Question: How am I ever supposed to ask someone out?

Answer: I’m going to die alone, re-watching episodes of Gilmore Girls until my cat gently but firmly sits on my face and suffocates me to death.

So, I’m not the best at asking people out. I’m not the best at dating. You would assume, with my flawless skin and solar flare-bright smile, that I would excel at dating. But shockingly, I am too beautiful and too charming.

No, seriously. I swear.

There’s this boy at the gym, and he is very attractive. Like, he has cheekbones that could cut your eyes out just by looking at them. That’s how sculpted they are. And my first instinct is instant revulsion, because he’s too attractive to be attractive. Does that ever happen to you? Like, you see someone, but they’re attractive so your body repels them out of some sort of embarrassment survival instinct?

That’s what my body does. The hot boy shudder.

I don’t really get crushes on “hot” guys. I like “cute” guys, ones who maybe went through a fat phase at some point, or had braces. Something to make me feel like we’re on more even footing.

But now, I do. And keep in mind, I’ve actually never talked to him. He could be a complete racist. Or he could have a voice like Rob Gronkowski—side bar, have you heard Rob Gronkowski reading his own fan fiction smut? It’s horrific—and that’s a total turn-off. But I still kind of want to ask him out.

But, barring the obvious quandary of “He doesn’t know who I am,” I have no way of really knowing if I’m hot enough to ask him out.

I wish that there were a score you could get on hotness, and you have a list of people you can ask out based on that score. If we can make thousands of people take the SATs every year, I feel like we can manage something for dating. We could call it the Sexiness Aptitude Test, or SATs for short.

I keep seeing him in the dining hall and I keep dragging various friends over to show them how attractive he is. I don’t know why I am so into self-flagellation.

Side bar, the lights in my room just flickered twice. Once is an anomaly, but twice is cause for concern. Or ghosts.

I wish that we didn’t have to do the hot boy shudder or the SATs (my SATs, not the actual SATs). I wish you could walk up to someone and just say, “Hey, you seem like you don’t have any lasting psychological scarring. Do you want to get coffee and tell me about your dog and various interests?”

Side bar again, one of the dorms on campus just lost power. PRAY FOR ME.

But anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, asking people out.

There shouldn’t be this intense pressure, but there is. And there shouldn’t be any stigma or weirdness attached to asking people out and being upfront, but there is. And that seems stupid as hell, because if schmoes like me didn’t ask babes like you out, there wouldn’t be couples like Beyonce and Jay-Z, Tom Ford and Robert Buckley, or Jessica Rabbit and…Mr. Rabbit (?). In fact, there probably wouldn’t even be a human race. Okay, maybe I’m not the best example because of the whole “two dudes can’t reproduce on their own” thing, but you catch my drift.

Asking someone out should just be that…asking someone out to another location to get to know them better. Maybe if we (me) all stopped freaking out about the process, and “What does it mean?” or “Do you think he thinks I’m weird?” we might watch a little less Netflix and be out with some cuties. Not a lot less Netflix, don’t get nervous. Just a little.