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May. 29th, 2006 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThe weekend passed in a haze of red box wine. Cousin San called Friday night after I was asleep and lured me over to her house for red box wine. (This is red wine, usually a passable merlot, that comes in a box. Brand is not an issue. Cheap drinkability is more important and when that's what you want, box wine delivers in quantity.)
Anyway. Red wine and conversation made for fairly late evenings... Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. Somewhere in one of those evenings, for reasons I am not real clear on, the topic turned to Cody. (No, he's not famous. He's just a guy.) Back in the spring of 1988 (I said it was ancient history.), I was in the senior play with this guy. The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream and he was, iirc, Demetrius. I had a bit part, but the big selling point for being in the fucking play was getting to watch him through the rehearsals. Cody was total eye candy and I was sort of fixated on the guy. He was *very* pretty and he knew it. Since I go for the whole arrogant thing, well, that was just icing on the cake.
At the time, Cody was steadily and seriously dating a girl in the class below me, Leslie. (He eventually married her, btw, so my assessment of seriously wasn't off the mark. In some small way, I feel vindicated, here.) Leslie was pretty and genuinely nice and smart (went to Dickinson, currently works with telescopes and space observatory crap) and a cheerleader and on the student council. She had a lot to offer and if I'd been a guy, I would have wanted to be dating Leslie, too. I couldn't even muster any hatred for her because she honest to dog was a nice person besides being pretty and gung-ho about activities and coordinated and a reasonably fashionable dresser.
So, that was that. He was stunningly pretty and in a solid relationship with a really great girl and even so, in the face of all reason, I totally wanted him, had for years. I didn't figure I'd ever *get* him because that sort of thing just doesn't happen. Ever. Except it did. It was so damn bizarre that I haven't been able to let go of it for all these years. (Not that I want him now -- I just can't let the event settle in my mind because there are parts of it that I still am not satisfied with. It doesn't... make sense, quite.)
We had a cast party for the play. The cast party was at my house and I'm not totally sure how that happened but it might have been due to the efforts of brother-the-younger. Now, I live way out in the country even for a tiny, rural school. Way, way out in the country. This was a selling point for the cast party because we managed to swing a sleepover cast party *with alcohol* for a school play when I was a senior in high school. I have no idea how that happened, but that's the cast party that we had. (Where were the parents? Upstairs, sensibly pretending to be asleep.)
It was a truly delightful cast party, as much of it as I remember. Here's what the videotape (okay, dead-tree diary of the event) has to say (edited but not rewritten):
March 27: The cast party lasted until around 6:30 this morning. People who showed were as follows: Jeff, Cody, Sherri, Becky, Michelle, Lori, Sid, Russ, Mike, Krista B, Julie, Nate. Noncast shows were Mike Z, Rain, Frank D, Jon R., Mike E., Wes, and Gary. Jeff, Cody, Joe, Nate, and I got a bit drunk. Nate slept (sitting up) on the upstairs toilet and puked all over himself about four times. Cody and I were at the playground. He asked me to kiss him. Said I excited him and attracted him sexually. I protested -- he has a girlfriend who dotes, madly dotes, dotes in idolatry on him. He insisted. I kissed him. I've liked him for so long -- how much moral fiber do you expect me to have? We talked endlessly. He said he'd like to be a good lover -- I said I thought he would be, but not mine. It was a bittersweet evening. If the world were different, perhaps we'd be a couple. It's not different and hey, hey, it doesn't look like it's going to change any.
March 28: Morning in homeroom. Didn't ask Cody if he had regrets due to the fact that he said he didn't remember anything.
March 29: I said hi to Cody today but no more -- no more.
The whole thing was this little anomalous blip in my life. It doesn't make any damned sense. I mean, yeah, I knew the guy but that's because in a class of about a hundred and twenty souls, you know everybody. He sat directly in front of me in Mr. Waite's homeroom, to boot. We didn't talk, particularly, but we each knew who the other was and all of a sudden he was interested in me? The whole thing was bizarre. The absolute only other indications I had that he might possibly ever have been interested were twofold -- first, what he wrote in my ninth-grade yearbook (and the fact that he remembered it while drunk and hitting on me, three years later) and second, that he knew I dinked around with horses and mentioned it during some dumb-ass self-esteem thing we had to do in school. (Horses weren't something most people knew about me. It was in the newspaper at fair time, but it wasn't something he would have found out and carried in his mind as a factoid in the course of everyday events if he had no interest in me.)
Before we went to the playground, brother-the-younger sat in the greenhouse and talked to Cody for what had to have been half an hour or so. (I was quite drunk and my time sense wasn't real good.) Brother-the-younger has always claimed that he does not remember what the hell they talked about (beyond "You, dude. We talked about you.") and I took that answer at face value, if only because it could have been so much worse. (Worse? Worse how? Worse like Dude, my sister is so utterly hot for you. Look, just pretend to be interested in her for tonight. It'll make her happy and I promise she won't make trouble for you later. It'd mean a lot. C'mon, be a pal. It's just for the night... Worse like that. In this world, there are questions better left unanswered and I've always felt that this was one of those where if I pressed too hard, I'd hear things I didn't want to hear.)
Nate (who was Oberon in the play) was slugging vodka out of the bottle and standing in the front yard declaiming things like "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!" At the time, we thought this was hysterically funny and I was kind of enjoying that sort of scenery while Joe was off in the greenhouse talking to Cody.
Anyway, everybody was pretty well lit by the time we decided to walk to the playground. Dad had just resurfaced the road with shale, so it was rough and stumbly and we were kind of drunk while walking in the dark. I was walking beside Cody and hanging onto him, sorta, and I bumped into him a more-than-strictly-necessary number of times because he wasn't objecting very much and well, when else was I going to have the chance. At the playground, Cody and I were sitting on the swings and talking about shit. From out of nowhere, Cody asked me why I didn't date in high school. I mean, yeah, it was prefaced by, "Can I ask you a question?" and I said, "Shoot." but that was about it. He followed up with, "So, how come you never dated anybody in high school?" and I felt just like I'd dived into the lake too early in the summer.
"Dude, nobody ever asked me out. I can't help it if nobody's interested."
"There are people who are interested."
"Yeah, right. Name three." (This is the kind of warm, friendly conversation that won me so many friends back in the day. I said exactly that, to a guy that I was desperately in lust with and figured I would never, ever have. Way to reel 'em in, there, sister!)
"Well, y'know, Mike that's dating the Yit. He only comes to your house to talk to you. He likes you."
"Mmm-hmm. He likes me so he's dating her. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Funny I didn't figure that one out myself. Okay, anybody else?" (For fuck's sake, youngerself, put down the sarcasm before somebody gets hurt!)
"Er. Ah. Me."
"Right. Look, don't lie to me."
"No, really."
"This isn't funny."
"I'm serious."
"So why didn't you ever ask me out or anything? 'Cause you didn't. I'd have remembered if you did."
"I didn't think you were interested. You were so smart and stuff..." (This is, almost verbatim, the argument my mother had hit me with from about the time I was in sixth grade onward. "Honey, you're smart and even the boys that like you are going to be intimidated because of that." It was like he'd been briefed as to what to say, what would work on me.)
At about that point, or shortly thereafter (I was still running through my mind about whether or not any of this was real. I figured there had to be an angle somewhere but the facts, as near as I could tell, lined up to indicate that he was either telling me the truth or telling me a very nicely-constructed lie that I was willing to buy.) my brother-the-younger fell over at the beach. We saw him topple against the background of the lake. There wasn't much light, but there was enough for that. Then we walked over to the point, allegedly to check on brother-the-younger to see if he was drowning face-first in the lake. We never did check on him (though he didn't drown) because I got distracted by the fact that Cody turned me to face him and was all like, "Kiss me."
"No. You have a girlfriend. You guys love each other." Actual words. I remember them well. I really did try to do the right thing. I was all object-y and stuff and he was not buying that. He said something further and I wish I could remember what it was, but I can't. It must have been convincing because I kissed him. That part, I remember. :) Most of the rest of the evening was devoted to hanging all over him in public and not-in-public though I didn't let it get further than a PG rating because I figured he'd wake up the next morning and be all like "Fuck, I did who last night?" and that would totally have sucked. I didn't want to be someone's drunken regret.
Later in the evening, Mike (who was dating the Yit at the time) drug me aside and tried to explain to me that I was just being used and that he (Mike) really gave a shit about me whereas Cody was, well, opportunistic. Whatever. I wasn't terribly interested in what he had to say because, dude, Cody. Also, how lame was it to be dating my stepsister because you were too chickenshit to make a play for me? That'd be very, is how lame that would be.
This whole thing all came up because apparently I'd never told cousin San about the cast party. She was like No way did he ever kiss you! and I was like "Yeah, he did. He really did. I still don't fucking know why, but he did." and then, fueled by red box wine, the whole thing unravelled.
It was one of the most bizarre incidents of my life. Not bad, mind, but bizarre. There's probably something wrong with my mind because when someone hands me what I really, really want, I spend my valuable time trying to figure out what the fuck the angle is and whether or not I'm being made sport of rather than drinking in the myriad delights the moment has to offer.
I still think about him sometimes. I think he lives in the greater Baltimore metro area and I'm pretty sure he's still married to Leslie -- at least I haven't heard any different. I know he's put on weight since high school, but haven't we all? He's balding, which wasn't a surprise. Other than that, I don't have a whole lot. Google (Yeah, I google people I used to know. Sue me.) doesn't turn up a whole lot on them -- mostly stuff from her work. If I want to know about A Dynamic Interactive Component In a Human−Computer Long−range Planning System, I can find out a lot from google. If I want to find out if they're happy, I can't turn up jack shit.
*sigh* More people should be immediately google-able via their real names. I tried me the other day. If you put in my real name, first and last, you get my fucking blog as the third result. Why can't everybody be like that? Forget an IP address for my damn fridge, I want to be able to locate flesh people in the network-y world.
Anyway. Red wine and conversation made for fairly late evenings... Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. Somewhere in one of those evenings, for reasons I am not real clear on, the topic turned to Cody. (No, he's not famous. He's just a guy.) Back in the spring of 1988 (I said it was ancient history.), I was in the senior play with this guy. The play was A Midsummer Night's Dream and he was, iirc, Demetrius. I had a bit part, but the big selling point for being in the fucking play was getting to watch him through the rehearsals. Cody was total eye candy and I was sort of fixated on the guy. He was *very* pretty and he knew it. Since I go for the whole arrogant thing, well, that was just icing on the cake.
At the time, Cody was steadily and seriously dating a girl in the class below me, Leslie. (He eventually married her, btw, so my assessment of seriously wasn't off the mark. In some small way, I feel vindicated, here.) Leslie was pretty and genuinely nice and smart (went to Dickinson, currently works with telescopes and space observatory crap) and a cheerleader and on the student council. She had a lot to offer and if I'd been a guy, I would have wanted to be dating Leslie, too. I couldn't even muster any hatred for her because she honest to dog was a nice person besides being pretty and gung-ho about activities and coordinated and a reasonably fashionable dresser.
So, that was that. He was stunningly pretty and in a solid relationship with a really great girl and even so, in the face of all reason, I totally wanted him, had for years. I didn't figure I'd ever *get* him because that sort of thing just doesn't happen. Ever. Except it did. It was so damn bizarre that I haven't been able to let go of it for all these years. (Not that I want him now -- I just can't let the event settle in my mind because there are parts of it that I still am not satisfied with. It doesn't... make sense, quite.)
We had a cast party for the play. The cast party was at my house and I'm not totally sure how that happened but it might have been due to the efforts of brother-the-younger. Now, I live way out in the country even for a tiny, rural school. Way, way out in the country. This was a selling point for the cast party because we managed to swing a sleepover cast party *with alcohol* for a school play when I was a senior in high school. I have no idea how that happened, but that's the cast party that we had. (Where were the parents? Upstairs, sensibly pretending to be asleep.)
It was a truly delightful cast party, as much of it as I remember. Here's what the videotape (okay, dead-tree diary of the event) has to say (edited but not rewritten):
March 27: The cast party lasted until around 6:30 this morning. People who showed were as follows: Jeff, Cody, Sherri, Becky, Michelle, Lori, Sid, Russ, Mike, Krista B, Julie, Nate. Noncast shows were Mike Z, Rain, Frank D, Jon R., Mike E., Wes, and Gary. Jeff, Cody, Joe, Nate, and I got a bit drunk. Nate slept (sitting up) on the upstairs toilet and puked all over himself about four times. Cody and I were at the playground. He asked me to kiss him. Said I excited him and attracted him sexually. I protested -- he has a girlfriend who dotes, madly dotes, dotes in idolatry on him. He insisted. I kissed him. I've liked him for so long -- how much moral fiber do you expect me to have? We talked endlessly. He said he'd like to be a good lover -- I said I thought he would be, but not mine. It was a bittersweet evening. If the world were different, perhaps we'd be a couple. It's not different and hey, hey, it doesn't look like it's going to change any.
March 28: Morning in homeroom. Didn't ask Cody if he had regrets due to the fact that he said he didn't remember anything.
March 29: I said hi to Cody today but no more -- no more.
The whole thing was this little anomalous blip in my life. It doesn't make any damned sense. I mean, yeah, I knew the guy but that's because in a class of about a hundred and twenty souls, you know everybody. He sat directly in front of me in Mr. Waite's homeroom, to boot. We didn't talk, particularly, but we each knew who the other was and all of a sudden he was interested in me? The whole thing was bizarre. The absolute only other indications I had that he might possibly ever have been interested were twofold -- first, what he wrote in my ninth-grade yearbook (and the fact that he remembered it while drunk and hitting on me, three years later) and second, that he knew I dinked around with horses and mentioned it during some dumb-ass self-esteem thing we had to do in school. (Horses weren't something most people knew about me. It was in the newspaper at fair time, but it wasn't something he would have found out and carried in his mind as a factoid in the course of everyday events if he had no interest in me.)
Before we went to the playground, brother-the-younger sat in the greenhouse and talked to Cody for what had to have been half an hour or so. (I was quite drunk and my time sense wasn't real good.) Brother-the-younger has always claimed that he does not remember what the hell they talked about (beyond "You, dude. We talked about you.") and I took that answer at face value, if only because it could have been so much worse. (Worse? Worse how? Worse like Dude, my sister is so utterly hot for you. Look, just pretend to be interested in her for tonight. It'll make her happy and I promise she won't make trouble for you later. It'd mean a lot. C'mon, be a pal. It's just for the night... Worse like that. In this world, there are questions better left unanswered and I've always felt that this was one of those where if I pressed too hard, I'd hear things I didn't want to hear.)
Nate (who was Oberon in the play) was slugging vodka out of the bottle and standing in the front yard declaiming things like "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!" At the time, we thought this was hysterically funny and I was kind of enjoying that sort of scenery while Joe was off in the greenhouse talking to Cody.
Anyway, everybody was pretty well lit by the time we decided to walk to the playground. Dad had just resurfaced the road with shale, so it was rough and stumbly and we were kind of drunk while walking in the dark. I was walking beside Cody and hanging onto him, sorta, and I bumped into him a more-than-strictly-necessary number of times because he wasn't objecting very much and well, when else was I going to have the chance. At the playground, Cody and I were sitting on the swings and talking about shit. From out of nowhere, Cody asked me why I didn't date in high school. I mean, yeah, it was prefaced by, "Can I ask you a question?" and I said, "Shoot." but that was about it. He followed up with, "So, how come you never dated anybody in high school?" and I felt just like I'd dived into the lake too early in the summer.
"Dude, nobody ever asked me out. I can't help it if nobody's interested."
"There are people who are interested."
"Yeah, right. Name three." (This is the kind of warm, friendly conversation that won me so many friends back in the day. I said exactly that, to a guy that I was desperately in lust with and figured I would never, ever have. Way to reel 'em in, there, sister!)
"Well, y'know, Mike that's dating the Yit. He only comes to your house to talk to you. He likes you."
"Mmm-hmm. He likes me so he's dating her. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Funny I didn't figure that one out myself. Okay, anybody else?" (For fuck's sake, youngerself, put down the sarcasm before somebody gets hurt!)
"Er. Ah. Me."
"Right. Look, don't lie to me."
"No, really."
"This isn't funny."
"I'm serious."
"So why didn't you ever ask me out or anything? 'Cause you didn't. I'd have remembered if you did."
"I didn't think you were interested. You were so smart and stuff..." (This is, almost verbatim, the argument my mother had hit me with from about the time I was in sixth grade onward. "Honey, you're smart and even the boys that like you are going to be intimidated because of that." It was like he'd been briefed as to what to say, what would work on me.)
At about that point, or shortly thereafter (I was still running through my mind about whether or not any of this was real. I figured there had to be an angle somewhere but the facts, as near as I could tell, lined up to indicate that he was either telling me the truth or telling me a very nicely-constructed lie that I was willing to buy.) my brother-the-younger fell over at the beach. We saw him topple against the background of the lake. There wasn't much light, but there was enough for that. Then we walked over to the point, allegedly to check on brother-the-younger to see if he was drowning face-first in the lake. We never did check on him (though he didn't drown) because I got distracted by the fact that Cody turned me to face him and was all like, "Kiss me."
"No. You have a girlfriend. You guys love each other." Actual words. I remember them well. I really did try to do the right thing. I was all object-y and stuff and he was not buying that. He said something further and I wish I could remember what it was, but I can't. It must have been convincing because I kissed him. That part, I remember. :) Most of the rest of the evening was devoted to hanging all over him in public and not-in-public though I didn't let it get further than a PG rating because I figured he'd wake up the next morning and be all like "Fuck, I did who last night?" and that would totally have sucked. I didn't want to be someone's drunken regret.
Later in the evening, Mike (who was dating the Yit at the time) drug me aside and tried to explain to me that I was just being used and that he (Mike) really gave a shit about me whereas Cody was, well, opportunistic. Whatever. I wasn't terribly interested in what he had to say because, dude, Cody. Also, how lame was it to be dating my stepsister because you were too chickenshit to make a play for me? That'd be very, is how lame that would be.
This whole thing all came up because apparently I'd never told cousin San about the cast party. She was like No way did he ever kiss you! and I was like "Yeah, he did. He really did. I still don't fucking know why, but he did." and then, fueled by red box wine, the whole thing unravelled.
It was one of the most bizarre incidents of my life. Not bad, mind, but bizarre. There's probably something wrong with my mind because when someone hands me what I really, really want, I spend my valuable time trying to figure out what the fuck the angle is and whether or not I'm being made sport of rather than drinking in the myriad delights the moment has to offer.
I still think about him sometimes. I think he lives in the greater Baltimore metro area and I'm pretty sure he's still married to Leslie -- at least I haven't heard any different. I know he's put on weight since high school, but haven't we all? He's balding, which wasn't a surprise. Other than that, I don't have a whole lot. Google (Yeah, I google people I used to know. Sue me.) doesn't turn up a whole lot on them -- mostly stuff from her work. If I want to know about A Dynamic Interactive Component In a Human−Computer Long−range Planning System, I can find out a lot from google. If I want to find out if they're happy, I can't turn up jack shit.
*sigh* More people should be immediately google-able via their real names. I tried me the other day. If you put in my real name, first and last, you get my fucking blog as the third result. Why can't everybody be like that? Forget an IP address for my damn fridge, I want to be able to locate flesh people in the network-y world.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 05:17 pm (UTC)I completely agree with this. I've been trying to find out stuff about my best-friend-from-high-school and the most I can find is her (I assume) married name from classmates.com. If I try to look her up by her name in high school, nothing. The new name? Still nothing. I'd even be happy with some sort of up-to-date listing with things like: current job, marital status, number of kids, current NAME even....just basic info.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 08:13 pm (UTC)Your mother just insured that I'll never date her. What a bullshit argument to make, and what a bullshit thing to tell your daughter.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 12:51 pm (UTC)There are special guys out there that are not intimidated by brains and assertive behavior. They are there. I did find them. But not while i was in high school or the first four years of college.