My twenties were a waste of time. I tried to date as many women as I could and actually counted the number.

“How many women have you dated?”

“Oh, it has to be at least a hundred this year.”

So much for having commitment. It was all about the quantity to feed my ego. My ego was a bottomless pit.

I forgot the names of more than half the women, maybe because it was more than twenty years ago. There is no pill to help me remember those names.

I do remember places and voices, the kissing and touching, the Santa Monica pier at night. We lay in the sand and made out in the car after seafood.

And then I found out that she was dating everyone else at my work. This was way back when it was acceptable to see someone outside of the office. I stopped talking to her, although I was still attracted to her light brown hair and fair skin.

She texted me one morning, but I never texted back. Fine, don’t talk to me anymore, she wrote. We’re over.

And then I had to see her at work, and the awkwardness was overwhelming.

My friends had to know how many women I dated. It may not have been so important to them, but to me, it was paramount. I needed to be the leader on the tote board.

And then, as I grew older, the scores would lose their relevance. Friends got married and divorced while I stayed single, still trying to stay in the lead. But I was all alone, in first place of course, because now I was competing with myself. It was more losing than winning. I would win maybe a few times out of the year.

The dating stopped altogether.

I remember one awkward date when I was twenty-six and she was twenty-one. Her father chaperoned us to the movie theater. The movie was a love story that she’d chosen, not me. Her dad sat behind us, I guess to protect her. There would be no kissing, no hands held, no hugging on the date. I never dated her again, but we remained quasi-friends.

There came a point when I wouldn’t date at all. I became jaded. Every relationship began and ended through phone apps. And I had to pay to continue with them. The apps were pimps.

I remember talking to a woman for over a month in my late thirties, using one of those apps (I forgot which one). It said in my profile that I was a writer. She thought I was one for that whole time until one day. I mentioned what I did to make money because, as most people know, writing doesn’t pay the bills. She ghosted me. It hurt like hell.

That was when I knew that dating wasn’t a game anymore. No one was keeping score, not even me. I quit that app and quit looking for dates. It wasn’t worth the trouble.