Author and Columnist
(This will be read by curious parties, some of whom are not fully up to speed with everything. So I will, in a theatrical fashion, give a cast of characters with descriptions.
You honestly do think you are adorable; the rest of the world be damned.
But, watching her smoke like a chimney and engage in long debates with her friend about what to get drunk on, I came to a profound realization. I am really bloody disinterested in the life she has chosen to lead.
Yes, I could have told you that months ago, and I am sure that I did. At one point, you and Kate overlapped in a way that made romantic sense. Since then, she has moved further in this direction. She is having her college experience; you are having yours.
My life focuses on aesthetic appreciation, pursuit of intellectual and spiritual betterment, and cultivating close interpersonal relationships. She smokes, drinks, and plays Nintendo.
That's simultaneously false, pretentious, and unfair of you. Your life is predicated on reading, writing, and trying to get in some girl's pants long enough that she will say that she loves you because then you feel comfortable. Mine is a bit more complex and robust, though one of the better things I could say for myself is that I am markedly less judgmental when it comes to other people's decisions that are not doing them much lasting harm.
Your bookshelf shows aspirational attempts at "intellectual and spiritual betterment," but you have to read the books for them to count. Magick is will in action, and your will is only the aesthetics of it. You rarely go to rituals or practice much on your own.
Also, how many of your cultivated relationships are because you are too scared to let people go? Is it that you think you gave them a piece of yourself when you decided that you were friends? When they left, or you faded from their lives, did they steal that from you?
No, they did not. Life is a matter of giving and taking. Once the relationship turns unhealthy (with Kate and other people in your life at this point), it becomes a matter of mutual hoarding of the worst parts. It becomes chronic neediness.
Granted, she has a certain degree of the appreciation I have. She is not a bad person; in fact, she is quite wonderful. But the life she leads would wither me in about a week.
That is a small concession. I wonder if you meant this to be an honest appraisal or merely to protect your ego. You have given Kate so much of yourself. If she were terrible, then wouldn't your judgment be more than a little suspect?
She is wonderful, by the way, no matter if it strokes your ego. Kate is an excellent person to know, then and now.
So, in parting, I told her that, while I loved her endlessly, I did not at all care for her life nor ever want to be a part of that kind of a life as anything more than a close friend. Some people would take this poorly. She hugged me tightly and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
I'm not sure about the cheek kiss now, but I like it. What did it mean? Is this the breaking up she had been hoping you would do so that you would start letting her go without her having to push you away yet again?
I don't know. I can read much into these relatively few words. I don't believe that you kept to this long enough, but I think you meant it at this moment.
I am her intellectual outlet, I suppose. I am the one she can actually discuss things with.
She has other outlets for that as well, but you serve some purpose for her. Her closest friends, Virginia and JB, are jolly imps who want her to give in to appetites to get the fullness of this particular college experience. They may have fallen away after graduation -- I didn't keep up with them -- but they were helpful in their role.
But Kate could talk with you. It was your mutual cleverness that drew you together and, I suppose, allowed you to keep torturing yourself because you could not believe that others could be as clever and Kate.
Would you have been so brave at this if you were not fluttering for your adolescent prospect Eileen? I want to say that you can self-actualize without the potential kisses of another girl.
But I imagine she finds my life of plays and libraries as boring as I find hers of collegial debauchery. So, truly, she can be my best friend now and genuinely love her as such.
It makes sense. For a long time, you marked Melissa as your best friend, a girl who had cocaine-snorting contests, had been in rehab more than once, and slept with men indiscriminately if they paid her the proper attention. Melissa once bragged that she had never prostituted herself for drugs, though some of her relationships might argue otherwise.
Kate would forever be a lightweight in comparison.
While I was with her though, a strange thing occurred. I thought of Eileen. A lot. I would look at Kate and my brain would say, "I wonder how Eileen is? We can't do anything with Katie, Xen, that would be untrue to dear Eileen." So, obviously, I did nothing inappropriate with Kate.
Look at you, not remotely self-actualizing because it is all about how you don't want to screw up your chances with Eileen! What an utter shocker.
On the other hand, you didn't do anything untoward with Kate that would have set back any chance of progress or friendship. I will take it. You aren't avoiding Kate's bed for the right reasons, but you are avoiding it.
In fact, I began writing a story about Eileen and me (which is about nine pages long.)
Wow, nine pages. Must take a lot out of you, writing nine whole pages--my golly.
And whom should I find at the desk (the third time I passed by, between shopping) but Eileen! So I stopped by and we chatted for a few minutes. She was considerably more physically attractive than I remembered. Not that I am superficial... it's just nice.
Yes, because your strongest visual memory of her was from when she was barely fourteen rather than nearly seventeen. Of course, you will not remember her as the young woman she has grown into being.
My little brother, whom I decided to drag along with me (thus making me a good older brother), claims that she and I were obviously very much interested in each other.
Yes, a month of flirting over instant messaging will do that.
Eileen informed me that, after I darted off, the boss asked why "The Blond Bombshell" ran away so quickly. Eileen replied by blushing profusely and the boss just smiled and walked off.
Well, I am a little flattered that someone called you that. It's been a while since I was called either of those things.
Oh, you stop being blond at some point. Your hair is brown. The body is a strange instrument.
After I brought her back here (we had to be dishonest. Well, she did. Easier telling her parents that she is going shopping with her friend Karen than tell them she is going to be spending time, unsupervised, in a long haired college student's bedroom), we ended up watching maybe ten minutes of "Twilight of the Golds."
Aw, crazy kids, sneaking around.
Treacherous/Romantic me happened to know the script backward and forward and summoned forth a romantic duet between Roger and Mimi ... It was very, very cute. Like a mating dance with better music.
Yes, what could be more romantic than two HIV-infected addicts singing personal dysfunction at one another?
The lyrics tended to match up very nicely with how we were feeling. I don't think I could have written the scene better (at least without getting harassed for copyright infringement by the estate of Jonathan Larson.)
Didn't you see the irony that you were singing as the guy trying to get away from his addiction after his ex-girlfriend infected him with something and died?
In my business, we call that heavy-handed.
Childhood. Foam dinosaurs. Heartbeats. And I began kissing her cheek and neck. She rather liked it (in that she pulled her hair aside so I could kiss her unencumbered and gasped when I touched her). I was exceeding happy.
This is all you ever get from Eileen, by the way. You never even kiss her lips.
That is not to say that this wasn't fraught with tingly tension, only that this is the only real dalliance the two of you ever have.
There, we began holding hands and talking, provoking her to say, ala Juliet, "Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hands too much..." This set us on a slight Shakespeare kick.
From the bottom of my English teaching heart, I want you to know that Romeo is not the good guy. He is a spoiled brat with no self-reflection but an excess of self-pity, obsessing about getting in the panties of a girl several years his junior, having in a flash forgotten about his true love of an hour ago, Rosaline -- a woman who no longer wants him, if she ever did.
Again, not that I am drawing comparisons, but...
Did I say I was falling for her? Well, I fell completely right there. And so she is "thinking about it," since I would constitute her first real relationship and she has to recalibrate herself for this concept.
I'm not sure that someone who wants to be with you must "think about it" too much. I respect that, young as Eileen was, she needed to consider, but you are barely detangled from Kate. Take care of yourself by not investing yourself in someone who is not ready for you.
The girl is more than slightly fond of me. And her best friend swore to kill Eileen if she let me go. And my family instantly adored her. My mother said, "She is in if she has my car washed." My father said, "She seems very sweet." My older brother's brusque girlfriend actually said, "Eileen is much prettier than Kate." (Which is the closest thing to a compliment she would say).
All good, all likely true. It doesn't mean that it works out.
I have no idea why your mother said that about her car.
I'm not rushing things. At least not until February 23rd (her birthday). But I am happy and hopeful and I may soon have a very nice girlfriend who recites Shakespeare when I kiss her.
This seems nice. If I were not burdened with knowledge, I would wish you luck.
Still, I think you are going about this the best way you can. You are trying to date Eileen, who would be a new experience -- even if she would be the same age Kate was when your relationship began.