The Classic Nice-Guys Finish Last Victimization Story As Told from a Nice Guy's Perspective

(Originally Written February 24, 2009 in the Journal)

So I’m not really effeminate I’ve just always gotten along better with girls rather than guys. I love sports, I mean I watch at least two sportscenters a day. I go to games a lot, and play as much as time allows. I like to call myself well-rounded – the guy who does hockey and When Harry Met Sally.
I like women. I love women. Sure, When Harry Met Sally is a complete chickflick but when Meg Ryan (my old as mom crush) does that thing in the restaurant I mean come on – how can any guy not love this movie.

But always I find myself swimming in this vast ocean of female friends who treat me like another wave rather than the barracuda I imagine myself to be. My greatest fear in all of this is that someday I’ll be sitting there with my friends (all girls) and they’ll begin to assess me on the female datability scale. I know this fear well – it’s been with me now for nearly 12 years.

Travel back with me, 1997 – Freshman year of high school

So there I am sitting in Mr. Genter’s biology class minding my own business or wandering off into some parallel universe in my head when ol’ Gentsy gets this look in his eye that an atom bomb just went off in his innards and excuses himself in remarkably quick fashion for a guy hitting 70 who has just had his insides nuked.

So my asshole of a best friend yells out to Beatrice Worthington what she thought of me. “Hey Beadie” he yelled. She ignored him because she hated being called Beadie. It was actually a nickname I maliciously gave her in the third grade because she had one eye whose pupil was about a fourth of the other one. I had never seen someone’s heart break before that day and even though she annoyed the hell out of me I worked to fabricate a friendship out of this wreck I cause and protected her from a lot of unnecessary berating. I felt especially convicted of this duty when people called her Beadie.

“Hey Beadie” he repeated. More silence and finally he said her name in full, “Hey BE-UH-TRUST”. She knew that was as close as she was gonna get out of him.

 “Yes Anthony?” She replied in a fully proper way. Beatrice wasn’t Amish though we all looked at her that way until it was finally explained to us that she was from a conservative Mennonite family. She always were a bonnet, plain blouse, and ankle length dresses. I’m sure she wore shoes but I didn’t pay them much attention or ever think about it until just this instance.

In addition to dressing very old-fashioned she spoke irritatingly proper English and always called people by their full names. This really got under my skin because having a couple of pot-head hippie scumbag parents they wrote down my name when they were high at my all herbal, all homeopathic submerged birth festival. (Yeah, I was born underwater with about 14 other kids to hippies at the commune). No docs or meds allowed, just a little acid and a ton of pot. So the parents wrote down babies’ names on the official documents and placed them all in a hat. Then different sets of parents drew the documents out of the hat and turned them into the government. At my birth festival there were fifteen kids born, eleven girls and four boys. Miraculously the three other boys all got boy names. My name, Bryan Mark went to some unfortunate girl who I think goes by Bri. Her name, Candice Ashly got so wonderfully tagged tom.

“Beadie, whaddya think of my boy Ash there. He was telling me the other day that you don’t get the credit you deserve. I think he’s working up the nerve to ask you out”. Laughter erupted in the class as Beatrice turned from pale white to a light pink.

Not to make me look like a saint in anyway but I risked a lot of my reputation on being nice to her. I never was a real jerk to anyone, well not intentionally, or not without some comedic purpose, but I wasn’t overly nice to anyone I didn’t see as capable of improving my status. Shallow but typical, I’ve grown out of a lot of my usury and will pay my time in purgatory someday undoubtedly.

Beatrice had actually acknowledge this fact a number of times before, especially in the summer between eighth and ninth grade. Some of this was probably self-preservation on her part but she offered me a release of her and my duty forbade it. A noble guy I wasn’t but, this was one I did right.

Embarrassed by my friend’s jackassery I looked at Beatrice awaiting some relief. I didn’t get it. Instead I got the origin of my phobia – the female datability scale.

“Ashly is wonderful. He’s like a big brother to me but not really boyfriend material”. Her eyes smiled at me as if she had alleviated me from an embarrassing situation. But as an even great clamor of laughter erupted in the classroom her eyes darkened as mine must have imploded. “Not boyfriend material”.
Fast forward with me to 2002. After four years of high school and a few shallow, short-lived relationships and a monstrous best-friend crush fiasco I survived and I went off to school.
I became real close friends with this girl a friend of mine had dated. After they broke up we became even closer friends. That friend moved away after one semester and Meredith and I spent all our time together. It was like we were dating, best friends, and brother and sister all at once. During finals week of the second semester we were together all the time. We slept in the same bed (a twin) and even showered together a couple of times. The tension was there, beyond anything I had ever felt.

There we were, completely naked, chest to chest, about an inch from each other’s lips saying some of the most filthy perverted things imaginable. A pause. She closed her eyes and curved her mouth into a wicked smile. Her tongue licked all around my lips as she put both hands on my shoulders. My body shook in anticipation.
She ran her hands down my chest into my stomach. I opened my mouth and breathed in deep. Closing my eyes I peered up at the ceiling. Moaning playfully her hands criss-crossed over my stomach ever inching further south and crossing my back she grabbed my hips. Yanking me in she bit my shoulder causing me to wince out in pleasurable pain, my eyes focused down on her. Biting her bottom lip she took her hands and grabbed my ass and dug in her nails.

“Like that?” she whispered with a sexuality I had never noticed in her before.
I could only throat laugh and choke out a “yeah”.
She giggled, kissed me on the cheek and said, “I bet you do”. I was stunned as she got out of the shower and dried off. I couldn’t move out of the shower. “Take your time, I’ll be out here” she mocked, shutting the door behind her.

Had this been anyone else I would have never have talked to them again. As it stood though, she was my best friend and could get away with anything. She owned me and knew it.
Our last day in the dorm that year she told me she felt guilty about earlier in the week and wanted to make it up to me. My mind raced on all the possibilities and two front row tickets to a Cubs game seemed pretty fair.
Over the summer we worked at summer camps. She worked in California and I worked in Michigan. I had a fun yet pointless summer fling and she fell madly in love with a guy who was no good for her. We didn’t talk all summer but she was so excited to tell me about him when we got back to school.

That semester we were close but it was different. She was really unhappy and stressed out all semester long. He was cheating on her and she knew it, but her love was so deep she said. They broke up over Christmas and she was thinking about dropping out of school. I drove up to her parents in Chicago on December 23rd to talk her out of it. I promised my parents I’d be back for Christmas but Meredith needed me more. My mom still lays a heavy guilt trip on me every Christmas.

So Meredith and I were together every day and night that semester. We grew close again and Meredith was happy. I was happy. Life was good. No, life was great. One night we were watching Law & Order. I rolled to my right because my left arm was asleep. Just at that moment she rolled to her left to tell me something. I was quicker so her nose fell right on top of mine. She was so close I could barely focus my eyes on her.
“Hi”, her warm sweet breath fell on my lips.

“Hi”, I retorted.
That was the best kiss I ever had. I threw my left arm over her in somewhat awkward fashion (it was still asleep) and it came crashing down on the night stand. My hand took in the remote and turned off the soothing sounds of Jack McCoy’s closing arguments so I could focus on this gorgeous woman wrapping her tongue around mine.
We made out for three hours straight that night. I’m not sure how we even breathed. Just passionate kissing. This went on for two weeks. Every night we made out and it was fantastic.

One night the kissing went deeper and grew more passionate. It was exceptionally hot that night and we were already fairly naked. I reached up the back of her tanktop and undid her bra while she took off her shirt. Whispering in my ear she said, “I don’t want this to mess up our friendship”.
“Ok”, I said, slowing down and resigning myself to more Law and Order. She straddled me when I rolled onto my back and leaned in for a kiss. Taking her shirt from the bottom she raised it over her head. Passion became lust and sex filled my mind. She ran her nails down my chest to my belt line and grasped at the waist of my boxers with her finger tips. She looked at me in the eyes and I saw hesitation. Fear struck me stiff. She was pondering that female datability scale.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this”.
“Ok”. My lips spoke words my heart could not comprehend. It was dead. She got dressed and I walked her to the door. We didn’t speak for two weeks. She started to see someone else. We fell away more and more until we hardly spoke.

It had been three or four months since we had talked. We were now seniors and just two weeks from graduation. At a mutual friend’s house we had both popped in for a drink. A cocktail of nostalgia and mixers took over and we sat there and talked for hours. Her and Mike (the guy she started dating right after we began the gradual drift apart) had broke up after a year and a half. I was ever single. She had a good job lined up, I didn’t.

The party wound down but we felt up for more nostalgia. She came over to my apartment, commented on my stagnant taste in design and I opened a bottle of Merlot. She fake slapped me and kissed my ear.

“You know wine makes me horny”, she laughed a little. “You’re just trying to take advantage of me”. I had actually honestly forgotten that she had told me that wine made her horny.

We made out again that night. The passion was gone.  Every once and awhile she calls me or emails me. Friendly how-are-yous, nothing more. We’re cordial but not close. I think she’s married now, but I’ve lost touch with most of my college friends.
So back to the present. I’m a bundle of relationship disappointments and a serious inferiority complex wrapped in a sheer veneer of overconfidence. I’ve got one good guy friend from work, Dave. We hang out. We play tennis, hit the movies, or bars. Then there’s Jamie, my closest friend. She’s amazing. Other than that my social network is more about business ties.
I’m good at what I do. My job is great – good hours, even better money. My apartment is fantastic, like one of those out of a magazine. Gloria, my cleaning woman, is to thank for that fact.
When I hang out with larger groups its with Dave’s or Jamie’s friends. I like Jamie’s better.
Just last week I was out with Jamie when Denise called her up. There was a wine and cheese affair later that night. Jamie wasn’t Meredith (more of a beer and a game girl). Jamie was uptown. I pretended to be too, so I went to the party.
Jamie was my ride and she was clean-up duty for the party. Afterwards we sat around knocking off the remainder of the wine. Then it happened:
“He’s so cute. He’s sweet. He’s stable. He’s perfect.”
“He’s too cute. I love him so much”.
I was in the kitchen doing dishes and picked up bits and pieces of the conversation. Basically Denise was trying to convince Jamie of why we were a perfect couple.
“It’s a lost cause you know”, I chimed in rounding the corner. I had left on the apron to encourage a laugh. Jamie’s laugh was intoxicating and put my mind at ease. I knew this was potentially awkward so I needed a buffer – laughter.

We sat and talked for twenty minutes. Plenty of laughter – not too much awkward silence, but enough for an inroad on a conversation in the car.
“You know, Denise is right. We’re perfect together.” I smiled and looked over at me. She had a look in her eyes of sadness, excitement and slight disapproval. (Tell tale sign that the female datability gauge was firing up). Fear gripped me.

The signs of that gauge change as women mature but I know the look well. I’ve seen it at thirteen, nineteen and now here at twenty-five. (I had seen it many other times but these three left the most telling marks on me). I wish this was a hollywood romantic comedy. That way Meredith would bump into me tomorrow and I’d all of a sudden be conflicted between Meredith and Jamie. Jamie or Meredith or both would get jeaulous and eventually Jamie and I would have a gorgeous ceremony and Meredith would be the best man for me. Sadly, this is my life, not a romantic comedy.
Jamie pulled up to my building, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “We’re on for tomorrow right?”
“Of course! It’s not Sunday without our non-date lunch date!” I still pressed further than I should have.
“Good night Ash”.
“Good night Jamie”.

 (The Classic Nice-Guys Finish Last Victimization Story as Told from a Nice Guy’s Perspective)