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.