I did not, however, get to avoid the "talk" with my friend C. -- tellingly enough, when she sat down with me, she said, "Do you remember when I said I had to talk to you?... I mean, that we had to talk?

Hm. Strangely enough, that had not slipped my mind.

I don't frickin know, really. The gist of it is that, from her perspective, I'm leading both her and A. on.

In reference to the title of this entry, I actually said that to my friend B. at some point -- a bit of background on me, I have traditionally been (though I never wanted to be) a Sensitive New Age Guy -- so that was part of the problem, I knew I couldn't really have a friend tell me I was being horrible without considering whether or not I really have been. Luckily, B. knew what I meant when I said, "I have become the thing I hate..." and dismissed the statement as too ridiculous to even argue with.

The thing I hate would be someone who is willing to play games with people's heart. The kind of person, which unfortunately many of us have been involved with, who honestly is okay with however much pain they are causing another person, so long as they get what they want.

In the end, C.'s point was that I flirt with her, and I know that she has feelings for me and vice versa, so now that I'm "hooking up" with someone else, that is problematic.

Well, first of all, I am aware that we have feelings for each other, but I thought they were friend feelings. Not that I don't find her physically attractive, but ... in short, because it's too late for me to bother being long-winded, I am fully aware that I'm not the kind of guy she wants. I'm just not. If you want a bit of what I mean when I say that -- well, witness that I only know what she apparently feels once she thinks I want someone else. I have no idea how to deal with that kind of stuff, and honestly I thought any chance of our being seriously involved had long-ago passed.

Unfortunately, somehow even as I said that tonight, somehow she got from it, "It's too scary because we know it could not be casual, so that's why you're fighting it..."

Strangely enough, now that I think on it, she'd said that more than a year ago. This is all messed up, because as I tried to tell her -- from her perspective, I seem interested yet will not pursue her, while from mine I've pursued and only been shot down. So end result here -- no more playful flirting with C.

Yet she also claimed I was leading A. on. For most of the night, A. spent her time at the bar talking with a cute guy whom she left the table with as soon as I arrived. She didn't even say hello for the first couple hours. And it did occur to me that I was probably meant to be jealous about this...

Really, how do you tell someone that you're just not attracted to them enough to imagine anything long-term? Especially after you've already slept with them more than once?

When we were going home, and she was hoping yet again that we could go home together, I took the opportunity to ask if I seemed to be leading her on. I explained (as I had early on) that I really didn't want anything serious, and I even went a step further. I explained that I've been in therapy for several months, and that I'm currently taking zoloft so that I might still be functional in the world. I even explained that, in a general sense, it was my relationships with women that sent me to therapy in the first place. My whole point -- in fact, the same point I tried to make to C. -- was that, as far as the stable, long-term, nice-guy marriage material that I seem to be ... well, appearances can be deceiving, and realistically any girl who thinks she's falling for me should run like the wind in the other direction, lest she get caught up in trying to straighten out the emotional tangle of all the girls who've screwed with my head in the past.

What did she get out of all of that? Well. I happened to also mention, because it still is a sensitive topic to me, that only two of my friends actually know about the therapy and meds, so I'd appreciate if she kept it to herself. So in the end, she got to feel so much closer to me that I was williing to share that with her.

And this is what I mean. When somehow your own fucked up emotional issues are simultaneously what draws people closer to you and what insures that you'll never really be together -- somehow I seem to have become the thing I hate.