mixed messages?

The other day when I ran into my photographer friend, I stepped to the side to light a cigarette.

He gaped at me. Then, “You smoke?”

I cringed. “Yeah. Having a hard time quitting.”

“Woah. I had no idea. I thought you were perfect!”

Maybe in isolation, the comment wouldn’t have been enough to give me “the wrong idea,” but still, was it so far-fetched of me to interpret that as some kind of interest? I asked him to dinner to get his opinion on something, he never actually responded to me either way, and he’s barely spoken to me online since. To be fair, we had never been very talkative as such in the past, but since he took my cellphone out of my hand so he could see my Twitter account to follow me, I’m thinking… hmmm… this is someone who has 43k followers. And follows fewer than 50 people.

And what about walking by where I was sitting that day and stopping to talk every single time, except once when he waltzed by to give me a quick pat on the head, or when he finally decided to sit down for a few minutes there with me  to talk about the day’s news. Oh, yeah, I guess that’s just my imagination. I have a really  fucked up imagination then. Seriously, how much contradictory self-love and self- loathing do I have to be made up of to imagine people pretending to have any kind of legit interest in me (romantic or otherwise) only to dash my own hopes?

I wish I could just scream into the night sometimes, wake up, and be whole…alone.