Grinding at the function.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Yesterday, I was thinking about a guy I was friends with in high school. It was a point in my life where the friends I was close with before had a sort of falling out, and we all split for a while. I didn’t have a lot of people I could really hang out with, so I did the best I could. Most people find themselves in a similar situation in middle school or high school at one point or another. There’s a problem or growing pains, and you find yourself between friends for a season. Luckily, later on in the year, I found probably the best friend I ever had in all my teen years, Joe Blanchard—who is a tale for another time. Back to what I was saying earlier: I was doing the best I could as far as finding guys to hang out with after school and such. My friend Parker and I were kind of close, but the funny thing about me and him was that we weren’t the closest before, so when we hung out alone, it always felt sort of like we were missing someone. Plus, he was a serial monogamist, so he was with his heinous girlfriend pretty often. His one before this was the person some would blame for our then-current predicament. And so, because of all this, we found John. John, if somehow you find your way to this blog, welcome. John was one of the most classic small-town Utah guys who ever lived. I’m not sure where he is now, but I’m guessing he’s probably doing construction, welding, or working on cars. I’m going to do some research before I end this to see how accurate I am in my assumption. Anyway, John was constantly seeking new ways to get hand jobs and always looking for acceptable reasons why he should be able to say the N-word. He only ever succeeded in the latter. This is how I remember him, at least. I’m pretty sure he tried out for the basketball team and didn’t make it (politics, of course) and also had an S-10 that was honestly pretty cool at the time. I don’t mean to slander him in this; I’m only remembering him with my hindsight. (Right now, I’m having intense deja vu. I have it all the time. Do any of you?) Anyway, it’s just interesting for me to recall all the time I spent with him because I laugh now that I was friends with a guy like that. I have an unfortunate, immediate distaste for fellows like John now. But as I remember harder, at the time, he was a beam of light to me. I was so desperate for friends. To even appear to be a part of a group of guys that would hang out after school was so important to me. John took me and Parker in like orphans off the street. At the time, it really felt that way. It was so imperative to me that I have a group or at least feel that I did. I wanted to know for sure that someone would call me on Friday, or any weekday for that matter, and see if I wanted to go somewhere. Honestly, now that I think about it, I did still have some other friends, but when you feel like you do at 16, it is impossible to even know why, but you just have to have people who you can hang out with all the time or you feel like a total loser. It was such a powerful sensation to me. I could not go back to school on Monday and tell people that I did not do something every day of the weekend, so I think, realistically speaking, I was mostly padding my stats with John. Regardless of that, he was such a goofy guy that I really did not like to be around. I never thought he was amusing in even the slightest way. I thought he dressed terribly and was truly pathetic. But nonetheless, I was so grateful for him to help me bridge through that dark time. I remember once we went to a big New Year’s Eve party together, and we got into an argument because I grinded on a girl he was trying to grind on later at some point that night. Truly, it was his intention to grind on her later that night. I can’t blame him for being mad at me. It was a very arousing 30 seconds. This girl’s name was Natalie. Once, my friend Brent—I swear this is true, by the way—convinced Natalie that we were living on Earth Two and that Earth One had been destroyed in “the war.” He also convinced her that Japan was inside the Salt Lake. She hadn’t realized that Japan was so close and still did not want to go. Natalie was also Holly’s older sister. Holly was our age and kind of a friend, so this was big. I got a lot of nods and even a few discreet high-fives afterward, and I can’t blame him for begrudging me those. Like I said, at the time, the appearance was so much to me. In my moment of eroticism, though exciting, I was deeply sad about another girl whom I had just discovered had no feelings for me whatsoever. Grinding on Natalie made me very confused inside because now I was horny but still very sad—one of the devil’s strongest concoctions. We were at the party for three hours, and I enjoyed none of them. My mom had offered me to go with her to our family friend’s house earlier that night. She assured me some of the kids my age would be around. They were theater kids, so that was not going to be a viable option for me, even though it was probably a much better time. So I went with John to this party and felt sad most of the night. Later on, when Parker and I patched things up with the other fellas and Joe and I became good friends, we mostly forgot about John. If I am recalling correctly, we tried to invite him out to a few things, but our other friend, with whom we had patched things up, said he did not like John very much. And so, just like that, we never invited him again. We no longer had need of him, and so we forgot him. Frankly, at the time, I felt that we were higher on the social totem pole, and so he should have been glad for his time with us. I think we made ourselves feel good about it because he got a girlfriend pretty soon after, so he was going to be busy. I don’t think I ever felt bad about that. I don’t really feel bad about it now, either. I’m not sure what I feel. John fulfilled what I thought was a need for me at a crucial time. I think being around him ended up making me feel worse most of the time, but I was on people’s Snapchat stories, which was what I basically wanted. I just had to have people to know I had friends and was doing things all the time. It’s funny how we think we need something and then it’s bad for us. That is all part of learning, I suppose. It’s crazy how if we really feel like we need something, we will become friends with John for as long as it takes to find a more desirable situation and then bail. Kind of insane to think about how much we are down to use people and then just be like, “Phew, glad I’m out of that sticky spot.” I would like to say that this guy is probably a solid enough dude at this point in time and that I was also a real weenie hut junior in highschool. I don’t know what I’m even really trying to say exactly. Maybe it’s just to say that sometimes it’s better to be lonely or even look lonely rather than stay in some weird dynamic or have a shitty boyfriend or something. I just hope that I don’t do that with other stuff too. Maybe start a new “hobby” or—I don’t know what—because I think I need it and it’s actually bad for me. And the thing that is good for me is the equivalent of going to chill with the theatre kids on NYE. I became a theatre kid the next year after all this stuff by the way. Also, for those of you wondering, I was right about John. He is a diesel mechanic. Also, one time he told me he was going to write a rap song about the N-word. I said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and he told me, “No, it is not going to be funny; it’s going to be political.” Just want to say also that John is not this guys real name. I used his real name in the first version of this and then I read it again this morning and I was thinking it's probably not chill to use his first and last name hahaha what was I thinking!!!!