How Things Change

My freshman year of college, there was this guy who lived on the first floor of my dorm. Italian, muscular, dark, and he played the guitar and would sing John Mayer songs. Every girl thought he was gorgeous, or at least some type of prize. I remember my roommate arguing with the girl who lived across the hall over who had claim to him. They both liked him and saw the other as competition. Little did they know I was actually hooking up with him at the time, but I let them duke it out over the Hot Sophomore and stayed out of their drama. To this day, neither girl knows that I ever hooked up with him, unless they discovered this blog I guess.

So Hot Sophomore and I had a few fun times together. We were friends and had a brief, end of semester romance that fizzled as soon as we left for the summer. He then spent the next year studying abroad in Italy and we lost touch.


Interestingly, six years later, Hot Sophomore and I live in the same town, less than a mile from each other. We started to hang out again and rekindle our friendship. It was nice to have a familiar face in a new location; however, I could tell Hot Sophomore wanted to rekindle more than just being friends. He would make jokes about when we hooked up in college, or offer to clean my bathroom in exchange for me cooking him dinner in my underwear. It all seemed silly until I became aware that he was somewhat serious. I thought about it, and realized that not only do I not want to be more than friends, but that I am completely UN attracted to him now. The hot, muscular, guitar playing heartthrob from college no longer exists. In fact, not only do I find him completely unattractive physically, but his personality really annoys me too.

Everything he does annoys me. He invited me over for dinner on a Tuesday night. I said I would arrive at 7:30 and asked what I could bring to contribute. He said nothing, had set the menu and told me to just bring my appetite. I arrived fashionably late at 7:45 and he had not even started cooking yet. I was instantly annoyed. He gradually started to cook but was sidetracked because he was watching American Idol, a show I do not follow nor can I stand. I asked if there's anything I can do to help, he said no so I sit on his couch fuming. At 8:15 I decided to say something and mentioned that it was pretty late to be eating dinner, I couldn't stay long and needed to get up early for work the next morning. He sensed the tension in my voice and told me to "chill the fuck out" and that the dinner was meant to be relaxing, not to cause stress. I don't quite see how agreeing to a 7:30 dinner and then serving it over an hour later than planned is relaxing, but maybe I'm just uptight. Plus I had just worked out and was starving!

We finished eating around 9pm (I wolfed everything down), I washed the dishes as a "thank you" to him for cooking and said that I had to get going. Only I could not leave until he played/sang a Jason Mraz song he's been working on. I sat through it, smiled, said it sounded good, and realized that his musical abilities no longer intrigued me like they did when I was 18. In fact, I couldn't wait to get away from him. I thanked him again and walked out the front door. He stopped me on the porch and asked, "Do you think cooking a meal like this turns girls on?" I fought to hold in my laughter. "Um....a guy who can cook is definitely a plus...." I trailed off.

On my walk home I couldn't help but ask myself "wtf were you thinking freshman year?" but I suppose this is all part of growing up.