The narrator expresses a persistent personal dislike of men while acknowledging affection for many individual men. Longstanding friendships with straight men persist from teenage years and university, though recent conversations often feel insincere. Many straight men are described as trapped in irony, self-avoidance, or an obsession with podcasts. After a divorce, the narrator has withdrawn from male-centric spaces and distanced from many straight male acquaintances. Social life has refocused around largely queer and often nonwhite female friends. An Oasis reunion tour is depicted as a male-dominated event attended with a few remaining straight male friends amid 90,000 fans at Wembley.
I don't like men. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love men, but I don't like them very much. Despite being an absolute darling, I remain somewhat synonymous with disliking men personally and professionally: I have disliked them on the internet, in my books, on the streets, in the sheets. You name the time and place; I'm there with a complaint about some nightmare named Ryan, probably, who sucks.
I'm still close with a few choice male friends, but those are friendships forged in teenagedom and ripping darts in the quad of a mediocre Canadian university. These days, I struggle to find sincerity in my conversations with a lot of straight men; the worst of them are stuck in feedback loops of irony or self-avoidance, or worse, they want to talk about podcasts. There is nothing worse than talking about a podcast.
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