It's been a baffling experience of the sort that I'm just beginning to mentally untangle. I don't want to think about it at all, but it still bothers me.
At first when it happened, nothing was wrong. As time passes, it becomes a widening chasm of wrong-doing, a lengthy discourse on fucking things up when everything was just fine the way it was. And as more time passes, I begin to get angrier and angrier.
Contextually, it doesn't make sense. Given all that has happened between us, the years, the awkward attempts at friendship, the eventual acceptance on my part that we weren't so bad at being friends, that one thing could destroy all of it seems unfair. I suppose in the scheme of the world, it makes perfect sense that it happened, that it was bound to happen, that it is just the nature of having friendships with someone of the opposite sex. People seem to be in hearty agreement that if a guy and a girl happen to be in the same vicinity they should be together. They just can't admit it. Or something.
I must admit, for a long time I held this belief. I found it difficult to be friends with guys and not want a sexual relationship, an intimate relationship, but after some time (in which I grew up), I realized that I was perfectly capable of being friends with men as long as they were happy to be my friend and not kiss me. The tom-boy in me was happy that I could be friends with boys again, and I was enriched by the perspectives of the men in my life.
I counted him among that group. And I never never never wanted anything more from him. In fact, I could barely fathom why we were even friends to begin with. I sometimes found talking with him a chore, he was perpetually gloomy, and his idea of a good time was seeing a movie, any movie (which led to the hilarious event of my actually seeing "The Break Up" in the theater). Every so often we would actually have a good time and talk like normal people. I appreciated knowing someone who had also miserably failed at the social circle that emerged from the fiction department. He often listened to my lengthy treatises on men and boys and whoever was causing me the most trouble at the moment. We got into the habit of meeting for lunch at the Thai Spoon after school ended and because I missed the Thai Spoon with its flock of spinach rangoons, quickly crafted plates of excellent noodles and the best thai iced coffee I've ever had, I began to associate our time with delicious food.
He was in a long relationship with someone I knew but didn't know from the fiction department. I was in and out of a lengthy relationship with Eric. There were no issues with us being friends. No one cared. I didn't care. It was a reason for me to eat at the Thai Spoon once a month or so. And that was that.
And then--
His girlfriend of common law marriage length began the tedious break-up process with him, which I coaxed him through several weekly appointments to let her go. If she wanted out there was no reason to struggle against her. He began to unfurl, losing his foundation, understandably, and I was his only outlet of support. And even though I was disgruntled about my role in all of that, I felt obliged to his listening of me when I had my break-ups. So I decided to take on being a good friend to someone I had peripherally been friends with out of indifference and habit for six years.
Our weekly hanging out at my apartment (because we were both broke and I was doing the lemonade diet and couldn't really eat out anywhere) was on week three when he suggested he wanted to get high for his birthday. So I went through the rigors of securing some pot and we hung out on the eve prior to his birthday and got high.
He claimed it was the first time for him. He managed to get fairly high, running the gamut of "I don't think this is working" to irrational giggling. We were sitting in my apartment, the sun was rising, the conversation was beginning to reach that stilted moment I find with some people where I just don't know what to say anymore. He kept awkwardly checking up on my emotional status, trying to unearth something which I wasn't feeling and I later discerned was proof to concur with his belief that I was in love with him.
Ironically enough, I was lamenting about the guys in my life, the brit, the drunken ambusher, etc. There was never any indication on my part that I even liked him as a person. I was very conscious of even being close to him and we played a lengthy subconscious game of musical chairs around my apartment. I worried about the prospect of his attempting to kiss me like a disturbing alarm that only I could hear and I chalked it up to paranoia from smoking pot.
And finally, after I'd convinced him that sleeping on my floor was not an option, he was standing at my door, I stood behind him in the hallway ready to accept the doorknob and lock him out of my life, he wouldn't leave. I knew then what it was, but I still played dumb because I thought, well I don't want him to think that I'm looking for that at all. And I didn't want to have any more awkward conversations. I was tired, it was eight in the morning and we'd been hanging out since a little before midnight. I just wanted him to get out.
Thankfully he did not attempt to breach the physical barrier of my walls, for I was so disinterested in the prospect of him kissing me, he was forced to merely stand next to them and shout out at me his desire to kiss me. And I winced. I literally, in front of him, winced. And I said, "I don't think that's a good idea."
After some awkward fumbling attempt at apologizing he was finally gone. I feared he would return, he would knock on my door, try to explain things, try to mend things, but he didn't and I fell asleep with a deep sense of bafflement and exhaustion.
Very few people in my life have been able to appreciate the depth of this terror. That it was unsolicited. That it happened in my apartment. That I was already uncomfortable. That he used the premise of being high to kiss me (his lackluster explanation). Ugh. The whole thing makes me hate him. I loathe him. I will never speak to him again. Most people cry out that I am being harsh, unfair and unkind to someone who needs my friendship at this crucial point in his life.
My only defense is that if I were a guy this would have never happened. He would not have attempted to manipulate a guy friend into a kiss even if he was high. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I know that much. The funny thing is, as much as the idea disgusts me, if he had said, hey I've always liked you, we're both single now, whaddya say? I'd have a lot more respect for him and I might be able to continue being his friend.
I'm not sure why this event has created such a stark sense of devastation in my world. Part of it is that I felt helpless, unsure of what was happening, manipulated, duped, and then the next day and the next, like the aggressor and not the victim. Even he treated me like the bad guy, assumed I was mad and seemed happy to let me be angry without attempting to take responsibility for what he did. Mostly I think what it did was remind me that sometimes, I give myself away too easily, to the wrong people, for no reason other than to be received. I felt taken advantage of, and now I feel like retreating into myself, to hide that part of me.
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