Day-log a.k.a. Bigmouth strikes again
This is very much a true story, dating back well over half a year now – but I don’t think it would have been safe to node back then, and even with hindsight I’m dubious. Either way, this is an account of a set of the most important events in my social life to date. Names are disguised for obvious purposes. No exact dates are given either, because I don’t know them.
A Friday evening in mid-Autumn 2002.
I was going round to John’s house – his parents were away for the weekend and he was having a few mates round to stay over. Of course, the atmosphere was going to suck though – he and his girlfriend of nearly two years (who happened to be one of my best friends – and without realising I was probably in love with her aswell) had had quite a fall out. Unfortunately, due to a communication lapse somewhere, John had assumed the relationship was over – and Anna was quite adamant that it was far from it. Of course, however, I had not spoke to Anna since they started arguing so I figured they’d split up – I also gathered they had split up as John was being encouraged very easily by our other friends that evening to phone up a girl called Jenny that he liked from his Geography class and invite her round – to no avail however, as her phone was off. The night went on, but as a general no-one had a nice word to say about Anna – even though she was meant to be very close friends with 2 of them – Paul, and my best friend since nursery, Rob – who were being particularly disgraceful by their standards. I did not speak up though – I felt part of a minority for even thinking about how unnecessary it was.
The next morning.
The night had passed in a fairly rough manner, including rather unnecessary attempted pranks on my sleeping carcass, which I can laugh about now. Either way, on the walk home, I send a txt message to Anna asking how she was that morning, considering whatever had happened in the preceding week. I got a reply just minutes later however saying something along the lines of,
‘I don’t know what to do… I can’t wait around for him to decide whether he wants me or not.’
Erm, woah… from what I understand, he doesn’t – the first time I saw the breakdown in communication as being obvious. That, of course, followed by an unprecedented,
‘Did he say anything about me last night?’
Crap. I can’t lie. But I can bend the truth nicely to keep me as neutral as possible, right? I followed up with,
‘Er, not really, no-one really seemed that bothered or sympathetic about the situation though.’
That evening.
Yeah, so that didn’t work. I’d gotten a fair number of messages throughout the day asking me to specify what sort of unsympathetic things had been said and by whom. I did not want to out-and-out lie to her, but in hindsight I probably ought to have. I just said I couldn’t think of anything specific (even though I could have probably reeled about 10 phrases off the top of my head) but she asked to meet up with me later because she needed to talk about it, and I really had to oblige.
So I did meet up with her, and even then I couldn’t bring myself to grass in my friends totally – especially as I had been friends with Rob for my entire life – but the others not so long, and Rob was really the only person I would judge my relationship as being more important than my relationship with Anna of my friends that were there the previous day. But she did start to blurt out names and asked me to say if they’d said anything nasty about her. And I didn’t lie – I just used the, ‘unsympathetic about the situation’ phrase many times to signify the literal translation of, ‘they said you were a slut’.
She was distraught though – a complete contrast to John, who seemingly didn’t even care. She cried in my arms and asked me never to be a bastard and such like. I had to leave though, I was supposed to be going out and I was late as it was.
The following week.
At some point, John and Anna must have sorted things out during the week with some sort of face to face conflict – this cleared things up though between them, they knew where they both stood and they had agreed to still date but take it slower instead.
(Note: During this quarrel, Anna had managed to say something along the lines of, ‘I know what you were saying on Friday’. That’s fine... but it becomes very important later on.)
The next Friday evening.
I had gone out once again, with the same crowd of mates, but this time to the cinema. However, the whole evening, everyone was acting very strangely – but moreso than anyone else was John, Paul and especially Rob. By this, I mean strange whispering – usually across me and what seemed to be deliberately loudly but in none of these instances did I even think to listen to what they had to say, basically because I didn’t suspect any problems at this point. However the mood was becoming very outlandish and quickly – but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
We walked home that evening – which we usually would, as even though it was dark there was a fair number of us so we felt nice and safe. On the way home though, everything came together. It was so simple. Paul and Rob were making comments to which John would respond to and general dialogue went something along the following,
‘John, don’t let Anna know you had Jenny round on Sunday – she’ll kill you!’
‘Yeah, I know, just shut up will ya?’
‘Did you get anything? You get head?’
‘… yeah, just a bit.’
Now, it’s hard to make obvious what the point is here simply by writing out text. So to put it plainly – my friends, who were all in on the show, were trying to make me believe that John had had Jenny from his Geography class round to his house on the Sunday evening and ‘done stuff’ with her. This is course was utter codswallop – if you had seen the acting, you would have screamed. The way in which they tried to put across a point would have made an episode of Sunset Beach look like a potential Oscar winning performance. The theory behind this was that I was going to go running to Anna shouting ‘Guess what John did!’ – And perhaps I may have, had it not been so obviously fake. As soon as it clicked in my head what was going on, I tried to avoid hearing what they were saying by talking to a different friend about something totally off subject – which increased their desperation which led to raised voices and talking to me directly to get the message across.
See, I was the outsider of the group. I don’t even know why. My theory (and it is still a theory, I’ve never confronted anyone since to even find out the validity of what I have just claimed) is that they between them deduced Anna’s comment about ‘knowing what was said’ as me telling her and therefore the congregated round at Rob’s house and devised a fool-proof plan to get me running to Anna and grassing them in… catch me in the act.
I went home very angry. I couldn’t believe people I was supposed to be good friends with would even try and do this to me – surely one of them could have thought to face up and ask me straight if I’d been snitching on them. I didn’t sleep too well.
The following day.
I had to let Anna know. I wanted her to know what I knew though – not what my friends had wanted me to tell her. I was going to tell her exactly what had happened – in effect what they had wanted me to tell her, except I was going to include the small detail that she did not have to worry about John having cheated on her with Jenny because it was all part of the plan to catch me out. But surely if I had kept quiet then everything would have blown over and my friends may have felt they could trust me again? I wasn’t thinking THAT rationally though. I felt I had to get it off my chest because I was so damn angry.
I sent her a txt in the morning asking her if she was free to speak with me because I needed to speak with her – Anna’s phone was a little bit crippled however so she didn’t even receive the message until late evening, but she did phone me back. I wasn’t quite so angry by this time, but I did manage to tell everything.
I guess technically I was falling into the trap that I had unveiled quite clearly and stared into and had time to look at and browse a few times by doing this. But she promised me she wouldn’t go shouting at anyone as that was not why I had told her – I let her know purely for the intention that I had to get it off my chest. She was particularly annoyed at Rob however, knowing that he had chosen to side with his new friends over me by plotting against me as well as the way he acted to her face was very much compassionate and caring as opposed to what she had interpreted from what I had said.
The following Wednesday.
Nothing was said; everything appeared to run smoothly. Anna and John were coping together once again.
I was in the college canteen, and I sat down the table where Paul and John were, where they were constructing poster with the words ‘Looking for a good time – male/female’ on it, using a passport photo of Rob’s they had found or been given, or something, and specified details such as address and phone number – a nice simple prank poster.
Anna came into the dining room shortly after they had placed the poster on the notice board, and John showed it to her. She laughed, and called over her friends to look at it. Her friends’ reactions in general were along the lines of,
‘Oh… that’s really nasty!’
‘I don’t care,’ she replied, ‘it serves him right for being such a two-faced bastard.’
Paul and John stared at each other in almost a state of shock. They said something too but I was too far away to hear. Oh fantastic. Bigmouth strikes again.
That evening.
I was quietly browsing the internet, when suddenly I’m being quite brutally verbally abused via MSN Messenger – making comments that I’d been telling on them and asking me what I’d said – followed by them trying to dictate what I had said. Once again they had congregated round at Rob’s and discussed the events of the day so as to see whether or not they had sufficient evidence in order to persecute me further – of course Anna shouting about Rob being two-faced was sufficient and then some. I didn’t respond to the chat box – but I did pay attention because I wanted to know what they thought had happened as opposed to what had actually happened (I think they thought I’d fell for the lies on the way home from the cinema, the main reason why I didn’t block the window). Last place I wanted a full-scale argument though was over MSN Messenger.
Epilogue.
I went away to Belgium that Friday, thank goodness, and luckily did not bump into any of the usual crowd around college before then. Everyone had time to cool off. When I got back, I did not by any means make an attempt to talk to anyone – but Paul made an effort to talk to me and didn’t even mention what’d happened, which I thought was fair, and so did John the next day. I was still angry as I am sure they were but we didn’t talk about it.
Rob however, my best friend since the age of 2, still hasn’t spoken to me since then. I haven’t spoken to him either so it’s mutual I guess.
Also I don’t see them outside of college any more to go to the cinema or round to their houses or anything else for that matter.
And I was stunned to find how seemingly meaningless my troubles were to Anna – not once has she ever accepted a responsibility for causing me to lose a best friend (I can accept I made some rash decisions and that I am in fact very responsible too) but she still talks to me as if I’m dirt. And she is still going out with John.
If I ever did feel in love with her, that’s gone now.
Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why I bother.