Just Friends? Just Kidding.

As evident in almost any romantic comedy ever made, it has been said that boys and girls can never be "just friends." There's a variety of cliches following the formula "the only person a girl can trust is her dad/girlfriends/dog," but it is unanimously agreed that a girl cannot trust any non-related, heterosexual boy. Nearly consistently throughout my entire (un)romantic life I've found this to be the case. Whenever I'm happily involved with a guy, the relationship is nothing more than a rapidly ticking time bomb that is in danger of exploding at any given moment, resulting in the annihilation of my chances at a happy ending. Depressing, I know. On a positive note, at home in New Jersey I'm blessed with the best guy friends a girl could ever ask for (I attribute this to the fact that these boys knew me during my awkward phase), so while I never had a high school sweetheart, that male void was filled platonically. However, at college I have only one guy friend. The rest of the guys I consider "friends" are guys that I hooked up with and are on good terms with after the fact. And, you guessed it, the remaining male population at this school are guys that I hooked up with and am on not-so-good terms with.
For my sorority, I was presented with the stressful task of inviting someone to my date party. I didn't have anyone that I was interested in at the moment, so I decided to invite the only guy friend I had that I had never hooked up with and furthermore never wanted to. This situation ended up being absolutely ideal because the night before the date party I ended up being letdown by a guy I'd really liked and had hooked up with on numerous occasions. I woke up unfortunately alone, and in a hungover/depressed state that I'd been so disappointed by someone I'd liked so much. I'd lost my faith in men (yet again), so I was genuinely relieved to be going to my date party with my guy friend.
"Last night was terrible, we need to have the funnest time ever tonight!!" I texted him.
"Love, you're going to have the best night of your life," he answered. In all honestly, I kind of suspected he'd never tried to get with me because he was gay.
Feeling a little better, I slept off the rest of my hangover and woke up much later that afternoon with enough time to grab some dinner and get ready for the party. Then, I went over to my date's place to pregame for the event. Being around a friend had taken my mind off of my shitty experience with guys the night before and I was back to being in a good mood. The pregame was fun, but once we got on the bus to the venue it hit me hard that not everybody was there as friends. In fact, being entrapped by the rows of drunk people making out it seemed that nobody was just friends. Things were better when we got to the venue. There were more people using their mouths to talk rather than make out, the DJ was decent, and my date had scored a drink bracelet and kept buying me drinks like a good date should. Somewhere between all the vodka tonics, three hours had passed and it was time to get on the bus home.  I was tired from the hours of drinking and dancing, but it seemed my date was even more tired by the way he started leaning onto me. In that moment, my drunken haze cleared and I realized he's not trying to sleep on me, he's trying to hook up with me. I tensed up and cheated my back towards him which seemed to do the trick. He straightened up and we snapped back into our normal banter. The bus arrived back at campus, but since it was only 12 the night was still pretty young. I was going to walk back to my dorm, but my date looked disappointed with that.
"Come back to the house and hang, it's so early!" He said. I was drunk enough to disregard what he'd seemingly tried to pull on the bus, but clearminded enough to trust him since he was my friend.
But once we got to his room it was blatant that he didn't consider me a friend the same way I considered him one. He immediately started kissing me, to which I hesitated.
"Come on, stop."
"What, why?" His mouth wasn't on mine anymore, but he was still heavily in my personal space.
"Because we're friends!"
"But Love, we will still be friends even if we hook up a little!" This time when he called me Love, I didn't think he might be gay.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, of course!" I'm not sure why I listened to him, I guess my subconscious still trusted him as "a friend," so I didn't leave the room and even though I was uncomfortable with it I let him kiss me.
I wanted so badly to leave, but I just kept on letting the hook up happen. Every so often I'd snap out of it and ask "Okay, will you walk me home?" to which he'd reply, "Of course, Love! Just in a couple minutes." A couple minutes came and went, until I didn't even know how much time had gone by. I stop letting my subconscious trust reign, and my conscious realized we were both completely naked. It was time to get out of here before anything else happened. Fueled by anxiety, I sat up and pulled on my clothes. When I turned back around to tell "my friend" that it was time to walk me home, he was lying there passed out. I tried to shake him awake.
"Come on, wake up." But he wouldn't move. "Seriously, come on, you need to walk me home." Still nothing.
I wanted to call a cab but I had no money. In that moment I had to turn to the only people I could depend on, and that was my girl friends. I pulled out my phone to call my friend with a car, when I saw it was 3:30 in the morning. Please wake up, please wake up, I prayed as the phone rang.
"Hello?" Her sleepy voice said on the line.
"I am so sorry to wake you up, I just really need your help." I tried to keep my voice as low as I could so not to wake my "friend."
"What's wrong?" Her voice became more alert.
"My date party turned out really badly... Do you think there's any way you could come pick me up?"
"Yeah, of course. Are you okay?"
"Eh, not really..."
"I'm coming now. You're at his place?"
"Yeah, I am. Oh my God, thank you so much," I couldn't believe it. I was so thankful to have such a good friend. With heels in hand, I snuck out of his room as quietly as I could. Sure enough, a couple minutes later my friends car pulled up outside. I didn't know whether to cry of happiness or cry because I was so mad about what had just happened.
Not only was my romantic faith in guys destroyed, now my platonic faith in guys was destroyed too. I'd trusted this guy as a friend and he destroyed everything. He had failed to walk me home as a friend, but coming to my rescue was my girl friend who drove me to sleep over at her apartment. While my guy friend had passed out after promising to walk me home, my girl friend had woken up at 3:30 in the morning and picked me up. Once we got to her apartment, she sat up with me and listened to me talk about what had happened. She told me that while this guy was an asshole, she's always be here for me and then she tucked me into bed. That was the night that I learned I could only and always depend on my girlfriends.

No Man's Land

I, along with every other student that just finished their first year of college, recently made the transition from being independent at school to being back at square one in my hometown. After what I can only describe as a hormonally eventful year, I was relieved to be going home and taking a hiatus from the craziness of college. As can be inferred from the prior posts, I’ve been consumed in random hookups gone awry with different characters from weekend to weekend, and while that’s been something of major aspect of my life, it’s been absolutely exhausting. At home, I wouldn’t have to worry about running into the person I hooked up with the night before while eating breakfast in the safety of my own kitchen, or having to walk back to my room in the morning with heels in hand then see my professor drive past me. A return to blandency was exactly what I needed, just for the summer, so I could return to school with a fresh energy and enthusiasm for making deplorable decisions. I finished my last final Thursday afternoon, packed the rest of my suitcases midday, and then took a redeye that night from LAX to JFK, finally arriving back home at 6 am Friday morning, where I immediately retreated to my TV room and let the rest of the prozac from the flight wear off. I spent the entire day with my practically lifeless body larding out on the couch catching up on the Glee my tivo had so faithfully recorded for me, I couldn’t have been more asexual if I’d tried.
But, my calculations for my desired asexuality dosage had been flawed. The degree of sexual boredom I thought I’d need an entire summer to fulfill I achieved in only seven hours of teenage drama and dancing. Whereas hours earlier I was slumped in a sexless state, I was now sitting with my posture erect fantasizing about hooking up with Mr. Schuester. I finished the last episode and immediately began scrolling through my contacts looking for the old numbers I used to booty-text, and it wasn’t until I was in the E’s that I stopped myself. If I hit up one of the old numbers I used to text in high school then I’d be stooping, and everyone knows it’s better to declare a literal boy-cott than to stoop. One minute you’re scrolling through your contacts when you find the number of the first guy to ever touch your boobs freshman year, then the next thing you know you've wasted your entire summer hooking up with some fresh-off-the-freshman-fifteen boy who peaked in high school where the only thing that keeps you getting off is the fact that you can keep your eyes closed while you’re hooking up and think about how sexy he looked in his yearbook picture from junior year.
I refused to let all the tall, chiseled progress I’d made in college go to waste, so I took the battery out of my phone, walked into the bathroom, and splashed some cold water on my face. “I’m taking a break from men for myself. I’m taking a break from men for myself,” I repeated the phrase with feigning conviction in attempt to prove my self-righteousness to my reflection. In order to declare a successful boy-cott, you need to convince yourself that your “break from men” was your own choice, and not something being thrust upon you.
“I’m taking a break from men for myself.”
I give it a week, my reflection told me with the roll of her eyes.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”