Why Didn't You Call Me?!

I just don't get it. You stand in the rain, ruining your hideous loafers (praise all that was sensible) and talking some nonsense we both knew was completely bogus. I tried, I considered, I compromised. I practiced! I polled the office girls for advice. I worked up the nerve. I was so afraid, I threw the phone in my desk the minute I asked, for fear I'd somehow combust if nothing happened.

I asked if you wanted to go, you said yes.

So how is it that it was really no?! Did you think it would be less offensive to tell me with what you didn't say?

Stupid boy.

I don't understand this behavior.

I began to visualize this dramatic stop to the world as we knew it if I asked you. Everyone would simultaneously turn around, shocked. All of our friends (and then some) would just halt. Someone would slam a drink down after a few minutes, either applaud or boo me off stage. Here, here! Stomp their foot and give a standing ovation.

"Oh, my God," the doctor would say, lifting my head off the floor, my hair perfected with a curling iron, "This woman actually died of embarrassment!"

(I never considered your reaction.)

(Little did I know I'd never find out!)

I worry about how in the name of all that is pleasant and rejected (been there!) I'm going to face to you. I have ridiculous fantasies about how I'd tell you off, repeating things you said about your loser friends in defense of me, turning them around to apply to you. I avoid your street for fear you'll think I'm hanging around. What am I going to talk about?

I'll tell you, sir: Nothing. 

I'm going to avoid you. I'm going to do all I can to keep from letting it appear this bothers me. I'm not sad, it isn't that, exactly, it's more like, here I was, all these ideas, and then you just walk back and take them away.

Rats.

I mean, seriously, why?!