Advice for 15 year-old girls from an older woman

I'm using full names in this one. Fuck 'em.

If only I had known....This was the topic of Dan Savage's column this week, "Advice for 15 year-old girls from older women." The advice that struck me? "Just because a man wants to fuck you doesn't mean he likes you."

Ah yes. Those men. Pete Rooney. Chris Schavi. And there are others.

I've always preserved my self-dignity by believing some unseen obstacle got in the way. Maybe he did like me, but then he changed his mind. Maybe the time and circumstance wasn't right.

Let me clarify a bit, there wasn't actual fucking with either of these men (if you can call them that). But there was pursuit. Attention paid. Physical co-mingling. And on my part, emotional attachment. Hope. Expectation. Dissapointment.

Chris lived across the state. I remember looking at his town on a map and wondering what it was like to live there. He played hockey, which seemed so foreign to me. The boys in my town played soccer. I sent him a birthday card, and received no response, despite including my phone number. Nothing in the entire month between encounters. When I saw him again, I expected him to be happy to see me. It was awkward. He didn't acknowledge me in any special way. I boldly went to his room and acted chipper and nonchalant. He would barely look at me. I think later that weekend, as I was standing by myself, he approached me and said something lame. I surely would have looked at my shoes and said something like, "Yeah, whatever."

Pete Rooney. He would have like to fuck me. What a conquest that would have been for him. Gaining attention from the shy, pretty girl that had avoided him all semester. How powerful that would have made him feel. Unfortunatley, he drank too much champagne and passed out.

When I read the Dan Savage article, as hard as it was to admit it, I knew it answered all my previous questions about what happened. My earlier questions were easier on my ego.

1. Did he really like me all semester, but just not show it? (Try to remember bit encounters that would reveal a clue.)
2. If we has hooked up earlier, would it have turned into something real?
3. Why did he get so drunk?
4. Did he really pass out, or was he pretending?
5. Was there a bet? Did he make a bet about me with that ass, Brian?
6. What was that bashful call the next day all about?

The high tea. It was horrible. He ignored me. The girls he has spent his whole semester with were there. Those kind of girls. Beautiful. Rich. Loud. It was as if he couldn't switch over from the persona he had developed all semester. And neither could I. At least not in front of those people. It would have been like thunder--hot and cold air colliding and everyone would have heard the crash and smelled the static in the air.

What I never realized before today, was that both the encounter with Chris and Pete has something in common. I was abandoned by my friends afterward. With Chris, all my friends roomed together and left me out. I was exiled to the uncool girls' room. The fat girls, the not-so pretty girls, the kind-of-psycho girls. With Pete, I got stuck sitting with Amy C. at the tea. There was no room at the other table for me. She was a meek mouse of a girl. Sweet, but we had barely exchanged two words all semester.

But was it me or them? Did I purposely push away from them, as if to say "I'm different now"? Was I punishing myself? Was I exhiling myself, suddenly feeling like a cast-off? Or did I just need a break from my friends' prying questions and piercing eyes? My friends knew what had happened. The unpopular girls didn't.