There is a time period in my life referred to as my Bad Place. Many experience it in some form for some length of time: an era of sheer stupidity, self-loathing, and self-pity, orchestrated by a vulnerability brought on by a seemingly catastrophic event that is concerning no one but the person experiencing it. Logic temporarily excuses itself.
My bad place lasted around a year (some might argue two) before I started to come to terms with a breakup that had been inevitable anyway - something, of course, in hindsight that I am thankful for happening, but at the time left me embarrassingly devastated and irrationally bitter. The time, as is usually the case in people’s “bad places,” was a blur of watered down whiskey, cheap light beer, girls, and rapid social expansion - continual new friendships defined solely by the bar as I became known as a regular in numerous establishments. Weeknights extended to 3 AM. Responsibility waned. Late night pizza was king.
Sometime around three or four months after the break-up, during the first few weeks of the spring semester at Edinboro University, I began to notice an attractive young woman who sat behind me in one of my college geography classes. She had dark bangs that rested delicately on her brow, big brown eyes, a nose ring, and a slightly hipster five-and-dime look to her. She was different and I liked that - a certain Empty Keg attendee vibe, the town’s resident art student bar, rather than the Hotel or Boro, the more sorority scenes that I had spent most of my time at since my Bad Place began. Never have I been the nervous type, especially around females, but I felt rather queasy in my desire to talk to her - I remember specifically noting one morning how we were a few weeks into our class and I had not yet spoken to her. Would it not be perceived as strange to do so now? I wondered. I suppose that I had been too busy sitting in my seat, examining the posters on the wall for the forty-third time, and sipping my coffee in hopes of curing my hangover.
It took some time, but one morning, charm out of the equation, I struck up a forced and somewhat awkward conversation at the beginning of the class about our dorky, but nice professor - and, to her, I probably came off as the dorky, but nice classmate who sat in front of her. Which hadn’t been my intention.
Still, from that day forward, I made a point to talk to her before every class. Without the alcohol, pounding beats, and a dance floor sticky with rum and diets, I had apparently forgotten how to have a proper conversation with a female. We would speak about the class (“Did you get all of the homework done?”), the painfully obvious topic of weather (“Pretty cold outside today, huh?” “Well, it isFebruary in Edinboro.”), I’d poke fun at her terribly beaten up notebook, we’d cover mutual acquaintances, our shared interests in movies and music - and lo and behold, there it was: we discovered that we were both huge fans of this relatively unknown band at the time called The Walkmen. It was my in.
The following week, on the way to class, I swung by the Rite Aid and bought a new notebook. As I sat in my seat in front of her, I dropped the notebook on her desk, with faked apathy reserved for a middle schooler denying a crush, joking how she wouldn’t need to squish ten pages worth of notes onto the very last page of her tattered one any longer. She had, outwardly at least, thought that it was cute and thoughtful and this made me happy.
I soon found myself thinking about her outside of class. Maybe I’d throw a “get together” and invite her. Maybe I’d just see if she wanted to hit up the bar for a drink after class one day. Or I could get our mutual acquaintance to put in a good word for me. I kept pondering over scenarios for getting us together outside of class.
Then one day, in a moment of sheer brilliance, I bought two tickets to see The Walkmen who were playing just a short drive away in Pittsburgh, knowing that I would ask her to join me - what a perfect opportunity! - knowing that I could also easily find some other friend to go if she could not. The next class, I asked her - abruptly, awkwardly. She smiled politely and with little hesitation said that she couldn’t go that weekend due to work. Victoria’s Secret. Couldn’t request off at this point. I nodded knowingly and smiled back and said no problem, shrugging it off like I had only asked casually, maybe even on a whim, I just had these tickets sitting around anyway and I thought I’d throw the offer out there to her first, since she liked them and all. No big deal.
She was a bright young girl and I think she was smart enough to sense my vulnerability and confusion - or maybe it was just the stench of stale beer emitting from my pores and the second hand smoke radiating from being absorbed in my hair - and she intelligently wanted no part of it outside of the pleasantries that we exchanged in class.
I had taken her rejection of going to that concert as a rejection of me. After that, like a bitter teenager, I ceased my pursuit, never once making an effort to hang out with her outside of class again. She sensed my sudden undeserved coldness towards her in class - or if not coldness, then a forced indifference - and while we continued to have increasingly brief conversations at the semester winded down, we never spoke again after the last class.
There were similar incidents as the months passed, but I learned from them. I seemed to do better under the guise of booze and loud music and dimmed lights and I would be caught in that cycle for some time longer, slowly easing out my way out of it as adult responsibilities took precedence. It’s strange looking back at this time period, which was more than a few years ago now, and try to put myself back in that mindset. I was 21 and young and angry and confused. Nowadays, it seems to me as if that person was not I, as if the memories had been planted in my mind in some Matrix-like scheme. But it was me all right.
This tragic amusement of young adulthood is that it reveals our frailness. We can choose to deny it or hide it… or accept it. The Bad Place. Few, if any, of us are immune to the side-effects. One learns during it that we only have so much control - and once a person is made aware of their own absurdity and accepts it, there is no reason for that bitterness and self-pity to ever make an appearance again.
