Most of the stories I have regarding girl troubles make me
out to be the victim. Whether it’s due
to someone else’s actions or my own fear and stupidity, I’m typically the one
who ends up hurt or confused or left to learn an important lesson. But, in all fairness, there has been a time
or two when I was the one doling out the heartbreak. These aren’t stories I’m proud of, or even stories
I particularly enjoy telling; it’s always easier to tell the ones that make me
liked or pitied. Yet, if I’m going to paint
a full picture of my messy history with the opposite sex these stories need to
be told as well. I’d like to think that
all of us have moments when we act in a despicable fashion. It’s these moments that seem to show our true
humanity, that we all have a dark side, that there is no reality to the concept
of perfection, just the search for it. It’s
futile to think these lapses will never happen to us, we can only hope that
they don’t cause any permanent damage or harm.
Even with admitting all that, there’s nothing easy about telling these
stories and facing up to what each of us is capable of. I spent most of 1996 acting in a way I’ve
never been proud of and hopefully will never act like again.
I’m not
sure what it was about that year, maybe it was some horoscope thing, how all
the celestial bodies happened to line up for those particular 12 months, but it
all started the minute the calendar turned over. I was back from college and everyone got
together to celebrate the new year. I
can’t tell you exactly what happened, maybe it was because I was high as a
kite, maybe it was hearing everyone in my life tell me ad nauseum that they
didn’t understand why I was dating a girl 3,000 miles away, maybe it was
getting readjusted to someone I hadn’t seen in three months who now wanted all
of my attention, but Sara annoyed the hell out of me all night. She annoyed me to the point that I walked
away from the party deciding that the relationship was over. I can’t tell you what she did, it’s been to
long, but if my vague memories are right, it wasn’t even something to write
about, something that others would have heard and said, right on, you needed
out of that. It was me being 18, super sensitive, and
stupid as hell.
My next
move should have been sitting down with Sara and talking about how I felt, but
instead, scared to break the girl’s heart, I acted like everything was fine for
the next few days, or however long I was still at home, and headed back to California
planning on ending the relationship over the phone from across the country. I knew at the time the relationship deserved
a better ending than this, that it wasn’t nice or fair or appropriate, but I
just didn’t have the guts to handle my business face to face. I think I waited a month or so before finally
announcing my feelings to her. The plan
was to act like it was something new, that since returning to California
I realized things weren’t going to work out, but for whatever reason, probably
guilt, I came out with the whole truth.
She begged me not to dump her, much like I feared, and I didn’t handle
it any better than I thought I would face to face. After what I’m sure was hours, I recanted on
my stance and told her I was willing to give things a second try. I would like to say that I came to that
conclusion because of something she said, that she made me see how stupid my
reasoning was and that what we had was worth keeping alive, but that wasn’t the
case. My thinking was more along the lines
of, it’s killing me to hear her breakdown and beg me to stay, so if I just
agree to try again we can end this phone call, and since I’m 3,000 miles away
for the next three or four months, I have three or four months to figure the
rest out.
I spent
those months pretending that there was no Sara, that we had broken things off
and I was free to do as I pleased. What did
it matter? She wasn’t going to know what
happened or didn’t happen anyway. I
still talked with her on the phone and kept up appearances, but really I was open
to any California girl that came
my way. In all honesty, I wasn’t totally
over her. There was a part of me that
still missed her terribly and didn’t want to completely let go. She was still the one I wanted to be the
first to hear my news, the one I wanted to share all my inside jokes with, the
one I loved whether that love was something that had run its course or
not. So what I really found myself in
was the perfect position. I had three
months to explore whatever I wanted on the west coast and if nothing happened
or didn’t feel right, I had her waiting for me back east.
When the
school year came to an end, I came back east still unsure of what I wanted from
Sara. The first weekend I was back,
Sara’s parents were out of town and she had everyone over to hangout. It was a super weird night where I was unsure
of what she wanted from me or what I wanted to happen, how I was supposed to
act towards her or how I was supposed to act towards everyone else. Sara and I hadn’t talked since I got back, so
I was somewhat unclear on what our relationship was supposed to be, or who knew
what and what was thought about everything.
There were plenty of uncomfortable moments where things were said or
done and I wasn’t sure what to say or how to react. I kind of wanted to just be with her and hash
things out, but the presence of all our friends made that impossible. So, I hung around until everyone filtered out
thinking we would get a chance to talk.
Instead, she took me up to her room and we had sex. At the time, I thought it was a sign that
everything was okay and just went with it.
What I realize now is that it was her way of keeping me around. If we talked, things might come to an end,
but who would leave a girl who was throwing herself at them?
This went
on for a while, but something just wasn’t right. Things weren’t the same in ways that I can’t
really describe or pinpoint 17 years later.
I think part of it was I still wasn’t sure I wanted the
relationship. I think another part was
she was unhappy with herself for letting me treat her how I did and still wasn’t
able to let go. Part of it might even
have been an eerie sense of desperation that hung over everything. So, we powered through, trying to make things
work, but both unsure that it was really what we wanted. But as the summer stretched out, I became
more and more sure that things were over.
She started to demand things I wasn’t willing to give, she annoyed me at
almost every event we attended, she kept trying to overcompensate for the
distance that was growing between us. I
was still scared of breaking things off, though; I had tried it once before and
it went really bad, the thought of going through it again killed me.
Everything came to a head one night
half way through the summer when I did something I have grown to regret more
then anything else in my life. The
Summer of ’96 has become the summer of legend.
It’s the summer when my circle of friends discovered the joys of
drinking as a group. Every weekend was a
reason to get together, get drunk, and do a bunch of stupid shit. Everyone has this period in their life, the
period that you love to reminisce about whenever you get together with people,
the period when the whole world seemed to be there for your pleasure. A group of at least 8 of us got together
every weekend that summer, usually at Paul’s, and drank to oblivion. We were all at one of these get togethers. I was pretty drunk. I have no idea where Sara was, but I was
talking with Betty and things started to get kind of intense. So intense that I was feeling the urge to
reach out and kiss her, and so intense that I was sure she was totally okay
with that. This was the Betty who I had
been extremely close friends with over the previous three years, the Betty who
was also one of Sara’s closest friends. The
thought ran through my head that if I made out with Betty, Sara would be so
upset she would break up with me, or at the very least, would not beg me to
stay with her when I tried to end it myself.
So, Betty and I decided to go for a walk and, when we thought no one was
around, made out on the side of the street.
I went to Sara a week or so later,
scared that the news would get to her some other way than from me (this feels
like a whole other level of sickness, I was fine doing something despicable to
break the girl’s heart, but I was truly worried how she would react if someone
other than me told her). Much to my
chagrin, it didn’t change anything. She
still begged me not to break up with her, to just make it last the summer until
we both went off to college. This time,
for whatever reason, I held my ground. It felt absurd to go forward together
another second after all that had happened.
There were tons of tears and more kissing then would be expected, but I
eventually got up off the couch and walked out the door for good.
You might think this is where the
story ends, but I ruined more than one relationship that summer. As much as that kiss with Betty was a means
to an end for me, it was much more to her.
Over the years our extremely close friendship had turned into more of a
crush from her end and the kiss validated everything she had been feeling. She thought very much that it was going to be
the start of something new between us. I
did not. Yet, once again, I didn’t have
the guts, or the desire, to make that point very clear. We still had a chunk of the summer to get
through, and now that Sara was out of the picture, I needed someone to hang out
with. We never ended up having sex, but
we certainly explored every inch of each other’s bodies. I did make it clear that I wanted to go back
to California single, that I
wasn’t looking for us to turn into anything serious, but I let plenty of things
happen knowing darn well that she didn’t feel the same. When we both got back to school, she would
write me and call me, and I would respond coldly or not at all. Slowly but surely, and after taking a few
deserved verbal swings, she stopped trying to contact me, and what was an
amazing friendship came to a horrible end.
I have very little to say in defense of my
behavior. I could plead youth and
inexperience. I could argue that I was
going through so much change in my life and I was unprepared to handle it properly. But all that just feels like excuses. I acted like a selfish asshole no matter what
context you try to put it in and treated people I cared about deeply in horrendous
ways. Above everything else I’m totally embarrassed
of how I acted during that year. It wasn’t
me. I never acted like that prior and
I’ve never acted like that since. Maybe
that was why Sara and I were able to have a long friendship after all was said
and done. Even she was able to recognize
that, for whatever reason, I wasn’t the guy she knew when all that went
down. And maybe it’s why I’m so quick to
forgive or deflect when I’ve been treated in similar ways. Maybe they’re just not themselves. Maybe they’ll come back to their senses like
I did. Or maybe not; maybe that part is
just me.
