Home Again, Home Again

  The entire experience of spending a month together made Jen and I closer than we’ve ever been. However, the entire time she gave me mixed signals about how she really felt about me. It was obvious she had a lot of confliction in her thoughts and I don’t blame her for that. She did have a boyfriend. But when anything happened between us that became too emotional/physical/personal she would follow up the next day pushing me away, so to speak. That frustrated me and in those times I found myself playing up that girl Azuree I had recently met in my mind. I don’t know if I was doing it as a defense mechanism, a tool for jealousy or both.

  If she felt the need to call her boyfriend, I would call Azuree with my friend Alan’s borrowed phone card. I would call Azuree and talk for quite a bit. We were due to fly back home just before Valentine’s Day so I asked her on a Valentine’s date. She agreed but then turned around and said that her sister, Sarah, thinks that she should date some other guy. I was quite taken back by that comment. Azuree then continued saying that Sarah thinks the other guy is better looking than me, and thus, a better catch. Naturally, all respect for Sarah went out the door. I also told Azuree that I don’t think she was supposed to be telling me this. I told Azuree that it was her choice to make, and that I wouldn’t stop her from going out with this other guy if that was what she wanted. I should have taken this conversation as a warning that this girl was crazy. Instead I took it as a challenge.

  I went back to the apartment and told Jen all about the conversation and Jen became instantly protective of me. Then next time I talked to Azuree over the phone, she said the other guy was out of the picture.

  It was bittersweet leaving Europe with Jen. It was going to be weird when we got back for everyone. I always had two pieces of relationship advice I always gave and stood behind. “If you’re not happy in a relationship, get out. Don’t make excuses.” And “Don’t settle.” And here I was, I knew I was settling for Azuree, and creating an image of her that I wanted her to be, because she wasn’t Jen. And I knew Jen wasn’t happy in the relationship she was currently in, but the guy waited for her as she moved to California for a couple of months and went to Europe with another guy.

  We got back to The States and got through Customs, which was a concern because of Jen’s rugs and some butterfly knives that she illegally smuggled back to NY. Jen’s boyfriend Bill picked us up from the airport and the entire ride home we talked about Azuree. I don’t know if Jen brought it up to quell the tension, because it was obvious there was something between Jen and I that wasn’t there when we left.

  Immediate plans after we got back were the Valentine’s date with Azuree, Jen and I were going to cook a Spanish dinner for my friends and I was going to attend a Jehovah Witness meeting with Jen one weekend.

  Because I didn’t have time to make plans for Valentine’s Day, the best I could do on the short notice were flowers and dinner at a diner. Azuree didn’t mind and conversation was okay. Overall the evening was uneventful and ended with a goodnight kiss. The next date we went on was a few days later. I took her to see “Good Will Hunting.” After the movie, I asked her what she thought of the movie and she said she thought it was cute. There are a lot of words you can use to describe that movie for or against, but cute did not fit into any category. I wasn’t sure she if understood it. A few days later I brought her back to my house and sat her down to watch “For the Love of Benji” a movie from the ‘70’s from the point of view of a dog. Not a difficult plot: Spies try to smuggle microfilm into Greece through the dog. She watched the movie as I watched her. The phone rang and it was Jen, we talked for a bit while Azuree watched the movie. When I got back, I asked Azuree if she understood what was going on and she said “I know the dog is cute and all that, but why is everyone chasing him?” I broke up with her driving her home that night. Four dates over a two week period was enough. She had three life stories that she could speak of. Her niece looked like Yoda. She went to the mall by herself one time. And she met me on Halloween. I heard each of these stories more than one over those two weeks. Things didn’t get too far between us. Some making out and fondling. Nothing too much that we couldn’t cut our losses and still be friends. I told her we could still be friends. She wanted a reason why we couldn’t date and that was fair, but nothing I could say would spare her feelings. Not that anything she said spared my feelings, half the time I’d ask myself, ‘did she just say that out loud?!’ Seriously, no inner monologue. I told her that we had nothing in common.

  To prove I meant what I said about being friends, I agreed to hang out with her the following week. We went out to eat and when I drove her home she said, “Something you said last week bothered me.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “How you said we had nothing in common. We both like that one song.” Referring to (Don’t You) Forget About Me by Simple Minds (from the Breakfast Club)

  “Okay, so?” as if there was a point she was getting to, but that was the point. I explained that we couldn’t base a relationship on liking

a song. She didn’t buy it.

  For over a month I had to give her reasons we couldn’t date. Her sister hated my guts for breaking Azuree’s heart, and I thought I had done the honorable thing. She had a drop dead gorgeous body that another guy may have taken advantage of, but she was a virgin and I knew that this kind of crazy and sex was an explosive mix I wasn’t ready for.

  I tried using: I had too much debt from the Europe trip to treat a girlfriend like I would like. It was the age thing and finally, realizing that the friend thing wasn’t going to work, I told her that I would love to have a relationship for her, but one day, I don’t know when, I was supposed to move away to Colorado and it was better to end things now than to break each other’s hearts even worse later on. That she bought. I had been saying I was moving to Colorado after High School since the 8th grade. At 23 I doubted I was going to ever really move, but it worked.