I’ve been reading a lot about “incels” — men who call themselves involuntary celibates, but who have such a repulsive worldview of women that it’s understandable why they’re not finding partners. They look at unattainable women as bitches and women who enjoy sex as sluts and women who are involuntarily celibate as cows. In other words, they’ve dehumanized every possible woman they could have bedded. Naturally, they’ve taken to valorizing men who kill as many as these women as possible.

When I was younger and single, I had a lot of what would be called dry spells. I was appealing only to a select group of people, many of which were interested because “fat girls are easy”. (Note: we’re not.) I once even called myself celibate, until a sassy friend said, “There’s a difference between being celibate and not getting any.” So, as you see, I was in the same boat our incels were in.

I didn’t become a man-hater, although I’ve always been too much of a feminist to give in to “fat girls are easy” and too proud to gush over any guy who looked at me. So I took matters into my own hands.

I fantasized about a place of solace.

I named it the Brigadoon Sparrowhouse, “Sparrowhouse” for a place where free spirits, which I had nicknamed “sparrows”, lived, and “Brigadoon” for the play about a mysterious village that appeared only every seven years.  In my mind, the Brigadoon Sparrowhouse popped up somewhere in the west central part of Urbana, the funky area where college professors and the occasional house full of poor, progressive students lived. I didn’t know where it would be, but it would appear when the light filtered just so through the trees as they shook droplets from their limbs. In my mind, in the moments I was most in need of human contact.

The door to Brigadoon Sparrowhouse was always open to me. I would walk in, and find myself standing in the middle of the living room, a slightly chaotic place with couches and chairs, all with their newness worn down by use. The living room wore dark paneling, an artifact of the era in which the room had first been remodeled. Pillows and an afghan brightened the room, and a woven wall hanging completed the look.

I would sit on the couch and cry, soaked from the rain and feeling like I would never get warm again. I would grab the afghan and curl up in it. I was alone; it was always a chance I took going there.

Soon, someone would show up, someone who was free and not currently connected with someone. Usually, it was Mark, who looked gloriously unlike the people I knew. He was tall and thin, with waves of auburn hair pulled back in a short ponytail. His face was narrow and pale and Irish; his eyes nearly the same color as his hair.

“You’re freezing,” he would say and wrap his arm around me, hugging me close.

“I got caught in the rain while I went walking,” I would stammer. “I didn’t know where I was going.” Often, I would think, I didn’t know where I was going.

“Something’s up, then,” Mark would say. “Tell me what’s up.”

I would tell him what was up — I felt like I was wrapped in a bubble and unable to talk to other people; I looked at the shining beauty of a friend and couldn’t reach them; I believed that nobody would ever love me.

“We love you,” Mark would say with his arm around me. We. The Sparrowhouse.

Sometimes Mark the sparrow and I would make love, up in his bedroom, a chaotic room with white walls, a mattress on the floor and a chest of drawers with sacred objects on its top — a stone with a hole, a cowrie shell, a bowl made of stone and a feather. Our union would grow out of a discussion, and tears, and solace. I felt the poignancy, because the sex was borne of agape, not eros or ludus — it was a gift, a reassurance that isolation would not be forever. It was not charity, but humanity answering humanity.

I did not fall in love with Mark, knowing that he was a figment of my imagination, just like the Sparrowhouse, which would disappear when I stepped out of it.