"We're the directors—our hands will hold steady. I'll be John Cassavettes—let me know when you're ready. Man, we make our own movies. Man, we make our own movies. Man, we make our own movies. Man, we make our own movies." – The Hold Steady "Slapped Actress"
Does your life ever seem like a movie? You know what I'm talking about? Sometimes you're just sitting there living your life and if you think about it from a detached perspective, you can almost hear the bad soundtrack in the background and the people in the audience asking themselves how that character got into that situation. That's where I was at. How did I get there? Good question.
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I showed up to work one night incredibly hung over. When I found out that I was going to be training a new server I was not excited by the prospects. The last thing that I needed was to answer someone's questions all night while my head reminded me of the bad decisions I had made the night before...then I saw her. She had beautiful wavy brown hair, and the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes I had ever seen. Her smile was electric and I was immediately smitten. It didn't hurt that she was tall, with incredibly long legs and what looked like beautiful breasts.
"Are you Jake," she asked.
"I am," I replied.
"My names Chelsea. I think you're supposed to train me tonight."
Suddenly my headache was starting to dissipate and I was forgetting about the 5 shots of Wild Turkey from the night before.
"Cool," I said. "Follow me and we'll get started."
For the rest of the night I showed her what to do and talked to her. I found out that in addition to being beautiful she was smart, funny and more than a little sassy. I love the sassy. As the night went on the conversation between us became more and more natural. After our shift ended we had a drink or two with some of our co-workers and went our separate ways. I was so happy as I walked home that it was a little frightening. This was six months after a long-term relationship had ended. That relationship had died for a number of reasons, but a big part of it was that I just wasn't able to communicate very effectively. After the break-up I made a pact with myself that I wasn't going to do that again. The next time I had an opportunity with a woman I was going to be honest and up front with her, no matter the eventual consequences.
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That night had been about a month ago. As the days went on Chelsea and I got closer and closer. We saw each other a lot at work and went out all the time with friends. She was very flirty with me, constantly touching me on the arm or shoulder when we were talking, making suggestive comments, the usual. She laughed at me all of the time. I'm funny, but not that funny. After a while, I knew that I wanted to be with her. And that gets us caught up to how I ended up in my own little "movie".
I had gotten up the nerve to ask her out and she said yes. I guess I had assumed that she understood I meant it to be a romantic date, but I wanted to make sure. So using my new life rule to be honest and up front I told her how I felt. I started some long speech about how I thought she was beautiful and smart and funny and that every night when I went home I thought about when I would be able to see her again. It was good, really good.
I was ready for her to admit her feelings about me when she said, "Can you sit down?"
We were walking to the movie on a snowy February night. The only place to sit was the front porch of some random house. I sat down and instantly realized that in addition to what was undoubtedly going to be a crushing denial from Chelsea, I now had a wet ass. "Sure," I said.
"That is about the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me," she said. "And I've had so much fun with you over the past month, but I just can't do that right now. You're a friend, and I want you to stay that way, but I don't want a relationship with you."
I listened to what she was saying, and the only thing that entered my mind was, "this sucks." She had recently ended a relationship too, so I was ready for her to say that it was too soon, but that's not what she said. She said, "I don't want a relationship with you." Combine that with a wet ass and the night wasn't exactly going as planned.
"Jake?" she said.
"Yeah?"
"You haven't said anything," she answered. "I still really want to go to the movie with you."
Spending two hours in a movie theater with a woman who just rejected me was about the last thing that I wanted to do. At the same time, I didn't want to let her know that I was totally hurt and act like a child taking their ball and going home. So while I was planning on kissing her tonight, and maybe exploring that sexy body a bit, I was instead going to go to a movie with my "friend".
The movie ended up being fine. I walked her back to her apartment and she invited me in to see the pictures from her semester abroad. I looked through the pictures with her, all the while feeling the sting of the rejection. She was acting like nothing had happened, and while I tried to do the same inside I was screaming. We spent the next month or so going through the same motions we had established in our friendship.
We would see each other at work, have some drinks with our coworkers and have flirtatious conversations again and again. It was getting to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. Something had to change. Either we were going to see where the relationship could go, or we had to spend less time together. The present situation was horrible for me and I needed to do something. I decided that I was going to give it one more shot, with a different strategy.
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There was a group of us going out for the night. Everyone was meeting at the bar we worked at and we were going to go out from there. My friend Mike saw me as I walked in.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said. "Is Chelsea here yet?"
