< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >
 

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am a die-hard drama freak, member of the debate team as long as our school had one, and I've been in the gifted program since first grade. During the past 18 years of my life I have resigned myself to being an outcast from the "real" society of all the normal kinds. What I'm trying to say is, I have not a freaking clue how dating is supposed to work at the high school level. I was "a little chubby" in jr. high and while that's all gone away, as far as I can tell no one has noticed.

Or have they? I'm all confused.

Junior year I met this guy. He tried out for the play, sparks flew back stage, everyone theought we were a couple. Hell, I thought we were a couple. I asked him to Sadie Hawkins; our version of modern dancing practically made the school paper. We went to school plays other than our own as a pair, out for coffee, I spent the day before Christmas Eve helping his parents set up for their Christmas party and met his grandfather.

Suddenly, we come back from Christmas break and he won't even talk to me. I'm stuck thinking, "What the hell?" We're friendly and all that but it wasn't the same. Week before Valentines Day he invites me back to his house to chat. Just before I was going to ask him to the Spring formal, my best friend sends me an urgent page. He let me use the phone and what do you know but he had asked her to the dance third period. I would try to describe my fealings at this point in the narrative, but a primal scream is really more appropriate. I left, dignity barely intact, and avoided him like hell for two months on what was my turf (he only became hard core drama after I introduced him to all my drama friends and got him into the right parties. I would like to note at this point that several of my friends defected over to him. Arg.) Spring quarter I went to the other side of the country for an internship and I really did forget him for three months. I had a beautiful romantic relationship with a wonderful boy. I was healed.

Then I came back and he was still there. Worse, he ran for v.p. of the Drama Club and won. I was calm, I was mature, I held on to the carefully-won poise that carried me through school without ever letting anyone see me cry or get upset. Then, it all started to happen again. We went places, as a couple; he made a big point of dancing with me at parties even when there were no other couples dancing, and I was like "ok, expecting nothing. These are merely mindless head games."

I was right. He asked my other best friend to Sadie Hawkins. This time around I was "too sick" to go anywhere near his family for their Christmas party. But, we did go ice-skating with all his other friends. During this time BestFriend #2 that went to Sadie's with him became utterly obsessed with him to the point of curing up in balls on the floor sobbing. Our school threw an informal dance during January; he invited a girl who was going out with someone else (her bf was at a band concert. He was not happy, but he went along.) Then he invited me over to spend Valantines Day with him. Utter confusion on my part, I decided I would not be played for a fool if it killed me.

Spring Formal again. I wanted to go. I was more than willing to kill to go. He had tried to set me up with one of his friends for the last dance, two days before the dance and well after I had planned the alternative activity. So, asked him if I could go in his group to the Spring Formal with any of his free friends. Then he started hinting that I should ask him when he had been ruthlessly chasing the girl he had taken to the last dance. I do have some pride so I played dumb and told him if he wanted a date we did have a mutual friend who really wanted a guy to ask her to a dance. He did.

Now, finally, we get to the question: What the hell is going on? My key support for the theory that he does/did like me is that back during the initial dating (?) he kissed me on numerous occasions and he has not kissed any of the other girls. I would say he likes me now but he is damn near all over the girl he went to the informal with, who just broke up with her boyfriend because he was mad about my guy. Breakup Girl, there are no disinterested parties left to look at this situation. What happened? What is happening? Is ther a solution short of killing him or dumping all myfriends and quitting drama to avoid him?

-- Ivy

Dear Ivy,

Sometimes when you are driven, baffled, to ask the question,"What the hell is going on?" it kind of answers itself. In the sense that someone confusing, inconsistent, flighty, selfish, and frankly, tacky, enough to beg that question is -- selective kissing or not -- unlikely to come through for you.

You swore you wouldn't play the fool. So: quit drama? Yes. But not the club.

Love,
Breakup Girl

< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >