Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 02:52:31 -0500
From: frostydog187@gmail.com
Subject: What Has Been And Will Never Be

First thing's first: the author reserves all rights, yadda yadda, this is
his, so don't take it.  Second, if you shouldn't be reading this (legally),
I advise against.  Third, this story is 100% true, unfortunately.  Names
have been changed to protect the bystanders and the perpetrator.  Lastly,
this is my first submission, so while I'd love to hear from you (especially
if you've had similar experiences), if you can't be mature and polite in
your criticism, shut the hell up.

*****

Sometimes it only takes one look at a person to know that they are going to
be trouble.  I don't mean that they look sketchy, or violent, or have any
particular distinguishing feature that most people would recognize a
problematic.  What I'm talking about is almost an instinct, some internal
warning that has nothing to do with clothes or tattoos or anything like
that.

We should listen to ourselves more often.

I have a problem.  I think a lot of people have this problem.  We want what
we can't have.  We always want something better than what we have.  Even if
we get it, we want something better.  We are not content.

I remember the first time I saw Ryan.  I had started a new job, and was
just walking in to get started on my first day.  He was wearing a green
collared shirt with khakis and wasn't doing much of anything.  My first
thought was, "Uh, oh, this guy's trouble.  I shouldn't be here."

Ryan is pretty much my opposite.  He's athletic, muscular, arrogant,
closed-minded, likes to hunt, likes to drink, and likes to fuck.  The word
hedonism comes to mind.  I am skinny, dorky, humble, liberal, vegetarian,
and I almost do not drink and have even less sex.  We even went to rival
colleges.

I would have crazy hot nasty sex with Ryan Sean Carter.

I don't understand it.  It makes no sense. A friend has said it's the
bad-boy complex.  Maybe opposites truly do attract.

A little history is probably appropriate.  I tend to fall for people I
shouldn't.  I want what I don't have.  I always had crushes on the jocks
and popular guys in school, especially if they had a nice butt (I like 'em
big).  Ryan, of course, fits this perfectly.

Morally, I have no desire to even be Ryan's friend.  But physically, I have
never been more attracted to a person.  Like I said, Ryan is muscular,
confident, etc.  And he has an amazing ass.  This would be fine if he were
a total jerk.  He usually is.  But for some reason, to me he's not.

This is the confusing part.  I get that Ryan's my kind of hot (not that
that's complicated).  What I don't get is why in the world he'd want to be
my friend.  We have very, very little in common.  For some reason, though,
almost from the day we met he has pursued friendship.  I asked him once why
he would want to be my friend given how different we are.  Ryan's response
was something along the line of "there's something about you I like".  He
seemed to think I was on his level or better than the other people we
worked with for some reason.  I have no idea why.

Ryan is twelve days older than me.  We graduated college at the same time
and were hired at almost the same time.  He and I worked together for about
three years.  Early on things were pretty normal.  The only interaction we
had was basic coworker conversation, mostly getting to know each other.
Given how different we are, I imagined that he would be much like others
had been in the past: something nice to look at, but pretty much repugnant
beyond that.

Things got a little weird soon enough.  Ryan wasn't very talkative, but he
would seek me out to have conversations and share more than he would with
most about his personal life.  I can only assume this had something to do
with the aforementioned status of "cool kid" he had attributed to me.  Then
he started inviting me to do things, like help him fix up this house his
parents were renovating.  At this point I have no idea if he knew I was gay
or not, and we had never done anything outside of work.  I declined his
invitations, including one to go out of town with him for the weekend to
see a football game.

So things were getting weird, but the weirdest moment by far that first
year we worked together was the time he and I were alone in the break room
and he asked me to look at his junk.  Apparently he had a rash or something
and he wanted me to check it out.  I know my circles don't include a lot of
Ryan's type, but this, to me, did not seem like typical straight guy
behavior.  I refused and encouraged better personal hygiene.

Ryan was driving me a little crazy, with things said and not said, things
shown and not shown.  Later that year he had surgery on his lower back and
was very eager to show me the surgery site.  I declined and walked away,
but he followed and practically dropped his drawers in public to show me.
I didn't see a scar, but I saw a whole lot of ass.

At this point it's hard not to think that Ryan wasn't offering, or curious,
or whatever.  Still, aside from his behavior toward me, he was acting
normally (straight).  He would talk to me about girls he hooked up with and
all sorts of things that I had no interest in.  He eventually started
dating this girl that he talked incessantly about she and I meeting, and
how much we would like each other.  He pushed it so much that I would not
have been surprised if he suggested that the three of us get in on
together.  Our one meeting was brief and awkward.  I get the feeling that
Ryan talked to her about me as much as he talked to me about her.

One good thing about Ryan being in a relationship is that it tempered my
desire somewhat.  He would still want me to feel his muscles and come up
behind me to spontaneously massage my shoulders, but it helped a little for
him to be "taken."  Another thing that helped was Ryan joined the National
Guard, so he was at work less.  He eventually left for training, and it
seemed I would finally have some relief.  I had been dating a little
myself, nothing serious (or even good) but it helped push Ryan aside,
especially after he left.

I can't say life was better with Ryan gone, but out of sight, out of mind
is a saying for a reason.  I'm sure if I had never seen him again I
wouldn't be writing this.  Anyway, for a few months I was a little more
sane at work.

Then Ryan came back.

Once again, from the first moment I saw him I knew I was in trouble.  He
came up to me while I was on the phone and just stood there, smiling, until
I got off.  It's not like I was out of his way, but I was the first person
he talked to when he came back.  In any case, Ryan came back, and to make
things worse, his girlfriend broke up with him not long afterward.

If I had thought things were bad before, I had been fooling myself.
Single, broken-hearted Ryan was ten times worse than regular Ryan.  He
looked like a sad puppy all the time and I just wanted to hug him
constantly.  To make matters even worse, he started hanging out with my
group of work friends, most notably one of my best friends, Sasha.  I
suppose this could have been worse, because I only managed to hang out with
him twice outside of work.  The first was just a few drinks after work,
where we ended up sitting next to each other.  We didn't stay long, but the
waiter managed to switch our credit cards (we had the same type and got the
same thing).  I didn't notice until the next night, when someone actually
asked to see my ID while I was paying for groceries.  I had used the card
several times that day, and ended up texting Ryan after, letting him know
that I owed him some money.  He had used my card, too, and we had spent
roughly the same amount of money, so we just called it even.

The second time we hung out was just a movie, and again we were with a
group.  Ryan was late getting there and I waited for him, so he would know
where we were.  I guess I hadn't mentioned it, but my only defense against
Ryan was trying to act rather indifferent, bordering on rude.  When he
showed up, I just beckoned and walked in the theater.  I deliberately sat
where he would have to walk by everyone to sit next to me.  He seemed
restless the entire movie, and kept glancing in my direction.

One other thing gradually changed after Ryan's girlfriend broke up with
him.  This was by far the most difficult thing for me to deal with.  Ryan
started flirting with me fairly openly.  For example, Sasha and I were
talking about my drinking escapades while Ryan was present (I only have a
few memorable ones, and they are not flattering), and Ryan pipes up with,
"I would love to see you drunk."  He had this goofy, eager grin on his
face, so I responded with, "What, Ryan, you want to take advantage of me?"
He comes back with, "If the opportunity arises."  I looked at Sasha's
surprised face, shook my head and walked away.

There were a lot of exchanges similar to that toward the end of last year
we worked together.  I wish I could remember them all.  Most of what I do
remember comes in bits and pieces.  I can remember Ryan, Sasha and I
talking on another occasion.  I can't remember exactly what we were talking
about, but at one point I remember staring Ryan in the eyes and saying
something in a general sense that was directed to how he had been acting
toward me.  His face got bright red and he looked away.

I really should have mentioned Sasha more throughout this essay.  Not only
was she my rock through most of these events, but also Ryan would talk to
her about a lot of what was going on.  Sasha was fully in the camp of "He
just likes the attention, i.e. it's a game to him."  She was probably
pretty damn close to the truth.

Eventually Ryan did something that forced me to confront him about all
this.  We were working on inventory one night with a small group of others.
I was a short distance away from the group, trying to find some item code
or something on a computer.  I was standing in front of the computer, with
my right hand on the mouse and my left hand curled around the edge of the
desk, palm flat with my fingers hanging off.  Above the computer station
were a lot of supplies, pens, tape, that kind of thing.  Ryan walked over
from the group and reaches up toward the supplies. He stands right next to
the desk, right on top of my hand, practically mashing his crotch against
my hand.  As soon as we made contact, I almost asked what the hell he was
doing, but managed to stifle my exclamation because of the other people in
the room and ended up with something close to a gasp, but more subtle.
After that sound, Ryan claimed he was getting a pen, almost in a singsong
voice.  There were many pens in easy reaching distance.  Ryan took his time
getting a pen.  There is no way he did not know what he was doing.  There
was no way he did not know I knew what he was doing.  After what seemed
like forever but was probably only about ten or fifteen seconds, Ryan took
a pen and went back to the group.  I was speechless.

I managed to make it through the rest of the workday, of course telling
Sasha what had happened.  She was as shocked as I had been.  As I said, I
decided to finally confront Ryan about it all and get a straight (ha, ha)
answer out of him.  The best I could manage, however, was an email.  My
words were, "You know, I get the feeling we could have an interesting
conversation.  I also get the feeling that that will never happen."  It
took him three days to respond.  I found out later that he got the message
at work, and Sasha was with him.  He asked her what to do, I guess because
he was panicking.  He finally sent back, "You're right, it's not me, it's
not going to happen."

At that point I decided that any time with Ryan was not worth it.  There
were other factors involved (I had been debating moving away with my
brother for a while, and I was less than happy with the company we worked
for), but I put in my notice at work.  The day after I put in my notice,
Ryan put in his.  I was avoiding Ryan as much as possible now, but he still
sought me out and tried to talk to me.  My responses were very short and as
uninterested as I could make them.  Some of the things Sasha told me he
said to her made me think he was actually considering having that
conversation after all, but he never approached me.  Our last workdays were
back to back, and he spent a good portion of the last one we had together
trying to talk normally with me.  I remember working on something while he
stood next to me, trying to keep a conversation going.  I wouldn't look at
him and would barely talk to him.  He just stood there with his hands in
his pockets, scuffing his shoes along the floor like a sad little boy.  I
felt bad, but he knew where I was from talking to Sasha and I liked him too
much to just hang around as a friend.

That's my last memory of Ryan.  It's been a few years, and I know he's
moved on so to speak, but I still think about him a lot.  I get updates
every once in a while from Sasha, as they still talk occasionally.  In some
ways I regret not being more forward.  Maybe if we had hooked up or
something I would feel a lot differently than I do.  I'd bet money that
Ryan was at least a little bi-curious, but I'm the kind of guy that puts a
lot of emotional attachment in sex.  Even if something had happened I would
probably just have felt worse.  I kind of wish we still kept in touch, but
that would probably just be asking for punishment.

After typing all this out, it feels a lot less powerful than it did at the
time, but years can do that to almost anything.  Still, if Ryan tried to
get in touch with me now, I'd respond in a heartbeat.