Twas Brillig

It’s Soap Opera Sunday and our fourth and final Chad. (Need a refresher? Here’s part one, part two, and part three.)

Okay, fine. I confess that to say that he asked me to marry him is a bit of an exaggeration. But he began to refer to us as though we were engaged, and he would talk about our children and our life and our future as though it were a done deal. He told me that there was a ring, but he knew that I wasn’t ready for it yet, so he’d hold onto it until I was.

I never saw that ring.

Somewhere in here, Kate and I made up. Obviously. Anyone who’s ever read this blog knows about my BFF Kate. It was on a very special Groundhog’s Day that I called her and told her I was sorry and that my life without her in it was… stupid. Especially when I knew that the blame didn’t fall on her. (Groundhog’s Day is a significant holiday for us, but she’ll have to tell you that story on her own blog sometime. It’s hers to tell, not mine.)

Naturally, I was getting sicker and sicker and searching for some kind of escape from our game, but I began to feel like this was my destiny. But Chad didn’t want to marry me in the Temple, which is where I’d wanted to be married my whole life. Not just wanted, needed. But he wouldn’t do that. He would have felt like a hypocrite there, because he just didn’t believe in it all anymore. I didn’t blame him for not just doing it anyway. I mean, if he didn’t want to get married in the Temple, then I wouldn’t force him–I wouldn’t have wanted him to just do it for me.

From the beginning of our bizarre relationship, one thing had always been understood. I was going to serve a mission for the Church. I’d always wanted to, and now I had an opportunity to go two years earlier than most women get to go. I was passionate about this, and whatever was going to happen between us would have to happen when I got home. He never considered talking me into staying home and marrying him instead. He knew that this was just something I had to do.

So I turned in my application to serve a mission and soon received my assignment to go to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was so excited. I’d spent time in Buenos Aires before and I was utterly in love with it. I couldn’t wait to go. And so I threw myself into preparations and made myself, well, scarce.

One day he came over and said, “I’m going on a date tonight.” I laughed. “No, really. I’m going on a date. W from that-one-house called and asked me out.”

I scoffed. “Well, did you tell her you had a girlfriend?” Of course, she KNEW he had a girlfriend. Everyone in the foreign language housing knew us. We weren’t exactly hermits…

“No. I didn’t tell her I had a girlfriend. Besides, it doesn’t matter. It’s just for some dance social thing and she needs a partner. It’s no big deal.”

Hmmmm, I thought. Who asks out a guy who has a girlfriend? Still, I didn’t really have time to worry about it. Or care very much.

It was decided that I would go and spend some time with my parents (who were, coincidentally, also living in Argentina–though on the opposite side of where I’d be serving my mission) before I began my mission. So, very suddenly, I up and left. I didn’t say goodbye.

He began writing me, and I wrote back at first, but finally I decided that this was dumb and I was through. So I wrote him a letter, telling him that if he were still around when I got home (in two years!) we’d see how we felt about each other. In the meantime, I asked him not to write me again–UNLESS (and this part had been a joke) it was to send me a wedding announcement for him and W.

Exactly one year later, I received a letter from him. A wedding announcement. For him and W, who he was marrying in the Salt Lake Temple.

There was no letter attached. Just the announcement.

I nearly died. I examined it over and over again to make sure it wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t. By the time I received the announcement, they were already married.

I have to say, though, that the moment I finally accepted that it was real, relief washed over me–like warm water being poured over my head. It was over. PHEW!!!!

I’ve never seen him or heard from him since. I sometimes wonder how I would act if I were to run into him somewhere. But it’s just done. Over. And I couldn’t have asked for a better ending.

I do sometimes wonder, though, if she’s wearing my ring…

THE END!

(Stay tuned for June’s Perfect Post Award! The Awards go up on Monday–generally they go up on the first day of the month, but they’ve chosen to put them up on Monday the 2nd instead. Woohoo!)

It’s Soap Opera Sunday and Chad Part Three (here’s part one and here’s part two if you need a refresher…)

By way of disclaimer, I’m going to tell some things here that I’m not proud of, and you, Gentle Readers, will refrain from berating me…

As it turned out, Chad and I did have one important thing in common: the art of manipulation.

To the untrained eye, we were this blissfully happy couple. While we would have sworn that we cared a lot about each other, I think that what we actually cared about was the game. I needed him to adore me, but I wasn’t prepared to adore him back. While he was incredibly charming, handsome, intelligent, and funny, if he’d fallen off a cliff, I’m not sure I would have cried.

Before you feel sorry him, he was playing the same game with me, even though I think that his emotions ran deeper for me than mine did for him. Still, he used me. I was his trophy girlfriend–the girl he could take to parties to show off, the girl he could use to keep the many freakishly-obsessed girls away, and the girl whose mind he could mess with just for the fun of it.

I confess that my loyalty and commitment to him were… lacking. In fact, I cheated on him–quite regularly. And he cheated on me, too. We were quite open about it, and we hated each other for it, but we stayed “together” anyway. Even with our cheating, though, there were limits. There were lines we just didn’t cross when it came to cheating. (Doesn’t that sound stupid? Cheating-boundaries? Remember when I said, “let the unhealthiness begin”? Yeah….)

One night, he and I and a bunch of our friends got together to watch a movie. I don’t even remember what movie it was, but I remember not having the least bit of interest in watching it, so I immersed myself in an online chatroom while everyone else cozied down to watch the movie. My best friend Kate was there, and while I thought it was strange
that the two of them got all snuggly on the couch, I wasn’t really all that concerned.

Eventually, I left, leaving Kate and Chad asleep together on the couch.

The next morning, Chad sat me down to tell me that he’d kissed my best friend. It felt like I’d just been smacked across the face. When I asked him to expound and tell me how it happened, he said there was no explanation. (I’m not sure what kind of an explanation I was looking for, anyway. “What? You tripped and accidentally fell on her face?”) I stormed out of his apartment, furious and scorned. He had crossed the line, big time. My first item of business was to call Kate and let her know that she was not welcome to call me or see me or come anywhere near me ever again.

Part of me felt slightly guilty freaking out at Kate like that, because I knew her and I knew Chad. I knew that if they’d kissed, it had been all him and not at all her. Still, I had to freak out at someone, and Kate was my lucky target.

Just screaming at her wasn’t enough. I had to get back. I had to get even. How?

I had to tell her mom.

Kate was only 16 at the time, and was therefore still in high school and still living with her mommy and playing the overly angelic act that her mother was still buying. The best revenge would be to tell her mom who she “really” was and let Kate live with her mommy’s wrath.

By the way, this was the worst idea ever.

So, I let Kate’s mom know, very cleverly and subtly. I assigned my dear friend Matt to go to Kate’s house to pick up some CD’s of mine, offering her mom the explanation that Brillig wasn’t speaking to Kate anymore and why–and then leaving just in time for all hell to break loose (while I waited for him in the car).

In the meantime, I forgave Chad. Stupid girl that I was, I dumped my friend–the innocent victim–and forgave the jerk. And we went on, playing our game.

Until the Honor Code Committee called us in.

Many of you will have no idea what that means. Let’s sum it up by calling it the BYU Gestapo. BYU has very strict rules, and in my experience, they have great fun finding rule-breakers and hanging them as examples. There are spies everywhere–people who consider tattling to be an attribute contributing to their uber-righteousness.

I was being called in because I had enabled a girl, my friend Kate, to be in a boy’s apartment “after hours.” Kate’s mom had reported me, and somehow this was all my fault. And all the female Chad-adorers who hated me and wanted to see me burned only confirmed the Gestapo’s hunch–that I was wicked and needed strict punishment. And so I was called in, sternly spoken to about righteousness and lawlessness and was told that they would discuss me in their committee meetings (really? They had nothing better to do than discuss the world’s most trivial infraction?) and get back to me later. Chad was called in and given a similar spiel.

Long story short, the result was Honor Code Probation, meaning that if I broke one more rule, I would be thrown out of the school. I looked at the man who was in charge of my “case” and said, “you and I both know that this is ridiculous. How do I fight it?” And in true Gestapo fashion, he replied, “don’t bother fighting it. We have people watching you everywhere. They’ll get you on something, even if it’s not this.”

I was completely shocked. He’d just threatened me. They were spying on me. He knew who my parents were, but he wasn’t scared. Wait. He wasn’t intimidated by who I was–who they were. Ahhhh, they were making a public example of me. It was BECAUSE of my special last name that I was being harshly dealt with.

You’ll be happy to know that Chad got the exact same punishment that I did.

You may recall that I was on full-ride scholarship at BYU and, since I’d dropped out of high school (yes, that’s a whole nother story, friends) I felt that my whole future hung in the balance. I was ready to spit in BYU’s face and storm out in dramatic tantrum style, but I knew that the truth was that I needed them. No one else would accept a drop-out (they’d accepted me before I dropped out, and never bothered to check to make sure I’d actually gotten my diploma). I was stuck.

And for WHAT? Because I had “allowed” Kate and Chad to be together after hours…

Does this make any sense? No? Good. Because even after all these years, it still doesn’t make any sense to me either.

(It should be noted that not everyone has such a miserable experience with BYU and their Gestapo… I recognize that many wonderful people have wonderful experiences there. This is just my own personal experience.)

So you see, Chad and I were on rocky ground (had we ever been on stable ground?) We professed eternal love to each other, while fighting constantly. Oh, how we fought. How we hated each other!

And yet, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world when he asked me to marry him…

Soap Opera Sunday and Chad part 2 (part one is here)

I know that some of you were casting bets that Chad was gay. I’m so sorry to disappoint, but he wasn’t. Believe me, a big chunk of my life would have been a lot easier if he had been!

No, actually he’d fallen for me. I’m not sure how or why, especially since every girl in the apartment complex, not to mention anyone who had a class with him, or, well, anyone who walked past him in the hallway, had a thing for him.

It made me the object of much cattiness and snippiness. Stupid, silly, girl-stuff. I didn’t mind, at first. It just meant that they were all jealous. But because BYU operated on an “Honor Code” system, we were all sort of encouraged to spy on each other and report when someone broke the rules. And having a group of girls with a grudge against me would turn out to be an unfortunate thing.

Chad and I began spending a lot of time together. A lot. We never “defined the relationship” or anything silly like that. We were just having fun. On the surface I think that we thought we had a lot in common, but the more we got to know each other, the more we realized how completely different we were.

One night, he and I were at my apartment watching a movie and I fell asleep. I woke up to hear my roommate interrogating him. I could hardly believe that she thought it was any of her business to ask him such things, but since I too wanted to know the answers, I pretended to still be asleep as I listened in.

What I learned from their conversation was that he’d stopped believing in God. He wasn’t sure he’d ever believed. What you need to know about BYU is that nearly everyone there is Mormon, and on top of that I knew he’d served a mission for the Church, so I had just made assumptions about his beliefs–that they were identical to mine. But I realized we’d never actually talked about it.

As their conversation continued, he admitted that he was finding himself falling completely in love with me, but he knew that I was extremely religious and that I would want a certain kind of wedding ceremony and a certain kind of lifestyle, but going through with that would feel like total hypocrisy on his part and he couldn’t do it.

At some point, my roommate told him, “well, I don’t think she’s even thinking about marriage right now! I mean, she just turned 18!”

“WHAT?!?!?”

Ummm, ooops? I guess I’d forgotten to mention that part. I hadn’t tried to hide it. In fact, I was quite proud to be the only female freshman in the Foreign Language Housing. It was a true honor to be there for anyone, but it was almost unheard of for freshmen to be admitted*. I just assumed he knew that about me. He was 25. Apparently our 7-year age difference was a little too much for him.

*Before you are impressed with my accomplishment of being accepted, please know that it had nothing to do with my own merits, and everything to do with who my Daddy was and who his connections were. My Italian sucked. I had NO business being there and I was painfully aware of it. Still, it made me LOOK smart and talented.

Looking back, I think I would have been ready to break up with him if I hadn’t heard this conversation. We really weren’t very good together and we really didn’t have much in common. Making-out was fun, but not worth staying together over.

But sitting there, listening to him give my roommate his list of objections over me, was the same as him issuing me a challenge. I said to myself, “My religion bothers you? My age bothers you? Hmmmm. We’ll just see about that.”

Picture me, then, arching my eyebrows, tapping my fingertips together, and chanting, “he will be mine. Oh yes, he will be mine.”

Let the unhealthiness begin.

Soap Opera Sunday, friends!

As I was trying to tackle this particular Soap Opera, it became clear that this one is just so many soap operas within a soap opera. Much too soapy to possibly fit into one post. So, I’m making it June’s Soap Opera—a series, of sorts, that will last the whole month. Unless it’s extremely unpopular, or if I get really bored with it. Plus, one day I may run out of Soap Operas! Then what would I do on Sundays? So I suppose it’s better to stretch it out, huh?

I was heading towards the laundry room in my apartment complex–not to do laundry, because that would have been totally out of character for me, but rather to buy candy. As I approached the laundry room, I could hear singing. Opera-impersonating singing. Not terrible, but certainly not professional. I thought there must be a hilarious gathering of people in the laundry room (not totally unheard of in these parts), but when I opened the door, there was just one person. One completely embarrassed person, singing while he was doing his laundry.

It didn’t hurt that he was gorgeous.

He laughed and introduced himself as “Chad.” We talked for a brief moment—he lived in the Russian House*, I lived in the Italian House. He’d heard that all of the girls in the Italian House were extremely pretty. I’d heard that at least one of the guys in the Russian House was gay.

He asked me what I was doing so late, so I explained that I had rented the movie “The Rocketeer” because some guys had told me that I looked EXACTLY like Jennifer Connelly in that movie, so I wanted to see what she looked like, since I hadn’t seen her in anything since Labyrinth. And now I was stopping by the laundry room to get some candy out of the vending machine, because who can watch a movie without chocolate?

“Well, I hope that you took it as a compliment—the Jennifer Connelly thing, I mean. As I recall, she was beautiful in that movie.”

“Well, I guess I’d better go see, then!” I headed out the door, but stopped to say, “Do you wanna come watch it with me?” (*gasp* Had I really just been that bold?)

“Uh, no.” He replied. “I’ve got this laundry… and it’s late.” (*gasp* Had I really just been brushed off?)

I reported this meeting to my roommates, all of whom knew who he was. And, awkwardly enough, they were all in love with him. And, by the way, Chad had been right. My roommates were exceptionally pretty women, so the competition would be fierce. Still, the guy was hot, and had that special, intangible something, so I wasn’t going to give up just yet.

The next time I saw him was at a college dance. He was dancing. With a group of guys. To Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” Hmmm, okay. I guess he was the gay one, then. Well, that was that. Still, I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. He looked my way and smiled a few times, but stuck with his group of friends.

Later that night, when I got home, my roommates had a bunch of people over. Okay, they had a bunch of GUYS over (we didn’t have very many female friends…) There were guys from the Italian, French, and Russian Houses. And yeah, Chad was there too. But I really didn’t talk to him. There were many attractive young men in the room and there was much flirting to be done. hahaha.

At one point in all the chaos of a tiny apartment filled with a million occupants, Chad grabbed my hand and pulled me outside.

“Okay, I know it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you would go out with me tomorrow night.”

I was a bit stunned, but readily accepted, hoping I wasn’t coming across as TOO eager…

So we went out. Apparently, he wasn’t gay. Just a lot of fun. (I think that the only truly fun guys I’d known up until that point were gay, so this was new for me.) He was an art major–oh, how I dug the starving artist thing! And starving he was. He drove a clunker that was older than I was. He was on full scholarship, fortunately, but could barely afford his next meal. Still, he had a well-stocked “date” fund. The boy knew his priorities.

He took me to dinner and then “disco skating” (random, but really fun…). He was funny, flirty, charming, and (did I mention?) gorgeous.

When he dropped me off that night, I wasn’t ready for the night to end. He walked me inside my apartment which had no lights on except for my roommate’s crazy green lava lamp, which was strangely romantic in the moment. I remember being certain that he was going to kiss me. I remember the way he looked into my eyes, and then slowly looked down at my lips, and then back to my eyes.

But he didn’t kiss me.

Instead, he said goodnight and left.

*We lived in BYU’s Foreign Language Housing, where you had to be proficient in both English and at least one other language. (Most of us were Americans who spoke foreign languages, but there were a handful of foreigners who spoke English plus their native language.) Inside your respective “House” you could not speak anything but your assigned language. In return, you got school credit and great language training, plus the “prestige” of living there, as the application process was brutal, and only a few were selected. It was a fun place to live, despite it being excrutiatingly demanding, because you knew that the people you met would likely be cultural, intelligent, and interesting. Though, of course SOME of us weren’t. hahaha.