Gagnon Jilly - Choose Your Own Misery: Dating

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Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright 2018 by Mike MacDonald & Jilly Gagnon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is a parody. It was not authorized by Chooseco, the publisher of Choose Your Own Adventure. Choose Your Own Adventure is a registered trademark of Chooseco LLC.

For more information, email

First Diversion Books edition May 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63576-171-9

To all of our exes.
Without you, wed never have realized theres no such thing as unconditional love.

Do not read this book straight through from beginning to end! These pages contain too many different forms of misery for any one person to experience end to end. And it will feel like all your choices are meaningless if you do it that way, since theyll lead, inexorably, to existential absurdity, and while thats basically true of both life and this book, thats a pretty grim way to read.

The shit that happens to you in this tome of endless, unavoidable misery is still your choice, on some fundamentally meaningless level. You are responsible because you choose, and frankly, youre too old to keep blaming how things turned out on your parents. After you make your choice, live with your shit. The rest of us have to.

Think carefully before you make a moveor dont. Frankly, it wont make much of a difference. None of what we do makes much of a difference. Were all just programmed to die.

JILLY GAGNON is currently based in Los Angeles, but is originally from Minnesota, a fact shell likely inform you of within minutes of meeting you. Her humor writing, personal essays, and op-eds have appeared in Newsweek, Elle, Vanity Fair, Boston Magazine, McSweeneys Internet Tendency, The Toast, and The Hairpin, among others.

In addition to the Choose Your Own Misery series, Jilly is the author of #famous, a young adult romance. Shes an especially good conversation partner if you love amazing cocktails, terrible television, or talking to your cats.

MIKE MACDONALD lives in Toronto, Canada. He has written and produced a sketch comedy television show with one of the largest networks in Canada, launched a Canadian satirical news site, worked as a journalist for the largest newspaper chain in Canada, and covered the last federal election for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Because all these things happened in Canada, of course, youve never heard about them.

Jesus, it has been SUCH a dry spell. A sexual desert. In fact, its been so long since you did it with anyone, youre starting to worry your sex organs are shriveling up into tiny, genitalia-shaped raisins.

You have to fix this. Now.

But how? Trying to meet people in real life is so HARD. Its basically impossible to not either come off as desperate or creepy. Worse, even when people do respond to your advances, you start to worry that maybe theyre just trying to harvest your organs, and you get so nervous about that one urban legend about waking up kidney-less in a bathtub full of ice that you cant finish your drink in case its roofied.

No, real life is just too risky. You have to face it: its time to sign up for online dating. Everyone you know thats single at your age has put themselves up on Kindler. Why not join the party, right?

Are you a man seeking women?

Swipe left for .

Swipe right for .

Fuck no. Youre an independent woman, not some sad, latter-day representative of a crumbling patriarchy.

And as a good feminist, youre not bound to anyones morality-play ideas of what you should be looking for. Relationships are great and all, if you want your sex life put into a glass coffin. The last guy you were with was so into cuddling you actually started to develop bed sores. Including on your vagina.

Fuck that, all you want right now is to get laid. Its not like youre AGAINST meeting the right person, its just not the priority. Youll waste less time on bad dates and save money on all those additional toothbrushes you wont have to buy.

Besides, you never have to explain the herpes to a one-night stand; thats really a date three conversation. Anyway, that tattoo on your arm, of an owl with totally normal coloring, but with the crotchowls have crotches, right?shaded a bright, angry red, is a PRETTY obvious metaphor. If youre about to get busy with someone and you see a tattoo like that and go ahead with it anyway, its really your own fault for playing such a risky game.

Still, you dont want to wind up in some billionaires sex dungeonat least not for more than a few days. And it wouldnt be the worst thing in the world to cuddle for just a couple minutes before the Whos calling the Uber? conversation starts

You download Kindler and start filling out the basic information.

Should your main profile pic be that hot bikini shot?

Swipe left for .

Swipe right for .

Yes, you have to admit it: you won the whole being born in a patriarchy jackpot. You do feel guilty about it occasionally, but being a man has really been a sweet gig.

Its Saturday night and youre at home alone without any plans, unless you count playing your old-school Nintendo for hours on end. It doesnt even feel ironic anymore.

At this point, most of your friends are either married or in relationships, enjoying their nights with other coupled-up people, most likely chatting about escrow or whatever at some formal dinner party where the place settings dont work out for singles.

You feel a sense of interminable loneliness as you stare vacantly at the TV, watching all of the various pixels dance around the screen in perfect harmony.

Sigh.

How is it a nice guy like you is still alone?

Until recently, of course, you werent.

You had a girlfriend not too long ago. A great girlfriend, in fact. Perhaps even THE ONE. In hindsight, constantly broaching the subject of Where is this all going? probably wasnt smart. Especially right after the first time you made love.

You pause the game and pick up your phone, opening the online dating appKindlerthat your friends convinced you to sign up for.

What else is left to do but dive headfirst back into the dating pool?

You click on the app and see a pile of kindling wood as your stand-in avatar. That obviously needs to change. But what sort of picture do you want to lead with? First impressions are everything.

A picture of you and a cat would really convey your essence, right? Of course your essence is really boyfriend material, and for once, youre not sure you want another relationship just yet.