I'll have a Nottie-Hottie, please waiter...

I don't know if I want to tell this story, truth be told. I feel like I told it a lot - I really haven't, just to a few close friends in the hopes of mashing it out and reconstructing it into something I can understand but at the core of the matter is the glaring fact that it's really only facts that matter. I can conjecture until I turn blue in the face but all that makes me is a girl. And a silly one at that. That it's the things that were not said as much as the things that were said. And what my experiences say about those things.

It's weeks later. After I should have stopped thinking about it at all. But, after all, I am me and this is what I do.

See, there was this boy I liked. I really liked him a lot and thought that I connected with him in a way that I hadn't connected with someone for a long while. I guess it's in those moments that expectations are born with or without one's knowledge. Even despite one's best efforts not to have them at all in the first place. But more often than not my brain has its own triumphs over me so I really shouldn't be surprised I guess.

But I digress.

I liked a boy. And it was wonderful. For about a week. And then it turned to shit. And then it turned to fertilizer for the weed-bed of my aforementioned willful brain. For about a week he sent me silly text messages and weird pictures and called me every night. I wasn't sure about the whole calling me every night thing. I hate sitting on the phone but he made me laugh so it was okay. And then it all stopped. This isn't unusual. I don't mean for me specifically, I just mean in general. I don't know why when faced with these situations I feel somehow unique. And resentful. He never promised me anything so I knew I didn't have any right to be upset. Besides, we both had a lot going on in our lives. The semester was concluding, there were projects afoot. Work was insanely busy - I put in waaaaay more hours than I am supposed to be working. But there was still a bit of contact. He hadn't disappeared totally. Yes, his communications were less frequent and more terse but I thought it situational and decided not to be offended.

Then, one night we were on the phone. Where he had been funny and interesting before, lately his conversation had been disjointed and didn't give me a lot of room to find my own thread to follow and respond. Which should have been a bad sign. It was late, I was tired, I had just gotten home from a business trip and to be honest I wasn't really giving him my full attention. But all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of a yarn. One which turned out to be a very tangled ball of incredibly stupid yarn. I don't remember the specifics but there was something about hurt feelings and possibly about different goals. It was, in fact, a break-up speech. And I had no idea if he was talking to me, not talking to me but talking to me, or really not talking to me at all. In my exhaustion, my solution was to get the hell off the phone and deal with it tomorrow. Which, I attempted to do via that lovely, crazy, undependable interweb playground we all know and love - myspace. I wrote him a message asking him what the conversation had been all about, told him my thoughts on how our "association" should go. I said that I enjoyed his company, would enjoy continuing to enjoy his company - no pressure, no expectations, talk to me when you want to talk to me, don't when you don't - and don't feel guilty when you don't. I hate that. I never want anyone to do anything for me because they feel guilty. Do only what you want to do, that's the only thing that has ever meant anything to me. Guilt-tinged gifts of time or words or whathaveyou feel dirty to me. They stink. That was the gist of it anyway. It's all I remember.

So I sent this message. And then I waited. Three days went by and I was going crazy. I couldn't look at the message I sent and analyze it's content for potential offenses or craziness. It was suspiciously absent from my sent folder. Now, historically I don't use myspace's messaging system. Most everybody I want to talk to I can just email. For some reason that's changed lately but when it didn't appear in my sent folder I thought, "maybe there's a checkbox you have to click." "save message to sent folder" is not entirely unusual. And I was unwilling to just mail someone to find out. It made me feel obsessive. Anyway, on the third day after I sent the message I couldn't stand it anymore. So I sent him a text, something to the effect of "My curiosity is getting the better of me - am I a) a whackjob or b) are you simply too busy to respond?" He sent back the message, "End of the semester crunch". Now, that wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been something I distinctly remember writing in the message. So it felt like my words were being thrown back in my face. I don't remember if I responded or not. I think I tried not to, but I may have. The next day I felt totally ridiculous. I thought to myself, why o why did you have to go and expose yourself as caring enough to send the message in the first place? You're a headcase. It lasted a week. LET IT THE FUCK GO, you dumbass. Jesus, how I browbeat myself. Feeling stupid I sent yet another fucking text message. Confusing him even further and further cementing my status as a headcase.

The following Monday I sent a friend a message. I checked my sent folder and there it was. Glaring evidence that he never got the message. So I sent him a message relating that. I also said that I wasn't going to text him, or myspace message him, or call. That if he wanted to contact me, he knew where to find me. There was no response to that one either.

I think I quit there. I decided I was done feeling stupid. That this was enough evidence of disinterest to sweep all this mess back under the rug and get on with my life. I had plenty of life to attend to anyway. It didn't stop me fantasizing about him a great deal and wishing things had gone differently because I had liked him so much. Silly girls dwell. I was to charge on and forget about it.

And I nearly had. And then he messaged me over myspace again. Essentially apologizing for his silence. I messaged back and said it was all right, that it was probably for the best, that it had allowed me to focus on the things that really needed focusing on and that again, if he wanted to, he was welcome to call me. He has not.

And yet, there are the fantasies. Cropping up at the oddest moments. I was walking down the hall at work the other day. One of the last times I saw him he had just shown me his new tattoo. I had this flash, this twenty-second quickie involuntary daydream. I licked his tattoo. I literally had to stop in the hall, shake my head to get it out - like there was a bug in my hair, reprimand my brain. And then I started walking again.

Now, aside from the obvious craziness over the lost message I think I maintained myself as a fairly reasonable girl. There's really nothing for me to feel all that badly about. I behaved like a grown up, I attempted to communicate like a grown up, and he decided he didn't want to communicate with me. So what, right? Big deal. It happens all the time. I am not special. Most especially I am not special to him. Also not a big deal. Who cares? Certainly not me... am I right? Brain, am I right? Can I please fucking be right for once? No? You're not willing to let this go? You're gonna subject me to all these little fantasically sexy vignettes of increasingly frustrating bodice-ripper fodder over someone I can't have? Really? Do you have to? Can we just not and you can say you did? Please? No? Well dammit. Fuck you then.

So this is where I am. Caught in a mental k-hole of imaginary two-person sexy parties to which I am not actually invited. Goddamn it.