Old Betrayal

NOTE: I re-read this after typing it, and it’s not up to my usual standards, but I don’t care enough to fix it. I’ve spent too much time thinking about this bullshit as it is. Also, this shit is LONG.

So here it is, a month exactly since my last post. In my post before that, I made mention of some things that I wanted to expound further on. Seeing as how the semester then decided to repeatedly violate me in a most unglorious fashion, I was not able to do so. Now, I have a bit of free time as I take a short break from studying for my finals. So what is it that I wish to bend your ears eyes about? Tonight, for the approval of the midnight society, I present a tale of betrayal and shattered trust; a tale of my naiveté in dealings with the most foul of animals, the human being.

A few notes before I begin:

• This story is years in the making. I shall start at the beginning, but be warned: This may take a while.
• I debated a long while before finally deciding to post this. It’s seen many drafts and revisions and I finally settled on a version where names and such have been changed. Make no mistake, this has not been done to protect the guilty parties involved. It was purely a CYA decision. One can never be too sure.

I started work at my present place of employment as a lowly file clerk almost 4.5 years ago. By about the six month mark, I had graduated from file clerk to desk monkey who pushes mail around. A few weeks later, two stunning young women also gained employment at the company I work for. And by stunning, I mean hot. Just so we’re clear. It was my happy pleasure to train them. During this time, I got to know them a little and we became friends. The first girl is inconsequential to this story, but some of you may be interested to know that she is the one who later became known as Belly Button Girl. (Incidentally, I have a funny story involving her that recently occurred which I will post in the near future.) It is the other girl who is of interest to our tale. I can just hear you all now: “How did we know it involved a girl?” Should I have known better? Yes. In my defense, all I can say is that I was young and stupid. Ah, the foolishness of youth.

So, this girl. She was quiet at first, but eventually became one of the gang, as it were. Those were the golden days of my employment there. It wasn’t perfect but what job is, especially a part-time-for-the-cash-after-class-college-student job? She and I worked in this mail pushing job together for many months before she quit to get a job closer to home. I was sad, because she was hot and I hadn’t yet worked up the balls to ask her out. In a happier world, that would have been the end of this story. A sad ending yes, but not so terribly bad. Live and learn, right?

Fast forward to late 2004. Girl takes a temp position with the company for the holidays doing her old job. “Here’s my chance!” I think to myself. Who gets second chances at lost opportunity? I for one was not going to waste it. BUT WAIT! There’s a minor road block in my plans. By this time, I had become a lead, which is sort of like an assistant supervisor. Dating among co-workers is generally frowned upon, but most departments will look the other way. But date a subordinate and you will get your ass canned right quick. This could be a serious problem, because I needed the job and the money, but then I realized that she’s only a temp and as soon as she leaves, I have my chance.

As the days turn into weeks, I mention my interest in this girl to someone that I work with. We will call him Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul tells me that I’m nuts. Why does he says this? Because he thinks the girl is average, at best. The absolute worst score I’d give her, on a scale of 1-10 is a 7.5. I’d say she ordinarily rates higher than that, but Jean-Paul was not to be convinced. Well, whatever. It’s not he has to think she’s hot for me to ask her out. At this point, I’d like to make clear that it’s not just her looks that I like. She has thus far appeared to be a genuinely nice person who shares some similar interests. Granted, I’m a few large steps up the intellectual staircase than her, but it’s not like she’s dumb as a box of hair. Her personality and looks formed an attractive package which I was interested in exploring, even if no one else at my place of employment (we’ll call it Hell, Inc.) thought she was worth a second look.

That point can’t be stressed enough. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE that I spoke to regarding this girl said she was not at all worth getting excited over. Keep that in mind later on.

So time goes by and oh shit here comes the universe to fuck up my plans. Turns out the girl decided to see if she could make her temp position permanent. Hell, Inc. agreed and now I’m screwed. As much as I want to date Girl, I’m not willing to risk my job for her. So I wait and bide my time. After a while, she decides to try for a position in another department. “Great!” I think to myself. If she’s in another department, there’s no worry of Hell, Inc. dropping a hammer of indiscriminate justice on us if we date. I drop a hint or two to test the waters. It would seem that my hints are returned in kind, so I know I’m not swinging at shadows here. That’s good. BUT OH WAIT. Here comes the universe to fuck up my plans once more. She gets the job and goes upstairs, but comes back not two weeks later! It turns out the job was nothing like what was promised and sucks serious ass. Oh well, back to the time bidding thing.

Time marches on and it’s summer of 2005 now. The weather is hot and we lust for cooling treats. There’s a place nearby that sells Italian ices in a metric fuckton of flavors. Me, Jean-Paul, Girl, and this other person who I’ll refer to as Weigh Station (and if you know her real name and what she looks like, that pseudonym is pretty fucking funny) take turns going out to get some Italian ices for the gang. Now, Weigh Station doesn’t actually have a car due to a variety of reasons all relating back to her being a miserable excuse for a human being (and I use that term loosely). Because of this, she wasn’t able to go on her own and get any Italian ices, so it was decided that Weigh Station’s role was to accompany the driver and help him or her carry all the sweet, sweet ices from the car to our department.

So I’m stuck with this broad one day and on our way to the ice place, I foolishly let slip to her my interest in Girl. This was unintentional as Weigh Station is rarely able to keep her mouth shut about anything, ever, so I’m in some shit now. Luckily, this was one of the few things where she did keep her fat mouth shut. So all was right in the world, for the moment. It was the summer of sweet ice treats and Jean-Paul’s stories of coming of age.

You see, Jean-Paul is what we refer to as a n00blet when it comes to the women. So this past winter, at a New Year’s party which I unfortunately missed, a mutual friend got Jean-Paul all liquored up and set him up with a suitably experienced female friend. Due to circumstances outside their control, however, he stopped short of closing the deal. Since then, he’s been venturing out at parties and coming away with the sweet taste of victory. He was growing from a n00blet into a n00b. “One day,” I thought to myself “he may even graduate to becoming a rocket whore.” I was genuinely proud of my friend for breaking out of his shell and confronting his fears and having fun. But the good times were not meant to last.

More time goes by…

October 22nd. My birthday! Yay! I’m 25 years old! HOLY SHIT, THAT’S A QUARTER CENTURY. Now I’m depressed and I could really use some hot loving to cheer me up, but the chances of that happening are somewhere between zero and none, so a winnar is not me.

Why do I mention my birthday? It is a birthday like any other, but this time, something is… shall we say… hinky. A dark conspiracy is forming, taking root and spreading it’s filthy tendrils across the land of Hell, Inc. So what’s going on? Well, Jean-Paul is coming in every now and then with some tale of debauchery which makes us smile with pride. Weigh Station is still insufferable. Girl is still hot. Nothing has really changed much, at least on the outside… or so I thought.

It’s Thanksgiving Thankstaking and there’s a party at work for it… but there was some question as to whether or not it was going to be held this year or not due to lack of interest. Turns out it was held. They didn’t bother to tell me till the night before but hey, these things happen, right? Of course, since I don’t have time to make anything for the party, I don’t know how I feel about going and eating other people’s food without contributing… so they solve that problem by starting the party before I get into work that day. They call me from the cafeteria and tell me to come on down, but it sounds like they drew straws to see who would be the poor sap that had to call Daljit and let him know where they were. No thanks, I’ll stick to my desk. Tomfoolery occurs at this party of which I am unaware.

The end of the semester comes and I’m swamped with work. I notice my “friends” at work aren’t really that friendly any more. The most glaring example of this is their Christmas plans. They all plan to go into the city one weekend and have a good time. Do they invite me along? Sure, but not until they know I have finals and there’s no way for me to get away from studying for them. Maybe if they’d mentioned it to me weeks ago when they were planning it, I could have shifted around my schedule a bit and met my friends from school at another time to study. But no, they didn’t ask earlier, so I couldn’t go. MAJOR tomfoolery occurs during their outing of which I am unaware.

Now it is February and I have finally secured a job that takes me out of the cavernous dungeons of Hell, Inc. and onto the third floor of the building. I’m doing similar work, but less of it, and I’m getting paid more! Not only that, but the semester seems pretty ok so far. And to top it all off, I’m now in a position to ask Girl out, since I now work in a different department…

“He gets the pass from Number three and dribbles the ball upcourt… he fakes out the first defender and sprints by the point guard. Past the power forward…. HE COULD GO ALL THE WAY! Daljit goes for the slam dunk, BUT OH NO! He’s on the ground! There’s a whistle… the refs are conferring… yes, they’re calling it a flagrant foul! That fall had to hurt. Let’s go to the instant replay and see what happened.”

What did happen? Let’s go back in time and review some facts for a moment.

• Jean-Paul thinks Girl is unattractive and has repeatedly questioned my taste because of my interest in her.
• Weigh Station knows full well how I feel about Girl and takes pleasure in teasing me about it when she’s not around.
• Vegetable, Rigatoni, and Hot Magazine Model, three friends that were “part of the gang” but now work in other departments (all of whom were at the Christmas in NYC trip) all know of my interest in Girl)
• All of them conspired to lie to me about events starting on my birthday leading to the day when I was going to ask out Girl.

So what’s the big conspiracy? What’s the big betrayal? What the fuck am I going on about? It turns out, that since November 4th of last year, Jean-Paul and Girl became a couple. That’s right, the closest friend I had at work took it upon himself to go out with the girl that I was interested in. Before I go any further with that, let’s first look at some of the past events I’ve mentioned, and a few that I have not:
My Birthday: As near as I can piece together, it was on this day or very near it, that Weigh Station got the ball rolling on the massive conspiracy. She apparently played matchmaker and got Jean-Paul to ask out Girl. He was apparently not confident enough before her prompting.
A few random days that I had off: Jean-Paul and Girl were all over each other making it obvious that they were dating. The rest of the department pretty much knew about their relationship because of this. However, they took care to keep it from our supervisor.
A few random days when I was at work: Jean-Paul tells us some more stories of his adventures with girls at parties, claiming that he’s getting more action. In retrospect, it seems like he was getting action all right, just not from where he claimed.
Christmas in NYC: Jean-Paul and Girl announced to Vegetable, Rigatoni, and Hot Magazine Model that they were a couple and were asked to keep it a secret.

Now at this point, what is there to keep a secret? 90% of the department knew about it and now people who hadn’t worked there in over a year knew. It becomes painfully obvious that they are only trying to keep it from me, and to a lesser extent, their supervisor.

So how did I find out about this? Well, after I had secured my position on the third floor, I was asked to come down from time to time to help out in my old department. One of these times, I took my break with Girl because we were in the middle of a conversation. We walk to the cafeteria and she gets increasingly nervous. Finally, she comes out with it. She tells me that they’ve been going out since November and that since Jean-Paul got a position in another department, they meet for lunch every day at the same time.

I just kinda stared at her in shock. Well, so much for asking her out. I mumbled something along the lines of “good for you” and went back to my desk. When she came back, her, Weigh Station, and I had a long conversation where they filled me in on the details. Weigh Station set them up and they kept it secret from everyone until Jean-Paul left the department. After that, they systematically told everyone except for me and my supervisor. Why did they keep us in the dark? There was a minor chance of them getting in trouble from the supervisor, so that explains not telling her. And it should be obvious why they didn’t tell me… they feared my horrible, horrible wrath. By Girl’s own admissi0n, they purposely decided to single me and our supervisor out and keep us in the dark, except that their reasoning was that “it was weird,” among other inanities. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So how is it that everyone but me and Supervisor know?
Weigh Station: How could you not know? There was Thanksgiving and the way we were all over each other on some other days, too!
Me: You mean that Thanksgiving party I wasn’t at? And when were you all over each other, before my shift starts or during my days off.
Weigh Station: Oh, I guess you missed that.
Me: Obviously.
Girl: We were gonna tell you if you came to Christmas in NYC!
Me: Which you didn’t invite me to until the last minute when you knew I couldn’t go?
Girl: …
Weigh Station: …
Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought. Why not just tell me since everyone else knew? (Note: At this point, neither of them was admitting that they kept me in the dark to avoid my wrath.)
Girl: It was weird, you know?
Me: No, I don’t.
Girl: Well… you know… Jean-Paul was always the butt of the jokes sometimes… you know…
Me: And that means what exactly?
Girl: It’s weird. That’s all.
Me: … uh huh. I buy that. Really.
Girl: Cool, so you get it. (Note: MAJOR failure of her sarcasm detector.)

I left it at that. They feared my wrath, but there was no wrath. I never let on to them that I was PISSED. I’m still somewhat steamed, but I just don’t care anymore. When all this went down, I was fucking filled with rage. It’s bad enough that Weigh Station encouraged them and helped to get them together, but she was never really my friend so I don’t expect her to look out for me. Girl bears some ill will from me for responding positively to my hints after she started dating Jean-Paul.

And then there’s Jean-Paul.

This fucker is supposed to be my friend. He’s supposed to have my back. Instead he goes out with a girl he knows I’m into, a girl who he has repeatedly stated in no uncertain terms that he does not find attractive. But you know what? I’m fairly easygoing. So maybe his feelings towards her changed. It’s not like I was actually dating Girl. I hold no rights when competing for her affections. What really bugs the shit out of me is the fact that this asshole couldn’t man up and just say something to me.

“I’ve come to like Girl. I want to ask her out. I just wanted you to know.” Had he just grew some balls and said those words to me, everything would have been fine. Just because circumstances prevented me from asking her out doesn’t mean no one else is allowed to. But the fact that this supposed friend hides this from me, concocts tall tales to further mask his relationship, and pulls away from a friendship because he wants the same girl I do is just bullshit. The fact that my three friends from outside the department all knew and didn’t tell me is also bullshit. One of these friends, whom I have named Vegetable, invited me to his birthday party. How did he get my new number to call me? He asked Jean-Paul. But Jean-Paul didn’t have my new number yet. So how did he get it? Oh that’s right, him and Girl were vacationing in [cheap, allegedly romantic mountain getaway] when Vegetable called Jean-Paul to get it, and Girl had my new number. Oh, and the fact that practically THE ENTIRE FUCKING DEPARTMENT KNEW and didn’t tell me even though they’re supposedly friendly with me is also bullshit.

I was royally fucking pissed when I found all this out. I’ll hand it to them, despite their protestations to the contrary, they did a pretty good job of hiding it from me. I’m not usually so easy to fool. Then again, maybe I am. :\ In any event, none of this elaborate crap would have been necessary had Jean-Paul grown a set, been a man, and just talked to me about it like an adult. As it is, all of them look like middle school kids.

I still see them most days because one of my job functions requires me to take a brief trip into my old department to borrow one of their machines for a few minutes. I don’t speak to anyone but my old supervisor. Incidentally, I told her everything about this betrayal. I was specifically asked not to, but why would I heed the words of those who would abuse my trust? Fools. Hey Girl and Jean-Paul? Supervisor knows. Bite me.

So if I’m not pissed anymore, why did I write all this? I just needed to get it off my chest I guess. I feel a lot better now. There’s something about sharing bad experiences that makes them not as bad. It loosens the grip the experience has on you. I’m not even mad anymore. Just disappointed in people I thought were my friends. Thanks a lot, guys.

There’s some small comfort that someone will read this and think of Jean-Paul and his co-conspirators and think to themselves, “Man, what a bunch of assholes.” To me, that is entertaining.

And in the end, that’s all I ever really have.