Author and Columnist
I realize you really do not know who Jen is, other than extrapolating that she was my lover at some point.
Given that you retroactively created entries enough from letters you had written to various friends, you will forgive me if I don't linger much over this ex-girlfriend.
I had frankly had a crush on her, off and on, since I was in eighth grade. Nothing too consuming, I didn't scribble her name on my notebooks.
I don't know why you had this persistent attachment to Jen of all the girls in your orbit. This is not to speak ill of Jen, but she was not the friendliest, sweetest, kindest, or most literary girl you knew. She might have been the funniest, which would have gone a long way to charming you.
I ended up going out with Coley again into a very passionless relationship
You loved Coley -- or at least experienced with her something closer to love than you had with anyone else. She was reserved in your relationship (both times you dated). However, on paper, Coley is the obvious match: an attractive, pale-haired, intelligent, and goofy witch. All that she had in her disfavor was that she seemed scared of being affectionate -- I don't recall why -- and was not physically present. If Coley had gone to your high school and Jen was forty-five minutes away, there would have been nothing like a competition -- not that there should have been anyway.
and she hooked up with the really immature and annoying guy.
And, to be fair in all this unsavoriness, I choose to add that this guy, who played Rocky in the local Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcast, was having regular sex with the guy playing Frank but rationalized that it couldn't be cheating because he wasn't gay.
Once we made out as she broke up with her boyfriend over the phone.
Oh, that is sleazy. This will not be the last time this happens to you.
It is no better of an idea then.
I spoke with Nick about this and he suggested that "[I] keep using Jen like [he was] doing." So I punched him in the arm for being a complete dick and a failure to his sex.
To my knowledge, at this point, Nick considered Jen a fallback (much as Kate may have regarded as you). He didn't necessarily want her, but he didn't like that you were playing with his toy.
I confessed what was going on to Coley, and she didn't much care.
I don't know what Coley thought or felt about any of this. I assume you wanted some drama, some fight in her, but she just accepted it.
Maybe you three should have been polyamorous.
Before I saw Coley again, I saw Jen. Jen gave me a huge hicky and proclaimed me marked and hers.
Abrupt, but let us try to see this from Jen's perspective: you were vacillating between making out with her and trying to reaffirm your relationship with Coley. If I remember this correctly, you once said to Jen that you thought your infidelity with her improved your relationship with Coley. You were just the worst.
So, Jen got tired of your indecision. She had dumped her lackluster boyfriend -- an act to which you contributed but did not request. She was likely frustrated by Nick kissing her and expressing no interest in dating her, exacerbating how she felt. She forced your hand with a hickey. I cannot blame her.
(Understand here that I did not break up with Coley just because of Jen. That was certainly a part of it, but a far larger part was that she just didn't seem to care about me.)
So, I circle back to stating that I have no idea what Coley thought or felt. She swore that she nearly worshiped you and was eager to lose her virginity to you, but she didn't much want to talk with you or kiss you. It might have worked better if this had been an era of social media and texting. However, I do not know all the contributed to this.
At the Winter Formal, during a slow dance, I confessed that I loved her. She kissed me and put her head on my shoulder. But she didn't admit loving me until five months later.
Jen never loved you. She may have said it aspirationally or because she wanted to appease you. She liked you at times, lusted for you beyond question, but she didn't love you.
She was a best friend who should not have been your girlfriend. You will reencounter this breed soon enough.
Nonetheless, I really was in love with her.
I want to tell you that you were not in love with her. I might be able to wiggle out that you didn't love her. That emotion is too deep and mature, but you were in love with her. Kissing her felt better than kissing anyone ever had.
That she did not love you made you miserable. That she could be indifferent to what you thought was romantic frustrated you. (Once, she skipped the Valentine's Day dinner you had made for her for no explicable reason, which so easily could have ended up with you dating Kate months early, that that is another story.) That you quickly gave in to her totally because she parroted the affection back saddens me, though you did.
At the end of June, I went away to Summer Scholars (a two week, live-in seminar). We kept in touch though e-mail and the occasional phone call, everything seemed peachy. However, three days after I returned, she broke up with me.
I can hold against her that she kept this from you until you returned from geek camp. You could have been so well comforted by the girls who tried to sit on your lap or beg you to be their first kiss.
However, the lethal blow came when Nick bragged to me over AIM one night that he was dating her, that he had seduced her while I was away. I think he expected me to be proud, like this was some sort of game and I should take this one-ups-manship in stride.
He hadn't been your friend for months before he did this, in part because you took Jen away from him, even though he made clear that he didn't want her.
Of course, they then dated for years. You might have been the interloper in their relationship.
I cyber-screamed at him, at his protestation that I had no recourse by his Seinfeldian logic
I wish I had the slightest idea what this might have been.
He proceeded to call her a whore, slut, bitch, etc. and proclaimed that he loathed her "for lying to him." He said he was going to tell her off. He never did.
Yeah, he was playing you. I might not be surprised if Jen were sitting behind him while he typed to you, laughing at what a dope you were.
And I forgave Jen and Nick. I would like to be her friend now, though I know it is too late for that.
I suppose you did forgive, but it took you too long to release the hurt.
One of my couples, Zack and Veronica, broke up over this past weekend. They seemed like one of those couples that are going to last. They had been friends forever and they always seemed so right for each other.
They were a cute couple, but Zack was not made to stick around one woman, particularly when he was nineteen. You ask too much of people.
I decided, the moment he told me that they had broken up for good, that I would talk to Veronica and let her know that I am still her friend, no matter what her relationship is with Zack. After the Kate break-up, I felt like so many people turned their backs on me when I had once considered them friends.
See, this is a level of projection I like in you. "I hurt when this was done to me. I see that it has happened to someone else. I would like to do for them what I wish was done for me."
I get on your case a fair bit, but you occasionally behave well.
Incidentally, not all of Zack's exes -- and he will have more than his share -- will appreciate this. You are Zack's friend. He broke their heart. You are thus also the enemy. So be it.
Zack told me yesterday that he cannot just date. He needs to find someone just as good as Veronica, if not better, or he will never be happy. He will always wish he was back with Veronica and that is unfair to all involved.
Gee, who does he sound like?
I am unclear why they broke up then, but that is their issue.
I cannot say that each subsequent young woman is Veronica's caliber, but he did have excellent taste in women worth getting to know. In his menagerie of exes, I doubt there is one who doesn't seem like a movie-perfect Manic Pixie in the right light.
Keilaina and her boyfriend Ian parted ways as well.
This is the first time you have mentioned Keilaina, one of your best friends. Though I have seen her fewer than three times in the last decade -- she lives across the country -- I still regard her as one of my favorite people.
Keilaina, at this point of her life, bore some echoes of your issues. You both wanted to find a spouse when you would better have been served dating and relaxing. (Not, I would like to note, dating one another. You tried it briefly, shortly after Kate left you. You kissed three times, and then she decided that you did not love Jesus enough. That's a fair objection.)
I had an immensely pleasant conversation with Kate the other night. I finally caved in and called her, because I missed her so damned much. We chatted frantically, excitedly, contentedly until 2:30 in the morning. Yeah, so, very pleasant conversation. Erm...
I am tired of singing this refrain about a young woman who is erratic and codependent when it comes to you.
I do not want to associate Kate with pain.
Then stop handing her a grater and inclining your face her way.
Frequently, people ask if I am with her yet.
Who are these people? Did you make them up? Either way, don't associate with them.
The only one I can imagine saying this is Eileen, and only because she wants you to desire her instead.
This hurts me, as I do not regard reconciliation as a definite.
It isn't possible and does not occur.
She tells me that she does not wish to see me for a while. I am too much for her to deal with once more. Perhaps she is too much for me as well.
On top of not seeing one another, don't talk.
I'm done.
Dulcinea gave me permission to use her real name in the journal. It is Idonia (Idonia sounds like Aldonza who was the barmaid that Don Quixote called Dulcinea. Just in case you wonder how I pick pseudonyms).
Ah! A name!
I don't remember Idonia any better, but I can do research now.
I found one person who has this name and went to Dutchess, though I cannot tell if it was during the correct years. All her available pictures are of fluffy white dogs. She recovered from cancer and married recently. While this is a lot of information about a potential stranger, it does not verify that you once knew her. Still, for the sake of the conceit, I messaged her.
Anyway, she has yet to fulfill her courier duty and deliver the note. Tomorrow this shall be done, by her reckoning.
Does this happen? I'm excited to find out, though I do not love this lacuna. How much I seem to have forgotten, small though it feels now.
Yesterday, after Zack told me his philosophy on dating, he pointed toward a tower jutting from the arts & science building, querying what was up there.
Though this is not interesting, I prefer trivial interjections over obsession with women.