A Ritual of Cleansing

My Friday commutes have been all Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History lately. His “podcast about things overlooked or misunderstood”. it’s a really fun dive into topics that I’m at most vaguely familiar with. His silly, often self deprecating tone blends seamlessly with some pretty heavy insights and I often find myself finishing the remainder after my commute because I don’t want to stop halfway through.

The concept, reviewing events that people either misjudged at the time or have skewed over the years, is fascinating in its own right. As a pathological overthinker, I do this a lot with events in my own life - look back on things and realize when I was wrong and didn’t notice, or blind to some crucial point of whatever happened. It’s tiresome, honestly, to live in the past that way, dwelling on things that were done a long time ago by a version of me that no longer exists. There’s very little to be gained in all this reflection but a negative self image and regrets. I often wish I could stop, but wishing doesn’t make it happen. So I wonder, would putting these into words and getting them out of my system cleanse them from my late night overthinking sessions?

I mean… only one way to know for sure, right?

Now presenting an embarrassing collection of memories and moments that still creep into my thoughts from time to time. Things that I wish I had done better, or been better, or done differently, or just view in a totally different light given more experience and hindsight. Many of these I’ve never actually shared with anyone. I’ve always struggled to let others see me struggle, or make mistakes, and so sharing moments like this would seemingly break that flimsy disguise I’ve grown up wearing. Airing them out now in hopes that it will somehow exorcise them. Somehow. Maybe. I hope.

Woof. Here goes.

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1) Not Naked Enough

In the middle of my “hot shit on dating sites” stage some 10-12 years back, I started chatting with an athletic freckly jewish gamer nerd. This one was coming on a strong, flirting hard, and started requesting more pictures of me. Then pictures of more of me. After a couple of weeks of chatting, she started teasing taking a big set of sexy ultra revealing photos for me. Really talking them up. First time she’s ever tried this. Big plans. Gonna blow my mind. Eventually she shifted this into an exchange where she wanted something of me too. After all the talk of her plans, I was obliged to play along.

I wound up sending her some photos of me in compression shorts after a workout, with one of just a hand covering myself as a final kicker. She eagerly approved and set to work taking her set for me that was gonna ROCK MY WORLD OH MY GOD. She eventually sent photos of herself in various stages of peeling off a dress down to a bra and panties as she sprawled over and rolled around her bed. And… that was it. PG-13, tops.

So what did I do?

I ignored that she had put herself out there for me, made the effort, and possibly overcome who knows how many insecurities to send them. I told her she looked great, but that I thought there would be more. That I was disappointed that was it, to be honest with ya. Then I faded her. Moved on to the next girl hoping for my attention.

Ouch. I reached out to her a few years later and apologized, but still. Ouch.

2) Rent’s Due

When the college friend group decided we’d go house hunting to rent off campus junior year, everyone was close and it seemed like a great idea. Then my first dose of undiagnosed depression kicked in (before depression was a publicly discussed thing) and I started really struggling. My grades flopped. I had no money and no real job prospects. And the roommates took it personally when I’d stay home instead of going out with them. The other organizer of the group was responsible for collecting rent and started giving me drawn out lectures about finances in his best condescending nasal tone. While he outwardly seemed to be keeping the peace, when I would go out with the group he would get drunk and randomly swing at me on the walk home, like he had wanted to punch me for some time and this was when it randomly bubbled over.

I said fuck him. Fuck them. I don’t need this passive aggressive then suddenly aggressive bullshit. It isn’t a good friend group that’s gonna bail on me, talk bad about me when I’m not up for going out with them, and give me condescending lectures. I still lived there, but I stopped associating with them.

Except… was it really their fault? I WAS late on rent payments regularly, what was he supposed to do? Pay for me to live in perpetuity? Not only did I not work to understand what was wrong with me at the time, but I gave no hints of vulnerability that would have told them I needed support. I would pretend to be OK for as long as I could and then shut myself in my room when I wasn’t. I didn’t give them much of an opening to offer help, and I gave them plenty of reasons to dislike me.

It was the last real friend group I had, and I definitely fucked it up at a time when I could have used the support.

3) Homecoming Queens are Super Impressed by Guitar Hero

I was 23-24 when I learned to take care of myself, dropped 50 lbs, lifted religiously, and went from friend-zoned afterthought to getting noticed and slipped numbers when I went places. It was jarring, and I didn’t really know how to handle the sudden shift. I managed to chat up and get a date with a girl who was, in all ways, amazing. A dream. Smart, funny, smiley and outgoing (homecoming queen), and breathtakingly gorgeous. We met up down by her and spent 6 hours chatting over food and drinks and wandering. There was an exceptionally long hug at the cars, and she mentioned something about wishing we could continue but everything being closed but how far was it back to my place and…. I told her I didn’t want her to have to drive 50 minutes there, but that I’d be seeing her again soon.

Our second date, she came up to visit. We went to dinner. She met my parents. She hung out in my little studio apartment basement with me. And I could NOT pull myself together. I got all wrapped up in my head about her and her upcoming study abroad and whether I was good enough and… nothing happened. We played some guitar hero, because chicks dig guitar hero. I awkwardly asked if I could put my arm around her while a movie was on and she had to tell me “of course, you don’t have to ask that”. She went home and left for study abroad, she sent a few emails while she was away, and then faded. Never saw her again.

I had built myself into someone that women found attractive, and I could be charming initially, but after that all the self doubt from my pudgy friend-zoned past would creep in and I’d stumble, trip, and fall flat on my face before the finish line. While I don’t assume anything lasting would have come of the Cali situation, having nobody to blame but myself for that wasted opportunity stays with me.

4) Pass/Fail

I had made the decision to take a break from college halfway through my second junior semester. Depression was soaring, purpose was lacking, and I was feeling like a failure on most fronts. My ever-supportive Mom had offered to put me on a plane to go stay with my uncle in California for a week to try and take a break from things right after my last stat final. She drove me to UMD, I went in to take that final final, and then she picked me up and took me to the airport.

Or… so I claimed.

In reality, she drove me to UMD and dropped me off where I promptly found an empty stairwell and sat for an hour and a half while the rest of the class took the final. I hadn’t been able to get myself out of bed in the mornings, so I hadn’t been to stat but a handful of times all year. I didn’t know any of the equations, hadn’t learned any of the lessons, and I could even get myself to walk into the classroom where nobody would recognize me to fail properly. So I took the cowardly way out. I skipped it, sat in silence in a stairwell, then walked out to get picked up. That was the final day of my first attempt at college.

5) Her Too

My first ever girlfriend had a cute younger sister. She was known as the cute younger sister among our high school friend group. We would tease my gf about it. She was a known quantity for years.

When I was living in the house at college, the cute younger sister reached out and let me know she would be coming to the same school. We met up and I showed her around some places. She and her friend joined my group for a happy hour. Then just the two of us went out. Soon I found myself in bed with ex’s cute younger sister, spooning and watching a movie. We had been flirting. She seemed interested, but this seemed…. risky.

I needed to play this incredibly cautiously. She had brushed her hair off to the side, and I took the opportunity to hesitantly test the waters. I said something about how she really shouldn’t be showing me that part of her neck, as it was one of my favorite spots. She giggled, pushed her hair aside again and leaned to the side, exposing that part of her neck even more. Wow. So there it was. Ok, well... here we go then? I followed it up with something about how this spot on her hip was my other favorite, placed my hand on her hip, exhaled so she could feel my breath on her neck, and leaned in.

She jumped out of bed in an instant. “I SHOULD GO HOME.” I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I knew this was bad. I tried to downplay the situation. I tried to let her know if was OK to just watch the movie. And it would have been - I had apparently misread what she wanted but that didn’t mean I wasn’t happy just being there and hanging out. But still she insisted she had to go. So I relented. Drove her home, dropped her off, wished her a good night.

I didn’t hear from her for a couple of days. Then my ex girlfriend contacted me. As one can imagine, she was not happy. “My sister told me about how you BASICALLY TRIED TO RAPE her, you need to stay away from her”.

…. I what now? I was stunned. I knew there was a chance at an unhappy conversation, but this was NOT what I was expecting to be accused of. But I was clearly in the wrong one way or another, how could I possibly defend against one accusation while being guilty for the underlying implied accusation? I just shut up. I said I was sorry, and I was. I let her know I didn’t mean to make cute younger sister feel that way, but that I would respect her wishes and not reach out to even apologize. I just fell on that particular sword, knowing the one I had set up myself would get me anyway.

I spent years sifting through the shame, trying to figure out what had happened. Did cute younger sister just lie to get out in front of it? Knew that her older sister would be pissed if she found out the beginning of the story, so embellished and fabricated the rest to seem like the victim? Or did the ex embellish what she was told because she didn’t want me anywhere near her younger sister at that point? Both reasonable assumptions, and I had no way to know.

Then, years later, the Me Too movement hit. And a lightbulb went on.

I had tried to convince her to stay after wires got crossed. I wanted her to know it’s ok, things don’t have to go that direction, that I had just misread what she was interested in. That seemed reasonable, given the several hangouts, the flirting, and her various signals as we laid there pressed against each other in my room in front of a movie.

But what did I DO? Specifically?

I had said “nooooo, it’s okay. c’mon. You don’t have to go.” and I wrapped my arms around her hips and I picked her up and plunked her back down in the spot she had been in befoooooooooooh no…

In my myopic moment of panic when things went wrong, it hadn’t occurred to me how that could have been misconstrued. My intentions were good, but how could she have known that? Regardless of what had happened before, regardless of the tone I had used, she had said she needed to go and the large man she had been laying with told her no and pulled her back into bed.

After years of assuming that I was set up one way or another I realized that, maybe, she wasn’t completely fabricating after all.

6) I Called Veronica “Lauren”

Yup. I did. Just, like, on Tuesday. This week. I thought I had recognized Lauren from a workout two weeks prior. I did not. It was Veronica, someone I had not met yet.

While I recognize this one doesn’t quite measure up to the rest it’s still fresh and how the fuck am I gonna play off going into class Friday when both Veronica AND Lauren are scheduled to be there?

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion…

7) Trumpet and Clarinet

Two moments stand out for me from Band Camp the week before my freshman year of college. The time the senior drum major complimented my tone, and the first time a particular clarinet player marched past me in one of our drills. She was 5 foot nothin’, medium brown hair that was only slightly darker than her tanned complexion. You ever meet someone that just hits you different? Clarinet hit me different. She wasn’t homecoming queen from item 3 beautiful, wasn’t the sort who was going to coast through life charming everyone around her with looks, but from the moment she marched by in that dopey “I’m holding my clarinet up but not playing it because we’re just learning the shapes” stance she was on my mind.

This was, of course, when I was still seeing Ditz, she had followed me to school, so nothing was going to happen. But Clarinet was in the same honors program and same dorm as me. We got to chatting as months went on. Got to be friends. Hung out on occasion. And by the time Ditz and I weren’t a thing anymore, of course, Clarinet was seeing a guy.

Not just any guy, this was a Trumpet player. A 5’1” tall trumpet player from New Jersey. That’s three strikes, for anyone keeping score, and he lived up to all three of the cliches. Loud, in your face, self obsessed, had to be the center of attention in every group even when he had nothing to say or contribute. Trumpet and Clarinet were almost immediately on the ropes as a couple. Some 4-5 months in he was cheating on her openly and blaming her for it. I wanted to throttle the little munchkin fuck for having the girl I wanted and sending her crying to me for support so damn often. But while they were always having trouble or taking a quick break, Clarinet was never single. I was stuck.

Then I started getting the signs.

She invited me to hang out in her apartment with just her and her girlfriend to play cards and drink schnappes on a saturday night. We wound up tipsy, swimming in the fountain in the middle of campus at 2am before the three of us heading back to my dorm where they both ended up in my t shirts and boxers as their clothes dried off. We spent dozens of hours on an honors project - of the group of 6, we were the two working on it together. All the while getting closer and closer. At one point she came to hang out with me at my parent’s house over spring break and we wound up spending the night cuddled up in my garage music studio watching The Last Samurai and wondering if the other was going to make a move. Or at least, I did. But no moves were made. There was a moment in the morning when she went to roll over me to get out of bed where she was straddling me and I instinctively put my hands on her thighs and looked up at her for a moment. She paused in her movement for a tick, looking down, apparently thinking the same thing, before we both moved on. Not yet. Not with Trumpet still lingering somewhere in the background. She hadn’t made that choice. Yet.

That summer, Clarinet invited me to head up and visit her place. We drove up to her sister’s summer camp to drop something off and hang out a bit before making our way back to her parents’ house. We talked on the way there of where we’d go to dinner, but once we got there we never left the room. Chatting and joking and laughing took priority. She had gone out and gotten my favorite drink, and I’m not even sure we got around to cracking that open. We hung out in her room for about 6 hours chatting and then… it happened.

We kissed. I don’t remember how it came about, but we kissed. And it was like both of us were coming up for air after years of holding our breath. Clothes were flying. Hands were everywhere. Over and over, with short breaks spent cuddling up and smiling at one another. Euphoria. Just before 4am she warned me that her dad was about to wake up for work. I dutifully shifted over to the futon on the other side of the room and pretended to be asleep while he got ready. The moment the front door closed, I was with her yet again. More euphoria.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a better mood when I finally left around noon to head home. I was dead tired, hadn’t slept, but Clarinet had finally given in and seen that we’re right for each other. And after two years of wishing she were mine, being with her was even better than I had fantasized about. Natural chemistry. I knew it all along.

I couldn’t wait to talk to her again, so I called her that evening to check in and see how she was doing. Clarinet answered. Barely. She was sobbing. Bawling. Beside herself. She couldn’t. She couldn’t. Only a few words at a time were escaping between her labored breathing.

… oh no.

The whole call lasted about 3 minutes. The only words I could really make out for the majority of it were “I can’t”. Then at the end she seemed to compose herself a bit and managed the following, and I’m quoting because the words have stuck with me ever since -

“Go make someone special incredibly happy.”

And then she hung up. Literally and metaphorically. I never heard from her again. She didn’t answer calls or texts, no response to online messages, nothing. It took me many years to get over that call, and even once I had and tried to reach out online to check in as an old friend I still got nothing back. She completely scrubbed me from her life.

Clarinet and Trumpet broke up some months later, but it wasn’t for me. Would that have been different had we waited? Would things have gone differently had we given it just a few more months before we devoured each other in a 10 hour marathon of pent up sexual tension? I’ll never know.

8) die Verlegenheit

On the topic of bands and college - the honors program I was in, arts focused, produced a bunch of exhibits and shows for the big day on campus when everyone put something together for families of students. Being Muzykmann, I naturally joined in the band option. There was some sort of future theme happening so our show wound up being spacey punk covers. I wound up on lead guitar and lead vocals for 99 Red Balloons, effectively the Goldfinger cover version.

Yeah. The one with the upper register verse towards the end sung entirely in German. A language I’ve never studied or spoken.

I basically learned the whole thing phonetically, just listening to the record over and over. Come time for the show we were in a small room with 15-20 people wandering through and half paying attention. My parents and girlfriend at the time were sitting there, along with one or two other parents. And I did it. I sung the song. In English and German. Mostly away from the microphone.

Turns out that all the the acoustic playing in the world isn’t adequate preparation for working a mic live. In my real time embarrassment for standing front and cetner, all eyes on me, as the lead singer of this little charade I spent about as much time looking at the band around me as the 6 people paying attention. And looking at the band around you means you’re not singing into the mic, which means nobody can hear your flawless German.

Why do I set myself up for these things?

9) *clank*

At one point of my depressed days in college, having already dropped out but not yet moved out, I ran into a familiar face in the gym. Cheerleader. A couple years younger than me back in my high school, her family hand been friends with my family growing up. She had gone on to be a competitive gymnast, captain of the school dance team, and yet another homecoming queen. Another stunner, with an ass that literally made black men in town go “wooooooOOOH my GOD” as we’d walk by. I’m not making that up to be funny. Literally. On several occasions.

Oh. Spoiler alert. We started dating.

I don’t really know how this happened. She didn’t recognize me in the gym, and I made some coy game of it. I asked if she was who I thought she was, she said yes, and when she didn’t know who I was I gave her a hint and walked off to keep lifting. Every couple of sets I’d come over and give her another hint, then walk back and keep working. Eventually she got it. She found me on facebook a few days later and asked me out. Yeah. That happened somehow.

To the surprise of nobody, this was not meant to be. Pudgy, insecure me was not mentally equipped to have this kind of girlfriend. Everywhere we went she’d literally turn heads and I could FEEL the judgements coming at me. “Oh my god, she’s with THAT GUY?!”. She invited me out to the party bar with her entire competitive cheerleading team. I quietly went to Applebee’s beforehand to pregame with several long island iced teas for courage and then wandered over. She looked genuinely happy to see me, even with her whole team there, even with my whatever it is I attempt when dancing, and yet I couldn’t stop feeling like the smiles from her friends were more pitying than enjoying my company. I got through the night, but barely.

The doubts only got stronger. I started noticing her old high school bf’s pictures still around her room. They definitely weren’t together, but she claimed they were just “still close”. I took off work to surprise her by showing up to one of her cheer competitions downtown, and when I got there she seemed more annoyed to see me than anything (I’d later find out that her parents were there, and her parents LOVED her ex). One of the ultra popular guys from HS, the one who always seemed to have a thing for and be making moves on whichever girl I was crushing on at the time, came up to me when I was bouncing and told me about how lucky I was that he had put in some good words for me with Cheerleader. As if he was the reason she chose me. Shortly after she mentioned something about a drinking game at a party with that group once where she had to make out with him and one or two of his friends. I was disgusted, and now I DEFINITELY wasn’t comfortable going to parties with her.

When the inevitable happened, and she came to the house to break up with me after a month or two, I already knew. I cried, and I think it was almost entirely because this was confirmation of my own self doubts, as opposed to because the relationship was ending. Towards the end of that conversation, tears in my eyes, I emotionally asked if I could kiss her one more time. She accepted. I came in hot, passionately, as if the right move here was going to salvage things.

CLANK

I came in so hot that we loudly knocked teeth.

I don’t think she was all that broken up over our breaking up. And I don’t think I blame her.

10) Hook, Line, and Sinker

Bruddah was already plastered. I don’t know how many beers he had had before I got to the festival, but I started seeing the high functioning drunk signs pretty clearly. He had basically elbowed his way up to the front of the shoulder to shoulder crowd waiting for Chevelle to take the stage - just tapping people on the shoulder, pointing at the stage, mumbling incoherently, and plodding forward as the people tried to comprehend the audacity of it - and I followed close behind apologizing profusely, letting people know I was trying to catch up to him, and then nudging past myself. We got about three rows of people back from the stage right as the band stepped out on stage. Good show. Great show. But by the end Bruddah was gone again.

Oh well.

I stayed in my spot, waiting for the next band to come on. It had been a pretty mellow mosh pit, and some idle chatter with the other festival goers ensued. Shortly, a group of three women emerged from the crowd. One focused in on me immediately. Touching my arm. Then my back. Laughing at all my jokes. We were chatting as a group, but she was clearly after something.

You know what? Fuck it. She was attractive. Very attractive. I could play along up to a point. It’s not committing to anything. Flirting with a stranger at a music festival. This is what people do, right?

As the next band started up and drowned out all conversation, I gave her an eyebrow and gesture-asked if she wanted to step in front of me so she wouldn’t have me towering between her and the stage. She accepted, sidled against me to take her place, and IMMEDIATELY started grinding her ass into me. Almost knocked me off balance.

Is… is this what people do, too?

The entirety of that 40 minute set was spent with her grinding against me, rubbing her hands around the front of my jeans, and roughly guiding my hands over her. I had never experienced anything like this. I was playing along, but even in my tipsy state I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought of it. At one point she turned and coyly looked up at me, eye to eye, from a few inches away. I thought “… if this bitch thinks I’m gonna kiss her…” before giving her a playful smirk of my own and looking back up at the band.

You know what? Fuck it. She was attractive. This is new to me, but it felt good to be singled out like this. Chosen, in a way. Grinding on a stranger at a music festival. This is what people do, right?

The set came to an end. There had been a lot of rubbing and grabbing. Oh god, the fuck are we supposed to do now? How does one stick this particular dismount!?!

She turned again, smiled big, put her hands on my chest, and came in real close. Before I realized what I was doing, I was slowly closing my eyes and tilting my head slightly to th…

She pulled away at once, turned off the dreamy eye look as if with the flip of a switch. “Ok, well hey, I think we’re gonna go get drinks but maybe we’ll see you over at the Anthrax set?”

Ohhhhhh this bitch. I reflexively lost a game of chicken that I had momentarily forgotten we were playing.

God damnit.

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You know what? I’m sure I could keep recounting embarrassing moments forever. Honestly, it’s kind of fun typing these out, but at this point I’m having to really dig through my memory for them and I don’t know that that’s the goal of all this. I think, from this point forward, I’ll just include the occasional embarrassing story as a side note in posts when they happen to be on my mind. Rather than continuing this tome, that is.

So uh… yeah. I’m even keeled. I take a thoughtful and controlled approach to most everything I do to try and limit regrets, mistakes, and bungled moments. But boy… have I evidently had my moments.

Woof.

-M