Chapter Five - Suburban Relapse

It's amazing what you can get used to in eight weeks. I'd gone from living in a suburban house that was honestly a little too big for four people to a 12' X 13' dorm room that was honestly a little too small for two people. In the time I'd been at Allegheny, I'd come to accept the room in Ravine as my base of operations. The Big Blue Box, the affectionate nickname I gave my house in suburbia, was still "home," but the dorm was edging it out.

Fall Break came and changed all that. My mother had her first child (me) at age 32. This is, in my opinion, the worst time to have your first kid. The way things line up, it means that you have your first high school graduation, your first kid leaving the nest, and your fiftieth birthday within the same year. What this means is a mid-life crisis of epic proportions. My mother's midlife crisis was a 2004 black Toyota Solara convertible. It picked me up the day of my high school's Homecoming game.

I was never a football fan, despite my school's team being phenominal for a less-than-500-student school (In my four years at the school, our records were 10-0, 10-0, 7-3, 8-2). I spent many a bored Friday night dragged to those football games by my parents, them wanting to socialize with the parents of my friends and my little brother's friends. Most of my friends were either on the team or in the band. It made for a boring evening.

In contrast, the Homecoming game was fun. I got to see all my friends from high school, some for the first time since commencement. I remember the things that happened that night. Kurtis, one of the "Wish I was cool," types, having come out of his shell in college and introducing me to his girlfriend. Gary, a guy who had a minor mental handicap that kept him out of college, but working hard and looking at a promotion and moving into a place of his own by this time next year. And my eternally stressed, viciously pessimistic best friend Derek, now happy as anyone can be with his new girlfriend. It was an uplifting night. Even seeing some of the faculty was nice. The possible exception was Mrs. Cunningham, the principal.

I'd never been a fan of her; she cared too much. She was the type who created too many rules for the student body to feel comfortable living with. She was one I hadn't missed, and didn't anticipate ever doing so.

So, when she tapped me on the shoulder and set hello, I was less than thrilled.

Just get her to leave. I thought.

"So, how's college going?" she asked. The women was very obese and very short; nearly as wide as she was tall.

"Pretty good, actually. I've got some issues with my roommate, but otherwise I can't complain." Apparently you're not actually supposed to give an honest answer when asked how things are going, but I love to break social rules, so hey, why not?

"Well, that's good. How do you like Allegheny?"

At that moment, I realised that the chains of authority had been severed. My initial thoughts of "Awwwww, she remembered where I'm going to college," were quickly trumped by a little devil on my shoulder yelling "Abuse this opportunity or regret it forever!"

"Oh, I like it a hell of a lot better than here." I proclaimed, struggling to keep a straight face as her smile went limp.

"Um, what did you say?" she asked. I'm sure her stride was broken by her realising the same thing I had about the power dynamics of this situation.

"I said, 'I like it a hell of a lot better than here.'" I repeated, using every particle of self control in my body to keep from laughing.

"Well, you have a nice time, then." she muttered and walked off. As soon as she was out of earshot, I cracked up.

But you know, there was one person I looked for, but never found. Kind of like our relationship in high school. It all started in the seventh grade. Now I know some of you are thinking, "Awwww, how cute." Not really. Let me explain.

Her last name was one letter different than mine, so whenever we took the same class, we wound up next to each other. That included my seventh grade social studies class. I'm not sure the exact moment it happened, but one day I came to school and noticed that girls didn't seem quite so...icky...as they had yesterday and as far back as I could remember.

I suppose my brain is wired a certain way. The signs I've seen scare me a little; I'm worried I might have a predisposition for being possessive and controlling--tell me, how do stalkers behave? Hence the apprehension. Anyway, I have a tendency to seek out one girl I like and become...what's the word? Oh yeah, obsessive towards her. I just called it a crush; that sounds less menacing. Anyhow, starting in the seventh grade, I had a crush on this girl. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was, I didn't know how to show it. For five years, I talked to her, was there for her when she choose to need me (don't get me wrong, we weren't as close as this language suggests, it's just the most accurate wording that comes to mind), and never told her how I felt. At the end of my junior year, she started to flirt with me. I didn't know how to reciprocate. She must have interpreted my lack of communication as a lack of interest. I asked her to the Prom; she turned me down.

Her name? Her description? It doesn't matter. I know everyone has a person like this, someone they look back on and say, "If only." Just pretend your If Only is the person I'm talking about. Granted, you may wish for If Onlies in a different circumstance, one more fulfilling. Then again, maybe not.

What ended my devotion to her? A pretty mundane scenario, actually. Her parents were divorced. Her brother and sister were at their dad's house, she was at her mom's. Her mom left for two nights or so. She had a party. Not the kind of party my friends and I had. The kind of parties that you see in movies and TV shows. I didn't go; I don't drink and didn't care to see others doing so. She had no such compunction; she got herself hammered and fucked some guy I barely knew.

Yeah, I didn't sleep much the night after I found out.

If they'd been an item, it still would've busted me up a bit, but I don't think it would've stung quite so much. But the union was meaningless; just a night's entertainment, something to not be spoken of the next morning.

When I felt my hatred of William drain away, I said it was an odd feeling. The sensation of having playful devotion turn into bitter disdain is something entirely different. I avoided her for what little of high school remained. Occassionally she'd try to talk to me either in person or online. I did what I'd always done; I hid my feelings from her. To my knowledge, she never figured out I despised her.

Over the summer, I got over myself. I analyzed what had happened, and it was fairly simple. Over that long crush, I'd fleshed in the details about her that I didn't know with what I wished they were. When you were a kid, did you ever play telephone? You know, the game where one person says something secretly to the next person, who passes along what they've heard, until about eight people later the message has warped into something that sounds similar but means something totally different (well, assuming you didn't have a kid somewhere in the middle who changed the message so it always involved Bob Vila, which is what happened to me in elementary school. Why Bob Vila? I never found out). I played telephone with myself for five years about that girl, until it got to the point where I didn't have a crush on her, I had a crush on my own ideal.

Then reality intervened, as it has a habit of doing to all the best fantasies. Once I figured out that I wasn't agonizing over a pointless hump-and-dump, but in fact mourning the death of a person who never existed, I became disgusted with myself. But you know what?

Disgust will get you over something real quick.

I started talking to her again at some point during the summer. We were friends, for real this time. She still had features that attracted me--not all of her allure had been engineered by my psyche--but they were all roads to a place I had made up my mind I would never go to. Once bitten, twice shy; I never felt a spark for her again.

Looking back, I think the reason I wanted to see her so much that night was to prove that I was still alive, better off without her. As if she cared; as if she was even keeping score. To my knowledge, she never knew how I felt. The funny thing is, after it all ended, I was glad it had happened; I decided that the real girl under all that mystique was someone I was better off without as anything more than a friend.

I offered to drive Derek home that night, and he accepted. We caught up on the car ride back, he told me about Mary, his new girlfriend. I confess I couldn't bring myself to listen too attentively.

After I dropped him off, I had to pass by her house to get back home. I slowed. Her car was in the driveway. Maybe I should stop in and say "hi." I thought.

"No, just keep going, Mark." I said to the empty car. "You never did anything else, why change that now?"

Originally posted on December 12th, 2004