As time wore on, I noticed that our group was starting to clique up among its members...there were new people whom I didn’t particularly care for, and many of us realized that some of the people that were hanging out with us, namely Aram, were complete assholes. As it happened, the Academy proved true to its everyone-pisses-everyone- else-off tradition, and before long, Raul and I were still friends, but in different camps. I found that my closest friend was Nick, and that we had formed our own little, two-person group. Nick was and is close friends with Anna, but, though I normally enjoy her presence, she has a habit of doing rash, often obnoxious things, and defending them as perfectly all right; she’s a free spirit, and takes it to an uncomfortable extreme at times. I also sensed a little patronism on her part towards me. So, while maintaining a close friendship with Nick (we began to tell each other most of our little personal problems: he about his dilemma with Anna, I about my problems finding anyone to be involved with), I moved off from this original group to make new friends. I hung out with some juniors I’d known vaguely at the beginning of the year, some guys on my floor, and the like. After a couple weeks of being rather ambiguous between groups (less fun than it sounds), I started talking to Ryan more, knowing him a bit already from our common They Might Be Giants fanaticism and his friendship with Anna. All this time, I was still faintly troubled by the fact that both my close male friends, Nick and Raul were having relationships, if not successful ones...I had a bit of jealousy, which made me feel quite rotten about myself. Eventually, I started talking about it to floormate Coery, who was probably the worst person to turn to. He gave me a plan for “layin’ it down,” and advised me to draw up a list of the girls I wanted to date, so he could tell me how to go after them (despite the fact that he has had no luck thus far at the Academy). I was getting A’s and B’s in all my classes, so I figured I had some time to devote to this. Corey seemed relatively certain that his plan was foolproof, so I went along with it, to the extent of writing down the girls who I thought I might have a chance to date. After a couple days thinking about the incongruency in my following this philosophy, I asked one of the girls I knew least well on my list if she would go out with me. That wouldn’t be so bad, but I did it on the spur of the moment, without prior conversation, in the hallway. At first, there was a confused, “Where do you want to go...?” which I was completely unprepared to answer. After agreeing to meet later in the lounge, we met later on in the day and talked about trivial things until I tried to get a more clear answer out of her. I got, “Oh. Nope: I’ve got a boyfriend and I’m happy.” Huh.

When I told Cory about this exploit, he shook his head and gave a helpful, “Ouch!” I put my romantic problems aside for awhile and began getting to know Ryan and some other senior friends of his better, Chris, the tall, blonde, funny guy, and Brandi, the dark-haired girl I always saw him with. I also met Jeremy, a senior I found fairly likable, but whom I was told is a royal asshole and a homophobe by the people who seem to be his friends, and Melissa, Brandi’s cute and energetic roommate.

All of these people seemed more interesting than the original group I had hung out with. Even Nick, whom I’d considered to be the most interesting person I’d met in quite some time, didn’t seem quite so witty compared to Chris, if partly because I’d known Nick for awhile and consequently heard most of his material. The only problem for me, when socializing with this new group of friends, was that I didn’t feel that I could contribute nearly as much; whereas in other groups I was constantly being told how funny I was (Anna has a Scott Quote Board, for God’s sake), I found that trying to be as funny as Chris and Ryan could be simply made me come off as trying far to hard. I came to grips with the fact that I wasn’t going to be the one that conversation depended upon, and while that made me more comfortable when I didn’t want to say anything, I sometimes felt and still feel that I’m not really needed. I started to notice that Chris and Brandi weren’t just together most of the time, but were together all the time. I knew they weren’t dating, but were just very good friends. About this time, the Sadie Hawkins dance was approaching, which I didn’t particularly want to go to, but when I found that many of these new friends were going, I agreed to go when Melissa asked me to accompany her in the interest of getting in cheaper. It was...interesting. While it was the best experience I’ve had at a dance thus far (which isn’t saying much), I was left still entirely clueless about how either Brandi or Melissa, both recent additions to the list (despite that I no longer went to Corey for relationship advice), which I think I kept just to make myself feel that I did have a chance with someone, felt about me. I had a suspicion that Melissa had some sort of romantic curiosity, but the likelihood that she was merely being friendly was such that I felt I would make an ass of myself by pursuing her. My interest in Brandi, however, was more...interesting. At first, she reminded me strongly of Ryan, and I felt more comfortable in her presence than I normally did around “prospectives.” I began to think, during the dance, that I felt something different for her. When we returned to Wagoner, Ryan and I went back our floor, as it was floor curfew. While originally I had simply wanted him to hear an MP3 or some other trivial thing, we ended up using the time and the fact that Raul had gone home for the weekend to talk from around midnight to about 2 in the morning about he, Brandi, Chris and myself. I learned that Chris and Brandi’s friendship wasn’t quite the perfect thing it had seemed at first; while they were indeed very close friends, Chris wanted a dating relationship with Brandi very badly, but she didn’t reciprocate it. Ryan, also, I found, was interested in dating Brandi, and had expressed it to her, something very difficult for someone on the introverted side. I realized that my playful hitting on Brandi and my just-getting-started pursuit of her was hurting both Chris and Ryan badly, people who’d known Brandi for at least a year longer than I had and devoted an infinitely greater amount of time to her. I felt very badly about myself and my behavior, and I realized that the right thing to do would be to stop trying to get Brandi to date me, to strengthen my friendship with Chris and perhaps to see what was going on between Melissa and I, if anything. After Ryan left, with our own friendship stronger than it had been before, I felt, I thought about Brandi, and how she was the absolute worst person to try to date, as she was the one person with whom dating would really hurt others I cared about. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how badly I didn’t want to give up on it, on this person I enjoyed talking to as much and more than I did to any of my other friends, and the fact that I was drawn to her physically, more so than I was physically drawn to girls in which that, outer beauty, was the only attraction. I could see why Chris and Ryan were so attracted to her. And somehow, I was able to tell myself that I was better than some other guy, that if I was in a relationship with her, it wouldn’t hurt Chris so much because I would actually care for her, not treat her like Jeremy apparently did. Selfish, yeah, but this isn’t about what’s right or wrong, but simply how it was.

Despite having known Brandi for a relatively short period of time, I felt for some reason that I had to do something. Even though Ryan had warned me away, and made me feel badly for even attempting to pursue her, and I felt that it’d be nice to be friends with Chris, the idea of dating Brandi seemed better each time I thought of it. I’d also been told that Brandi “usually has a boyfriend, but not right now,” so I though perhaps I couldn’t wait too long (taking for granted that if there was really something special to be between us, it would most likely occur, boyfriend or no boyfriend). I’d even asked her if she was interested in a relationship with me, to which I’d received a hopeful, “I haven’t decided yet.”

I had no way of knowing whether I was falling in love with her or not; I could only describe my feelings about it as an intense mix of emotions I had felt before, combined into something I hadn’t. Happy when I saw her. Enjoyed talking with her even if I wasn’t able to contribute anything interesting. I started to notice little things; characteristic gestures and speech, that made her seem more special. I tried to maintain an air of confidence, but was told later that it was rather obviously phony. I tried to appear not too intensely singly drawn to her, and apparently I succeeded too well in this respect. I felt that, knowing all that I knew about her, her relationships and how others felt about her, that if I was to appeal to her I would have to show her something I considered special about myself.

I was feeling introspective one Friday, partly from an unusually deep chat with Crafty, and partly just excitement for the oncoming weekend, which I was sure would be interesting. I sat down after my last class, with two hours to myself before Raul’s classes ended for the day, and fell into one of my favorite moods; that state of being able to write from the heart without really having to try; I wrote a good deal about the definition of self, and, thinking it was decent, sent it off to a writer friend from home, who was online at the time. He told me that he thought it was good, but I didn’t feel it was done yet. I thought some more about it, and how it related to my current situation. I’d been feeling rather out of place in the group of Chris, Ryan and Brandi, and I felt a bit lost as to who I should be among these strong personalities. I decided to relate the question of who I really was to how I was trying to find someone to be in this group, still something of a problem for me...be yourself, but who is that? I knew that Brandi understood that I felt this way, so for the first time I wondered if sending this would be what to do to share something of myself with her. I struggled for awhile with the wording, but finally decided to say what I’d been feeling: that she was a main reason I wanted to find myself, to be someone special in her life as she was becoming in mine. I wrote that I thought that I was in love with her, and that I was unsure how to handle it. It didn’t fit with the rest of the essay, and perhaps it would have actually brought us closer together, as I had wanted it to, if I hadn’t written that, but I felt that being honest would have more appeal than holding something back. So I sent it.

I checked my E-mail several times that night, and as soon as I got up in the morning. I had no response. When I saw Brandi the next day, she gave me no indication that she’d even read it, but as the day wore on, I could tell she was giving me a bit of cold shoulder, which ended up lasting through the next day and making me feel quite confused. When I sent that E-mail, I thought it would be what finally showed her that I wasn’t as shallow as I felt I was coming off, what I felt was the reason she “hadn’t decided yet.” I remained in confusion until about 10 on Monday morning, when I found an E-mail that had arrived either over the night or that morning, from Brandi, titled “My reply.” My heart literally pounded as I opened it, trembled as I read, “Forgive me for being brutally honest...” and I read the rest of the letter in shock. It seemed that Brandi believed that my piece of writing was all B.S., just one big scheme to get her to date me quicker. I thought about it, and I thought about it some more. I dashed off a response in denial, and then I cried. I took down my pissed-off-o-meter, deleted the now-ignored prospectives list from my hard drive. I cried. When the time came for me to go to Civitas, I walked to Burris with my head down, gave my paper to a classmate to turn in, and left with the explanation that I didn’t feel I could contribute. I ran into Nick on my way back to the room, and asked him if he had time to talk. After he went to a meeting on his several unexcused absences, he met me in my room, looked me in the face and said, “It’s Brandi, isn’t it.” I’d told him I believed I had feelings for her, and that I thought I had a shot with her. I allowed him to read the letter Brandi sent me...he sat down on the bunk next to me, and I cried some more. Nick is still probably the only person here I feel comfortable crying in the presence of. He told me that, while he couldn’t sympathize with how I felt, never having experienced it, that he understood why she could feel as she apparently did, and how much it was hurting me. After we talked about it for about half an hour, he had to leave, leaving me to consider my actions again. About this time, Mr. Watson called to ask me why I had missed class, and we arranged a trip to Arby’s for lunch to talk about it. He asked me to tell him the whole story, and I did. He did have advice for me, and, without having read the actual letter from Brandi, said that he didn’t think that it was over at all. Mr. Watson’s advice was to tell her that I understood how she felt about the situation, and that I did care for her but wasn’t asking her to reciprocate that; telling her again that I was in love with her wouldn’t do any good. I understood; thus far, the way things were going was simply me announcing my intentions, and saying, basically, “So. What’s it going to be?”

I talked to Brandi about it later that day. I told her that I’d talked with Mr. Watson, even that I’d mentioned names. I told her I’d skipped my Civitas class because of her. I had her alone, for once, and I tried to do what I wanted to. I told her (again) that I really did care about her, but that I didn’t need her to reciprocate that at the moment; that this was how I felt about her, and that all I needed was for her to believe that I was sincere.

I don’t know if she did. I wasn’t able to say exactly what I’d wanted to, and I noticed that when I told her I didn’t know if a relationship between us was right, she smiled. When I had tried to do this to salvage something, it seems to me that this little chat had something of a note of finality. Time passed. I felt uncomfortable around Brandi, nearly all the time. I stopped doing anything that could be remotely considered hitting on her.

Not being able to relax around Brandi (and Chris, as the couplet goes), I started hanging out with Melissa more, with either Wes and Derek or just the two of us. I felt more and more, as time went on, especially in the week after Thanksgiving Break, that while Brandi didn’t mind being my friend, Melissa actually wanted to be my friend. So what the hell? Brandi doesn’t want to be with me, so why should I force her to hang around with me?
read on part 2 of 3