The Parade of Mistakes

So I have this special talent. Actually, it’s not really a talent and it’s not that special. It’s more of a matter of bad timing. But when I’m out and about, I generally run into people I know. Leisurely stroll, errand running, driving my car around town, you name it. I will bump into someone. And for whatever reason, it’s usually a former lover. College town, home town, current large city, even foreign countries. There was the time a few years ago that I was riding with a friend back to my home city on the highway and passed Junior in his Mom’s SUV, lip-synching with the windows down. I crouched down and escaped his notice. But this does not compare to the Parade of Mistakes.

Back to my freshman year of college. I was ambling toward the gym with a friend, which was a 15-minute walk from my dormitory. First, we ran into Ginger. I averted my gaze successfully. I then spotted my former Chemistry class crush on the way back to his dorm. Our study sessions had ended only in an enhanced learning of the material, much to my chagrin. We said hi and waved. Upon finally approaching the gym, my friend spotted someone familiar. “Effie, is that…..?” I looked at where she was gesturing. Who else was entering the gym but Burger? Of course. I put my headphones on and had the run of my life on a treadmill. My friend and I later dubbed this series of unfortunate men the “parade of mistakes”.

My “special talent” continues to this day and will assuredly follow me to my next destination. Who knows which former lovers, ex-boyfriends, and crushes of yesteryear I’ll run into next?

Ginger and Me

Ginger is the reason I will never date, kiss, or otherwise be attracted to another redhead. We met during the orientation period of our freshman year at college, a time fraught with drinking, making new friends, and not yet having any classes to skip. While I was near the end with Junior, I met Ginger during some evening orientation event. We hit it off as friends, then began hanging out since he lived in my building. This was also my first and last case of dormcest (the act of hooking up with someone who lives in your dorm). Things started off nicely; he walked around campus with me, talking about academics and life, and commiserating with my recent breakup. Then things got weird.

He wanted to see me every night. He tried to attend every party that I went to with my friends. He stole display vegetables and fruit from the dining hall. He showed other freshman males how to do their laundry, then collected the dryer lint because it was good to start fires with (I have the Boy Scouts to thank for teaching him that tip). He was a really aggressive kisser, then became just generally aggressive.

I broke it off after only 3 weeks of hanging out, with even less of that time actually spent “dating” or making out in his dorm room. He did not take it well, as one might surmise from the above warning signs. He tracked me down at some party, where I loudly told him off by the keg, then left in a mix of tears and fury. One night while drinking (ok, “pregaming”)  in our room with some of the guys from downstairs, he knocked. We, being the mature group of 18-year-olds that we were, decided to ignore him. He kept knocking, louder and louder, until we all became fearful that he would call the RA. He made some sorry pleas, then shortly afterward desisted from following me. I still saw him collecting dryer lint from time to time, but that’s why dormcest is so bad. You’re stuck living in the same building as them even when the ~romance is over.

He started dating another girl in our dorm who looked eerily like me, then moved on to her best friend (also in our dorm). Sophomore year, he pulled a knife on her when she tried to break up with him, then got arrested after she called the cops. And that’s, fortunately, the last I heard of Ginger.

my salad days

I didn’t date a lot in high school. Other than a random makeout backstage during play rehearsal, I managed to keep my hands to myself. Since I kept mum about my collective crush on the entire varsity soccer team, my parents hinted that they perfectly fine with my concealed lesbianism. I finally found myself with a debilitating crush on a guy two years my junior at the beginning of my senior year. We’ll call him Junior. We got together by way of a mutual friend and AOL Instant Messenger in September and began our status of boyfriend and girlfriend through innocent hand-holding and makeout sessions on his parents couch.

After several months, things heated up. Think Cinemax late at night, both of us trying to keep our voices down while we had oral sex on his living room floor. We exchanged “I love you”. I was blissful despite knowing the iffiness of our future when I moved off to college. I made it perfectly clear that I was not ready to have sex. Junior agreed to wait, but one night he mentioned that he had some condoms upstairs. I balked and shot him down in a loving tone.

I graduated that June, then he spent most of the summer as a counselor at a Christian camp. He came back to visit in July and said he no longer felt “right” exchanging oral sex. Oh. We walked around my favorite park, having a heated discussion about his sudden interest in religious values, on what was supposed to be a lovely date. There was a lot of crying on my part, and a little on his, but we stuck it out. I moved away to college in August, and caught a ride back home several weeks later to break up with him on what would have been the day prior to our one-year anniversary. It was “mutual” in a way that made me hope for all my future breakups to be mutual. No lingering bitterness, no bargaining or pleading, and no stuff to exchange.

Junior made it out pretty unscathed, as did I. He started dating a girl several months later, and they got married last year. Meanwhile, I just had some ridiculous rebounds that fall semester. A crazy redhead, Gummy, and the older man. Those tales are yet to come.