Posts tagged Friends
Posts tagged Friends
Warning: Potential self-harm triggers behind the cut
I remember thinking as a kid that everyone was like me. I always thought that the popular people were the same as me, except better looking and more confident. I thought they would appreciate me and everything I’m about if they got to know me. I thought that for a long time. I remember being at a party when I was 19 or so where these too-cool hardcore punk kids – I don’t know why “kids” is the first thing I think of to call them – were talking about Sarah Silverman. In that moment I thought, oh god, I have the entire Jesus Is Magic special memorized.. I could quote something from it right now and they would realize that I’m awesome. But I know now that, not only would they not think I’m awesome, they probably wouldn’t even know what I was talking about. And I wouldn’t like them either. But I never thought of things that way. It was the same way with every guy I ever liked. I just liked them and worried that they wouldn’t like me back. I would think, ugh, he smokes a ton of pot, he used the word “illiterate” to describe my fumbling with the door handle, he eats meat and doesn’t care about animals, but.. what if he doesn’t like me? I would always feel devastated when a guy didn’t like me or when he stopped liking me and I think a lot of it had to do with my thinking that everyone is at least like me enough that they would find me interesting. And some of it was just a need for approval from men (16 year old boys).
I had just spent the night and the whole next day with my new friends when they invited me to go to a party a few cities over. I was excited about it because I was currently smitten with my new group of friends. They were cool, smart, and cared about things. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have found them. I didn’t know yet how close we would all become, but these people ended up being my best friends for years afterward and they will always have a special place in my heart.
So they invited me to this party and all I asked was that they let me stop at home to brush my teeth. They didn’t understand why I cared about doing that, but they would soon learn that I was kind of obsessed with oral hygiene and they had a lot of fun making fun of me for it. One night I was so drunk that I threw up in my friend Bruce’s bathroom, then just kind of rolled around on the floor while he and his girlfriend comforted me. I stood up and pulled some mouthwash out of my purse and it took a lot for Bruce to convince me that I would probably throw up again if I tried to gargle right then. That bad breath incident from when I was 13 was still fresh in my memory at 14. So I went to my house to brush my teeth and we ended up picking up my friend Jaimie to go to the party with us. She lived right down the street so it wasn’t a long trek or anything.
We got to the party and it was on this huge property where there was also a big garage where a band was playing. It was some skinhead band with a black bassist. This was the night I learned that not all skinheads are racist. So immediately my friend, Jaimie, is trying to introduce me to some guy. She’s yelling at him, “Phil! Phil!” And eventually he turns to her and says, “Oh, yeah, that’s not my real name. I’m sorry I lied to you.” And then we talked for a while. I can’t remember who the guy was, but I know that I became friends with him later and I know that he claimed that night that “antidisestablishmentarianism” was the longest word in existence. Is he right? I don’t know.
I went into the house where I somehow began arguing with some dude about lord knows what. We were sitting on the couch still fighting when he suddenly put his hand up my sweatshirt. I was shocked and not exactly pleased, but did not do anything to stop him. I just sat there while he felt one breast, then the other. It was so fucking weird, especially since there were people sitting on the couch right across from us. I hoped that they couldn’t tell what was going on, which I think is part of the reason I didn’t do anything about his groping. I thought it would draw attention to it even more and make me look like stupid. Later in the night Jaimie also got into a fight with this guy. Oh yeah, boob-grabber was named Cody and looked like a cowboy. So she’s fighting with him and he says something like, “Sorry, but that’s just not in my vernacular.” Jaimie says, “What does that even mean?” And another of my future-friends, Sam, intervenes to calmly say, “I don’t know what it means either, but based on the context I’d say it’s probably something like vocabulary, is that right?” I love Sam. He asked me for my phone number at a party once, which is insane and does not happen to me, but my mom “forgot” to tell me when he called. I think she got scared off when he said, “I’m the guy with the mohawk she met at a party”, which she told me he said like 2 months after he’d originally called. Back to the fight: Cody now tells us he has a girlfriend who is like 13 years old. I say something about how he cheats on her and he denies it. I’m like.. uhh.. yeah, you do. And he insists that he doesn’t and I don’t want to prove that he does by saying, “Yeah huh, you felt my goods!” So he just gets away with being a dick and I still end up feeling stupid.
Then I’m on to have some more fun! I ask some dude with blue hair for his phone number. This is typical me. I am always obnoxiously hitting on someone who I don’t know and who isn’t interested in me. The weird thing about this guy was that he didn’t look like the kind of guy who would have blue hair. He looked more like some preppy guy whose friends told him they were going to a punk rock party, so he should liven up his look a bit. Anyway, the guy gives me his phone number, but when I later called it, I was shocked to find that it was a fake number. I didn’t even know guys ever did that! Maybe he saw me being felt up by a cowboy and decided against taking me home to meet his mother.
The saddest thing about this night for me was that I found out Bruce had a girlfriend. When I’d stayed at his house the night before, we slept in the same bed cuddling. It was lovely. So I was a bit heartbroken when I saw him hugging on some little blonde at the party. But they quickly broke-up.. then he dated another blonde.. then a brunette whom he married. My crush on him lasted for a few years, but eventually ended and then we were able to have a wonderful platonic friendship. He was my best friend in those days and I have so many fun memories with him. This crazy skinhead punk party where I got sexually harassed was only the beginning.
Oh yeah, and that party was eventually broken up by cops. No doy.
A girl on Tumblr once told a story about how she stood up for someone who couldn’t defend herself. She was very proud that she’d administered justice on behalf of someone whom she did not know and who would never even know about what she did. Here’s the situation: She’s on a bus when she hears two friends talking about a woman who is running outside. The girls are saying, “Oh my god, look at her! She has a huge wedgie! She looks like such an idiot!” This girl is getting fed up. So she goes over to the girls and says, “Oh, do you run?” The girls say “No”, and she looks the girls up and down so they know that she’s sizing up their bodies, then says, “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
I feel like this girl was incredibly rude, much more so than the girls she confronted. She disagreed with me and said that she would want someone to stand up for her in a similar situation. I feel like that is an immature way to view it. These girls were teasing someone about a wedgie when they knew that the girl would never hear what they were saying. Not only was it not at all cruel, it was also probably not even something that actually bothered them, but was more just something fun to talk about while riding a bus with a friend. Also, a giant wedgie is a definitely worth talking about. I have no doubt about who the bully was in this situation.
