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.