Dr. N and the Women, Episode IV
Well, I've kept everyone waiting nearly a week now, but finally it's time to continue revealing to the entire world the forbidden secrets of my love life, or lack thereof.
There is, of course, a reason I've been putting off this post. I had to wait until the time was right for this. I couldn't do it during the week; I've been feeling bad enough lately, and I needed to get at least some sleep for work. I have tomorrow off, however, so if I stay awake all night tonight pondering over events I cannot change, no one will notice in the morning.
The reason I needed to wait for the right time to write this post is that this episode is "the Big One." This is the one that counts for anything and everything. This is the tale of the woman who broke me.
Tonight
I shall tell you
of Kristen.
[insert ominous thunderclap]
As I'm sure it was for many people, my freshman year of college represents some of the best and some of the very worst times of my life. For me, both sides of that coin as well as the dichotomy itself can be traced back to two young women. Their names were Becky and Kristen. They were roommates. When I moved into the dorm, they lived in a room right down the hall.
The first time I saw Kristen was from some distance in the hallway of the dorm. This was a couple days before classes began, so there was a lot of activity with people moving in and whatnot. Still, she caught my attention through the bustle, even if briefly, and struck me as a quite attractive specimen. This wasn't a momentous occasion, just a sort of "Wow, she's pretty. Well, moving on," sort of moment. I certainly would not have guessed at the time where things would end up from there.
Shortly thereafter--it may even have been the very same night--there was a community meeting for the section of the dorm I was living in, and lo and behold, there she was again. The meeting started by having everyone introduce themselves, and when it was Becky and Kristen's turn, they announced that they had cookies and offered a general invitation for people to come by and have some. After the meeting, my roommate told me he was going to go get some cookies from those girls and asked if I intended to come along. Well, it was my first time out in the wider world on my own, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.
I guess somebody made an impression on someone then, because the four of us wound up spending a fair bit of time together after that. This is where a lot of those "best times" I mentioned earlier came from. We went bowling once, caught a double feature of "Swingers" and "Fight Club" another time, got dinner at the dining hall pretty often, and just kinda hung out. They even took me to the only dance I've ever attended.
But despite the generally good times, they were tainted by the ever-present pain of being so close to such an attractive woman and not being able to let her know how I felt. I couldn't make a move right away because she was still attached to her boyfriend from high school, and as I've mentioned previously, I'm very proprietary when it comes to relationships. Of course that didn't last much longer, but I could never seem to catch her when she wasn't involved with someone. I'd end up not getting together with her or Becky for a week or two, and in that time apparently she'd break up with the last boyfriend I knew about and begin dating someone else already. The worst was the time when I came by their room and Kristen told me all about how she had decided to get back together with her high school boyfriend. She showed me this framed... picture... thing she'd made or something with both their names and some flowery prose printed on a background of fluffy clouds. I smiled, and nodded, and then went out into the hall... and somehow managed to avoid crying or screaming or punching a hole in the wall with my skull. A true miracle.
I suppose if I'd had any balls, I'd have taken that opportunity to say "Hey, you don't need him, I'm right here!" or something along those lines. Well, hindsight is 20/20, I guess.
There was another time when I stopped by their room to... well, unload, I guess. I'd just found out that someone I knew in high school had died in a fire, and I guess it was weighing on my mind. Becky wasn't there, but I wound up having a nice long conversation with Kristen. She wound up telling me about how she couldn't run any more because of her shin splints, and showed me her calves to illustrate. She said I could go ahead and feel her shins, but I guess I poked her too hard in the wrong spot. Hmm... she let me touch her and I wound up hurting her. I'm sure that's significant somehow, but I'm too lazy to figure out the symbolism now. That will be your homework assignment for the week.
And then there was the dance I mentioned earlier. That was an unforgettable night, no matter how hard I try. I spent most of the time sitting at a table, not because no one would dance with me so much as because the DJ played mostly obnoxious rap or disco music. Becky managed to drag me out onto the floor for a couple of songs that were at least tolerable. This included the song "Smooth," which they requested after I told them I would be willing to dance to that, and "Crash Into Me" by the Dave Matthews Band, which, despite its soft, quiet tone, is a filthy, filthy song if you ever listen to the lyrics. I didn't get to dance with Kristen, though she certainly made a valiant effort to get me on the floor at one point. This is what she did: as she went toward the dance floor, she walked behind the chair I was sitting in and put her hand on my waist, dragging her arm across my back as she moved past. She didn't exert any force, but she nearly ripped me right out of my seat. If only the music hadn't been SO terrible. I guess, ultimately, it's my own damn fault I didn't get to dance with her that night, but I was still bitter about it. To this day have trouble listening to "Smooth" for the frustrating memories of that night it stirs.
I suppose by this point you're thinking, "Well, that's all well-and-good, but I don't see how any of that makes this 'the Big One.'" Patience, though; you'll understand shortly.
During the second semester that year, I took a fiction writing class. One of our assignments in the class was to write a monologue. In response, I produced "Confession of a Thing," which technically wasn't a work of fiction, but actually more of a... well, I guess you could call it a love letter, really. After getting my grade on it, I decided to go ahead and present the monologue to its addressee. Not so unusual, really; I'd presented Becky and Kristen with my previous writings for the class, and they seemed to enjoy reading my work. So, I went down to their room, handed the monologue to Becky, told them to let me know what they thought, and took my leave. A short while later, Becky showed up at my door all choked up and saying how great it was. Shit! It misfired!
Augh! The roommate? You gave it to the ROOMMATE?! You stupid, stupid fool! What the hell is WRONG with you?! G'ah!
I guess I had assumed Becky knew about my infatuation with Kristen and would understand that it was intended for her. I guess that was a poor assumption to make. The irony of the whole situation is that, even before the love letter fiasco, I was closer to Becky than I ever was to Kristen. I suppose that was in part due to me having to distance myself from Kristen lest my feelings for her be exposed. I suppose it was also partly due to the fact that whenever I came around looking for someone to go to dinner with and Becky wasn't there, Kristen always seemed to have other plans. Right. Whatever. But things never went anywhere with Becky. She had always been more attracted to my first roommate, so even if we had hooked up, we'd both be with our second choice at best, so it's probably better that we didn't.
Anyway, that happened. But I wasn't done making a fool out of myself. No sir, not by a long shot.
Really, that was just one more frustrating incident on top of an ever-increasing pile of frustrating incidents. At some point near the end of the school year, that pile reached critical mass and collapsed. I broke. I decided to take action. I had to let her know. So I arranged to meet with her on ICQ, and I poured my heart out. I told her I was attracted to her the first time I saw her, I'd been attracted to her all that time, and I needed to know if there was any possibility that we would ever go out. Yes or no, I needed a definitive answer.
I will never forget her response.
"Not right now."
Not
Right
Now
Hmm... can't get much less definitive than that, can you? Apparently she was involved with someone else at the time.
Hold on... that sounds familiar... ah, yes. CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT, I remember you well.
Well, that was about a month or so before the end of the school year, so I did see Kristen again a couple of times before the summer, but she seemed content to act like the whole thing never happened. Hmm... maybe that's why she said she was glad I'd done my little spiel over ICQ instead of in person. Easier to pretend it never happened that way.
Whatever. Once again, the school year came and went, and things never got any further than that.
Now, that may seem like a perfectly good place for this story to end. But for some unfathomable reason, there is, in fact, more.
I went home for the summer, and my computer went into mothballs, which meant I had no access to ICQ. Since I never got any contact info from Becky or Kristen, I wasn't able to get in touch with either of them until school started up again. Once I got back on ICQ, I tried to arrange a meeting with Kristen, but she basically blew me off. She said she had mono or something and wouldn't be able to do anything for a couple weeks. I guess that's a valid excuse, but at the same time, "a couple weeks" is just about the perfect amount of time for us both to forget about contacting the other. Which, apparently, is exactly what happened. Oh well.
Then when my birthday came around in April, completely out of the blue she sends me a happy birthday message. That's all it was, just "Happy birthday" in an instant message. Well, okay, that's easy enough to figure out: ICQ's set up to send out reminders to everyone on my birthday, so she just never got around to taking me off her friends list, and sent a generic response to the birthday reminder she got. Fine, whatever.
Not quite a year later, just before the Chr--sorry, Winter Break, once again, right out of the ever-loving blue, I get a message from Kristen. Just kind of a "hey, how you doing" sort of thing, and I play along, and we have a nice little chat. And at the end of it, she gives me her cell phone number, tells me to give her a call over break "if I feel like it." I mull it over for a while, and finally come to the conclusion that yes, I do indeed feel like it. So I call her over break, and we had a nice chat, pretty much the same one we'd already had on ICQ. Then I don't hear from her again for like another month. She tells me she'd been in and out of the hospital for a while, so I guess it's forgivable. We chat a couple more times on ICQ, and she tells me she bought this "Illuminati" card game, because she remembered how I used to go on about the Illuminati. Well, I take that as an opening, so I get my cards from home and let her know I'm up for a game whenever she likes. And can you guess what happened then? That's right.
Absolutely nothing. Never heard from her again.
I suppose it's probably a good thing I switched over to AIM not long after, otherwise she might still be stringing me along. Then again, for all I know she might have wound up back in the hospital and I'm the callous one for thinking she was just being malicious. Whatever. That's where the story ends. For real, this time.
So now we come to the part of the post where we try to determine what we've learned today. Well, I'll tell you what I took away from it all, and unfortunately, it's not really anything new:
1) NEVER EVER TELL ANYONE HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THEM EVER. EVER!!!
Tonight I shall bid you a warm sandwich of you between cool sheets.
There is, of course, a reason I've been putting off this post. I had to wait until the time was right for this. I couldn't do it during the week; I've been feeling bad enough lately, and I needed to get at least some sleep for work. I have tomorrow off, however, so if I stay awake all night tonight pondering over events I cannot change, no one will notice in the morning.
The reason I needed to wait for the right time to write this post is that this episode is "the Big One." This is the one that counts for anything and everything. This is the tale of the woman who broke me.
Tonight
I shall tell you
of Kristen.
[insert ominous thunderclap]
As I'm sure it was for many people, my freshman year of college represents some of the best and some of the very worst times of my life. For me, both sides of that coin as well as the dichotomy itself can be traced back to two young women. Their names were Becky and Kristen. They were roommates. When I moved into the dorm, they lived in a room right down the hall.
The first time I saw Kristen was from some distance in the hallway of the dorm. This was a couple days before classes began, so there was a lot of activity with people moving in and whatnot. Still, she caught my attention through the bustle, even if briefly, and struck me as a quite attractive specimen. This wasn't a momentous occasion, just a sort of "Wow, she's pretty. Well, moving on," sort of moment. I certainly would not have guessed at the time where things would end up from there.
Shortly thereafter--it may even have been the very same night--there was a community meeting for the section of the dorm I was living in, and lo and behold, there she was again. The meeting started by having everyone introduce themselves, and when it was Becky and Kristen's turn, they announced that they had cookies and offered a general invitation for people to come by and have some. After the meeting, my roommate told me he was going to go get some cookies from those girls and asked if I intended to come along. Well, it was my first time out in the wider world on my own, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.
I guess somebody made an impression on someone then, because the four of us wound up spending a fair bit of time together after that. This is where a lot of those "best times" I mentioned earlier came from. We went bowling once, caught a double feature of "Swingers" and "Fight Club" another time, got dinner at the dining hall pretty often, and just kinda hung out. They even took me to the only dance I've ever attended.
But despite the generally good times, they were tainted by the ever-present pain of being so close to such an attractive woman and not being able to let her know how I felt. I couldn't make a move right away because she was still attached to her boyfriend from high school, and as I've mentioned previously, I'm very proprietary when it comes to relationships. Of course that didn't last much longer, but I could never seem to catch her when she wasn't involved with someone. I'd end up not getting together with her or Becky for a week or two, and in that time apparently she'd break up with the last boyfriend I knew about and begin dating someone else already. The worst was the time when I came by their room and Kristen told me all about how she had decided to get back together with her high school boyfriend. She showed me this framed... picture... thing she'd made or something with both their names and some flowery prose printed on a background of fluffy clouds. I smiled, and nodded, and then went out into the hall... and somehow managed to avoid crying or screaming or punching a hole in the wall with my skull. A true miracle.
I suppose if I'd had any balls, I'd have taken that opportunity to say "Hey, you don't need him, I'm right here!" or something along those lines. Well, hindsight is 20/20, I guess.
There was another time when I stopped by their room to... well, unload, I guess. I'd just found out that someone I knew in high school had died in a fire, and I guess it was weighing on my mind. Becky wasn't there, but I wound up having a nice long conversation with Kristen. She wound up telling me about how she couldn't run any more because of her shin splints, and showed me her calves to illustrate. She said I could go ahead and feel her shins, but I guess I poked her too hard in the wrong spot. Hmm... she let me touch her and I wound up hurting her. I'm sure that's significant somehow, but I'm too lazy to figure out the symbolism now. That will be your homework assignment for the week.
And then there was the dance I mentioned earlier. That was an unforgettable night, no matter how hard I try. I spent most of the time sitting at a table, not because no one would dance with me so much as because the DJ played mostly obnoxious rap or disco music. Becky managed to drag me out onto the floor for a couple of songs that were at least tolerable. This included the song "Smooth," which they requested after I told them I would be willing to dance to that, and "Crash Into Me" by the Dave Matthews Band, which, despite its soft, quiet tone, is a filthy, filthy song if you ever listen to the lyrics. I didn't get to dance with Kristen, though she certainly made a valiant effort to get me on the floor at one point. This is what she did: as she went toward the dance floor, she walked behind the chair I was sitting in and put her hand on my waist, dragging her arm across my back as she moved past. She didn't exert any force, but she nearly ripped me right out of my seat. If only the music hadn't been SO terrible. I guess, ultimately, it's my own damn fault I didn't get to dance with her that night, but I was still bitter about it. To this day have trouble listening to "Smooth" for the frustrating memories of that night it stirs.
I suppose by this point you're thinking, "Well, that's all well-and-good, but I don't see how any of that makes this 'the Big One.'" Patience, though; you'll understand shortly.
During the second semester that year, I took a fiction writing class. One of our assignments in the class was to write a monologue. In response, I produced "Confession of a Thing," which technically wasn't a work of fiction, but actually more of a... well, I guess you could call it a love letter, really. After getting my grade on it, I decided to go ahead and present the monologue to its addressee. Not so unusual, really; I'd presented Becky and Kristen with my previous writings for the class, and they seemed to enjoy reading my work. So, I went down to their room, handed the monologue to Becky, told them to let me know what they thought, and took my leave. A short while later, Becky showed up at my door all choked up and saying how great it was. Shit! It misfired!
Augh! The roommate? You gave it to the ROOMMATE?! You stupid, stupid fool! What the hell is WRONG with you?! G'ah!
I guess I had assumed Becky knew about my infatuation with Kristen and would understand that it was intended for her. I guess that was a poor assumption to make. The irony of the whole situation is that, even before the love letter fiasco, I was closer to Becky than I ever was to Kristen. I suppose that was in part due to me having to distance myself from Kristen lest my feelings for her be exposed. I suppose it was also partly due to the fact that whenever I came around looking for someone to go to dinner with and Becky wasn't there, Kristen always seemed to have other plans. Right. Whatever. But things never went anywhere with Becky. She had always been more attracted to my first roommate, so even if we had hooked up, we'd both be with our second choice at best, so it's probably better that we didn't.
Anyway, that happened. But I wasn't done making a fool out of myself. No sir, not by a long shot.
Really, that was just one more frustrating incident on top of an ever-increasing pile of frustrating incidents. At some point near the end of the school year, that pile reached critical mass and collapsed. I broke. I decided to take action. I had to let her know. So I arranged to meet with her on ICQ, and I poured my heart out. I told her I was attracted to her the first time I saw her, I'd been attracted to her all that time, and I needed to know if there was any possibility that we would ever go out. Yes or no, I needed a definitive answer.
I will never forget her response.
"Not right now."
Not
Right
Now
Hmm... can't get much less definitive than that, can you? Apparently she was involved with someone else at the time.
Hold on... that sounds familiar... ah, yes. CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT, I remember you well.
Well, that was about a month or so before the end of the school year, so I did see Kristen again a couple of times before the summer, but she seemed content to act like the whole thing never happened. Hmm... maybe that's why she said she was glad I'd done my little spiel over ICQ instead of in person. Easier to pretend it never happened that way.
Whatever. Once again, the school year came and went, and things never got any further than that.
Now, that may seem like a perfectly good place for this story to end. But for some unfathomable reason, there is, in fact, more.
I went home for the summer, and my computer went into mothballs, which meant I had no access to ICQ. Since I never got any contact info from Becky or Kristen, I wasn't able to get in touch with either of them until school started up again. Once I got back on ICQ, I tried to arrange a meeting with Kristen, but she basically blew me off. She said she had mono or something and wouldn't be able to do anything for a couple weeks. I guess that's a valid excuse, but at the same time, "a couple weeks" is just about the perfect amount of time for us both to forget about contacting the other. Which, apparently, is exactly what happened. Oh well.
Then when my birthday came around in April, completely out of the blue she sends me a happy birthday message. That's all it was, just "Happy birthday" in an instant message. Well, okay, that's easy enough to figure out: ICQ's set up to send out reminders to everyone on my birthday, so she just never got around to taking me off her friends list, and sent a generic response to the birthday reminder she got. Fine, whatever.
Not quite a year later, just before the Chr--sorry, Winter Break, once again, right out of the ever-loving blue, I get a message from Kristen. Just kind of a "hey, how you doing" sort of thing, and I play along, and we have a nice little chat. And at the end of it, she gives me her cell phone number, tells me to give her a call over break "if I feel like it." I mull it over for a while, and finally come to the conclusion that yes, I do indeed feel like it. So I call her over break, and we had a nice chat, pretty much the same one we'd already had on ICQ. Then I don't hear from her again for like another month. She tells me she'd been in and out of the hospital for a while, so I guess it's forgivable. We chat a couple more times on ICQ, and she tells me she bought this "Illuminati" card game, because she remembered how I used to go on about the Illuminati. Well, I take that as an opening, so I get my cards from home and let her know I'm up for a game whenever she likes. And can you guess what happened then? That's right.
Absolutely nothing. Never heard from her again.
I suppose it's probably a good thing I switched over to AIM not long after, otherwise she might still be stringing me along. Then again, for all I know she might have wound up back in the hospital and I'm the callous one for thinking she was just being malicious. Whatever. That's where the story ends. For real, this time.
So now we come to the part of the post where we try to determine what we've learned today. Well, I'll tell you what I took away from it all, and unfortunately, it's not really anything new:
1) NEVER EVER TELL ANYONE HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT THEM EVER. EVER!!!
Tonight I shall bid you a warm sandwich of you between cool sheets.
posted by David R. Nevel | 5:35 PM
2 Comments:
Yikes... sorry, dude. That's all extremely sucky stuff. The pain is bad enough, the stretched-out aspect seems intolerable. There's a lot to be said for clean breaks, and I'm glad you eventually got one.
Well, Justin, if I did know someone in that situation, I probably wouldn't be terribly surprised things would have ended up as such, considered that this person I might know never would have seemed terribly enthusiastic about taking his/her theoretical boy/girlfriend to Japan in the first place. But then again, who would I be to criticize anyone else's relationships. Hypothetically, of course.
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