“What religion or reason could drive a man to forsake his lover?”
Now, where were we? Yes, regrets. I wish I could be that cavalier person who proclaims, “I regret nothing!” Unfortunately, that’s simply not who I am. I am filled with regrets. Petty regrets, even. Regardless, a lot of these regrets shaped my life, and I’m curious to know “what might have been?” Most of these changed me as a person, but I wouldn’t say that it was for the better. Whenever I think to myself, “I’d like to be a better person”, there are several glaring instances that remind me of how I got to where I am. Well, what’s Regret #1? I regret that my high school persona was that of “the guy who’s madly in love with the girl who doesn’t want him”. Allow me to explain.
Around the time of middle school, I changed schools a lot. Either the public school system was dangerous, or the Catholic school was full of hardass nuns. Now, I had always been a friendly kid and I hadn’t really had trouble making friends. I had gone to the same school from K-6, so it was weird leaving my little family that I’d established over that 7 year period. Kind of like “Saved by the Bell: The College Years”, I took a few of them with me to middle school. That is, until I left after 6 weeks because of…let’s say “irreconcileable differences”. Anyway, I went to public school for a year, and still befriended the cool kids ’cause I was like their own personal nerd. That smart kid they had around “just in case”. I schooled them on how to sneak out of their homes for dates and how to change their report cards. Sometimes, I’d even let ’em cheat off of me. Whatever it took to survive and be friended. In any case, I finally landed at Newport for 8th grade. All of a sudden, I didn’t know ANYBODY. And I was pretty desperate to make friends.
All my life, I had just been friendly and people came to me, but this was different. There was a meanness to some of these kids. It was a different environment, and I don’t know if it was the money or the upbringing. Don’t get me wrong; I’d grown up in private school, but there’s something about kids who go to a $10K school that sort of set them apart from the rest. All of a sudden, there were family ski trips, weekend resort trips, etc. I felt like Lainey Boggs, ’cause I certainly couldn’t afford to do all of that stuff. In any case, Mommy wanted me to fit in and sent me to what she could afford, but I just couldn’t seem to make friends. There’d be days I’d come home from school and just cry. Yeah, it sucks, but I was really lonely. And the one day that I thought this was all going to change was a day that I’ll never forget.
One afternoon, I had study hall and found myself with nothing to do. Somehow, I began a conversation with Matt and Leroy. Let me tell you a little about these two bastards. I didn’t know it then, but those two guys were real sons of bitches. Matt was sort of the black-heartthrob-with-a-chip-on-his-shoulder, while Leroy was your stereotypical henchman/sidekick. Leroy’s utter uselessness later became quite evident when he got expelled, on the last day of school, for punching Barney Rubble at Kings Dominion, but that’s a story for another time.
Anyway, I guess they decided to “have fun with the new guy”, but I didn’t realize it at the time. They were really friendly, inviting me to stuff and whatnot. Stuff that, in hindsight, you KNOW is lip service, but back then, it was the Holy Grail. The biggest thing they did, though, was plant a seed. You see, they told me that this girl, Amani, had a crush on me. Now, kids at this age have crushes all the time, but I’ve never really related to my cohorts. While most people would kind of care for a week and walk away, I somehow saw this as an answer to my prayers: Here I was, worried about not making friends, while here was a girl who actually liked me as MORE than a friend.
Now, let’s factor in a few things. I had never really had a conversation with this girl. Mere shit-shooting here and there. Didn’t know much about her. But if there’s anything I wanted more than a friend, it was a girlfriend. My desire to be coupled has always been greater than that of a Jewish chick approaching 30. If you’ve read my site at all, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not exactly psychologically stable, and this is the incident where I first became aware of that.
I don’t know if Matt & Leroy saw the glint in my eye, or the rush of life come over my face, but I think they new they had succeeded at that point. All of a sudden, these 20-minute-ago-strangers were my new best friends. “Oh, you should ask her out,” they said. “Y’all would make a cute couple,” they said. I was a sponge, soaking it up, ’cause now I had friends AND a girlfriend. I was king of the world. I guess I should have been wary of their grins and whispers to each other, but I was too happy.
Now, I’m gonna spare you the details, because 12 years later, it’s quite hard to remember them all. I can tell you there was an awkward approach made to Amani, I was rebuffed, and didn’t really know what to do next. Unfortunately, I’m not just crazy, but also tenacious. Somewhere along the line, Matt & Leroy laughingly admitted that they made the whole thing up just to pass the time in study hall. The sad thing is that the mind is a tricky bitch. Over the course of time, I had grown to really like Amani. She was smart, I thought she was cute (disclaimer: 8th grade Amani wasn’t exactly “bomb”, but I can’t talk since I was a butterball with halitosis), and she was like queen of the Black girls in our class. I could be dating a queen! Even though the jig was up, I was really into this girl. And that’s where the trouble started.
You see, I was just learning how great of a weapon guilt could be. Somehow, I started gaining friends, but they were all of the female variety. No, that was NOT a good thing. You see, I would take Amani’s rejection pretty hard. I don’t know what happened, but I pretty much established an “Urkel/Laura Winslow” relationship between she and I. As I amassed these female friends, I would just dump all of my woe and misery and whatnot on them, and they’d feel sorry for me. I’d feel empowered, and somehow this would all make its way back to Amani. That was the plan. I was gonna guilt her into loving me. And it almost worked. She surrendered. We had an illustrious 5-day relationship (counting weekends). Then, she decided she “just wanted to be friends”, but remember how I said I was tenacious? I know I said that this started in 8th grade, but it persisted on through the 11th grade. Yup. THAT long. And that’s who I came to be: “the guy sweating Amani”, depending on your vernacular.
Why do I hate this whole situation? Because I resorted to self-deprecation to get something that I never knew I wanted until someone told me I did. Did that make sense? You see, there’s so much more to me than that. I can be funny, caring, a good friend, etc. There are a handful of people from that era who know this. But my general persona was “the pathetic guy”. I was a joke, and even teachers were in on it. They would laugh, or say “just give up already”; thanks for the vote of confidence, teachers! I’d like to think I was the class clown, but they weren’t laughing with me. And somewhere along the line, I started to see that pathetic guy, as well. I can’t blame Matt & Leroy; they were just acting their age and having fun. I blame myself because I was too stupid to realize that I was “young and stupid.” You’re not going to fall in love and marry your 8th grade sweetheart, and the rest of the problems in your life won’t go away by thinking you are. There was so much change going on at that time, including the Russia trip. I was out seeing the world, yet internalizing everything in a way that made Pathetic Will a reality. But eventually, I GOT the girl. No pressure or anything. It just happened. But that’s when you find that having isn’t as good as wanting. And that’s where I think I’ll pick up tomorrow.
