JAKE
Rule: All boys are the same.
Don’t trick yourself into thinking one’s different. The moment you start thinking that, pull back. Lose interest. Stop calling. Stop initiating contact in general. Because if you don’t, he will lose interest first and you will think he is a jerk.
I crafted this rule after a boy named Jerk – I mean, Jake. He was a musician (big surprise?) and I liked his band. We had mutual friends, the other guys in the band along with a few people from school, but we didn’t hang out. I only ever encountered him at shows. After our first meeting, we exchanged phone numbers and for a little while we would converse over text message.
Jake and I never really got to know eachother, our only common interest was the band. Other than that, there wasn’t much else. I figure the reason why we never really made an effort to get to know eachother was because we knew how different we were. He was tall, I was short. He was the strong silent type, I was a constant talker. He liked Six Flags, I lived at Disneyland. He never opened up more than necessary, I poured out everything at every given opportunity. He was a Mac, I was a PC. Etc, etc, etc. All of that stuff was petty and we could get past it (Jake and I were the masters of dropping things that didn’t really matter), but what did matter, and made all the difference, was our taste in music.
Music was important to both of us; I was a singer, he was a guitarist. Though we both appreciated music and could tolerate listening to almost anything (except Country, our dislike for it was one of the few things we agreed on), as far as our iPods’s Top 25 Most Played was concerned, we were on two different ends of the rock and roll spectrum. He was into metal, progressive rock. I was big on power pop, punk rock. (Mini music genre lesson: Progressive is all about expanding the boundaries of traditional song structure, while power pop strictly follows the tried and true rules of verse-chorus-bridge with a catchy hook) This was a huge red flag. I knew that becoming friends with this kid would be an uphill battle, so I didn’t try. Nick Hornby defined it in the book High Fidelity, “it’s not good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently,” and he was right. Intellectually speaking, Jake and I were utterly uninterested in one another.
That’s why I wouldn’t have said that we were friends. I don’t know what you would have called us, but the best way I describe it is “chill.” We were chill with eachother. We had meaningless conversations, we tolerated the other’s presence, and never went out of the way to see or talk or hang out with eachother. But when we were in the same place, it was chill. We neither enjoyed nor disliked the company. Though we usually disagreed, we avoided potential arguments (with the exception of our epic ninjas vs. pirates debate. Ninjas ARE better than pirates, and you can’t tell me otherwise) and immediately dropped subjects that started to lead to arguments (like I said before, we were the masters of dropping petty things). I suppose we developed this symbiotic relationship so that we could coexist in the world of “the band” without causing agony to our friends. He was just another boy that I knew. So you must be wondering why I would make such an effort to have such meaningless conversations and spend so much energy avoiding petty arguments?
Oh. Did I forget to mention that he was hot?
I had (and still have) never been as physically attracted to anyone as much as I was to Jake. He had the traditional allure of any musician, and he was good looking. You might not agree with me; he wasn’t the traditionally accepted generic Abercrombie & Fitch model/Ken doll type of good looking, but he was everything that I preferred. You would probably say something like, ‘I guess he’s pretty cute.’ He was tall and skinny, white but not a sickly pale, he had longish wispy hair (to me, hair color doesn’t matter but for the sake of imagery it was a brownish blonde), and an irresistible smile. Oh man, the smile was the definite deal breaker. I’m almost positive that I wouldn’t have been so wildly attracted to him if it wasn’t for his smile. His smile was wide, his teeth were nice (thanks to middle school braces), and when he grinned he looked a little bit goofy. He didn’t smile a lot, but when he did, I went absolutely bonkers on the inside. I suppose I liked it so much because his goofy smile was the only thing that contradicted his outward personality.
I only ever considered him as an object of physical attraction. I never pursued anything because I didn’t like the idea of dating a guy in a band (Actually, I had dreamed of it, but I didn’t want it to mess up my relations with the other guys in the band). I wanted to be a supportive friend, not just Jake’s groupie. Besides, I knew (from experience, at some point I was probably begging for it) that Jake paid more attention to his guitar than he would to a girl. So I settled for quiet admiration and utilized remarkable quantities of self-restraint in order to keep myself from spontaneoously jumping on him. I kept my cool. That was until he started flirting (I think that’s what it was) with me. The conversation stopped feeling hollow, he sounded genuinely interested in what I had to say, he teased me, he even bought me lunch once (okay, off the dollar menu at McDonald’s, but it counts!). So I flirted back and didn’t think twice. (I think it’s a natural reaction. You sense you get flirted with, you flirt back. Whether it’s on purpose or not. Like animal instinct.) It didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t expecting anything. It was attention from a cute boy and I welcomed it happily. Did I think something was going to happen? Of course not. Unless somehow I magically began to resemble a Gibson Explorer or a Fender Telecaster, I knew he wouldn’t even think about laying a hand on me.
One night, after one of their shows, I managed to break away from my group of friends and casually snagged a ride with him to Denny’s, where the band often went to after a show. During the car ride, he asked me my opinion of the show, we talked about the future of the band, about Paramore (a band we both liked, miracle much?), he surrendered control of his iPod for awhile (it pained him I’m sure), we sang along to With Arms Wide Open by Creed and did our best Scott Stapp impressions, and laughed about what an insane driver our friend Eddie (also on his way to Denny’s) was. It was chill. Come food time we sat, ate, talked, laughed, teased. Eddie ate some of my bacon. We talked about stuff that was insignificant like usual, but for some reason it wasn’t meaningless anymore. It was interesting. At the end of the night I insisted on paying, but Jake picked up the bill while I took care of the tip. The ride home was quiet as we enjoyed eachother’s company. I walked in the door to my house at 1AM.
After that, things changed in my mind. We continued to flirt, but now it meant something. I began to consider the possibility that he was into me, that maybe I was into him. No longer did I only “want him for his bod,” I wanted him for more than that. I said that he was different than the other guys I normally associated with. The other guys I spent time with were loud, energetic, and attention-seeking. No, Jake wasn’t like that. Jake was chill. He could sit down and just talk about insignificant things and call that hanging out. It’s also when things changed in general. I wanted to hang out more. So I subconsciously began to go out of my way to try to hang out with him. He always found a way to decline. I must’ve not gotten the hint, because it only made me advance more. Eventually he stopped flirting. I didn’t laugh with him. He stopped making jokes. I tried harder. He stopped talking. I wondered why he was being a jerk. After awhile I couldn’t take it anymore so I flat out asked him if he had an issue with me.
He told me I was obnoxious, that he just needed a break.
That’s how I knew he was no longer interested. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was an obnoxious personality. There’s no getting around that and I wasn’t willing to change it. He tolerated it because he was interested. Now that he wasn’t, he stopped tolerating it and therefore stopped tolerating me. He didn’t want to deal with me anymore. We reverted back to our toleration existence. It’s a bummer, I know. Believe me. I know. You’re probably empathizing as you read this, but I lived it so think about how I feel. There’s nothing more disappointing than a cute boy becoming suddenly uninterested.
So take note. The second I started thinking of Jake differently, things started going downhill. I expected to get treated a certain way, and when that didn’t happen, I got frustrated. Getting frustrated made me unleash a little crazy (which all girls are capable of), crazy translated to obnoxious, and obnoxious turned him off. Which leaves me here, lamenting the loss of something so incredibly gorgeous.
Sad days.
