Corey’s new column, Little Black Book, runs Tuesdays at 9am. Tune in for creative writing on queer life.

To “trust” is to abandon common sense in the vain pursuit of shared humanity. To trust someone who wants to sleep with you is to simply be a fool.

Trust is something I never learned very well. As a child, I did not trust those around me. I would tell relatives who attempted to influence me that “they weren’t my mom,” and I never totally trusted her, either. (My father, being a man, has fared even worse.)

I never trusted sources of authority. I did not trust that adults knew best. I started riots on the school playground, and leveraged myself out of suspension.

I trusted then-President Clinton for a little while. You can guess how that went.

In my neurotic compulsiveness, my trust with men today comes and goes like the rise and fall of the tides. The speed with which I take trust away is matched only by the speed with which I gave it to begin. Looking back on things now, I realize that there was a period in which I trusted every man with whom I’ve slept; I trust none of them now.

And in case you were wondering, I especially don’t trust you. I never have. And not for the reasons you think. In fact, it’s precisely because you think you know yourself so well – think you know all your perfections and flaws – that makes me distrust you so.

You are not the neat, medicated package you imagine yourself to be. You are a bizarre, staggering pile of contradictions. The ones of which you are aware, which you think make you quirky and intéressant, are only the tip of the iceberg. Your vain confidence in your own self-awareness is what upsets me most about you, even now.

Even in my moments of foolishness, when I thought that maybe I could trust you – that maybe you were honest and good, at least on some level – your lack of doubt in yourself let my doubts about you linger. For how could I trust a man who so deeply trusts himself?

Sometimes I dream that I am there in your arms. I wake in the frigid sweat of self-loathing.