Over the last several years I have had the "opportunity" to go on dates galore with people who I met in various walks of life (read: met online). There was a time, though, when I wasn't so desperate for a boyfriend and all I wanted was a casual make out here and there and maybe a fun person to hang out with. (I'm gonna need you to refrain judgement...it was college.). I talked a big game about how I wanted to find Mr. Right and how I wanted to fall in love and yadda yadda yadda, but in reality commitment scared the bejezzus out of me when I was 19/20 and was the last thing I wanted. One summer, I accidentally found myself in a semi-serious relationship. (Yes...accidentally.)
The summer after my sophomore year at UMD made me feel like I was hot shit. I had a sweet managing job at a fancy chocolate store in the mall (total babe magnet...) and I was also working at the gym on campus a couple days a week. (I have not missed the irony that I worked in a chocolate store and a gym...) I, too, find it odd that I worked at a gym in college. For someone who loathes working out and sweating as much as I do, I spent more time there than my own apartment some weeks. Then again a lot of my life decisions don't have much rhyme or reason to them...if they did, I probably wouldn't be writing about all of this to you.
Anywhoz, the days I worked at the gym that summer I would stay down in College Park with one of my straight male bffs (remember, I was the anti-gay gay). We would drink the night away with Kentucky Gentleman and play guitar hero (these were some of my straightest acting nights of all time). But there were random days over the summer, mostly clustered near the end, where he wasn't available and I needed to find another place to crash for the night. That's where Drug Dealer #2 came into play. (I was attracted to danger, assholes, not to the drugs! I'm clean as a whistle!)
Drug Dealer #2 and I met right before Winter break my sophomore year in the residence halls. My NJ Bffl introduced us on a whim and I thought he looked like a wretched degenerate with stoner eyes. (Ahhh true love). He had this long greasy hair always tied in a pony tail, wore these God awful beanies, and always looked like he had clothes that were meant for a 300lb man (he was tops 130...hey jealousy). I was thoroughly unimpressed with him, and the only thing he had going for him at the time was that he was straight. (Burn the gayzz! Seriously, I had an odd amount of angst for gay people. Yet I was all about being an activist....don't ask)
(Why yes this is the odd man who dated Mischa Barton and exposed his ballz to the world. Apparently he is a pop artist now. Drug Dealer #2 had this type of hair. blech)
I honestly thought nothing of him, that is, until he walked back in the doors from break looking like a completely different person. Drug Dealer #2 used his Winter break more productively than anyone else I had ever met. He cut off his hair and left this sloppy, yet perfectly placed, hair do. He got form fitting (even tight!) clothing and he shaved off his sorry excuse for a mustache (Seriously...I felt like I had walked into a 90s porno when I met him...). I literally didn't know it was him as he walked to the elevator and waved at me.
(Why yes, he did end up looking like late 90s/early 00s teen heart throb Chad Michael Murray. And yes, I did have a massive soft spot for CMM...especially when he was on Dawson's Creek. Facts)
I was in shock and all I wanted to do was retract all of my previous statements about him and jump into the closest twin sized bed with him and find a way for two men to procreate. (Is it impossible? Yes. Would we ever stop trying? Hellz no!). I, somehow, weaseled my way into a random invite to hang out with him and some of his friends a few days after getting back from break. I spent the whole time making them laugh, which wasn't terribly hard because they were blazed and everything was funny to them. It still made my ego inflate three times its normal size (little victories..) and as I was leaving their room, Drug Dealer #2 pulled me outside to chat.
Drug Dealer #2: Hey, so that was the most fun I've had in awhile. We should definitely hang out more, here's my number.
Me: Yeah totally, so much laughter. Uhhh ok well I just texted you so give me a call when you wanna hang out again.
Drug Dealer #2: Oh, I don't do that. You can call or text me when you want to hang out.
Me: Excuse me? You don't do what?
Drug Dealer #2: I don't contact people, people contact me.
Me: Oh, well, good luck with that. I'm gonna wait til you text me now...so maybe see you never?
Drug Dealer #2: Wait, are you serious? Thats fuckin' dumb. Just text me later I wanna see you.
Me: I think I will wait it out. I don't need rules for having friends.
Yup, that happened. No matter how much you resemble my high school love fantasy, I am stubborn as a bull. I was very turned off by the cockiness of this man/boy who had just recently turned into hotty mchotterson.
So I left and had no plans of talking to him again. Three days later I get a call from him around 11pm, to my general shock and awe.
Drug Dealer #2: Look, I don't do this and I'm not sure why I'm doing this now, but come hang out with me
Me: Ohhh looky looky, you've decided I am good enough to contact. I am oh so pleased, I will have to ring my parents to tell them of this wonderful moment. (there is a very real reason I am still single...)
Drug Dealer #2: Fuck, Fabulous, just come upstairs. I just really want to see you.
I literally had lost all the sassiness I had built up for this moment I wasn't even sure was going to happen. My jaw had hit the ground and I wasn't completely sure what to do with this weird new friendship that was about to begin. Drug Dealer #2 was dating another one of my friends at the time, who came with her own set of baggage, but she was very in-tune with the LGBT community. For some reason she used to tell me all the time that she thought Drug Dealer #2 was into me, but she wasn't perturbed by it at all...(like I said, she had her own baggage to worry about).
We had this friendship that confused the masses because he was such a big druggie and I wasn't into any of that at all. He would drop acid with his friends and then I would join them later and mess with them. (My favorite thing to do was tell them that the floor was the ceiling and the ceiling was the floor. I made one of them cry when I did that....little pleasures). While I had the initial attraction to Drug Dealer #2, after he had said all the stuff about not texting people to hangout I had lost most of that and thought of him purely as a friend. (A weird, drug dealing friend who drunk dialed me most nights...)
So, back to the original point, Drug Dealer #2 was my back-up apartment to sleep at when I couldn't sleep over with my straight male bffl. The second half of the summer it turned into at least one night a week over at Drug Dealer #2's apartment. At the beginning we would go out with a group of people, then it turned into only a few of us, and after a couple weeks Drug Dealer #2 was telling me he didn't really want to go out anymore. He asked me to stay in with him because he was going to try and stop drinking as much. (I pointed out the continued pot smoking, but that didn't seem to phase him). I agreed to stay in with him at least one of the nights I was in College Park.
Over the next few weeks, he began planning dinners for us in DC and finding movies and things for us to do. He was also doing all of it completely sober without any sort of drugs in his system. I thought I was really helping in turning over a new leaf. My friends began asking questions about the situation and implying that there might be something else there. I shot all of them down because I knew all I was doing was helping someone. Then I had a very real conversation with my best friend from elementary school.
Elementary Bff: You do realize you are dating him, right?
Me: Poppycock! I have no connections. I am free as a bird.
Elementary Bff: So what do you do with him when you hang out.
Me: We enjoy nice dinners in DC, go to museums, sometimes catch a movie or a play
Elementary Bff: And who pays?
Me: I...I mean, well, let me think about it. Uhh..you don't really pay for museums.
Elementary Bff: Don't be a tool
Me: I guess he pays for it, but I do drive alllll the way down here from home.
Elementary Bff: Yes, you drive down here to work and get paid. Paid money you don't ever have to use on the dates you go on with your Accidental Boyfriend
I didn't want to believe it but the facts were all there. I was just fooling myself into thinking we were just bosom buddies. (I hate myself for typing that...but I am going to leave it just the same). The thing that I left out of telling most of my friends is that when I would sleepover, I always slept in his bed and we would cuddle. Literally...just....cuddle. (I KNOW...I mean...I am really good at suppressing thoughts if I don't want them to be there). I had cuddled with straight male friends in the past so it wasn't that far off, but I never cuddled in bed with them. Ugh...I know....bad right?
There were still a few weeks left in summer and after all of the chatter between my friends, I had decided that I still needed a place to stay. I also wasn't opposed to free DC dates and a good cuddle with my high school imaginary t.v. lover. (I still hold a flame for Chad and hope he makes his comeback soon...). I decided to suppress any of the thoughts about me and Drug Dealer #2 having this pseudo-relationship and thought about trying to discuss it in the fall, once I had moved into my apartment, one building over from him...
When the school year began my life was a little overwhelming. I was taking 18 credits, working 2 jobs, an internship, an executive member of 3 clubs, and trying to maintain a social life. (I would call myself an overachiever but all you have to do is look at my transcript to know that wasn't the case). That first semester of junior year was extra brutal on me, and a lot of friendships suffered. One of the relationships that suffered was the one with Drug Dealer #2. He had been one of my only focuses over the summer and now I barely had time to talk to him on the phone. I tried to see him but life got in the way and after the first 3 weeks of the semester I began receiving drunk dials and voicemails.
He would rant about how I didn't care about him anymore and how I had found new people to see. He would ask me if I still thought about him and if the summer meant anything to me. The next day I would receive a text or call apologizing and asking for a reminder of what he said. (Why yes, this does sound like the fight of two people who were in a committed relationship. No, no I never made an official commitment...confuddled.) This went on until November when he texted to let me know he was going to delete my phone number, which was good for me because I had started dating someone seriously a month or so prior.
I was going through a break up for a relationship I barely knew I was a part of. The following year we ended up having an illicit affair after my serious relationship ended. Drug Dealer #2 then disappeared into thin air when college ended. He deleted his facebook and stopped contacting everyone he was ever friends with, including me. I found him a few weeks ago on the internet....he works to help birds migrate south for the winter. (I didn't realize they needed help...you know since its instinct. At least its a job?). I would go on to have pseudo-relationships with a couple other people, completely oblivious to the fact that they were relationships. This will always be my ultimate Accidental Boyfriend.
Fabulously Lost: Deaf, dumb, and blind.
Drug Dealers: Real fixer-uppers. My specialty
Friendz: Usually right about your effed up life
Kentucky Gentlemen: My true life long friend....
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