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The wind howls, a venerable tempest rages outside the floor to ceiling living room windows, depicting a cold cityscape blurred by raindrops. Wrapped in your college-era quilt that has thankfully seen many washings — its softness a metaphor for the quiet acceptance of post-grad life — you ward off the chill that comes with mid-fall and the gradual and cruel descent into winter.
Splayed out on the couch, you scroll through Netflix. Bemoaning the options and eventually decide on Captain America once again because Chris Evans “can get it”. Even though he has yet to respond to any of your tweets offering yourself up.
You feel the subtle vibration of your cell phone against the taupe IKEA couch cushions, and pick up your iPhone to a random number.
“Hey, how are you? Been a while.”
“Who the fuck are you,” you whisper to your unfortunately not rent controlled living room. You scroll through previous messages and deduce that it’s the random guy who ghosted on you a few months ago after a date and a half. The half is because you went to Brother Jimmy’s the last time you saw him, and shots of Fireball shouldn’t count as a date, but whatever.
“Asshole,” you mutter to no one in particular, diverting your attention back to shirtless Chris Evans.
Twenty minutes later, you feel the vibrations again and reach for your phone, hoping it’s your still breathing friend you left at the bar last night with some dude. Nope. It’s the name saved as, “don’t text” who you’re pretty sure went to rehab after saying “he needed to go away for a while.”
You could go on and on regarding the ill-fated and desperate texts sent during “cuffing season,” (the stretch of time before you give up on going out during the winter in favor of Netflix and Chilling) but it’s this simple — we know your game. And by we, I mean the fairer sex that you have ghosted on, or have ghosted on you. Or that you have maturely and responsibly broken things off with, but whatever.
Cuffing season texts are an innate, knee-jerk reaction to getting your ducks in a row before the snow begins to fall, but before you reach out to that random person (or arbitrarily send a photo of your dick) just know that she’s receiving way too many messages from people suddenly reappearing out the blue, and is going to write you off with the rest of her rag tag crew of missing dates and exes who realized their parents weren’t going to be thrilled when they brought home a Jew.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send them and give it the ol’ college try, but just be aware that you’re not going to be her favorite person in the world.
Well, what should you do then? It’s simple enough — shoot her a brief apology if you ghosted (blame it on work, chicks love employed bros), and mitigate the potential of her not responding with something like “I understand if you don’t respond, you deserve better than how I treated you, but I’d like to see you again. I really enjoyed your company and hope I can take you out again soon.” Blah blah blah something to that bullshit effect. If she returns your sentiments, set a date and take her out and pay for it to get back into her good graces. No one believes in her own personal White Knight anymore, but common courtesy still goes a long way.
Winter is coming in every sense of the word, so be prepared and have your parents’ Netflix, HBOgo, Hulu and Amazon Prime passwords at the ready. Best of luck in your cuffing season endeavors, and may the force (and penicillin) be with you.