Even though nothing much happened today, I still managed to spout some two thousand words (the most since my first entry. See below for more information) out of nothing. Okay, not exactly nothing. But this cannot, repeat, absolutely cannot be seen by any of the actual people who knows me. Too much gossip, probably. And a lot of people are featured here.
29 January 2011, Saturday
You know, I'm not normally a stupid, reckless, or impulsive person. Plus I have severe social-interaction phobia (if I do say so myself). How, then, can I explain my completely out-of-character behavior today? Even to myself? I'll tell you why. It's all Alice's fault. Let me tell you how it started.
Alice and I had, as noted in the above entry, originally planned to go to the Art Museum at noon, so I decided to sleep in until eleven. However, my plans were rudely interrupted when Victor came into my room sometime after eleven (he didn't know what time it was when I asked him) with the phone. I've accidentally overslept more than once before, so I've come to absolutely dread the morning phone call the day we're supposed to go out.
I was right to dread it, but not for the reason I thought: Alice said she couldn't go today, because she had to go pick up her anxiety medication from the doctor today (who's not open during the Chinese New Year. Most things, save fast food restaurants and convenience stores, are closed during the almost week-long holiday. It's one of our most important holidays, and is all about celebrating with your loved ones and welcoming a new year.) and she had to take mock TOEFLs again. Darn.
We rescheduled to Tuesday. While I went to the toilet, preparing to go back to sleep until noon, the stupid idea hit me, and it wouldn't let go. See, I'd originally hoped to see if I could ask Christopher to come with us on Wednesday (remember? The rain), but I lost my nerve, or just plain forgot. Nah, it was actually because I couldn't get up the guts, and it was too late to ask him.
But since we're only going on Tuesday, there was no reason I couldn't call him and ask, right? Plus all of his family members, save his grandma, weren't home (Remember, I know his younger sister. And I'm pretty sure his parents know me as well. It'd be horrible if any one of them, except probably his dad, picked up the phone). I've got nothing to lose. Wrong. The mere idea, or plan, nearly drove me crazy with nerves for the whole of today. I was even more jittery than usual, and the knot in my stomach was ever-present.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not go back to sleep after the idea hit me. Just my luck (bad), I'm sure, I was just drifting off again when Dad knocked on my door and made me get up for lunch outside.
We went to a pasta restaurant in the Gongguan region called 'Discovery Spaghetti' or something like that. It was quite good, but neither Victor nor I could finish ours, so we had it wrapped up to take home.
After surfing the net on the iPhone for more than an hour, I started to do our winter break homework. There is a ridiculously large amount of it. I only finished English (Duh. Ten minutes, tops) and History (because I'd already finished most of it during the semester). I got sick of doing homework halfway during Geography, so I turned to the iPhone again.
You must remember that, all through the day, the queasy feeling at what I planned to do tonight: 'call Alice first for moral support and permission, then call him', never let up. At all. So I was a bit distracted.
I messed around until around nine. I'd originally hoped to start calling then, but Dad was furious because Victor had somehow managed to make the computer go haywire and he was trying to fix it, so I didn't exactly dare. I actually decided to put it off until tomorrow.
So I went to shower in the meantime, hoping to make up my mind and somehow, somehow, find the guts in me to do that. When I got out, it was only half and hour after ten, and I decided that it wasn't actually that late and to just do it, or I'll spend the rest of tomorrow in discomfort, too. God, how torturous. I don't think I'll ever think of doing something like this of my own volition ever again. It was even harder than the many times I'd called Martin because of various projects.
Alice went first. Her mom put me through with no incident. It turned out that she hadn't actually taken the mock TOEFL, as she went to the church for some activity instead. I told Alice that I didn't remember this morning's phone call so well, and I wanted to confirm it with her. She giggled and said that it was so funny that "There are really people whose minds are not clear in the morning!" Well, that's me.
I talk really fast, and not all that clear (so Mom says), when I'm nervous or embarrassed. As a consequence, I had to say, "I want to invite Christopher with us to see the art exhibit" a few times before Alice finally understood me. Or she enjoyed torturing me, whichever works. I'm inclined to think the latter.
She said that it was no problem, and for me to go ahead. After talking for a little bit more, trying to get up my nerve, she said to call her right after I called him. I agreed, of course. You know, post-traumatic counseling might help.
Unbelievably out of character for me, I pulled out my contact book and dialed his number.
Thank heavens, Christopher picked up right away. "Is this Christopher Yang?" I asked him. He said yes.
I proceeded to say, a bit too quickly, in my opinion, "Well, this is Laurence here. I want to ask you if you'd like to go to the Gauguin exhibit at the Art museum with me and Alice."
"What?" he asked. I groaned inwardly and repeated it again.
He sounded very surprised, sputtering a little. "Why are you asking me?"
I quickly came up with a plausible reason. "Well, another of my friends can't go because she has to stay home studying."
"Who is it?" Why did he have to ask that?
Never mind, I was prepared. "Someone in 905. You don't know her."
"Who?" he asked again. God, why is he so curious?
"Tiffany Lu," I replied. I'd mentioned her to him before, so I knew before he did that he didn't know her.
He admitted, "Well, I don't know her."
I was a bit annoyed with him. Just hurry up and say it! "So can you go or not?"
"It's Tuesday, right? We will probably have spring cleaning then. You know, my parents are still in Taichung. I don't know their plans, but they'll come back here sometime from Sunday morning to Monday afternoon."
"Isn't Sunday tomorrow?" I asked.
"Um, right!" he said, probably not thinking too clearly.
"They must be driving," I concluded. There would be an exact time if they were taking the train. "Do you really know nothing about their plans?"
"Yeah. They never tell me anything." We digressed a bit to the subject of traffic during Chinese New Year.
I asked him again whether he could get out of spring cleaning. "You know, we're just going in the afternoon, so you could clean during the morning." By then, I think my face was seriously heating up. This is bad. I never blush. Like, EVER, probably because of my coloring.
"I'm pretty sure I can't go," he replied. "Besides, I'd never planned to go to the exhibit, anyway. No one to go with."
"Well, I'm asking you to go with us," I say again, trying very hard.
Conclusion: Christopher isn't going. He suggested asking Yvonne. I said okay, I'd ask her, but I'm not sure if she can go.
After a bit, we finished talking. I think he sounded at least as awkward as I probably did most of the time. To be honest, I didn't even feel that disappointed or embarrassed. Very thankfully (and surprisingly). So it wasn't really that bad. I just can't believe I did this. Thank GOD I hadn't asked him to face to face. Great Beings knew how mortified I'd have been.
I called Alice right after I hung up with him. She was, fittingly enough, giggling madly. I'd have been too if our positions were reversed. When I started telling her what he said, Victor came in my room and asked me, excitedly, to see something. I went out to find that they'd taken all the glass panes on our overhead light in the living room down. It looked ridiculously naked, with only a bunch of light bulbs there.
Anyway, I told Alice in short what happened. She said, "Too bad for you. It's nothing to me, of course…" and she broke out laughing.
We somehow ended up talking on the phone for all of fifty minutes (I checked the phone), discussing all of our past crushes and, you know, love in general.
I've only ever liked four boys in my short life until now, and I probably would have been stuck liking just that one boy if circumstances allowed (I stopped liking the first one because I moved away. The second one was because he moved away. The third one was because he got a girlfriend. The fourth one…well, he's my current crush. All but the first one were boys I first met in grade five.). Alice, on the other hand, says she sometimes leaves a few out when counting how many boys she'd liked before, there's so many of them. She is capable of liking a boy whose name she doesn't even know (I don't know how she manages it). Not me. I have to know the guy at least moderately well.
In grade six, Alice and Martin both liked each other. Most of us (as in, people in class 608) knew. But Martin was too much of a coward to admit it to her face, and Alice said that she didn't feel right then to like a boy so much, so she deliberately pushed him away by being nasty to him. I was there to witness that, and she now agrees with me that she was really cruel to him. Too bad he's with Debbie now.
I could swear that he still likes her, at least a bit, because nowadays the only time Martin talks to me is to ask about Alice. Hello, how do you think I'd feel about that? I can only say that Martin is not currently on the list of my friends. Heck, even Ben (Just for the record, I used to hate him. I don't now, though) or Eric (he has a light case of Asperger's) pays more attention to me than he does! I no longer long to be in the same group as him when we're dividing into teams in class, like I used to.
Okay, since it's my private diary, and no one I actually know is supposed to be reading this, I'll admit this: Martin was the third boy that I'd seriously liked. You know, the one who has a girlfriend? That's him. And I liked him a lot all through the 7th and 8th grades, too! I'm a bit angry at myself.
Luckily, I've got someone else to divert my attention now, so I didn't actually feel heartbroken for that long. Just for the most of the second semester in grade 8 (yes, *sarcasm*). It was truly one of the most horrible times in my life. I used to write down, periodically, everything that I was frustrated about, in English, on a scrap of paper (so that no one would know what I was writing about), and then tear it up and throw it away. Suffice it to say, it did not work. Neither did the counseling I was forced to go to in school during that time. I didn't tell the counselor any of this, but the sad thing was, aside from this, I still had plenty to talk about.
I told all of this to Alice, and she was quite surprised to learn that I got dragged to counseling in grade 8. I'd never told her before; I saw no need to. Add to that, the second boy I liked was actually a very good friend of Alice's, and we all suspected that he liked her as well.
After hearing all this, Alice wondered that maybe some of my stress was actually caused by her. I said I don't know. She said that when people said they didn't know, they usually meant, at least a little, that it was. I agreed with her.
Consider: I've never had a boy like me all through my life, while she's had at least two that have admitted it to her face. Sometimes I do wonder what she has that I don't.
I still don't know if Christopher likes her or not (he probably did), although he told me a number of things that really had me convinced. He said that most boys that like Alice only look at her looks, or at least only at the parts that she presents to the outside world. Once they got to know the real her, they'd all be scared off (it was quite amusing, really. What does that make me? I do know the real her, and I'm still with her). He, on the other hand, said that he usually looks at the real person inside. It's one of the things I like best about him.
Anyway, if he did actually like Alice after all the things (he said more that I don't remember so exactly) he said, I'm going to go off him at once. At least, he did assure me that he had no interest in her. Mostly because Yvonne, insensitive little thing that she is (I mean that in the best possible way), once told him that Alice is looking for a boyfriend.
I was made aware of this by Christopher himself. When he asked me what that meant, I cocked my head and asked him, "Just what do you think it means?" (I was silently stunned that Yvonne would actually say such a thing.) He looked a bit incredulous and said, "Well, I'm not interested in her at all."
I should mention that Yvonne thinks that Alice liked him (she did for a very brief period. Not any more, thank goodness.), and so tries sometimes to fix them up. She is going about it absolutely the wrong way, however. It was then that he told me the above things about Alice.
It did feel pretty good to get it out in the open, even if it took a very long time.
Also, I've noticed that my life is seriously messed up. Or it was, not sure if it still is. Probably not.
After a bit, I went and watched "How to Train Your Dragon" with Mom, Dad, and Vincent. It was quite good, although I only got to go to sleep at after one in the morning.