Did that really just happen?

...Did Mr. Librarian really just go down on me in the dark, locked common room?

In this chair. That's my ass print 6 hours later.

At 3am. This morning. He did. Because he wanted to. And I wanted him to. And it felt damn good. A little unsettling. (For how many other people has this been a ritual, accidentally or otherwise? This isn't us going too fast, is it? Oh, fuck it--)
But wait a minute, wait a minute.
The Talks I Will Have to Have with Mr. Librarian, Probably Tonight If We See Each Other as Planned but Definitely Before Next Friday When I Peace Out of Here:

• What does it mean that I'm leaving the city and probably won't live here again for an indefinite period of time? I think I like him enough to keep this going, at least to see how it feels in my post-college reality. I think he feels the same way. But we need to make sure.
• What's he invited to on graduation day? Does he go to the ceremony and spend an hour and a solid half getting to know my parents by himself while I chill (freak) out in my seat 5,000 feet away with the rest of the mortarboards? Does he go to the ceremony and sit by himself and make everyone feel vaguely uneasy about that? Does he go to the ceremony and holy fuck please no sit with Mike? Or does he just meet me and my parents up for dinner after? None of the above; well, some of the above stitched together. He'll have work. It's 3pm on a Friday. HE'LL HAVE WORK OH THANK GOD YEAH JUST MEET US TO EAT US. (...Heh. I shouldn't put it that way on the invitations.) 
• He called me his girlfriend about five times last night, just casually tossed off. Three times in public (the Tavern at a local band show we went to hear) and twice during our Choose Your Own Adventure time. I don't care about what we call each other except when the label implies rules. Like girlfriend. And boyfriend. Those mean things.

But you know what's even more intimate? We read each others' writings and liked them. 

"Hey, let's go dance and make the other people uncomfortable."
YES.

Homie, this shit is basic.

Mike called me today.

It was after I woke up at 9am and decided to go ahead and walk to the Food Lion to buy ingredients for a red velvet cake I wanted to make for the senior semester official non-homemade-jello-shots celebration at our editing professor's house and then decided oh what the hell I won't have time in the next 36 hours so I'll go ahead and bake this sonovabitch.

It's not pretty but it gets the point across.

I was walking outside in a flour-covered t-shirt that I hadn't bothered to change because I was going for a run in about two seconds. I hadn't showered and I smelled like vanilla and frosting and had red dye smeared like blood down a forearm. Mike's car glided by and we caught eyes and waved.
That upset me. That made me remember all over again. So I went running.
After, when I was walking back upstairs in my dorm, he called. He said seeing me on campus made him realize we hadn't spoken in two weeks. (Two weeks? That time span sounds odd. But it's true.)
Yeah, I mean...I thought we were sort of going with that. The no-contact thing. As the least painful, least tempting, Jesus-will-approve-and-so-will-our-sanity option.
Now he's coming to my graduation.
That's not as intimate as it sounds; it's a spring ceremony for a public state college and is free and open to the public. A good many people come to hear the speaker and not cheer on some yahoo or another getting a degree.(Hi, Mom!)
But he's coming to see me.
I'm going to meet up with him afterward if that's possible in the chaos. I should somehow explain this to my parents, myself, and Mr. Librarian before it actually happens.
We can haz friendship back now plz?
Oh dear. I'm getting flippant again.

Literature and Star Wars

Star Wars marathon (original trilogy non-special edition, duh) + a mushroom pizza + co-copy editing an English paper for Ed over email + discovering we had articles in the same issue of the student paper in August 2007 = best date so far?
I'm very tempted to say yes.

Old picture but nicely illustrates the nerdy.

His mom watched most of the first movie with us. I'm not going to say that was annoying because guess who shouldn't cast stones from her own parents' house since she's moving back there in a week and some days? Yeah.
But we bonded over what unassigned things we've found in our past English anthology textbooks and Han Solo's bassassery vs. Luke's nobility and I don't know how else I feel about this except  "good." Kind of a generic description, but...good. It fits.

99 problems but this pitch ain't one.

Tomorrow's my last ever day of school ever. It promises to be a calm one in the newsroom.

I'm just glad I passed. That "D" is not my grade (although it's probably damn close); it's my reporting/editing professor's initial. He scribbled this on a blank sheet of tabloid paper and propped it up on my chair when I went down to the broadcast semester's studio. 

This is going up next to the diploma.

One of us does that each week, you know, look in the camera and read the scrolling words we wrote and try to stand up straight while you tell people watching (nobody except us) what's online and in the next issue in 45 seconds at the end of their daily live news show. 

Take an extra second to slow down, get it right, write it out, let your edits breathe. Find the rhythm of your story. Watch the visual grammar of your story structure; that matters too.
Remember that there are many other people and many other things in the world other than the boys you get preoccupied with. With whom you get preoccupied, sorry. Always protect the grammar. It needs your help.
I want to remember all of that.

We the students are having a keg party at one of our apartments (not it) tomorrow night to celebrate our triumph. I'm just glad I passed. I've never been to a keg party, but I like all the other people who are going and hell, don't have to wake up any sort of early on Tuesday.

No produndities, dear reader. Just an ending. I'm ready to get out of here.

Comfy broad.

This is my DNA bracelet. I'd like to present it as a symbol of how things are going with Mr. Librarian: bright, shiny, a little clingy, but it stretches to fit.

Biggest overreaction to a gift: him when I gave him the Gatorade I bought with my meal plan for him while he's recovering from nasal surgery this weekend. He hugged me like five times and then sent me a pun-riddled thank you text the next day at his lunchtime.
Weirdest parallel found so far between him and BF: the floorplans of their childhood houses. They're the same, because BF grew up in the same neighborhood. I didn't get dejavu until I went upstairs with Mr. Librarian and then BAM. I think there's even the same Bless This Home shell-colored framed needlepoint in the SAME CORNER.
Oddest turn-on discovered while snuggling and making out and groping fully clothed on his bed: A tie between whispering in his ear (he got this voracious look on his face and jumped me) and kneeing him in the groin (no, seriously. He told me to try it, so I did. Very gingerly. His face got this melty look that...well, frankly it made me want to jump him in turn.)
 Favorite poem from the poetry reading he invited me to last night: "Truck Driver Jesus."
Geekiest bonding moment: Sharing indignation at our governor's latest screw up. OR noticing how he leads with his chin when he nods and unconsciously doing the same thing while listening to his mom. OR discussing censorship in young adult books and whether that's a necessary thing or not (it's not. They've got to learn about the world somehow. Books're probably the safest way to do that). OR deciding we need more of each others' music snobbery in our lives.
Most alarming use of a word meaning commitment: when he talked about this aunt and uncle of his who always make him feel like a geek. "If they were coming over tonight, I could go, 'Look at my girlfriend! Who's a geek now?' " I let it pass because he was joking, mostly, I think, and he didn't bring it up again.
I'm kind of gun shy about that word right this second.  
But: Best part about last night: realizing we both like each other a lot. I know, BIG SURPRISE ENDING.

Chocolate wine and Twizzlers.

Sudden craving for chocolate wine and Twizzlers means my period's here. Body, you're weird.
Yeah. And heart? Please stop doing this to me. Pick one damn speed and wear that one out before moving on. It's confusing and makes me feel guilty for being happy AND sad at the same time.



AND YOU'RE MAKING ME LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC. STOP THAT.

Drinking alone.

It doesn't really work. It just makes me too dizzy and flushed and sleepy to do much of anything.

I would like to share this bottle of chocolate raspberry wine I bought at Food Lion. I would like to sit on a front porch with a boy and pretend we can't taste the medicinal bite of alcohol under the chocolate aftertaste as we watch Friday night cars glide through the navy velvet night punctuated by orange streetlamps and feel a cool storm-bringing breeze stir our skin and hair until we're too cold and we go inside and lie next to each other on a bed until we slip into sleep.

Maybe if the Librarian's sinus surgery isn't next weekend and maybe if my roommate goes home next weekend, that could actually happen.

He road tripped to Pennsylvania this weekend--something planned months ago--and has sent me a couple sort of postcards in text message form.

April 14, 8:47pm: Started Steven Seagal's Out For Justice with VA pals, wish you were here to hate/love this with us. :)

No way in hell was I ever going with him (he did ask, in a half-assed "You're probably going to say no" sort of toss-off remark), but that does sound kind of fun.
He got into Philly, telling me that and the following as I wandered grocery store aisles, done with my shopping but still enjoying that narcotic soothing rhythm of strolling through shelves of neatly packed things:

April 15, 5:50pm: Name-dropped "Melanie" a few times related to cool things, always with reference to "Melanie likes that too!"
Including to a waitress who tried to talk me OUT of ordering pasta that had mushrooms on it (it was delicious, thankyouverymuch).

 Um. I guess I would be more creeped out if I hadn't name-dropped him in a  phone conversation with my mother about him an hour later. But she needs to know. Maybe. Probably. More than his friends in Virginia need to know, anyway. At least out of sheer proximity. 
My parents have been surprisingly nonchalant about this whole me dating thing, considering how little practice we've all had dealing with it and how very much of an only child I am. 

Abraham Lincoln quality, that.

I saw Mike today, as I walked back to my dorm from the j-school and he walked over to his car from the computer science building. We waved.
That's it. Waved without pausing, either of us, an entire street width apart with no goofy runs toward each other in anticipation. I don't even know if we smiled.
*headdesk that turns into a minor sob*

Tonight was my dorm's end-of-the-year banquet. I bit the bullet (the over-salted black olives) and actually went to the goddamn thing.

It was anticlimactic, as was my last radio station meeting ever. My sentiment's run dry. That's probably a good thing, or at least protective.
I keep trying to remember HEY NOW THIS IS THE LAST ONE as college things start to fall like dominoes, but I just can't find enough poetic nostalgia lying around to care.

You're nice to boys.

Michael, just know that I mourn in strange ways, okay? I'm pretty sure you won't let me bake you a cake.

A day after I made out with Mr. Librarian in the campus library stairwell in between looking for a cardboard life-sized model of a raptor, he called my radio show and requested this song.



This is cute. And fast. Maybe too fast. But we have so much in common he even went to high school with BF.
Mr. Librarian brought it up, as in, "If you were at the radio station then, you must know BF, this kid I went to high school with..."
I would've been completely happy never knowing that.

Side note: I'm glad Ed treasures the Throw Money at Them So They'll Get Out of the Room to Go Buy Sandwiches memory as much as I do.

We'll always want more.

I hate you too, religion. Go die in a bucket.
You've cost me my best friend. You're the reason I'm procrastinating on replying to an email from said best friend that's headed "Dear, dear Melanie"; agonizes about the physical temptation he wouldn't be able to resist if we were together; ends with "We'll always want more"; and is signed "Very depressed, Micheal."

He is completely right and I agree with everything he said, including the part where he said we shouldn't hang out or communicate for awhile. Fuck. Ow. Let's just stop ripping each other's hearts out. That's a good idea.

Wednesday evening I called him to see if he wanted to go see a student union movie on our usual Thursday if I could get Katie to go with us. We ended up talking about--no. We ended up sighing those frustrated little puffy sighs that are just short of screams (at least mine were) at the situation after I wondered out loud if there was any possible way for us to work since we do love each other so much. He asked for time to write down his feelings.
Okay, fair enough.
I read those feelings on a j-school Mac in the vis com lab at 7:45am yesterday. I'd spent the better part of 36 hours alternately mooning over the possibility of finally being able to hold his hand and steeling myself for the exact words he ended up sending me.
It wasn't anything I didn't expect, but it was nothing I hoped for. And oh, the guilt and the shame and the lust and the shame again and...just...ow. Stop hurting him! And me!
He sounded like he hates himself for mentioning this, but he said he'd like to go through C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity with me. While at the state collegiate press association conference thingy my class field tripped up to, I saw a box of discarded books in their student union lobby.

This was one of them.

I liberated it (along with almost-new copies of The Bell Jar and a Flannery O'Connor collection. My fuck, the things people throw away) with the plans of reading it by myself. I already don't like the couple of sections I've scanned, but said scanning was done at 2am under slightly buzzed conditions.
This read may be doomed from its start, but I can try in my own (sober) way and give it enough respect to stay open to learning something even as it guts the happy part of my soul.

That's how I get over the loves of my life--with booze and other people. Blueberry margarita and Ed's friend the Librarian, you are my new friends.

End.

Today, I present you the death of a best friendship in three acts of Facebook messages from last night.

Act I: Hanging Out This Week
Me (10:05pm): Heyo,
Want to hang out Thursday as usual? Maybe food and meandering, if the weather's nice. Possibly a rousing game of Spot the Jorts. That's always amusing.
[Cape] said he'd go see Tangled and [Katie] said she'd go see Black Swan but neither can go until later in the weekend, so we'd have to wait for movie chaperon-age.
I feel like I should say something profound and comforting here, but it's all coming out awkward, so just have a good night.
Mike (10:10pm): Ehhhhhh awkwardness. :-/ Everybody's unfavorite.
Is Black Swan this week at [student union]? I'd be up for waiting for that one. I've wanted to see it for a while.
Me (10:11pm): Yeah, it's the 9pm one.
Black Swan, I mean. Not the awkwardness. I'm ignoring that.

Act II: Awkwardness and Love
Mike (10:16pm): Yeah. Awkwardness, alas, has no timeframe limits.
Me (10:17pm): And it makes me blurt out: Can we not hang out alone anymore?
I don't mean to be dramatic but that would be really depressing.
Mike (10:18pm): Yeah. Agreed. :-/
(10:20pm) I hate that. But I do agree. Plus it would be constantly scratching at the itch instead of getting it to go away.
Me (10:23pm): Clarification needed, please. Hanging out alone is tempting fate, is that what you mean?
Er, not fate, but the itch.
Mike (10:24pm): Yeah, kinda, and it's not like we magically quit liking each other last week. And hanging out alone together would I think just make that worse.
Me (10:25pm): Oh goddammit.
You're right. I just wish liking each other wasn't so...bad for us.
Mike (10:30pm): Darn it all to heck and back. Why can't we have fallen in love with more compatible people...
Me (10:33pm): Because--fucked if I know.
I halfway want to enjoy this but mostly I just want my best friend--that'd be you--back.
Mike (10:34pm): Ditto.
Anyway this is kind of making me sick to my stomach. :( Can we maybe pretend the awkward away? Looking directly at it doesn't seem to be helping.
(10:36pm) And I miss having you as my non-romantic-interest close friend too.

Act III: Ice Cream Time
Me (10:38pm): Yeah. Awkward's gone. What awkward? Exactly.
I think it might be ice cream time over here.
Mike (10:39pm): No ice cream here, sadly. I do have ramen, but um... poor substitute much?
Me (10:39pm): We almost made it. Five more weeks of some good old-fashion repression, and I'd be safely back in [home] and the awkward could die a rather slow but dignified death. Maybe. We could pretend better, anyway.
(10:40pm) Okay, but for real. No more beating on it. That's just making things worse. ICE CREAM, my friend.
Mike (10:40pm): ICE CREAM!
Me (10:41pm): MSG vs. sugar. Hmmmmmm. Oh so different but both oh so tempting. I bet there's ramen-flavored ice cream somewhere in the world. Probably not Columbia, though.
Mike (10:42pm): Japan. All the freakiest stuff is there. We read Cracked, we know this.
Me (10:43pm): HAHAH. Cracked: social ambassador to the Weird East since 1950.
Mike (10:46pm): No, if Cracked.com was our ambassador to pretty-much-anywhere nuclear winter would have set in roughly... *checks founding date* ...2007.
Me (10:50pm):Yeah, I was going off their masthead. But the world hasn't ended yet, so I think you're the right one here.
(10:55pm): On that positive note, I gotta go. Good night, Michael.
Mike (11:02pm): Good night, Melanie.

Fin.
Fuck you, Love.

Yeah, that's the one.

Everything I start to type about last night reads extremely boring and superficial. It might be those stupid Groucho Marx glasses staring at me from the back of my school's student paper.

I rushed through my dinner and sweated through my fundraiser playlist on my radio show so I could go cringe at about a dozen uniquely unfunny masturbation jokes, miss Mike (as in not see him because he wasn't there), and explain to Cape (who didn't wear his cape to perform) that using "spiked" as the punchline of a follow-up to a gay joke got more shocked groans than laughs because it implied S&M.
Watching the stand-up was more uncomfortable than fun because of the flopsweat you could hear as jokes died.

"Why are you so dolled up?" Said with a smile. And hair gel I'm not sure he knows how to use but I wasn't going to call him on it because I'm not sure how to use it, either.
Answer: for him, and for Mike, and for how my hair feels soft and light on my bare shoulders in that dress, and because I wanted to wear my kickass red shoes, and because it was still 85 degrees outside at 10:30pm.
And J, the tiny computer scientist doctoral candidate I know from robotics who likes to wear a giant beard and sunglasses with a checked blazer and the occasional utility kilt hugged me in greeting and told me I smelled delicious. I, uh, guess the new deodorant's working okay then.

I did run into Mike earlier, when we got to my dorm at the same time in the morning for different things (meeting a tutoree, grabbing a camera). It felt normal, especially the part when I punched his shoulder in parting, but it also felt like we're both terrified to do or say anything with more emotional depth than "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"
My brain insisted on opening a tiny box of celebration that has let out all the memories I've stored of Mike for new examination. Look! There, where you thought he was so adorable? He liked you, too! At the same time! Great. That's great, memory, really. Maybe if I chew on you enough you'll give me something useful.

Theories of communication.

I think if me and Mike start communicating exclusively through typing funnies at each other over the Internet and arriving separately at group activities, we might just make it.
Theory to be tested tomorrow. In my favorite sundress.
WHAT? It's not like--
Oh, just FUCK.

Empty symbolism.

It's been five months today. Over done with gone.

And now it's not staring me in the face when I need a shower.

I've moved on to recovering from last night's radio station dance party (I went with Ed and his girlfriend, who seems super sweet and they were adorable, two-stepping to electronica around all the people trying to make babies through their bar clothes on the dance floor, and I just let my body dance however the hell it wanted, and I had a great happy very non-awkward time), waiting for my actions to refresh in Echo Bazaar so I can play through a full set tonight, starting the audio book of Zadie Smith's On Beauty while cleaning out my overflowing desk, and thinking about the shoulder of Mike's black hoodie every time I close my eyes (it's short story research, I swear. Beginning vignette about What Happens at the [Free] Movies. A whole series that will make a million in the very lucrative wallpaper-for-fellow-writers'-cardboard-boxes market).

This has been the weirdest five months of my life in terrible ways, but I'm very fucking glad I broke up with BF when I did. Underneath all the angst (you might have to crowbar up a corner of this blog to see that deeply), I'm positive it was the right decision. *stamp*

On a geeky note, during our serious talk Mike said the reason he hasn't written his side of our fan fiction in LIKE FOREVER is because every time he'd try to write, it'd go in the direction of Echo Bazaar's equivalent of what happened between us at the movies.
Our characters aren't us, though. I thought that's what we were pretending when we started this.
And if we can't touch each other in real life, can we get it out of our systems through writing to each other? How much of a pervert would I sound like if I suggested this?
I won't suggest it. I promise. I just really miss our tag-team adventure writing, full stop, no innuendo meant whatsoever.

To Mike.

Thank you for giving me an excuse to belt this out in the empty newsroom during lunch today. It didn't solve anything, but damn it felt good.



And it's out of my system now. I swear.

Your dramatically inclined handsy heathen friend who is terrible at singing but likes to anyway,
Mel