straws.

i grew up with lindsey. and when i say i grew up with lindsey, i mean we spent are most formidable eighth grade through high school years together.

we would slide down her stairs on sleeping bags, and when that wasn’t enough, we would use mattresses. when it was cold we would walk to a tiny hill and snowboard down it. we were never good snow boarders. later in college, before i dropped out, we went to starbucks once a week, it was a ritual. and there she taught me about straws.

“okay alyssa, take the straw wrapper, tie it in a knot, then pull on both ends. think about the boy you love. if it’s still a knot after you pull, then he’s not thinking of you. if it’s not a knot. then you know. he wants you.”

i believe in the straws.

two summers ago, i taught jacey about the straws. whenever we would order an iced grande soy caramel macchiatto or an iced grande soy green tea latte, we would hold the straw wrappers, and together, we would pull, and together we would get angry or overjoyed that the men we loved were not or were totally, oh em gee, thinking about us. she said, “i believe in the straws.” fact: those boys thought about us a lot, but currently, i doubt they think that often. now we pull straws for other boys.

back five years ago, when i went to harper college with lindsey, who is currently graduated by the way, i pulled straws for a blonde with blue eyes and giant biceps. he told me that i was his best friend. according to the straws, he thought about me a lot, and i would smile, and innocently say, “of course he’s thinking about me, he loves me.” no one ever gave me the kind of attention he gave me. he told me i was pretty, that he liked my conversation. i thought he looked like a cokehead, but he seemed intelligent, and he liked to drive me home. i never told him i liked him, because i doubt i was sure. but i loved hearing that he liked me. he said it all the time. threw it at me, like i could handle that kind of pressure.

one day while driving me home he told me he was dating this other chick with a big smile, googly eyes, and love handles. the straws didn’t lie. he did. this girl had nothing on me. she was lame. and they broke up four months later. but still, my heart was broken a thousand times over. because i must not have been as beautiful, interesting, smart and wonderful as my mom tried telling me i was.

three years later, there was a boy. he lived in wisconsin and he had green eyes and a scruffy face. he played the guitar and smelled like sun burn. i liked him way too long for my own good. in fact, he wasn’t special, just quiet. just interesting to me. he liked me and then fingered a blonde from kenosha. whenever he got intoxicated he told me that he wished he could be with me, but that this other chick was his girlfriend. i told him that he should have checked the straws. they would have told him that i thought about him everyday.

“i didn’t know you liked me too, i would have chosen you. i’m with her now, don’t wait for me,” he said. drunk talk never turned me on. i didn’t wait for him, in fact i got sick of him telling me how much he wanted me when he was drunk, and dating someone else when he was sober. so i stopped seeing him altogether.

that year i met a boy with brown eyes. he was tall with a nice back. to me he wasn’t real. just a figment of my imagination. i needed something like that. something that i didn’t have to put my trust in. he was never something that could break my heart, because he wasn’t the type to ask for my heart in the first place. so i liked him, because it was hard not too. he was mean, and mean made sense. nice guys always dated other girls, because of reasons the straws don’t inform you of. mean guys don’t think of you at all, trust the straws. they don’t lie. he never thought of me. and i could deal with it. until i couldn’t anymore.

the first time i remember talking to him, i pulled straws with him. he was setting up the bar, and had to unwrap the straws for drinks later. he told me i was a quiet talker. i’m not. i’m kind of a loud talker, actually. i wanted to figure out everything about him, i used to stare at him, just to see if i could learn something knew. he would catch me, but i never got that embarrased. he intrigued me, and i knew he wasn’t about to be intrigued back, so i had really nothing to lose. he never promised me, told me he liked me, or gave me reason to expect.

you can read back a year ago. i wrote about him. somewhere in between not caring and the truth, he messed my heart up more than any of them. he never even gave me a reason to believe in him, but i did. he wasn’t good to me, but i liked everything he was. and here i tried to figure out, why me, a smart girl, with a hurt, but normal self-esteem would actually go for someone who treated her like shit. he was my favorite, and the straws, and everything in general, told me that i wasn’t his.

i still like him. and i still pull straws, but it’s more of a mindless thing. i don’t realize what i’m doing, like a ritual, or an ocd tendancy. because where the straws may not lie, they don’t tell you everything. and life is not a crazy, cosmic force that pulls people together and sends brain power through inadament objects– even though the thought occasionally crosses my mind.

in reality you can’t help who you like, and even when it hurts, you still think about that person. but that’s not fate, that’s just us, being retarded human beings, falling in and out of like, pain and optimism, thinking, because we can’t help thinking. i smile when i think about him now– it used to make me sad. i don’t know what changed, but i’m not really ready to understand anything.  i don’t even know what the purpose of all these words are.  i feel like if you read this far, you probably were really bored or something. anyway. i’m going to go to sleep.  sleep sounds exciting.

someone should give him a straw, because i am like so totally like thinking about him right now.