Friends Letting Friends Date Drunk

Friday, June 6, 2008

People Who Hate Me "The Balloon Pops"

I’m not saying I’m a perfectly innocent player in this scene. I was clearly not at my most sensitive at that particular moment. Looking back, here is how I remember it:

1) I bought a shot for my good friends in an attempt to have a bonding moment.
2) I was momentarily distracted by a good-looking bartender.
3) I was deeply hurt to discover that my bonding shot did not mean as much to Balloon as it did to me.
4) I meekly asked “Balloon, why did you give my shot away? That was for the three of us to do together.”
5) “YOU WERE BUSY, YOU SHALLOW BITCH” Balloon spit back, and then proceeded to burst into tears and run, arms flailing into the ladies room.

What probably happened:

1) I bought a shot for my good friends in an attempt to get more wasted
2) I saw a cute boy, forgot about the shot and my friends, and decided to flirt.
3) I was fucking pissed to discover that that Balloon Bitch had given my shot away.
4) I said “What the fuck, Balloon? Why you gotta be givin my shot away?”
5) Balloon looked me coldly in the eye, said, “You were busy,” and then stormed off to the ladies room where she then burst into tears because I hurt her feelings.

I’m sure what happened rests somewhere in the middle. All I know is that despite my attempts to apologize to Balloon that night, the fact of the matter is she burst into tears, ran away from me, and then squirreled herself away into a stall of the ladies room, sobbing to AB about how awful I was.

Fair enough. I was not on my best behavior that night. I’ll admit it. But I also hadn’t done anything intentionally to hurt her.

We had one more day in Chicago. I apologized my brains out to Balloon. I thanked her again and again for having me at her house. She seemed to accept my apology…even though I was slightly confused as to what I was apologizing for. I mean, even if I had snapped at her, it wouldn’t have been THAT awful…that’s something I can apologize for and something that I think can be fairly easily forgiven. We had been friends for 4 years at this point…me snapping at her one night when I was drunk hardly seemed to warrant the volume of hurt and pain that I had apparently caused her.

I left Chicago feeling like a bully. I truly felt awful. That is, until I made a little discovery while unpacking my suitcase.

There, resting on top of my clothing was a Hallmark envelope with my name printed neatly on the outside. Curious, of course, I opened up the envelope and found a glossy greeting card featuring two little girls on a bench holding hands.

Oh, how I wish I hadn’t lost/thrown away this card so I could reprint verbatim what it said.

At some point, (according to the letter, 2am the morning before I left while scarfing down half a gallon of ice cream), Balloon had written (poorly) on this card all of the reasons why she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.

The well thought out points that I committed to memory:

1) “All you care about is boys.” (Not true, Balloon. All I care about is myself).
2) “You are shallow and simple minded” (I am the first to admit I’m shallow. I don’t want to be deep. I find “deep” self-indulgent and boring. And my “simple” mind managed to garner me $20,000 dollars worth of scholarships to one of the top 50 schools in the country (at the time). So. Fuck. You.

And number 3, this one kills me:

3) “You don’t care about important issues like I do, like genital mutilation in Africa.” (I scrunched my nose and narrowed my eyes and thought to myself “What’s genital mutilation?”)

So it went. I was neither smart enough nor was I profound enough to be worthy of her friendship. I wrote her a quick email saying something along the lines of “I understand and respect your decision. But know that I will always be here for you if you need me.” Not because I meant it. No, if that bitch asked me for a favor, I tell her to stuff her beaker-shaped face in a pile of farts and inhale.

I wrote it to be a martyr.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m still bitter about Balloon now, 8 years later.

Well, the truth is, I’m not. I’m way over it. In fact, I’m so far over it that I thought I would reach out and say hi to her on “Facebook.” Her best friend from childhood had friended me. She was apparently friends with AB. I might as well give it a shot, right?

So I do a search looking for Balloon on Facebook. I can’t find her. Now, I’m confused. Apparently, she’s left comments on AB’s page, but I don’t see anything. And I KNOW she’s on there because AB has told me as much.

I call AB.

“AB, why can’t I find Balloon on Facebook?”

“She’s on there! That’s weird,” replied AB.

Silence.

“Oh my God,” AB whispered. “She’s blocked you.”
“She what?” I asked.

“She’s BLOCKED you! That’s what you do to people who are stalking you or something.”

We both burst into laughter.

Balloon blocked me so that we could never be friends on Facebook. Because apparently, she wants to send a message that we will never be friends, either in real life or on the fucking computer. My very existence bothers her.

Is it wrong that this brings me some sort of sick pleasure?

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up. I am seriously considering going for the sole purpose of looking smoking hot and saying hi to everyone around her except for her.

And if she did have the stones to say “Hello” I would reply, “I can’t see you. I’m blocked.”

Asshole.

P.S. I think it’s fucking hilarious that I’ve given this girl the pseudonym “Balloon.” It works on so many levels.

See. I am fucking deep.
Gay-ass douchebag.

5 comments:

richellea said...

First of all she sounds like a self important douche bag...anyone who has to block you on Facebook over something that happened 8 years ago needs to get a hobby. Maybe she should focus harder on Genital Mutilation to take her mind off you and your retched 'boy craziness'.

You should go to the high school reunion - I went to mine and hated it - but it was like stepping back in time. Everyone stood around the room in their old groups, the same people were bitches, the same people wanted to sleep with each other...the same conversations were had...and I got VERY intoxicated!

Cookieface said...

Thank you!!!

HS reunions scare me.

I wish I had been at yours...we would have dropkicked some bitches

Liz said...

You could not pay me to go to a HS reunion. Isn't it bad enough that I still live here and run into people? But the thing is, I cannot remember anyone. So they say hi and I look at them blankly, and they think I am a bitch. Winning all around.

However, you should go to yours, if only for the stories and the smoking hot part and the "I can't see you, you petty bitch".

Anonymous said...

I love that she used a black and white "children dressed like grown ups" card. Those cards were wretched. Do you think that mid-shovel of mint chip the irony dawned on her?

Anonymous said...

You write very well.