A Good Teenage Cry
I have to confess – actually I don’t have to; Mrs. Toad would be right on here to correct me if I pretended anything else – that I was a right pussy when I was a teenager. I was still a nice sensitive boy by the time I met my darling girl at fifteen, but I was even worse before that. Even so, even by the time we met, I was still far too soft for a leather-jacket-sporting, drinking, drug-taking party girl who hung out with the school’s rock band to even consider indulging in foolishness with me. We got on incredibly well and had that sort of unspoken trust that you get sometimes when you click with someone. So rather, we both considered it – sort of – but in a rare show of good sense for either of us we both knew instantly that it would be an unmitigated disaster, so put that idea to bed for another ten years to mature.
Anyhow, if I was bad then, I was worse in Singapore. I moved back to Vienna from South East Asia at fourteen and it was in Singapore that I first got into genuinely tragic and completely wet teenage heartbreak. Frankly it was, and I’m sure I’m not alone here, just a little pathetic. I look back and I think ‘oh for fuck’s sake man, grow a fucking spine!‘ but t’was not to be. I was a state, a sincere, cowardly sexual retard with another nine years to go before I was to spontaneously and unprecedentedly grow a pair of balls at about age twenty or twenty-one.
Anyhow, want to hear what I cried myself to sleep to after yet another crushing rejection? Every one to the time-honoured mantra of ‘You’re like a brother to me’ and ‘What we have is so special, I don’t want to ruin it by going out with you’ and ‘But you’re my best friend’ and other such cunning euphemisms for ‘don’t be ridiculous, you dickless wonder’. My friends and I called it ‘the old fuck-off-and-die routine’ because frankly we’d have found being told to fuck off and die more dignified. Lots more dignified.
Anyhow, I’m better now, but I can’t hear these songs without cringing. Worryingly, there may have been worse, but I think my mind has blocked them out, thankfully.
Jackson Browne – For a Dancer
Bruce Hornsby & the Range – The Road Not Taken
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band – You’ll Accomp’ny Me
The Eagles – Desperado
Ouch, but much sympathy Mr. Toad. I wasn’t dissimilar, then discovered flippancy, and that if there’s anything worse than being given the ‘you’re too nice’ it’s being dumped AFTER you have been planning to get married.
Anyway, watch out Mr. Toad, you’re at risk of letting your feelings show. I expect a mass round of swearing and ranting -or I’m sure we will all start to worry!!
I’m still a pussy at 38, but now I’m a married, 6′4″, 225 pound pussy instead of a single 6′4,” 160 pound pussy. Psychologically it really makes all the difference in the world. It’s being a pussy that makes me me.
The old “I hope we can still be friends” line is horrorshow. Talk about twisting the fucking knife!
I got that in a letter once, to which I wrote an excoriating, vituperative reply, the centerpiece of which was that line, in his own handwriting I taped in the middle of my screed. Bastard.
Christ, no wonder I’m alone, ha-ha
Talk about a post with universal appeal …
Who among us (men at least) wasn’t the pathetically clueless victim at least once as a teenager. I still can’t remember with what or who it finally all made sense but thank god it did.
Now, to echo Ed, a healing blast of swearing and ranting, please.
You used to cry to the Eagles, Toad? No wonder you got fed the old “friends” line!
By the way, all of the above stories remind me of Jen, after realizing Dawson had picked Joey over her in season two, episode one.
Don’t you dare mock me, China, or I’ll cry again!
Actually, it was a bit sad really. In my favour, when Mrs. Toad and I finally got it together ten years after high school, she said: ‘After that kiss when you just walked straight off and didn’t look back, I knew you’d changed.’ – Yes, get in!
In other words, I’m still the same idiot deep down, I’ve just learned some superficial tricks to mask it for long enough to actually get some! Then once that’s happened you relax enough that you tend to become less crap anyhow.
But, China, I was never so sad as to watch Dawson’s Creek. That much I can be proud of.
Never saw Dawson’s Creek? Shame, shame. Well, if you want to feel really uncomfortable, watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EzGl2jupOgI