2002-06-30 - 11:13 a.m.

I'm thinking of giving up on the whole love/attraction/romance thing altogether.

Okay, no, that was a blatant lie, and anyone who knows me at all knew that immediately. Though, if I didn't like it so much when I actually had it, I'd give it up. The rest of the time is just far too hard and confusing.

To begin with, I guess I should explain what happened with Sasha. In a nutshell: Nothing. Which is good, because, as I said before, she's 14.

See, I went last week, again, hoping she would be there. But when a different band showed up than The Ethnix (which is what the band I will be talking about from now on will be referred to as, even though they no longer use that name, but haven't replaced it), I had a feeling Sasha would not show, either. I was right, but probably for other reasons. Though, I did recognize a few others who were there that night. Thinking they might be regulars and know her, I asked. They did know her, and in about a minute after I mentioned her, they asked me how old I was. When I said 20, Jeannine (the girl I'd asked) informed me of just how ridiculously young for me Sasha was. That's when I met Rod, who's 18 and made the same mistake. Today, I met Mark, a 36-year-old guy who aparently also fell for Sasha's charms. I just have to say... Wow.

So today, as I sat with my friend Alex, listening to the Ethnix, I noticed a couple of people I recognized, but not anyone I'd actually talked to yet. There were also only five people dancing at the time, so I was not about to throw myself out there. Instead, I was pulled. In mid-sentence with Alex, I suddenly found the hands of a very sexy girl--who I would later learn was named Elise--in a loose, dark green tank top with the midsection cut off, wide, rolled-up jeans, and red Converse All-Stars, in my hands, pulling me up to dance. I'm not the world's best dancer, and I was a bit awkward at moments, but I did my best, and had fun, and her abilities sort of made up for my lack thereof. Occasionally, she'd twist one way, I'd move another, and while I had no idea what had gone wrong, I knew I'd screwed something up pretty bad. But for the most part, it was good. She'd just smile, twirl away, back, away again, and then I'd dip her, pull her up, and we'd dance really close, close enough that I could smell her, feel the light sweat on her back where my arm supported her under the cut-off bottom of her shirt, and at one point-purely by mistake, I swear. I may have an air of sensitive male, but that doesn't mean I'm gay, and occasionally, there are some things a guy just can't totally control-I know she could... um... feel me, too. *cough* oops.

Anyway, then the song ended and we split up, but I decided to stay out on the floor. I'd dance on my own, and occasionally-through no real effort of my own-I'd find myself dancing with a very pretty blonde girl in yellow-lensed glasses, very short gray shorts, and a matching gray shirt that went just to the end of her shorts, and was a darker gray in the parts where the wet bathing suit she was wearing underneath soaked through. So far, not a bad start to my night.

After a little of that, Beth-the blonde in gray-disappeared with her friend, a petite brunette with a nose ring who looked a lot like my friend Harmony and had pretty well ignored me, and the band slowed down for a bit. I drifted back into the crowd standing around the pit, and talked to Rob and Jeannine. Jeannine mentioned that she hadn't seen Sasha in a few weeks, and she and her family had probably already gone back to Russia for the summer, something they'd apparently had planned for quite some time. Then Rob informed me that Beth and her friend are only here for the summer, were pretty drunk, and any attention (or inattention) that I got from either of them shouldn't be taken *too* seriously. That was just about when I heard the band announce that they were going to play a song specially for a friend of theirs. "Birthday," by the Beatles, for their friend Elise, who had just had a birthday on Wednesday. Her 16th.

Fuck.

I suddenly felt like a very dirty man.

Then, at about 10, the band went on a break, and a girl I'd talked to a few times, Amelia, asked me to go with her and her friend (whose name I can't remember right now) to Starbucks. I said okay, and thought maybe my luck was turning back around. Until I found out that Amelia had been spending the night looking for a guy she liked, and her friend was up on vacation, and was headed back to Sarasota, Florida in a week.

Well then. Wonderful.

I also saw a girl watching the band who I'd seen when I went to the same Starbucks to write the night before. She had been studying something that appeared to be rather difficult, but at one point, I caught her sort of looking like she was looking at the book, but was actually looking beyond the corner of the book... at me. Today? Didn't even glance in my direction.

Needless to say, after my rather hideous luck that night, I wasn't too disappointed when 11 o'clock came, and I had to leave. Had to leave because there was a midnight showing of "Weird Science" at the Coolidge Corner theater, and it was going to take me that long to take the T to get there. So I told people goodbye, and I'll be back in two weeks (I'm going to Maine next weekend for a wedding), and headed off to Brookline.

As I'm sitting, there, hoping to see two girls I'd seen at "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" just a week before who'd said they were probably going to this one, too--they didn't--I notice a group of people who all appeared to be about my age, and seemed like the kind of semi-eccentric-but-not-trying-to-be type of people who I love hanging out with. Then (though I didn't want to admit it at first) I recognized someone in the group. Someone who proved to me that, yes, these people were my age, and yes, they were probably the type of people I'd have enjoyed hanging out with.

Yep, after a night of failure after failure, for various reasons beyond my control, I end up running into the one girl who I knew was going to be in this city before I moved here, and who I knew I would get along with really well if I was given the chance. A girl who just joined a gym because she thinks she's "fat," but when I saw her I could see she really wasn't. She's quite pretty. She complains about being single and seems to think there are no polite boys left in Boston. Along with me, she's been going through a lot of the problems with moving into your first unfurnished apartment (though, in my case, it's my first apartment with an unfurnished bedroom, the rest is fine). But to add to it all, she's a girl who, if I started talking to her and she figured out who I was, she would probably have caused a *very* big scene, if not injured me somehow, so I said nothing. I tried to deny to myself that it was her, but when she started talking to her friends, and saying names that I recognized as being her friends, I couldn't deny it any more. I shouldn't have been surprised that she was there, though. I learned about the Friday and Saturday midnight movies from her, and I know she has a special place in her heart for John Hughes movies. It was Kate. Or rather, Katybug to those of you who have read the story before (for those of you who haven't, it's right here). All these things that show me that, despite all of my troubles with the other girls I've seen today, there is still one who I could be pretty good friends with, and never will because I met her on Diaryland, instead of at the TMBG concert we were both at, or at tonight's midnight movie.

Ah, hell. I'm staying in today. I don't feel like facing people.