Dating Diary: Neighbor

I met my neighbor through my other neighbor (future roomie) Kayvie. 

My first impression of Neighbor was that he was sarcastic, pompous, handsome, and an Asshole.  After sipping on some beers, playing a rousing game of Catan, he said to me, “I didn’t expect you to be cool, you look like you’d be a bitch.”

(“What!!??”)

He likely meant this as a compliment, maybe every pretty girl he’d ever run across had treated him like garbage, but I took offense.  How dare this person I’d never met assume that given my genetic fortune that I was a bitch.  And in that moment I decided to use everything in my Jenna arsenal to get him to be my friend.  He would be on Team Jenna if it killed me. 

And it didn’t, kill me that is.  Neighbor was my type of people.  He was smart, had an amazing satirical wit, was handsome and fun to be around, enjoyed watching movies, and didn’t mind listening to me storm on about various social injustices until late in the night with me on his assorted armchairs. 

When I dated the great Grizzly he was a voice of reason who tried to get the Grizzly to chill (“Jenna is a big girl, she can walk home at 9 o’clock at night alone”) told me I wasn’t crazy for being smothered.  We talked about everything I couldn’t talk to Grizzly about.    Even his virginity. 

I found his lack of passage fascinating and horrifying.  The self control he possessed with admirable…and disturbing to me given my own tendency to impulse and passion.  We spent tons of time together.  He saw me in my jammies-people who’ve I dated for a year have never seen me in my jammies (with kitties on them, not for nights of fooling around). 

Things about him drove me bananas-the fact that he had no issues with his parents footing the bill on a studio in Back Bay and his continued education-or on his enormous big screen tv. 

But when I got tickets to The Daily Show in New York City he was the only one I thought to invite-much to the Grizzly’s chagrin. 

We sat outside the studio in the sub artic temperatures, and I laughed at his apparent geekdom when he spazzed over George Lucas being the guest.  It wasn’t until we were on the bus back to Boston when he started to rub my back that I realized that something had shifted from friend to feelings.  And it wasn’t on my side. 

I started to avoid him.  But how do you avoid your Best Friend?

I broke up with the Grizzly.

And Neighbor was there, but rather then appreciate his support I felt suspicious. 

Until one night we were out with his friends, standing in line I remarked on the some girls in skirts short enough to show their hoo-ha’s.  He looked at me and said, “They aren’t like you, class isn’t someone that everyone has.” 

I got hammer drunk.

And at 1:40 am in the bar I found him, on his birthday, and pulled him aside and told him I liked him.  He just beamed at me, and said, “I like you too.”

A few night later when his company had left, I let him kiss me in his apartment, I let him push me against a wall in a moment of passion. 

And the next day I felt guilty.

I felt guilty when he asked me on a date, the second girl he’d ever asked out.

 

I felt guilty when I avoided him—I felt guilty when I tried to pretend it never happened. 

He’s the only one I’ve ever hurt to save.

I saw what I’d done to the Grizzly, I saw what I’d done to JJC, I still felt what Third was to me.  I couldn’t do it to Neighbor, my best friend in Boston. 

So I avoided him, and then one night, when I tried to apologize to him, I deleted his hatred of me before I’d had a chance to read it.

We never spoke again.

He’s the only one in my Diary that I regret my behavior towards.  I cared about him in a way I had never experienced and I blurred the line between friend and boyfriend because I didn’t understand my feelings.  I hurt him because of that misunderstanding. 

I know retrospectively we wouldn’t have worked.   I’m a lot to take.  I feel on a big scale, and ride the current of my emotions in bigger ways than most, and I love love love attention, he would have ended up hating everything that he liked about me in the end-and given how much I cared about him that would have been a tough pill to take.

 I’m sorry that I was a terrible friend to him.