Author and Columnist
On Friday, I rather salivated over several high school girls and skimpy clothing and a high school boy in a black trench coat and shortpants. No, it's okay, I am not a creepy pedophile, I was merely watching a local high school to a production of Cabaret.
Though you are twenty, it's best to never even imply for a literary flair that you might be a "creepy pedophile."
Trust me. I have taught more than my share of nineteen-year-old pedophiles.
Frankly, I do not think Cabaret is really a play a high school should be doing.
Your argument is sustained, though specifically how that school did it. Rocky Horror Picture Show was less sexual than their Kit Kat Klub. During your second viewing, the school cut the song "Two Ladies," a song about the Emcee living in a polyamorous triad with, as the title suggests, two ladies. The director had staged this with no illusions that it was about anything less, the three of them tickling under bedsheets and licking one another.
In the first ten minutes, the Emcee refers to a Kit Kat Club girl as a "cunning linguist" and slaps the asses of two others.
Yeah, I would love to see how the director spun this to the parents. "Okay, so this boy is going to spank your daughter... she's a freshman, right?... your freshman daughter. Oh, don't worry, she'll be wearing a negligee -- oh, I'm sorry, I've just been informed that it will be closer to a thong. Anything for the arts, am I right?"
Or even for the Emcee. Don't worry; the Emcee was only attractive as a character. While the actor did an excellent job with him (which fed my attraction), it was the character and his interplay with the other characters that made him appealing.
Yeah, you are straight, but it is a generous sort of straightness, one still not relished in America in the early twenty-first century. Throughout your adolescence -- and well into my adulthood -- people clock you as a potential gay man. They did this even when you had literally charmed the pants off their sisters, daughters, and exes.
Guys can be attractive, but that does not mean you are, per se, attracted. It also does not mean that when a gay guy flirts with you in a low-key way, you don't blush a little and appreciate the compliment.
I picked up Alison and Zanna at the home of the latter.
Speaking of generous sexuality. I wonder if yours -- both the loose interpretation of masculinity and ease with which you seduce women -- did not play some factor in the erosion of your friendship with Wren.
Once -- and I think they happened in your undocumented past rather than your future -- you were driving Conor and Wren somewhere. He, still years from officially transitioning, became irritated that neither Conor nor you had ever expressed interest in kissing one another ("Well, we are straight, so that likely plays some part in it"). Then Wren stated that, if he had a penis, he would do nothing but masturbate in front of a mirror.
Strangely, it did not occur to you more fully that Wren is a man.
[Alison] can be a surprising social little butterfly when it suits her. I'll have to keep her around just for that.
Alison was one of those people who always drew people to her, which is ironic given that she would have said that she was a social malcontent and would shudder at the notion that you saw her otherwise.
Well, she was otherwise. She was charming and charming to be around. People, especially once she escaped the clutches of her hometown of Cold Spring, could not help but fall into her orbit, especially weird people, your people.
Your friendship dissipates to nothing after college -- perhaps during, but I cannot remember. I regret this, but I respect that Alison wanted the distance to establish her authentic life.
(see, things like this make me wonder if my life is the work of really bad script writers. The first time the three of us are all together at one since we saw Quills together, and the strangers we meet mention going to see it together. Eerie!)
Life expands with access to friendly company and social occasions. Like wildflowers and weeds, coincidences abound when given space.
Also, a movie starring Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, and Michael Caine is not a rare indie, no matter if it is about the Marquis de Sade.
Kate and I are not talking, really. I told her I was not going to call her something like... oh... ever again.
My boy! You have finally taken my advice! I'm so glad that you've come to your senses about this whole Kate situation.
Well, that's not exactly true.
Make it truer.
I told her I had no plans on calling her for a while, as she is a bit like a hedgehog covered in razor blades and lemon juice. (Poor hedgehog!) However she should feel free to call me sometime next week.
How much better your life would be if you could firmly shut a door.
When I called, she sounded hurt/needy. I asked what was up; she said she was fine in a convincing way. I told her that I couldn't really talk; I was just concerned as her page contained extra numbers. She said that her finger pushed the button a little too much and she was sincerely fine.
I do need reminding on occasion that you are not alone in behaving poorly. Kate was playing games with you too. Maybe something did hurt her, and she wanted to use you as a therapist. Perhaps she was only lonely and jealous because you had tried to put distance between the two of you, and you were out with other people.
I cannot now say what Kate was going through here, only speculate from what you have written (biased though you implicitly are). I know that she was not being fair to you, not that she has much reason to be.
(That sounds so cold and heartless, but I need some time to myself.)
Your setting of boundaries is long overdue.
One night she is snogging me madly, proclaiming that (and I quote), "I want nothing more than to be happily in a relationship with you... I don't want to hurt you." The next I am the most unattractive thing since maggot infested sliced bread. I told her this on Wednesday, when I was clarifying that I was having trouble being her friend.
She had staggered back to wanting you, perhaps, or understood that you were trying to escape being her fallback, preventing you from dislodging her hook entirely.
However, [Eileen] rebuffed me with the usual (and nettlesome) "But you belong with Kate" and "You think too much of me." And she damned Erikson, which I take to be a good sign in her personal evolution.
Speaking of women who have no idea how to react to you. Eileen wants you to contradict her -- and you do often enough. I suspect that she wants a grand gesture, something befitting a rom-com.
I don't know why you don't bother standing outside her bedroom window, a boombox held aloft playing "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." It might not have done you any good, but I doubt she would have been upset (I imagine she would have been amused and flattered).
It would have made for a story worth telling, though I cannot say whether it would be yours or hers.