when I sucked

8/29/99

I had nothing to say yesterday, so I didn't even bother saying that. I slept in, watched movies all day, and relaxed. Good time. Didn't do much more than that today, but I did venture out for a couple of hours. I drove up to Macon and went shopping. Bought a spice rack, finally—do you know how hard it is to find a spice rack without the spices in it? I already have all the spices I need.

I also picked up some energy supplements (shut up, shut up, all you hippies, I've tried to be all natural, and I just NATURALLY have no energy.) And I got another keychain with lip balm, since I broke the last one, and some hand lotion for work, where my hands dry out like crazy from sorting all those dusty invoices. I got sucked in at one of the displays in the middle of the mall, a woman was selling polished stones, and she sucked me in. I bought a sodalite pendant and a polished piece of malachite—those are my two favorite minerals.

I once bought a sweet little sodalite pendant from a hot guy in the mall in Ann Arbor, and wore it for several years, until it broke. The sliver of stone just split right along one of the white veins, and the tip fell off and got lost. Eventually, the whole necklace disappeared in one of the moves. The one I got today looked almost like that one, but it's smoother and doesn't have a big white vein running through it.

So I'm walking through the Macon Mall with this rock in my pocket, remembering that time in my undergrad years when I worked at the mall. I was an optical technician in JC Penney's optical department. Every day on my lunch, just to get some exercise and a change of scenery, I'd go out and stroll around the mall, talking to people I knew at various stores. This really hot guy worked at one of those little carts in the middle of the mall, selling crystals and jewelry and T-shirts with stoned frogs on them.

I struck up a flirty little conversation, and soon his cart was a regular stop on my daily trek. His name was Guillermo, he was from Ecuador, and I completely misjudged his age, the way I always do with foreign men. He was 33. I was 19, and...well, to put it plainly...a virgin. (Shut up.) My age didn't seem to matter to him, so we played our little games every day until he finally asked me out.

We went to a shitty movie—I think it was called Congo. After, I drove him around the mall to his car, and we made out in my car for a while. I'd only ever kissed guys in high school and college, and this guy was – hands down – the hottest hottest kisser I'd ever kissed. Wow. He wanted to go home with me, he had a long drive and used that as an excuse to try to stay at my house. I backed out, as usual, told him my roommates were home, or something.

He was totally cool, and everything would have been normal the next time I saw him, but I had freaked out by then and I rarely left my office, just so I wouldn't have to see him. Something random happened to him within a couple of weeks, and he disappeared. I never knew what happened, if he'd gone back to Ecuador or gotten busted for selling something illegal, which I was pretty sure he was doing.

Ahh, well. One of those little vignettes I have stored up in here.

I was always doing that to guys back then. I was a chick with a commitment problem. I'd flirt and flirt, and as soon as a guy finally fell for it, I'd freak out and get out as quickly as I could. And the shitty thing is, I knew when I was doing it. I teased this poor guy senseless my freshman year in high school—he was a year older than me, and in my biology class. Wanted to be a stand-up comedian, so he cracked stupid cliche jokes all through class, usually at the teacher's expense. Mr. Ratza sat "Joe" next to me, thinking I'd calm him down, but something in my coy disapproval just egged him on. Soon I had Joe writing sappy notes to me and he invited me to the Winter Carnival dance.

He also began to behave himself in class, so everybody in the class was in on the whole soap opera. Good girl meets naughty boy. Joe made an ass of himself following me around, and I hated that. The surest way to stop me from liking a guy was for him to act like a dumbass over me.

Good girl dumps naughty boy after three days of "going together." Yep—Friday he asked me, I reluctantly said yes, just to get out of the awkward situation. I think we had a phone conversation over the weekend. Then Monday I gave him a note. Oh, boy, was I a bitch back then. So fourteen years old. He was destroyed. Punched something, so I hear. He was a total wreck in biology.

And what he did for the rest of the year, well, it bordered on stalking. Always at my locker, always talking to my friends. For a while he tried to date one of my friends. Then he tried to be my friend. I wasn't having it. He began to remind me of Ted Bundy. Even the next year, when I thought he was over it, he'd torture the guys with lockers near mine for information, and ogle me in the hall.

All that didn't stop me from doing it again and again, through high school and college, until I met John. With all honesty, I intended to ditch him, too; I just never quite got around to it. Romantic, huh?

So, for anyone who'se reading this that I may have dumped unfairly at one time or another, I apologize. I suck. You're better off, believe me.