From: v026ltr5@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Monty)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: More From Our Files
Date: 6 Apr 92 05:11:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

Fresh from my mailbox, here's a nice angst story I hope you'll
all enjoy. Its a little long, but worth it at the end.

We started talking by email last year. She saw some posts of
mine on alt.personals when I was making fun of other people
and thought I was kind of funny. So then we started chatting
with send (on VMS). It was one of those 6 hour conversations
which is one true sign of an impending painful relationship.
This is where my memory gets a little fuzzy, but she broke
up with her boyfriend and we talked a lot more and then
started talking on the phone. So we decided that we got along
really well and she starts asking me to visit her over the
summer. Now, she lives about 8 hours away from me, but being
the stupid male that I am, I figure if I could actually meet
someone and have a relationship (this would have been my
first, at age 22) it would be worth it. We're not even talking
sex here, just hoping that something romantic would come out
of it. She assured me, ha ha ha, that looks weren't important.
** WRITE THIS DOWN ** This is a major danger signal. If only
I knew then what I know now. If only I had read alt.angst.

So, like an idiot, I go off to meet her. When I get there,
its kind of odd. First of all, although I realize that this
is not the kind of girl one lusts after, we got along well
and that fact coupled with the fact that I found her a little
attractive made me accept the fact that for romance, I didn't
have to have Madonna. She was someone I could be with. But.
But something was different. She was very cold to me, very
distant. Almost rude. She really didn't pay any attention
to me, which made me feel kind of uncomfortable as a house-
guest. So I'm sitting in her guest room feeling like an idiot
because I'm obviously so grotesque that she can't even bear
to introduce me to her parents. So they're all talking and
what-have-you and I'm up alone in this room. She then explains
that she didn't feel romantically attracted to me, and that
she avoided me so as not to hurt my feelings. Thanks.

Then she explains that a similar thing happened with her and
ANOTHER guy a few months earlier. Too bad she didn't tell
me this BEFORE I drove 8 hours. So she said that she wouldn't
be fun to be around, so my 6 day visit became a 18 hour visit.

When I got home, there was a letter from her, written a week
earlier, saying that she thought she had fallen in love with me.

We didn't talk for a long time after that. When I heard from
her next, it was last semester and she had some boyfriend,
which I could have guessed. So I angsted on that for a while,
then nothing. No word for months. I went on to be tortured
by others and didn't even try to contact her. Not because
I didn't like her, but because I knew I had to stay away
from someone who was capable of causing that much pain and
who didn't seem to understand, notice, or care.

Today she sent me mail telling me that she was leaving school
and getting a job and then was going to get married to someone
who she either knew long before she knew me and never mentioned,
or met within the last 9 months. She mentioned him by name
and then asked 'oh, did I tell you about him'?

I try to plumb the depths of her psyche to figure out WHY she
would have told me this. WHAT made her think that I would
want to know this information and WHAT made her think that
it wouldn't make me incredibly depressed, which it did?
She never seemed like a nasty person. I can only guess she
was so unfeeling that she never realized what she was doing.
I further realize that she never understood me in the least.

Is there any hope? Of course not. If I had read this group,
I would have known that there IS in fact a group of males
in the world who remind every woman of her brother, and
every woman looks at and thinks that she'd really like to
be just friends with us. Every single one of us has the
following problem: every woman looks at us and thinks of
a friend who might like us, but the friend never does.
Instead, the friend thinks of another friend who might.
That other friend isn't attracted to us, but can't figure
out or accept that lots of other women don't either.

We are doomed, aren't we? Doomed to lives of watching women
fall all over men who seem to have no personality at all
and then having them complain to us about men. Doomed to
having them torture us and coming back for more. Doomed...
well, we're just plain doomed. I don't know what else to
say. I hope this means something to someone. I'd try to
understand it myself, but I'm too damn depressed.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
{       Jerry Brown for President          | Matthew P. Mason        }
{           TAKE BACK AMERICA!             | SUNY Buffalo Law School }
{             1-800-426-1112               | v026ltr5@ubvms.bitnet   }
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/