Awkward Things I Say To Girls

Part 4 of 5, Chapter 19

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

My whole world was just about complete.

Well, except for that HCE wasn’t actually really dating me. Yet. We went out on weekends and saw movies and had dinner, and we chatted online constantly and talked on the phone, plus we wrote notes to each other in class in the form of haikus where we told each other that the other one was cute. But, other than that, no. We weren’t dating.

Plus, I was busy limping out of school with the minimum possible academic performance. If collegiate (and subsequent) experience has taught me anything, it is this: if something comes so easily to you that you can rush through your homework and never study, which to you is a fantastic deal because you don’t really enjoy it much and want to get on to something else as soon as possible, that thing is not the sort of thing that you’d best choose as a major in college. “Wow,” you want to say of your chosen field. “I could listen to old people drone about this subject for hours! Then I want to rush to the bookstore and drop hundreds of dollars on hardback books about it that I will want to actually kind of skim!” If that is not you, then I hope you either prefer used books, or you are good at forcing yourself to do things that you find at least mildly unpleasant, which frankly is a useful skill that you wish I would acquire so that you could actually read this blog instead of refreshing it in vain. Well, college also taught me that wings and beer go great together.

Oh, there were other details. The Cavs lost a ridiculous number of basketball games. Winter in Cleveland aimed a few final kicks into Spring’s gut as she lay curled in pain on a Parma sidewalk before he took her purse, turned, and stumbled off, drunk, to sleep off another hangover. I was not getting any better at knitting.

But other than that, HCE was single, and I was single, and we spent all our time together, and so what could go wrong?

—

“I don’t think this boy is going to come make out with me,” HCE said.

Whoa. What? This wasn’t one of our typical conversations about ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, sex, literature, movies, school, politics, activism, dating, the campus newspaper, the administration, public displays of affection, private displays of affection, music, our childhoods, sports, board games, liquor, parties, Cleveland, fashion, or anything having anything to do with what we’re doing this weekend. I was on new ground and completely lost.

“Boy?” I said, playing it cool.

“The one from our softball team. I told him I wanted him to come make out with me, and I don’t know what I’m going to do if he doesn’t.”

I can think of a few ideas that I’d like to try, I thought. The filter let it through. “I can think of a few ideas that I’d like to try,” I said.

“No, you stay put. How’m I supposed to make out with him if he shows up and you’re here?”

You’re not supposed to make out with him, you’re supposed to make out with me, a fact which I will share with him emphatically if he needs convincing, I thought. The filter caught this one. “Okay,” I said, confused. Maybe she needs a rebound makeout. It isn’t as though I’m going anywhere.

Part 4 of 5, Chapter 18

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

Deep breath. Okay, another.

The professor is swimming in the front of the class, nattering about the difference between GDP and GNP. HCE is scribbling something in my notebook.

I could still throw up
It’s “Regurgitation Day”
I won’t if you won’t.

Waking up still drunk and going to class anyway wasn’t something I did a hell of a lot of in college, partially because our college was less fun than a pocket calculator with a personality disorder, and also because I didn’t go to a tremendous quantity of classes in the first place. That is, unless a certain someone was going to sit next to me and write haikus at me all class long. Especially if both you and that someone are coincidentally now single. I picked up the pen.

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Part 3 of 5, Chapter 17

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

I broke her gaze and looked down at the box of relationship-droppings, outside her dorm room. “You broke up with him.” Junior Midshipman Obvious, sir, reporting for duty aboard the USS No Kidding. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine as soon as I get everything that was his out of my life,” HCE said. “Here, you can help. Find his books in the shelf and put them in the box.”

“Which ones are his?”

“Which ones are stupid? At least give me some good news. How is your girlfriend?”

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Part 3, Chapter 16

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

I only spent a few nights up in Art School Girl’s cozy, strange bedroom at the top of the ancient house just off campus that she shared with three other people. It was Dumbledore’s office if he had been an art student, full of dark colors and smelling like home.

“What is this?” I said the first time I took a tour of her bedroom, pointing at spilled sand on the wood floor beneath a window.

“Don’t step in it! That’s a bird.” A bird? Oh. I noticed the tracks. “After I spilled sand one day, the bird got in and walked on it. I figured I’d just leave the tracks here.”

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Part 3, Chapter 15

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

“Finally,” I thought, as I leaned in to kiss her.

I specifically remember this particular kiss as being the first time I realized how much I like to draw out those brief intermediary moments when there’s a pause and your faces, eyes still closed, remain micrometers away but yet fully connected by the warmth and breath and anticipation, stretching those quick quarter-second kiss-intermissions that punctuate any normal makeout to ten seconds or more, until both of you are wound up so much that you’re unable to delay gratification any longer without being so full of adrenaline you burst.

It’s tough to describe without physically coming over and puckering up. Plus, the previous paragraph is guaranteed to be awkward or your money back. Who cares? I thought the kiss was spectacular, and I’m pretty sure she liked it, because, when I finally wrapped it up and stepped back, she whispered, eyes still closed, “Please, could you do that again?”

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Part 3, Chapter 14

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

“Justin, I can’t begin to describe how drunk I was…”

“Don’t even worry about it.”

“You think I’m dreadful. I’m so sorry for behaving like that.”

“Quiet. Listen: I have a few thoughts about the other night. I’ll write you a haiku.”

“Okay!”

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Part 3, Chapter 13

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

On a frozen February Friday in 2003, HCE and her suitemates tried to drink their weight in boxed wine. Think serious motor skill disruption and mental impairment. HCE’s favorite suitemate and best female friend managed to pass herself out, is how bad we’re talking. People were unable to stand. I know because I stumbled into the suite after midnight. I was escorting her other suitemates home from an entirely chaste and sober movie, because I had spent so much time at the suite being platonic that they all wanted me for their platonic own.

After great personal struggle with my own verbosity and emotional exhibitionism, I have chosen to present my reconstruction of our subsequent Instant Messenger conversation to you un-cut, free of stylistic interruption. Just know that I felt at least a few emotions during the following.

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Part 3, Chapter 12

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post, and the below-described escapade is most definitely not a date. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

The hot ex-copy editor and I are holding hands while walking back from having cider at the sort of coffeeshop they don’t have in the south, the kind that is big enough to be a house and so cozy inside that the windows are fogged constantly in the freezing winter. I put my arm around her and pull her close. She snuggles into my shoulder.

It’s a Thursday night in March of 2003. Despite all appearances, someone else is her boyfriend. Still.

It wasn’t my idea to escalate our relationship into cute semi-harmless physical contact, but getting hooked on heroin isn’t just something you just put on your day planner either. In our case, my relationship-boundary-observing world had been shattered months before when she suddenly pulled my arm around her when we were walking along. Since them, you couldn’t stop me from publicly or privately displaying non-kissing affection if you tried, and she didn’t. I never got on base, but I was certainly doing what baseball players refer to as “making contact.” Look, plenty of people cuddle with their platonic non-single best friends during movies. Right? That’s not weird.

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Part 3, Chapter 11

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

“You should hang out with Justin sometime! He’s really,” she paused for emphasis, “really nice.”

I flinched when I heard the adjective. I don’t have anything against the word generally, or even its application to me, unless the person using it happens to be the hottest ex-copy editor I’ve ever seen. And when Michigan Girl is telling her friends that I’m really nice, obviously no one is going to be having hot makeout and cuddle sessions anytime soon. Except for perhaps them. And her. With people who aren’t me.

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Part 3, Chapter 10

FYI, this is an It’s Not a Date story post. New to the story? Start at the beginning.

“…and then when we woke up Michigan Girl and I went out for breakfast on that last morning before I left. We finally didn’t try to order the same thing as each other, but then when we went back to the cabin her dad said that he had ordered the same thing that I had, just a few hours earlier! And then…”

Gush.

That’s what I did, the second I was back in Cleveland. It didn’t matter who I was talking to: my roommates, coworkers, friends, and even my ex-girlfriend became uncomfortably intimate with the most insignificant details of my trip to Michigan, and the girl who had become, for me, the living representation of the entire state. If you live in Ohio you have to hate the University of Michigan, but I was in love with Michigan Girl.

“…and then I was about to leave, but I saw my bathing suit on her clothesline, you know, drying? Which obviously means that I forgot to pack it. But, I figured, why say anything? Because now she’ll just have to…”

I simply would. Not. Shut. Up.

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