a start

Some Things I Wish I didn’t Know

Chapter 1: Some preliminaries


Before we start I think there are a few things you should know. I just want you to understand where I'm coming from before you judge me. I feel ashamed of what I did, but I think there were extenuating circumstances. So, I am going to ask you to do me a favor: please, use your imagination. Try imagining that you’re me. Put yourself in my shoes. If you’re willing to do that, we can start.

Imagine being homeless in the winter. Imagine an almost painful feeling that fills your stomach instead of food. Imagine having no family or even real friends. Imagine the bench you sleep on is… well, horrifically hard. Now imagine that it’s snowing. Desperately you walk around the block, trying to warm your freezing body, pacing rapidly and slapping your thighs, when suddenly, through a storefront window, you see... a marvelous sight. You see a restaurant. Inside the people are warm, and happy. You stare as a chubby yuppie, chomps on a hamburger slowly devouring each greasy, but somehow delicious morsel of meat. OooOOoo, you want to eat. You want it so badly. The desire slowly consumes you sucking out of you everything you ever knew before now, drawing from you an odd sort of consent- you would do anything for a bite of that hamburger. Then you stare down at your pockets…no money. You shiver; then you sigh.

What a perfect metaphor for my relationship with girls! That’s what it’s like! I suppose the trouble started my eighth-grade year-that’s when my parents sent me to Shriver Academy. It’s an all-guys prep school. Even today I am convinced that things would have gone better for me if I hadn’t gone to that damn school. It’s an excellent school if you don’t like having fun. I excelled. I went to a school for the best and I became the best of the best. Now, if they had graded us on how we interacted with women my GPA would be a lot and I mean a lot lower. In that respect I deserve an F, an F minus.

More than anything else I remember staring. Silently at the corner of a dance floor I would gawk hoping against hope that she would come and talk to me….that for no reason she would see something in me, and come to me. She never would. Instead she would dance slowly, and beautifully, swinging her hips back and forth in near-perfect harmony with the music as her loose white shirt swung with her as she moved. How could she do it? Was she some sort of professional dancer? Long, blond, and beautiful she occupied my thoughts for months. I was very awkward. I could never hope to woo her on the dance floor. I thought I needed some type of conversation. Such a conversation would never happen. The music always drowned out that hope in an almost obnoxiously loud roar of trendy noise.

I think that’s how I began to hate pop music. It seemed like the one great obstacle between me and her. Slowly I began to resign myself to some realities of my life. Reality number one: I only saw girls once a month at inter-school dances. Reality number two: conversation was impossible at said dances because of obnoxiously loud pop music. Reality number three: I could only initiate contact with girls by dancing, and I couldn’t and still can’t dance. I had no options.

I remember failing. One day I found the courage to try to dance with her. I would slow dance. That was easy. I walked over toward her to ask for a dance trembling inside, sweating profusely, and wishing I had applied more deodorant. I spoke, “Doyawanna dance?”

“What?” she screamed. The music was as always way too loud.

“{DO YOU WANT TO DANCE}?” I screamed back even louder.

“Sure.” She nodded. My heart went flying up through my esophagus and out of my mouth. I attempted to say something else, but my mouth was full. We just danced. Then she noticed.

“Is that a... boner?” she said with anger. I stared down at my pants. I didn’t feel anything. How could this be? Suddenly I realized the oversized cell phone that I had stuffed in my right pocket was positioned a tad awkwardly. I had to explain.

“It’s a cell phone,” I yelled. She didn’t understand. Instead of asking for clarification she wound up and slapped me. With an angry gleam in her eye she stormed off the dance floor and out of my life. Wow did that sting.

At this point you may be wondering who she is. I’d tell you, but I don’t know. I fell in love with her without knowing her name. For a guy with so little… experience I have a weakness for beautiful women. I won’t settle. I only fall for the most beautiful. I worshiped girls silently from a distance not knowing anything about them, but loving them all the same. At least I thought that nervous feeling I got when staring at girls like her was love. I remember finding the feeling for the first time staring at her. That feeling entered me slowly crawling in through my extremities, paralyzing the air within my lungs, leaving hopelessly me in love, and convinced that I would never forget her. Fine… I know that isn’t love; I’m not dumb. But, I was right on one account: I haven’t forgotten her.

There are more stories. I could tell them, but you might get bored.They all end the same way. So, I will just give you the highlights. I’ve called pizzerias thinking they were girls. A girl told me she would rather "get herself to a nunnery" than go out with me. That smart *#$%! @* she dumped with a Shakespearean allusion. I have been lied to, laughed at, and cheated on. I have a long and dark history with girls. Rejection hurts.

Don’t be deceived a lot of girls were attracted to me. I’m actually a pretty good looking guy. I know…I know I’m not exactly an objective judge. But, as long as I kept my mouth shut girls seemed to like me. So, I know now that looks weren’t my problem. I was intensely awkward around girls. It took me a little while to understand that. I used to think I was ugly.

Every guy has a secret fear of girls. They have power over men. Nothing scares me more than a girl making fun of me. There; I said it. You won’t get that admission from a lot of guys. You know all you need to know. I could give you some other details, but they’re not important. I made some mistakes, but to some extent they were justified. I was desperate and weak.Listen, I got my first kiss at seventeen. That might have been OK if I had been a girl in the fifties, but this is 2005. I am guy. Therefore, at least according to anyone born after 1984 I am a loser, awkward and I’m not having any fun.