I am the “nice guy” and she cannot think of anyone she can hook me up with because she “thinks very highly of me”.

It’s 3 am and I am restless. Knowing that for some god forsaken reason, I have been given a singular identity as the “nice guy”. I hate that. Yeah, I may be nice (though I would argue otherwise) but that is not my only identity.

At this point in my life, I need to accept some things I guess. One of them is that she will never see me as anything more than a “nice guy”. So, should I remain a “nice guy”? I probably should have met this other group of friends, where there was a woman who I think had shown interest in me in the past. Oh well, I guess I am stupid too.

I keep telling myself to take it one day at a time. Healing takes time and every day, it would be better. Yeah, I will get over her and then what? I really am not sure. I have begun to doubt my own instincts and my own identity. I have begun to think that the possibility of me being “forever alone” is more likely than not.

So, what changes day by day? Nothing but the acceptance of the inevitability of the futility of my struggles.

Nice ad, right? Makes you laugh too. Does not make fun of the fat guy and is actually quite respectable towards him. You do pity him and are glad that he got a better deal with Bharathi Axa, right?

Yeah, I liked it too. Initially. After all, how many times do you see a fat man represented these days on television in any way? But after all, how many times do you see a fat man represented in television?

I had a long chat with a person once about why choosing a handsome/beautiful person is an easy way out for most story telling because then one does not have to flesh out the character of that person for you to make a story. If you choose to cast or write about someone who is clearly not in that mould of conventional beauty, then you have to spend time and effort getting the audience’s or reader’s sympathy towards them.

In an advertisement, you have very limited time or space. This ad was about 45 seconds but most ads are about 30 seconds which gives you no time or space to get the audience’s attention. The print ads are worse. There is just one picture which you need to use grab the attention. Which is why ads are dominated by beautiful people. I say “dominated” because there are always those ads with the fall guy.

And when I say, “beautiful”, I mean conventionally beautiful.

So, you see the insurance ad is an oddity. It has a fat man as the protagonist. But the fat man has a critical disease. That kind of plays into the stereotype of linking diseases (and the worst diseases) with fat people. You cannot have a beautiful person in the ad with a critical disease because, by convention, they are flawless and are symbols that the audience is supposed to identify with. In this case, the audience pity the fat man and that translates into the “what if” fear that the insurance company play on.

Yes, it is a nice ad and it was nice to see a fat person in an ad but it still sucks to be the (seemingly) only one to see the subtle play of prejudice and stereotype in the ad.

Assholes.

because we are neither, right?

She is truly unique… to realise her own shallowness.

Sadly, the thing that attracts me to her is the fact that she realises that she is shallow but she does not understand that. Meanwhile, she posts pictures of her new boyfriend on facebook and I am tempted to delete my account on facebook. Sometimes, you can be too connected.

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“Contrary to our expectations, higher levels of physical activity were not associated with lower rates of obesity across the race and ethnic groups,” said Britni Belcher, M.P.H., the lead author of the study.

But of course, the researchers doubt their own study…

“This paradox may be accounted for by the fact that non-Hispanic white youth may spend more time in activities not captured well by accelerometry, such as swimming or bicycling,” said Donna Spruijt-Metz, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and senior author. “These differences could also be attributed to the higher socioeconomic status found in the non-Hispanic white youth because higher socioeconomic status has been related to lower risk of obesity.”

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When we were younger, birthdays were happy occasions. New clothes, a cake, all that fuss your mother makes over you and all the people who wish you. We got all the attention we wanted for that one day. The fact that we grew older by one year was not such a big deal. In fact, there were those special birthdays which were special because you reached a certain age. Thirteen, Eighteen, Twenty one… After that, we go through a phase where birthdays are not very special for us and we would rather not have anyone make a fuss over you on that day. That is, till you reach a certain age, in my case, twenty eight, and you have been alone for a long time. And getting lonelier by the year. One moves out of college and gets to meet the close friends a few times a year, which diminishes over the years and sooner or later, you are the only one left still in the country or single.

Single. I have been single for a long time. It’s true. I have never been kissed or loved or held as a close friend. Which is why it was so easy for me to fall in love with her when she came to me with her personal problems. She cried that day over the phone and like all chivalrous men, I caved in and talked to her. We shared so much and I told her details about myself that nobody else in this world knows. But unknown to me, I had become her gay best friend. Well, scratch that. I do not think she even thought of me as a sexual being, except for that one time but I will save that story for another day.

Whenever she gets a new boyfriend, she gets a little distant and her calls and chats drop. It had been a couple of weeks since she had met me and I was getting the same feeling of deja vu again. I knew that she was seeing somebody and was not telling me (again). That was her way of trying not to “hurt me”. From the limited conversations I had with her, I picked up that she was not at her place most of the time and was “working”. Before you judge me, I was not fishing for information but just something I grasped from the snatches of conversations I had with her. Of course, I was curious to know who this guy was but I am not nosy.

One time she called me to ask about places to go in Thailand.
She seems to be in a hurry and asks me, “Tell me fast, what are the good places to go in Thailand?”
I wondered where this plan suddenly came from and I wanted to ask her but refrained from doing so. Instead I asked her, “what do you want to do? scuba diving or partying?”
The conversation veers into different regions of Thailand and which place is good for what. I tell her about scuba diving in the similan islands, the beach in Phuket, the bay area of Phang-Nga and the go-go bars in Pattaya. All this while, the curiosity is burning deep in me. With whom? And by the time of this conversation, I had the vague doubt that she had a boyfriend and I wondered whether she was going with him. But I did not want to ask. Honestly, I did not want to know.
The conversation had gone on for some time and I could sense that she was wondering why I hadn’t asked her yet. She said, “it will be a just a bunch of girls”. I tell her how Thailand is safe for women and how they can wander the streets till late night without a problem, all the while knowing that she was lying. Later she adds, “there would be one guy who might travel with us.” Then she pauses. I know she is fishing for my reaction to that. I know she wants me to ask who this guy is. But I won’t. Instead, I divert the conversation to the financial aspect of the trip and whether she has the cash.

I really did not want to know. I was better off with that doubt instead of knowing the truth.

It’s midnight and I get a call from P&P, a couple with whom I am good friends with.
P wishes me first and asks, “Where is the party?” She has become a good friend to me over the past two years and we share a similar taste in music and usually hang out together but she is one of the most self-absorbed person I have ever met.
I had not decided where we were going to go and told her so. Then the Other P wished me, whom I disliked for various reasons but who nonetheless thought I was a good friend. We chat about this and that, and meanwhile, I get the familiar beeps that indicate that somebody else was calling me. It was Her. I figured she will call me back again.
The Other P says he is sleepy and gives the phone back to P. We chit chat and decide to talk later in the day about where we want to go.

She had messaged me a simple message, “Happy birthday!” I messaged back, “Thank you!”. Normally, I would have called back but the recent revelations were still fresh in my mind and I was not ready to have a normal conversation with her.

Later in the day, I call P&P and ask P where would she like to go. She talks of this open air place where you can buy some food and sit outside and how nice it is. That is what P&P, the couple, would like to do and I had no intentions of being the third wheel. I said no but I said that we could go to the nearby bar that we had never been to. She agreed to meet me there.
I called Her and asked her whether she would like to join us at this bar. She had intended to come to my place but since I suggested that she come to my small party, she agreed to meet me there. She said she would come alone and asked me to pick her up but due to other circumstances, that did not happen and I reached the bar without her.

P&P came in a bit later and we were having our drinks when she called me.
“Some of my friends want to come. Can they join us?”
If P was not so absorbed in P, she would have seen the distress in my eyes. My reply, “sure”, was devoid of the anxiety I felt surging within me at that moment. Having been on my own for so long, I have learnt how to mask my true feelings and maintain a more or less calm demeanour, even though I was being torn apart inside. It would take her half an hour to get there and I dreaded every moment of it.

I talked to the Other P about the bar and how nice the environs were and he told me about the gays in the bar and how they were hitting on him. As I listened to his homophobic ramblings, I was checking the clock and trying hard to concentrate on what the Other P was saying. A storm was brewing within me. I wanted to shout. I wanted to run away but I could not. Like that song by Flock of Seagulls, “And I ran,  ran so far away. I ran, all night and day. I couldn’t get away.”

I wondered what this guy would be like. I had a notion of the kind of guy she would date but had secretly hoped that she was not that shallow. I remember one particular conversation we had had once. She had just met a potential employer and was talking about how hot he was.
“He is like 40, ok. But he looks like he is in his twenties. God, I cannot have such a hot boss…”
Even though, I had not seen him, I knew he looked nothing like me, someone who actually was twenty seven at that time. I knew that because she had made it clear to me that she was not attracted to me. I also knew that because I have never had any woman lusting for me.
Lusting after some hot guy was something but was she really that shallow? Another question that I did not want to find the answer to. Because after all, I did not want to know that I had really fallen for such a person for whom looks was more important than substance. Because, substance, however minimal, is all that I have.

She walks in with her friends. One is her friend R, about whom she has been talking about for the past couple of weeks. The other one is The Guy. She introduces me to him and R, after which he stands aloof, away from our group, me, P&P, and Her. He talks to R specifically and the two stand apart from us. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe, she is not really dating this guy. I look over at the guy again. He is tall, speaks with an American accent, and looks the complete opposite of the way I look. In other words, “he looked twenty eight”. But he seems to be more interested in talking to R than in hanging around Her. I feel like a moron for having all these emotions and it looked like there was no truth to all my fears. I still had doubts because my gut said otherwise. It told me to observe and it told me that I was not wrong…

She gives me a gift. Bought from a boutique, it is a very carefully wrapped, with her handwritten note on top of it wishing me a happy birthday. I ask her whether I can open it and proceed to peel off the gift wrapper carefully. It is a beautiful gift and clearly, she has put a lot of thought into it. I am honestly touched that she did this for me and tell her so. I realise that when she says that I am a good friend, she really means it.

As I was opening the gift, I was watching The Guy out of the corner of my eye. I could see that he was watching me and her during this dance of me opening her present. There was a certain curiosity in his eye, a curiosity that told me that he was wondering why She had gone to all that trouble to get me the gift. I could see him trying to gauge her relationship with me. I could see that the distance they were maintaining was artificial and was for my benefit. That was her way of trying not to hurt me.

The Guy obviously knew about me and my feelings for Her. Why the charade? Why tell him about our history and make me feel like a loser in front of her new boyfriend? I guess she really does not understand how observant I am. In spite of having spent so much time with me and knowing how quickly I catch on to things, she thinks of deceiving me. Why insult my intelligence? At this point, you are probably thinking that all my thoughts are unsubstantiated. True and I felt the same at that time. But we went to a restaurant later and I saw them hold hands under the table. So, there…

After this, for me, it was all over. I had made a big mistake and I knew that it was indeed over between us. If she could not see what we had and ran around with the kind of guys The Guy represented… But then I was biased against The Guy based on what he looked like and I did not really know him to judge him. Although, from the limited exchange I had with him, I did not see anything out of the stereotype. More importantly, I was done with her. And now, I had to pick up the pieces of my life and look at the bright side.

A couple of days later, she pings me on gtalk and tells me that she is seeing someone. She tells me how she does not want to hurt me and how she will try to avoid situations that would be awkward for me. That is one of the things I like about her but this had to stop. I basically tell her that I made a big mistake liking her and I am sorry for creating an uncomfortable situation for her and that, from my perspective, we will just be good friends from now on. What I do not tell her is that something fundamental has changed. I will no longer be her “gay best friend”. I cannot put myself through that again. I told her all this in sweet terms but what I was really reminded of was what Rhett’s famous last words for Scarlett were in the movie “Gone with the wind”.

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”

But I am no Clark Gable and Scarlett was not coming around to accepting her feeling for Rhett. I realise that I just a sad, fat, little man with a Rhett Butler complex.