Broken

*The following is written as proposal of dating to a hypothetical woman. It is meant to show my current thoughts on my romantic prospects and dating in general.*

Greetings to you beautiful romantic prospect! I'm so happy that you're willing to give me a chance. As you can see, I'm a short bald fat man, so you're clearly willing to look past undesirable physical features. The ability to overlook glaring flaws will serve you well as you continue to explore the possibility of being my girlfriend. First, I suppose we'll want to get health issues out of the way. Diabetes is the most serious thing going on with me and if I don't control it, it's likely it will disfigure me and kill me horribly. So yeah, you're definitely taking a risk that I'll keep that under control and not die or go blind on you or anything. Harder to deal with is my autism, which makes me disabled in a number of ways, some obvious and some you'd never attribute to autism unless you knew something about it. Since part of my disability is social, I'll never know when I am getting on your nerves or the nerves of those about whom you care unless I am specifically told the fact. Neither will I be able to intuit your emotions, which will necessitate you remembering to specifically tell me not only why you are sad but also THAT you are sad (or any emotion, really) in the first place. There's a lot more to dealing with an autistic and you could read volumes on the subject without knowing everything it entails, but, trust me, it's a lot of work. If you're fine with all that, there are two more things we need talk about, mainly sex and money.

Here's the thing about sex. In my past two relationships, I agreed to wait as long as they wanted without having it. This policy resulted in me having no sex for a year total. Well, that's too long not to have sex. After having given it much thought, from the time of the first date a clock starts. After a month of dating relationship goes by, I will need to know where this relationship is going. I'm not saying the clock strikes midnight a month hence and you need to put out or get out, necessarily, but I will need to be given at least a rough idea of when this can happen. Waiting isn't the problem and isn't a problem for me, but waiting indefinitely most certainly is. Another thing you should know is that I've never successfully produced orgasm in a woman and, I suppose, there's no guarantee that I ever will. Bearing that in mind, the early stages of any sort of sexual relationship are very likely to include experimentation writ large. None of this is to say that I am particularly demanding sexually. On the contrary, I am something of a camel sexually, with the ability to get by with only one episode of coitus per year, if I must be so limited. For this reason, I rather go with the flow, as it were, when it comes to the sexual demands of my partner. When you're open to everything from once a year to several times a day, the other person tends to be in charge since they tend to have more defined preferences.

Possibly the most difficult thing to accept about me is that I am unemployable. Now, you look at me and that certainly isn't necessarily obvious. It took me my whole life, up until quite recently to realize this about myself. In the course of eight failed careers, I feel I have given this a lot of thought and tried just about everything I can think of, including running my own company. If you're confused about what regarding autism could make a seemingly high-functioning autistic unemployable, I'll give you a quick primer. Impaired social skills can sabotage relationships with superiors, coworkers, and subordinates, leading to firing or, sometimes, being first given the choice to quit. This is because I'll fail to read signals for when I have gone on talking too long or am otherwise alienating people. Then you have the physical impairments to dexterity and coordination, which makes certain movements, such as operating a broom or mop, impossible. Nobody wants to hear about your physical limitations, especially when they aren't outwardly obvious. You're to shut up and do what you're told or leave. Gastrointestinal problems also come with autism. When you may need a bathroom break at any given time, you are not a desirable employee. Finally, mulitasking is a vital part of many careers and something that I find completely impossible, as well as moving or working quickly in general. So there you have it. If you're willing to accept everything I just told you, we may have a chance.

-Frank