My Top 5 Rejections. Number 4.

Continuing to expose the emotional wounds for your reading enjoyment. Sadists.

Read Number 5 first, if you haven’t and care about order.

Number 4

In elementary school chicks dug me. I was chased on the play ground, kissed in the coatroom and invited to play spin the bottle. It was a great start to my interaction with females. I was hot shit.

Then, unbeknownst to me, something happened. Looking back, I think it was the onset of puberty for every around me, leaving me still in cherub-land. As a general rule, after sixth grade I was socially clumsy and not smooth with the girls. But that was the general rule, and not always so.

Enter Wendy F in seventh grade. She was this soft-voiced, cutie who had big, light brown hair with bangs dropping into her eyes. She was adorable with nice, kissable lips. If only I had the chance to experience them.

By some random twist of fate (that being an alignment of a seating chart) we sat next to one another in the back of the class room in math class. The teacher was a dick and I quietly made fun of him, which caught Wendy’s attention. She laughed, and eventually, we had a bit of a rapport going on. We talked a lot in class and got in trouble together for it. It was fun, and I thought she was digging me.

With this diggery in mind, the scene cuts to the Junior High dance. Just as in all the movies about dances, but the girls and guys were actually intermingling. 80s music was lingering in the air like cigar smoke. “I feel for you” by Chaka Kahn. “Wild Boys” by the Durans.

I passed by Wendy in the hall outside the gym where, naturally, the Dance was being held. We talked and said hi. She was digging me. I could feel it. She smiled a lot. Gave shy glances from behind her bangs.

I had to pee real bad, so I said, “I’ll see you inside.”

“OK,” she replied. I think she meant it too, like, it was OK.

I returned from the bathroom, entered the dimly lit gym with the douche bag DJ spinning “Rhythm of the night” by El DeBarge. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and I was scanning the room for Wendy when the “Rhythm” ended and Madonna’s “Crazy for You” started to spin.

Perfect. Time to make my move and take my relationship with Wendy to the next stage. I found her in a group of her friends, maybe 5 of them. As I walked over, nervous as hell about what I was about to do; ask a girl to dance for the first time and pray to god I wouldn’t sport wood on the gym floor.

In retrospect, what the F was I thinking? Approaching a girl in a gaggle of her friends without a wingman of my own; throwing my soul out there for those dark-hearted 7th grade harpies to pick apart.

I walked up to her, feeling pretty confident, despite my nerves.

“Hey Wendy….wanna Dance?”

“No. Eww. Now? No.” Seriously. These were the words that came out. But you have to read them fast in order to get the effect. The gaggle laughed. Hard.

I was stunned. What else could I do? I walked away. We had such a thing going, I figured her saying yes was a formality.

What I had not considered was the social ramifications. Those harpies in her clique had blackballed me. I really think she liked me to some degree, but I wasn’t on the in-list. I was on the outs.

Wendy and I recovered the friendship, as I acted as if it was no big deal to have my pre-pubescent heart stomped on for the purpose of her social approval into a clique. After that year, though, we didn’t talk. She kind turned burn-outy in high school. I think I heard she was living in a trailer park in some rural area with her 7 children, and her busted-down pickup truck and her no-good deadbeat of a husband. I hope not. She was too cute.