I have a horribly AWKWARD tendency to become attracted to my male amigos. They’re all adorable in a cute best-closeted-gay-friend type of way, but I find that after a while I always find myself struggling with emotions of attraction and attachment.
One of my earlier (but definitely not earliest) endeavors that included a serious breach upon the laws of platonic friendship was spent with my good friend—well, let’s call him R. R was the distressed poet type in my high school English Composition class who, like many before him, made the mistake of falling for the infamous vixen C. C is an always-well-clad bitch whose hobbies include bending precariously over in front of any teachers with testicles and making passes at those poor innocent individuals that have yet to fall in love with her.
So, here I was sitting AWKWARDly in my English class, seething as C rustled her freshly-painted fingers through R’s hair when I realized why exactly I was bitter. I had feelings for R. At the time, I did not recognize these feelings for what they really were a product of; A mundane and insignificant crush, like the kind you experience when you walk into a bar and fall in love with the boy on stage with his acoustic guitar—that is, until you see him up close after his set finishes. I can get feelings for anyone, and I’ve found that I tend to lose them just as quickly as they appear.
So, it’s the last week of my senior year of high school and our English teacher announces the end of the lesson, giving us 20 minutes of time to sign yearbooks. R struts over to me and asks me to sign his yearbook. I consent. As I’m writing, I realize that I will only be seeing R a couple more times we head off to college so I decide to make his day [and maybe a future night of mine?] and inform him that I have had a secret crush on him all throughout high school.
This is a lie. This crush has lasted all of about two days and has already started to [though without my knowledge] wane. I had heard that he didn’t read his yearbook entries until after graduation so I assumed that that same rule would apply to mine. I should have remembered that candid little phrase that has saved my ass countless nights: Never assume. Well, unfortunately for him, I did.
He read it. I’m pretty sure that very night, because the next night a bunch of us high school theatre nerds had a date set up to go out to eat and then head to the 7PM Showing of Avenue Q. R happened to be one of those people, and we happened to be carpooling. That was when it became apparent that he had read the entry. He made a show of trying to sit next to me in the theatre, and even though many of our high school staff [who had, like us, been given teacher/student discounts] was sitting behind us as we watched puppets fuck on stage, he still managed to whisper little secretively-flirtatious snippets into my ear.
Graduation passes by, and my friend A calls me asking me to go to dinner with her. As I’m driving over to her house, illegally carrying on a conversation with A via text message, she nonchalantly lets me know that R and A’s new love interest E were “tagging along.” On this AWKWARD double date, I decide that R is cute and that I really want to give him a chance, especially since I’m the one who initiated everything. To help push me in the “right” [meaning so horribly wrong] direction are a few drinks, served to us by the ditzy waitress who mistakenly forgot to ask for our identification.
To cut to the chase, we AWKWARDly go to some random suburbia park. Drunk. And then AWKWARDly kiss. I realize as we’re locking lips that I literally have zero feelings for him. He asked me out again for months after high school until he finally seemed to get the idea—that even though I lead him on as far as I possibly could, there was no chance in hell anything would over come out of it.
So am I C, the vixen I secretly despise? I analyze my past and realize I have a million other Rs under my belt. B, T, P, J… the list goes on. Am I notorious for being a vixen like my nemesis, C? Do I feel a secret schadenfreude pleasure every time I destroy a friendship and a perfectly amazing guy? Maybe. Maybe I really am everything I despise.
~Anonymous
“Britney Spears”
janedoe424242@yahoo.com
