It's shocking, I know, but I had dinner with someone tonight. Less shocking, it was an actual friend of mine who happens to live in Tampa, not someone from the reading. While we were on our way back to the hotel, I was telling her about something I had forgotten about not in an actual forgetting about way but more in the not actively thinking about way, but still it's there way, and now that I remember it in the actual remember something way, I'm going to tell you.
When I was in high school I had one serious boyfriend: Louie, who I went out with from sophomore to senior year. Like most high school boyfriend/girlfriends (I think), we were completely in love, basically inseparable, pretty volatile, and completely insane. After a very long break up process that started in November when Louie called me another girl's name in bed and endured through my forgiving him; us getting back together; my soon after finding out he was cheating on me again, this time with a girl named Cricket who was new to our school; Louie, Cricket, and I for some crazy reason all roasting hot dogs together behind Fairway elementary one particularly surreal night; and some questionable actions with plastic vegetables once in Louie's sister's bunkbed, we finally went our separate ways some time around February or March when I was seventeen. After our final hurrah, I only saw him twice--once when I was with my new boyfriend James and his friends and we went to Denny's and because my life is my life, you know how every Denny's has at least one table with a leaf that can be two tables when it's down but is in one rounded booth? Well, James and his friends and I were seated there in the very same booth as Louie and Cricket, and once about a year later when Glenn and I were at a the same restaurant as he was, and I when I got out of the bathroom, he was at the door waiting to talk to me.
Over the years I've thought about him a lot, less in the more recent ones than in my twenties and the beginning of my thirties, and when Facebook became a thing, of course I looked him up. For years he wasn't there, but one day--October 10, 2014--he was. Well, I thought he was, but there was no picture and he's not the only one with his name, so I sent him a message with one word: Louie? and I never got a response. About six months ago--February 7 to be exact--I decided to look him up again and, lo and behold, there he was, picture and all, the same account I'd sent that message to almost four years before. Now, you know how shy I am, people who read my blog, or at least at this point you should, and when doing uncomfortable things like this involving boys, I'm a character-in-a-movie mess. If it had been any other boy I'd been into in the past, I probably couldn't have done it, but this was Louie for fuck's sake, the person who I'd been so super close to for so long, who I didn't feel intimidated by at all--I mean, by God, it's Louie--so I wrote to him again just basically saying it had been a really long time and it'd be great to catch up.
You know how when you're not friends with someone on Facebook the message goes into a kind of purgatory sometimes that isn't always seen or at least that's how it used to be? Well, that's where my message went. I checked a few times and he hadn't seen it but then one day when I checked, his little profile picture was next to it indicating he had. And he didn't write me back.
Yes, that's right. This motherfucker didn't write me back. Like, we went out for two years and went through some crazy, crazy shit, he's the one who cheated on me, the last time we had any communication--you know, after the time he ambushed me outside a restaurant bathroom--was him calling me, and he didn't write me back? After almost 25 years and a universe of time between anything bad that happened between us, he didn't write me back? I get friend requests from people I went to high school with that I've never even heard of and the guy I averaged having sex with about three times a day for two years didn't write me back?
And he's friends with Cricket?
I'm outraged. Outraged, I tell you! Like, I want to write to him again and be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you seriously not going to answer me back? But I suppose that might be a little insane, maybe just slightly more than linking this blog to his profile, but then again, maybe not.
When I was in high school I had one serious boyfriend: Louie, who I went out with from sophomore to senior year. Like most high school boyfriend/girlfriends (I think), we were completely in love, basically inseparable, pretty volatile, and completely insane. After a very long break up process that started in November when Louie called me another girl's name in bed and endured through my forgiving him; us getting back together; my soon after finding out he was cheating on me again, this time with a girl named Cricket who was new to our school; Louie, Cricket, and I for some crazy reason all roasting hot dogs together behind Fairway elementary one particularly surreal night; and some questionable actions with plastic vegetables once in Louie's sister's bunkbed, we finally went our separate ways some time around February or March when I was seventeen. After our final hurrah, I only saw him twice--once when I was with my new boyfriend James and his friends and we went to Denny's and because my life is my life, you know how every Denny's has at least one table with a leaf that can be two tables when it's down but is in one rounded booth? Well, James and his friends and I were seated there in the very same booth as Louie and Cricket, and once about a year later when Glenn and I were at a the same restaurant as he was, and I when I got out of the bathroom, he was at the door waiting to talk to me.
Over the years I've thought about him a lot, less in the more recent ones than in my twenties and the beginning of my thirties, and when Facebook became a thing, of course I looked him up. For years he wasn't there, but one day--October 10, 2014--he was. Well, I thought he was, but there was no picture and he's not the only one with his name, so I sent him a message with one word: Louie? and I never got a response. About six months ago--February 7 to be exact--I decided to look him up again and, lo and behold, there he was, picture and all, the same account I'd sent that message to almost four years before. Now, you know how shy I am, people who read my blog, or at least at this point you should, and when doing uncomfortable things like this involving boys, I'm a character-in-a-movie mess. If it had been any other boy I'd been into in the past, I probably couldn't have done it, but this was Louie for fuck's sake, the person who I'd been so super close to for so long, who I didn't feel intimidated by at all--I mean, by God, it's Louie--so I wrote to him again just basically saying it had been a really long time and it'd be great to catch up.
You know how when you're not friends with someone on Facebook the message goes into a kind of purgatory sometimes that isn't always seen or at least that's how it used to be? Well, that's where my message went. I checked a few times and he hadn't seen it but then one day when I checked, his little profile picture was next to it indicating he had. And he didn't write me back.
Yes, that's right. This motherfucker didn't write me back. Like, we went out for two years and went through some crazy, crazy shit, he's the one who cheated on me, the last time we had any communication--you know, after the time he ambushed me outside a restaurant bathroom--was him calling me, and he didn't write me back? After almost 25 years and a universe of time between anything bad that happened between us, he didn't write me back? I get friend requests from people I went to high school with that I've never even heard of and the guy I averaged having sex with about three times a day for two years didn't write me back?
And he's friends with Cricket?
I'm outraged. Outraged, I tell you! Like, I want to write to him again and be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you seriously not going to answer me back? But I suppose that might be a little insane, maybe just slightly more than linking this blog to his profile, but then again, maybe not.
... or maybe he's with someone. Someone who might frown on such contact?
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