Straight No Chaser

Test of Fortitude

better title: "reason number 8,103,665 why i hate weekends."

yesterday i told will and kyle (different kyle; not the one from "Kyle" but one i met last semester who lives uptown) that i'd go to the movies with them. they kind of advertised it as a group thing, keeping the numbers vague, and used the potential multitude as the reason why they couldn't pick me up from campus and drive me to the theater, fifteen minutes away. ordinarily i'd probably push it (that's a lie; i have no spine), but this time i figured that as they were coming from the opposite direction, and supposedly responsible for transporting a bunch more people, i'd let it go and just take the train. this was NOT intended to "make a dramatic point," as suggested by my ex-roommate (who, ironically, made a "dramatic point" of her own a moment later, one that resulted in a chipped wall and broken fragments of what had once been her remote control), but rather to serve the practical purpose of getting me the hell off campus on a night i'd probably have spent moping around otherwise (i'll explain later).

plus they said they'd bring me home afterward, so i didn't have to walk back from the train station in the dark. that, admittedly, is a dangerous thing to do, one that i've done anyway but regretted.

so i took the train there, met them, expected to see a huge swarm of their uptown friends and was met, instead, with a single other girl--will's date. effectively making our movie trip a double date. except that i didn't let kyle pay, trying hard to salvage the idea that it was still just a gathering, and i sat with my leg crossed away from him through the movie (it was "guess who" and it was funny but a little irritating). still, after it was over he asked whether he and i could go back to his apartment by ourselves, while will and erica(? not sure that was her name) took their SEPARATE car to some party. either that or we could all go to the party! get drunk and laugh and roll around on the carpet! great fun. not the exact wording of his suggestion, but the basic gist.

okay, so lots of problems with both suggestions.

first, two cars between three people? obviously that equals SEVEN available seats, a mere ONE of which i would have occupied had he had the courtesy to come and pick me up for our "date." i asked him about that, jokingly and nonconfrontationally of course, and he just kind of laughed. it wasn't funny. trekking from my urban campus to the suburban mall is more than just an arduous train ride; it's a long walk from school to station and station to theater, a long uphill walk, and each leg of the journey is sprinkled with bums and seedy alleyways. the first thing they told us during orientation week was NEVER to walk anywhere by ourselves unless we absolutely had to, and that any young man who truly desired to spend time with one of us would understand that it meant playing escort before and afterward.

second, i had made it clear during the ticket-purchasing period that i was not going to let it be a date. he asked whether i had a boyfriend and i, without answering his question directly, told him about marcus, explaining that my purpose for the evening was to keep my mind off the fact that marcus had chosen to spend our first available weekend together at a raucous post-pageant afterparty. i didn't say i was angry. i didn't say i was looking to get revenge by hooking up with a practical stranger. i didn't give any indication that i was interested in him on any but a platonic level, and barely that.

third, see above, i didn't WANT to party. if i did, i'd have been with marcus.

long story short, i told him no, he got upset and pointed out that he'd gone to the trouble to find a date for will; the least i could do was make that staggering generosity worth his while by leading him on even further, so it would seem. no, i said, and no, and no again, over and over and over all the way down to the parking lot, and when we got to his car (which was really nice, and dark purple) he announced that it was going back to his apartment, and that anyone inside it was doing the same.

so, i took the train back to campus.

now i don't even have the energy to get into why it was such a big deal that marcus was out partying. suffice it to say that by the time i got into bed (five-eighteen, because some other stuff happened after i stepped off the train), in addition to feeling ditched (by marcus), i felt disrespected, underestimated, lied to and superlatively unwanted. i hate weekends. i turn invisible to him on weekends, and then things like this happen.

i guess it's not such a big deal. once when i took the train home by myself at that hour, i got my wallet stolen.

anyway.