I liked him like ice cream.

(Animation courtesy of Google Images)

It sucks when you like somebody more than they like you.

Which is what I’m thinking as I’m returning these sandals to Ross.  I love the barely-there sandals because I feel like I’m virtually barefoot when I wear them and because I like looking at the tattoo on my foot.  I think it’s my favorite.  So far.  It reminds me that my life should not be driven by logistics but by the way that I feel. 

And I know sometimes I am too sure how I feel.  I’m so certain of my instincts most of the time that I have followed them blindly—right into brick walls sometimes.  Like him(s).

It sucks when you like somebody more than they like you.  And that’s what I was doing with/to the him(s).  Yes, I shamefaced-ly admit that there was more than one.  Less than three.  (She nods to Jean Grae’s “Keep Living.”)

I guess I wouldn’t have been mad if I was on the other side of the equation.  Being liked more than you’re liking is not so bad.  I know this from experience.  It was all (well sometimes) good food and great massages.  It was also boring and predictable, no belly flips or dead in the middle of class blushing for no reason you could name out loud.  But it didn’t hurt.  If that’s the word.  It might not be fair to suggest the feeling’s the opposite of hurt.  Because it didn’t really feel good.  In fact, it didn’t feel anything.

But, oh buddy, does it feel like something when you’re on the liking side of the equation rather than the liked.  I know this, too, from experience. 

He was all things good and a few things not so great and none of it mattered.  It always helps when you can pinpoint the source of your like: his cologne, sense of humor, smile, the stuff he buys you, the way he kisses.  These can change or at least be eclipsed by similar qualities so you can switch up your feelings with the change: his locks are actually kinda linty, his humor is vitrolic; his smile is too girly; and the stuff he buys you ain’t all that; someone else just might be able to kiss you better…

It sucks worse when there is no rhyme or reason to the liking you’re doing.  You don’t even usually go for bald headed guys, find his art dry and lacking any depth; his friends are 35 year olds still trying to live like frat boys.  And yet you can’t control yourself, must be available when he calls, cook dinner for him, let him wash his sweaty stinky gym clothes in your washer—with your detergent.  Okay so I have not gone quite this far but I have felt like going this far.  And I think that counts because the sentiment was always there even when the action was not. 

I liked him(s) like ice cream, man!  And I like ice cream a lot.  A whole lot.  An eat-it-every-night lot.

And I just didn’t feel like I was his ice cream. 

And I felt like melted mush for it. 

Like frozen yogurt being passed off for the real thing. 

Not good enough.  Not quite.  Not It.

Ever been there?

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