My Corn-Fed, Deep Fried Okie Romance – Part 4

My life at the beginning of my sophomore year was in a bit of turmoil. I should have pulled a Felicity and chopped off my hair and have been done with it. Would have saved me a lot of heartache because there’s no way a guy would date me if I had hair that short. I’ve got weird wavy hair and a poorly-shaped noggin. I would make a terrible bald person. Anyway, the turmoil. I had spent the summer living at home and deciding that I would never live at home again. Over those few months I had been talking to a guy who promptly dropped me right around the time that school started and that was kind of devastating.

From my Livejournal around that time:

i went to norman whenever i got the chance, to see him. we couldn’t date though. my parents insisted on knowing where i was all the time while i was living at home. but he asked. all the time. asked me to go places with him. i promised him i would as soon as i was back at school and not under some crazy rule at home. and he was the sweetest guy. the sweetest. i was happy. a sort of happy that i hadn’t felt before. i wanted to write all the time. things were beautiful. sparks of wonder in everything.

i loved the summer. because he was in it.

i suppose i should tell you that he wasn’t perfect. far from it. but that seemed like a good step for me. i had always been so picky about the guys i was going to date. i wasn’t the most forgiving about the past. he and i had differing views on some things. but i was getting over that and moving on. i liked him a lot.

then i moved back. i never thought i would want norman back in my life so badly. living in norman meant i wasn’t far from him. it meant i could date him. things would be different now. i would have this guy in my life that had a life of his own. here. in this town. it was something so different from anything else i’d been offered. there was a problem though. one that i hadn’t expected. as soon as i got to a place where i could date him if i wanted, he stopped asking. or if he did, it was late, after i’d already told him i’d just finished washing my hair, or that i had some homework to get done. something had to be in the way for him to ask. and then he’d say i had excuses. so. i was a big girl for once, the pursuing type (which i am not) and asked him. and he had his excuse. i never pressed him again.

We weren’t dating or anything, but I thought the friendship had been headed in a different direction. It wasn’t headed anywhere and at the end I was cranky about relationships altogether.

I kept quiet about it and didn’t tell anyone what was going on. On the outside, I was happy. Inside there was a lot of heartache. I was hurting. Vulnerable.

Enter Chupo.

(Changing names to protect the not-so-innocent — and Chupo is what Heather took to calling him in private anyway).

Chupo was charming, good-looking (he knew it), and could be really sweet at times. Of course he was. Why else would I have been interested.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think, in the beginning, he was sincerely interested in me.

We were friends at first. Then there were dates. Mostly those college coffee dates on Campus Corner. He was going to the BSU (he started after he met me; this was before I was going regularly) and that made me a little more comfortable around him. Of that meant that he must be a “nice” boy, right?

Not so much.

I remember being at the mall with him one evening and his parents calling him on his cell. He answered and a conversation ensued. He raised his voice a number of times and in the end, hung up on his father while he was still talking.

Uhh…what? That would not be okay at my house. I had never heard someone speak to their parents with such a rude, ungrateful attitude. He was so disrespectful.

And soon it would bleed over into how he treated me.