Let's Be Friends, For Some Reason

James has been away all week on business, so I'm going a little companionship-crazy at the moment. It has just come to my attention that a boy on whom I had a constant low-level crush in college has just moved to San Francisco. And I want to be all friendly and invite him out to meet folks -- I remember how hard it was to move to a city and not know anyone -- but I also, upon reading his profile, have come to realize that we would probably never in a million years be able to stand each other, even as casual friends. 

"Hobbies and Interests: Just the usual stuff: going out to eat, movies, gym, drinking with friends and socializing, dancing until dawn etc etc."

Oh God. The horror. It's just occurred to me that this is the most I've ever known about this lad, more than I ever managed to glean from my droopy glances at him across lecture halls. Compare his life to my hobbies and interests, most of which involve anxiety and discomfort and hiding as far from the world as possible, preferably in dark and confined secret places. We share nothing. Well, nothing aside from drinking.

And the worst part: I still want to make overtures of friendship and invite him to Dolores Beach and stuff. Not because I'm a nice person -- a nice person would leave him the hell alone and let him make his own friends, friends he'd actually like. If we ever did hang out -- if I ever was able to somehow con him into having the slightest interest in spending time with me -- I would only wind up being very mean to him, because I'm unable to control my unpleasant spite when someone's personality doesn't dovetail with my own.

No, I only want to invite him out because I like being in the presence of cute boys. I'd be the worst kind of friend; the kind whose primary concern is for the style of your hair but not the content of your character.

This makes me very melancholy, because it's not the kind of thing that would have occurred to me when I was 21 -- my dumb craving for his friendship back in college is evidence enough of that -- and I wonder now how many boys I used to treat that way, before it finally occurred to me that my boyfriend might be doing the same to me.