Women!

New Rule! From now on, no woman that I’m actively interested in may ever read this blog. I’ll never tell her, and you won’t either. If you do, I’ll find you. >:D

(Note to self: Insert diabolical laughter here.)

I’ve been good thus far. I haven’t told anyone since Scrapbook Girl. Even in her case, I’m not really convinced she ever gave enough of a shit to read this damn thing anyway. I can’t say for sure though, since anytime I tried to talk to her, she just ignored me. Even in front of our own friends, as if she somehow didn’t hear me. Sometimes she’d act like she couldn’t even see me, and I’d have to holler her name just to get her attention. Sometimes she shot me the dirtiest looks. I was never anything but friendly to her, and honest with her, and I never harassed her or anything like that. That didn’t matter. I’ve since decided she must have some rare form of mental illness, one that is triggered specifically by me for some reason, and moved on.

One thing that still nags at me though; we were friends before I told her. Now, after so many attempts to reach out to her, and get past the whole awkwardness of a rejection, she’s useless to me. We’re in the same program, have some of the same friends, (some of whom are literally my neighbours and ask me about her. Why they think I know anything more than they do about what she’s doing, I don’t know), and we were even in the same class last term. A class I actually had to take! Otherwise I might have just switched out of it. The first time I tried to hang out with her and another classmate after class, she couldn’t make eye-contact with me, and looked like she was couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

At first I thought maybe Scrapbook Girl was trying to spare my feelings, but then I guess I came to realize she just couldn’t see things from anyone’s perspective other than her own. She was presumably miffed at me for putting her on the spot like that. But the words “sorry, I don’t like you that way,” would have been a stellar diffuse the situation. Or “lets just be friends for awhile and see.” Or hell, “fuck off” – I mean, saying ANYTHING would have been an improvement. I had the courage to say something to her. I was the one who would have to feel rejected, right? RIGHT?

Why she then decided that ignoring me completely was the most appropriate response I deserved, I will never know. I think she’s such a coward for it. All she had to do was talk to me, and she’d realize how easily I could forgive the rejection. Hell, I half-expected it in the first place! I get so much rejection that I barely care anymore. That’s as a lover though. She was my friend, and I felt there was value there. There’s usually only one boyfriend slot in a woman’s life, but there’s a virtually limitless supply of slots in one’s life for friends. You have to really hate someone to feel the need to friend-break-up with them.

I had to reject a girl of my own recently, a little under a month ago. Somehow, over the course of the last school term, she managed to develop a crush on me. I’m calling her “Treasure Hunter” because she used to play this repetitive facebook applet with digging and treasure in it during one of our English classes, instead of listening. She is, in fact, also a slam poet, and she was, in fact, in the same class I shared with Scrapbook Girl, but that’s just a coincidence. There were a lot of girls in that class – even Parasite Eve and Bright Eyes were in it. My goodness, do the girls ever love crushing after our pretty-boy professor. Even I think he’s kind of hot – the bastard totally knows how pretty he is – but I digress.

The point is, Treasure Hunter had the courage to tell me she was interested in me, so I, in turn, made a point of showing the courtesy of suggesting we spend some time together doing something, so we could see if there was anything to that. She told me she thought we were similar, which I found a remarkably odd observation, since I couldn’t see it. I arranged a date for us the week after our final exam, during which she spent most of her time babbling about her stupid job that she hates, but, without being interesting about it. I tried asking her about any of my interests she might like, and she generally didn’t even know what I was talking about, which in some cases, was amazing. I finally asked her to tell me about her interests, and all she could come up with was “facebook.” I joked that we’re all a little guilty of spending a little too much there, and then she added that she liked writing poetry. I’ve seen her perform some of it – it’s what I might describe as teen-angsty, which is fine I guess, if you’re still in high school. At the end of the night, I told said “I don’t know how to say this, but I don’t really think we have anything in common. Did you kinda get that feeling too?” She agreed. I knew she wasn’t quite satisfied, but I figured this was the nicest way to tell her – and show a little bit of courage and actually fucking tell her! So, at worst, I had pho and played a few games of pool with a girl I’ve no interest in. At best, I might have been wrong, in which case we might have hit it off that night. It’s amazing how just a little exposure can tell you what you need to know about someone. This is, again, why I think Scrapbook Girl is a total coward. But that’s another rant I needed to get past to talk about what’s really bothering me.

What’s bothering me is the precedent set by these rejections from friends. I like another one of my female friends, you see. I have for awhile actually, and even some other slam poets have asked if we were dating. I can’t say for sure how she feels about me though, not without explicitly asking. (And if I do that, the cat is sort of out of the bag, isn’t it?) As it was with Scrapbook Girl and Nurse Betty, I have every reason to believe she should like me, and I’d treat her like a queen. She makes me smile, which not a lot of people can really do. (Ema always can, but I somehow don’t think that I’m his type. Anyway, he just celebrated his 4-year anniversary with his girlfriend.) Maybe part of it is that I’m doomed to fall for wounded women – I think I suffer from Florence Nightingale effect – falling for women because I feel sorry for them, and think I can heal them. This has, in fact, been what caused me to fall for all of these women – N/A, Karma Chameleon, Nurse Betty, Scrapbook Girl, Diary Girl, Ballet Girl, and the list goes on, but you get the idea. I fall for these women because I feel sorry for them. I feel like I can heal them. For each and every one of the aforementioned women, I felt I needed to prove to them they could be loved by a man who would always treat them with respect, always come up with new ways to make them smile, and who would love them for who they really were, and not who they felt they had to pretend to be. (Scrapbook Girl, for instance, had noted at one point that she had to downplay her intellect to keep guys’ attention. I always thought her intellect was the best part.) I wanted to prove that I could always be there when they needed me. I’d even be there for them if any of them needed me now. That’s just my nature, but as far as relationships go, I can’t afford any more charity cases. Sorry ladies, but if you’re going to continue to get used an abused by assholes, it’s your own fault. Those men continue to behave that way because they know it gets them laid, and they never have to deal with the consequences, you do. I know you’re all intelligent enough to get past it.

Anyway, the reason I even bother to mention all this is that I like another one of my friends now, but after Nurse Betty, and Scrapbook Girl, and Lilith, etc, I’m tired. I’m tired of losing friends because I develop feelings for them. It’s the weirdest thing. It’s like falling in love with them was the biggest insult to them, and they all seem to just hate me for it. Who could have ever thought such positive feelings could have such negative effects with such disgusted reactions. Often I think I must be missing something obvious, but when none of them are willing to talk about it, it is difficult to discern.

I do not want to tell my friend I love her because I do not want to lose my friend. As it stands now, when it’s just the two of us, I feel like I can tell her anything, particularly when it comes to dating, and I can get the woman’s perspective on things. She, in turn, can get my perspective on the guys she and her friends are seeing. Typically, as you might imagine, I think she can do much better than the assbags that harass and text her constantly, but she never has the heart to get rid of them either. I try to encourage her to tell them she’s not interested, because that is exactly what I would want to know, were I the guy. And also, I wonder what will happen when it is my turn. The very thought tires and depresses me.

For now, and in fact, as usual, I have a few other prospective women lined up. I have two dates scheduled this week, both of whom I met online, but who nonetheless can carry on a relatively unstupid conversation. I don’t have terribly high hopes for either of them yet, as the internet is a terrible place to meet women, but you never know for sure, and anyway, the longer I’m distracted from trying to convey to my friend I love her, the better off I’ll be.

It occurs to me at this point that this friend deserves a name. I’m going to call her Social Girl, because she goes to tons of social events, particularly concerts and poetry slams, so we know a lot of the same people. She’s also really fond of Broken Social Scene.

That about wraps up my dating situation these days. I’ve other more exciting news, but for now, I’d like to limit this entry to one “broad” topic. (There’s a little pun there. Did you miss it?)