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04:21:2002 Entry: "Free to good home: heart-slightly used"
Free to good home: heart-slightly used
When I started college back in 1979, I was going through a really rough time. My friendship with my best friend from high school, Harriet, was ending, her choice, and a long story. Other friends from high school went to different colleges and we seemed to be a bit alienated in our ideals. I had an on-again, off-again lightweight boyfriend, Lenny. I hung around him a bit, but it was so difficult to keep a conversation going with him. He thought I was "too intense." I had another male friend, Tom, but he was at another university. The first class I had on Monday, Wednesday and Friday was Drawing 101, I think it was called. There was a familiar face in it, someone that I was acquainted with from my high school, Shelly. We became incredibly fast friends that first college semester. We seemed to have so much in common, at least at that time in our lives. She told other people we were best friends (which seemed sort of junior high if you asked me). We did everything together. I was there for her when she needed a shoulder to cry on after losing her job. She helped me out at a job I had. I helped her out with her figurative drawing ability, which she was struggling with. She supported me when I was having a hard time dealing with the breakup of my friendship with Harriet. I opened up a whole new world of music to her beyond much of the MOR pop/rock she listened to. We spent New Years Eve together with Tom, and went to see The Who with Lenny and another friend of hers. We were inseparable.
Then she met Rick.
Rick was also an art student. He met her in the great hall where we used to eat our lunch. They started going out. Despite all the fun times we had together, despite all the secrets we shared, and all the times we were there for eachother, he could offer her something that a platonic friendship with a woman couldn't.
We had made plans one time to see a movie that was playing somewhere in town; I believe it was "Being There" with Peter Sellers. She would pick me up as I didn't have a car. I waited and waited. No Shelly. I called her house; like me, she also lived in town with her family. Her mother informed me that she was at Rick's. I felt nausea surge through my body. I asked her mother for Rick's phone number and called him, wanting to know what was going on. I was the bad person for calling. I had the nerve and audacity to ask Shelly why she stood me up. How dare I! I had no right! "I am here with a woman that I love and you have the nerve...!" Rick yelled at me. What an ass.
Well, I guess I just couldn't compete. Shelly used my friendship up like an old dishrag. I had overstayed my usefulness as a friend. I could no longer offer the newness (not to mention the sex) that Rick could. After all the emotional support I had given her. Now this.
After that, our friendship was strained and we eventually drifted apart. And Rick reeeeaaaaaallllly hated me. I couldn't say the feeling wasn't mutual.
A couple years later I was talking with Stan in the great hall during lunch. We were fairly good friends and in several classes together and getting to know eachother better. Rick was walking by but stopped to talk to Stan about the Asian History class they were taking together. After Rick went on his way, I looked at Stan. Dare I risk asking about it? "You know him?" I said with a somewhat cringing expression. Stan sort of laughed and said yes. Stan was afraid I'd judge him poorly by being an acquaintance of Rick. I obviously didn't, but I did tell him the story years later.
Now at the end of the decade of the 80s, Stan and I ran into Rick downtown with his new girlfriend, a prodigious young newspaper reporter. I guess by now I was somehow redeemed in his eyes, perhaps for the fact that I was serious about art, or perhaps for the fact that I was friends with Stan who maybe he had respect for. For some reason, he knew that Stan and I were moving (word did get around in that town, and some people would say that's because we were famous there, but I don't know about that) and he told me he'd have to buy some of my art before we left town. Of course he never did. I'm pretty sure it might have been just talk and puffery to impress his girlfriend who, as a reporter, was familiar with my many art exhibits in town. But I'm glad I never sold anything to him. It's really hard to give up your children when you know the history of the adoptor.
3 Comments
Guys are often jealous at their girlfriend's girlfriend because girls often has so intense friendships, I don't know. It was anyway a lousy friend, Shelly, but it's very normal that people who get a girl/guy forget about everyone else - until the girl/guy drop them, then they often come back again and expect you will still be around, even if it's several years later.
Posted by Nico @ 03/12/2002 01:50 AM CST
Well, Shelly never came back around. She married some guy from the military and moved back out east. It's weird though, because I NEVER ignored my girlfriends when I got a boyfriend. NEVER. Not that I ever had many boyfriends, but still.
Of course, I'm not human, either, so I don't know what it's like for the other species. ;-)
Posted by Ann @ 03/12/2002 08:20 AM CST
I've never dropped my friends either even so I've had boyfriends too and some/a few/many/ girlfriends ;o] But I'm bisexual and that's not really human either ;o]
Posted by Nico @ 03/12/2002 12:02 PM CST