Teen Angst: He's Just Not That Into You

He’s just not that into you if he doesn’t call you…He’s just not that into you if he’s not dating you…He’s just not that into you if he’s not asking you out…

Okay. I get it. Jake Telfair is just not that into me.

But I knew that from the start. It hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it, though. Freakily enough, I can see our relationship. I can see us being intimate. I know what the dates would be like, I know what the conversation would sound like, I can imagine how we would act in public and how much cuter we would be in private. I can see myself in the front seat of his car, I can see myself making out with him in the front seat of his car. I’ve imagined myself doing things that I wouldn’t have even considered. I can also see myself leaning my head on him, and I can see myself with is arm around me. We wouldn’t be hand holders, though. I don’t know why, but I don’t think we would. I can see us giving a peck goodbye when we part, or a full on make out session at the end of the night when he drops me off at my house. I would look super cute in his Iron Maiden shirt and my underwear, and I could see myself somehow ending up in his Iron Maiden t-shirt and my underwear. The scariest part is…I want to.

See? Told you I was a freak. I can’t remember being like this before. I do remember saying he was the first guy I could see myself actually ending up with, but I also remember it was probably just because he was the first one that was seemingly accesible. Now, I cringe at the thought of being his girlfriend and think of the whole debacle as a momentary lapse in judgement. Plus, I knew he wasn’t interested in matters of the pants. This new guy, on the other hand, would definitely want some and the more I think about it, the more I think I want some too…

And I would be okay with that.

Sadly, I know it’s too late for me now. I can’t do anything about it. The friend zone is all too familiar territory and I know when I’ve tumbled down to the bottom of the ladder and hit every rung on the way down. It’s disappointing and kinda hurts like a bitch. I think there are things I could’ve done differently that might have given me a better shot, but it’s too late now. I thought twice about going for it and I missed my window of opportunity and I’m never going to forgive myself for messing this one up. I thought it was going so well in the beginning. It’s a shame I wasn’t more sure of myself. He scared me. I didn’t understand why he would talk to me, flirt with me, pay for my dinner, buy me Taco Bell, drive me around. So did I sabotage it by becoming overzealous? And now do I remind him of his best friend? Is he trying to fill a physical void with me? Mrrawr I wish I made things easy and just stopped thinking. At least I’m not acting upon it. At least I’m not skank that expresses full well how much I want to be on him through myspace comment. No, I’m classier than that, I do it over AIM -____-

So what now?

Do I pretend I’m content with being friends with him? Do I disappear and never talk to him again? Do I keep doing what I’m doing? Well, I don’t want to stick around like that wimpy ass song that I wrote about me being okay with being ‘Just Friends’ but wanting more, because I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with that at all. We know where I ended up when I did that. I can’t disappear entirely, either. I still like the band. I’m still going to support the band. I’ll still do the myspace. I won’t take it out on them just because I’m not getting what I hoped for in return. I knew going into it that working on the myspace wasn’t going to make him love me, but it kept him talking to me and that’s why I did it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m passionate about it, I like doing it, I wouldn’t want to see someone else do it, and that’s why I’m going to keep doing it. The guys appreciate me, keep me involved and that’s enough for me. I like what I do.

I think I’m just going to keep myself busy. He doesn’t need to know where I am or what I’m doing. I’m not going to sign on everytime I have downtime in hopes that he’ll IM me. I won’t text message him when I’m bored. I never called him in the first place anyway. If he needs me, he’ll get a hold of me. If he wants to talk to me, he knows my phone number, he can leave a comment on myspace, he can get a hold of me through Janaye or Ryan. There are a billion combinations of many ways , ranging from very easy and more difficult, to contact me. That’s it. It’s his turn to work. Besides, the band is taking a front seat right now. I respect that. I also realize that I need to obey the most important rule of foot.

Patience.

S and J were in a class together for 5 months before they got together. K and F knew eachother for about the same amount of time before they got together. It’s been about 4 months since we first met…

I’ll give it about two weeks and I’ll know for sure. Two weeks and he won’t have an excuse to not hang out with me. We’ll see.

hopeless

Teen Angst: The Music and the Misery

Have you ever been emotionally unstable before and then listened to music? Isn't it funny how even though your music will be set to shuffle it will play songs that know exactly how you feel? Fate or coincidence? It's fascinating. It's amazing. For at least 3 minutes at a time you can feel better because for at least 3 minutes the song feels for you so you don't have to if you don't want to.

"What came first - the music or the misery?" - Rob Fleming (High Fidelity by Nick Hornby), like the chicken and the egg. I can't say much for the chicken v. egg dispute but as for music v. misery, I say both. When you're miserable, music alleviates misery. After dumping all your emotional baggage on that song, the music then reminds you of the misery the next time you hear it.

It's pretty potent stuff, isn't it? Weren't the best songs written when their musicians were absolutely miserable? ...or cloud 9 happy? ...or under the influence... But disregarding the last bit, it looks like there's no grey area in pop music. You're either Walking on Sunshine (Katrina and the Waves) or Not Okay (My Chemical Romance), aren't you? You never hear a song called You know what? I'm just so-so today. Maybe I'll write it. Now THERE is a song truly universal.

I mean really, no popular song can truly be related to. People just like to trap themselves in emotional extremes just so they can sing along and mean it.

That's it. From now on I'm sticking to Star Wars instrumental tracks.

The Rules About Boys: Preface

Preface

A friend of mine once asked me,

Why are girls so crazy?

Well in my opinion, it’s because

Boys drive us crazy.

These are The Rules About Boys, a compendium of various rules of thumb that I’ve put together thanks to personal experience and the experiences of some close friends and family. They are casual observations I’ve made about the opposite sex, and I really think that girls should take them into consideration when dealing with boys. (If I’ve gone through pain and agony trying to understand and explain the male gender, I figure I could ease the pain for someone else out there.) Yes, I understand that these rules are from personal experiences and although situations in your life are going to be different, the end result will most likely be the same, because all boys are the same (refer to the chapter about Jake), so take the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and don’t mess up! Ha ha.

Note that I’m not being entirely serious (I don’t expect you to carry this book around like The Bible and follow each rule religiously. You know as well as I do that it’s not going to work that way), but keeping these in mind has helped me maintain some sanity when handling boys. Lord knows we need to keep our sanity.

Now, let’s get to know the book, shall we?

Each chapter of the book is named after a boy, and each boy with a chapter has done something that caused me to make a rule. The beginning of each chapter starts with the rule, a little explanation, followed by a short story about how the rule came to pass. Easy enough, right? Now on to the first chapter to learn about your first rule!

The Rules About Boys: Jake

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.