Everyone at school loves me, so social events like homecoming always present issues. There are simply too many people who want to go with me and not enough of me to accommodate them all. So, yet again, I won’t be attending homecoming this year.

I always tell my friends that we can just go as a large friend group, because that’s the only way to establish dominance among our peers, since having a huge friend group at school dances is the cooler thing to do anyway; this is obviously not because nobody else wants to go with me. 

I have tons of options; I mean, whenever the topic of homecoming arises, every single one of my friends says to me, “Let’s go to hoco together!” 

Of course, I don’t actually plan on going—much to the disheartenment of my friends who are practically begging for me to come along with them.

Aside from my high demand, the social norm these days requires that going to homecoming means asking out a partner—just for everyone to assume that you and whoever you invite are dating each other. 

What kind of loser puts themself in a situation like that?  Besides, these couples get all lovey-dovey with each other, and it honestly makes me sick.  

The type of things they’ll do for homecoming—matching corsages and all that—disgusts me. Relationships are fickle in high school, and no one really loves each other; it’s all just for attention.

In fact, just last week, a random girl passed me in the hallway and told me my Transformers underwear was showing.  Her obvious— and honestly desperate—attempt at a display of affection went ignored, since I don’t need a girl deciding whether my appearance is to her liking or not.

The worst people, though, are those who prepare huge, fancy posters to ask out their dates, generally with incredibly cheesy one-liners scribbled over them by an artistic acquaintance. It is just so pointless to put so much time and effort into something that won’t even matter in the long run, anyway.  

To put a rather spoiled cherry on top of that, I don’t even like the big, social events that our school holds, like our football games. Although I often complain about having limited opportunities to hang out with friends, I’d never show my face at these superficial events if it killed me. 

Everyone knows that those people who attend are just chasing fame. They alternate girlfriends or boyfriends every other week and think of these events as another opportunity to “make memories” with other peers–as if I would ever want to spend time with the likes of them. 

After all, people such as myself, who spend the entire day at home studying to maintain a 3.0 GPA are universally loved by everyone at school, and truthfully, are the ones who will really be successful in life, anyway.  

As homecoming approaches, more and more people around me ask each other out, and a sense of anticipation seems to fill the air. But no matter how many girls try to catch my eye, dreaming of their own homecoming proposal, I’ll remain steadfast in avoiding that dreaded fate and gatekeeping my purity from women.