Friends

My second time I uttered "I love you" was quite different than the first. For one, I didn't initiate the exchange. In fact, I tried to avoid it as long as I could. This guy was in love with me way before I was even truly aware of his existence. He developed a crush on me, according to him, as soon as he met me during orientation freshman year of college. I was mostly oblivious as I was still enamoured with my Conan O'Brien lookalike who was now attending a different college three hours drive away. So I did that long-distance yearning bullshit my entire first year while, in the background, this other guy was developing a devastating crush on me. I was in denial about it for the majority of the year until one night I stayed up until 4am geeking out with him in his dorm room over Drum Corps International (DCI to those "in the know") and Ben Folds lyrics. After that night I couldn't deny his feelings any longer and this new guy became a permanent fixture in the recesses of my mind. He was always on the fringe, just waiting for my relationship to crack. And, of course, the relationship did crack at the beginning of sophomore year of college when I was finally sick of the aforementioned long-distance crapola. The night Conan and I had the talk, I was extremely upset. I somehow procured a bottle of vodka and tried to get my girlfriends to get drunk with me in the dorms. Mr. Fringe caught wind of this turn of events and invited me to his room. My girlfriends, who saw through Mr. Fringe's intentions before you could say "Denial is not just a river in Egypt", offered to accompany me to his dorm room to supervise. I was the only one who drank the vodka while we watched a movie (I can't remember what we watched) and finally my girlfriends were ready to leave I begged them to let me stay, "I wasn't tired". I was all to eager to let a guy who was there, in flesh and blood, shower attention on me. And that he did. He swooped in like a vulture, kissed me that night, and began his drawn-out seduction. It didn't go as he had planned as I was still pretty broken up about Tall Boy. Mr. Fringe got frustrated fast with me, but persevered and soon I was spending a lot of time with him, letting him comfort me and build me up. One night during this time period, we were having a laugh about something--for some reason I remember that my hair was wavy that day and we were sitting on his cliche college futon--and he told me I was gorgeous. When he walked me to my building I asked if he was in love with me and he told me he was, acting shy for the first time. I didn't say it back and I don't remember when I said it back first. But there was definitely an awkward period after that when he was telling me he loved me and got no response. This relationship also lasted roughly a year and a half, but over half of the relationship consisted of me trying to find ways out of it without triggering a suicidal rage.

The last time I was in love, the actually expressing of love was much more romantic than the one that preceded. Though, that is not to say that it wasn't still somewhat fucked up. Ok, really fucked up. This guy had the typical I'm-a-man-so-I-don't-express-emotions bullshit going on. I could tell he yearned to be that man's man tough guy type. He was one of these guys who didn't want to put titles on relationships because, you know, it would put all these pressures and expectations on the relationship. Whatever. This facade was not very convincing to our circle of friends who, a year or two earlier, had found out and then publicly exposed that he was cheating on his last girlfriend with a man. At this point enough time had passed since this incident (by the way, he immediately afterward deemed the relationship with this fellow as a mistake and then made every effort to pretend it didn't happen) and it almost then seemed like it was one of those dreams when you wake up and wonder if that had actually just happened. Despite his repressed bisexuality, I was attracted to him and we had a chemistry that had been steadily growing and becoming more intense over the three years we had known each other. Once Mr. Fringe (I had finally cut the cord with him about 6 months before I started seeing this guy) caught wind of this relationship, he, how shall I put it delicately, flipped shit. He waged a holy war against this new affair and this gave Repressed and I that whole us-against-the-world mentality that brought us closer together. Repressed was still espousing his "no titles" dogma when we started sending romantic emails to each other (to which Mr. Fringe was privy since in his flipped-shit shenanigans hacked into Repressed's email account). In these romantic emails Repressed mentioned that this whole affront to titles was really just about being afraid to be vulnerable with someone and that he was afraid of the four-letter word that went along with it. I ate it all up, though wondering where all this hurt-puppy-dog stuff came from since he cheated on his last girlfriend...with a guy. But I was in love and accepted it. Cut to some weeks or a month later, Repressed and I were making out, I was straddling him. We had music playing in the background. That Frou Frou song about letting go and jumping into things came on and I was suddenly filled with this rush of affection for him. He caught my mood quickly and asked "Are you afraid of that four-letter word too?". Of course I was. I nodded, tears in my eyes. That's when he said "I love you" and it was actually a very nice moment. Unfortunately guy number three didn't work out either. It ended partially over disagreement over where to live (I know, shocking it got that far) but also partially, and secretly, due to an episode of Oprah I watched about midway through the relationship about married men living on the "down low", having sex with men on the side since their wives don't do it for them anymore.