(no subject)
Here is a story of my continuing misadventures in romance behind the cut:
So I hang out in my friend Alex's suite a lot--it's full of moody Russian majors, which are pretty much my kind of people. Anyway, there's this boy that lives downstairs from her, who I didn't know very well first semester, but this semester, we have a class together and we ran into each other at a couple of parties, and we pretty much flirted constantly and hit it off. As a result, I'm kind of into him. Or at least, I think I am. I'm not sure if I actually am attracted to him romantically or if I'm just flattered that he pays attention to me. Anyway, he's sweet and well-traveled and well-read and it's a distraction from the other, more important stressors going on in my life, and he looks a bit like Tsar Nicholas II, actually, so it's not as if he's bad-looking:
Anyway, I hosted a Purim party on Saturday night, and he came, and we proceeded to get rip-roaringly drunk. At some point in the night, one of the people in our social circle who I don't like particularly well but who I invite to things to be nice because she doesn't have many friends otherwise, arrived with one of her other friends who I like even less. This is the girl who converted to Judaism after she met her boyfriend and now thinks it's okay to make Holocaust jokes and say things like, "Jewish girls give the best blowjobs!" and so I just don't like her even though I try my hardest to like everybody. Anyway, she and this boy (we'll call him N. after Tsar Nicholas) had two classes together last semester, and they're good enough friends, but she's just a toucher and she likes to flirt, which in itself is a totally neutral thing but she seems to always want to flirt with boys that I am interested in, which means that I am basically just frustrated constantly when she's around.
So, she had not been at the party more than 10 minutes when she sat down on N.'s lap and proceeded to stroke his beard. The following conversation ensued:
N: Please don't touch my beard.
Her: But it's so soft!
N: It's not that soft.
But the drunker he got, the more accommodating he was to her, and by the time everyone decided it was time to go to the frats they had their arms around each other like they were best friends and he was like, "WHY DON'T WE WATCH ANTHONY BOURDAIN TOGETHER MORE OFTEN" and I was just standing there like a useless idiot all, "I like Anthony Bourdain too."
We got to the frats and he and I just stood there. We had the following conversation:
N: I really am not drunk enough to do this. I like can't dance unless I'm wasted.
Me: Me too! What do you want to do?
N: Hmm, I don't know!
Me: Do you want to go back to the suite and drink some more? We can take some shots and then meet up with everyone else later.
N: Yeah, that sounds good!
So we were leaving when all of a sudden it was decided that WE MUST ALL GO TO PHI SIGMA OMEGA RIGHT NOW. And he was like, "well, whatever, if everyone's going, I guess I'll go too."
And I just brokek down. I was not going to Phi Sigma Omega. I would not go to Phi Sigma Omega. So I stood on the porch of Pi Kappa and burst into tears. It was a combination of drunken emotionality, anxiety due to being in a confined frat house, and the fact that I was just too frustrated to live. Ellen, sweet Ellen, was the only person who noticed me burst into tears and so she held me for about fifteen minutes while I cried about how "it's not fair" and how "it was perfect." I was releasing a lot of different emotions, and I think a lot of them have to do with how I'm always expected to put my needs last within the context of the group because I'm the "group mother." It's not something with which I am unfamiliar, but after six plus years of it, at a certain point you just can't handle it anymore.
Ellen volunteered to take me back to the suite, but I decided to soldier on like a good Protestant and ended up at Phi Sigma Omega, drinking a Keystone Light with N and watching everyone else dancing. He clearly knew I was crying and I tried to explain it away by saying, "I have an anxiety disorder and I get panicky in enclosed spaces," which wasn't a lie, but it wasn't quite the truth as to why I had been crying. I think he knew why, because we stood there in awkward silence for a good while, and then we tried to dance, but our hearts just weren't in it, and I ended up gossiping with Ellen and some of our other friends while he just stood in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by grinding couples, staring at us.
We sat at the same table at brunch today but did not really acknowledge each other's presence, and we made small talk in line at the coffee shop, but otherwise nothing. I went by the suite earlier tonight and was there for a good three hours, and normally after I'm done hanging out with Alex and I'm getting ready to go, I'll stop by his room and talk to him, but I didn't tonight. I am scared that somehow I fucked it up again, as I usually do. He's very shy and I'm very shy, and I think he may be embarrassed as to how he acted this weekend (he and I got drunk together on Friday too, and he said some things that were maybe not the smartest and ended up getting sick, and he straightup told me he was embarrassed about that), so I have to show him I'm not angry at him. The only person I can really talk about this to is Alex, since she knows N really well, but she is going through a lot of things (her father passed away two weeks ago after a long fight with cancer; I went to the funeral and haven't posted about it yet because I'm not sure it's my place to), and I think Ellen is too sweet and will just tell me what I want to hear.
And I kind of was angry at N, last night. Oh well.
So I hang out in my friend Alex's suite a lot--it's full of moody Russian majors, which are pretty much my kind of people. Anyway, there's this boy that lives downstairs from her, who I didn't know very well first semester, but this semester, we have a class together and we ran into each other at a couple of parties, and we pretty much flirted constantly and hit it off. As a result, I'm kind of into him. Or at least, I think I am. I'm not sure if I actually am attracted to him romantically or if I'm just flattered that he pays attention to me. Anyway, he's sweet and well-traveled and well-read and it's a distraction from the other, more important stressors going on in my life, and he looks a bit like Tsar Nicholas II, actually, so it's not as if he's bad-looking:
Anyway, I hosted a Purim party on Saturday night, and he came, and we proceeded to get rip-roaringly drunk. At some point in the night, one of the people in our social circle who I don't like particularly well but who I invite to things to be nice because she doesn't have many friends otherwise, arrived with one of her other friends who I like even less. This is the girl who converted to Judaism after she met her boyfriend and now thinks it's okay to make Holocaust jokes and say things like, "Jewish girls give the best blowjobs!" and so I just don't like her even though I try my hardest to like everybody. Anyway, she and this boy (we'll call him N. after Tsar Nicholas) had two classes together last semester, and they're good enough friends, but she's just a toucher and she likes to flirt, which in itself is a totally neutral thing but she seems to always want to flirt with boys that I am interested in, which means that I am basically just frustrated constantly when she's around.
So, she had not been at the party more than 10 minutes when she sat down on N.'s lap and proceeded to stroke his beard. The following conversation ensued:
N: Please don't touch my beard.
Her: But it's so soft!
N: It's not that soft.
But the drunker he got, the more accommodating he was to her, and by the time everyone decided it was time to go to the frats they had their arms around each other like they were best friends and he was like, "WHY DON'T WE WATCH ANTHONY BOURDAIN TOGETHER MORE OFTEN" and I was just standing there like a useless idiot all, "I like Anthony Bourdain too."
We got to the frats and he and I just stood there. We had the following conversation:
N: I really am not drunk enough to do this. I like can't dance unless I'm wasted.
Me: Me too! What do you want to do?
N: Hmm, I don't know!
Me: Do you want to go back to the suite and drink some more? We can take some shots and then meet up with everyone else later.
N: Yeah, that sounds good!
So we were leaving when all of a sudden it was decided that WE MUST ALL GO TO PHI SIGMA OMEGA RIGHT NOW. And he was like, "well, whatever, if everyone's going, I guess I'll go too."
And I just brokek down. I was not going to Phi Sigma Omega. I would not go to Phi Sigma Omega. So I stood on the porch of Pi Kappa and burst into tears. It was a combination of drunken emotionality, anxiety due to being in a confined frat house, and the fact that I was just too frustrated to live. Ellen, sweet Ellen, was the only person who noticed me burst into tears and so she held me for about fifteen minutes while I cried about how "it's not fair" and how "it was perfect." I was releasing a lot of different emotions, and I think a lot of them have to do with how I'm always expected to put my needs last within the context of the group because I'm the "group mother." It's not something with which I am unfamiliar, but after six plus years of it, at a certain point you just can't handle it anymore.
Ellen volunteered to take me back to the suite, but I decided to soldier on like a good Protestant and ended up at Phi Sigma Omega, drinking a Keystone Light with N and watching everyone else dancing. He clearly knew I was crying and I tried to explain it away by saying, "I have an anxiety disorder and I get panicky in enclosed spaces," which wasn't a lie, but it wasn't quite the truth as to why I had been crying. I think he knew why, because we stood there in awkward silence for a good while, and then we tried to dance, but our hearts just weren't in it, and I ended up gossiping with Ellen and some of our other friends while he just stood in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by grinding couples, staring at us.
We sat at the same table at brunch today but did not really acknowledge each other's presence, and we made small talk in line at the coffee shop, but otherwise nothing. I went by the suite earlier tonight and was there for a good three hours, and normally after I'm done hanging out with Alex and I'm getting ready to go, I'll stop by his room and talk to him, but I didn't tonight. I am scared that somehow I fucked it up again, as I usually do. He's very shy and I'm very shy, and I think he may be embarrassed as to how he acted this weekend (he and I got drunk together on Friday too, and he said some things that were maybe not the smartest and ended up getting sick, and he straightup told me he was embarrassed about that), so I have to show him I'm not angry at him. The only person I can really talk about this to is Alex, since she knows N really well, but she is going through a lot of things (her father passed away two weeks ago after a long fight with cancer; I went to the funeral and haven't posted about it yet because I'm not sure it's my place to), and I think Ellen is too sweet and will just tell me what I want to hear.
And I kind of was angry at N, last night. Oh well.