Don't crap in your own nest
was the stupid, stupid, stupid policy I took up at university.

I'd always been a shy retiring kid at school, but in sixth form I started to find my feet a little and by university I was a whole load more confident - still a little gawky and awkward, sure, but then I was going to a fairly spoddy university so I shouldn't be too out of place. And, hey, I might meet some equally gawky but gorgeous sensitive poetic etc etc GURLS.

And I did; plenty. Unfortunately for some reason I had decided "don't shit in your own nest". In other words, friends are friends. No matter how lovely and/or fuckable they might be, just don't. Things will go wrong, because they always do; and your friends will think the worse of you.

So how was I going to meet the poetic sensitive girl of my dreams, then, if she couldn't be a friend first? Hm. Never quite worked that one out. In the meantime I somehow valiantly contrived to shrug off the attentions of Cath, who made it perfectly clear she wanted me and reputedly went like a rabbit in a sack; of lithe little Sarah Jane who deposited herself on my knee at one Christmas party much to the envy (and subsequent disbelief when I did precisely nothing) of the male half of our department; of Karen, who was a little unhinged but nonetheless had some fairly obvious attractions and rather unnervingly appeared to consider me the sensitive poetic soul of her own dreams. After all, we were all friends, weren't we? What would our other friends think when it all went wrong?

My most excruciating face-palming hour ('hour' would have been better: this one played out over the best part of a year) was Mary. Mary was a canny little thing with a wicked sense of humour and an acerbic view on life, and I fancied her immensely. Clearly being nice, complimentary and flattering wouldn't get me anywhere with the most amusingly cynical thing ever to wear a skirt. So I wasn't. In fact, I was somewhere between dismissive and rude, purposefully taking against all the things she liked, and taking the piss at every opportunity. Somehow I thought this might endear me to her. Right? It was a few months after it had all imploded messily that a friend told me she'd said at the time "I used to fancy Guy quite a bit, you know. But suddenly he went all weird on me." Gah.

And then there was Clare. Thoughtful, beautiful, kind, stunningly talented (a cellist - I've always had a thing for cellists), the most alluringly filthy laugh, and she drank like a fish. Anyone in our department who wanted a poetic pre-Raphaelite girlfriend fancied her, and given that we were a fairly pretentious bunch that was most of us. Obviously this meant I couldn't even think of it: not only would I be an idiot in front of our friends, I'd earn their undying enmity if I did ever get anywhere.

A shame, really, given that we were best friends for a couple of years. She'd occasionally gently joke about how she was offended that I'd said I didn't fancy her. Of course I didn't fancy her. The fact she was the only girl I'd ever cried over was irrelevant, right? We were just really good friends.

Oh, Guy, you silly arse.

It all came right in the end, somehow. A couple of years later I met the future Mme Debord, quite by chance, far from any of my friends. I didn't have to worry about making an idiot of myself. So I didn't.

But when I think of the three years I spent with an entirely unnecessary self-imposed emotional chastity belt - yes, I was a complete idiot. Ha.
(Guy Debord cette mauvaise réputation..., Mon 27 Sep 2010, 22:39, 1 reply)

Isn't the tradeoff
Inherent in one of those arty-type degrees ('pretentious' was your word) that you swap any chance of a job for a rock-solid guarantee of unlimited deep and meaningful action with an endless parade of gorgeous, tortured-soul-but-totally-uninhibited women?

You might as well have done computer science and had a chance of getting revenge on the world that doesn't understand you with a £500k/year job at Goldman Sachs and the coke mountains and stripper herds that are its principal perks.

Still, I'm not saying anything you don't already know! Congrats on the wife at least. Finally, have a *click* out of empathy.
( Scrumper, Tue 28 Sep 2010, 19:07, closed)