Heap of Crap

Last night I dreamed about Philip, and the dream was so vivid, I've been thinking intently of him all day, and nearly emailed him. We're still in touch, though sporadically: even slight contact with him and I start getting all angry and upset again, even though it's been nearly twenty years since our relationship. Well, "relationship."

In the dream, he was at his best: we were walking around town and he was warm, loving, gentle, kind, sweet, wearing his trench coat, squeezing me and nuzzling my ear and whispering, "I just love you love you LOVE you." When I needed a fake name for something, he gave me the pseudonym of Mrs. Davison---his last name.

Philip and I knew each other in high school. He was like a celebrity: so confident, so funny, so comfortable with everyone---and kind of unpredictable with women. He was rumored to have dated a cover model, a Playboy bunny, twin porn stars---but at our school he would date the sweet, nice, smart girls and also the really messed-up, damaged, non-smiling bad girls. And pretty soon the sweet, nice, smart girl would be crying in Algebra, and her male friends would be looking broody and like they wished they were Tough Guys instead of Nice Guys. Or the messed-up, damaged girl would be out of school for two weeks and come back looking exhausted and stringy.

My boyfriend and I had a very bad break-up right at the beginning of the summer following my junior year. Very bad. The kind where I lost my mind a little and threw my packet of birth control pills at the new girlfriend. I spent that whole summer with a group of nice, geeky, Klingon-speaking, non-threatening boys. There were five or six of them plus me, so I was the adored pedestal girl. I wasn't at all attracted to them, and they were ALL attracted to me---but in the overly-chivalrous way of geeky boys: I was too shining, too marvelous for any of them to do anything but fall all over themselves to impress me and prove the purity of their love for me. Oh, it was a lovely, lovely summer, and just what I needed after a humiliating heartbreak.

Philip was friends with some of the guys in this group, and so sometimes he came along. He treated me in a totally friendly way, not at all flirty. I don't know what happened to change this. Actually I think I do. Philip's good friend Jason became interested in me, and started leading up to asking me out. I think that's what caught Philip's attention. He called me and invited me to come over to his place. (He was the only 18-year-old I knew who had his own apartment.) He said he'd teach me to drink: I'd said once that I never had, and that I didn't know how.

It's very embarrassing to me to admit that I completely believed him. That is: I thought he was inviting me over to teach me to drink, and that he thought that would be fun. I thought he was still regarding me in the same platonic way he had been. I seriously didn't suspect anything else; plus, he had a girlfriend. That's what a naive dumbass I was at 17.

I was going to go into detail here, like about how he took my glasses off, like about how he said, "If I ask you very nicely, can I kiss you?" Like how sweet he was, how all his loud funniness was switched off and he was so nice and so affectionate and so gentle. How I felt I had been completely wrong about him.

But it turns out that it's too unpleasant and mortifying to go into that kind of detail, so let's skip to the end: I didn't want to put out, and was in fact shocked that he thought it was a possibility on what I was redefining as a "first date," and when it was clear that my decision on this was serious, he completely switched off all the kind/gentle/loving stuff. The lights went on and the music went off and he was saying, "I'll let you go now---see you around," and he was dialing his girlfriend on the phone and asking her to come over, and I couldn't find my shoes, and I'd had four shots of vodka on an empty and completely inexperienced stomach, and I had to drive a mile and a half home and I was really, really sure I shoudn't be driving but there was NO WAY I was calling my parents.

I was totally confused. I didn't know what had just happened AT ALL. I thought I'd hurt his feelings, or that he was embarrassed to have tried to take things too far, and that maybe he was calling his girlfriend to break things off with her, and the next day he'd call and we'd continue on our new relationship. *cringe* Even though I know a lot of people have gone through that same thing, it still makes me feel stupid to remember it.

Years later, Philip got back in touch. He acted totally casual, like we'd always been just good high school buddies. Finally I broached the topic, expecting him to say something like, "OMG, I was such a jerk at that age!" Instead he claimed that he had sent me home because I was too wonderful and too perfect, and he realized he'd ruin me and not be any good for me, and so he wanted to protect me. Awww. Doesn't that sound GOOD? Do you think he's convinced himself of that? Or does he know it's a heap of crap? He sure was hurt and offended when I said the thing about it being a heap of crap.