Boomerang
My first real relationship began my freshman year of college with a man we’ll call Alec. Alec was dark and brooding. He was the type of guy who wore a black hoodie with the hood pulled so far over his head it made it nearly impossible to make out any of his features. Yet somehow you could still look at him and know: this is a hot person. He played soccer, was studying “economics,” spoke sparingly and wore beanies even though it rarely felt cold enough for that (#LA). We all had crushes on Alec. He was mysterious and handsome and seemed more like an idea than an actual person.
Alec felt out of reach but it was fun to daydream about him. Entering college with no relationship experience to speak of, fantasy was readily available to me, but reality? That was uncharted territory. One night fall quarter we ended up at the same frat party, which was both shocking and thrilling. What was he doing there? What was I doing there? We’d both been socially swayed, the way one often is during the first few weeks of college. So malleable, until we learn otherwise.
I spent most of the night trying to avoid half full solo cups being thrown/spilled/flipped in my direction. Eventually he and I crossed paths. I waved or maybe it was he who waved first. I wasn’t even drinking that night, just nervous and feeling largely out of place, as I felt inside of every fraternity ever <3
He asked me to dance which felt, bizarre. Not only because we had never shared more than two sentences prior to this night, but also because he did NOT strike me as the dancing type. Brooding and aloof? For sure. Suave and rhythmically inclined? Not so much.
Our “dancing,” if you could call it that, lasted about 3/4ths of a Lil Jon song. He attempted some small talk but it was impossible to hear anything he was saying over the gentle hum of Three 6 Mafia vibrating off the DJ booth. Was Alec making a “move”? Was he just trying to be polite? Was I wearing enough deodorant? I didn’t know what to make of any of it, but I could feel my mind starting to wander to crazy places. Maybe I’d go back to my room and read my horoscope for some overly generalized insight.
It wasn’t until my floormate and friend Rachel came to me with her insider information that things finally started to add up. She had to practically hit me over the head with her intel. “Okay you’re not ready for this.” If she was alluding to the social climate of college as a whole, she was absolutely right. “Chris says Alec has a thing for you. Stop laughing. I’m being DEAD SERIOUS, Steph.”
Chris was her boyfriend and roommates with Alec. A trusted source, but still none of this seemed reasonable. At the risk of sounding extremely Mia Thermopolis, I was shocked to hear he knew I existed at all. But seriously why would Alec have a crush on me? With so many sorority girls buzzing around our floor, far more physically and emotionally available than I, it didn’t seem logical. Perhaps this line of thinking was an attempt at self preservation. An aim to protect myself from the inevitable disappointment and heartache that would soon be ignited by the Pacey Whitter of our dormitory.
Despite this noise, I was flattered. And so deeply curious. How could I not be? So instead of trying to figure out why Alec had decided on me of all people, I turned down the volume on my rational mind for maybe the first time in my brief 17 years on planet earth and just went with it. Within a week of Rachel’s breaking news, Alec and I had begun “seeing each other.”
When you’re a freshman in college, dating is strange. There's virtually no privacy while living in such a communal way. Everything we did seemed to include an audience. A roommate, an RA, a nosy person in the dining hall. Still, Alec was hot and fun to hangout with and we really were enjoying getting to know each other. Most nights we’d walk around campus after dinner, go back to the dorms, listen to music, make out. He gave me that fluttery feeling in my stomach I had only imagined existed until now. I’d finally graduated from fantasizing about this sensation to experiencing it--a true miracle to my late blooming mind and body.
We fell into a routine and it felt nice. He indulged me in watching The OC reruns together and in exchange I would occasionally tune in to “FIFA.” I had put him on a pedestal for long enough that by the time I began really getting to know him, I realized we weren’t all that different. I mean, sure his bone structure was an absolute miracle, but his jawline wasn’t going to take his finals for him. He studied just as much as I did, and this put me at ease. Granted he was far more efficient with his time. Most nights I listened to him play shitty half songs on his guitar while he waited for me to finish my Classics homework. But once you got past his hotness, he was basically just a remotely athletic, nerdy person. Somehow studying Econ, aka math with consequences, never really sent him over the edge. I appreciated his chillness, especially considering I had almost none.
Our relationship was simple and sweet. Our deep conversations were far and few between, but those were never his strength. I realized I was mostly physically attracted to Alec. Still the difference between physical and emotional connection was much more difficult to distinguish once I’d been intimate with him. A tale as old as time!
I suppose in the back of my mind, I knew things between us would be short-lived. Maybe because I was so inexperienced or maybe because summer was fastly approaching. Everything felt like it had an expiration date and I had been quietly bracing myself for things to go sour from the start.
Perhaps he could sense my fear of failure because by the beginning of May, he started to become distant. He began to really take his time responding to my texts, a red flag that would haunt me for many years and relationships to come. He started taking trips to his friend’s house in the Palisades on the weekends, often inviting me as an afterthought once he was already out there with all of his “buddies.” Had he met someone else? The odds of that were pretty high. The amount of girls who threw themselves at him was astounding.
Realistically he was my first boyfriend so like, was he really going to be my last? Unlikely. Still what’s worse than the ominous feeling of someone beginning to pull away? It’s like getting onto the 405 with an almost empty tank, praying you’ll make it home but knowing in your heart that you’ll only make it a few miles before disaster strikes. I could feel our relationship running out of gas.
Unfortunately my paranoia was rooted in some version of the truth because after a blissful few months together, he decided to break up with me on the last day of spring quarter. After I’d already torn my entire dorm room apart. Everything I owned was packed up/in the hall waiting for my dad to come help me roll it down to our white Ford SUV. The car that parents of the suburbs had all collectively decided on that year.
While I waited for the buzz of my purple-cased Nokia to let me know my parents had arrived on campus, Alec made his way to my room. My heinous pink rug still rolled out on the floor, stained with bleach from that one time before finals of winter quarter when I thought it would be a good idea to “give myself highlights.”
He showed up a little meek, hesitant to enter. Maybe because I was blasting Gavin Degraw’s Stripped album like I was getting paid by the decibel? In my “gut” I knew something else was going on. He said he needed to talk which historically is never good (pretty sure this is in the Bible? look it up). My bed was already bare and I was bravely sitting on my bed sans sheets, mattress cover, likely contracting some version of HPV they hadn’t yet discovered. He started out by letting me know he really cares about me which again, means something terrible is coming. I didn’t let him finish his thought. I was too overcome with embarrassment. Plus, my nerves had caused me to develop sweat stains in my unforgiving Michael Stars pink fitted tee. I couldn’t let him see me like this.
I don’t really remember what happened next. I think I tried to form a thought but could feel my face starting to cry, so I stopped. Instead I used my body language to get him out of there (signature move). He wanted to be friends. But don’t they all. As honored as I was to be friend-zoned on the final day of my freshman year, I declined his offer. And as my luck would have it, as I was ushering him out of my tiny space, I heard what sounded like my dad’s voice echoing through the hallway. Was Alec really going to meet my parents under the worst of circumstances? I wanted to leave my body and come back when this excounter was behind us.
Luckily, he fled faster than a cockroach at sunrise. And so my dad was met with a mere “hello sir” before Alec sprinted down the hall to the stairwell as fast as his Adidas Sambas allowed. My dad cracked my door open and gave me a look, somewhere in between a smile and sympathy pout. We hugged before I could truly air my emotional baggage. Instead I cried softly into his shoulder. By the time we pulled away, his Eddie Bauer polo was damp from where my face had made its temporary home. “Sorry Dad.”
When I was little and I’d get more emotional than he was comfortable with (didn’t take much), it was often met with a “there’s no crying in baseball, Steph.” This never resonated with me and often led to more tears. But thankfully in this moment, he just let me cry. We didn’t discuss the details of what happened. Maybe he could piece it together. He was an engineer after all. I wiped the residual moisture from my face and helped him to fill two rolling carts with everything I “owned.” I made the bold choice of leaving my obnoxiously pink, bleach stained rug behind.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I took one last look at my slightly sad, shell of a living space. “No dad, I’m good.” I let the weight of the door slam itself shut.
That summer Alec texted me a few times to “check in.” I barely remember the details of these texts or what had made him feel like reaching out was a good idea. This was before smartphones, when texting felt like you were receiving a telegram or deciphering morse code. “Plans Saturday? Would be nice to see you.” I tried not to read into it. Several weeks had passed and I was no longer so off put at the idea of friendship with him. The sound of hanging out seemed reasonable, mature even! So I agreed to meet up in Irvine (yikes) to hang with him and a few of his friends from home in their local park.
I brought my friend from high school, Heather, who was studying theater at Northwestern and thankfully provided enough personality for the both of us. I was nervous. Did I still feel things for Alec? I did, but I was too overcome with social anxiety to decipher the boundaries of my emotions on the topic. While I pondered the remnants of my broken romance, Heather graciously led us through enough rounds of “never have I ever” and “two truths and a lie” that within a few hours, we were all ready to call it a night. Alec and I hung approximately 2.5 times that summer and it was, fine? I genuinely thought okay--maybe we can be friends.
That fall we received our room assignments for the dorms. I’d requested to be back in the same ten floor building I’d been in freshman year because I had “liked” it there. I didn’t know Alec had requested to live there too. Still, with ten floors and hundreds of people packed onto each floor, what were the odds that we would be even close to one another in that seemingly large dormitory? Well the odds, for once in my life, were in my favor. I ended up getting assigned to the room ADJACENT to his.
It felt like the kind of thing the writers on an MTV reality show write into the script to “spice things up”. But this was my real life and I was not amused. I thought after a few casual hangs I could get away with being his friend from afar, maybe. But this set up felt like we were practically roommates. After examining my new room and it’s proximity to the bathrooms on either side of the hall I realized I would have to pass Alec’s room every time I wanted to use the restroom. Every. Single. Time. I quickly learned this was going to be hell.
At first we avoided the reality of the situation. We would say a hello, sometimes it was just a smize from either direction. Eventually this dwindled down to avoidance. From my end mostly. To be fair, I had been dumped by this person. The first man I had really opened myself up to and here I was faced with our bizarre situation. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle it with any sort of maturity or grace. Being that close to him on the daily felt unreasonable. “Too soon” as they say.
And to make an uncomfortable situation even moreso, just weeks into our first quarter back to school, I discovered he was dating someone new. Not just anyone. She was a 24 year old grad student. 24?!?!?! My 18 year old brain registered this as “basically 30.” What was she doing hooking up with my barely 18 year old ex? She had her own apartment in Westwood--couldn’t they hang there instead of rubbing it in my face 24/7? I could actually hear them having sex. Isn’t that everyone’s biggest fear post breakup? Somehow, this had become my new life.
I used to run into her in the communal bathrooms down our hall. I pretended not to know exactly why she was there. Me, with my hot pink toiletry carrier (remember those?) and her, with her adult looking nightwear and cool looking hand tattoos. Ugh. Who did she think she was? I stood in the mirror brushing my teeth and fantasizing about the things I wanted to say to her. “I hope you get a UTI in the very near future” or “Congratulations on being so exotic looking.” It’s hard to imagine coming for anyone in a verbal attack while wearing a Hello Kitty robe. And so, I refrained. Not really an exercise in self control so much as an exercise in self preservation. She definitely looked like she could murder me with my own toothbrush if given the chance.
After weeks of doing my best to avoid Alec and his new beau, I met someone. His name was Dylan and he was a freshman and an ~artist~. I’d first noticed him because he was the only person I’d ever seen skateboarding on our floor. He seemed earnest and interesting, despite the fact that he was trying to turn our hallway into a halfpipe. We were randomly paired in a cringe worthy ice breaker organized by our RA at the start of the new school year, and from then on we were inseparable.
Our friendship grew quickly, the way it can in college when there’s seemingly endless amounts of downtime and shared space. We spent hours and hours just talking until our eyes fell heavy. He drew me things, he showed me how to work his fancy camera, he slid poems under my door. It all felt very A Walk To Remember. One time he even painted me a questionable abstract painting inspired by the Victoria’s Secret hot pink sweatpants I wore a concerningly large amount of the time. The attention felt nice. Perhaps if it had come from the wrong person, I’d have run. But coming from Dylan, I was flattered and intrigued.
He quickly learned, through visits to my room and uncomfortable encounters in the hallway that Alec and I had dated and that now, things were tense. He stayed out of it and got along well with Alec actually. I tried not to make it obvious how much this annoyed me. Instead I kept my distance, avoided eye contact with Alec’s older lover in the bathroom, and continued to build a genuine friendship with Dylan. It was the first time I felt like I was growing closer to someone in a romantic way, without having the physicality of it all clouding my brain.
I was attracted to Dylan though, don’t get me wrong. He was one of those kids who had shed a ton of weight while going through puberty and hadn’t quite realized they were a hot person now. He showed me his driver’s license one night to prove it to me. It was endearing and perhaps part of the reason why he treated me so kindly? He was a great listener, the kind of listener you become after you’ve made it through something character-building. Perhaps middle school without any friends, a bad haircut that blemishes your precious high school reputation, or even, a chubby phase.
Whatever or whoever had influenced who he had become, I was grateful to know him. I didn’t feel like I was in an unspoken competition with all of the other females buzzing around our floor for his attention. I didn’t have to change my hair or learn French or pretend to be one of those soft spoken liberal arts girls ironically smoking a clove in the backyard of our TA’s houseparty, for instance. Instead I felt like I had little to hide. Not my insanely hot pink pottery barn fashioned dorm room, not my questionable taste in music, not my retainers which I inevitably wore during many late night impromptu, deep conversations in the hallway. Dylan just let me be and for the first time in my brief but poignant time on earth, I felt an inkling of what it could feel like to maybe, one day, be loved.
Before long Dylan and I were doing most things together--long-winded dining hall meals, exaggerated walks to our late afternoon film class, visits to the Hammer museum, hours of pretending to study in our floor’s “study lounge.” I enjoyed our time together. It felt like the closest thing to emotional intimacy that I’d ever experienced. Still I was young and wildly immature and there was a part of me that was hoping all of this was making Alec jealous. I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed what was starting to grow between Dylan and I. Had he come up for air from his affair with an older woman? Who could tell.
Their relationship was constantly being teased in front of my face, like the way shining a light on a wall can drive a cat absolutely mad for hours. Even when you generously show her where the light is coming from and give her a chance to snap out of it, she continues to backflip over her own body and cry at the moving target on the blank wall. Like she has any shot in hell of catching it. She is me, I am her. I think anyone who’s experienced disappointment in love or lust is some version of this cat. My friend Lauren once gave me some unsolicited romantic advice that stuck with me: “However long you guys were together, divide that by two. That’s how long it’ll take you to get over him, Trust me.” As much as I loved a simple math equation, I knew if I kept on as I was I’d be festering in the remnants of my, perhaps superficial, feelings for Alec for much longer than Lauren had specified. I was finally ready to erase him from my brain, but first I wanted to make him jealous.
Activities with Dylan became calculated. It wasn’t what we were doing, but where we were doing it. An intimate conversation in my room became an opportunity to have a public hallway chat. A quiet afternoon spent listening to music and drawing together became a communal affair. I’d leave my door open and turn the volume up on our music and/or the conversation just enough to make sure Alec was part of our audience. If I had to hear him have sex with what’s-her-face, then he could at least be a peripheral part of Dylan’s long-winded unpacking of the latest Wes Anderson.
Eventually though, Dylan started to pick up on my behavior. Once he realized he was a bit of a pawn in my game, I could feel him starting to pull away. It was all too terribly familiar.
He saw through my bullshit. So did Alec honestly, but he was so far past whatever had happened between us you could tell it only took up .02% of his brainwaves. He easily swatted away what I was throwing his direction and kept going. By the time I realized I had hurt Dylan’s feelings and taken advantage of the first good guy I’d really known, he was practically gone too.
Spring quarter was coming to a close and though we still spent time together, things felt awry. Dylan was falling deeper into his art major requirements. He had met a girl in his program and they’d started spending more and more time together. “Kirsten”, a name I already didn’t like. Finals week that spring was torture for me and not just because of my course load and subsquent rapidly fading motivation. I knew deep down Dylan had moved on. And though I loathe this expression, our “ship” had in fact, “sailed”.
Wednesday of finals week was our school’s quarterly tradition, best known as “Undie Run.” An experience I was initially resistant to, but had grown to enjoy for its odd equalizing abilities. Every time I participated I felt like I was having a small breakthrough. I suppose running across campus in your underwear surrounded by your closest friends but also hundreds of strangers can do that to a person. This particular quarter, my group of friends decided to “pre game” “off campus”. Despite our slight falling out, Dylan’s friends were still my friends and vice versa. We ended up at the same houseparty. I “took a shot” which I never do and suddenly had the courage to approach him in the driveway of our friend’s place.
“I really miss you, A.” I cut to the chase, as alcohol tends to allow. He was sitting on the curb, head in hands. It took me a second to realize he was upset and it maybe had nothing to do with me. I bent down to console him. “What’s going on? Talk to me.” He looked up. Was he actually crying right now? Jesus. I wasn’t prepared, but I went with it.
“It’s this girl. We’re sorta fighting right now.” Was he talking about me in the third person? I knew that was a psychotic thing to assume. Of course he’d moved on and for reasons unknown to me, Kirsten had brought him to tears. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on with whats-her-face but it’s gonna be okay. Put it aside for now. We’re supposed to be having fun, remember?” Even I was annoyed by the words coming out of my mouth, but that didn’t stop me. He moved his side swept hair from one side of his face to the other. He looked good. Was he hotter to me because he was no longer the genuinely nice and emotionally available man boy I had met in the fall?
“Dry your tears. I literally took a shot, like a real college student. Can you believe it?” He cracked a small smile.
I leaned in to hug him and pull him up from the curb so we could join the crucial pregaming we’d abandoned. But before I could, he grabbed my forearm and pulled me down towards the cement. Our faces merged and next thing I knew, we were kissing. Making out even. All of it felt nice and familiar. He wrapped his arms around me and there was that flutter in my stomach. The feeling I’d been chasing all year, hoping to recreate out of spite. Whether I deserved that blissful feeling or not, here it was again.
So if Alec wasn’t the gatekeeper to this precious, fleeting high then who was? Could I perhaps be, on some level, in control of my own excitement and joy? I didn’t get too far into this train of thought before I was interrupted by the sound of muffled cheers and shouts. Our friends were packed into the window facing the street, egging us on. I felt both embarrassed and liberated. The tension that had been building up between Dylan and I had finally come to a head. Thank god.
I truly did feel terribly for treating Dylan like second fiddle all year long. But now here we were, making out on the curb. In front of all of our closest friends. Maybe he was using me in this moment the way I had been using him these past few months. And if so, I deserved it.
This felt less about getting “even” with Alec and more about making peace with myself anyway. Surely being neighbors with him post breakup had proven to be difficult. An exercise in letting go, choosing the high road. Neither of which I was able to do in real time. How I’d handle being in the next difficult situation would be more telling than anything. Would it take a few more broken relationships and uncomfortable aftermaths before I learned my lesson? It could.
Would I approach the next breakup with more grace, more ease, more dignity? Would I treat the next Dylan who came along with more kindness and honesty? Maybe being in such close proximity to Alec this year was an odd shaped blessing. It forced me to confront some of the feelings I’d been avoiding after everything between us fell apart on my extra long twin mattress.
I’d been running since June. From the embarrassment that came with learning someone’s feelings didn’t match mine. From the anxiety that defined my fractured expectations. From the very specific feeling that comes with opening yourself up to the possibility of love, the possibility of pain.
Sometimes we think we can outrun our discomfort, our distress, our jealousy, our suffering. Sometimes we may even make it a few metaphorical miles before our tank runs out. But the thing is, no matter how far we go in the opposite direction and how far we think we’ve come, these feelings we avoid--the good, the bad, the blissful, the unrelenting. They’re following us home, they’re moving in next door.
