I’m no therapist–just someone who needs one–but I would think that my insecurity would be the reason why I’ve pushed away any guy that has ever had a crush on me. I live by Groucho Marx’s words: “Why would I belong to any club that would want me as a member.” To be fair, the first guy I can remember having a thing for me was like the bully in “Full House”:
His name was Kenneth and he told me would blow up the school if I didn’t become his girlfriend. This was a lot for a kindergartner to handle. I held strong on my denial of his request and and luckily, so did the bricks of our elementary school during that horrifying explosion (I’m kidding). Then there was this smelly, heavy-set kid who liked me in 4th grade. It was Halloween and we wore our costumes to school. I must have phoned it in that year because I wore my weekly ballet uniform, a black leotard and pink tights; the art teacher asked me to model which entailed me standing on a table as the class drew pictures me. It was weird, but not as bad as the next day when she asked me to do the same thing naked. I said no and my lawyers were notified. In all seriousness, the non-naked modeling part was true, and I remember being creeped out after Smelly McFatty would not take his eyes off of me, appreciating my toned 9-year-old legs.
In middle school I debated in my journal the merits of going to the local carnival with the guy who had asked me to join him on the Gravitron for who knows what. I may have dodged a bullet on this one though, because he ended up banging someone’s mom while we were still in high school, and I did not have the breasts to compete with a cougar.
In high school there was my best friend who molded himself into the role of my non-sexual boyfriend. We spent every weekend together and countless late nights fully dressed on my bed. I refused to entertain the idea that we could become anything more, no matter how hard he tried. Or another perfectly eligible bachelor, whose desire to invite me over to watch movies with him turned me off. Hello, who wants to watch a movie on a Saturday night with me when you could hang out with our entire grade in the parking lot of 7-Eleven? Then, there was the guy who would draw caricatures of me while he sat behind me in class and when I would ask him to stop he would reply, “don’t worry about it.” He also knew everything about me including the fact that I had an inside joke with my friends where they called me Joan. This was the card that he left at my doorstep.
Oh yeah, he also knew where I lived, my license plate number and probably my social security ID.
In college, a friend who I know liked me asked me to his formal at a hotel in Baltimore. I did my part as the perfect date: drank too much, fell asleep while on the toilet in the hotel room, and then puked over the side of the bed. The fact that he didn’t take a photo of me to share with his fraternity seemed insane. You have a girl passed out on the toilet, one breast exposed, pouring over her dress, and you don’t snap away? What, do you respect me or something? Weird.
No, I instead crush on the unavailable, the guys who don’t actually care about me. Like the guy who I offered a toothbrush to, implying it was for the next morning, and he instead pocketed it and took it to go. Or the guy I was excited to finally… you know… (sorry my grandparents read this) only to find out through StalkerBook aka Facebook that he had a long distance girlfriend.
Let’s hope that in this next decade of my life, there is still someone out there who may find me worthy of their affection. Because I know I was given many chances in the past that I let my insecurity squander.