Feelings 'n Shit

HOLY CRAP I AM WRITING ON THIS AGAIN.

Recently, I have come to face the reality that I am ending my educational career in a matter of weeks, along with the fact that I need to become an active member of "the real world". So now, I too can tell young people how awful the economy is, how bad the job market is, how it's not as great as it used to be and blah blah blah blah BLAH. Growing up is great, innit? In addition to this package of despair, I have been reminded that I can succumb to feelings 'n shit.

That's right, non-existent readers - I have tragically developed a crush.

One of my best pals recently described this to me as "the best kind of bad news" when I told him how I felt about a girl that I had just met. Actually, it was my second time meeting her, but that's beside the point. Most people who have come to know me for an extended period of time may fairly describe me as a dry and often emotionless drone that hates everything and everyone around him. So basically, I'm a nihilist. But then, when I let crack that elusive smile of mine, or even say, "Hey, you know, I kinda like that person," suddenly it's like finding a unicorn snacking on four-leaf clovers.

I should say there is perhaps a reason as to why I don't like to express feelings 'n shit. Since I was a lad, I have been, well, kind of a dork. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. I mean, look at Jonah Hill. Make enough masturbation and dick jokes and you may find yourself with two Oscar nominations! But anyway, the first "girlfriend" I had (I use quotes because, according to the universal law of dipshits, you can't have a real girlfriend when you're three-years-old) was a girl whose name I honestly have no idea how to spell anymore. She and her PARENTS liked me when we went to the same daycare together. Then some little cocksucker by the name of Tyler pushed me on my ass and made me cry in front of her and her mom. And I never saw old what's-her-name again. Fuck Tyler and his dreadlocks.

In elementary school, I had my eye wandering here and there. See, the beauty of an elementary school crush is that most of the kids all look sort of cutesy still, so nobody is really at an ugly phase. Even the fattest kid or that little asshole who was always crying his lungs out had that "aww" appeal to them. It's honestly not worth mentioning much except that I could have totally had a thing with one girl due to our mutual Latino-ness, but I never really made a move. Same goes for the adorable blonde that co-starred in "Oliver" with me in 5th grade. Luckily, I made friends of both of them, so I deserve a pat on the back.

Then came middle school. Holy fuckaroo, I could go on about middle school. I could talk about me getting detention and suspension and that time I took my shirt off and swung it around in the cafeteria like a stripper...but I won't. Instead, I'll talk about the second girl I liked in 6th grade. Not the first, because she was an uptight little bitch, yet we still somehow hung out years after that. Anyway, the second girl was an interesting case, because she was always on my mind, even though our first meeting at the class Christmas party was, well, SHIT. She wanted to play her ghastly rap music and I wanted to play the "Daredevil" soundtrack along with that track from "Hulk" by Velvet Revolver. See, even when I was 11, I had no idea what kind of music kids liked. But cut to a few months later (I think it was March of '04?) and I was head-over-heels for Second Girl. Of course, now I was in middle school, where my fat ass, unkempt hair, and braces were all a trifecta of ugly. So, when that one friend told Second Girl I liked her (because we ALWAYS have that friend who does that shit to you), the natural response was nothing more than "Ew, yuck."

BUT WAIT! Does the humiliation conga stop there? Not so fast, I say! You see, despite Second Girl thinking I looked like roadkill butthole, we somehow became nicely acquainted. You could even say we were friends. And being a 12-year-old with strong feelings (i.e., hormones raging like wildfire), I would express them to my class through poetry and stupid behavior. Yes, a myriad of stupidities that still haunt me to this day. I can't blame her for my suspension or detention, but part of it stemmed from that ever-present desire to look cool and feel cool. That's all most kids today really want - coolness. That feeling that everybody around you bows before you and kisses your feet, and you rule amongst the lowly plebes with your queen (or king) by your side. Sadly, that dream would end for me.

I remember moving from Mineola to Baldwin being kinda scary. To be blunt, going from a place with mostly white kids to a place with mostly black kids is quite a transition. Sure, I made friends quickly, even if they would harass me, insult me, take my lunch money, and just make me feel like a giant fool...but hey, I guess that's 7th grade. Then comes 8th grade, when I met...You-Know-Who (YOU obviously don't know, but that's what I called her around my parents, so yeah). Yeah, there was another girl I liked before You-Know-Who, but the funny thing about her is, even though I never really expressed my feelings for her to anybody, SOMEHOW she and all my friends knew what was on my mind. In a way, from 8th grade onward, we were almost unofficially together. We toyed around with the prospect of going out, but for some reason, I never acted. Probably because I was too busy being a bitch, worrying about my school work instead of conforming to my friends' standards of "getting it". She and I had our spats (in class in front of our friends, no less), but somehow, there was always this warm vibe about us. I remember walking her home during lunch one day in our senior year of high school. I remember making her birthday cards and her very happy reactions. I never forgot her birthday, even if she never acknowledged mine.

At one point, she did consider us being together, but there was always one stinking, stupid, shitty reason that always sort of held me back from making a move: I was always raised to be a devout Christian (funny how that worked out), and she was/is a firm atheist. For about six years, I held my feelings back because I felt that my relationship with her would be frowned upon by a higher power. Now, I'm not blaming God for me not getting with You-Know-Who, but this had something to do with me never making my move. Of course, who knows, maybe there would have been something there if I tried, but now, I may never know.

Interestingly, in between my crush on You-Know-Who, I had a thing for three other girls that I feel are worth mentioning (because if you happened to have read this far, then you can stomach more of this). There was one girl I met, funny enough, in 8th grade. I think I'll call her Two-Face. You see, Two-Face always showed me that face with the big adorable ear-to-ear grin because shit was cool and we were friends, and I was making her laugh. Then again, that's how I came to realize that the nicest people are usually the biggest shit-talking-behind-your-back assholes. That's really all I can say about Two-Face. Then there was a girl in my photography class, a year above me. I almost gave her a card on her birthday, but even that never happened. And to think, I still had a penis on me. Unfortunately, this girl was gone too soon, as I found out, not five years later. She will never know what I felt, and for that, I feel a bit of stinging regret. Finally, there was yet another girl in my photography class, also a year above me, that I met in my junior year. I did actually tell this girl how I felt about her...through Facebook, of all places. In my defense, she had just graduated, and I felt like I was never going to see her again, so, making due with what I had, I reactivated my Facebook account after my whole "who needs this shit" bout, and I started to reconnect. Getting nowhere, I said "Fuck it" and spilled my heart out through a nicely-worded message. She liked my honesty, though she acknowledged that nothing would ever happen between us. The only thing I have to say beyond that is that asking someone out via the internet is sort of a bitch move. And that is why I don't resort to internet dating (especially after two profiles that got me nowhere).

I did leave out one girl, because I wasn't sure if what I felt for her was a crush or not, because my whole reason for talking to her was to get in her pants after I heard she was banging the ugliest dudes at school. So, yeah, I thought I had a shot. And perhaps, reading this back to myself, is why I got nowhere. Because I was about to be that jackass that used a girl for sex. And I've been resenting her for all these years for giving me a fake phone number when in actuality, I deserved it.

Hmm. Funny how these things come into my head so late.

And now, that brings me to COLLEGE! The place that I was once told is where "everybody" gets laid. Whoever tells you that, and whoever told me that, can eat butts. My mindset going into college was kinda like that, until a year later when I realized that I was already such a drone that I had no room for feelings 'n shit. Plus, let me be real, damn near every girl I've come into contact with from my school is a drag. There were two girls in my major during freshman year that I thought I would have a shot with (not at the same time), but, as you can guess, nothing happened. This wasn't really because I didn't act, but because I figured out that they were little assholes. The first girl was, as my dear friend Gary would say, a "HEARTLESS FUCKING BITCH!!!!!!" Just a mess, emotionally and mentally. The second girl was a cookie cutter sorority girl that stopped talking to me when she got "real friends". Also, I tried to use the Facebook ploy. Didn't work. Again.  The international girls at my school have slightly more personality, and they are as friendly as they are pretty, but apart from the whole long distance thing with that kind of relationship, they don't seem to be interested in American guy relationships, unless that guy happens to have some Norwegian/Swedish/Scandinavian in him. I mean, I can't blame them, us American males can be such morons.

I didn't learn my lesson going into my sophomore and junior years of college. I liked one girl that I met through a friend. She seemed really cool - we like British stuff (specifically, Harry Potter and the show "Misfits"; mostly the first two series when Robert Sheehan was still on), we have a dry sense of humor, and we put up with a bunch of idiots that we called friends. So, what did I do to get closer? Why, stalk her on Facebook and Tumblr, of course! And you know what? Not a bad idea, since this girl was just as fucked as the first film major "heartless fucking bitch" girl. Some stuff about her dad and grandma being assholes, but I won't go into it. Case in point, looked like a bunch of baggage I wasn't about to get into.

And then, prior to and after that shit, there was yet another sorority girl. What makes her different than the first, you may ask? Well, I'll tell you, non-existent reader! You see, Sorority Girl #2 wasn't in a sorority when I met her. In fact, I met her when I was advertising a club from school. A Harry Potter club, no less (J.K. Rowling, where would I be without you?). And, as I say with a sigh, I began to chat her up on Facebook. I didn't ask her out, of course, but I did get quick to chatting with her. She also seemed really cool. And, to be real, she kinda is. She was a dance major, she liked Harry Potter, she was from Vegas, and she was strikingly beautiful. She even invited me to join her in the Hamptons! And yet, somewhere down that path, my chances went kaput. She stopped talking to me, or responding. and then, surprise, she went and got herself a macho boyfriend (an Italian one, no less!)...and just when I stopped giving a shit, a resurgence in attention came about! Did she finally get rid of her Guido Jersey Shore wannabe idiot boyfriend? She actually started saying hi to me by my name, even when I wasn't paying attention to her. So, being me, I took this as, in the most crude way I can put it, "AW YEAH SHE WANTS MY DICK." I went ahead, got her number, made some bullshit excuse about wanting to make a movie about dancers (that's not a panty-dropper, by the way, gents), and all was about to go down...until another bitch named Sandy (as in, Super Storm Sandy) came blowing by, fucking shit up and keeping me without power for about two weeks. After that shit settled, I came to discover an ugly truth - Sorority Girl #2 was STILL with her idiot boyfriend, who, and this is still unclear to me, was either in prison or sent on duty somewhere (to my knowledge, SG2 has a thing for the all-American white guy). In a way, I sort of look at this as God's way of saying "Dude, I helped you dodge a bullet," so maybe it's fine that I didn't get as far as I thought I would. By now, she's left him and moved on to another meathead. This guy has a Facebook picture of him holding a gun next to a "Twilight" poster riddled with bullet holes. Now THAT, gents, is how you turn someone on. Shooting, with a gun, the poster for a film adaptation of something that has been relentlessly mocked for more than half a decade because it makes you look badass. Okay, so maybe I don't know those two guys and maybe they really are nice or whatever (shut up), but, for my own petty reasons, I very much resent SG2 for her whole "let me talk to you and then stop talking to you" shit that she had me go through. Not her fault, I guess, and probably my own for getting in over my head and overthinking things. Still, fuck her.

This next girl wasn't really a student at my school, but I met her while working at the summer camp at my school. She was my co-counselor with our little band of troublemaking kids (real talk, I loved those kids with all my being, and I miss most of them, but they were still little dickheads). My friends are quick to point out that she had great breasts, but that wasn't the first thing that caught my attention. Sure, I needed to focus on the kids, but how could I when this lovely creature was standing next to me?! Curse you, testosterone, and your filthy ways! Within my eight-week time frame of knowing Co-Counselor, I knew I'd have to act fast. But there's only so much you can say when you have to supervise kids. So, the first thing that came to my head was (paraphrased), "Do you smoke weed, and if you do, come smoke with me." If you can hear the sound of something crashing and burning, it's not in your head. Turns out that Co-Counselor, much like Two-Face, likes to go behind people's backs and say shit...so she tattled on me. Now, I understand that it was my own dumbass fault for asking, within earshot of kids (I did try to be discreet, though). But for fuck's sake, I mean, if you have a problem with me, TELL ME TO MY FACE AND NOT SELL ME OUT LIKE A LITTLE BITCH. In the end, our last encounter ended with our only ever hug (yes, I did feel those nice breasts push against me, and I very much enjoyed it), but within our souls, we knew there was a deep disgust for each other within.

This brings me to today. And I'm sorry I had to put you through that whole "How I Met Your Mother" type of story to get to my point, but I am writing to express my recently-developed crush on a girl that I happened to meet on a film shoot. Actually, it was three days earlier, but I really got into a horror movie discussion with her, and I gotta say, this girl is pretty cool. Cooler than You-Know-Who or SG2? Why yes, I'd say. Funny, smart, and absolutely beautiful. And now, she has been occupying my mind for longer than she needs to, to the point where you could say I'm almost putting the pussy on the pedestal, something I was told by another dear friend to NOT do. People seem to forget that I'm Latino and we tend to express our deepest emotions in ways unlike that of the common folk.

So now, as of this writing, I am making it one of my remaining tasks to stand up, nut up, and do shit about it. Not just another regret, or a failed opportunity, but damn it, I'm gonna make shit happen one way or another. Doesn't matter if she says yes or no, I WILL FIGHT FOR MY RIGHT TO PARTY.

It'd still really suck if she said no, but hey...that's the real world, I guess.