11/15/2004 - 10:58 p.m. | now there's a strange mint

Ooh, I didn't even mentally plan this one, so who knows what's coming out? Well, I can sort of estimate. 1) CHALLENGES TO MONOGAMY. OK, not really, but the fact that I am very anxious about a committed relationship with, by all accounts, a good person, then combined with some recent coincidences*, just makes me all... I dunno. Nervous and guilty. You've got to understand, my last long-term relationship was one so devoted that I never even considered the thought of other girls. No, really. It was that sick. So now that I have become all jaded and fearful of being heartbroken, maybe these thoughts do exist, and they make me feel so, so awful because Missy is just such a great girl, and "my god what have i drawn her into," is more or less my below the surface mindset. And the fact that this is something of a public forum may be good. Let her know of my internal struggle! That these things do exist! Because I am sort of scared to.

*Because, despite anything else, I cannot help but revel in these a bit. Firstly, I had kind of taken to, er, not bathing for extended periods of time and wearing the same clothes and not shaving and generally looking about as much like a serial killer as I could possibly muster. As requested, I ran to the Industrial Design place to pick up Shelly and meet her ultra-cute British design teacher (who was all anti-advertising at first because it is so often anti-design, except then I told her about how brilliant and non-conformist I am, and she accepted me hahahaha), and this super tall, super gorgerous semi-goth artsy chick (henceforth known as CrushWithEyeliner) is totally giving me the eye and smiling. Or so I briefly think, but then correct myself because, gah, I know what I look like, OK? But then, girl loops around to give me the eye again, this time biting lip. NOW WHAT THE FUCK I hope to God that she was silently mocking me, as the good old voices in my head would have once pointed out, because otherwise I am just mad at you and Jesus and America in general. Entire unfair. Seriously. And then! Mom and I run out to Papa Del's on Thursday night when she and Tina are in town to pick up the foods, and ok now really what the fuck, Jenny Stiegler from Serena High School, my first crush, my crush of crushes, as far as I am concerned, whom I was so so so so sooooo in love with, perhaps the reason I discovered masturbation even, etc, etc, is now in town and working there. Giggle giggle smile. And I thought momentarily, "Your a-game is totally in place now, Nate. This could be done, done easily, I think, whether you wanted to or not, just to mark that notch you never got to make." Oh god shut up. I am not a bad person! OK, I am, or rather, I have some of the tendencies of a bad person, but I also have the force of will to avoid acting on any of these tendencies. Because I do not really want to act on them, I think; it is more about self-sabotage, and we aren't having any of that. And of course Allison Helm decides she wants to start talking to me. All of you, piss off. The only one I will be letting get hurt here is me! I will not hurt ANY of you, and I will definitely not hurt Missy because she is too great for me as it is, and Jesus, where did all of these bizarre challenges come from?