For the benefit of friends who've moved away...
I don't really open up a whole lot. Right now, I'm a bit drunk and really frustrated, so I'm going to do that. This is mostly for those friends of mine who've moved away and don't have any other real form of contact with me. For those that read this and have only ever known me online, this is your warning. I'm 19 years old. Right now, I'm going to take a brief departure and act it. Full of angst, conflict, and more hi-balls than I bothered to count. You've been warned. Now then, without further ado...


[ANGST]
God fucking dammit.
Why would they think I'm fucking her? I know I'm not an unattractive guy, but she's about 5 or 6 leagues removed from the one I'm in. Like a fucking greek goddess. Allow me to back up a bit.

I'm going to only use initials here, as fuck knows who's reading this. I work with a girl, M. M is goddamned gorgeous. I'm an atheist and M still makes me want to drop to my knees and thank God. No one doesn't like each other where I work, so M and I get along well. We talk quite a bit. She also happens to be next in line for a manager promotion. As I was the last one to go through this, she follows me around while I'm working and I show her what she'll be doing in a couple of month's time. Today I was working in the back office, fucking around with the cash as is my job, and she comes in. As is to be expected, we get to talking. 45 minutes later, we realize it's been a while and go back out to the lobby. There's also some stuff that needs to be done in the projection booth and as she's learning that too, she watches me work and we talk while I'm at it. How to tell an aspect ratio from the look of the film, which lenses and aperture plates go with what, that sort of thing. We happen to have a special screening of a silent movie on Monday, so I had the rare opportunity to work with a silent film, and she got to see it up close. Cool stuff. Well, this takes time. Another 45 minutes later and we're done. We go back out into the lobby and the rest of the staff start snickering at us. Whatever. It's what we do, we all tease and flirt with each other constantly so I shrug it off.

Well, the shift comes to an end and B, N, C, and I all decide to go out for a couple of beers. We head to the pub down the street, Murph's, and chill for a while. This is when it starts.

B: "So dude, c'mon. Straight up. What were you two doing in there for so long?"
Me: "The hell? We were talking, man."
N: "Come off it. I (an initial, not N) went up and knocked on the door and you didn't even acknowledge it."
Me: "Really? Didn't hear a thing. Honestly, we were only talking."
B: "C'mon. Don't fucking lie to me, man. I understand that you're worried about it,  'cause yeah she's a minor, but she'll be 18 in a couple months. You're barely a year and a half older than her. Just tell us."
Me: "Swear to god man, NOTHING HAPPENED."

This goes on for a while. Finally, I manage to convince them. But that's three guys. Apparently the whole damned theater thinks we're fucking. What the hell?

Y'know what kills me? Since we started working together more, I've really started crushing on her. I would like nothing more than for those goddamned fucking rumours to be true. She was always beautiful, but the more I find out about her, the more attractive she becomes. And tonight there was an opening. I won't go into the details, but she left this opening in the conversation intentionally. She expected, wanted, me to say something specific. I knew what it was. What did I do? Same fucking thing I always do. Act all awkward and clueless. Try to play it off as cute. Fucking spineless, ballless sack of shit that I am, I just try to pretend I have no clue. Maybe I really don't.

I may not look it, but I'm still trapped in Junior high. I hear that a lot of people are. No matter how much you change, inside you're always really going to be that person that you were in the 7th or 8th grade. I kinda got fucked in that respect. In the 7th grade, I was 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide. I could barely speak to a member of the opposite sex without wanting to vomit, even if I had no attraction to them whatsoever. The ones I liked, fuck. I would vomit. I'm a lot better than that now. Most of my closest friends are female. Still, when it gets down to important things, I'm still that same fat little fucker I was when I was 11.

After the bar, B, N and I walked home together. I love both of them like brothers. They're fantastic guys and I wouldn't give up their friendship for anything. Of course, they want to try to help me out. Now that they know that I'm not fucking M, they want to work it out so that I am. I promised that I wouldn't reveal the bulk of the details of that conversation to anyone else, so I won't go into them here. A drunken vow is still a vow. All I'll say about this walk was that there were points where, no matter how much I love the guy,  I could have wrung N's neck.

A big part of the problem is that they think I want the same things they do. They're quality guys, don't get me wrong, but at the moment, all they're looking for is a quick fuck. I really want a relationship.

SIDE STORY: ONE OF THE MOST PATHETIC NIGHTS OF MY LIFE
A few nights ago I couldn't sleep. I went over to my bookshelf and let my fingers skim across the book spines. They eventually settled on an old volume of Shakespeare's writing that my father gave to me a few months before he died. It was his when he was a teenager in the 40s, and he wanted me to have it too. It's a very old book, and holds a hell of a lot of sentimental value to me. Anyway, I didn't want to read anything too involving. It was already four in the morning and I wanted to get to sleep. I decided I'd just read some sonnets. Light reading as I'm going to sleep, y'know? I didn't even get two pages in before I was in tears. I don't cry often, but this really set me off. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my head in some girl's lap and be reading them to each other. I couldn't take just reading them in bed with a cat sitting on me. I went to sleep soonafter, but it wasn't a very good sleep at all.

So yeah, not out for a quick fuck. Now I'm not fooling myself. I know that at 19, especially with the bar scene in this city, finding that isn't very likely. I don't need exactly that, but I do need something involved. The way that they were trying to help me almost made me sick. Essentially it boils down to "Just lie to women, dude! It's so easy!" Sorry guys, I love you and all, but that doesn't help. Honestly, the way they were talking about M pissed me off a bit too. Especially since I've been getting to know her, she deserves more fucking respect than that.

I walked the rest of the way home by myself. I'm really frustrated with myself right now. I know I had an opportunity to get somewhere with her, and I did the same fucking thing I always do. I swore at the sky a couple of times, top of my lungs, on the walk home. I only felt good for a second or two, but it was kinda nice. Anyway, I work again in 6 hours, and have a Japanese test the next day, so I need to get some sleep.

[/ANGST]

If you read all that, congratulations I guess. Sorry I unloaded on you all like that. I just haven't been able to vent in a long time, and all my good venting friends live places where it's too expensive to call them. I really need to get to bed. I feel like hell. I promise I'll be back to the usual stuff by next post, whenever that may be. Night all.

-Peter