The Friendzone Cake Story

A few months ago, I was tired of the same arguments on Bluesky, over and over again. I was tired of my feed being dominated by screenshots of some overconfident white guy saying some stuff that makes other people mad. So with the help of Signet—my AI assistant, who didn't write a word of this post, btw—I made a custom Bluesky feed that basically took my regular baseline feed and filtered out all the annoying stuff.

As it turns out, once you filter out all the annoying stuff, you end up with a much better experience on Bluesky. You see hot women posting selfies, you see more vegan content, and you actually get to see your mutuals posting about their niche interests. And that's how I came across a post about a delicious Vegan Korean BBQ restaurant.

Naturally, my first instinct was "I want to know where this restaurant is." But my second instinct was to look at the profile picture to see if the poster was Asian like me. They were, so then I clicked through their profile. What I read filled me with excitement.

It was like looking into a mirror, and my desire to make out with myself has only increased since I started my transition. So I asked her for her discord and we started talking, slowly building up a rapport and a narrative in my mind.

1. If we don't end up being compatible, I bet we would still make amazing friends.
2. If we become friends, we could form a micro-VAAAAAAPIVegan, Asian-American, Agender, Asexual, Androgynous, Aromantic, Polyamorous, Interesting community.
3. With all of our people in one digital place, it'd be so much easier to find one to cuddle and make out with.
4. With a more close-knit niche community, we can form a gang and beat up racists, pooling our money to pay for really good lawyers!

So either way—if we end up becoming friends, or friends who make out, or partners who date each other—I'd be happy. The problem, though, is communicating this to them. You see, hot women hear the same thing all the time:

"Oh, I want to date you but we can still be friends if you're not interested!"

...but it's such an empty platitude without anything to back it up. I learned about the emptiness from my friend Lux when we started our friendship. She'd make friends with a guy, and the guy would express his romantic intentions to her, but she'd gently let them down with:

"I think you're really nice, I'm just not romantically interested. But I still really like you as a friend."

...And presumably the guy instinctively goes,

"Aw... Okay. No, no, it's just allergies making my eyes red. Yeah uh I'm totally still down being just friends with you."

...So they shake hands or do something super platonic for the rest of the hangout, but then the friendship fizzles out because the guy wasn't really looking for a friend in the first place. Lux has to grieve over the loss of a friendship using weeb stuff, and the guy grieves in his own way, presumably by looking up porn of women who look like her.

If it was one or two times, Lux probably wouldn't be scarred by these experiences. But apparently it's happened like, half a dozen times, which crosses the line from being sad to being sad and annoying. Sad because every time she makes a friend, there's like a 50/50 chance of having to reject them romantically. Even worse, when the rejection happens, there's like an 80% chance of experiencing the fizzle. What makes this annoying? She has to stop herself from getting emotionally closer to people before she gauges a few things:

1. "What are the odds that I, a hot woman, will have to reject this person?"
2. "If I must reject them, what are the odds that I, a sweet Romani, will experience a fizzle?"
3. "If I experience the fizzle, how much emotional pain will I, a cutie patootie, feel at the loss of someone who I genuinely considered a good friend?"
4. "Is getting closer in this friendship worth that possible emotional pain?"

...Now I'm paraphrasing here. Lux probably doesn't do all that. She probably just sticks to a rule of thumb like "I will only go out of my way to make friends with someone if I'm like super-duper sure they'll be cool about the friendzone, like the author of this essay."

I had a great time watching Oppenheimer in theaters with Lux, even though it definitely wasn't a date. So I tried to end it on a funny note, looking into her eyes, saying, "Damn we should friendzone each other right now, I'll go first. Lux I think you're great. I just don't think we're compatible as partners. Let's be friends! Okay now you go." She responded, deadpan, "We're better off as friends."

I pretended to hold back tears by opening my eyes, pursing my bottom lip—

—whimpering "I understand" before breaking character to make plans for another hangout!

But in the days following, I got the feeling that she was still worried about the fizzle, that I'd have less interest in pursuing a friendship. I had to do something more than just one funny face and a voice.

I had to get something from Costco. And that took a whole lot of planning. It involved math. I knew that I was going to hang out with Lux on Thursday, so I had to come by on Monday to fill out the cake form, drop it in the box, then come back Thursday morning to pick up the cake, timing it so that it wouldn't melt by the time I'd show up at her apartment - and then of course I needed someone to hold the camera, so I had to bribe my then-friend Kayla to do this trip with me. But at the end, I showed up about five minutes early to her apartment, waiting for her to come out so I could ambush her with a short friendship speech. It went something like,

"Lux, I remembered what you said about your friendzones usually being awkward. So I wanted this one to be something special. And tasty."

I grabbed this bad boi that was sitting in the backseat, a little sheet cake with a custom message:

And we got a nice photo together, thanks to Kayla!

The rest of the hangout was great. And we're still good friends! In fact, after I started dating Kayla and the relationship turned toxic, Lux gave me really good advice on how to stand up for myself and evict her.

Anyway, if you're reading this: I haven't figured out what bit to do if we decide to become friends. But I want you to know that I'm enjoying the brainstorming process as much as I'm talking about you to my best friend, a different woman who also friendzoned me about five years ago.

Hope we get to hang out soon!