You Can't Spell "Unrequited" Without "Quit." ... Or "Quite" for that matter.

Sandra chose unrequited love.

All the devils in the world couldn't think up a more painful thing than to be in love with someone who doesn't love you back.
-- "Hollow Room" by Of Montreal

One of my nicknames when I was at UGA was The Boy Who Cried Love. No one could keep up with my fleeting infatuations, and while for a time, they were numbered, I have long since abandoned all hope of cataloguing them.

While my memory of most of them has faded, I still remember Matt.
::sigh::
Matt was the Gay Boy Next Door. Just so cute and friendly and self-effacing in this old-fashioned, almost Jimmy Stewart, "Aww shucks," way that only made him more attractive. Brown hair, thin, and with this voice that could make me shut-up -- content to listen to him. Especially if he were angry at someone because the most he could muster up was, "Grrr, Jon! I can't believe he stuck me on this committee."

I think maybe Matt was a bit too nice to the point where he was incapable of saying "no." He met me for drinks at Wild Wing for 2 Dolla martini night ("That's so great a deal, you could get drunk just off the savings," I always said) and told me he had to run, that he'd been assigned DD that night, and he rattled off a long list of names.
"They're all fitting in your car?"
"Yeah. And none of them live close to anyone else."
"You're like the gay soccer mom."
Then, he vented about Lambda, the UGA gay student union.
"You should just stop going."
"I'm an officer."
"Then you should definitely stop going." I paused for a sip. "I'm going to be a bad influence on you."
"You are."
woooooooooo
I tried to get him to tell some stories since I liked listening to him and also because I was afraid I had been talking too much -- third martini and all -- but he demurred. "I don't have any. I'm so boring. That's why I like talking to you."
::cue second Saved By the Bell audience noise::
"Well, thanks, but I don't believe you. Everyone does. It's just a matter of perspective."

The gay club in Athens was called Boneshakers, and I met Matt there a few times. We would dance and kiss, and Matt would... press against me. Although now in retrospect, I'm scared to death that maybe it was all my imagination, that Matt just felt obliged to go along, and I couldn't see it, that my physical reaction was an over-reaction just as one-sided and unfounded as my feelings for him.
Matt eventually wrote me apologizing for the misunderstanding. "I can never tell when people are interested in me" -- a statement I wanted to find suspect, but maybe he was right, and it had all been my imagination. He went on to say that he was very happy with the guy he had started dating.

Matt and I had a mutual friend named Barry. He was my lack-lustre disciple ("I rue the day I lured him away from his lucrative fishing job.") since he said he wanted to be like me when he grew up, and he was Matt's best friend.
Barry and I talked about the whole mess one night.
"Matt said you and he dated for awhile, but it didn't work out."
"What? When are we supposed to have dated? What is he talking about?"
We eventually sussed out that he meant the Boneshakers interactions.
"That doesn't count as dating," I said. "Nothing was bought."
Pooor Barry. He had a crush on me, but I didn't return his feelings. Oh irony! You are a stitch!
One night, Matt, some guy named Lysander, Barry, and I all wound up lost in the woods. I won't bore you and relate the full adventure this time, but suffice it to say, it was a wild night with Barry's head being replaced with that of an ass at one point. Hoo boy.
"The course of true love never did run smooth," became our inside joke. All one of us would have to do was say that, and the others would just laugh and laugh.

So yeah. I still saw Matt, and we would talk in the gay office, and I was civil to his boyfriend.
Ugh.
Matt was dating Nick. Now, I may be horribly biased, but I found Nick to be just another in a long string of poor dating choices Matt had made. It's like he felt he didn't deserve happiness and must first whittle his way through every reprehensible gay man in Athens before dating me as though he were wearing some kind of dating hair shirt or something.
I wanted to tell him, "Baby, you don't got to be that way. I love you fine the way you are."

Nick had a voice that reminded me of the Charlie-in-the-box from the Island of Misfit Toys especially if he got excited about something. I was hemmed in the Lambda office -- where I went to help myself to their free coffee -- when Nick went off on his tirade against salad.
"I hate vegetables. And a salad's just like, 'Here. A bowl full of vegetables.'" This went on and on.
He also went through a phase where every day he would come into the Lambda lounge and sing songs from The Little Mermaid.

And apparently, he wasn't even a good boyfriend.
After talking I saw Matt at Boneshakers out back in their patio area.
"Will," this very breathy, relieved sigh. He put his arms around me, kissed my neck. "I'm so glad you're here."
My mind raced.
And then, I pulled back from him. He was drunk. He was drunk, and they'd had a fight.
"Nick and I are arguing," ha! called it. I win! I am at least consistently plan B. He shook his head. "But I... but I just need to learn that it doesn't mean anything if he makes out with exes. It doesn't mean anything when he makes out with girls, does it? Why... why should it be any different with guys? I'm just... I'm just being silly and drunk."
Oh my word! No you aren't. I cannot begin to tell you how right you are. Is Nick a wizard? How does he get away with that?
Nick came outside after -- I guess -- making out with several people. The two had it out and then made up.

But yeah. If Matt was happy with Nick, I should respect that and move on.
And I did.
I had several other ludicrous crushes and bad dates. Graduated. Moved back to Conyers. Moved to Atlanta. Started the job at the firm.
One day, I received an email from an old UGA friend named April. She was going into the Peace Corps and was having a going-away Sunday lunch at an Olive Garden back in Conyers the day before she left for Niger. I of course agreed to see her off.
I was the first to arrive, and unfortunately for April, she let slip that Matt and Nick had broken up. So while I tried to be respectful and ask questions about Niger and April's preparations (she had to learn French in two weeks and then a mystery language once she was given her assignment. See? I paid attention.), I also steered the conversation back to Matt. Probably something like this:
"Really? That's so interesting. Blah blah blah. You have to sleep amongst goats. Now you say Matt broke up with Nick? That is so intriguing. Oh you you you. YOU'RE going to the poorest nation on Earth. And you go on to say that Matt is living in Atlanta now? This has been the most edifying conversation I've ever had with you, April."
We had to stop because Nick was meeting us for lunch, too. A few of us had salad, so we got to sit through Nick's spiel again.
During the lunch, April regailed us with tales of Niger.
"If you're a guy, they tell you not to pee in the lakes because there are parasites that can swim up your urine stream."
"Nuh-uh," Nick said.
"No, really."
"Nuh-uh."
"No, there really are. They swear."
"Nuh-uh."
This. Went. On. Forever. I thought I would take my salad fork and stab him with it.

I told my then-roommate Chris -- who was like an older gay brother: we teased each other a GREAT deal but also looked out for one another too. He persuaded me to write April -- a scant twelve hours before she left the continent -- to ask for Matt's number. I think he did that partly for his own amusement, hoping it would blow up in my face.
I did such a snow job.
"You know April seeing you and Jon and Rosanna and Nick reminded me: I have been too lax with the people in my life, content to let them slip through my fingers. I thought of your Halloween parties and that time we all got together and watched Labyrinth. (I wish Jeff could have been made it out today.) I decided I would do something about it. I need to get updated contact information for everyone, and I know you are obscenely busy packing and double-checking everything, but you are such a talented coordinator. Would you happen to have the cell number for Matt Stephens? I think he's the only one in Atlanta right now. I'll start with him."
Oh, that was smooth.
So April wrote back with this knowing one-sentence reply email. "His number is __________."

We met up a few times. We got some coffee, and Matt shared that he'd dropped out of college and was just kind of adrift right now and a little depressed.
He came over to my house, and we tried the wretched home-made Mr. Beer that Chris had created.
"Oh my God! This is terrible," Matt said.
"It's like watered down Kool-aide that is slightly beer-flavored," I agreed.
"They're trying to teach me about beer at work." Matt was working at Gordon Birscht or whatever in downtown.
A few other slight adventures, and ... I knew I shouldn't. I knew he only wanted a friend, and in fact, he may even have told me so. I don't remember. But I convinced myself that I wasn't sure. I was too committed to the possibility, to the potential story that maybe he did love me.
So one night, when we were at my house, sitting on the sofa, I just reached out and put my hand on his knee and then quickly withdrew it. Matt excused himself shortly after that. Instead of hugging goodbye as we had been doing, he only waived. The next day, I tried to call, and the number had been disconnected.
"It's been disconnected?" Chris said. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything."
"Call his number."
I did. "'We're sorry. The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Message Fifty-Two."
Chris laughed. "Have you called fifty-two times, Will? Is that what that's about?"
I saw Matt only once after that when I was with a group at Gordon Birscht, but he pretended not to see me.

I suppose that's kind of appropriate since unrequited love is all about willful blindness. It's a stage-four infatuation where there's not only some temporary physical attraction that will disappear as soon as the other person opens their mouth but a personality that seems to compliment yours. And so you construct a story with an inherently faulty narrator, with a huge perception discrepancy by definition but a universality as well.
Except Nick is just a poor boyfriend choice. If you don't agree with that, you are just plain wrong, and there is nothing I can do for you.

Help Wanted

It was a good job, great even. Despite my skepticism, there were customers aplenty -- so many that once or twice I had to turn requests down. The pay, as I've noted, was more than fair, and it quickly became clear that I could supplement it by lifting the odd item or two after I had, so to speak, put the subject away. This didn't always work out, of course. Sometimes they didn't want to stay dead. One guy, who I'd done in good with an aluminum-handled garrote, woke right up and wanted me to have a beer and maybe watch the game. In spite of myself, I found this a little strange, a touch supernatural, as if, while we were sitting there watching the plasma screen, I could see through him a little, and I didn't stay long. Another, a chipper woman who told me her friends had gotten her a murder for her thirtieth birthday, started plugging me with questions befored I'd even gotten started, like about what I did in real life, what kind of music I listened to, whether I thought the murder thing was stupid, distasteful, "and/or kind of cool" (and/or kind of cool, I said), if, maybe, when we were done I'd like to take some x and "see what happens."

-- The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

Dead Inside

Kara chose jobs.

After graduating from UGA, I worked at Ghetto Discount Pizza as a delivery boy. It was not my first choice, and I finally resorted to it after no restaurant would hire me as a waiter. Admittedly, I am horrible at filling in applications. I start out going, "Ok. I'm going to take this seriously while not being bland in my answers."
That plan never works.
I tried lying, but then I just sounded like Coach McGurk when he was scamming his way into a coffee barrista position. "Sometimes at my old job, I would go, 'Stop. Don't pay me.' But they keep doing it. I just love helping people. What can you do?"
I tried making up restaurants where I previously worked. But they still didn't hire me.

Finally, while picking up pizzas for the church pre-school, Mom happened to mention it to the manager of Ghetto Discount Pizza, which was really called Premier Pizza and Pasta. But yeah. The manager said that as a fellow UGA grad, he would give me a shot.

For my first week, he would say in a conspiratorial whisper, "Now, I don't tell everyone this, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll let you know," and then would tell me something either obvious or would try to make something expected sound like it was a big favor.
Like:
"Now, I don't do this for everyone, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll do it for you. We have these boxes we put the pizzas in, so we don't have to carry them around by themselves, and plus, it helps keep them warm."
Or:
"I actually pay everyone here in monopoly money, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll pay you in hard currency. Keep it under your hat."
I told a friend, "UGA has really opened doors for me -- or door. I feel like I should donate to the alumni association now."

As for the rest of the Ghetto Discount Family, there were:
The owner's daughter and some other high school girls worked the small dining area and the cashier and the phones;
a group of high school boys who worked the kitchen;
our assistant manager Andrea, who coined the term "Ghetto Discount Pizza;"
her husband, who was not an employee per se;
the owner's ex-wife, who was another assistant/fill-in manager;

And then there were the other drivers.

The drivers constituted a rotating cast of colorful characters with only a few mainstays.
There was Fred, an older man in his late-forties who had secured mornings and afternoons to himself. That might sound bad, but he did very well and, as Andrea was quick to point out, was pretty much guaranteed to make more money than the evening/night workers.
"You wouldn't know that to listen to him. Lord, he'd complain about getting a blow-job. 'I had to stand the whole time.'"
I love Andrea.
She did a great impression of Fred. She thought he had left one night, though, and did her impression as she came around the corner and saw Fred counting his tips, so she laughed and had to play it off like they were best-buds.
The kitchen staff was always trying to top Andrea's Fred, but their's centered on his pronounced limp.
"Now y'all don't do that. He can't help the limp. Make fun of him for being an asshole. He can help that."
Andrea once told me, and in her defense this first time it was relevant to the topic, that Fred lived with and supported his niece and her husband, "who is black," Andrea whispered. But then, several weeks later, she told me the same story when it really had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I mean, we were talking about Fred and that was it.
"You know, Fred lives with his niece -- "
I started giggling right away, which made Andrea rush through the rest.
"Andherhusbandisblack. What? He is! He is!"
I stopped laughing long enough to say, "You told me that already, but you should totally say that every time anyone mentions Fred."
Fred would sometimes look at me and shake his head. "How can you afford rent and your car? Your family must be helping you out."
"Not really."
Fred grinned like, ok whatever. "I wish I had someone help me out."
I wanted to say, "You do. Disability!"
And really, like Katie, I wondered why Fred thought I'd be working there if I some roustabout mooching of my family.

There was Jesse, who had been a disciple of Nancy Fowler, the Conyers woman who saw the visions of the Virgin Mary. He bragged that he'd been her assistant, which I would have kept quiet. That's quite a fall from being one person away from the mother of God to a pizza delivery boy.
He also took a correspondence course in radio -- not from the prestigious E. Wilson Young school, though. He wanted to be like his hero: Sean Hannity.
He and the owner would commiserate about politics.

There was Michelle, who talked like Laura's dog Audrey. Michelle was pursuing a criminal justice degree at Georgia Perimeter or DeKalb Tech. We knew because she kept telling us. She also had a crystal meth habit and kept trying to entice the girls into smoking with her. One of them did and later told us about using a lightbulb as a pipe. I don't know.
As Katie once said, "Drinking is so much easier. Watch."
Andrea and I didn't care for her.
One day, Andrea came up to me all excited.
"Michelle's not talking to me!"
I made face. "Why?" It should be the other way around.
"I don't know, but," she gave me a thumbs-up. "Good deal."
Michelle reminded me of that verse from Proverbs about it being better to have a millstone tied around your neck and to be tossed into the sea rather than lead one child astray.
"Can we substitute the dough mixer for the sea?" Andrea asked.
Michelle was pregnant by the time I left.

Delivering pizzas was... interesting. That's when I first started listening to This American Life and NPR, sort of like a lifeline while I worked there, so I never argued about going on long runs. It was just more time to hear a full episode.
And I had a few adventures actually delivering. There was one time when this family did not know what way they lived on a State Road 212. They could only tell me that their road was across the intersection from a gas station. I finally called them from a pay phone -- this was back when I didn't carry a cell.
"I'm at blahblah gas station. Is that it?"
"... We don't know."
"Well, ... I just passed blahblah road. Is that close to you?"
"[background whispering] ... We're not sure."
It turned out I had gone the wrong way. But really, that family had no right to order delivery. Instead, they should pool their resources and hire an explorer, so that he might map their environs, and the next time they order, they can confidently boast, "According to Vasco Da Gama, this is where we live."

If the customers, as is usually the case, were the worst part of the job, the best was working with Andrea. I loved her, and she really made the job bearable, and she loved working with me. Tracy, her husband, would sometimes hide her liquor supply after she went on a bender.
"Will, you're creative. Help me get my liquor back."
"Ok ok. Go up to him and say, 'Tracy, I'm so sorry you had to see me like that, and I know I shouldn't put you through it. And I know that you're only doing this out of concern for me, and that you feel you have to go to this extreme has really made me take a step back. You're not going to have to worry any more.'"
"Yeah, but what about the part where I get my liquor back? That's important. We can't forget that."
"'So let's toast this new leaf I'm turning over. Where'd you hide my liquor?'"

Andrea would tease the kitchen staff for lazing around and not answering the phone.
"Oh uh, uh, uh," she would snap like she was struggling to remember something. "Way to not answer the phones, girls."
She would do the same snapping move when she wanted to make fun of someone. "Oh uh, uh, uh dumbass," and she would bend forward and bring herself back upright on the word "dumbass" like she was riding a wave of mockery.

When I first started, I could tell myself that it would only be for a little while, and that I was meeting a lot of interesting people. Research. Real-life experience.
Edging up on a year at Ghetto Discount Pizza, it got harder and harder to convince myself of that, and the distraction Andrea provided was growing less and less.
One night, I was on a run and Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car" came on the radio, so I pulled over to the side of the road and just cried for a few moments.
"You need to get out of this place," Andrea said, when I told her about it. "You don't belong here. But me," she pointed at herself and shook her head. "It's too late for me. I'm dead inside." And for the rest of my time there, if anyone would mention her drinking or smoking, she'd look at me and then go, "Hey, dead inside. Ask Will."
I eventually broke away, moved to Atlanta, and after a month of looking, lucked into my current job.

A Brilliant Plan That Depends on Invisibility

Susie chose P.E.

I have never been an athletic person. The only exercise I get is from jumping to conclusions. That and fidgeting. So I have never been very fond of P.E.
I did have a very kind coach for two years in elementary school, and for those two years, P.E. wasn't as bad as it could have been. Plus, that was where I discovered my uncanny skill at crab-walking. (If P.E. were more crab-walking-centric, I would have loved it. I would probably be a crab-walking coach by now, teaching crab-walking gold medalists.)
I spent the four years of my prior elementary school life in a completely different environment.

I don't remember the coach's name, but I seem to remember her as an older woman -- although to a little boy, that could just mean "older than mom" -- with glasses. She would put on this scratchy record that played children jingles/directions for stretching.
"Climbing, climbing up so high / climbing, climbing to the sky," and we would stretch our arms upward in a climbing motion.
While I liked how it scanned, I didn't care for the repetition.

Anyway.
After stretching we would run a .... distance of some length measured by laps around three landmarks in the yard outside the gym: a stumpy pine-tree, a telephone pole, and a basketball pole. The coach referred to it as "running Pine Tree, Pole, Pole."
After doing two laps, I decided I'd had enough of this foolishness and cut across an open field with the intention of pretending I'd run the final lap.
While the coach watched us.
Elementary-school Will was not the brightest crayon in the box.
But I guess the weird consolation was that I wasn't alone. Two others had had the same idea and had already been caught.
I didn't see them when I started across the field. I would like to think that if I had noticed two other people who had been caught, I would have glommed on to the fact that the coach's eyesight wasn't quite as bad as I apparently thought.
I waited with the two others while the remainder of the class finished their laps.
This caused a bit of confusion because the coach would yell, "Come on! Come on!"
And I would think she meant us, so I would start up the steps. "Not you, Will. Stay there."
This continued several times until the coach was screaming at me. "Not you! Will! Stay there!"
Not the brightest crayon.
When the last person had honestly finished his laps, the three cheaters were marched in and shamed before the class.

Also, she is coming over onto my side of the car.

Mya chose fingernails.

I don't notice my fingernails much. Except I do sort of pick at them and sometimes give myself hangnails. I remember a family trip ages and days ago. My cousin Lee was tattling about how I had four hangnails going.
I probably started to whine.
Mom snapped, "Well, maybe he's starting a collection. Just leave him alone."

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

Katie chose shameful humor.

My friend Matt looks like Fred Flintstone and has a very risque since of humor. He's not a hateful guy, but he loves telling outrageous jokes. Our friend Linzy bought him a book, Truly Tasteless Jokes.
"Matt should write his own on the blank pages in the back," I said.
"That's a great idea," Matt said. He tried one out on us. "What's great about Hurricane Katrina?" Linzy and I shrugged.
"Higher test scores for Louisiana."
I told him that reminded me of another atrocious one of his that started, "Hurricane Katrina and the Holocaust walk into a bar." I did laugh at it, but I think it had more to do with the set-up.
Oh Matt, that's crazy! Hurricanes and genocides can't go barhopping.

Another time, Matt and I tried to come up with humorous bumper stickers for child molesters. I came pretty close to winning with: "My other car is a fake ice-cream truck."