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Note to my mother who sometimes reads this blog: Please do not read this entry.
The roommate and I originally know each other via the Message Board of Note and thus ‘know’ a lot of the same people. To be fair, I know them a lot better than he does, given that I have close friends through the board. Given that my amazing friend just sent me a plane ticket.
The roommate didn’t know about me and OLB (I thought EVERYONE freaking knew about that since OLB quite publicly acted like a jerk and behind the scenes I whispered “Psst. Not only is he being obnoxious, but he also did this.” And then it occurs to me, that I guess I never told this story. (For the record, the women he obnoixously posted about were never me.)
For one, I cannot believe that was three years ago. And actually, most of it, FOUR years ago, since it was 2007 when that drive to Connecticut occurred, and it was Thanksigiving weekend of 2007 that I got dressed for a gathering somewhere, subconsciously knowing something was going to happen, even though I had no reason to think so.
I met OLB on a random drive to Connecticut, for a random gathering of libertarians, who had somehow all wound up on a random spin-off message board. We’d briefly met at a previous gathering, but I thought nothing of him. I guess those hours together in the car were important, because at Thanksgiving weekend that year there was another gathering in the city, and it was one of those nights where you know you look pretty(I had this lacy red tank top on, peaking out from my black sweater. Clearly, some part of me knew something was up even though I really, seriously Had No Idea) and you wonder if the boy next to you is actually sitting closer to you than he needs to be, or whether you’re just imagining it.
(I wasn’t imagining it)
He was smart and emotionally unavailable, so clearly I was hooked. Plus, I thought because he was older he’d be less inclined to play games. Ha. Ha. Ha.
OLB pulled me into his bed, but not his life. I was like his dirty little secret – the crazy girl he was secretly sleeping with. He took me out to dinner, but never out with his friends. The mornings after, he took me for breakfast, and for walks, and then he pushed me on the subway and basically said ‘Get out of my life’
One night a guy from Message Board of Note, from out of town, was visiting. The local contingency got together and drinking was involved. We were a few blocks from OLB’s apartment and a long subway ride away from mine, so I asked him if I could stay over and he said sure.
At the end of the night, it was me, OLB, and this other acquaintance of ours who totally knew what was up. He had known what was up at Thanksgiving – he’s not an idiot. We were all standing on a street corner on the Lower East Side, saying goodnight.
OLB pushed me away and pretended to be walking in a different direction. I was so blindsided/confused that I froze. The acquaintance saw what was up and offered to see me home safely. I was drunk (and now upset) and wound up going home with OLB anyway, where I yelled at him, called him out on what happened that night, and then later, ultimately cowered.
I’m stupid, but I’m not naive. I knew what was up. I had learned a lot of lessons from HWSNBN years earlier. (#1: Do not be with someone who won’t hold your hand in public. Literally and metaphorically) I already knew what it was like to be with someone who’s emotionally unavailable. Who will sleep with you but never tell you you’re pretty. Who will take note of the fact that you’re a headcase, point out your flaws, and later remind you that if you just hadn’t been so god damned melancholy, maybe things could have worked out. Who will constantly cancel on you at the last minute, because sticking to your plans would mean admitting to his friends that he’s seeing you.
I had a crush on HWSNBN long before he kissed me. We were sitting in my living room, and he said “You’re beautiful.” And then he kissed me and in those moments, my world was perfect. Later he told me “I don’t know what guy couldn’t fall into eyes like yours”
A total line, but he said it, I fell, and he still pushed me away. I wasn’t pretty enough or sane enough or together enough or smart enough or whatever enough.
And for all the tears over this, I let it happen and let myself continue to accept increasingly mixed signals, because hell, it was better than nothing. With HWSNBN it was because I’d crushed on him for so long and then he actually kissed me and we’d tease each other politically with “you feed my radicalism.”/”no YOU feed my radicalism”, and at 4 am we’d smoke Camel Lights on my front steps and it felt like Something. With OLB, well…I don’t have any idea. He kissed me, he brought me home, and he made me coffee. And a year later, at the same sort of meet-up, even though we hadn’t talked in months, he walked in and said “You look really nice.” And I proceeded to get black out drunk and go home with him, and engage in what David has since described as “Date-raping yourself”
Somewhere between all of that we made the trip to Chicago for the Message-Board-of-Note meetup. He made the 12 hour drive with me, shared a hotel room with me, and never acknowledged my presence in front of the others. So I coped by getting epically drunk (but behaving quite well. Ellie was driving and was thus stone cold sober and tells me I was fine. As do other people. OLB insisted I was a mess and instead of caring that I was a mess (at this point, I had admitted to him I had a total booze problem) he was just like ‘you’re an idiot and you embarrassed me). We were barely out of Chicago the next day when he blurted out “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
I cried. He listed my flaws. I cried a fair amount of the 12 hours home.
The Thanksgiving relapse happened a few months later and ended with him screaming at me and shoving me on a street corner. And then spending the next few months on Message Board of Note, talking about his relationship drama. In public, he got away with it. In private, fellow MBON people flocked to my side, and as time went on and more stuff developed, more people were like “WTF?!?”
Don’t get me wrong, when this was all going on I was an actively alcoholic head case and no guy would/should have wanted me anyway. But OLB was such a jackass that people were still on my side. I like to think I took the high road – I never made it public, I never called him out on it. But David (x3), Timothy, Ben, Ellie, Ross, Alex, Ali, and hell, even Dru swooped in and said “Yeah. He’s being a jerk. You’re not crazy for thinking he’s being a jerk.”
And years later I am well over HWSNBN and OLB, thank god. I never thought I would be over HWSNBN because he devastated me more than anyone ever had. (“I am a cynic, you are a romantic, but you’re smart enough to be a cynic,” he told me. “And you are really romanticising this.” His dismissal of my alleged romanticism, and thus me was incredibly painful. Ages later, I wrote this. I was able to hold me head high, say ‘screw it’ to the boy I’d moved to New York for, and manage for those first 6 months when I lived in Jersey City and could basically see his building from the balcony.
I smoked the occasional Camel Light, but other than that, I was okay.
And I realize this babblefest has not even addressed The Ex, which is either worthy of a different entry altogether, or not worthy of one at all. Our relationship “changed me” because we were together 4+ years and they were formative years. Mostly though, we were too young. It’s our random friendship that was more damaging. That happened and in some ways I fell for him all over again. As far as I know, he’s in the middle of med school at Georgetown. Which means for a year, I lived no more than a mile from him. On my last day in Glover Park I was packing up some final things and was in a bad mood, and was all sweaty and gross, and thought, ‘watch me run into The Ex right now.’
I didn’t run into him. I haven’t seen him since a week after I broke up with him in 2004. But in the summer of 2006 we had a standing date to speak on the phone on Sunday nights, and texted all the time…and it was fucking ridiculous. And then he got a girlfriend. He tumbled into a relationship with this girl after a long conversation with me where he freaked out about his feelings and I advised. I was in Chicago, a newly minted UChicago student, and hundreds of miles away from everything that had made me happy. One night in October he called me and said tentatively “Oh…so…I have a girlfriend now.” I swallowed my tears (several times) and I smiled through them and told him how happy I was for him.
I loved him. I did love him. I did love him enough to want him to be happy. I do hope he’s happy.
In some way, he must have known it hurt me, because of the tentative tone of his voice on the phone, after several months of us being so close. I called a friend and burst into tears. She’d witnessed all my stupid texting and swooning and she knew I was being stupid. “He has to know that this hurts you,” she said.
It did, but it didn’t matter.
(“There’s one thing I have to say, so I’ll be brave. I know what I wanted. I gave what I gave. I’m not sorry I met you. I’m not sorry it’s over I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say.”)
The Ex is an Ex for a reason. For a lot of reasons. And it was fucked up when we were ‘friends.’ There is a little piece of my heart that will always, always love him (even though the feeling isn’t mutual. He totally hates me) and I’m completely okay with that now.
I have loved once (The Ex), THOUGHT I loved once again (HWSNBN), and once knew there was no way in hell I loved, but I was doing it anyway (OLB).
In between, I’ve had my share of perfectly nice dates with perfectly nice guys, none of whom pinged my interest.
The way to win my heart is to be emotionally unavailable. I’ll take the bait every time, and no, I never learn.
