them and go through the motions of conversation.

And then, like the asshole he is, he proposed.

I must confess at this point I ran away. It wasn’t even a light jog, or an energetic walk. I literally sprinted away from the poor man. I have to work with him in the new year and I ran away from him.

This is it. I have no other choice, I’ll have to move to Guam or something. 

The rest of the trip passed in a blur. I found myself back at my front door at record speed to find another bloody man waiting with flowers.

I cracked. He proposed and I lost the last of my marbles in one fell swoop. I screamed at him that I wasn’t interested in marrying any damn man in this damn town because I was goddamn gay.

He handled it much better than I was expecting. He just smiled and said, “oh that’s fine, I have an unmarried sister who you’d love”.

Maybe this town isn’t as bad as I thought it was.