Author and Columnist
I should update you on my thoughts and feelings about Miss Katherine the great.
As always, I would prefer you not to do that.
I definitely feel, with some certainly, that Katie and I have drifted quite a bit. Once we were so much a part of one another that we barely needed words. But, as you know, she wanted to break any part of me out of her and be truly alone.
One of you needed to take that step. I wish you had the fortitude that it was you, so Kate would have to be the one to deal with emotional absence after the breakup.
I think it saddens Kate more than a little that I no longer fawn on her and melt when she speaks.
Yes, it likely does.
I will divert from Kate to talk of another friend who fell into this category -- and not only because your perseveration over Kate is tedious. I will not name this friend as a point of basic etiquette, though she shows up soon enough in your story.
You immediately took to this woman. It was an intense interest on your part that might have been romantic in other circumstances. Had that happened, it would not have happened long, and she would not have been your friend after, so better that it didn't happen, even in speculation.
She appeared to possess a carefully put-together personality, one more overwhelming than yours.
It was not a brief friendship, but its cornerstone was your aromantic adoration, which she never fully reciprocated. I don't know how she felt about you at her core. What I know is that your relationship eroded when you figured yourself out and began treating her more like a peer than a minor deity.
The final nail was her irritation when you were single and decided for the first time that you no longer wished to remedy this. You didn't need a woman in your life to be complete.
She yelled at you, the undercurrent being that you should have pursued her. She did not ask you out. I don't know that you had seen her recently. She had several other men who fell into the role you once occupied, one who more emphatically put a stop to it and cut off their friendship.
I was and am sorry that the friendship did not persist further. Aside from this -- and it was a more minor thing in fact than retelling -- it was a good friendship, and she remains an incredible woman.
I don't know if there is a firm lesson for you in this. Perhaps your propensity to elevate women into a role of superiority is toxic and gives them the wrong idea of how they can treat you, one that poisons continued friendship. However, you alone didn't dictate this and are likewise not wholly culpable for the fallout.
I do think, in the least arrogant way possible, that she is mourning a little that another has me and is very much in love with me.
Jealous but not mourning. Kate loves you, but she is not in love with you. These are not minor distinctions.
On breaking up with you, a future girlfriend will tell you that she hopes you will let her plead her case if she calls in five years, repenting her decision. You fire back with a bit of acid, "I hope I am not married in five years," or something to that effect.
She didn't. You were.
She, I assume, figured I would always be there for her whether she wanted me or not.
Yes, that is how you felt about your relationship with the friend mentioned above. She didn't want you, but she wanted to know she could have you if the men she did want fell through. When you cease fulfilling that position -- one impressed upon you and never asked -- she feels rejected.
She does still lash out at me futilely, feeling the need to rebel and defy someone and irrationally choosing me periodically as the target.
You must admit you make yourself a prime target to rebel against.
She is one of my most intimate friends as I had, in fact, been her faithful lover in the past.
Were you, though? I'm not accusing you of cheating, but I am questioning the gloss you put on your former relationship. Sometimes you were less invested, your eyes wandered, or you might have thought it better if you parted ways. She could be a difficult girlfriend -- who isn't at that age? -- and you may have considered who would be less complicated. I can't name any names, but I bristle at how you make yourself seem especially shiny.
I do not want to lose all that ever was special between Kate and me.
You haven't. You always have the memories of the relationship you once had -- though I wish you had better chronicled it. You were a sweet couple and healthy for one another. What happened after doesn't ruin what did before.
It has been nearly a year's time since she left me. I have recovered.
Have you?
I no longer crave her touch, though reading the conversations we once had can still bring me to tears.
That does not sound like the action of someone who doesn't crave her touch.
I don't think she is really expressing her feelings to anyone, least of all me.
No one owes you their pain. She can do with her emotions what she wishes, which absolutely includes not divulging a word more to you than she does.
She writes extensively in little red journals that she lets no one ever see. What she does with them, where these journal go when she fills them to the metaphoric brim, I do not know.
It does bother you that people don't act as you do, publishing their every precious thought for public scrutiny.
I would go to great lengths to read but five pages, if just to know what she is really thinking and, selfishly, what part I may still play in her heart and mind.
Ugh, you are the worst. Everything in Kate's life isn't about you and doesn't need to be.
If Kate wishes to know this sort of information, she need only read here or ask me plainly.
She isn't required to make this reciprocal and wishes to know your thoughts less than she does.
So I called her, and she sounded delighted at the prospect, even suggesting that we could meet at her apartment and she could make me something to eat. I had a lot of hope, because it sounded like I was getting my dearest friend back.
Aw, that would be cute. I hope it happens. I remember going to Kate's apartment a few times but never feeling welcome by anyone there.
In some deep recess of her mind, Emily stole me away from her, though you journal readers well know that Kate wanted me away from her, telling me that she wished I would get a girlfriend who was not her in just so many words.
I don't know that it was so deep a recess. Even if she felt Emily stole some part of you, the loss was not a significant burden. It must have been some relief that you put less pressure on her.
You also pushed yourself more deeply and quickly into your relationship with Emily to try to escape Kate's hooks with middling success.
And you want her to be jealous. You want her to burn a little, knowing she has lost you, so she might consider putting effort into getting you back more. (Not necessarily romantically -- I don't know when you shut that door for good -- but as a more intimate friend.)
Last night she poured out her heart about her passionate love affair with Senor Jake. While they have both reached a plateau at which they can readily confess their eternal adoration for one another, he has not ceased bedding random girls and she has not cease drinking deep the cup of easy men.
Is there some comfort in knowing that your romantic stickiness is not the most torrid and twisted in your life?
Sarah's passions were always more intense and less clean than yours. Jake remained a critical figure in her life for years, but they are never a committed couple that I can recall. He might prove a demonstration that you could never have been Sarah's boyfriend. I am not positive she had a solid one in her twenties.
She stated that I would not approve. I don't think it is my place, exactly, to approve or disapprove.
Why do your wilder friends think you will be this voice of disapproval, some paternalistic scold? I'm not saying it isn't warranted on their part. I just want you to think why that might be.
Oh, I'm sorry, your wilder friends you would like to sleep with. You do not care what Melissa or her friends do -- and they do more and worse.
While all of this is fascinating (no, really), the important section of our discussion hinged on the fact that she is very likely coming to my camping party.
She doesn't, though that would have added an exponent to the party.
this will be the first time is three years that I have actually had the pleasure of seeing this girl face to face. Of breathing deep her essence.
The worst. That's what you are.
Of course, 99% of our current friendship exists over phone lines and modem tones.
She is worth working off long-distance phone bills, though she only lives an hour away.
I asked her if we would erupt into a shower of sparks. She assured me definitively that we would.
I must reiterate that this dramatic, complicated fondness is never one-sided.
This party could likely be an enormous turning point in the journal, as many characters that have never seen one another shall be brought together in my backyard.
Putting aside that it is the purpose of a party, you should not overestimate the degree to which introducing your friends to one another is a promising idea. If one traces the grain backward, it contributes to killing one of them.
Sarah also tried her damnedest over the phone to tempt me into getting drunk, getting high, and getting slutty, stating that I became more of a guy every time she and I spoke. That one day, I would be the sort of have an affair with her.
I cannot speak to her motivations here, except that she is not always sober when talking to you.
She may be another who wants your adoration but does not want your presence or actualization. She is another who may consider you a boyfriend in reserve, an "In Case of Loneliness, Break Glass."
She talked of marrying when you turned thirty, retiring to the Maine coast, and raising seals together. The other woman may have suggested a similar plan once, in age if not pinniped husbandry.
More like, she was being the Demarte to my Valmont.
You've never read Les Liaisons Dangereuses.
You have yet to see the movie Dangerous Liaisons -- which is excellent.
What you have done is watch Cruel Intentions a few times and find it sexy. So, stop being pretentious when your exposure to the source material is finding it hot when Sarah Michelle Gellar offers anal sex.
She was trying to test my boundaries and her own.
She thinks trying to seduce you is a good sport, knowing she would never do anything but laugh if you accepted.
Years later, out of profound hurt and irritation that you are her drunk dial, you tell her to either fuck you or stop bringing it up.
She does neither.
She was introducing thoughts into the controlled zone of my mind, to see it there would be a reaction. I know her, and I know that she would be reticent to do anything to hurt me.
Do not dress up what the drunk girl is trying. In the right mood, she would not hesitate to hurt you. She hurts you plenty in subsequent calls.
Emily and I are much stronger than we started out.
Maybe so, but I wish you would meditate on why you started so rocky.
Almost all reticence on my part about being in a relationship, being someone's boyfriend, is banished by her charm and good humor.
She is charming. She abounds with good humor (she's hilarious).
Twenty-five percent of your reticence turned down to a manageable volume.
I find myself increasingly physically attracted to her when I once worried that I was to be asexual.
You are not remotely asexual. Your body was merely trying to stop you.
As Sarah pointed out in our conversation, she is surprised I am with Emily because she does not hurt me.
That's an awful thing to say to you.
Not wholly inaccurate in either direction. You crave the drama that comes with being mistreated. Also, your relationship with Emily is not healthy. You are hurting, but it is a dull, chronic ache. Other times, Emily will hurt you more keenly and directly, but you will not see a way out of that pain.
Sarah inquired if Emily had ever done anything that upset me.
Yeah, she loved you.
Emily is a very wonderful companion that I grow more in love with daily. I am grateful to have her in my life.
You write as though you are being interviewed from a prison camp as your captors sit just off-screen, hands on their guns.
I beseeched the handsome boy not to stop on my account, as I had come to heard him play. He explained that he cannot play under pressure, he smokes under pressure. Here he extracted a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. I told him I would leave so he could play anew. When I was fifty feet away, I heard the notes again. It is a pity I could not hear it closely, but it is more important that he play.
I remember this. I wonder now how the boy took this encounter. He played publicly, so he had to expect he was overheard, simply not so obviously or not by you.
Thursday, she mostly lay and groaned. She was to go to work and I was to go to Kate's for dinner. However, owing to her sickness and her being at my house, neither occurred. Kate was not pleased, as you can well expect.
It looks like dinner didn't happen.
I cannot prove what happened here. I can, however, tell you that you will gain a reputation for canceling plans at the last minute because Emily took ill.
Did Emily malinger so you would not have dinner with Kate?
Possibly the boy has to recite the entire Torah from memory or circumcise a goat. I'm really quite vague on the matter.
Your sense of humor could use originality.