There's a baseball metaphor for this.... in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I won’t say I’m surprised because I’m not, at least, not when I look back and take a look at everything that has led to this point.

Richard moving back to Sacramento wasn’t the great healing I thought it would be for our friendship. We haven’t really seen each other since August, and I don’t really fault him for that. He works Friday through Sunday evenings in San Francisco, takes the bus back and then has class from Monday through Thursday. However, he’s constantly posting these videos of him doing things just minutes from my house without even once reaching out to see if I’m available.

Cut to the week of my birthday, I had been pressing Richard to hang out with me on the 30th for about a week and a half. He was telling me that he had class until 7:30 that night. Then he asked me why we had to hang out on that night, specifically why the 30th? So I replied to him, “Well, I’ll be traveling to LA on the 31st so I won’t be able to celebrate my birthday on the day.”

He just replied to the text with, “Birthday?” He thought it was just some random tradition that we celebrated Halloween, not even realizing it was my birthday for the last several years. He knew at one point, he bought me one of my favorite gifts I’ve ever gotten.

So he acquiesced and agreed to meet up for a quick drink on Wednesday. I was going to meet him downtown, pick him up from school and then take him home so he wouldn’t have to ride his bike all the way home and be exhausted.

When the day finally came, I sent him a message. Nothing. I tried calling. Straight to voicemail. Twenty minutes after I was supposed to pick him up, I get a text telling me he’s very tired and we’ll have to meet up (for my birthday that he forgot about) next week.
d was incensed.

Anyway, I went on my trip to LA. Yada yada. Came back went straight back to work, no big deal.

Sunday, Richard asks me how everything went, how was my trip. I tell him and he suggests we get together Monday. I tell him I’ll swing by his place after work. When I get to his gate, I realize I haven’t been there in so long that they’ve changed the gate code, so I start calling his number to get his gate code. No answer, no response to my texts. Finally, after 15 minutes, he answers and gives me the gate code.

When I get there, he’s completely passed out. He just wakes up twice to say hello and then to snap at the dog over something. I sat there for two hours thinking he just needed some kind of disco nap before waking up. He never did, so I left and went to grab a drink by myself.

He never apologized. Just kind of sent a “guess I passed out” text. I wore my Bob Welch shirt the other day, it was the shirt he gave me as a gift. That friend was so excited about my birthday that he hunted on E-Bay for anything remotely related to Fleetwood Mac to give me as a gift. The guy who ditched my birthday plans twice is a completely different guy.

But maybe that’s being unfair. I have changed, too. I know that my traumas of late have probably influenced the way he approaches me. That brief bit of time where our relationship was sexual probably clouded the freshness between us.

What’s funny is that he actually mentioned he had a moment of clarity while on the phone with me on Sunday. He had gone to see Natasha Bedingfield with our friend Nate last week, and I guess Nate had become a drunken mess and Richard had to apologize for it all. Apparently, Richard seemed to think that the way Nate had acted was analogous to the way he had acted when we stopped speaking for a while. I don’t know enough about the situation to agree with that, but Richard said it was karma for the way he treated me.

I don’t think the karma for the way he treated me has quite come around again.

He also just invited me over to his dad’s house this weekend for a barbecue because his brother is visiting from LA. I like his brother and I like his family, but this just doesn’t feel right. I asked him if his family invited me, and he said they did.... part of me wonders: if they hadn’t invited me, would he have even thought to ask me?

I should stop putting my energy in directions that have no rate of return. Besides, this’ll be the third strike and I don’t think I’m ready for that.