catching up

Over the weekend, Amanda at Pandagon wrote about a Salon article on friendship break-ups.

One of the incidents that is detailed in the article is Kate Roiphe's story about sleeping with the man her overweight best friend was hot for - even though she didn't really like him.

This happened to me in high school.

I spent my first two years of high school at a private Catholic school. When my older sister was asked to not return for her senior year, my parents pulled me, too. So when my junior year started, it was almost like starting a brand new school - I hadn't kept in touch with any of my friends (something that continues to this day, I'm sorry to say).

At the start of the school year, we had standardized testing, and I was passing the test sheets to the boy behind me when I suddenly felt struck by Cupid's arrow - who was this beautiful boy with the soulful brown eyes?

I started observing him. Some would call it stalking. But I didn't have the nerve to interact with him. I knew we liked the same music. He was a frequent call-in guest to a radio show at UCONN that I listened to. I got my first job working at the same store where he worked, and I worked up the courage to start a few conversations with him. He was polite but distant.

I denied that I was in love to everyone, but finally I told my best friend. She gave me some tips (this was my best friend who slept with many, many people) on how to get his attention. But it just didn't seem to be working.

At the end of my junior year, I got accepted at the Center for Creative Youth for their Creative Writing program. So I left school with nothing but a picture of my love object.

Best Friend came to visit me at CCY one Saturday, and she told me that she and my love object had met at a club a couple of weeks before. And she said they slept together. And that now they were dating.

DATING!!!! Best Friend didn't date, she fucked and moved on. I left the room and locked myself in the bathroom stall. Best Friend came in and sat on the floor and wouldn't leave. She cried and told me how messed up her life was and how great it was to finally have something normal like a boyfriend, and that she didn't think she could bear it if she had to give him up. So I just forgave her. I decided it was more important to me to have her in my life than to have him in my life.

Of course, it was so much more complicated than that. It was a betrayal. I held myself in such low-esteem that I didn't really think I could have a better friend than Best Friend. And her own problems put mine into a perspective that, in a way, helped me cope with my own shitty life.