In case you haven't read it, please refer to my previous entry for background. Or don't! If you don't though, I can't promise any of this will make sense...
New Year's Eve, 2005: Sonoma County, CA. The home of my bestie, Leslie. Low key event with friends, and at that point I still was alcohol-free, so pretty tame. I looked damn good, no lie. I was in the best shape of my life. Turns out that the break-up/flu diet works like a charm. I was miserably depressed, but I was ready to make a night of it, put on a fake smile, yadayada. Then I caught him looking at me. And I flirted, mercilessly, all night. Because it felt good to. Because it helped me to forget how I really felt.
You'll fake it if you have to
And you'll show up for work with a smile--Rilo Kiley
And he returned the flirtations. Whenever I caught his eye, he was looking right at me. He made an effort to be a part of every conversation I was a part of, and to be in whatever room I was hanging out in. He had dark hair and, what I thought were gorgeous, expressive, blue eyes. With time, I learned that those eyes were actually quite empty, but at the time I was blinded by the attention. It felt good to forget that I was broken, that I'd lost my dad, that all these terrible things had slid into home base at the same time. When he asked for my number at the end of the night, I felt like I was going to vomit. I was so excited and anxious, so surprised and nervous. I definitely didn't expect him to ask. I didn't know a thing about dating. I gave him my number: the first of many huge mistakes.
At this point, I was still an undergrad at UC Berkeley. I lived in a fantastic studio apartment (that was later broken into...) and I was seeing campus and the city through single eyes for the first time. There was a tinge of excitement deep down under the pile of sad that had become me. The boy started to pursue me, hard. I remember spending many nights on AIM, all legs akimbo in my slidey desk chair, talking for hours on end. He said things to me, and about me, that made my head spin. He thought I was beautiful, but he also thought I was talented and smart. I never felt like I was any of those things. He loved my poetry, and he wrote me poetry. It was very romantic. Plus 10 points for the chubby loser!
But it was too good. He came on so strong that it made me pull back a little. On our first official date he made me dinner and we watched Metropolis. Who watches Metropolis on a first date?! Now I can tell you who -- a dude who is completely obsessed with his own intelligence and with convincing others of his own intelligence. But at the time I thought, wow, how avant-garde of him. How different. How endlessly interesting. I had yet to see his self-obsession, narcissism, and borderline psychopathic tendencies. I didn't know.
He tried to kiss me that night, but I couldn't do it. Oh yes, readers, I did the full turn-face-away-to-avoid-kiss move. And he sulked off like a dejected puppy. Right then and there I tried to explain: I've never kissed anyone other than my ex, I've never been in this situation, I am nervous and scared! But he just whimpered off into the darkness, pathetically. When I got home, I signed into AIM as quickly as possible, I felt so guilty and I knew he'd be there and I could try to further explain myself. I felt bad. I felt like I had done something very wrong. This was the first sign of something that would eventually define our relationship: me feeling crazy/bad, him telling me I am crazy, me acting crazy in response. He was always sane, always logical, and always right. Ours was a serious Gaslight Anthem.
*=DSM still stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, criteria for classifying mental disorders.
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