The Vine: January 5, 2001
Hi Sarah,Over the summer I met a boy. His name is Ben. Ben and I started spending time together and our personalities really clicked. I felt comfortable around him quicker than I usually do around people. Anyway, after a few weeks of hanging out, going to movies, baseball games, etc., I started to feel a bit of tension between us. For example, I’d get really nervous when he’d walk me out to my car as I was leaving his apartment because I didn’t know if he was going to try to kiss me or not. I’m not a prude or anything, but I just didn’t want to screw things up by things getting complicated and romantic. My philosophy when it comes to tension in my relationships with boys is that Jiffy Pop is just as fun to make as it is to eat…if that makes any kind of sense.
Anyway, things did get super complicated and fast. Over the last few weeks, we’d fooled around a few times and he’d asked me to stay the night with him, but I’d always decline and say that I had to get home. I felt like things were falling into a pattern: he’d call and ask me if I wanted to hang out, I’d go over to his house and we’d sit around and talk maybe watch TV, and end up fooling around with each other. Lately, he’s been doing things like telling me that he wants me to come visit him in Australia over the summer (he’s going there for a study-abroad program which starts in January), and then the next day bitch about how I call him too often and that I annoy him with my phone calls. Also, he’d bitch and whine about all the girls that he wants to get with…yet he’d always end up lying on his couch till all hours spilling his guts to me.
So last Friday I called him and told him that I needed to talk to him about some stuff. So I went over to his house and we went for a drive up into the mountains for a bit, then got out and went for a walk. I told him that I felt like he was playing me and it seems as though he’s just using me. I proposed that we need to lay down the boundaries and just be friends without any more physical stuff, not see each other at all anymore, or just use each other for sex. He responded by flat-out saying that all he cares about right now is himself, and that I’m being dramatic and petty by not being able to just come over to talk to him at his place. Also, he probably won’t even talk to me or see me again, since he’s going away in a few months and he’s leaving his life here in Colorado behind. I was pretty much speechless at his response. I had a feeling that he’d turn it around on me, but I had no idea that he’d invalidate my feelings to such an extent. I mean, is it so wrong to be on neutral ground when you’re trying to talk about personal stuff? I didn’t really want his roommate listening in on what I had to say. So, after that, I took him home, and before he got out of the car, he tried to put his arm around me and apologized for possibly having hurt my feelings and said that he’d see me soon. Yesterday (Tuesday), I saw a friend of his and she asked me how things with me and Ben were going. I said that I hadn’t spoken to him in awhile. She replied (cattily) that he told her about our “little discussion” on Friday, and that she thought I was being really immature to “fuck with someone’s head like that.” Yet again I was flabbergasted. I told her that that wasn’t the way things were and said goodbye.
I had my mind set on never speaking to Ben again after the way he treated me on Friday. He gave me the perfect out by telling me that he only cares about himself (which is something I should’ve expected seeing that his favorite author is Ayn Rand). However, I feel like I need to tell him off for getting his friends involved in what transpired between us. I am afraid, though, that it’s not the most mature thing to do. I don’t know if it’s best to fight 21-year-old-indecisive-boy-drama-fire with fire. Should I leave it or tell him what I REALLY think of him now?
Feeling the Dawson’s-like drama in Colorado,
Lisa
Dear Lisa,
And now, an update from The Department Of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished…
You tried to handle the situation like an adult. Ben preferred to go the sixth-grade-lunch-table route. Sad to say, that’s the beginning and end of the story. If Ben wants to spin it to his friends like you laid a head trip on him, or “tweaked out,” or whatever it is that the chicken-parm-at-every-meal-eating, the-word-“chick”-with-no-irony-using, “don’t fence me in”-saying, compassion-challenged man-boys of the world say when another person has the cheek to ask them to take responsibility for themselves, well, there’s not much you can do about it, and you shouldn’t bother trying.
If you want him to know what you “REALLY think of him now,” say nothing. Your silence will speak volumes. Let Ben model his drama-queen tiara for his friends; let them “ooh” and “aah” at its sparkly light. You, I assume, have better things to do.
Tags: boys (and girls)
