I�d just like everyone to know right now that I�m off the hook! And I don�t mean that in the vernacular, like I�m really fly or dope or such like (although I am -- you can just ask Li�l Kim if you don�t believe me!). Rather, what I mean is that a crisis has been narrowly averted and I can now rake up the bullets I�ve been sweating, and perhaps put them to better use.
Allow me to explain (this might take a minute)(go get a cookie): about three years ago at this time, I had just become involved with a new and eclectic group of friends. Like in any social circle, some of us hit it off immediately and became thick as thieves. My "A" group at the time were my pals Pam, Jen, and Steve. Well, for about a week, the three of them were for various reasons not around, and I ended up making Fallback Friends (you know what I mean) with a rather eccentric duo I came to call Crack and Carny.
To cut to the chase, after a week of hanging out with these two, I became aware I�d made a serious blunder. Carny was a bazaar of issues, running the full gamut from codependency to an overwrought persecution complex, and Crack�well, Crack was a freshly minted seventeen. At the time, I thought this was his only problem. I turned out to be very, very wrong. In any case, he decided in the space of that single week that he was in love with me, and that he could never be happy without me.
Basically, I was in a jam from which I spent the next two months trying to extricate myself. I started getting daily emails from Crack wherein he would profess his feelings for me (and of course he signed them all �Love, Crack�, which was sweet in a Play Misty For Me kind of way, and would have been a lot less awkward if he wasn�t still in HIGH SCHOOL). I also started getting daily emails from Carny, in the guise of Crack, also professing undying feelings and�as I said, it was a jam.
Finally, I told them I was moving, and possibly never coming back. They cried and cried (TWO MONTHS, people! We�d known each other for TWO MONTHS!), and resented me and tried to make me feel guilty about it, and I did a little dance and packed up all my shit and got the fuck out of Dodge as fast I could. I still got regular emails from Crack, and Carny as well until the day she got married to some guy she hadn�t seen in seven years (and I mean the first time they saw each other in seven years was THE WEDDING -- issues people! They had issues!) and fell willingly off the radar.
Crack didn�t fade quite so willingly into silence. I continued to get the periodic email from him, comparing all his various and sundry romantic conquests (which I didn�t ask to hear about, I�d like to clarify) to his sexual fantasies about me (which I also didn�t ask hear about). Eventually, they became less and less frequent, and the last time I saw him in person, he told me all about his new boyfriend, who was about my age and whom Crack had known for two months before professing his love to him (sound familiar?). I believed I was very much out of the woods.
Then came last Saturday when I received a surprise call from Crack, who is in LA for a week, and wanted to come visit me. Obviously, I had the requisite palpitations and shortness of breath, and the sweat came in proverbial bullet form for several days, getting worse yesterday afternoon when he announced that he�d probably have to "crash at [my] place" on Wednesday (today). And then, the clouds parted and fissures formed in the thickening plot, and it all fell through at the last minute. There will be no visit, only relief.
A lot of time has passed, and perhaps he really has matured to a point where things wouldn�t be quite so strange, but I think I�m just as happy not putting that theory to a test. I may have been sweating bullets, but the only one that matters is the one I dodged.
Someone Got Here By Searching For: In the last week, I�ve gotten about a frillion hits from people looking up Lion Distributing. I wonder why? I�m Watching: American Idol, but damn are these kids boring this season. And: 24. I hate to say it, but I�m getting a little tired of Jack�s sanctimony. I love how he gets to bend the rules all he wants when his family�s in trouble, but no one else gets to mess with the rules.