A code reinforced

It died, of course, the bird. 
The Complete and Total Loser thought it was going well. It had spent a night out successfully and flew to the Loser the next morning, chirping for a morning meal. It was staying out all day, hunting its beloved insects and spiders. The Loser took it in the night after its first full night out due to heavy rain, though the bird had spent a day during a rainstorm remaining dry. The next night it was out again.
The next morning, no bird.
The Loser had a bad feeling about it as the day went on. It wouldn't have left that completely and abruptly—it still looked to the Loser for food and protection. The Loser went outside his back door often, clapping and calling and getting no response. He knew.
Friends, of course, put nice faces on bad things and said he may have joined his family or others of his species or, at worst, been chased from its territory by bigger birds, bluejays perhaps.
Yesterday, the Loser found its body, well eaten by ants but still clearly the bird's. It was right by the small single step that leads to the backdoor. How he hadn't seen it for the eight days since the bird vanished is baffling. His only comfort is that the bird had died before he could have saved it. The Loser was often at that door the day after the bird left and if it had been alive at all a sound or movement would have surely caught the Loser's ear or eye. His open bedroom window is directly above that step.
It's probable that the bird was injured or ill and got to that location, closest to the only companion and protector it had ever known, and died waiting for the Loser's help.
Birds are small and dumb, the Loser tells himself, and incapable of forming an intimate relationship with a human. True of all pets; we anthropomorphize the rest. But there were times in the final days when the Loser was sitting outside with the bird and it had eaten when it wouldn't fly off into a bush or tree. Instead, it would stand on the Loser's hand and then sit, and just look at the Loser. It was simply hanging out with a friend.
The Loser forgot his code for a few weeks, but he remembers it now and will keep it with renewed vigor: Never love anything.

What he wanted

The Complete and Total Loser doesn't think his unrealized desires when it came to being half of a couple were too selfish. He just wanted a kind woman who was smart enough to be worth listening to and who would, in turn, listen to him. He didn't hope to find one who was pretty, but did want someone who took care of herself and exercised regularly, like the Loser does. 
It didn't seem like too much to ask, but it never happened. 
Oh well!

Andrew Wyeth, Day Dream, 1980, tempera on panel, 19 x 27 3/8 inches, the Armand Hammer Collection.

Tangled sheets

The Loser and the woman he's seeing had a long, pleasant night (and morning) together. 

He wanted this

The Complete and Total Loser wanted to be part of a couple his entire life. 
He wanted to fuck seven times a week in his twenties, four times a week in his thirties, three times a week in his forties and have that change to occasional, gentle, medication-assisted copulation from his late 50s on. 
But no. That basic knowledge of what to say to girls wasn't pre-installed in the Loser's grey matter, and he was too self centered to learn it on his own. 
He was so stupid he couldn't see that what he was doing would never work. Now, the Loser downloads books illegally from bit torrent sites about how to meet and talk to women. The advice often sounds silly to the Loser but the overwhelming motif is not: Practice. Get out there and meet people. Crash and burn, rise up; crash and burn again, rise up again. Repeat. 
In his mid-50s now, the Loser lacks the energy to do this and he is so far behind. He doesn't even know how to dress! He doesn't think about it as much as he did. The loneliness isn't a continuing ache now but a sharp pang, which hits him once a month or so. The Loser knows he'll never have what this elderly couple on a bench at a Trader Joe's has. It's too late for that.

My Love Life (Poem)

I’ve been crazy in love only twice,
The first time was in college.
She decided it’s women she found nice,
And in time she shared that knowledge.
Time two was someone I found a beauty
Shy, smart – she had it all.
With her I’d have done full marital duty,
She said yes, but in St. Paul.
If you saw me it’s fine if you just ate;
I’m not so bad to see.
(Friends don’t believe I’ve been celibate
Since 1983.)
Women don’t just like looks and money
And men who aren’t too old.
Other things draw them like bees to honey,
Or so I have been told.