Dating Detective: Liza's Story
Gems, Liza here.
Okay I’m setting the scene for our very first DATING DETECTIVE newsletter, in which we will be recounting dating stories that are such goddamn mysteries.
Imagine a smoky film-noir-esque detective’s office. Jazz music. It’s raining. Maybe I’m wearing a fedora. I’m torturing myself, trying to figure out what in the goddamn fuck is WRONG with me that this boy doesn’t love me.
This was a cold case for many years, but I can now report that the case has been CLOSED. Long time listeners of the pod have heard me reference this story, but I’ve never told it in its entirety. Here we go…
Here are the facts of the case:
The year: 2006. The place: my freshman year dorm. I’m hanging out in the lounge, desperate to make friends and convince people that I’m cool, fun, aloof, sexy, and also very experienced in all things from drugs to sex (lolz at the time I had only smoked weed and given a handjob).
In saunters Beau (*NOT his real name, it just sounded film noir-y to me and also means boyfriend. Feel free to unfollow). Beau is witty, charming, nerdy, has dark curly hair, and a cute smile. He’s an endearingly sloppy dresser. He’s from the east coast, and we talk about New York City and how it’s far superior to the city we were living in (did I mention I was pretentious? I was pretentious.)
I go back to my room and tell my infinitely patient and kind roommate, Maria, that I have my first college crush (this IS her real name and I love her and she’s still my dear friend and she helped me through this saga and female friendship is magical and HI MARIA!).
Over the next few months, Beau and I flirt constantly. He stops by my room. I stop by his. I learn that he’s a musician and has a great voice (still a foible of mine). I meld into his group of friends. He’s a year older than me, and much more socially established, so I feel extremely #cool. We hang out a lot in groups. I think there are feelings. One night, he asks me to grab dinner, just the two of us. Is this it?!
We have a great dinner, and at the end he pays. I FREAK OUT internally, thinking this is my first real-grown-up-date. We walk back to our dorm, and he says I should come hang out in his room. I go back, we have beers, I sit on his bed (which was the only place to sit other than his desk chair). He sits...in his desk chair. We chat, drink, eventually he puts on a movie. I lie down on his bed, subtly trying to leave enough room for him to come lie next to me. He never does. The movie ends. He tells me he’s tired and going to go to bed.
“Um. Okay” I say. And then I leave.
This pattern repeats a few more times. He lets me split the dinner after a few more ‘dates’. I am so puzzled. He has told many other people in our group of friends that he likes me. It’s become common knowledge that we’re kind of a thing. Poor Maria hears about nothing except Beau and how confused I am by him.
Gems...you guys may have a sense by now of what’s happening, but bb Liza is completely and utterly drawing a blank. I am tortured. I am sure I’m in love. There’s a whole side story where a Sophomore girl is icing me out of our friend group because SHE has a crush on Beau and had a crush on him her whole freshman year, and now hates me. The first few months of college are such a vulnerable time, and I was 18, and a theatre major, and I put on my goddamn sad drama mask and staged a daily Greek tragedy about my unrequited love and this girl who was trying to exile me (again...sorry Maria).
This continued until the end of my Freshman year. During that time, I joined a sorority (lolz), drank my feelings, and gave more than a few fratboys blowjobs. I’d talk about my exploits around Beau, desperate to stoke his envy. He seemed unfazed by anything except the fact that I had new friends, which irked him.
The next year was his Junior year and he spent the first semester abroad. He emailed me constantly. I was sure he had realized how much he loved me when he was forced to be apart from me. He came back to school and…the same patterns kept repeating. We hung out constantly, shared everything, had a million inside jokes but he never made a move. And neither did I.
The next summer I spent abroad, and we ended up being in Paris on the same weekend. We were both on extreme budgets and decided to share a shitty hotel room. It had been two and a half years of this pattern repeating itself, and I still was POSITIVE that this would be the night. Paris! Romance! It came and went. Nothing happened.
Are you screaming at your screen at how dumb I was? I know. It’s embarrassing.
During this whole time I never gathered the courage to ask him how he felt about me. I never let him out of my mind and my heart. When I think about the time lost, and the agonized journal entries, and the self esteem that was chipped away over and over again by my own inability to play an active role in my own life, I’m so so sad for that little baby Liza. This story is a huge reason I tell you over and over again on the podcast to just say how you feel. The short term pain of rejection is NOTHING to the years spent like this.
The thing that sucks is...this was not the last time I did this. Fell for a friend, obsessed, was positive I was in love, ignoring all signs.
After Paris, I forced myself to move on. I was embarrassed, confused, and now knew for absolute sure that nothing would ever happen. We tried to remain friends, but I was mean to Beau. I resented him. I was icky and bitchy and cold. He was confused and hurt by my sudden shift. I took out on him my own inability to be honest, which was unfair and unkind.
Years after we had both graduated, when I was living in New York and running around to bars every night until the wee hours of the morning with Kimmy and other actor friends, Beau reached out, wanting to catch up. We were sporadically in touch, and friendly on the surface, but I mainly tried to avoid him. He was working in another country, so we set up a time to Skype.
In a long, beautiful, and meaningful conversation, Beau told me he was gay. He told me he carried so much shame around it for so many years. He apologized for leading me on and any pain he caused me. It was brave and fierce and honest of him to come out, and to have that conversation with me. He’s a very special person, and I care about him a lot.
So years later, the case was closed. After a lot of pain. I know that the pain I felt was NOTHING compared to what Beau was experiencing, and I feel so deeply for him. But for my own sanity, my own self-esteem, and the years of confusion, I wish I had just asked him how he felt about me. I’m sure he would have said he saw me as a friend. I would have been devastated. Probably for months. But I picked the slow burn devastation rather than making myself vulnerable. I regret it, and I hope telling this story will embolden someone to just ask. Or tell the person how you feel.
OKAY Novel over, now it’s time for:
~*CONSUMPTION CORNER*~
-Sex/Life on Netflix
-Summer Reading by Taylor Jenkins Reid