Saturday, July 4, 2020

v2.0

I went to have dinner with Aileen sometime earlier this week. On our table, there was a bookmark-shaped card that had prompts on it for conversation starters. It was designed so that you'd put down your phones and engage fully with your meal companion. Our question was "what is the most awkward experience you've had with a crush?" Aileen went all the way back to kindergarten, when she told the boy she liked that they had to hold hands because the teacher said so, although the teacher hadn't.

Mine was comparatively much more recent, which is possibly not a good thing. When I was in high school, I had a big crush on a senior called Khalis. I thought my crush was pretty obvious to everyone around me. A couple years later, after we'd both graduated and were in different schools, my best friends got him to be at my birthday party, because I wanted to learn to play drums so they'd engaged him to teach me to drum. I never knew the arrangement, whether they were paying him or whether it was for free. 

Anyway, so this Khalis guy, he was the coolest dude in my mind. He danced, he drummed, he drew (because he's an architect). When I went for drumming sessions with him, I never knew if my heart was pounding because of the goddamn DRUMS or because lord, he was so near me, and I think, or I know for sure, he knew the effect he had on me. 

After a few sessions, I told myself, what the hell right, fuck it, I only live once. I told him in no uncertain terms, that I liked him and I wondered if he'd actually go out with me, or consider me as a partner, or something. He then said "Sarah, you know if I wanted to sleep with you, I would have done it easily because I know you would, right. You're a cute person but I think we're good as friends." 

I burned up in embarrassment. That was maybe the first bout of real rejection I'd ever faced, mainly because he brought up that he could have slept with me if he wanted to, and let's be real, it was probably true. To this day, I wonder if it was the best way he could have done it, to have given me absolutely no hope nor leeway, or the worst, for being so brutal. 

For months and years, I still admired him and placed him on a pedestal. This went on and on until maybe a couple years ago, I realized he was literally just another guy and didn't see him as being integral to my life. I think the last time I talked to him was legitimately two years ago. 

Khalis was the guy who actually told me I remind him of agape love. First of all, I don't know if that's just a thing men say to girls who like them but whom they don't have reciprocative feelings for. If that's a thing, someone needs to tell me now, so I stop feeling this amount of special, lololol.

All this to say, through the entire thing with Khalis and actually just through my life, I've never known whether guys were flirting because they liked me, flirting because they knew I liked them and because they could, or they were not flirting at all and it was all genuine platonic friendship on their part, and I misconstrued it because of the feelings I had. I like to think I'm more mature now, but am I, really? In many ways, I suppose I could say I am but in other ways, maybe not.

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