When I was in college, I had a small cult following in my neighborhood. Some teenage girls living nearby apparently thought I was cool and worshiped my weird, old Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme car. I had vinyl decals of New Order, Joy Division, and Lush on the back window. This goth girl who lived on the corner had her friend take this picture of herself draped over my car at night without me knowing. She left this photo on my windshield wiper. I talked with her later and found out that she was really into Bauhaus and Siouxie & the Banshees. She didn't know the band Joy Division though. I guess she was still figuring out the whole "goth" thing at the time, because how can any goth kid not know of Joy Division?

Memoirs of a painfully shy, lovesick nerd

December 2022

(Notes: 1. I've added code to the HTML of this page to prevent webcrawlers from sniffing the contents and sharing it with search engines, thereby ensuring privacy of those involved. Thus, anyone searching for any name or combination of names featured therein will never see this essay in any search result. 2. The main focus of this essay is not my wife, but mostly focused on past relationships and my emotions involved with those experiences. The story focused on the love story of my wife was written later as this essay here, and it involves many of the same people from my college days mentioned in the essay you're about to read, particularly the final girl in this story.)

Chapters:

• Introduction
  
• Elementary school
  
• High school
  
  • Denise
    
  • Jenny
    
• College
  
  • Juliet
    
  • Lisa
    
• Looking back
  
• Looking ahead
  
• Epilogue

This is the story of how I, a shy introvert, through introspection, reflection, and self analysis gradually learned to believe in myself and to be self-assured. It is the story of how I became responsible for my own peace and assurance in my life, and by providence I found love. Of course, this story revolves around girls---the girls I was crazy about, and how much I wanted to simultaneously be with girls and flee from them. These candid emotions I'm about to share in this retrospective are how I felt at the time, which I had fortunately captured with pen and paper in pages of my private journals, emails, and heartfelt, handwritten correspondence I have kept over time. I have to admit that connecting with these old emotions has been difficult for me, and I have shed many tears while writing this. These are my joys, failures, sadness and regrets. This is the story of how I went from being a perpetually heartbroken, forlorn boy with my head constantly down, ashamed of my own face, plagued with a dark cloud of despair and self-hatred, convinced that I'd never find love to actually finding myself in a love triangle of sorts and disappointing a few girls despite my best efforts. It's the story of how I went from being a self-loathing boy with no self-confidence to becoming a young man who gained confidence to do what most people lack courage to do: pack up and move to a foreign country to start a new life and work there. Being shy, there were very few girls I ever got close to in my life, and through these girls with whom I bonded and made friendships ---the ones whom I knew before I met my wife in person---through them I slowly learned to improve my character, to find peace and assurance on my own and to not be discouraged by the lack of romance in my life which others seemed to find so easily, yet somehow seemed forbidden to myself. It seemed to me that everyone else could find love except myself, and I actually felt that love was somehow unattainable and prohibited to me by fate. I was even scared to fall in love, convinced that doing so would be inseperable from the pain of heartache. However from even the girls who broke my heart I learned to become a better person, and how to appreciate others as well as appreciate myself. This is not so much the story of my romance with my wife, but rather how I came of age and the lessons I learned from four very special girls in my life to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude as they added to my character greatly. It's how recently being suddenly reminded of one particularly special girl --the final of these four girls-- prompted me to delve into my written memories, which sent me on a mental journey back in time to connect with my past self to find the answers I was looking for here in the present: to improve my life, to acknowledge that connection of events which lead me to the place in my life which divine providence has found for me.

My question though, through my retrospective journey from adolescence to young adulthood is this: do people hurting inside somehow gravitate towards each other? Those who have the pain of sadness and loneliness in their hearts... is there some inherent characteristic that instinctively draws us together? All along, was I not so alone as I thought?

Elementary school
I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona in 1976 and grew up in the '80s, if you want to know about all that crap. We lived in Phoenix and then moved to Glendale when I was 4, in 1980. Glendale is pretty much a suburb of Phoenix, in the West Valley. There are only two seasons in the Phoenix Valley: "summer" and "not summer." When it's not summer, it can be pleasant. When it is summer though, it's rather dreadful. It can go for months without rain. Snowbirds from places like Minnesota love Phoenix and say crap like, "You can't shovel sunshine!" because they come from godawful frozen places. They never have to worry about snow in Phoenix. People here in Japan often ask me what winter is like where I am from and I tell them that anything resembling "winter" as they know it lasts only about two weeks, around Christmastime. It's then when ice might form overnight. By the end of January, the flowering pear trees are blooming already and people are wearing short sleeves, at least during the daytime. I haven't been there since March 2012, a month after Mom died. I haven't been back. I miss my family, I miss Arizona-style Mexican food, and I miss my friends. Aside from seeing the sights like Sedona, the Grand Canyon, and Monument Valley again and wanting to share these experiences with my daughter, there's not much else I miss about living in Arizona though, or America in general. But, I digress.

I can't say my childhood totally sucked, as my dad was a carpenter and was able to be the sole provider for his family. My sister is 3 years older than me, and we got along well growing up. However, I hated school. I remember after my first day of kindergarten, Mom asked me how my day went. I told her it was alright, but I wouldn't be going back. I didn't know the kids there and I was too shy to make new friends. The elementary school I attended encompassed kindergarten through the 8th grade. There was no separate junior high school for me, so that school was the first nine years of my school life. I graduated the 8th grade in 1990.

I've gotta say that when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back in the movie theater as a small boy (about 4 or 5), that really blew me away and it really affected my life in a major way. It made me a nerd for life. It wasn't until later when I finally saw the first Star Wars movie in the theater. It was a different time back then, when only rich people had VCRs. I didn't even know such devices existed at the time.

Girls were such an enigma to me. The first girl I ever kissed was in the 1st grade. Her name was Jennifer and she was the girl who lived across the street. She wanted to try kissing, so OK, why not? During the process, she inexplicably fell backwards and hit her head on the stone bench in front of my other friend's front door. She went home crying. Did I push her? What happened? A year or so before that when I was 5, Dad went golfing with a friend of his and that man's daughter was a year younger than me. She declared she was in love with me or something and was chasing me around the picnic tables. I was just trying to get away because she annoyed me. She tackled me and I knocked my two front teeth loose on a table. "What is up with girls, anyway?" I thought. (Incidentally, the second girl I ever kissed is the one I married.) The first time I got in trouble for talking in class was in the 1st grade. I was talking with a Chinese girl named Lee and we couldn't stop talking about Pac-Man. She was alright.

I was not only an introvert but a horribly shy, uncoordinated kid who couldn't play sports with other kids because by doing so I only invited derision and mockery. Other kids could enjoy sports, but a tetanus vaccine when I was 4 years old ensured that I did not have a "normal" childhood, as it gave me a dangerously high fever that cooked my brain and damaged my coordination, which guaranteed ridicule from classmates my entire school life. This wrecked my childhood and prevented me from connecting with others. Mom told me that the fever was so high that she was afraid when the doctor said that it could have left me mentally retarded, so I'm lucky that only my coordination suffered, although I think it may have left me with undiagnosed cases of Asperger's and Tourette's. I definitely remember myself being unable to stack blocks and breaking down crying at that age, and Mom would recant that story often. My hand-eye coordination was shot and I wasn't able to tie my own shoes until I was about 8 or so. (Mom was hesitant to have me get the "booster" as my high school was expecting it. I ended up getting it and while I had another bad reaction with a high fever, it wasn't as bad... but after that I started taking daily naps in the afternoon.)

I completely hated P.E. class every day, as my clumsiness was the target of a constant barrage of insults and ridicule, and I remember a few times even the damned P.E. teacher himself joined the other students in making fun of me, the bastard. When choosing sports teams in P.E., I was always picked last because nobody wanted me on their team. I was called a loser every day. As a child in elementary school, I was shunned, scorned, and mocked on a daily basis. I was pushed, punched, chased down, and spat on. I was sad and I hated myself. Sometimes I was followed home and mocked by other boys. I never really told my parents about this because I was so ashamed of myself, like it was all my own fault that I was mistreated. That shame weighed heavily on my heart. When other boys were bullied, I felt a reprieve. I wanted to avoid them, rather than embrace them as allies. Eventually I questioned this and it began to heighten my level of empathy for others. Looking back, two of my nemeses were boys whom I now suspect were abused physically and sexually by their fathers (or some older father figure in their lives). Often at recess I just sat against the wall outside with my knees drawn up, my arms folded across my knees, and my head resting on my arms. I'd just stare down at the concrete, listening to the other kids playing, and wait for recess to end. Sometimes I would just bounce a ball against the wall, if one was available. Teachers felt sorry for me and would try to stick me with some other shy kid, thinking that this would help. They couldn't understand how difficult it would be for two shy boys to break the ice with each other, and in my case my ability to interact with others was limited strictly to stuff like science fiction.

I fared far better in Sunday school at church. I think I was actually fairly popular there. I had friends I could talk with there. I did at school too, off and on. I think I was in the 4th grade when I had a birthday party at Peter Piper's Pizza with friends from both school and church. It was a wonderful day, and I'd never felt so popular in my life. I had fun, but I also saw some friends were lonely because they didn't know the other kids. The kids from school could get along, but the other boys I had more individual relationships with were a different case. One boy felt very alienated because he didn't feel included. I felt bad about neglecting him, and it reinforced a sentiment that it's better to not have a large circle of friends, at least at one time. It's easier and safer to engage friends one-on-one.

I fantasized that someday the kids at school would all like me, but of course that day never came. I wanted the hurting at school to stop, but it never did until college. So in elementary school I hated school and each day I would gladly go home to watch Scooby Doo, play Atari video games, and lose myself in science fiction novels. I was reading at nearly an adult level by the time I was in the 1st and 2nd grade. Not having a VCR and my love for Star Wars helped with this. Since I had no way of watching Star Wars movies, I read the movie novelizations and it went on from there with other higher-level novels. I felt that books aimed at children were beneath me. But although I was reading at such a high level, I was discouraged by my teachers and Mom from reading science fiction because my reading wasn't "well-rounded" enough. The genre didn't have the respect in the '80s that it has today. Reading books was a way to escape reality, and science fiction was the furthest from reality. However in later years, I began to read a lot about World War II, and eventually became fascinated with the Pacific Theater, which laid a foundation for my interest in Japan.

I would often spend time alone at school during recess, particularly in the 3rd and 4th grades. It wasn't always like this. I had some kids I talked with, discussing stuff like Star Wars, Transformers, or G.I. Joe crap. But this depended on whether they would rather play sports. I avoided sports because I didn't want to be mocked. Many girls were mean to me. I remember one airhead girl named Amber who'd ask to borrow a pen and then wouldn't give it back. When I'd ask for it back I got this "Oh my GAWD, get away from me, you NERD!" attitude. I swear... back in the '80s when it was somehow stylish to wear multiple fluorescent Swatch wristwatches on one's arm, she did so and I asked her what time it was. She couldn't even tell time on an analog watch. I swear, she was such a ditz. In the 5th grade there was a pretty Filipino girl named Abigail I had a crush on and she threw sand in my face, then she and everyone laughed at me, calling me a loser. In the 6th grade, there was a Chinese girl named Virginia I tried flirting with by playing with her hair affectionately, but it embarrassed her. She got angry at me and told me to stop. I'd thought that we were getting along, but of course I was awkward. Come to think of it, I guess I always had a sweet spot for Asian girls. It's probably because in that first house we lived in up until 1980, we had some Vietnamese refugee families living on our block and these teenage Vietnamese girls were always picking me up and gushing affection for me. But they'd also carry me around like a football and I hated that. (It's a Vietnamese way to carry babies, I guess.) I think by the 8th grade, I had begun to realize that I should just embrace being a nerd and to stop trying to not be one. Just avoid girls and accept my fate as a loser. I was always being called a loser anyway. If the shoe fits, right?

People can say that they are shy, but I was shy to the point where I would think, "I want to say 'good morning' to that person, but I'm afraid I'll get ignored. Maybe I'll just say it very quietly so that if they do not want to acknowledge me, maybe I can just pass it off like they didn't hear me and that way my feelings won't be hurt." Yeah, I was at that sort of level of shyness. Towards the end of my elementary years (7th and 8th grade in Arizona), I spent my lunch recess in the library doing homework. Avoiding other students. I wanted to get my homework done so that when I got home, I could indulge in my nerdy passions more: reading SF books, playing Atari 7800 video games, and building plastic models.

Come to think of it, there was one girl named Margie who may have been fond of me in the 8th grade. It was that awkward age when some girls grow so much taller than all the boys in the class, and the boys teased her and called her "Large Marge." Some called her a "horse" because of her height, and that was just too mean. She was pretty and would talk to me, but since I was designated a nerd and a loser, I figured that she was just being polite. I remember one evening I was at the Glendale Library with my parents and as I walked by, Margie and her friend called out to me, "Hi, Greg!" in a singsong manner. I was so embarrassed and ashamed that I just nodded at them and kept going. Afterwards, Mom and Dad told me, "Those girls were looking at you and smiled at each other! I think they like you!" I got angry and said they were probably making fun of me and laughing at me behind my back. I refused to believe my parents because I hated myself so much. Thinking back on that incident now though, I think maybe they were right. In my stupid 8th grade mind, since she was taller than me, I thought that if people suspected that we liked each other, then people would make fun of me because she was taller than me. My 8th grade mind didn't realize that I would soon probably grow taller than her, and that she may have been a girl to keep track of. But after 8th grade, I never saw Margie again as she must have gone to another high school.

In the 8th grade, The Cure's Disintegration album was released in 1989 and in 1990 Depeche Mode's Violator was released. I started getting introduced to bands such as Echo & The Bunnymen and The Smiths, and I started to realize that there was more out there than what was "popular" and mainstream. I started reconsidering what it was that I resonated with. This Alternative music started to speak to who I was, but at first I didn't quite know where to tune in to hear such music on a regular basis.

High school
I went to Ironwood High School in Glendale, AZ from 1990-1994. In high school, I had a hard time finding friends the first month or so of my freshman year. Friends from the 8th grade went in other directions, leaving me by myself for a while at first. I did eventually find some guys I knew from 8th grade and we would talk about Monty Python and Saturday Night Live nearly every lunch break. I didn't realize it at first, but they were pot heads. In most of my classes though, I had a hard time talking with anyone. I did make some friends though.

In high school, I was very socially awkward and eccentric. I still am. Girls would laugh at me. I was called "fag" a lot by the jocks. Yeah, OK jocks. If I was gay, how come I didn't have at least a dozen pinhead girls with daddy issues following me around campus constantly? Assholes. Of course I was interested in girls, but I was scared of them. I didn't know how to talk to girls at all, really. I had a lot of creativity, but no way to express it. In my junior year of high school, for Christmas 1992 Mom gave me a journal to write in. At first I didn't take it seriously, but I was also into writing poetry at the time. I would write silly poetry as well as crappy, teen angst poetry. But some of them I was rather proud of. I had to write some poems for my senior year Honors English class really impressed my teacher Mr. Bausch and he read them to my class, which embarrassed the crap out of me. A girl in Mr. Bausch's other Honors English class told me that she liked my poetry, because he read them to that other class too. He told the students not to tell me, but she did. (She figured that someone else must've told me already.) Anyway, I didn't treat the journal as a diary per se, because with a diary you would write every day about something. For me, I just wrote about how lonely I felt, goofy stuff, and usually lame attempts at poetry. It was sort of an emotional cushion for me, so to speak.

Well lately, I've been re-reading those journals I kept and it's felt like I've traveled back in time. I still keep a journal, and I'm currently up to volume 21. But these old journals from my teenage years I haven't read in a very long time. So here I am, 46 years old, and it feels like I have quantum leaped into the consciousness of my young self's mind. I began reading these old journals and I've relived the ups and downs, connecting to memories I'd forgotten, reliving experiences that were fantastic as well as other experiences that were heartbreaking. I connected so deeply to my old self living in Arizona in the 1990s that after putting the books down, I felt disoriented by having to return to my life here in Japan in the year 2022. It really had that sort of effect on me.

When I was a freshman in high school, that's when I really started listening to Alternative music. It was the winter of 1990/91. (Check out Greg's Life #25 to see the music I was listening to back then and still love today.) I'd found KUKQ 1060AM, an Alternative radio station to listen to. It really connected with me, being an eccentric type. It really helped me get a feel for the type of person I wanted to be. By my junior year, I'd started wearing a military surplus beret and my dad's plaid green rayon sport jacket from the '60s, with my Lum T-shirt. In winter, I'd wear my dad's Air Force-issued trench coat. I wore penny loafers with argyle socks, and would sometimes wear houndstooth pants with my plaid jacket. I fancied myself as a "fashion anarchist" and despised the trendies with their stupid Stussy and Mossimo T-shirts. Stupid trendies.

The church my family and I went to in junior high and high school was a small Foursquare church. It was called The Church Triumphant, but it was a very small church. More like "The Church Pathetic." It never grew. But I did go to summer camp with other Foursquare churches in the Valley and made friends that way. The crappy boys from my church, Toby and Jeremy, snubbed me and I was all alone and dejected, hiding my face with my sunglasses. Then some friendly girls from Faith Chapel saw that I was alone and started talking to me. They were very pretty too. Their names were Mijon and April. "Hey, why are you all alone?" So when those two boys were busy being dickbrains, they saw that the boy they ditched suddenly had pretty girls talking to him. HA! When I took my sunglasses off but was averting my eyes, April told me I had pretty eyes and it quietly made me happy. Faith Chapel had a large youth group, full of friendly kids. So I made friends from there at camp, and it was a good experience. My first big heartbreak though, was with one extremely pretty girl from Faith Chapel who got my phone number. It was Mijon. She invited me to a birthday party for a guy I was cabin mates with at summer camp. Holy crap, I had been asked out by a beautiful brunette with captivating eyes. But she was like a real-life Minmay from Macross: beautiful, immature (but so was I) and a heartbreaker. (Do you remember Magibon from the early days of YouTube? She captivated millions just through her eyes alone, without saying a word. The first time I saw Magibon, she reminded me of Mijon.) Mijon and I carpooled to that party. Her mom drove us to the party and my mom drove us home. As soon as we got to the party, she started asking her friends if some other guy was there yet. Then she just waited outside for him to arrive. He did, and he was older by a few years, wearing a tank top, athletic muscles. Gosh, I had been used. She used me to get to this other guy whom I assumed she wanted to hide from her mom. That night, I couldn't sleep and I cried my eyes out for hours and hours, into the morning hours. "That's what you get for thinking a girl could ever like someone like you, you pathetic loser," is what resounded in my head. Heartbreak #1. This was the summer of '91, before my sophomore year of high school.

Oh crap... there was another girl from Faith Chapel. I can't remember her name. Blonde girl, a little heavyset. She was very sweet on me, but I never knew why. She had a boyfriend even. I believe it was autumn of my sophomore year in '91 when there was some event with the youth groups from various Foursquare churches in which we went to Peter Piper Pizza, ate and played video games until late at night, then we all stayed in hotel rooms. I can't remember what we did the next day, but I certainly remembered playing lots of Pac-Man, Tempest, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the arcade that night. Mijon, this blonde girl, and another girl with black hair and glasses I thought was cute had the room next to ours. The blonde chick practically tackled me once in the elevator, cornering me, kissing me all over my face, leaving her stupid lipstick all over my face with her boyfriend standing there watching it happen. Was he some cuck who got off on that? He never stopped her; he just watched. Or was it just some way to make fun of me? What the hell is going on? I wanted to run away. Neither Mijon nor that cute girl with glasses were there in the elevator at that time, but some unrelated adults and Toby, my hotel roommate from my church were in that elevator with us, flabbergasted at the embarrassing scene she was making. That night, she called my hotel room's telephone and asked me to step onto the balcony, so I did. She was there on her balcony next to mine, waiting for me, and she said "hi" to me. "Yes, what do you want?" I asked. She was wearing her nightgown and stuck out her chest, trying to seduce me or something. I refused to stare at her big boobs. She didn't say a word, so I said "goodnight" and went back inside. That chick was nuts and made me uncomfortable.

I fared better at summer camp in '92, the next year. It was then when I met a girl named Amy, who also went to Faith Chapel. She had blonde hair and wide, pretty eyes, and I could tell that she liked me. I saw her at some other church-related events after then too. In person, she was very friendly, crazy, and fun. But whenever I tried calling her on the phone, it seemed like she always had some reason for not being able to talk on the phone. I figured she was avoiding me. Her dad worked with my dad, which I thought was cool. But it seemed like there was nothing really to talk about with her; only to goof around and flirt with each other when we were together. Weird. A long time later, sometime in the spring of '93, I tried calling Amy again to talk to her. I found out she was totally into listening to country music. Yuck.

In a much earlier essay I wrote on here, I mentioned how every Friday night I would either watch Blade Runner or The Empire Strikes Back (I forgot to mention I also sometimes watched The Wrath of Khan) in high school because I didn't have any friends to spend a Friday night with. That was my junior and senior years of high school. Before that, I actually had one friend from elementary school, named Matt, whom I would spend Friday nights with. He was athletic, but he was also a nerd. In the 2nd grade, He had an Empire Strikes Back lunchbox and I had a Return of the Jedi lunchbox, so we hit it off. I told him I was jealous of his lunch box since Empire has always been my favorite Star Wars movie. He was always playing sports at recess, so I was alone, sitting against the wall. Matt is the one who had reintroduced me to Robotech/Macross and he also introduced me to Gundam plastic models when we were 14 or so. He was a nerd like me, but while I learned to embrace it, Matt was ashamed to admit it. Matt had gone to a Catholic private school called Bourgade after graduating 8th grade. He enjoyed himself too much at that private school and his grades were slipping, so after his sophomore year his parents made him go to public school with me. He was my best friend, but he was a phony. He was always all about the false pretenses, trying to impress everyone. Mom would tell Matt, "When you are here at our house, you only need to be yourself because you do not need to impress us. We love you for who you are, not what you are." Mom had him figured out. She had pretty good insight into people's hearts. Matt used to tell me his dreams for his future, the type of man he wanted to be. The kind of stuff he was too embarrassed to tell anyone else... that he wanted to someday become a Catholic priest. Matt would often spend the night at my place on Friday nights. He'd even give me foot massages, and that's something I have done for my daughter and she demands them on a regular basis. His dad was a Vietnam War vet, who always shouted at his three sons. My house was a safe haven for Matt. But after he started attending Ironwood with me, he saw what a pariah I was at school and was ashamed to even be seen talking to me. Sometimes he'd be with a crowd of jocks who were mocking me for being different and never once did he stick up for me. "Hey, Greg is my friend and he's a nice guy. He's actually not gay. Lay off." No, he never once said anything. He never once defended me. He just waited for everyone to leave before he tried talking to me. Ironically, once after his so-called friends got done calling me a freak and a faggot, after they left and he made sure nobody was looking, he asked me, "Hey Greg, I've noticed you spending a lot of time with that pretty girl with glasses. Is she your girlfriend?" I replied, "Her name is Denise. No, she's not my girlfriend. I like her a lot, but she told me that we are 'just friends.'" "Hey, that's too bad. She's very pretty and she seems nice." He knew I wasn't gay, but he just let his companions mock me. It made me sad. Even my best friend was ashamed to be seen talking with me! He was ashamed to be my friend. When we were at Desert Palms elementary together, I told him that it's not worth trying to gain acceptance from the assholes at school because they aren't worth it. I told him to just be true to himself and not care what others thought of him. I always offered my friendship without condition. But no, he wanted to "prove" something to them. Maybe that attitude was due to his belligerent father. Ultimately, he chose acceptance from the Asshole Brigade. After all, I was just a nerd/loser/faggot/outcast and he didn't want to be associated with me. We drifted apart. He never had to be a phony with me, but I suppose I wasn't "cool" enough to be his friend anymore. I had lost my best friend as he had chosen to be a phony. After graduating high school, he went to college in Nebraska. Sometimes I'd see him when he was visiting home on break, but eventually I stopped seeing him. Sad.

This is Matt (left) with me in my room, playing Super Nintendo. This photo was taken December 28th, '95, when he was visiting from Nebraska during winter break, and is probably the last time I ever saw him. About 10 years ago, he found me on LinkedIn and wanted to connect. I was so happy to hear from him that I poured out my soul to him in a long email, which he just ignored. All he cared about was adding another name as a connection to his list. I was disgusted and ended up just removing him from my connections list. In the end, he was a phony after all. But you know, I'll always care for him...

I had a friend in my computer programming class (we went from BASIC the first year to Pascal the second using Apple II GS computers as it was the very early '90s). In our junior year in 1993, he introduced me to using BBSes, bulletin board systems you would dial into with a modem to post messages, share files, etc. Some BBSes had multiple phone lines, meaning that two or more people could actually text chat with each other at a time. It was amazing. There was no "social media" at the time. Just using computers to dial into remote systems and from there our souls connected. It was there that I was able to start meeting some other people online who were more similar to myself. Back then, I hadn't even heard of the internet yet. I introduced my sister to using BBSes and she really took off with that. She went to Glendale Community College and had a hard time finding friends because all of her friends went off to University of Arizona in Tucson. The BBSes had get-togethers (GTs) which were a way to meet people in-person. The username handle I used on BBSes was Major Tom. I'm actually more of a fan of the Peter Schilling song "Major Tom" than David Bowie's song "Space Oddity."

First-generation digital cameras in the mid-'90s were black & white with very low resolution. I have enlarged these pictures 200% so that you can see them better. On the left is me wearing my The Ocean Blue T-shirt and a green plaid sports jacket (my dad's from the '60s). The picture to the right is two pictures of me wearing my The Smiths T-shirt. The first is me wearing my token Ferris Bueller-esque beret and the other was taken of me at Denny's later that night. The reason I am smiling so big in the picture is because I actually had my arm around Jenny and she was wearing my beret. We'd gone to the GT together, practically joined at the hip the whole time, and people thought we were going out. I knew that she liked me, and she was special to me. I felt so happy because it almost felt like I had a girlfriend. But I think the guy who took this pic liked her too and was jealous, so he edited the two of us into separate pictures. These pictures were posted on BBSes. This was my senior year of high school, spring of 1994.

Denise
It was during my junior year of high school, in February 1993, when I met a girl in the library named Denise. It was just a couple of months after I first started writing in the journal Mom had bought me for Christmas. Denise found me in the library, introduced herself to me and we hit it off immediately. She said that she'd seen me in school and thought that she'd like to get to know me. Strawberry blonde hair, dreamy eyes, glasses, pretty, nerdy, charismatic, cheerful, and had a crazy sense of humor. I wrote how she really had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. Holy crap, a girl was actually talking to me and being nice to me. I couldn't believe it. It turns out we liked a lot of the same bands, from New Order to The Jesus & Mary Chain, which was great because at the time, the kids into Alternative music at our high school mostly only cared about Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Her favorite band was They Might Be Giants. We hit it off fantastically, I found out she was Christian, and then I found out that she had a boyfriend. Well, at least she was up front about it. Her boyfriend was a dork I knew from French class. She was so nice though, so funny, pretty and nerdy. She invited me to her church once. It was a boring Baptist church but I was happy to be with her. For my 17th birthday, she and her friend dressed up nicely with skirts and pantyhose and wore signs around their necks which said, "Today is Greg's birthday." That day after school, we went to Saguaro Ranch Park by Glendale Library and she let me play with her pretty hair. It was a happy birthday, and I was in love. She was so crazy, and so was I. We once had a funeral procession for a smashed soda can we'd found outside during lunch. We laid it in a pizza tray, adorned it with flowers, and fashioned a cross for it with plastic forks. We pretended to cry on each other's shoulders. We buried it in the trash bin after saying some words about its life as a can about its hopes and dreams, crushed flat one day by a terrible shoe. Then some other girl came by, tossing her empty cup of ice onto the makeshift coffin. Denise and I shouted at her, "Have you no respect for the dead?" I had so much fun with her. She would even wear a Ziplock bag on her head and ask, "Do you like my hat?" I endeavored to be her friend, but it didn't work out. I was an immature turd who wasn't sure how to deal with girls who put me in the "friend zone," and she was flighty. I was being possessive, and she always seemed out of reach. I ended up pissing her off when I wrote her a dumb letter, which she showed her friends and turned most of them against me. Heartbreak #2. I'll always be grateful for Denise though, because she was so goofy she helped me break out of my shell and I became more outgoing. We had so much in common, but the one thing teenagers are good at is hurting each other. I used to call her my Zanzibarian Princess, from a silly poem I had written. (By the way, for those who watch my stupid YouTube videos, If you ever hear me say "OH MY COW," Denise is the one I picked this phrase up from and have used it ever since. When I say this to my daughter, she asks me, "What's your cow's name?" I always reply, "Bob. Bob the Cow. He's a cow... and his name is Bob.")

Jenny
During my senior year in spring of 1994, I met a girl named Jenny from one of those BBS get-togethers at Cave Creek park. I was aware of her username and I sort of already knew her a bit from online. I believe we'd both posted poetry on The Unknown BBS (TUBBS). She'd had a poem published once, and she said that she liked the poems I had posted on the BBS. She had once dated a BBSer named Brian I had in my senior year physics class (he went by The Mighty One on BBSes), whose senior year yearbook was lent to Denise and he never got it back. Jenny was a pretty brunette. She didn't shave her legs and although I thought it was weird seeing that for the first time, I thought she was cool for that. I thought her leg hair was pretty. I wish I had told her. She was a true nonconformist. She liked a lot of the same music I did, and she even liked the band Catherine Wheel! She was also really into stuff like science fiction and anime, so we hit it off. Oh my gosh, I've found a girl who likes Robotech! Once I spent the day at her house, and I brought some Japanese manga. She read it while I rested my chin on her shoulder, our heads next to each other, my heart soaring just to be so close to her. She also liked horror though... like pretty dark, morbid stuff. I didn't care for that. She was a year younger than me and went to a different high school. She told me I was cute and my parents picked up on how intelligent, thoughtful, and how in-tune she was with other people's emotions as compared to other girls her age. Like me, she was so empathic, almost like a sixth sense. She could sense my sadness when she held me. And I could sense her brokenness when I held her. One time we were in my room listening to my Ocean Blue CD. When the song "I've Sung One Too Many Songs for a Crowd That Didn't Want to Hear" started, she wanted to dance with me. Somehow she could sense that I had often fantasized of slow dancing with a girl to that song. She could sense it! We danced, and she held me closely. I was trembling because I was so excited, nervous, and scared. I was afraid. I felt an uneasiness. I could sense something dark and elusive inside her heart... a pain therein... and my body was quivering. She told me she could feel me shaking. I felt her arms around me, and I felt her beautiful body in my arms. I almost felt like I belonged to her. After she went home that night, I could smell her perfume on me and it made me so happy.

Jenny was great. She even told me that I was "extremely attractive," and she was a boost to my abysmal self-esteem. We went to the BBS GTs together, went to the mall together, went to the movies together, I took her to concerts, etc. It almost felt like I had a girlfriend, so I was happy. I was falling in love with her. We'd be watching anime like Bubblegum Crisis and Battle Angel Alita on TV in the family room of my house and she would get very cuddly with me, holding my arm tightly. Holy crap, she excited me. She even told me that she'd had a crush on me, but at the same time, I got the "we're just friends" lecture. "You aren't chasing after me, are you?" A few times we went swimming together, constantly in each others' arms. We went to the water park together and I remember as we went down a slide in an inner tube together, she sat on my lap, I wrapped my arms around her and put my chin on her shoulder. At that time, I had never been as close to a girl's body as I was with hers. I was euphoric. She stirred my senses and I loved her. But Jenny was also a vegetarian and it drove me a little nuts. Mom made spinach and cheese enchiladas for her when she came to my place for dinner. "Oh, I can't have that." "But there's no meat in it," Mom said. "But there's cheese in it," Jenny replied. Oh crap. So not only was she a vegetarian, but she was a vegan to boot. I didn't even know what a vegan was. Sounded like something from Dragonball Z or something. So when Jenny and I went to the mall food court together, she and I could not agree on anywhere to eat at. So yeah, we had some compatibility issues. Going out with a vegetarian was difficult, I came to realize. It made me wonder if I could ever marry a vegetarian girl.

When I said she was cuddly though, I really mean it. I loved having her in my arms, and I loved how she curled up next to me on the sofa of our family room as we watched anime in the dark. To feel her feminine body next to mine and to savor her feminine scent... I was so happy for a while, even though she said we were "just friends." I wanted to make out with her so badly, but I was afraid to kiss her because I was afraid of how she might react negatively, to possibly end our friendship, and therefore I was afraid that I would not have a girl to cherish a sensual embrace with and therefore feel alone all over again. I just wanted to help heal her darkened heart, to help her fractured soul become whole, so that we could love each other with a sanctified love. But like The Ocean Blue's song Ballerina Out of Control, Jenny would rather see the night than the reason of the day. I wanted to help release the darkness in her soul, to help lead her to the Light of salvation. To heal her brokenness. She was such a precious girl and I loved her. I wanted to give her hope and light, but she refused every time. I wanted to help her, but she wouldn't let me. Jenny was so precious to me, though. Often Jenny and I would lay on my bed and listen to music together, holding each other. Once as we listened to my Spanish guitar CD she was laying with her back to me. She had a bobbed haircut and she wore a scoop-backed top, and I pressed my lips against her back, wanting to kiss her skin of her back and the nape of her neck. She could feel my lips move and asked me, "Is something wrong?" I told her to never mind. I couldn't muster the courage to kiss her. Maybe she was hoping I'd kiss her, but I was too scared to do it. Oh, but I wanted to! That was the day of my graduation party, and she had arrived before everyone else. I was so happy when we'd lay there together, listening to music. I felt kind of dirty about it, but my parents didn't say anything. Then again, I would lay in bed with my girl cousins Bethany and Shelby and do the same. We'd light a candle, stay up late at night, holding each other while listening to my Lush and Kitchens of Distinction CDs and talk. I miss them.

Irony of ironies. As my senior year of high school came to a close, people would ask me if I was going to prom night. I scoffed at this. I always said that prom was phony and stupid. It's for the normies, right? Not for outcasts like myself. I had no desire to go. I wasn't going to invite Jenny to prom. If I had asked Jenny to prom, she probably would have asked, "Who are you and what have you done to Greg?" On April 14th, 1994, I was on the phone with Jenny, talking about what a stupid traditional high school ritual prom was. Then I got an incoming phone call. As it turns out, I was asked to prom by a girl named Angela who went to a different high school. We'd been friends since I met her at that party in which Mijon used me to get to that other guy. Angela saw what had happened to me and consoled me. Angela went to Faith Chapel, the same church as Mijon. For a while I thought I loved her, but she put me in the friend zone and after a while, it was mutual. She was cute and petite, with blonde hair and glasses. We really didn't have anything in common aside from our faith. Mom liked her more than I did, but she was a friend to me and she would call me often. She once had a boyfriend named Sheldon I had a bad feeling about, and she called me "judgmental." They dated for a while, then later the guy eventually pulled a knife on her for whatever reason. But I guess I was an asshole for being "judgmental" though. Whatever. Anyhow, Angela's prom date canceled on her, even after the arrangements had been made. Of course I hated the idea of prom, but I knew that I'd do anything for Angela. We would go as friends, and I felt badly that she'd already made such plans. So my parents rented a tuxedo for me and I went to prom with Angela. I got her a corsage and everything. She did the driving because I didn't have a license. We had steak and crab legs for dinner. (It was my first time eating crab legs, so it was awkward.) Then we went to the prom. I couldn't stand the ghastly Top 40 music played, but I slow danced with her on 2-3 occasions, and she felt nice in my arms. I really can't dance at all, and before the prom Dad tried to teach me the box step. But on the dance floor, Angela and I just held each other and shifted our weight from side to side. That night at prom I realized on that dance floor that I was surrounded by lonely souls wanting to understand what love truly is. It was a bit depressing as hell if I thought too much about that, but in that way I suppose that even these normies were not too different from me. Angela had often said that she wanted me to be her "bride's maid" at her wedding someday. I heard that a lot from her and she valued me. Then a few years later while I was in college, she did get married. She told me that she was going to shack up with him first and I told her that I did not feel good about her living with her fiance before they got married. I told her about putting the cart before the horse, and she got mad at me. The way she snapped at me, I could tell that I was not the first person to disapprove and caution her, and this was obviously not what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear me approve of her decision to go against her own morals. So after all the "bride's maid" talk she didn't even invite me to her wedding; only to the reception afterwards. I was hurt by this, so I declined to go altogether. I would have gone to her wedding, but that was a slap in the face. I never heard from her again after that. I wish her well. Statistically, people who live together before getting married do not last as long as more traditional marriages. It's just a fact, but what do I know? I don't know whatever happened to the prom photo of Angela and I together. I wish I still had it. Perhaps it's still in America, and my mom put it somewhere. Perhaps my dad still has it.

And speaking of Angela, one time during my senior year of high school, several months before prom, I visited her church's youth group. It had been a very long time since I'd been there. That girl Mijon couldn't believe it was me. "Greg, is that really YOU?" I was oblivious and didn't know why she acted this way. She repeated that a few times and I couldn't figure out why she was acting so weird. She even invited me to give her a call sometime. I just thought she was being nice. I figured it was just a pleasantry, because there's no way a beautiful girl would want to really talk on the phone with somebody like me. Oh man... I think maybe I must have changed in the two years I'd seen her and maybe she had a different opinion of me. Maybe I was less hopeless and more attractive since she'd last seen me, and maybe she thought differently about me. Maybe she was a Smashing Pumpkins fan, because by my senior year of high school I had so many people telling me I looked like Billy Corgan's doppleganger. I never called her, though. I really was too shy.

My senior year photo, class of '94. I never could perfect an "Echo & the Bunnymen" hairdo.

College
This is where it gets interesting. I began attending Glendale Community College (GCC). College was a liberating experience. I was no longer being made fun of, but I also didn't know anyone. It's rather fascinating to consider the depths of self-hatred I had for myself at this time, and I would often write about it. I suffered from a cloud of wistful melancholy and low self-esteem that occupied my mind. If a girl was ever nice to me, I would convince myself that she just felt sorry for me because I was so pathetic. As always, I was painfully shy. From reading my old journals, I'm feeling such a surge of emotion as I plug back into my post-high school, teenage mind. My first semester of college was very uneventful. I made friends via the Anime Archive BBS, two guys named Nathan and Galen. There's a sense of camraderie between fellow nerds who are unlucky in love. It's like C-3PO said, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life." There was that terrifying dichotomy of wanting love, yet being anxious around girls and not knowing what to do or say to them. Well from December 1994 and through the next few years, we would get together every other month or so and watch anime fansubs. It was a great, nerdy experience. The worst part of that was that I had invited Jenny to those get-togethers, which proved difficult for reasons I'll explain in a bit.

For a brief while, Denise came back into my life. I had been at the library for a while one afternoon, then saw my friend Oggie and talked to him for a while. I got home and Mom said that a girl named Denise had called, and she told her that I was at the library. My heart skipped a beat. I rushed back to the library. She had walked all the way from her apartment to to library, and Oggie had told her I had just left. Fortunately, she was still there, talking with Oggie. From there, we went to Saguaro Ranch Park by the library where we had gone for my 17th birthday, that day she let me play with her pretty, strawberry blonde hair. I was glad that we could finally reconcile. We apologized for hurting each other. In high school when we were friends, she had given me her picture, her senior yearbook photograph. I had framed it and after our friendship ended in high school, I kept her picture for a long time. She was so beautiful in that photograph. Sometimes I would look at it and cry because I missed her and I thought she hated me. But here in the autumn of '94--a half year after high school graduation--we became friends again. I told her that I had thought of her so much ever since we ended our friendship in high school, and she said she had thought of me so much since then, too. That made me so happy to hear. She told me that she had created an account on the Rock Garden BBS with the username "Zanzibarian Princess" and was hoping to find me on there, but that was a BBS I never logged into. (My sister did, though. It's where she met her husband.) She knew that I used BBSes, but didn't know which one. She'd even shown up at one of the Cave Creek Park GTs once, but I didn't talk to her then because I was too scared to. I cannot remember, but I think I was able to finally get Brian's senior yearbook back from her.

One day after class, I took Denise out to treat her to lunch and we spent the day together, listening to CDs in my room, and I read to her some poetry I'd written. So Denise and I started spending time together for a month or so, and would talk on the phone and email each other. I was happy. But now that she was in my life again, I found myself wary of being hurt again. I'd ask her out and she'd cancel on me at the last minute, saying she'd already made plans, etc. I felt like I was changing and moving forward, but she was not. I felt that she was not going to take me as seriously as I wanted to take her. I felt that I ought not to pursue her romantically. I was falling for her again, and I did not want to set myself up for disappointment and hurt a second time. And I did not want to hurt her again like I did in high school. I was a silly boy, and I was scared of her. Scared of my heart breaking, because I was crazy about her and I loved her. Somehow I knew it wouldn't end well. So this time I was able to properly say goodbye and left it at that. I am glad she sought me out though, because I was relieved that at least this time I was able to part ways on good terms. To finally have closure after a year and a half of sadness and bitterness. She was living in an apartment by herself and I had returned something she'd let me borrow. Or maybe it was something I'd let her borrow. I remember she was wearing a tight sweater with multi-colored stripes, and she looked so pretty as always. Before I left, I gave her a hug and just held her tightly for a long time. I savored the feel of her in my close embrace. She felt so good in my arms. I didn't want to let go, because I didn't know when the next time I'd ever get to hug a girl again like that... knowing that the cloud of loneliness that haunted my soul would inevitably return. Then I said "goodbye." But I said it in such a way that she knew that I was really saying goodbye. She looked puzzled and said, "Okaaay?" I think she could see the tears starting in my eyes. "Goodbye," I said again as I backed away, only the second time I whispered because I knew my voice was about to fail me if I did not whisper. I knew I was too pathetic and lonely to make her my girl and to make her happy. I knew we would end up hurting each other again if I allowed our relationship to continue, and it made me sad. I drove home from her apartment with tears in my eyes. At the time, I didn't know how I could have handled the situation better. She was so lovely and beautiful. I loved her, but I was trying to harden my heart because I was scared that she would break it again. I don't know if she loved me too or not. This was my first semester of college, the autumn of 1994. I never saw her again, and she'll never know what a positive impact she had on my lonely, teenage soul. I was so nervous about talking to girls, but she was the first girl I was ever able to truly talk to, and she had helped break me out of my mold a bit with her crazy sense of humor and how we would laugh and do crazy stuff together in high school, not caring what others thought of us. I'll always cherish the fond memories of her. Thank you, Denise. I wish had the maturity then to have been able to hold onto your friendship. I'm sorry. I was just a scared, heartbroken boy...

Eventually, I had to cut Jenny out of my life. The girl was a mess of emotional problems. I wanted to love her, but she'd broken my heart during the summer before I started college. She was escalating my stress levels. I felt badly for her. She said that her dad had introduced her brother to pornography and would watch it with him, which made her very uncomfortable and added to more paranoia about males in general, I think. There were so many other issues that I won't mention here for privacy reasons, things I had a difficult time processing. I thought to myself, Ugh... why couldn't I just find a nice, stable girl? She was traumatized and abused growing up. I wanted to help her. She hated it when I tried telling her about God, because she once went to a church and some people there weren't nice to her or something. All I can remember is that she had a bad experience. For whatever reasons, she'd decided that Christ was for others but not for her. That summer before I started college, Jenny would show up at my house unannounced with some dude named Stacy (isn't that a girl's name?) just to borrow anime videos, which made me jealous. She was inconsiderate of how I felt, being used as a library for her to show up to with a date. She'd started dating him the summer before I started college. I guess he was her boyfriend for a while, and she expected me to be fine with that. I felt like she took him to my place to just to rub it in my nose. To hurt me. With him, I thought maybe she was acting like she'd been smoking pot, but I couldn't smell it on her. Not that she was, but she wasn't acting herself in any case. She was annoying me, and I think she tried to rub it in my face that I was not her boyfriend. She kept hurting me, and the love I once had for her disintegrated into resentment. To top it off, eventually that autumn she told me that she was a lesbian, all while condescendingly mocking my faith in God. The boys she'd chosen in her life had all made her feel badly, but those boys were her decision. She knew I was a nice boy, but she is the one who put me in the "friend zone." And how could I accept her being a lesbian when she'd once told me she had a crush on me? I was confused. I just wanted a girl to love; not have a girl make me feel like crap every time I talked with her. She told me this in October '94, the month before Denise came back into my life. During this time of my life, I suffered badly from debilitating IBS to the point that I would miss school, and I wanted to remove stress from my life as much as possible. I felt like I was essentially being used as a dumping ground for her problems. She never wanted to listen to my advice, but only wanted to dump her problems on me. Coupled with the unforgiveness in my heart, any contact I received from her was like pushing someone on a swing set at the right moment each time to make the situation escalate too much. I couldn't take it. She was dragging me down and my instinct was to remove any unhealthy relationships at whatever the cost. I felt so badly. She'd shown me the scars on her flesh, self-inflicted superficially with a blade. Unseen were the scars on her poor heart, a beautiful heart wounded by darkness and pain. Wounds I could not fully understand, but wounds for which I weep to this day. She believed in God, but refused to accept that Christ was for her. I had offered to help her in the only way I knew how, but this was always soundly rejected. What was I to do? I was trying to distance myself from her, but unfortunately I'd still see her at the Anime Archive BBS GT parties since Galen had invited her, making it rather awkward for me.

I had to eventually tell her to stop calling me, stop coming to my house to borrow anime videos, and just to leave me alone. While at first she was a huge boost to my self-confidence, she became an emotional drain to me, and was impeding my ability to enjoy life. It was an unhealthy friendship. Jenny was a precious, yet broken girl. It pained me to have to give her the cold shoulder, but still today I care for her and will pray for her when I remember her. I do have so many fond memories of her though. My empathy for others cripples me sometimes, and my soul was absorbing her pain like a sponge while I was trying to overcome my own problems. It was a time when I felt I needed to focus on improving myself, and my friendship with her was an impediment to that. She went from being a girl I wanted to make out with to a girl I wanted to run away from, and it hurt me inside. I did not have the maturity to continue our friendship, and I felt overwhelmed. I wanted to free up my limited interpersonal bandwidth to make room for girls I could hope for romance with, and she was no longer such a girl. I felt that I had to harden my heart and move on. I hated doing so. I made her cry on that final phone call we had on June 26th, 1995 when I told her that I could no longer be her friend, but she never knew how I had cried afterwards. I know that date because she will always matter to me. She was crying on the phone, asking me what she had done to make me not want to be her friend anymore. Did I really have to explain to her how she had hurt me? I wanted to love her. She'd made me so happy at first. I felt desired... I wished it could have been different. I wanted to be her friend. I did not condemn or denigrate her. Even when she said she was going to embrace being a lesbian, I did not rebuke her. I had tried to just become indifferent and hoped that she would get bored with me and move on, but that day in June of '95, I had to end our friendship in a way I did not want to. I did not want to make her cry. I hurt her and she was hurting me. I'll always care for her, though. Oh Jenny, I'm so sorry. I regret how I treated you. I failed you. I'm ashamed of how I hurt you. In high school, you were such a boost to my self esteem as you were the first girl to tell me that she had a crush on me and for a while I could enjoy your female companionship, your closeness. For a while, I felt like I belonged to a girl. For a while, I didn't feel alone. And for that I am grateful. Thank you, Jenny.

I once recited poetry at The Cellar on a Thursday night. Obadiah did poetry that night too. Here is a poem I wrote in high school, inspired by the infatuation I had for Jenny the first day I met her, which I read at the poetry open mic night at The Cellar my senior year of high school:

During my first semester of college in Fall '94, there was a Bible study group I attended called Unchurch, aimed at Christian outcasts who didn't feel like they belonged among the "normie" Christians. People with nose and tongue piercings, one too many tattoos, people with black-dyed hair who wrote Gothic poetry, former Wiccans, punk rockers, etc. There was a girl named Kate who attended, and Kate and I were among some who looked "normal" by comparison. She was a pretty girl with glasses, her short brown hair always kept in a pony tail. I thought she was beautiful, but I was too shy to talk to her much. Obadiah is the one who had introduced me to Unchurch, and he said I might have a chance with Kate because I'd told him I had a crush on her. The Unchurch crowd began showing up at The Cellar, including Kate. The first time I saw her there, she was alone at a table. She smiled and waved, and I sat next to her. I asked her if she came there often (I didn't go every night there) and she laughed because it sounded like a cheesy pick-up line. I suppose it did. Every time she smiled and said hello, it made me happy and I would write about it in my journal. I was such a hopeless nerd. I think she knew I had a crush on her, so she was nice to me. Unfortunately, I was just too shy for my own good. There was one extroverted, overweight gal from Unchurch who taught me how to swing dance at the Havalina Rail Co. concert. She tossed my skinny ass around that night and I had fun. I didn't dance with Kate, though. Just too shy.

Kate told me about the Starflyer 59 concert in February '95 and I saw her there. Other local bands I was friends with also played there. I got to talk with Jason Martin from Starflyer 59 too that night. Very humble, quiet guy. I think Kate may have been a liaison for Tooth & Nail Records as well as the manager of a band my friend Roy was in. She liked my old car. Kate once told me that she was running a pro-life booth at Lolapalooza and the hideous Ro-Beast "feminists" from the crappy band L7 violently accosted her in the ladies' restroom and were about to beat her up until someone came in and foiled their plan for violence, lest Kate gain a witness. (By "feminists" I mean those who'd say "women's voices need to be heard, except those who disagree with us." Those who are quick to complain about patriarchy, yet somehow have no qualms about supporting the kleptocratic oligarchy who are the true culprits who wreck this world.) Kate said they were lesbians and I asked her how she could tell. Well, when they got up in her face and threatened violence against her, I guess she could sort of sense the type of people they were. Plus she pointed out to me that the word "lesbian" starts with the letter "L" and has seven letters, hence the name L7. I had no idea how to talk to Kate, though. Because she was so pretty, I was intimidated and shy. I was so infatuated with Kate, and I often had the New Order song "Temptation" lyrics in my mind when i was around her: "I've never met anyone quite like you before..." I thought Kate was such a cool name, and it was also the middle name of the gal who encouraged me to propose to Mayu years later. (I'll talk more about her later in this essay.) That is why I chose Kate as my daughter's middle name. I can't remember the last time I ever saw her. She'll never know I named my daughter's middle name after her.

I got to know a lot of interesting people at The Cellar, and it was great while it lasted. I got to know a lot of some local bands and they were kind enough to invite me to spend time with them. It's there where I made friends with a guy named Richard, who was about 10 years older than me. We hit it off and from then on, we started hanging out at the Coffee Plantation (aka the "Coffee Damnation") at the Biltmore on Thursday nights. We called it Therapy Night, in which we would discuss music, life, and of course to share our frustrations with girls and commiserate.

During my second semester, there was a very cute Hispanic girl with an olive complexion named Tammy in my ENG102 class who would smile at me and I'd smile at her. At the end of the semester, I worked up the courage to ask her out. She turned me down of course, but it was a milestone for me. I also asked a cute Chinese girl named Cindy out. I didn't have her in any classes, but she worked at the Panda Express at the mall and was very nice. She turned me down too because she constantly had boyfriends, but she was always very nice to me.

One bright ray of sunshine began in March 1995. The previous December, I was at a Japanese grocery store called New Tokyo and I bought a magazine on Japanese culture called Mangajin. It was the only issue of that magazine I ever bought, and it was because there was an article on Japanese bands. B'z, Southern All Stars, Pizzicato 5, The Blue Hearts, Shonen Knife, etc. In the back of the magazine in the want-ad section was an ad for ALC Press's pen pal service. I photocopied the page, filled out the application, and sent it. I was promised to be matched with three pen pals, so I figured I would wait to see how it worked out. I gave up waiting actually, because I figured that I would not get a response from anyone. Then on my birthday on March 8th, 1995, I wrote about how I had a feeling that something very special would happen to me soon. Six days later, I received a letter from a charming girl named Mayumi living in Nagano Prefecture. She told me her nickname is Mayu. I was so very excited! Her birthday was just four days before mine, making her almost exactly one year younger than me. She was just about to graduate high school. I don't know if I was ever matched with two more pen pals, because she was the only one who wrote me. From then on each month we would send each other one letter and one postcard. I told my friends and family about her. She would send me letters written on scented paper. I would open the envelope and the letters smelled like a girl! I was euphoric every time I received a letter from her in my mailbox. I even had fantasies of someday getting to meet her and even marrying her. At the time, I thought these were silly, unrealistic thoughts. Little did I know that those fantasies would come true.

Serious Greg looks serious. Spring, 1995.

In the Fall '95 semester, I submitted my Macross-inspired, dystopian, gloom and doom poem about death for Mr. Bausch's Honors English my senior year of high school to Glendale Community College's annual creativity book called Traveler and I won 3rd place in poetry the next year, in '96. I was even honored with an "Outstanding Student Achievement Award" the next year and received a glass trophy at an awards ceremony. I still have my award certificate, but I wonder if that glass trophy is still somehow at my dad's house in Arizona.

Some time around November, my parents finally gave up on that Foursquare church when it collapsed. I had stopped attending earlier that year because it was doing nothing for me spiritually. The pastor had focused all his energy on The Cellar and not on the church, and it got to the point where they couldn't pay the rent and the church got evicted and basically ended. Mom and Dad found a new church called The Vineyard and it was then when I began to grow as a person. My uncle Gary attended there, and I discovered that it was Roy's church too. (He's one of the guys I'd met at The Cellar.) I had stopped attending church for about a half year or more, and I wish I had been attending the Vineyard all along! The music at the church was phenomenal, and in fact I've created a YouTube Playlist of my favorite Vineyard music. I became more secure in my faith as well as who I was, and I began to bloom as a young adult. It took a lot to overcome my self-hatred, but I began to appreciate myself for being unique. I remained shy, hesitant, and eccentric but I also began to learn how to love myself. I couldn't expect others to love me if I could not love myself, and once I began to do so, I grew in confidence. Here in my college years, I grew as a person.

At the beginning of January 1996, I finally gave up trying to ask Cindy out on a date after months of phone conversations, emails, etc. I faced the reality that she was not going to take me seriously. I wrote that my goal for the year 1996 would be to just forget about girls and merely focus on improving myself, and to allow God's love to shine through me. To not expect to find love, but to just focus on showing love to others. After all, it seemed that fate would not allow me the happiness of female companionship, so I vowed that for the year 1996, my resolution would be to just give up on the idea of finding love because it depressed me to yearn for that which I obviously did not deserve. I was better off without girls, I thought. So often I figured I would be better to just harden my heart against all girls to prevent any of them from hurting my heart. To just ignore girls. But later that same month, at this church I met two beautiful girls about the same time who had quite an impact on my life.

An 18-29 age kinship group for singles at that church had recently begun, and in January I got around to attending. It was January 17th, 1996 when I first attended. Because I was so shy, I asked my friend and fellow anime nerd Nathan to go with me. I liked Nathan, but as socially inept as I was, he was even moreso. I'd describe him as "Horny Mr. Spock." Very stoic and not expressive of emotions, other than his desire for a girlfriend to make out with. Seriously, I'm not even being mean because he even often admitted himself how "boring" he was. Not boring to me, but I'm talking about normies... people who aren't nerds like us. Those whom we had a difficult time relating to, who in turn could not relate to us. Music didn't really stir his emotions. He didn't even have a particular food that was his favorite. Imagine that! But, he was good company for me, and I appreciated him. (He was an engineering student at DeVry Institute.) He was a good friend of mine and we spent a lot of time together. I was an INFP and I believe he was an ISTJ. Very different personality types, but being both nerds, we had a lot in common.

It was that night when I met a rather Italian-looking girl from Ireland, with beautiful long, curly, black hair and a charming Irish accent. Her name was Lisa, and she was so beautiful. I swear--put her in a bodysuit with a Starfleet communicator badge and she could easily cosplay as Counselor Troy from Star Trek... she had the hair for it! That first night, my eyes lingered on her most of the time, but I tried not to look too much. I'm not trying to make this sound like a Beatles song or something, but there was just something special about her. When we made eye contact, I was shy. I was afraid if I looked too much at her that she'd think I was a creep and avoid me. I liked her nose... is that weird? Anyhow, I liked it, so shut up. She was there sitting between her two sisters, but I was focused only on her. There was just something about her... I later learned that she had two younger brothers, so there were five siblings in all. I was expecting maybe that she wouldn't be interested in talking to me. Pretty girls not wanting to talk to me was the story of my life, after all. But after the group meeting finished, I got to talk to her and I found out that she went to school at GCC with me. Oh my cow, I was actually comfortable talking to her and she genuinely seemed interested in talking to me! I really liked her and wanted to get to know her. But Nathan had a more difficult time talking to anyone, and I could sense that he was feeling out of place. Since he seemed uncomfortable, I suggested that we leave. Oh God, I wanted to stay and talk with Lisa more! I was afraid that I would not see this beautiful girl again, and I was so amazed that she seemed to enjoy talking with me, of all people! I wanted to ask her for her phone number, but I was shy, afraid of coming across too forward and being rejected. I felt like telling my friend, Look, can't you see I'm talking to a pretty girl? Can't you just go wait in the car or something? Alas, I reluctantly said goodbye to Lisa and just hoped that I'd see her again. I think I must have asked her if she planned to come again the following week to at least appease my anxiety. Lisa was so cool and pretty. A pretty girl was talking to me! I was so happy.

Pretty Lisa was there again the following week. I made sure to come alone this time so that I could ensure that I could talk more to her. Lisa was so cool! We talked about school: classes, teachers, etc. at GCC. She told me she had WWW access through her ENG102 class (was it Lynx text-based or full-on graphical Web through Netscape?), and I told her about this very homepage I still have today, which you are reading now. I wonder if she ever looked at it? At that time, my homepage was only a month old and was so small back then. I think I called it "Major Tom's Nifty Homepage" or something back then. At the time, my Siamese betta fish was named Baron Ludwig Von Sushi XIV or something, and it wasn't until a month or so later that fish died and I got another betta fish and named it after Lisa's little brother, Steve. Steve The Fish, which I in turn named my website after many years later. (I remember that night too. I was over at Lisa's home spending time with her and little Steve came out to the living room to bother us. I remember he was climbing on the back of the chair like a goofy monkey. Lisa scolded him for not sitting properly when I told him that I was going to name my fish Steve.) Anyhow, I still couldn't believe that she seemed to enjoy talking with me. I was so happy.

So... there was another girl I noticed at the Vineyard church during services. Strawberry blonde hair and glasses. She would make eye contact with me. After a couple of times, I worked up the courage to... smile at her. She smiled back. Once when I was standing in the back talking to someone (I was taking a ministry training class on Thursday nights and it was after one of those classes), she said "hi" to me as she walked by. Oh man. She was beautiful. I mean, she wore glasses even, so I was happy.

Juliet
Well, that singles kinship group was planning a trip to Sedona, and I attended. It was January 27th, 1996. The pretty girl with glasses came. I found out her name was Juliet. She came along and we totally hit it off. The plan was that we would all meet in the church's parking lot and carpool together in several vehicles. I was the first to arrive, and I sat on the back trunk of my '67 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, formerly my mom's car, snacking from a box of Froot Loops cereal I kept in the back seat for friends to snack on or throw at birds. I had two bumper stickers on that car, visible in the picture at the top of this page. One was Dr. McCoy from Star Trek saying, "He's dead, Jim." The other one said "I'D RATHER BE QUILTING." (I've never quilted in my life, but I just found that bumper sticker ironic. I guess I was a proto-hipster of sorts. Kate liked that bumper sticker, too.) Juliet arrived with her friend Tanya and I offered her some Froot Loops. She said she loved my bumper stickers. Because of the Star Trek sticker, we then got into a conversation about spacefold, wormholes, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Dude. Holy crap. Not only was she pretty and wore glasses, but she was a geek like me! Plus she liked the band The Sundays, one of my favorites. She told me that she played violin, and she had a scholarship to Juilliard, but she developed tendonitis and could only play violin a couple of hours a day. I also learned that she was an aspiring actress, having appeared in bit parts in movies and TV shows, often as extras. She had tried out for a part in the Power Rangers TV show. She later told me that she knew a guy who got a job playing a Stormtrooper in a new scene for the upcoming re-release of Star Wars: Special Edition (which was filmed in Yuma, AZ). I can't remember how many people went on that trip in total. I guess about 14 or so? I can't even remember interacting with Lisa much that day because I was so focused on Juliet. I now remember that I had been looking forward to spending time and talking with Lisa on that trip, but Juliet was commanding my attention the whole time and I became completely infatuated with her. Lisa was more reserved while Juliet was more open and affectionate. (Maybe Lisa had been looking forward to spending time with me, too? Maybe Lisa was disappointed?) Juliet and I really seemed to hit it off that day, and I think the others noticed this. In Sedona we all went to Tlaquepaque (a gallery and shopping complex), ate at a Mexican restaurant, and went to see a "light show," which was basically just Christmas lights strung up along a bunch of buildings.

Juliet sat next to me at the Mexican restaurant. Get this: I even tested her to see how much she liked me. Later in the evening after the "light show" when we went to a Denny's for dessert, after she had already sat down, I purposely sat at the far end of the table. She then made an excuse to make room for others or something, so she got up and sat next to me. She wanted to be next to me! I was so happy. I had ridden up to Sedona with Dan in Scott's car listening to Scott's R.E.M. CD (he had a portable CD player for his car, the first time I'd ever seen one). But on the way back, Juliet and her friend Tanya rode with me in Scott's car. Juliet and I rode in the back seat and talked the whole way home. She said that she wanted to join the group because she was hoping a boy would ask her out, which was a total hint that she wanted me to ask her out. I was completely falling in love.

I took this picture at Sedona's Tlaquepaque when I went there with Juliet and the group. I tried to take a few sneaky pictures of Juliet, but they were blurry. I won't post them for privacy reasons. I could have at least asked to take her picture, but I was too shy.

The next weekend, I went to the Chinese New Year event in downtown Phoenix as I did every year. On Saturday I went with my friend Galen, and I bought Juliet a Chinese cork carving as a gift which I gave to her at church on Sunday. She was happy and I asked her out, so I took her to the Chinese festival after church. After we parked, I mustered the courage to take her by the hand as we walked together. I held her hand several times that day. I was scared to take her hand at first, thinking that she would pull her hand away and reject this. But a pretty girl actually let me hold her hand! I couldn't believe it! I was so excited! Afterwards, we shared a white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake together at the Coffee Plantation. Isn't that what lovers do? Afterwards, we came to my house and looked at the newspaper's movie logs. We went to go see the movie Restoration which wasn't really a movie I would have wanted to see, but I enjoyed just being with her. Our date that day was so wonderful, and I felt like we were getting closer together. I felt my self-hatred dissipating rapidly.

That day at the Chinese festival, my friends and family could tell that she really liked me. At the end of the day, I hugged her for the first time before she left for home. I let her know that this was my first really positive relationship that I'd ever had with a girl and asked her if she didn't mind dating me. She thought that was a funny question, but she said that she really enjoyed being with me and going out with me. Wow. So certainly I was hoping that she could become my first girlfriend. I wanted her to be my first love so badly. For the first time in my life, I decided to go Valentine's Day shopping. Juliet would be my first true Valentine.

A week later, I got her a Valentine's Day gift---a heart-shaped candle inside of a heart-shaped glass box--- and a card. She'd told me that she didn't like chocolate, so I got her that candle instead. The card was a Charlie Brown card (a character I have always identified with as he was a shy loser and always the subject of girls' scorn) which said: I like you... I think I like you... I have some affection for you... and on the inside it said, I'm very fond of the ground on which you walk!!! Inside I wrote a haiku for her:

She invited me to her aunt's wedding that same month and I later learned from her mother that her grandmother took her aside to tell her what a nice boy I was and told her not to break my heart. People saw how I adored her and treated her like a lady, calling her "Lady Juliet" in front of them, and her grandmother was telling her that she needed to keep me. She wore contacts that night, and was afraid I would be disappointed because I'd told her how pretty she looks with glasses. She cared about how I felt about her.

While leaving that night as we got into Juliet's car, I opened the car door for her like a gentleman and I got in and sat in the passenger seat. I just gazed at her happily and thanked her for inviting me. I told her that I had a nice time with her. I felt so special since it's a big deal to be introduced to a girl's family, and I thought that at last I had found true love... so happy at the thought that a beautiful girl could love a lovesick loser like myself. Whenever I was with her, I felt so wonderful. As she drove me home, I was so happy, yet I did not want the night to end. I was just so happy to be next to her and smile. I gazed at her and tuned out the world outside the car. The motion outside the car's windows with the world passing by was like a surreal blur. It was almost as though for that short while, the universe consisted of only her and I, for all I cared. I just wanted to freeze that moment in time, with the happiness my heart had found with this lovely girl. On the way home, there was one song I had on my mind, one that says "Driving in your car, Oh, please don't drop me home..."

We would sit next to each other at that ministry training class on Thursday nights. One time her friend Tanya came early and sat next to me. When Juliet arrived and saw her friend sitting in her spot, Dad saw how furious and jealous she was! She was so angry at her friend for taking the seat next to me! Being an oblivious dolt, I didn't notice her anger, but I thought it was strange that Tanya didn't let Juliet sit next to me. I was disappointed that Juliet didn't sit next to me that night. There was some competitive, petty play at work among the two that Dad picked up on and told me about later. He saw how pissed off Juliet was at her friend for sitting next to the boy she liked. Apparently Tanya could have been interested in me too and was looking to put herself between us. I was still having a difficult time processing the possibility that one girl liked me, let alone two. I really wasn't interested in Tanya at all, and thinking about the situation later when Dad had a talk with me, I thought it was a crappy thing for Tanya to do that to her friend Juliet.

For at least a while, it seemed like we almost had an actual dating relationship. Things seemed to be a bit rocky because of her home life, moving out from her mom's place. Her roommate hadn't paid the phone bill, so the phone service had been disconnected and I couldn't reach her. Later she had to move back in with her mom and sister. Her mom told me once, when I called Juliet and she was not there, that she was disappointed that her daughter was not giving me the attention that I deserved. She saw that I was a good boy for her daughter to love, if only she didn't have her "head in the clouds," as she put it. On a date, I took Juliet to dinner because Dad had given me a gift certificate for a restaurant called The Hungry Heifer. Pretty stupid sounding name for a restaurant (in fact it sounds like it'd be the name of a restaurant from an episode of Seinfeld), but apparently it was a fancy steak restaurant. I didn't think the food was all that great, but I just enjoyed being with her. After that, we walked around Metrocenter Mall for a while. She told me that I was her only true Christian friend and that all her other friends flake out on her and depress her. She told me that I really cheered her up that day and made her feel good. She said that her friend Tanya was jealous of her relationship with me, and she stopped talking to Juliet. Plus, her roommate she'd been living with for a short while was always depressed, so she told me that all of her friends made her sad but me.

I remember once Juliet took me to a German restaurant. My family is ethnically German, so some of my worst memories from childhood was having to choke down sauerkraut and I hated it. All that boiled cabbage and vinegar just made me sick. I asked her if her family had German blood and she said yes. To which I replied, "Well, then! Perhaps we can sack Rome together sometime?" Another time, Mom and I went with Juliet and her family to Denny's for breakfast after church. We'd ordered orange juice which came with refills. I asked the waitress for a sarcophagus of orange juice and she was puzzled. "Do you mean a carafe?" DUH. Juliet told me that a sarcophagus is the type of coffin they buried Egyptian pharaohs in. Gosh... I knew that! Who doesn't know that? What was I thinking? I'm such a goofball.

The thing is, between Juliet and my friend Jonathan, they were so musically talented. Juliet with her violin and big Jonathan with his piano. I felt like I couldn't quite live in her world. Once when she came over, in my bedroom I showed her I could sort of play the main bassline to "Perfect Kiss" by New Order on my bass guitar, but I really wasn't on the same level as she was. I always felt inadequate. Talentless. Inferior. I struggled with this.

Juliet and I would attend the 18-29 singles' kinship group together, but half the time she stood me up and made me sad. When we did go, we'd either carpool or go in separate cars. I also invited her to the Coffee Plantation to hang out with my friends Richard and Steve for "Therapy Night" a few times. (I'd made friends with Richard at The Cellar, if you recall from earlier.) One evening on April 4th after I took her to Therapy Night, we stopped at a park just off of Bethany Home Road and sat on the swings in the dark. It was getting late at night and nobody else was around. It was there when she dropped a bomb on me. She said that she really liked me a lot and thanked me for not having ulterior motives with her, but that she was still in love with someone else who put their relationship on hold. She even admitted that he did not treat her as well as I did. Juliet told me that she wanted to have a relationship with me, but that she would first need to bury her feelings for the other guy first. She told me that she liked me too much to go on the rebound with me and that she'd rather take me seriously. She said that she did not want to leave me hanging nor did she want me to wait around for her. But essentially, she was telling me that I was her back-up plan. I was so happy that she admitted that she liked me that much, but I was sad that I was not her first choice. Man, that sucked. Here's the problem: I lacked enough self-worth to reject being her second choice and was willing to play along. At the time, I even admitted in my journal that I was already interested in Lisa before I met Juliet, and that Lisa was far more approachable and available, yet at the same time more difficult to get to know. She was more reserved and serene, I guess. During this time, I did do a few things with Lisa, but if she had affection for me, it was not as obvious as Juliet's. Looking back, I was clearly making the wrong choice because Lisa wasn't putting me on an emotional roller coaster, but lacked the self-confidence to change that!

The next time I saw Juliet, I wanted to give her a gift: a set of Chinese relaxation balls. I didn't see her the next week, so I dropped the gift off at her place when she wasn't there. With it I wrote her a card in which I wrote the following, which I copied into my journal:

Juliet,
You and I both know that a lot of things in life aren't going to be easy. And, right now, things aren't easy for you. But even in the midst of these hard times, God is sheltering you with his love. Sometimes He speaks directly to your heart, and sometimes He shows you His love through the people who care for you. That's why, right now, I want you to know that I am here for you---to remind you how much I care about you, how much I'm praying for you, and how very much God loves you.

Thank you for being so honest with me. I feel so much more comfortable now that I know how you feel about me. I want you to know that I just may be the one stable person in your life right now. I really like you a lot, and I respect you greatly. I want you to feel comfortable with me, and you can always turn to me when you need someone to care for you. I will never want to push you into something that would make you feel uncomfortable.

You are the first girl in my life who has made me feel truly wonderful. My heart sank a bit when you told me about this other guy whom you still have strong feelings for, but that is outweighed by how good you make me feel. You have been a boost of confidence for me. If there ever arises the opportunity for you to go back to him, I won't stop you if you do. I couldn't blame you, for I might do the same if I was in your position. I know how you must feel, because something similar happened to me two years ago. I took the chance to make amends and renew a friendship with a girl I once cared deeply for, but I ended up saying goodbye for the second time when I found myself getting hurt all over again. (Note: I was talking about Denise.) If it doesn't work out between you and this guy, I hope you still consider your potential with me. Since the two of us are open to the future, I'm sure that whatever happens will be alright. Whoever the love of your life may be, I pray he is the right one for you, and may he bring you joy for the rest of your life.

As for now, I just want to hold your hand and be the best friend to you that I can be. I look forward to what the future holds for us, and I want you to know that I will never keep you hanging. Never close the doors to good possibilities.

Thank you for being my friend.
With Love,
Greg

When I next saw Juliet, she thanked me and said that my gift and letter cheered her up and made her happy. She told me that she kept all of the gifts I'd given her on top of her bedroom dresser. I'm so glad that I took the time to write out all of these events from these days, because otherwise I would have forgotten details. Juliet had a tumultuous life. Her mom was a horrible role model, sleeping with a man who was somehow legally married to two other women. How the hell do people like that live with themselves? There were ups and downs over that span of a few months. I was willing to do anything for her. To give her my love. But she was taking me for granted. I deserved better, but I didn't think so. Not a boy like me who'd never had any luck with girls. And notice that I thanked her for being honest with me. Keep reading and you will find out the sad irony behind this.

Eventually it got to the point where Juliet's younger sister couldn't stand it anymore and she spilled the beans. I called her place, trying to get a hold of Juliet. I wanted to ask her to join me for Therapy Night again on a Thursday evening on April 25th. She'd gone with me the previous week. When I called, her little sister told me that Juliet went out to dinner with Mr. Sleepy and his parents. I'm talking about this lethargic guy named Mark she was always griping to me about, since he had no motivation in life. I told her sister that it seems like Juliet was always blowing me off to spend time with that guy, and she told me that he was her boyfriend. Um, okay... Ouch. It turns out that the guy she was always frustrated with, the testosterone-deficient guy who would sleep 16-20 hours a day, wake up, have a Pepsi and a cigarette before playing the guitar was her boyfriend. Her sister told me that Juliet was not new to lying and that she'd been holding his hand and kissing him the whole time. Oh my gosh. The guy couldn't even bench press a Q-Tip but I had lost out to him. The guy was so lethargic that I heard that when he helped Juliet move back in with her mom, he couldn't even do any real lifting because he was so weak. I've no idea if he had some sort of glandular problem or if he was just a lazy wuss, but this is who I had lost out to: a "project." (You know, the "he needs me" and "I can change him" trap that many chicks get into.)

So obviously I went to Therapy Night without Juliet that night, and I hung out with Richard and this guy named Tony at the Coffee Plantation (aka the "Coffee Damnation") --- Steve wasn't there for whatever reason that night. Therapy Night was intended for us to complain about how stupid and crazy chicks are... it's therapy, after all. I was able to joke about the whole situation with them, about Juliet choosing a sleepy dweeb over me, and it made me feel a lot better to be able to laugh over the situation. Richard said, "Ever since the beginning of time, women have never been able to dominate men. So some women have this idiotic concept of choosing a 'project' --- trying to change some pathetic guy and by doing so, try to dominate him. But they always fail... they end up getting dragged down by the lousy guy. This is especially common among Christian women." Yeah, that really was a good way to put it. And to think that just the week before when Juliet had joined us, she told me that she felt that Tony was "not a person to be trusted." No, she was the one I couldn't trust!

Therapy night was always a great way to stay sane. Richard would draw Hitler on a skateboard on the napkins there, and he would also draw Ian Curtis too. we'd talk not only about how insane chicks are, but we'd talk about music and discuss bands like Joy Division, Lush, Sugarcubes, and Steve had introduced me to a great band called Man... Or Astro-Man? After we'd finish drinks at the coffee house, we'd go to Borders Books & Music (God, I miss that store!) and go to the history section and look at books on Japanese war atrocities, Chinese communist propaganda poster artwork and such. We'd look at funny stuff too, and Steve and Richard were always better than me at finding all sorts of weird books to laugh at. We'd eventually be giggling like madmen and then have to leave the store before we made too big of a scene. I remember at least twice when we had escorted ourselves out of the bookstore once our abysmal maturity level had reached its crisis point, we were standing around talking shit about crap in the parking lot, laughing our stupid asses off about God-knows-what, and we noticed this one woman who was intentionally flaunting herself next to the windows, pretending to peruse the young adult fiction section because of its visibility through the window. She had quite a fantastic body, wearing tight pants and a tight, scoop-necked shirt over her curvy body, and she would sensually squat down to look at a book down low and then kind of slither her way back up to a standing position. Steve got a good look at her once and unfortunately her face wasn't up to par with her body. It was kind of depressing to think that this poor woman was at her point in life to where she was intentionally parading herself in front of a bookstore window, pretending to give a crap about young adult fiction, hoping that some man would take notice of her assets and come inside to hit on her. I guess this was in the days before dating apps or whatnot. I think we saw her there more than once. Sad. At least she was not in some bar somewhere. There was also this real fancy hotel there at the Biltmore with a big tall atrium inside, complete with a koi pond on the ground floor. We'd go there and look at those fish and make up stories about them. "This is Edward and his wife Lucy. They're a nice couple and are swell company to talk with. And this is Bernie and his wife Gladys. They've been married for 30 years, but things just haven't been the same since the affair..." And, "This is Dr. Jeffrey P. Fishington the 3rd. He wants his son Carl to go to Fish Medical School, but Carl's real passion is fish ballet and doesn't want to become a fish doctor. Will Carl have the courage to tell his father his true dream to become a ballet dancer?" We'd just crack each other up talking crap like that and it was great fun. Sure, we guys were immature, but at least we weren't crazy like girls, right? Well okay, maybe we were crazy. But at least we weren't immature, crazy and stupid...

After Therapy Night, as I was on the way home I stopped by Denny's and saw that my BBS guy friends were there. Big Jonathan, Max, Brian, and others were there at Denny's, and I commiserated with them. They'd all been through similar situations, being strung along by girls. I told them, "I am an honest, sincere and caring college student, and I was willing to love Juliet. Mark is a pathetic waste of flesh who is beyond depressed, laughs at her when she feels hurt, and would rather drool on his pillow all day than get a job like a normal guy." Brian told me, "It's her loss, not yours." They cheered me up, telling me "nice guys finish last" and that "there are more fish in the sea." "Be that as it may," I said, "I'm not very attractive bait." When I left for the night, I stood up and with a finger pointed into the air I loudly announced, "There will always be another girl..." -[APPLAUSE]- "...who will treat me like crap!" -[STANDING OVATION]- Being the clumsy dope that I am, on my way out of the restaurant I looked back to wave goodbye one last time and accidentally collided with the cigarette vending machine by the entrance and nearly knocked it over. When I got home, Mom told me that Lisa had called. DRAT! I had even tried asking her out just five days before then, but she wasn't home. It's not like Juliet was my girlfriend, and the problem was not that she had a boyfriend. The problem is that she had lied to me about it. It's fine for her to date other guys. But if she had a boyfriend, then that wouldn't be fair to either him or me.

Although I did not realize it at the time of course, the irony of my farewell statement to my friends that night at Denny's is that I never again was mistreated by another girl like that. It turned out that Juliet was the final one to drag my heart through the gutter. Even more ironic, unfortunately, is that from this point, I became the one who started disappointing girls and possibly breaking their hearts, which is my motivation for writing this essay. It's not what I ever wanted to happen...

The next time I saw Juliet at church, she came up behind me and swished my hair with her hand. I asked her to come outside with me and we sat down next to the wall outside. I asked her if Mr. Sleepy was her boyfriend. She denied it. I told her what her sister had told me, and Juliet assured me that Mark would never be her boyfriend because he was too unstable. She said that she would talk it over with her sister later. She stood up and offered her hand to help me up. I refused to take her hand. I said that either her sister is lying, she is lying, or maybe both of them are lying. I told her, "I cannot not trust you anymore. It is up to you to sort the problem out. I've had enough. I'm done." But before I left, I had one more question for her. I asked her, "If I am such a good friend to you and if you like me as much as you say you do, why does it seem like you'd rather stub your toe than to spend any significant amount of time with me?" She said that she was just being pulled in every direction by everybody at once. "Perhaps I am not pulling you hard enough?" I asked. She began pointing the blame at me at that point, as if the whole situation was my fault. I told her, "I am not going to call you anymore. If you want to talk, you can call me." Later I learned from her mom that Juliet was furious at her sister and yelled at her in the car all the way home from church.

A couple of days later at GCC, it was Tuesday and after my class ended that morning I stopped by Lisa's English computer lab class and waited outside for her to finish so that I could talk with her and see her smile. She was happy to see me. I walked her to her philosophy class, and it was the same philosophy class I was taking with the same teacher but at a different time that semester. I wished that she and I could have taken the class together. The philosophy teacher was a real conrball and would prattle on about this fancy type of bottled water he'd drink, which came in cobalt blue glass bottles. That and his fancy pen he always had with him. "Now this is a fine pen! Not at all like one of those disposable pens you students write with. This is a beautiful pen." That always killed me when he'd go on and on about the blue bottles and that pen of his. (At the end of the semester, I somehow won one of his cobalt blue bottles for some award in class, and I kept it on my bookshelf for several years.) Lisa enjoyed the class too. Just being with Lisa made me feel even better. She was such a nice girl, and not elusive and scatterbrained like Juliet. I told her I'd see her at our Wednesday night kinship group the next evening. Every time after the Bible study as a group, we'd split into separate guys' and girls' groups for prayer. On that night, Scott, Dan, and our group leader John prayed for me about the whole Juliet situation. When we guys finished praying, Lisa had already left. I was disappointed, because I had wanted to talk with her some more. She always made me happy. The next Sunday, I did not see Juliet or her crazy family at church. I decided not to call Juliet, even though I wanted to. I had to stand my ground. She'd said that she would call me, but of course she didn't.

So about a week later, one early evening while I was finishing grilling hot dogs for dinner in the backyard, Mom said that there was someone at the door for me. It was Juliet, wearing a tight, ribbed, silk tank top. Yeah, she was busty. She had already sometimes called attention to that fact around me and was obviously trying to use her feminine charm to her advantage. That's not why I liked her---in fact, I didn't even really notice the size of her bust until she called attention to it once on a date. We were in her car listening to my New Order CD on a date when she said that her bust size was the reason why she was turned down for the cheerleader's role in the Power Rangers show because she didn't appear "athletic enough" for the role. So I looked at her bust, and then she asked me not to look. Whatever... have it your way. So there I was, standing at the door, my heart pounding, anticipating an imminent conflict, which fortunately did not come. I realized that she wouldn't have driven over just to pick a fight in front of my parents. I invited her to my room for privacy and we sat down on my bed. Juliet gave me a long letter of apology which became rather counterproductive towards the end. You see, she justified lying to me because it was all to protect my feelings. Bullcrap. So she was doing me a favor? Bullcrap! She admitted that she had made a bad decision between me and Mr. Sleepy, who never even treated her very well, because she felt that he needed her more than I did. She had confused passion with compassion, and realized her mistake. Juliet was afraid of loving me just as I was afraid of loving her; we were afraid that the other didn't want us. She said that she had been praying that God would let her meet a decent boy to love. She said that God placed me right in front of her eyes, and she admitted that she was stupid for what she had done. All the kind gifts I had showered her with that she treasured, she told me that this was the sort of thing that she'd had to do to make past relationships work and the gesture was never properly reciprocated by other guys. She said that no boy had ever pursued her the way I did. I told her that I hadn't even begun to pursue her, and her eyes went wide and her face lit up in astonishment. "Are you kidding?" she asked. I assured her I wasn't. I didn't even try to kiss her. Sheesh. She admitted that she was dysfunctional. She said in that letter of apology that I deserved better than her, and how I would be better off with Lisa. (I wasn't even aware that she knew I had an interest in Lisa even, but somehow she knew.) I think she still wanted me to be her boy, but I wanted her to be more decisive. We talked for 2 hours, and before she went home, I held her for a long minute. She felt wonderful in my arms.

I knew that Juliet needed to change herself if our love was to grow, but I knew that she needed to change on her own. I couldn't change her. Somehow, I had the feeling that it would soon be a dead end. We did a few things after then. She invited me to go to her sister's school choir recital one night. I tried to make our relationship work, but it eventually fizzled out a week or so after that on May 19th when we were at Carl's Jr. at Metrocenter Mall with her sister. The food server was a young girl being harassed by her boyfriend shooting her with a squirt gun and calling her stupid while she wiped the tables. We asked her what his problem was, and she said that she found out that he was dating another girl behind her back. Juliet told the girl that she deserved better than that. Holy crap. Juliet lecturing that girl for deserving better than the boy cheating on her demonstrated how she completely lacked any self-awareness! I asked her if she was still upset over Mr. Sleepy and she said yes. DUDE, WHY? I thought that I was the better choice. I didn't say that; I only muttered that guys like Mr. Squirt Gun are not capable of much love. Juliet called me "judgmental." Must have struck a nerve. Ironically, just the evening prior I had gone out to dinner with Scott, and he thanked me for not being judgmental. And wasn't she being judgmental about Richard's friend, Tony? Furthermore, I often had to listen to Juliet's overactive "gaydar," always suspecting so many guys of being gay. I felt that sting every time, because I was always being suspected of being gay. Throughout high school, especially.

Juliet's sister looked like she didn't want to be there. Hell, I didn't want her to be there either, since I just wanted to be with Juliet. Why did Juliet bring her with us? The whole situation really sucked. Heck, I didn't want to be there, either. When the two of them excused themselves to go to the restroom, I contemplated ditching them and to go find a payphone to call my folks for a ride home. In the end, I didn't. I was too nice, but maybe I should have bailed. No, I just waited for them to come back, and we ended up going to see the movie Twister at the theater at that mall. I ended up volunteering to pay for all three of our tickets, while Juliet bought me a soda. I felt like I was dating her and her cranky little sister. During the movie, I had to listen to Juliet's theory that the actress Helen Hunt has breast implants. Oh God, here we go with the boobs talk again. Look, I don't care. (Ironically, Juliet will never know that several years later, my older sister would end up teasing me for marrying a "flat-chested" girl.) After the movie, she drove me home. I invited her to walk me to the door, hoping for the chance to speak privately, but she declined. That was the last time I ever did anything with Juliet.

All I wanted was just to be alone with her that day, to talk privately without her sister tagging along, especially because her sister obviously didn't even want to be there with us. I wanted to ask her where our relationship was heading, and if we still had a chance together. After that day though, I could answer those questions for myself and I realized that our love was not meant to be. I decided that I was not going to take any more crap from her. This was not true love, and I felt that I deserved to be treated better. That Thursday for Therapy Night, I told Richard and Steve about what had happened. Steve said that Juliet needed to grow up and was not in any position to lecture me. They'd also picked up on that word "judgmental" coming from her on the nights she had joined us for Therapy Night. That word gets rather tiresome, especially when it is overly-used by people afraid to call things for how they really are (like Angela, that girl I went to prom with, who had previously ended up getting a knife pointed at her by her crazy-ass boyfriend). My cousins Bethany and Shelby were staying at my house that week, and I told them of how Juliet was throwing herself at some dingus whereas I was the boy who gave her a Valentine, showered her with gifts, and asked her out. I practically worshiped her. They told me that Juliet was crazy to treat me the way she was. They told me that any decent girl would love to be treated as well as I had treated Juliet. Those girls were my cheerleaders. They were like my little sisters. I love them.

The next Sunday during the morning service at church, a group of us from the kinship group all sat together, and Lisa was sitting next to me. Once as I leaned over to whisper something to Lisa and she smiled that beautiful smile of hers, I made eye contact with Juliet from across the room and she waved at me. At the end of the sermon, during the final prayer time, Dan nudged Scott who was leaning on one leg, who bumped into Lisa's younger sister, who bumped into Lisa, who then collided with me and I fell to the ground in the aisle just as my big friend Jonathan stepped aside and out of my way. Pastor Brian just stared at me with a "what the hell are you doing?" look and I was tempted to mutter, "Um, hallelujah?" It was so funny. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn't. Afterwards, Juliet came by and said "hi" and I was finally able to introduce her to Jonathan, but Juliet was obviously rather bothered about something. My dad was observing the situation from afar, and he told me later that he could see that Juliet was burning with anger and jealousy at the sight of pretty Lisa next to me, and us getting along and whispering to each other during service. For someone who basically said that I was her 2nd choice, that's a bad double standard. She had told me not to wait around for her, even. The same girl who got super jealous at the sight of me sitting next to Lisa was the same girl who had a boyfriend the whole time and lied to me about it. So apparently that crap she told me about how I was better off with Lisa than her was just passive/aggressive, insincere drama crap. Juliet was never my girlfriend, yet she was possessive like that. She did want a possible relationship with me. If only she wasn't so mixed up, something good could have happened. But I realized that she was not capable of reciprocating the great amount of love I had to offer. And she'd gotten angry at me for standing up to her and confronting her for lying to me, and jealous of Lisa even though she had no right to be.

After church, the group of us (minus Juliet) went to Scott's house to go swimming (I'll mention this day again later). I had invited Juliet to come, but she said something dumb about how "they don't make bathing suits to support my cup size." Oh bullcrap. Who cares about support? Girls bouncing about in bathing suits is part of the fun of swimming with them. Why can't girls just enjoy being girls and the attention their femininity garners? This was just an excuse to brag about the size of her boobs to me, but that is not what I wanted to hear. If she was so proud of her bust, then she could've gotten into a bathing suit with the least amount of "support." Lame. I enjoyed playing with Lisa in the pool instead, and she and I got closer that day. After swimming, we all came back to church for the evening service, and Juliet was with her sister and came up and said "hi." But... I was with Lisa again. Juliet must have been unhappy about that. After service, our group (minus Juliet of course) went back to Scott's house and watched Star Wars movies on LaserDisc. It was like torture for Lisa and I could tell that she didn't like Star Wars movies. OH NO! The girl I liked didn't like Star Wars! Not even The Empire Strikes Back! For a nerd like myself to find out that a girl he likes cannot stand Star Wars, it is a troublesome predicament, to say the least. Dan, Scott and I tried to explain to her how cool Boba Fett is, but she just didn't get it.

The next day was Memorial Day, and there was a church baptism/swim party at GCC. That day I called Juliet to see if she wanted to swim with me. I really wanted to spend the day playing with her in the water, having fun in each others' arms. And of course, for her to wear a bathing suit and not to feel self-conscious about that which was beautiful. I still wanted to love her. My Lady Juliet. She was my first Valentine. A part of me still wanted to keep giving her more chances to accept my love. As I expected though, Juliet again declined. She said she was busy practicing for the stupid band she was in, with Mr. Sleepy. Captain Nytol. Mark. That was the last time I ever bothered calling her. She said that she'd call me back the next day, but that didn't happen. I figured that if she was still interested in me, she would make an effort because I was getting tired of always being the one who called. I never got a call back. I went to the swim party alone. My parents were doing baptisms and such. My cousins were there, but only for a short while. While I was there, I saw the creep who was Juliet's mom's ex-boyfriend. He said he wanted to let me know that Juliet was a very manipulative and dishonest person, and she has hurt many others just as she had hurt me. He warned me if I continued a relationship with her that I would only be opening myself up to more hurt. He told me I was "lusting" after Juliet. Big words from the man who was boinking her mom and cheating on her simultaneously. What a real piece of work that guy was. He said that he broke off his "sinful" relationship with Juliet's mom, yet he was there at that that event with another woman (while still legally married to two other women). What a prick. He was probably telling the truth about Juliet though, the part about her being manipulative and dishonest. He went further to say more about how horrible she is, but I'd heard enough of his crap and I did not want to hear anymore. I just said that she's misguided and does not have strong parents as role models (Juliet's father lived in Montana or someplace). All I knew is that I could not trust this man any more than I could trust her. We parted on good terms, and he wished me well.

From that time on, I stopped seeing Juliet at church. My kinship group leader Wendy (John and Wendy were the 18-29 singles' kinship group leaders) once reported that she saw Juliet at 1st service. Dad's opinion is that Juliet knew that Juliet had blown her chances with me, and she began avoiding me at 3rd service every Sunday. A year and a half later, In October '97 Mom spotted Juliet at church and told me that she was there with whom she assumed was a boyfriend. As I was talking with Dan in the entrance foyer, Juliet walked past me twice without acknowledging me, each time catching me off guard. I wanted to say hello and be kind to her and her boyfriend, but she looked unhappy and purposely averted her eyes from me. Juliet's mother had told me that someday Juliet would wise up, realize that she'd hurt me, and realize her mistake in the way she'd treated me. Just the thought that a girl would go against her natural instincts like that in order to turn love into charity work is just insane. A sensible girl should want a strong, kind guy to take care of her, protect her, marry her, carry her across the threshold, provide for her, make love to her to get her pregnant, and to be a strong father for her children. Not a twerp who'd just roll around in bed all day like a lazy asshole. I don't care if he can play guitar.

Juliet had told me that she had been praying for God to bring a decent boy into her life, and that God placed me right in front of her eyes. If that is true, then God used me to test her faithfulness. She admitted that she was foolish for her decision to treat me the way she did. I would have treated her like a queen had I married her, but she blew her chance with me. All the affection I showered her with was to no avail. I had planned to conspire with her sister to get her three sizes so that I could buy her a silk China dress that she had so much wanted. I was hoping to celebrate her birthday in a way she'd never forget, but that did not happen. Her birthday came on June 21st, and I wrote and sent her this letter:

Dear Juliet,
I really regret that things have not gone well between us. A few months ago I had planned out a birthday that you would never forget, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen. I haven't seen or heard from you in weeks now, and I'm a bit concerned. I still pray for you everyday, honestly. I hope all three of you are doing well. Whatever happens between us, there is nothing that could stop me from caring deeply for you. I always will. I really miss you, but if you do not wish to be friends with me, I will accept that. I feel as though I have failed you.

I'm sorry you think I'm judgmental. What you told me that day in Carl's Jr. really upset me, especially when my friend Scott thanked me for not being judgmental the previous night before. If I was judgmental, I wouldn't have spent that day with you after what had happened between us before then. I never told you this, but I felt like you were judgmental in the way that you are so quick to suspect certain men as being homosexual. I was wrongly accused as being gay throughout junior high and high school because I was always so different. I have often thought that if you had gone to school with me, you would have thought the same way about me. I never told you this because I was afraid that you would think ill of me.

I really do not intend to sound like I'm lecturing you, so please don't take all this the wrong way. I just feel like I ought to explain myself to you. You do not understand me because you have barely begun to get to know me.

I don't think I ever told you that the day I met you was one of the best days of my life. I had thought that there was a mutual interest and attraction between us, but I suppose now that there wasn't. You once told me that you would be interested in dating me someday. If that was true, I suppose that the affection you once had for me is gone by now.

When I first found out that you chose Mark over me, I feared that I had done something wrong. And if I did, I'm sorry for that, too. And if you have gone back to Mark by now, then that is your decision. But no matter what anybody says, I still think that you really are a good person. If you do not want me to be your friend, then I promise that I will never bother you again. But I will always remember you, and I will always care for you, and I will always enjoy the times I have spent with you.

Sincerely,
Greg

I copied this letter to my journal so that I will always have it for posterity. Reading it now... damn! I am rather impressed with how I well I wrote this letter and handled this farewell situation. I think I should have at least tried calling her on her birthday and tell her that I missed her. Oh well. At least I took the high road with this letter I wrote her. That last line remains true, obviously. I still remember Juliet, and I still care for her, and I still cherish the memories I had with her... Well, except for when she dragged her little sister along on dates with me. That sucked. But note that even though she broke my heart, I still believed that she was a good person.

On the day before Juliet had showed up at my home to apologize, she spent that day with a friend of hers who was in a local Christian band, the lead singer of which had graduated from my high school. (I thought the band was annoying as were their fans, but whatever.) This friend of her counseled Juliet. She had dated a guy who beat her for four years. The guy attended Grand Canyon University with her, a Bible college in Phoenix. Juliet asked her why she loved someone who treated her so poorly, and she asked Juliet the same question. Now that lethargic dope probably couldn't hurt a fly, but he treated her like crap, and he'd never treated her very well. Even Juliet's mom told me so. Yet Juliet was thowing herself at that guy because she felt he needed her more than I did. She foolishly confused passion with compassion, and for a while she realized how wrong she was. In the end though, she chose him over me. I wasted all that time, effort, and money on her and all I got in return was a broken heart.

My relationship with Juliet lasted only a few months in '96, from the end of January to the end of May. Oh gosh, the amount I wrote about that relationship is pretty epic, and while reading what I had written, I re-lived the excitement of when I first met her all the way through to the the pain of heartbreak I suffered in the end. It was truly a growing experience. I re-lived the whole experience, bringing so many lost memories back to mind. As far as Juliet goes, I would not change a thing. I was not in the wrong. I had written her a couple of letters, which I copied into my journal, and I have to say that I'm impressed with what my 20 year old self said to her. I think I handled that situation rather well. I don't know if she was serious when she said that I deserved better than her, and that I'd be better off with Lisa. Granted I couldn't play music and I could only fumble my way through some New Order and Joy Division bass tabs on my bass guitar in my bedroom, and I once showed her a techno-ish .MOD file tune I'd created on my computer with Jonathan's help but she wasn't very impressed, so I obviously wasn't a musician. But I offered Juliet my intense love and affection without a catch, and she just could not appreciate me. Crazy. Still, in the farewell letter I sent her, I told her that I would always care for her. I do hope she has a good life now (she's listed on the IMDB and occasionally plays bit parts in movies), and I would love to talk with her once more. She was the first girl to express interest in wanting a relationship with me, and as misguided as she was, her affection made me so happy for a while and made me realize that even a hopeless nerd like myself could be loved by a pretty girl. Thank you, Juliet.

Aside from committing the hideous sin of sitting next to pretty Lisa at church, I couldn't imagine what the heck I did that would have driven Juliet away like that, into the arms of Mr. Scrawny. I mean, if I had said something stupid like "I wanna be your Romeo" while riding in her car, I could imagine her being cross with me over that and never wanting to talk to me ever again. If I'd have said something stupid like that, if she didn't puke all over herself I'd imagine her saying, "Alright, get out of my car immediately. You're walking home, Greg. I completely hate you now." I wouldn't blame her. Having a name like Juliet, I imagine if I was her, that sort of crap would set me off every time. It would drive me mad. My sister was all into Shakespeare, but I could never understand what his characters were saying half the time. I loved English class for sure, especially Edgar Allan Poe stuff. (My middle name is Allan, spelled the same, less-usual way too. Most of the time it's spelled Alan or Allen, but mine's spelled the cool way: Allan. Not everyone can be as cool as Poe and I. That extra "l" gives my name a badass feel to it. But the one thing I hate is when people spell my name "Gregg" rather than Greg. It's a stupid Brit thing to do. Anytime anyone spells my name Gregg, I tell them that I lost that extra "g" in a terrible, grisly boating accident and that haunts me to this very day, and that I can still feel a tingling, itchy sensation in my name where that extra "g" once was.) But I felt phony if I tried to pretend to understand what Shakespeare was saying. It just always struck me as pretentious to want to commit so much time and energy to learning Shakespearean English just for those plays to make sense. I suppose it's more useful than spending that same level of energy on learning the Klingon language from Star Trek just so you can go cosplay as one at a comic book convention and talk shit with your fellow Klingon wannabes about the other cosplayers in Klingon while feeling superior, because you just know that those dumbass Naruto cosplay Narutards with their stupid headbands can't say more than a few words in Japanese and everyone knows what "baka" means (and their Japanese pronunciation sucks, to boot). Probably one of the most useful lines in Klingon would be to say, "Our pretend swords are infinitely superior to their pretend swords! Before the sun sets this day, their blood shall be spilt!" Klingons... Yeah so anyhow, we had to read Romeo and Juliet in high school in my junior year Honor English class. I swear to God, the two main characters are complete pinheads. The best part was when we watched the movie from the '60s, and of course we guys liked the part with Juliet practically hanging her tits off of her balcony when she was talking down to Romeo. It's hard not to fall in love with a girl with her boobs on display in the moonlight like that, and I suppose that's the point of the story. It's just depressing how people hold up Romeo and Juliet as some epitome of romance, when Shakespeare meant it as a comedy, ridiculing the folly of young, stupid love. You know, swearing by the moon of your infinite love for some chick you have only met, not even knowing if she could be a crazy. I mean, she could have shrunken heads, voodoo dolls, and hand grenades in her purse for all you know. On top of that, she could be a real bitch, but you're standing there in the bushes under her balcony, and all you care about is that she has a nice rack. I swear, Romeo was not the shiniest doorknob, you know? A real moron. You think Shakespeare didn't think about his characters not checking their pulse and not knowing the difference between taking a nap and being dead? He wrote the characters as vacuous imbeciles on purpose. It's why the play is called a "tragic comedy" rather than a "tragic romance." Stupid people killing themselves for silly reasons is funny, not romantic. Anyhow, if I was a girl named Juliet, I'd probably snap every time someone made a lame "Romeo" joke to me. I'd purse my lips and learn the technique of projectile vomiting. If anything I hope Juliet appreciated me for not being corny like that. The lame "Romeo" thought never really crossed my mind until much later when somebody else said something lame like "Well, you weren't meant to be Juliet's Romeo" or something lame like that. Crap like that makes me want to roll my eyes. It's comforting to know that as much stupid stuff as I blurt out at times, there are always others who say stupid stuff too, like bringing up Romeo and Juliet. Yet here I am, doing the same, and I don't know why. At least I somehow tied Romeo and Juliet to Star Trek. That's not something you see everyday.

But you know---and this is going to sound rather cynical, but I swear to you that this is what was going through my mind at the time---I sometimes considered this idea of mine that I'd been had; that it had all been a ruse. That being an actress, Juliet was a phony and the whole time she was just pretending to be interested in me, as though she was just using me for acting practice. That the story of some ex-boyfriend leaving her hanging was just a bunch of melodramatic feldercarb and she was just using that story to see how effective her acting abilities were. That the whole time, she was secretly laughing at me for being a pathetic loser and actually getting my hopes up that a beautiful girl like her would even be attracted to a nerdy outcast like myself. As crappy as that sounds, sometimes to me that made more sense than to think that such a pretty girl would ever express such an interest in dating a guy like me and to get jealous over me like that. Does that sound depressingly cynical? Well, welcome to the reality of my abysmal, 20 year old self-esteem in 1996. By this point I was improving, but obviously Juliet caused a bit of a setback. Fortunately, Lisa's kindness acted as a cushion for the blow. Without her, I don't know how long it would have taken to recover from Juliet. I wasn't completely sold on that theory that it was all an acting game, but I did consider it sometimes. But from what her sister and that SOB ex-boyfriend of her mom's had said to me, there could have been some truth to my seemingly paranoid theory. They both told me that she was phony, dishonest and manipulative, so it's possible that even if she did think I was cute at first, once she realized what a miserable nerd I was, she maybe concocted some story to deflect me as she would rather focus on that wimpy guitar boy with a thyroid problem or whatever. But the fact that Juliet did get super jealous of both her friend Tanya and of Lisa showed that she did love me and screwed up her chance to have a loyal boy who would have loved and adored her so strongly.

Here I am, posing next to my X-Files poster. 1996/97.

The good thing I learned from Juliet was to pray every day, as she did. She said that she prayed for her future spouse daily too, which I thought was such a good idea. The one advice I got from Juliet's mother I took to heart was this: she told me that I obviously had a great capacity for love in my heart. She told me to never let that go, because that would make a special girl very happy someday. She encouraged me to not harden my heart and to keep caring for people, but she told me to guard my heart and not let it all out for a girl unless I knew without a doubt that she is right for me. I got the impression that she was disappointed that Juliet was not making the right decision and that I would not become her son-in-law someday, to be a strong boy for her daughter to love and to take care of her. I took her mom's advice to heart, and maybe began guarding my heart a bit too seriously. I resolved that after getting my heart broken like that, I would never be responsible for breaking any girl's heart. If I was to live my life responsibly, I vowed to do it clean and not take risks, lest I hurt a girl's feelings. I ultimately failed.

Taking Juliet's mother's advice to heart, I had this on my mind that summer of '96:

1. Guard my heart and not gush love so freely and easily as I did with Juliet.
2. Do not be so willing to love a girl who does not apparently love me equally back. Personality tests I had taken all said that I have a capacity for love and caring that exceeds most people. I needed to not let that be a hindrance.
3. Stop defining my happiness and self-worth as contingent on whether or not I have a girl in my life.
4. Go easy with Lisa because it would be bad to appear as though I was on a rebound. Even though Juliet was not my girlfriend, people in the group knew that we had dated, that I was rather smitten with her, but yet I did not hide the fact that I was fond of Lisa too. I did not want Lisa to think that she was just a second choice, because she was too cool and deserved better than that. It would just have been bad optics for me to jump from Juliet to Lisa so quickly, lest people suspect I was just using the singles' group as a dating service and not being sincere. If I was to win Lisa's heart, I figured that I would have to move slowly. My plan failed.

Lisa
So now it's time to tell the story of lovely Lisa, the left-handed, dark-haired girl from Ireland who cheered me up and provided a friendship that uplifted me. I've already introduced her in this essay and mentioned her so many times by now, but now it is time to speak of how much I loved pretty Lisa, how dear she was to me, and the cherished friendship I had with her---which unfortunately I ultimately lost. She was like my dream girl: thoughtful, kind, charming, cheerful, black hair, European... how could I not love her? Yet there was something sad and elusive in her, and it took me a long time to learn what it was. When I did, it broke my heart. Nevertheless, I have so much affection and admiration for her, and I think the world of her. I sometimes almost feel badly that I didn't marry her --as though I was meant to marry her and that it was somehow wrong not to-- and I admit that I have often wondered what could have been, having passed on one international love story in favor of another. I do believe that God brought her into my life for a purpose, as her comforting spirit brought healing to my anxious heart, but not for the purpose of romance. Nevertheless, I still feel bonded to her and always will. She was a nursing student, and without her knowing, she helped lift me up and strengthen my heart.

Lisa was a clever girl who never treated me wrong. She never made fun of me for being a nerd, even though others in the group did at times... including her sister. She also didn't complain about riding in my old car like Juliet did. She would often call me on the phone, unlike Juliet. As far as I am concerned, the two best things to come from Ireland are the band My Bloody Valentine and my dear friend Lisa. She was so precious to me. Lisa always made me feel included with her family and our group at church, which meant more to this outsider than I think she realized. She was more approachable than Juliet, yet somehow distant. I loved her and flirted with her, but I never got romantic with her like I did Juliet. Yet there was a time when I wanted to take her hand and never let go... Thinking of her brings tears to my eyes, because she was so good to me and even just the thought of the possibility that I may have hurt her weighs heavily on my own. Of the girls I've mentioned so far, Lisa is the dearest to me and is my main reason for writing this essay. She's that special to me. I loved her so much. I really did... But I never told her. Lisa was a rose among thorns; a diamond in the rough. She was a kindred spirit, although I never truly understood what such a concept entailed at the time. She isn't aware of it, but her kindness helped guide me to inner peace. To me, Lisa was like a beautiful, sad poem that I could not quite fully understand, but one that I enjoyed nevertheless. Likewise, she was a poem that could not understand me.

In February '96 while playing mini golf with the group at Castles & Coasters, I was pleased to learn that Lisa was left-handed. I even suggested to Lisa that since we were both left-handed, someday we could get married and have left-handed children together. God, I was just so excited to find out that she was left-handed too! I had invited Juliet to come with us that night, but she didn't come. It was an opportunity to get to know Lisa more that night. Like I said, I had met Lisa before Juliet and I was interested in her first. I spent time with Lisa a bit during the Juliet period of my life in the first several months of 1996. Then the emotional roller-coaster of my relationship with Juliet sort of wore me out for a while, and I was wary of the effect that girls had on my schoolwork. As it was, I didn't do as well in my Brief Calculus class that spring semester of '96 due to the ups and downs from focusing on Juliet. I could have gotten an A, but I ended up getting a B. So I ended up not pursuing Lisa with as much vigor as she deserved. Much of my interaction with Lisa was with the group, but sometimes we did stuff just the two of us. Lisa was the girl that we guys in the group all had a crush on. I knew that I was not the only guy in our group who liked her. I wanted to take it slowly with her, for the reasons I stated above. In January of '96 I had joined a fitness program at the GCC gym, and I was happy to sometimes see Lisa there. We even did a race on the virtual reality bicycles there, and she won. I also saw Lisa sometimes between classes, and would wait for her class to end to walk with her to her next class. I was always so happy to see her, and proud to be her friend.

I often went to the drive-in with Lisa's family and the group. We would just sit around and talk while half-watching the movie. Once in April we went to go see the Steve Martin movie Sgt. Bilko, and it was her and I with her younger sister and her two little brothers, and I wished she hadn't taken them with her because I just wanted to be alone with Lisa. I remember once when she was still living with her parents and I was over there for whatever reason, I'd dropped an ice cube on the kitchen floor. Since I am a lazy moron, at home I would just kick ice cubes under the refrigerator. But at their home, there was some plastic guard which prevented me from doing so. One thing I like to do is say stupid stuff to see how people would react. I told Lisa, "It seems that I've dropped an ice cube onto the floor. But alas, my efforts at kicking it under your refrigerator have been in vain. I've reached an impasse." Lisa smiled and replied, "Just fire it into the sink!" I loved how she said that... That killed me and I've adopted that as part of my own speaking to this day. I was parked outside of their home, and afterwards I invited her to sit on the hood of my old Cutlass Supreme car outside her home and she was not sure if she might dent it. With that sturdy old car, there was no worry about a petite girl like her denting it. I told her that if she dented it, it would make me happy because there would be a permanent reminder of when a pretty girl named Lisa sat on my car's hood. I wonder if she remembers that? Lisa was beautiful, but she had about a dozen piercings in her left ear. I told her a few times that I was afraid I might cut my lip on those earrings someday. I think that offended Dan. He never cared for innuendo.

One thing stands out from my mind, in those early months of 1996. The first time I called Lisa and asked her out on a date (I cannot remember exactly when that was, but perhaps it was in March or so), I asked her if she would like to go out to eat with me. She said that she didn't like eating out at restaurants. This kind of surprised me and disappointed me.

So as I mentioned above, there was a guy named Scott in our church group who had a house with a pool, and we would go swimming there. I had invited Juliet, but she declined. Anyhow it was nice she didn't go because pretty Lisa was there, and I was pleased that she had knocked me to the floor in the middle of church that morning. If anyone were to knock me to the floor in front of the pastor, I was glad it was pretty Lisa. We played in the pool and I told Lisa that it was like going swimming with a supermodel. She wore a pink, two piece bathing suit. (At least I think it was pink. I didn't ask anybody what color it was.) We played together for a while in the water, gravitating towards each other, and I was thrilled. I wished it was just the two of us there in the water. Juliet was right, I thought. I am better off with Lisa. When I first met Lisa, I was afraid she wouldn't want to talk to me. But here we were, in the water, with her in my arms. We played and wrestled together. I was so excited! She rode piggyback on me while trying to push her sister off of someone else's back in the pool. I was so happy.

Three days later on Wednesday, we had another pool party at Scott's place, and we were playing volleyball in Scott's pool. When I lifted myself up out of the water to go get the ball, my drawstrings had come undone and my trunks fell down as I pulled myself up. (I guess Lisa and the other girls saw my butt before my wife did on our wedding night!) Dan and I were joking, "Are you looking at my bum?" I asked Lisa if she saw my butt, and she dodged the question. After most everybody left, I had a real nice talk with her. Just the previous weekend, Scott said something like he and Lisa were talking about going out together. So I asked Lisa if she was going out with Scott, and she smiled and said, "Are you crazy?" Oh my. I was relieved! Seriously: we all had a crush on Lisa, regardless of how she felt about Star Wars. But I wrote in my journal: But, I will have to tread carefully to avoid any repercussions among the group if I do ask her out. I was overanalyzing the situation, trying to position myself strategically in order to try to win Lisa's heart. What I should have done is just ask her out, but I didn't realize it at the time. My low self-esteem prevented me from realizing that.

A few days later, it was Saturday, June 1st, 1996. Our kinship group went on a trip to San Diego. We woke up at ass o'clock in the morning, got in a van, and went to Sea World. I got to our group leader Wendy's house at 3:30am, and Lisa and her sister were actually there on time. We left around 4 and arrived there by 11am. I had suffered a bad case of insomnia and was awake all night playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo on my Super Nintendo, but I was excited and didn't feel sleepy that day. I was with Lisa, her younger sister Aran, and Dan the whole day while we all split into mini groups. I had the idea to see all of the actual aquarium exhibits rather than focusing on watching the silly entertainment shows, so we made that the priority and sought them all out. Fish knock me out, you know? We did catch a few shows, and we sat in the splash zone at the Shamu show. As you know, Sea World is a delightful way for a beer company to legitimately make money off of children. When I was about 4 years old, I had visited Sea World. All I remembered was that I was not tall enough to see over the walls to look at the penguins, and some asshole stole my Shamu stroller because they were popular, so for the rest of the day I had to ride in a lame-ass dolphin stroller and it sucked. But this time, I was glad to make new, happy memories of Sea World with my group. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant by Mission Beach called Luigi's. People wanted to eat at a Mexican restaurant, but I begged them not to because I was so scared that my IBS would attack me and that I'd be cramped up and incapacitated with pain, constantly running to the toilet the whole next day. I was too embarrassed to say that, though. Fortunately, Scott recommended Luigi's. But I remember now that Lisa didn't join us for dinner. I thought I might follow her, but she declined. (It wasn't until much later that I understood why she wouldn't eat with us.) That evening as we all walked along Mission Beach, I was asked by Wendy the group leader about what the story was between Juliet and I, because she knew that I liked her and she and I would show up to the group's Wednesday night Bible study together. So I told everyone that she had a boyfriend the entire time and lied to me about it. I imagine that Lisa was curious about that as well, and I have no idea what sort of conversations she may have had with Juliet. All I know is that Juliet was aware that there was some sort of attraction between Lisa and I which I never mentioned to her, and Juliet was so jealous of Lisa. Wendy said that I had a good personality, and that praise made me happy. That night in San Diego we stayed at a motel with rooms with two queen sized beds each, and I remember while we were planning our trip, after voicing my aversion to having to listen to Scott's snoring, Lisa had offered to let me share a room with her and her sisters. Oh, my heart fluttered! Only if I get to share a bed with you, Lisa, is what I wanted to say, but of course I was too shy to say that. She was flirting with me! She liked me! Didn't she? If this had happened, I may have been so happy and excited that I'd have gone close to 48 hours with very little sleep, thanks to both Lisa and Chun-Li from Street Fighter. I would have been so happy. But this did not happen, since it was a church group after all. Crap. Not that any naughtiness would have transpired, but it wouldn't have been good optics. If I recall correctly, Dan and I made Scott sleep on the floor of our room. He snored.

See? This is how stupid I was. I spent a day at Sea World with a pretty girl and a camera bag slung over my shoulder, and I never once thought to take her picture. Nor any of my other friends who went on that trip. Instead, I just have some pictures of dolphins and fish. I was too preoccupied with trying to express myself artistically, yet I wasn't even inspired to do that because I was with friends anyway. Crap.

At the end of the day before we left the beach, Wendy took a group photo. Everyone looked happy. As always, I stood off to the side, not presuming to be a part of their happiness, not wanting to impose on their memories. "Get in the picture, Greg!" is what I have often heard in my life. But... sometimes I don't hear that. That day, Wendy told me to join the group photo, and others also invited me to join. "Yeah, come get in the picture, Greg!" said Lisa. I never like to assume that I am part of any group, but you know, Lisa always made me feel a part of the group. I draped some seaweed around my neck like a scarf and struck a heroic pose. That way, perhaps many years later, whoever would look at the picture, that the person would remember who I was. Perhaps today Wendy still has that photo, but I never got a copy. I wish I had the arrogance to ask for one, so that I could see those friends again. Oh God, I wish I had that picture! And why couldn't I have gotten my own camera to take a picture? Well, it was in the van, I guess.

On the long drive home, that night as I was double-sunburned from two days in the sun and we all smelled like the ocean, pretty Lisa wanted to sit next to me! She and I talked alone in the back seat of the van for hours, just as I had hoped we could! It was just the two of us in the back seat, talking for at least two solid hours. I was so happy, and I was falling in love. I liked her so much and my affection for her grew on that trip. Later I found out that while we were in California, that Sunday at church Mom had been talking with Lisa's mom about Lisa and I. Mom said that it seemed that Lisa's parents really liked me, which was a good sign that Lisa must have liked me herself too. A girlfriend from Ireland... How cool would that be? But I was afraid I'd drive her away somehow if I was persistent and didn't go slowly. After all, girls always said "no" to me. Even Juliet, even though she liked me. I was afraid I'd blow my chance with Lisa if I tried too hard to get her to like me.

The next weekend, I went to Lisa's house and we watched movies together and had a good time. "She's so nice and pretty," I wrote in my journal that night. She asked me to save her a seat at church, and so I did. So soon after Juliet was out of the picture, my relationship with dear Lisa seemed to accelerate, all while I was still getting used to the loss of my relationship with Juliet. Although I was trying to take it easy, it seemed for a while that "Greg & Lisa" was going to happen. I wanted it to happen! My parents saw it, I think her parents saw it, others saw it. Even newcomers to church saw it, like those two brothers visiting from Germany could see that I was interested in Lisa since she'd sat next to me during service and as I hugged her goodbye. Did she see it? Looking back now, I think she may have seen it better than I did. She was left-handed, which means that she expressed herself creatively and indirectly. I, of all people, should have understood this. We were both left-handed, so we were both indirect and not connecting properly. In the same way I had looked at Lisa's ear piercings and said, "I'm afraid I might cut my lip on those someday" was my indirect way of saying, "Holy crap, I want to make out with you," she too must have had an indirect way of expressing her feelings.

After I found a job that month, she was enthusiastic and encouraging, and even gave me a congratulations card. "That's brilliant!" she said. She obviously cared for me, and she made me happy. She was rather reserved; friendly, but a bit reticent. We both were, and I suspect she was an introvert as well. She was easy to talk with and easy to get to know, yet somewhat mysterious. She had said things that made me suspect she was hiding something she was ashamed of, mentioning about past regrets. I figured if she would open up to me about this, it would be in due time. I was anxious to know because I could feel that I loved her, but I did not want to be pushy. I could never get a good reading from her about how she felt about me, as though she was guarding her heart more than I was. I wanted to love her, but I wanted to take it slow so as not to overwhelm her. I figured it would take time for her to grow affection for a nerd like me, after all. With my New Year's Resolution, I had convinced myself to not get my hopes up that any girl would like me. But to think that two girls could have liked me in one year? That Juliet even directly expressed interest in me seemed like the odds of being struck by lightning. Could that lightning strike twice in one year? My low self-esteem was convincing me not to get my hopes up and not go too fast, so as not to scare Lisa off.

On June 4th, my cousin Bethany wrote me a letter. She told me that she'd been thinking about the conversation I had with my friends Max and Jonathan about Juliet. (I had taken them to cheer on Juliet for her violinist competition several weeks before.) Bethany's theory is that Juliet had such an ego that she figured she would be able to say that she changed Captain Ambien for the better through "the power of her love," making it some sort of good deed. Yeah. Charity. An accomplishment rather than a pure love. "By the power of my love," she would want to say, "I helped change him and improve his life!" Oh, the arrogance and futility. You can't just change people; they have to be able to change themselves. All you can do is help point them in the right direction. I vowed I would never risk my heart falling into that sort of trap, thinking I could change some girl in trouble, since it would most likely only lead to my heart getting broken. Like what happened with Jenny. Too many girls fall for this trap, and it leads to their undoing. Bethany also said Juliet was also probably insecure and didn't feel that she deserved any better. Yes. Spot on analysis. On June 12th, I wrote a letter in reply to Bethany:

On June 1st and 2nd I went to San Diego with my singles group from church. On Saturday we went to Sea World and on Sunday we went to the beach. It was plenty of fun. I got to know Lisa better. I don't know if I've mentioned her to you or not. Lisa is a really nice girl from Ireland. She's lived here for almost two years. I've been very cautious about getting to know her for the past several months because I know that I'm not the only guy in our group who likes her. Last Saturday night I went to her house and we watched some movies together. She is really easy to get to know, but it takes time.

All this has helped me get over Juliet. I'm still concerned about her, but I'm not preoccupied with her on my mind. You were right about her. She told me that she felt like she didn't deserve me and that she was dysfunctional. I can agree with the dysfunctional part, but I think that she was just telling me what she thought I wanted to hear. I think that she only apologized to me because she was mad at that kid Mark, and that if she's stopped being mad at him by now she would probably go back to him. I haven't talked to her since the day of that church swim party. I really cannot believe that any girl would honestly think that she doesn't deserve me. Then again, I can't really imagine a girl actually loving me, because it's never happened yet. But anyways, it is good that I haven't had her on my mind as much.

On June 20th, Bethany replied:

I'm glad that you are starting to get over Juliet. You do deserve to be treated better. Don't ever let me hear you say otherwise. You're loving, sensitive, smart, cute, and a good number of other good qualities. (Just don't let it go to your head! The last thing we need in the family is the next Don Juan!) Don't worry, there is someone perfect out there for you. Yes, I met Lisa. Wasn't she the one that Scott liked?

My dear Bethany told me so many times that if we weren't cousins that she would love to date me. She would tell me that she wanted a boyfriend like me, and that any girl would be crazy to not love a boy like me. That always made me feel so good inside, but I know that she loved me anyway because we were cousins. I was never shy around her, and she never drained my energy. We were family, after all. Maybe she didn't know how scared I was of girls. She didn't know how impatient girls are with shy boys. And she couldn't understand why girls would snub me because I was never awkward around her. I could always be myself with Bethany because we were cousins, after all. But she had been my cheerleader for my pursuit of Juliet and was encouraging, and was angry with Juliet for the way she treated me. She saw how hurt I was and she was protective of me. She was encouraging of my interest in Lisa too. She loved me so much wanted me to be happy.

In June, Lisa's friend Margaret from Ireland came to stay with her on a work visa. She was thinking of getting a job as a waitress. We went to the coffee house Java the Hutt, the three of us. We enjoyed making fun of American teenagers together. I was happy for Lisa to have her friend stay with her, but I also thought maybe I shouldn't ask Lisa out just the two of us, lest Margaret feel left out. So I postponed asking Lisa out, in favor of allowing her to spend more time with her precious friend from her home country. I could always date Lisa later. I have time, I thought. Thus I decided to give Lisa space, lest I seem clingy and interfere. But Lisa always made me feel included with the group. She was always kind to me. Whereas Juliet was always up and down, Lisa was even keel. Whereas Juliet was often difficult to get a hold of by phone, Lisa had a difficult time to get a hold of me because I was often with my friend Nathan. He had moved to Phoenix from Calfornia, and was living alone. The previous year, he had lived with some roommates and one had a constant anger problem. Now that he had his own apartment, he was more relaxed. He had other friends, but I think he could confide in me more than others. There were many times when I was with Nathan at night and I'd come home to have Mom tell me that Lisa had tried calling me while I was out. DRAT! How come you couldn't just give her Nathan's phone number and she could contact me there? "No, that would not be fair to your friend," Mom said. But... But.. SHE'S A GIRL, MOM! Mom refused to cooperate. Nuts.

Earlier in June, a new guy to our singles' kinship group named Jason began attending and he gave me advice on buying an electric guitar. I was still wanting to learn how to play guitar, and he told me of a place where I could go and buy a guitar and practice amp for a low price. I bought a Fender Squire Stratocaster. He was really cool, but I could tell that he liked Lisa. That sort of complicated my plans to make Lisa my first girlfriend, and I was not interested in trying to compete for her affections because I knew a nerdy, socially awkward guy like me couldn't stand a chance. I'm the least competitive guy I know. In July I helped Margaret get a job at my stupid telemarketing job and she really killed it with sales as I enjoyed my referral bonus. Her lovely Irish accent was irresistible. "A 25% APR credit card with a $70 annual fee? Sure, whatever you say! Sign me up!" Ha! Suckers... Anyhow, by July, I could really tell that Jason was in love with Lisa...

On August 1st I finally asked Lisa out to the Coffee Plantation, just the two of us. Thursdays were Therapy Night, and I originally wanted to introduce her to Richard and Steve. They were busy though, so it was a date with just Lisa and I. I picked her up at her house and drove there. I had copied my Kitchens of Distinction CD onto an audio cassette in my car to listen to on the way there just for that occasion, but I was a bit disappointed to learn that she didn't care for such Shoegaze music. RATS! On the way there, my old car started to get overheated, so I had to park about a half mile away and we walked the rest of the way. I hoped that Lisa and I might share a cheesecake like I had done with Juliet, but she declined to eat anything. I was disappointed. She just had a drink. I can't remember what I had ordered, but I offered her a bite of it, but she refused... I wrote in my journal that we had a great conversation that night, but since I didn't write what we talked about, I have no idea what we discussed. That night after we spent time at the coffee house together, as we were walking back to my car I told her about what had happened between Juliet and I, and I told her that since I joined the Vineyard church, she and Juliet were the two girls I really liked a lot, but I did not want to do to her what Juliet did to me. I wanted to be honest with Lisa, unlike the way Juliet treated me. So I told her that I liked her, but I just wanted to take it easy with her for a bit. And I cannot remember exactly how I had phrased it, but I said it in such a way that it would not make her feel bad if she wanted to pursue Jason instead. I did not want to place her into an uncomfortable love triangle, so I was giving her a way to choose Jason so as not to feel badly about letting me down. I didn't exactly tell her "It's okay if you'd rather go out with Jason," but I let her know that I liked her a lot and just wanted give her an easy way out so as to not feel guilty about disappointing me. In a way, I sort of let her down so that she could let me down, if that makes sense. I think there's a song that says, "If you love somebody, you have to let them go" or some crap like that. I dunno. There was an unprecedented number of crickets on the sidewalk that night, and I invited Lisa to stomp on them with me. Not something I would do anymore, but I was such a spaz then. "These crickets will soon overrun the city! There are too many of them! It's up to us to stop them, Lisa! We must act now before it's too late!" Perhaps at that moment, the thought crossed her mind that she was on a date with a moron, yet still she followed suit. She spotted the nearest cricket and exclaimed, "A-ha! So it was you all along! I should have known. Have at you, fiend! Take THIS! Oh, drat." I think she missed the cricket on purpose. Lisa was just too nice.

The next week, Lisa invited me to the drive-in theater with others in the group. My parents were gone that night, so I went to go get some food for dinner. I got back and the key broke in the lock tumbler of the front door, and I had to sort of break into my own home. We kept an emergency key in the backyard, and I used that to open the side door to the garage, and I had to pry my way through a bunch of Dad's lumber blocking the door to get inside. After eating, I was running late, I drove around but for some reason I couldn't remember where the drive-in was! I think the broken key lock had frustrated me too much, clouding my judgment. By that time it was getting late and the movie had already started, so I went back home in frustration that I couldn't have spent time with Lisa, and I flippantly wrote in my journal that I was about ready to commit suicide with my own fingernails because of that stupid, broken lock. I just wanted to be with Lisa. I know I sure liked Lisa, but I did not know if she liked me as much as I liked her. I did not want her to ever think that she was my back-up plan since I was still getting used to being without Juliet's friendship. I just took such relationships too seriously, I guess.

Were our interests aligned? Well, hit-and-miss. And that was a let-down for me because when I was 20 years old, I depended on common interests to connect with others. Otherwise, I couldn't interact comfortably and naturally with them. Nothing depleted my energon cubes faster than trying to pretend to be "normal." As much as I was fond of Lisa, I was afraid that she wouldn't like me if we didn't have enough in common. But really, it shouldn't be so, and it's just a testament to my immaturity and inability to socialize like a normal person. Hence, I was a socially-awkward nerd. But we did enjoy some stuff together. I cannot remember when it was (I believe the springtime of '97), but once Lisa asked me to attend a dance performance concert at GCC, and because of the music used that night I learned that we both liked the techno/trance music that was so incredible in the latter half of the '90s. The Playstation game Wipeout XL had certainly introduced my cousin Justin and I to this sort of music, and Lisa liked it. So there was that whole musical avenue I didn't really explore with her to its full potential. Lisa didn't like dogs or maybe any pets at all, which I thought was strange but not a big deal. The unfortunate part was that she didn't seem very interested in what my hobbies were, and she definitely couldn't relate to or understand my fascination with Japan. Nowadays even the trendies think that Japan is cool, but back then I was a prototype of sorts. Lisa and I would often watch movies together, but she hated science fiction, so there's no way I could ever get her excited over Blade Runner just as she could not get me excited over French movies she liked. (Not that I minded them particularly... I mean, I'd be happy to watch them if it was with her, but they were just not my cup of tea. I took French in high school but only for two years. Lisa could speak French and Gaelic, I think.) I had heard from Lisa's sister Tara especially many times what a trash genre science fiction is because it's not based in reality. I felt ashamed. I felt like I had to keep my nerdy obsessions to myself, so I never invited her to my home. She never saw my bedroom with the Star Wars and anime posters on the walls like her little brother eventually did. But there it is: I felt that I had to keep my nerdiness to myself. I couldn't feel comfortable revealing my true self to Lisa. All the stuff I liked was alien to her. I felt that I had to stifle myself and be ashamed. Thus, I always felt that I couldn't truly be myself with her. I was afraid she'd think I was weird---that I was a nerd, and thus she would be put off by me. The fear of rejection... And this is why I was more excited about Juliet initially, because I never felt like I had to hide my nerdy obsessions with her and therefore I did not have to exert energy to hide them. Juliet had been in my room several times and I never felt ashamed. From the first day I met Juliet, she is the one who started the conversation about Star Trek with me, about wormholes and such. If only Lisa had that same spark of connection, I thought she would have been my ideal girl. I needed that sort of special connection with her, to know that she would accept me and that I didn't have to hide my inner self. That it's alright to love Van Gogh paintings as well as the Starship Enterprise.

And this is important, and this weighed a lot on my mind during these years before I met Mayu. I mentioned above about the Anime Archive BBS and the GTs we'd have every few months. In '96, I had a plan to go to the Anime Expo con in California that summer with the BBS's SysOp, Brad. I had already gone to Los Angeles for spring break with my martial artist friend Daniel in March, and I went to San Diego with my church group in June. I just could not afford to go to Anaheim or wherever the con was held later that summer. The thing is, Brad ended up marrying a woman from Australia who had absolutely zero interest in the animation we were watching. She came to one of our GTs once, and she looked bored out of her mind, grumpy, and obviously didn't want to be there. Oh man. Well, that's fine, but for him, that was his #1 hobby. What sort of strain would that take on their marriage? I imagine that he would have probably had to abandon his hobby for the sake of his relationship to that sourpuss. All I know is that he and I were not able to go to the convention the next year in '97, most likely because of her. See, this is the sort of thing that "normal" people don't have to worry about. But for nerds, it is a different story, and a potentially emotionally painful experience. Nobody should have to abandon who they are in order to please someone they like. It's phony. Disingenuous. I could only be true to myself. So my fear was that I would have ultimately disappointed Lisa for not being "normal" enough, and over time I figured that she would have ultimately rejected me if I had the courage to romance her. And then I would no longer have her as a friend, and that would make me sad. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Here in '96, I hadn't quite reached that point yet in my mind. I was still very infatuated with Lisa.

When I found out that Lisa was a vegetarian though, I was disappointed. One night we all went to dinner at Ed Debevic's, Lisa ate nothing and afterwards Dan asked her why she never ate with us whenever we would go out to eat. She replied that she was a vegetarian. Oh no! After my experience with Jenny in high school, I thought that that this spelled disaster. My martial artist friend Daniel whom I went to Los Angeles for spring break with was an evangelical vegan (if you can imagine what that entails). I had introduced him to Juliet at the Chinese New Year festival earlier that year. To be fair, Lisa was vegetarian but not vegan, but still I viewed it all as difficult. So being the immature cretin I was, upon her telling us that she was a vegetarian, I blurted out something like, "If you're a vegetarian, then we can't get married! It's not feasible to cook two dinners every night." Dan told me to shut up and I am certain that I hurt her feelings that night. Maybe that's why she started going out with Jason. Stupid Greg, shut up!

All along though, I was still trading heartfelt letters with Mayu in Japan, and writing has always been easier than talking for me. In one of her letters that summer, Mayu asked me when I would come to Japan to visit her. She was so far away from me, yet so close at the same time. I knew it wasn't fair, but I wanted to use Mayu as a standard to use for all girls to protect myself from getting hurt like I was with Juliet. I later wrote in my journal the next year about how I used Lisa as a standard as well, actually. Even though I had mixed feelings for her, I still placed Lisa on that pedestal. I wanted to gather my thoughts and apparently I took too long because by September Jason and Lisa had become boyfriend and girlfriend. Around the beginning of June, there could have been a window in which Lisa could have become my first girlfriend, assuming she really didn't mind me being a nerd. Things seemed to be going well with Lisa and I, then Margaret came to live with her, I took it easy with her, and then Jason entered the picture that same month. When he joined the group, I saw how he started commanding her attention right away. I backed way off and refused to compete. I saw that his affections made Lisa happy, and I wanted her to be happy. I didn't know how to make girls happy. I felt that a boy like me would have to exert great effort to get a girl to like him. I had showered Juliet with gifts and affection, treating her like a lady, and in return I was still treated like trash.

Because Jason knew that I liked Lisa and because I had told Lisa that I liked her as I stomped on crickets like a doofus that night in August just a month prior, she made Jason ask me permission to go steady with her. They both knew that I was interested in her. (That was so incredibly thoughtful of her though, to consider my feelings like that! She was so cool!) I acquiesced and I wished them well. Alas, those crickets that night on the sidewalk died in vain. After all, I'd learned that Lisa was a vegetarian, and that had deflated my interest considerably. So I figured that Jason liked Lisa more than I did, and I figured Lisa must not have been very interested in me after all. And I mean, let's face it. He was older than us, already had a nice-paying job as an engineer, he was handsome, and he played guitar. I couldn't play guitar; I was just a nerd who played video games and read SF novels. Juliet had already chosen a guitar player over me just several months prior, and I figured I wasn't as handsome and charming as Jason. I lacked self-confidence. I didn't want to be jealous; I even wrote at the time that jealousy is a waste of time. But... I was still disappointed. I wrote a letter to my cousin Bethany in September in which I told her that I'd even stopped attending my church singles kinship group so as not to interfere with Lisa's happiness with Jason. Jealousy is easier to manage when you aren't around, right? Like The Beatles sang, "You've got to hide your love away." Then later Lisa must've noticed that I'd stopped coming and was kind enough to invite me back. Such a nice girl!

October 1996. I came home after 9pm from my friend Nathan's place one night. Mom told me that Lisa had called twice, trying to get a hold of me. Lisa had called before she left for school in the evening and again between classes. (I swear, I missed so many calls from Lisa because of Nathan...) Lisa told Mom that she just hadn't talked with me in a long time. Mom told me that even though Lisa was going out with Jason, she thought Lisa was still hoping that she might still have a chance with me. I got into an argument with her. Mom's attitude was that Lisa was going out with someone else because she was tired of waiting for me to be her boyfriend. My low self-esteem wouldn't accept such a thought, and I got angry with Mom. I told her, "Get with it, Mom. Stop expecting every girl who pays attention to me to be in love with me. She's just being nice to me!" There is no way that a girl would ever prefer an awkward dork like me over someone cool and talented like Jason, I thought. She's already made her decision. If given a choice, no girl would prefer a boy like me. Having been pushed away by girls my whole life, the most unfortunate thing a nerd like me in my position could do would be to confuse kindness with interest. I was certain of this. I figured that unless it's a total nerdy girl who reads books about dragons and such, no "cool" girl would settle for someone like me unless she had no better choice. I just wanted Lisa to be happy without me, and I felt she probably wouldn't want a shy, untalented loser like me anyway. I couldn't express myself to anyone except through writing, and I hated myself for that.

I saw Lisa the next night at our church group's volleyball picnic. At first I kind of avoided talking to her, remembering the argument I had with Mom the night before. I sat in my car listening to music to withdraw from everyone and recharge my mental batteries. Lisa came and sat with me in my big car and asked me what music I'd been listening to. I played for her some very early New Order songs I had copied onto cassette for listening in the car: "Procession" and "Mesh," and I pointed out how the bass guitar drives the melody while the electric guitar seems to play an unrelated tune floating atop the bass, a little schizophrenic yet somehow the two complement each other. I asked her if there was something important she wanted to talk about, since she'd called twice the night before. She said that she just wanted to rendezvous at the coffee house Java the Hutt on the corner near where I lived. (I'd gone there before with Lisa and her friend Margaret, as well as my other friends like big Jonathan. Java the Hutt was a sort of go-to hangout place for me at the time, located between my house and GCC.) I was happy that she wanted to sit in my car and talk with me. You see? The self-hatred I felt the night before disappeared, thanks to her. Lisa had that effect on me. Even though she had a boyfriend, she was just so thoughtful and considerate to me and she lifted my spirits. Although I was lonely and had no girlfriend, just to receive the thoughtful kindness from a girl like Lisa was like a magic elixir that revived my soul, or like a white mage casting a healing spell on me in the RPG of my life. Too often my self-loathing was interfering with my ability to enjoy her friendship. I would self-inflict wounds on my heart and she could heal them just through her kindness. I'm sure she didn't even know she had that power over me. She made me happy. I wanted to tell her how much I liked her, but I felt that it wouldn't be fair to her to say that since she had a boyfriend. I had no idea how she felt about me at that time. No idea how I compared to Jason in her eyes. I liked Jason and considered him a friend, so as long as she was happy, I was happy. I'd decided on a zero jealousy policy, after my experience with Juliet and her jealousy of Lisa. Looking back though, it just makes me wonder what Lisa's mom had told my mom a few months prior, that time when Lisa and I were away for the weekend in San Diego. But I saw how infatuated Jason was with her, and I figured he would make her happier than I could. I did not want to interfere, no matter how much Mom prodded me to pursue her. I didn't want to cause trouble for them, and I didn't want to be jealous, either. I was shelving my interest in Lisa, and I was content to be with both her and Jason and just wanted them to be happy together, so that there would be harmony. I had reached a plateau of peace about it, so to speak.

Alright, so let me retroactively analyze the situation up to this point, because this is what was going through my mind back then. Strike 1: Lisa didn't care for science fiction, and in fact when she was with her sisters, it only amplified that disdain for the genre even louder, driving a spike into my hopelessly nerdy heart. Her older sister Tara was especially insulting towards science fiction, calling it a "trash genre" or something like that, and hated science fiction and fantasy because they had no basis in reality and was therefore a complete waste of time. I think Jason or Dan challenged her on the movie The Princess Bride (which is a fantastic movie by the -alleged- pedophile Rob "Meathead" Reiner who is notable for making other movies involving young boys having hands reached into their pants and parks his big ass on Twitter all day and bitches about "MUH DRUMPF", most likely because his name is on Epstein's flight logs to visit his pedo paradise island). Somehow she felt that the movie was exempt. Screeching eels aren't based on reality, toots. Don't be a hypocrite and just admit that it's fun. Strike 2: Any girl who is a vegetarian is basically removing themselves from much of the dating market. Vegetarianism is just not natural. I'm tempted to rank it up there with other eating disorders as anorexia, bulimia, gluttony, and childish dickbrains who refuse to eat vegetables and will only eat crap like potatoes and corn. I was a picky eater when I was a child, but as I grew up, picky eaters began to annoy me. Seriously, that vegetarian revelation really popped my "Lisa balloon." Strike 3: Usually I couldn't get her alone; it always had to involve others. I dunno if this was a defensive thing or a protective policy from her parents, but that sort of bugged me. I mean, Juliet was crazy, but at least I could get her alone sometimes (when her moody sister wasn't tagging along). Granted I didn't try too hard with Lisa and I wasn't going to shun my guy friends for the sake of chasing girls. Lisa was just so active. That's what was cool about Jenny: I didn't actually have to do anything with her. We didn't have to go anywhere in order to have a good time. Either just hanging out at the park, cuddling on my folks' sofa while watching anime, reading a comic book together with my chin on her shoulder, or laying on my bed and blissing out to relaxing music... I just loved being with her. I didn't have to actually do anything with her. I mean, we did go out to do stuff together, like go to the shopping mall and make fun of the stupid advertisements everywhere... but when I was with her, I could just be myself. No false pretenses. I didn't feel ashamed for being a nerd when I was with Jenny, because she was one too. I mean really, why did it seem like girls felt that you had to be doing something together, lest you get bored with them? Like they had to constantly exhibit some sort of female kinetic energy to make you like them. I didn't get that. Lisa was active, and I'd just watch her play tennis with someone. What about just taking it slow, watching the skies, and just enjoying each others' company? (I'm so glad my wife is laid back like this.) Strike 4 (yeah, forget baseball... screw sports---I'm making my own rules here): I couldn't ever really get to know her. We could talk a lot, but I couldn't really quite connect with her. you know? Feeling like I had to pretend to be something I wasn't (ie: NORMAL) drains my Dilithium crystals. So by autumn, I was reverting to my New Year's resolution on not defining my happiness by whether or not I had a pretty girl to spend time with. I was trying to achieve that Zen plateau as best as I could.

That Christmas, my cousins Bethany and Shelby came to stay at our home. Of course, they were family, so I could always relax with them. We could just lay back and enjoy each others' company without having to be doing anything in particular. Those two girls had been my cheerleaders rooting for me with Juliet and they knew of my affection for Lisa, but this time I introduced them to Mayu's pictures, letters, plus the audio cassette she had recorded of her voice for one of her letters. They fell in love with Mayu and Bethany told me that I needed to marry her.

Mayu!

Sunday, March 30th, 1997 was Easter, and Lisa invited me to her family's Easter picnic at Saguaro Ranch Park. I was so happy that she included me with her family! After my family had Easter Sunday lunch, I went to the park and found Lisa and her family. It was a nice, sunny day, and someone in a Chewbacca costume rolled by me on rollerblades. Wild! I wish I had my camera with me. In May, our kinship group went camping together, with a couple of married couples who served as chaperones of sort. I invited Nathan to go with me and we shared a tent. There were two other girls who were sort of flirting with me on that camping trip. I wasn't being entirely responsive, but I did kinda flirt with both of them too. What's the point in a singles group if there's no flirting? They were Kelli and Christy, and they were best friends and roommates. Kelli was cute, and Christy was like supermodel-level body and beauty. She was even sunbathing in a bikini one afternoon, if I remember correctly. I think I patted her on the leg and said something like, "Hey, it's a sexy lady" or something dumb like that. These two girls were receptive. I wonder if the confidence I was gaining from Mayu was making me more attractive to girls? But they were friends and roommates, and if both of them liked me, that spelled disaster. (A month later, I wrote about how I had no idea why a girl like Christy would be interested in someone like me when she could probably have any guy she wanted.) To be honest, I really didn't pay much attention to most girls, but some just had a spark that I could recognize. Lisa was one. But I didn't know where I stood with her, so I don't know if the other girls flirting with me was affecting her. She had broken up with Jason by that point though (I can't remember when... perhaps before Easter). Poor girl. I actually felt badly for her! I really had removed all jealousy from my heart and was hoping the best for their relationship. Out of respect for my friendship with Jason, I had properly removed romantic interest in Lisa from my heart and I had peace about it. I always wanted the best for her and I wished for her happiness, regardless of my role in said happiness, regardless if that meant she was with me or not. I cared for her that much, to put her happiness above my desire to be with her.

However at that time when we got back from our camping trip the Memorial Day weekend in May of '97, I wrote that I had been spending more time together with Lisa since she'd broken up with Jason. I didn't start doing things with Lisa until after they had broken up awhile. I had convinced myself that Lisa only liked me as a friend, but still I was happy to be able to spend time with a girl again. I think it was about this time when we went to that dance performance at GCC with all the cool music from Orbital and Future Sound of London techno music. This was also during that period of a few months in which Mayu had stopped writing me, and I started to give up after I'd sent a few letters with no response. Maybe getting my hopes up over Mayu was just a silly idea after all now that she's no longer writing me, and that I should just focus on trying to win Lisa's heart (or somebody else's) instead, I thought. It wasn't until over a month later in July when Mayu finally wrote me back. I liked Lisa, but I still couldn't get over the red flag vegetarian issue. A lifetime of bickering together over what to eat? I knew it wasn't fair to compare Lisa to Jenny, but that experience really left a bad taste in my mouth (no pun intended). It's difficult to get along with someone you can't eat with when eating together should bring about camaraderie. To me at that time, finding out that a girl I like is a vegetarian is almost as bad as finding out that she's a smoker in terms of compatibility issues. I just foresaw problems with the eating issue and I wasn't sure if we would be a good match.

Me and my dear cousin Bethany, in the high school youth room at the Vineyard church. Isn't she so beautiful? She's nearly exactly three years younger than me, with her birthday on March 3rd and mine on March 8th. Oh, how I love my precious Bethany! She was like a little sister to me, and whenever she came to stay with my family, my friends had a crush on her because she's so beautiful. We'd often stay up late at night talking and listening to music together. She lived in Texas most of the time, and we would write letters to each other. I wished she and her sister could have been with me always as they were immeasurably precious to me. This picture was taken sometime in '97. I love her so much!

Lisa and I did continue to do stuff together that year, in '97. I was always happy to spend time with her. For the fall semester, I was mostly attending ASU West but I had one class at GCC: ACC212 Managerial Accounting. I managed to get a B in that class, but I really hated it. I remember once I had kept asking questions about which certain items go into which columns and my classmates were snickering at me. I shouted at them all to shut up, saying, "Oh ha ha ha, isn't it funny when somebody asks questions because he doesn't understand? Let's all laugh at him!" I think most of them had already taken other accounting classes, but I hadn't and I just needed that one as a prerequisite. The bright side to that class is that I'd see Lisa in the afternoons between her classes as I would sit and talk with my friend Kevin in an open courtyard area of GCC's campus. As she passed by to her next class, she would always stop and talk with me. I think the first time she approached us at the beginning of the semester, I said to Kevin loudly enough for her to hear, "Hey Kevin, check out that pretty girl coming this way. I bet she's going to come over here and talk to me." She heard me, smiled and she came to say hi. Kevin didn't know that I already knew her, so I took the opportunity to simultaneously play a joke on him while flirting with pretty Lisa. In fact, I think I probably said that more than once. "Hey Kevin, here comes that pretty girl again!" Just to flatter dear Lisa and make her happy. To make her feel adored. She was so pretty and I always felt happy every time I saw her. I loved her. Did she love me? I didn't know. I figured that I was nothing more than a friend to her all along. I was happy to just be her friend.

On Saturday, September 13th Lisa and I spent the day together at the art galleries in Scottsdale. She was taking an art appreciation class that I had taken the year before, and it was my recommendation to go to the Scottsdale art galleries since that is what I did for my assignment. I wished that we could have taken that class together. She wanted me to go with her, so she invited me! At one of the galleries we visited, the clerks thought that we were a young married couple, and that made me so happy. To be married to Lisa... how cool would that be? At first, I gave the canned response of "We're just friends" from how I was conditioned from past girls like Jenny. The clerks told us to keep the door open as we don't know the future. I think I looked at pretty Lisa, smiled and said, "Well, maybe someday..." and Lisa didn't get upset like other girls I had known would have. If I recall correctly, as we left that gallery I took her by the hand and we skipped together to the next gallery. I was so happy, and the thought of marrying dear Lisa made me so excited. I wanted to tell her that I loved her. That day we had a long conversation about what the purpose of dating ought to be, and how a morally responsible Christian should behave in a dating relationship. It's what she wanted to talk about, so I think maybe she still did like me. She really impressed me with what she said, and we were on the same page. I felt like asking her, "So you're okay with kissing though, right?" ...But I didn't have the courage to ask. That day I opened up to her and told her I'd never had a girlfriend before, and that I was a virgin. We even prayed together about the subject of love and dating, and that day was the only time I remember holding her hand. We promised each other that we would seek God first in our relationships, and that God would guide us to faithful spouses someday. I prayed with her that whether we got married to each other or anyone else that we God would lead us to happy marriages someday.

It was a wonderful day, but Lisa again avoided eating anything with me. I think she just watched me eat a hamburger. I offered to buy her French fries and she wouldn't even have that. "Oh, I already have something waiting for me to eat when I get home," she said. I invited her to my house because I wanted to continue spending the day with her, but she declined. As much as I enjoyed being with her, there were these small, irritating disappointments like this. Like after church, I'd go to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet David Kwan's across the street from the church with others like Dan and Scott, or the two brothers from Germany. I even went there once with my friend Galen and we treated Juliet and her sister to lunch there. But Lisa always said she couldn't go, saying she wasn't feeling well, etc. I wondered if perhaps she suffered from IBS like I sometimes did. But now I think at this point I was beginning to suspect that there was something beyond her being a vegetarian... some elusive reason she was hiding, and I tried not to think of it because I was scared to find out. What was it? That thought always killed me inside. If I got romantically involved with the arrogant thought that somehow the power of my love for her alone could help change her, that could have been potentially heartbreaking for both of us. Could that have been the reason why she and Jason had broken up? I never asked because it wasn't my business to know.

I enjoyed Lisa's company so much, yet I was still convincing myself that I needed to focus on just being content by myself, to discover the type of person I was, to test myself and not have my happiness hinged upon whether or not I was spending time with girls. I was trying to find myself at that time. Trying to sort out what God's calling for my life was. I thought that if I had pursued Lisa's heart despite my hesitations, that I would have risked both of our hearts and detract from what I was feeling God's purpose was for my life. But that day I wrote about how during those years I knew Lisa, the dreary, desolate, overwhelming sense of loneliness in my life had been gradually lifting away, and a lot of that was thanks to dear Lisa's friendship. Dear God, I wish I had told her this. She'd brought so much healing to my soul. However, that day I also wrote this about Lisa:

I think she is truly a good girl, and is sound of mind. The major thing that turns me off about her is that she is a vegetarian. On top of that, she doesn't like Chinese or Italian food, and she can't stand science fiction. Other than that, she does have marrying potential, but something tells me she's not for me. I think whoever marries her someday will be very blessed and lucky, but somehow I don't feel that I will be him. Our destinies lay on different paths. It's not just about food and science fiction... it goes beyond that. But I wouldn't ever want any girl who frowns on my hobbies. Stuff that I am passionate about... I don't want a girl who just thinks "whatever" and doesn't even bother trying to seem interested. Lisa's such a nice girl, but I don't think we could appreciate each other to the extent to that which we both deserve. I don't know if it is from God or not, but I feel a calling to Japan. And Lisa couldn't care less about the country and she always confuses it with China. To prove a point, I sometimes say something like, "Well, you can't tell the difference because you're from Scotland." And Lisa, being from Ireland, says, "Hey!" I just don't pass it off as a mere coincidence that I, being a Christian and having a sincere interest in Japan and ministry, would like to travel to and live in Japan for a few years. Other people in the kinship group have also shown a "who gives a crap" attitude. I have brought this up for discussion and prayer in the past, and it always gets ignored. Some even tease me about it. I don't know how they would react to Mayu if I ever took her to the group.

So in time I came to realize that I was feeling a calling to Japan which others in our group could neither understand nor care about, and this alienation I felt with my kinship group that I mentioned in this passage continued to grow even more over time (particularly when I first visited Japan the next year). My heart was following a trajectory headed towards Japan, and I could not see how a future with Lisa by my side would have been compatible with this. I was reluctant to admit that, because the idea of marrying dear Lisa always excited me because she was so cool. And that day, the idea of marrying her was on my mind quite a lot---especially after what the gallery clerks had said to us. I always struggled hard to hide my affection for her because I wasn't sure if we were right for each other. Regardless, even though it never got serious between us, she meant so much to me. If I had offered her my love, would she have accepted it? At the time, I was so anxious and shy and was afraid of her rejecting my love because I was such a nerd, thereby ruining my relationship with her, thus making it uncomfortable every time I'd see her thereafter. Looking back though, maybe she would have gladly accepted my love? I'll never know ...

A few days later at our Wednesday night Bible study group, I asked Lisa to join me on an adventure at the Grand Canyon for that upcoming weekend. My dad worked at APS, the power utility company. Every autumn his company did environmental repair work at the Grand Canyon, and we would all drive up in company vans Friday night and sleep on the floor of Grand Canyon's High School's gymnasium in sleeping bags Friday and Saturday nights. Before bedtime though, we could do fun stuff like play volleyball, do rock climbing, etc. in the gym. On Saturday we'd do cleanup work around the perimeter of the Canyon and it was always a nice time. Dad would repair fences and do more skilled work. Two years prior, I even planted two pine trees near the edge of the Grand Canyon! I went every year with Dad. Nathan went with us the previous year. This time, I invited Lisa to go with us. She was very interested in going, but on short notice, her work supervisor would not let her leave work early on a Friday evening. I really wanted her to go with me. I thought maybe at bedtime it would be wonderful if we could find a place away from the snoring of Dad and others, put our sleeping bags down next to each other in a quiet place like a hallway, and just lay next to each other, just the two of us, facing each other, and talk all night until we fell asleep. I thought maybe I might even hold her hand again and pray together with her. After all, we weren't able to do so on our trip to San Diego, right? And also we could go out to the school's sports field at night and watch the stars because on a clear night, you can even see satellites traversing the sky up by the Canyon where there's very little light pollution. I enjoyed stargazing while up there, and the year before I'd seen a group of deer grazing on the field's grass in front of me. I was looking to bond with Lisa in special ways I could not normally do. I was still thinking perhaps we could fall in love together. I still wanted confirmation. Maybe if we really warmed to each other on that trip, spending so much time together, I could have taken her hand to hold under the stars, and told her that I loved her? What then?

It's a shame she couldn't come, because on Saturday after our day of work ended and we had showered afterwards, we volunteers were treated to a free string quartet concert held at an event hall. I know that Lisa would have loved it. The evening sun was starting to set, and the light through the windows lit up the room with an ethereal glow and it looked so pretty. They played a concerto by a modern Lithuanian composer named Vasks. As I was listening to the beautiful concerto, all I could think of is that I really wished that lovely Lisa was sitting next to me to experience this beautiful concert together with me, to look at her bathed in that light and see her brilliant smile. I kept thinking, If only Lisa was here with me... If only Lisa could share this experience with me... If only Lisa was sitting next to me, then I could see her brilliant smile... If only I could thank her for coming with me... If only... As it is, it was a beautiful memory, but to have shared this experience with pretty Lisa would have made this moment even more wonderful. Although at this point in my life, I was realizing that she was probably not going to be the girl I'd marry someday. Nevertheless, I loved being with her, and I really wished that she could have gone with me, to sit with her and share the experience of the string quartet in the pretty light that made the room glow heavenly. It was as though God Himself was embracing us all, and I just wished we could have looked at each other and smiled. I thought that maybe people would again think we were a young couple, and I know that it would have made me feel so happy and ease the loneliness as she was always able to do when she was with me. To feel like I belonged to a pretty girl. I knew that with her Irish accent, people on the trip would be charmed and again I'd feel so proud that she was with me. To feel so lucky to be her friend. Because dear Lisa was so cool, I felt cool to be friends with such a charming girl from Ireland. Perhaps they might think, "Wow, that beautiful girl from Ireland came with Greg? He is so lucky and they look so happy together! They'll make a good couple." And then maybe people would encourage her to love me? Regardless, I'm sure that everyone would have been happy she was there and enjoy talking to her. I invited her because I wanted to know her more, and I figured if I could take her on the trip, I could confirm if I wanted to try to win her heart. I adored being with her and I always cherished her companionship. Since Dad and I took an earlier ride back home first thing Sunday morning, I was able to make it to 3rd service at church, and there I saw Lisa. I excitedly told her about what she had missed. "That's brilliant," I believe she said, as she was always wont to say. "Maybe next year..." But that never happened the next year, as things changed between her and I by autumn of '98, a year later. By then, I had Mayu and I felt obligated to distance myself from dear Lisa.

Later that autumn, Lisa invited me to watch Titanic together, but I declined. I told her and her sisters, "Let me guess the plot of the movie: they have sex and the boat sinks at the end. Right?" (God, I was such a cynical jackass.) I had decided that my life goal was to die without ever watching that movie. (It was a vow I broke a year ago when I finally, reluctantly watched it with my wife. The romance sucked, but the action was good.) Looking back though, I wish I had spent that 3 hours of my life watching it next to Lisa. Nuts. I realize now how hypocritical it was of me to resent Lisa for not appreciating science fiction, but here I wasn't even willing to watch Titanic with her. However I did watch the Bean movie with Lisa and her sisters. After the movie, I mentioned how the movie was a bit disappointing that the movie recycled some of the same gags from the Mr. Bean TV show (like the turkey on the head scene), and how it was a bit painful to see Mr. Bean nearly push his Los Angeles host family to the brink of divorce. Still, I had a fun time with Lisa. I loved the way she talked, and I always felt so special just being with her, like a sense of pride to be seen with her. She always made me feel great! I loved her adorable Irish accent, and her way of speaking. Like at the end of an evening together, she would say, "Listen my dear, I had a brilliant time with you this evening. But I must be going now, so I'll have to bid you a goodnight and I shall see you again." Something like that. She would always address me as "my dear." Was I truly dear to her, as she was to me? Or was this merely an Irish mannerism? Although I have no photos of Lisa, I still remember her beautiful face, voice and accent clearly. The charming way in which her cheekbones became visible when she would crack a smile. The way she'd roll her eyes and say, "Oh, Lordy" when I'd say something silly to her. Her countenance was lovely, and her mannerisms were infectious. Just being at a movie theater or anywhere with her, I felt so proud and lucky to be her friend. I wanted to tell everyone, "I'm with her! This cool girl from Ireland invited me to be with her!" She was my friend! I loved her company, but nothing got serious between us. No Christmas or Valentines exchanged. I don't think I ever did anything for her birthday. Wait---I remember that was the year I learned when her birthday was. November 11th. It was our Wednesday night kinship group, and her birthday was just the day before. I remember where I was standing in the house of our group leaders Mark and Terry, which direction I was facing when I learned her birthday. She is four months older than me. "Happy Birthday, Lisa." I was 21, and she was now 22. If only I had known, I could have given her a card. I remember wishing that I had known! Rats.

Ha! I remember a couple of years before that in '95, I had gone with Big Jonathan and Brian to a birthday party for a guy we knew from high school who'd dropped out. His name was Bill and his birthday was also in November. Bill was a soft-spoken, weird dude. He was a BBSer too, but I forget what his handle was. He was in my computer programming class. We were juniors in high school when he ended up sleeping with some divorcee, and her lousy kids weren't even that much younger than Bill was! I mean, holy crap! How did he even end up in that situation? He dropped out of school to be with this cradle-robber and I guess he eventually got a G.E.D. Frickin' weird as hell, and at the time I didn't even realize that it was technically pedophilia and against the law since he wasn't even 18 at the time. I guess when you are a teenager, you don't think about stuff like that. Bill had his black hair in a mullet with lots of facial hair, and he sort of looked like a cross between a child molester and a Caucasian version of Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo death cult that sarin gas-attacked the Tokyo Subway and killed people earlier that year. I didn't have a sappy birthday card to give Bill and I was too cheap to go buy him one at the crummy Hallmark card shop, so I took a Halloween card my grandma gave me and repurposed it. It was something like this:

The card had ghosts 'n shit on it with stupid, dopey faces that were supposed to be cute but weren't. You know, "lame grandma crap" although looking back, I should have cherished her thoughtfulness more back when she was alive. I dunno if Lisa would have laughed and appreciated something as stupid as a repurposed card like that. I know Bill told me that it was the best birthday card he'd ever received. That's the thing though... Lisa was sort of... normal. She didn't seem to appreciate my bizarre sense of humor as I would've hoped. She probably would have smiled, rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, Lordy," but not laugh. I wanted a girl who could resonate with my sense of humor...

In my journal on December 23rd I wrote about how I was using both Mayu and Lisa as a standard to judge all other girls by. The last time I wrote about spending time with Lisa that year was that we spent the afternoon together just after Christmas on Sunday the 28th, but I neglected to write about what we did that day. So, I cannot recall what we did. I wish I'd written what Lisa and I did that day, but Mom was crying over my sister's poor life decisions that day and that is what I focused my writing on at that time. Lisa had spared me from being overwhelmed by Mom's sorrow, but I have no idea what we did that day, other than take her used textbooks to sell at the secondhand textbook store near GCC. And I think we went to church together for the evening service. That's all I can remember. Crap.

It was now 1998, the year which changed my life. From this point on, I stopped writing about Lisa in my journals during '98 as Mayu was solidly winning my heart. For Valentine's Day in 1998, Mayu and I declared our love for each other. (A full essay on my love story with Mayu will come in a later chapter of Greg's Life.) I did not feel hesitation in my heart for Mayu as I did with Lisa, and our long-distance love had been growing and growing for three years by now. I knew that I would see Mayu finally that year, and I felt more strongly for her than for Lisa... even though Mayu was not Christian. However, I was keeping my promise to seek God first in my relationship with her. I felt my heart being pulled towards Japan, a place Lisa knew nothing about nor had any interest in. The love triangle in my mind was becoming easier to resolve. My thoughts were concentrated on Mayu and not on Lisa, plus I was thinking that Lisa may have only regarded me as just a friend all along anyway. The thought that only a Japanese girl could love a nerd like me crossed my mind often. If Lisa only thought of me as only a friend, then that way I could do it clean, right?

That year, I found out that dear Lisa was not only vegetarian but she was also anorexic, and it broke my heart. I suppose all along she was mostly using the vegetarian part as an excuse to not eat with us when we were together. It all started to make sense to me. All the times she wouldn't eat with me, and perhaps the real reason why she couldn't go to the Grand Canyon with me for a few days... I cannot recall when she was hospitalized, but I believe it was in the first part of '98. I want to say perhaps February. My heart felt so much sorrow for dear Lisa. The thought came to mind of those potential left-handed babies we could have together dying in miscarriage due to this condition and it saddened me. I dodged a bullet, I cynically thought. I should mention that during this phase of my life, I struggled with a peculiar dichotomy of empathy and apathy. The latter was likely a cynical defensive mechanism against the former. She was so withdrawn and something like this I could neither cope with nor feel comfortable discussing with her. Her mental/body image problem is between her and God, and for other girls to encourage and support her. It was not my place to discuss such matters with her. Lisa and I were growing distant in '98 and I don't think we did much of anything just the two of us because of her condition. I mentioned Lisa only once in my journal in '98 in a lament to her eating disorder, about her being treated for her anorexia, while I thought of her during my trip to Japan that summer. I didn't write about Lisa again until '99, and I'll get to that later in this story. I don't recall much about Lisa in '98, other than her anorexia becoming more visible and how it pained me to see Lisa constantly drinking those horrible Gatorade drinks. I hate them even more now, those artificially colored, GMO high fructose corn syrup bombs with electrolytes. I knew she was subsisting on those for calories rather than real food. She was beginning to look weak, she looked sad, and my heart broke for her. Dear Lisa was hospitalized... Oh Jesus, I felt so badly for her. My heart ached for dear Lisa. My precious friend was wasting away. My communication with Lisa nearly disappeared that year and I didn't know what to say.

We went camping again in May for the Memorial Day weekend. One night when we had a bonfire, there was a second bonfire going about 30 meters away and Lisa sat there by herself. She was just eating some cut fruits. She had come along on the camping trip, but she'd been distant, quiet and withdrawn. I came over to talk to her, but she was quiet. She seemed so sad and dejected. God, I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her how much I cared for her, but I couldn't find the courage! "Are you alright, Lisa?" She didn't seem receptive to me, so I just sat next to her for a few moments and said nothing. I was glad to see that she was able to eat something at least, but my heart cried quietly for her with pity. I think she must have felt ashamed of her condition. She'd kept it a secret, and I now realize that others in the group had known about her anorexia before I learned of it, because I was an outsider in the group. Dear Lisa was such a sweet, precious girl, and she was suffering. Oh, my heart broke for her! It hurt me to see dear Lisa like this! My heart ached for her. I wanted to help, but had no idea how. I figured I'd do more harm than good. I had no idea how to handle an eating disorder. I wanted to somehow siphon the sadness from her. I realized that this was the reason why I could not invest my heart in her, because she suffered from that disorder, regardless of how fond as I was for her. Oh God, Lisa was such a wonderful girl and I loved her so much, but somehow all along I'd known that perhaps we weren't really meant to be. I realized that this was God protecting my heart. Perhaps this problem was the reason why it didn't work out between her and Jason. I refrained from giving her my heart, just as Juliet's mom had advised me to do: do not let my heart out fully for a girl unless I knew she was the right one for me.

Then came my adventure in Japan in the summer of '98 in which I traveled to Japan for one month and Mayu became my long-distance girlfriend. I spent my first several days in Tokyo on my trip to Japan, and that weekend I stayed at a guy named Jamie's apartment. He taught English lessons at the Vineyard church in Tokorozawa. I showed him the Snoopy doll I planned to give her when I would see her the next day (Sunday). I'd been advised that Japanese girls liked stuffed dolls, after all. I'd given one to Juliet that I'd won at the prize game catcher at Denny's, but I don't think she appreciated it so much. I don't think Lisa would have gotten excited if I ever gave her a doll. Jamie gave me advice and a warning: he said to be careful with Mayu if I was not totally serious about her. He said that with young Japanese girls, if a boy tells her that he likes her and gives her a plush doll, she'll be expecting an engagement ring eventually. I hadn't realized that, but I knew that I was in love with Mayu. On Sunday morning, I waited for her at the platform at Tokorozawa Station, and I remember when I saw her for the first time. She was like a dream come true. No other girl could compare, because Mayu was a girl I had known for years by that time, whom I knew I loved, but had never met in person. Seeing her there and smiling that bashful smile as she approached me on the platform melted my heart. She made my heart soar like no other girl before. More than dear Lisa, more than lady Juliet. (To be fair though, I had three years of anticipation and excitement culminating to that point.) For our first date that day we went to the Tokorozawa Vineyard church, then the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku in the afternoon. It was a wonderful day. I took her to the Shinjuku bus station and gave her the Snoopy doll, and kissed her on her forehead. She was so happy. I'll always remember how I felt as she smiled at me from the window as her bus took her back home and the Snoopy doll was in her hand, and I waved back to her. I was finally, fully, truly in love.

A couple weeks later, I homestayed with her family. As we sat in her grandparents' Japanese garden in Nagano Prefecture at dusk just before dinnertime, while we were being bitten by mosquitoes, I held Mayu's hand and asked her if she would like to be my girlfriend. She said "yes." Her affection was so transparent and innocent. She accompanied me to Arizona after my 1 month stay in Japan, and we kissed for the first time on the last night in Arizona. We made out for a long time that night. We made out again on the nearly-empty plane as I escorted her to Los Angeles Airport, where we said goodbye. I think I choked a bit when I watched her disappear through the security gate and waved goodbye to me. From there, I flew down to San Diego to spend a week at my friend Nathan's place.

Looking back now while reading the pages of these journals, I know that my announcement about Mayu becoming my girlfriend in the summer of '98 didn't sit well with some in my kinship group. It wasn't taken seriously, and was expected to fail. Lisa would ask me, "So, how is your woman?" I remember feeling a little hurt every time she just called Mayu my "woman," but I think there was hurt in her words. As such, I felt reluctant and guilty to talk to Lisa about Mayu. Like I was doing something wrong to Lisa. I'd had that secret love for Lisa in my heart since that first night I met her, and I felt like I was betraying that love. On one hand, I had Lisa, who always seemed to be a bit distant, yet lovely. I didn't know really where I stood with her, because I never worked up the courage to ask. We had grown apart that year in '98. Then there was Mayu, whose affection for me was very transparent, who told me that she wanted to be with me forever, and of course she aligned with the calling in my heart to live in Japan. My church friends did not react well to my announcement that Mayu was my long-distance girlfriend. Only Kelli was truly positive about that announcement. The rest of them were cold about it. My request for prayer over my situation was ignored. It hurt, and I was fed up with their indifference. I was angry and I withdrew from the group. I stopped attending the singles' kinship on Wednesday nights. I became increasingly antisocial and distanced myself from the group.

Mayu visited again at the end of that year in '98 for New Years, and that was when Dad and I drove to my friend Nathan's place in San Diego. We picked Mayu up at LAX to show her the sights around Hollywood and such. Nathan sat next to Dad in the front seat of the car while Mayu and I were making out in the backseat of the car all day. I had missed my precious little girl so much for several months! She'd dressed too warmly, and due to going through the same day twice with the time difference from the plane ride I could smell her two days' worth of musky, slightly-pungent sweat and pheromones, which absolutely intoxicated me. By the time we got to the famous mission in San Juan Capistrano, I was in a lot of pain and from Nathan I learned what "blue balls" meant. I had a hard time walking. Mayu was innocent and didn't understand the pain I was in. I was also innocent because I'd never heard of that condition before. I was in agony, but I was always a good boy to her and her mother appreciated that I never tried to do anything naughty with her daughter before we were married. After we said goodbye to Nathan a day or two later, we left California and headed to Arizona for New Years. I got to introduce Mayu to some friends at church. I was unable to introduce her to Lisa, but I did introduce her to her sister, Tara. Unfortunately, Mayu had to fly back soon after because of her overly-controlling parents. I flew with her to LAX and saw her off at the airport, sad to see her leave. It was now January 1999.

1999 was quite a loaded year. It was my final stretch of college before I graduated ASU West that December. I knew that it would not be feasible to see my darling Mayu that year, putting a strain on our long-distance relationship. And... it was the year I realized that dear Lisa was in love with me. Herein lies my sadness. For as much as I had secretly loved Lisa since the first night I met her, I was now hoping that she did not love me back, lest I break her heart... in order to do it clean. Oh, Lisa...

Lisa wrote this postcard from Berkeley in February '99 but didn't include a return address. I got her address, email address, plus her phone number in Berkeley from her family. I put this postcard in my treasure box and forgot about it until now. "Love, Lisa." Oh, Lisa... Forgive me. Don't ever doubt that I loved you. You'll always be the second most important girl I've ever known. But by this time, my interest had faded as I now had Mayu as my love. My parents were encouraging me to harden my heart. "Forget about Lisa. You have Mayu now," I was told. I had to bury my love for Lisa, and I hated it because she meant so much to me.

From: Greg
To: Lisa
Subject: Hi Lisa!
Date: 2/22/1999
Hi Lisa!
I hope this is the correct e-mail address. I had written you a month ago, but it was returned to me. Your dad didn't seem too sure when he gave your e-mail address to me, but Aran gave me the correct one a week or so ago. I called your house the Friday before school started to say goodbye before you left, but you had already left for California the Sunday before. I got your post card! Are you adjusting well? I've started my semester also, and I'll only have one more semester after this one until I graduate with my Global Business/Marketing degree.

I'm glad we can now e-mail each other. I find that I'm better with words while writing than when talking. I'm finally over my non-social mode. I'm sure you noticed that for quite a while I didn't have much to do with anybody. But, I'm getting over that now. I'm starting to do things with the group at church more. I really changed last summer on my trip, and I did a lot of thinking. I've mellowed out quite a bit. Dan said he's noticed a change in me. I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit a foreign country for a long time, because I was separated from my daily routine life and it gave me more time to contemplate. Plus, it brought me closer to God, I think. I realized that I had been rather abrasive towards people, and I felt guilty about that when I came back, so I just stayed away from people. I realize that I probably hurt you and some of the others on many occasions, and I'm sorry. I feel badly about that, but I never said anything. I guess I had just developed a cynical attitude towards people as a self-defense mechanism. I can't believe I would have been that mechanical and cliche'd in my behavior. Anyway, I'm sorry about that.

Hey, when is your spring break? Mine is on the week of March 14. Will you be coming back here? If not, I'd like to visit you in San Francisco. I have a few round-trip airline tickets that will expire in April, and I haven't used them yet.

Lisa told me that she was "excited and delighted" to get my email. This was her response:

From: Lisa
To: Greg
Subject: Gregory!!!!
Date: 2/26/99
Greetings Greg,
Lisa here!! (Just to state the obvious) I was rather excited and delighted to get your e-mail the other day... I toyed with the idea of replying right then and there, but then thinking about doing something and doing it are to very different things - in Lisa's world anyway.

For the record, the address was right. I would have had to send you a severe rebuke if it had not!!! I'm happy you got my postcard - I love those cards. They epitomise California - specifically Berkeley - mad as a hatter. All is going well. Contrary to popular belief, I have not been raped, dismembered, nor have to sleep in the bathtub at night (actually we only have showers). I have resisted all temptation to shave my head to join the ranks of the tambourine playing hari-chrisna's (spelling??). No earthquakes have rocked my residential unit of which I live on the seventh floor (my chances of survival being slim to none.) Finally my room-mate is a girl in this a-moral co-ed society. So all in all I count myself among the blessed.

Berkeley (the university) reminds me of what you must felt like in Japan. Most of the students are Asian and for first time in my life I am a minority. All are here because they deserve to be, so I say good on them!!. This school is not for the weak stomached though. It's rather intimidating. It's funny before I came here I wanted to be here so badly - now I'm here I constantly question God wondering "Why am I here? Why did you send me here - I can't do this ! I am not cut out for it! These people are too intelligent." (I enjoy to whine as frequently as possible.) But I wanted to be challenged and now I am! The moral of the story is, don't wish for something too hard - it might come true! I present myself - a living testimony.

It's good you are getting involved with the Christians at the church again - it's very difficult to be a lone ranger Christian. I'm telling this to myself as much as you! But then it's very difficult to be around people too. They are just kind of -- abrasive like sandpaper but then I guess that's what God wants to do - rub off our hard edges, refine and smooth us. People are the perfect way. Please don't apologise - it is most unnecessary. You did not treat me badly - rather it was I who treated you badly. I had basically washed my hands of everyone there for quite a few months especially prior to my hospitalisation and after I came out. I just couldn't face people and compromised the friendship of many precious people - like yourself. So I am the one who needs forgiving. I was so self absorbed with what I was going through I did not have time - or make the time, to think of others. Also I knew I was going away to California so didn't want to get too close to people because you can't miss want you don't have. I was preparing myself emotionally. Coward that I am, I preferred to throw the baby out with the bath-water giving up all relationships rather than taking the risk of having a few great ones. I think that is one of my greatest fear - emotional hurt and basically relationships, as well as being wonderful, hurt. Anyway enough of that. I have much to say on the subject and might never shut once started.

Yes I am coming home for Spring break. My parents actually miss me - fancy that. They want me to come home. I really am touched. They seemed to have temporailry forgotten what a nightmare-child I am. Thank God for parents. But you really must come here sometime - Have you been to San Fran. before or Berkeley? I have never been anywhere like this before. There is never a dull moment - let me tell you that. Anyway I am going to go now but will write again soon.

Take care, my dear. My love to your parents - they are such teriffic people,
Lisa
xoxxoxooox

Oh Jesus, dear Lisa was a hurting soul and dealt with shame and wanting to withdraw to be alone, just like me. She struggled with self-confidence, just like me. She even accused herself of being a coward, just like me. Our personalities had a lot in common, after all. Perhaps this is what had instinctively drawn us together? A thread of bond we shared. Kindred spirits. You can feel in her words that she was a good Christian girl, and had a habit of pushing others away just as I did. And the part about being a "Lone Ranger Christian," that is exactly how I feel now, being so isolated and so far away from any decent churches. And by her own words, she told me I was precious to her, too! She was always so precious to me, as I have already made clear in this heartbroken essay of mine, haven't I? She had been hospitalized for her anorexia in '98. What she said about people being like sandpaper as a way for God to smooth us out was an allegory worded so eloquently. She's left-handed, after all. Speaking in metaphors like that, perhaps she has an INFP personality type like myself? Again, I think we had more in common than I realized at the time. She promised to write again soon, but didn't get around to it. I guess I did not either, because I could not find any other emails sent to her. I told her that I can express myself better through writing than verbally, and with this one exchange of email, my dear Lisa opened her heart to me and exposed her beautiful, hurting soul. How could I not care so much for her? She was so dear to me! Even though Mayu was my girlfriend, this shows you how much I treasured Lisa.

With this one simple exchange of emails, isn't it obvious that dear Lisa was a kindred spirit to me? We shared the same pain, but in different ways. For me, it was IBS that would render me bedridden, cramped up into a fetal position in miserable pain for days, constantly running to the toilet and unable to have any solid food at all. For Lisa, it was anorexia. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Lisa! You were a hurting soul just as I was. And here I was, connecting directly to her beautiful soul in a way I wished I had been able to from the beginning. So it didn't matter if my hobbies were dumb and if I was nerdy. She and I were connected, and that bond remains in my heart to this day. And honestly, I think that if I could have been able to talk to her like this through email from the beginning, in winter of '96, back when Mayu was still just a silly, intangible fantasy in my mind and I also was pursuing Juliet's love... If I would have been able to open my heart to Lisa through writing like this from the beginning, back when we went to school together either through email or GCC's electronic forum... I'm just going to say that it is quite possible that it could have completely changed this whole story. I can't say that my ring would be on her finger today, but... Alas, I cannot say why we never wrote each other again like this... Perhaps we just got so busy with our school work that we lost track of corresponding. I know that is the case for me. I wish I had emailed her every day so she wouldn't have felt lonely in California. I wish I could have been a better friend to her. If I had emailed her more often, I could have permanently cemented our friendship forever... I just know it. Even though I had Mayu as my girlfriend at this point, I wanted to hold onto Lisa's friendship forever. (I am an INFP, after all, and we INFPs want to treasure friendships forever.) Even with the "xoxoxo" at the end of her email, can you believe that I was still convinced that she thought of me only as a friend? While she was away, I missed dear Lisa and certainly felt her absence in our church group. It didn't feel the same without her around. How I missed her! I had a Lisa-shaped void in my life. I never did go visit her during spring break as I mentioned in my email, unfortunately. I thought maybe I could use the plane ticket vouchers for both of us. I could fly to see her for a couple of days, maybe find a youth hostel to stay at, then fly back to Arizona together, and her ticket could take her back to California. I'd only ever been to southern California, so it would have been a fun adventure to enjoy her company in San Francisco. But my parents discouraged me from going, telling me that I had a girlfriend and should not fly to California to visit another girl. I wasn't thinking along these lines, but Mom was convinced that Lisa was in love with me, and was concerned for what might happen. She did have good insight into people's hearts, after all. Mom wanted to protect Mayu, and I had already confessed my love for Lisa to Mom, so she knew how special Lisa was to me. And I believe Mom was also discouraging me from emailing her. I made the mistake in assuming that since Lisa knew I had a girlfriend, that she considered me as just a friend. I assumed that she had the same attitude I had when Jason was her boyfriend for a while. Lisa did come back for Spring Break, at least. Those free airplane tickets went to waste. Crap... I should have at least given them to Lisa. I ended up working extra hours over spring break because the day before my birthday in March, I had rear-ended a woman's van when she braked suddenly while making a left-hand turn. My spring break was spent working rather than having fun with Lisa in San Francisco. Crap.

That semester, I stayed close with Lisa's family. I helped her dad Bill install Windows 98 on his computer in April. I saw Bill often at the student computing center because I worked there, and I would talk with him often there. I spent a lot of time with Lisa's littlest brother, Steve. This pleased Lisa. I corrupted Steve with plenty of science fiction and anime, the stuff Lisa didn't care about. I'd "kidnap" him after church on Sundays and do stuff with him, taking him and his brother to comic book stores, and a store called Pop Culture Classics that sold games, toys, and so many collectibles. In April and May, my friend Nathan and I were discussing via email the difficulty in being "just friends" with girls. I had told him in April that I'd been spending time with Lisa's brothers and doing stuff with her father. Lisa was cool, I was a nerd, and plus I had Mayu as my girlfriend anyways. I figured that we were just friends. So on May 1st I wrote him the following:

There have been very few girls whom I have felt comfortable with being just friends with. Lisa is one of them, but I can't presume that she feels the same way. Mom says that she thinks Lisa still likes me. I don't know...

I thought it was possible that Lisa liked me more than just as a friend, but I was failing to appreciate and respect that properly because I was a coward. In '97 I could sense that she liked me, and it made me happy. I flirted with her, but I was not taking her seriously. I was just enjoying the affection I could sense from her, but I was being selfish and rotten about it. I didn't think it was a big deal at the time, and it's not like I was really wooing her or anything. But in '99, I wasn't sure if she still felt the same way. Oh God, if it wasn't for the calling to Japan I felt in my heart as well as Mayu in my life, Lisa would have been the type of girl I always figured I wanted to marry. She definitely would have been the dream girl to my high school version of myself. She was so cool and pretty, and she wasn't an American girl. I loved her accent. She came from a nice family and her parents liked me.

In June, I took both of Lisa's brothers to go see Star Wars: Episode 1 at the movie theater. Lisa was back from Berkeley for the summer, and her dad Bill dropped some major hints that he wanted me to marry his daughter. I was at their house one evening in June, as her father Bill had invited me to study the Bible together. Lisa was there. He said that he'd invited somebody else, but that person was a no-show. I didn't think of it at the time, but looking back now, I think it could have been a ruse to just invite me over to be with Lisa. Afterwards, Lisa had made a batch of those Pillsbury biscuits you make from opening an exploding can. Peel it open and BOOM! The can explodes in your hands. Mom always made me open them because she was chicken and they scared the crap out of her every time. Unfortunately, I didn't see Lisa eat any and I figured it could have been due to her anorexia, but I had one. I remarked that the biscuits were delicious and that I hadn't had those in a long time. Then Bill said, "She's a good cook and would make a good wife someday." I was taken by surprise that he was so bold. He went on to say that she has an appreciation and a fondness for Japan and its culture.

That was too far, and a bit patronizing. I didn't know if Lisa heard that. She would have been even more embarrassed than I was. It put me in a difficult position, because I am sure he knew that Mayu was my long-distance girlfriend. I felt so happy that Bill thought so highly of me as to want me to marry his lovely daughter, but I felt badly because I was already in a long distance relationship with Mayu. I felt torn. I knew that Lisa would definitely make a good wife someday. I had no doubt about it! ...But maybe not for me, considering the trajectory my life was already on at the time. And the part about her loving Japan was certainly not true. In fact, Lisa couldn't care less about Japan and she'd always get it confused with China. For that matter, Lisa couldn't have cared less about my passions in life, and over time as that became increasingly clear to me, it made it easier for me to lose romantic interest in her. In fact, all three sisters were a bit narrow-minded and opinionated, but at least Lisa didn't make fun of me because she apparently liked me and we were friends.

If I just had some other pen pal other than Mayu who had stopped writing me and if I was never able to visit Japan on vacation... if I had given up on my dream to get a job in Japan, would things have been different between Lisa and I? This is the conundrum. She deserved to be more than just a back-up plan, and I did not want to treat her the way that Juliet treated me. I was close with her and her family, and I figured if I did marry Lisa, I would've been welcomed into her family. But I also was afraid that I would probably have irritated her with my nerdiness and the whole food issue was a potential problem. And given my experience with Jenny, that was a red flag. At least Lisa wasn't vegan; she just didn't care for the taste of meat. Food is what should bind people together; it shouldn't divide us. All this time later, I find myself more concerned about her feelings now than I did at the time, and I feel badly about this. Looking back, I realize that I must have disappointed her too. Oh Lisa...

That night was Sunday, June 6th, 1999. I had been put into an unfortunate position. I wrote this in my journal that night:

Mom and Dad said that it seems like Bill has had his eye on me as a potential suitor for Lisa. I was blind to it until tonight. Bill knows I want to teach in Japan. He even expressed the desire to do so himself. But I know Lisa wouldn't be happy being a part of that part of my life. I really like Lisa. What Bill said was right; she will make a good wife. But our futures seem to lie on different paths. We're too different and we have different tastes in things.

If the events of that night had transpired exactly three years prior in June of '96 when Lisa and I seemed to be hitting it off so well at that time, hearing Bill allude to me marrying dear Lisa would have made my heart soar into orbit with joy. I would have taken a hold of her hand and smiled at her... and maybe make another comment about us someday having left-handed children together. But it was three years too late. Instead, that night I suffered from a bit of emotional whiplash... I thought that I had buried my love for Lisa without anyone knowing about it, but it was like that love had been discovered and it's why Bill said such things to me. Lisa's older sister Tara had even met Mayu at the New Year's party, and I was certain that she'd told her whole family about Mayu, including Lisa and Bill. I am sure he didn't mean any harm. He just saw me as the type of highly-moralled boy who would make a good husband for his lovely daughter and provide a lifetime of love for her. But I felt torn. I felt ashamed for loving Mayu instead of dear Lisa. I felt that I had betrayed Lisa, because I had quietly loved her and I held that special place in my heart for her. I had been comfortable with just being friends with her, as I had said to Nathan a month prior. But from that point on, I no longer felt comfortable being her friend. I felt like I had done something bad to her, and I felt guilty.

I remember once that summer when I was with her brother Steve in my car, he asked me how I felt about his sister. I think he was hoping I would marry her, too. Maybe Lisa put him up to asking me that question? I think I said something like, "I like your sister very much, but I can only consider her as a friend. Our destinies lie on different paths." I can't remember if I started crying in front of him or if it was afterwards; all I remember is driving home with tears in my eyes, making the road difficult to see. Am I making a mistake? I asked myself. Is Lisa the true one I should have chosen to love, and am I making a mistake to not pursue marrying her and to be welcomed into such a nice family? I had once looked at her parents as potential in-laws. I was having doubts... Again, it was my lack of confidence. I knew I loved Mayu, and I'll just have to cover this in another essay. But my mind was heavy with thoughts. Was I walking away from something potentially wonderful? Because I loved Lisa, I did not pursue her heart. I knew I did not have the courage and confidence to overcome her eating disorder which broke my heart inside. I didn't want to make her worse. Does that make sense? To love a girl enough to not pursue her? Thinking that I could get involved with someone with the expectation of changing her would make me no better than Juliet with the way she chose that wimpy, sleepy guitarist over me. I didn't want to hurt any girl's feelings, but I am sure I was in the process of doing so anyway. Perhaps all along Lisa thought I was nonchalant and disinterested in her, but inside my heart that was not true at all. Lisa did not know of the conflict I had inside me. I was so torn. Oh God, I was so torn! This heartbreaking love triangle of mine...

Because I loved Lisa, I didn't want her to love me back, because if she did, then it meant that I would break her heart. For too long, I was convinced that I was a pathetic loser, unworthy of love. Like I'd written to my cousin Bethany three years prior, the idea of any girl loving me was alien to me! But here I was, caught between two beautiful, exotic girls with black hair. How could this be possible? I'm just a nerd, I thought. I never thought I would have to bury my love for a girl like this. Not for a girl who never did me wrong. Denise, Jenny, and Juliet had all hurt me and pushed me away, but here I had finally found a decent, truly special girl... and yet I was walking away. In her email, Lisa told me I was precious to her, but I never told dear Lisa how precious she was to me. Oh Lisa... When I had come back from my trip to Japan in '98, I felt guilty to tell Lisa that I had a girlfriend. I felt torn because of the affection I'd had for Lisa during the years I'd known her. We were growing distant. The pains of being young and in love, being caught between two very special, beautiful, kind, lovely girls... Oh Lisa, forgive me...

Shame. Guilt. Regret. Shame. Guilt. Regret. I couldn't do it clean. I felt ashamed of my intense love for Mayu around Lisa because I had also loved Lisa all along, and now I felt that I was betraying that love I'd felt for dear Lisa and I realized that I was hurting her. I felt guilty for having that Lisa-shaped hole in my heart while loving Mayu. And I regretted taking Lisa's affections for granted, and not being mindful of how she felt about me. Mom was right. My wonderful friendship with a beautiful girl was now essentially disintegrating. Mom was right. Even after I had gotten so angry at her, telling her to shut up and that she didn't know what she was talking about... Mom was right. I was faced with the reality that I was hurting Lisa. For too long, I refused to believe that there was any special place in her heart for me. For years, I was always happy to see Lisa in my church group. And when she wasn't there, I noticed her absence and missed her. I had loved her from the first night I met her, and now I felt horrible. Like I said, Lisa deserved to be more than a back-up plan, more than a second choice. And when I thought that I was comfortable with "just being friends" with Lisa, I realized that I meant more to her than I thought I did while she wasn't even my second choice. I felt like an asshole.

For far too long, I'd regarded myself as a pathetic loser. After all, that's what I was always called growing up. Loser. Nerd. Creep. Weirdo. Freak. Dork. Faggot. Ugly. "Go away," I was so often told by girls. I'm serious about what I mentioned earlier, about possibly having Tourette's. I had tics, but I guess not when I was at home, where I was comfortable. Tics. Head jerks. Facial contortions. I was called "ugly" because I would twist my face and I wasn't even aware that I was doing. "Do that with your face again! You're ugly!"---I'd heard that said to me in the 5th grade. I didn't even know what they were talking about. I wasn't cognizant of my own facial contortions. I'd babble nonsense to myself as a kid in the 7th and 8th grade, inventing new nonsense words and phrases, repeating them constantly, earning me a reputation of being a weirdo. And I'd pivot around corners rather than just turning corners, like a twirl, and was accused of being gay for that. If all that isn't Tourette's, then I don't know what is. I had no concept of this as a kid, as I thought that Tourette's entailed blurting out filthy language. Still, I do sometimes say stuff that I shouldn't. I know Dan would get upset if I made some joke or reference to sex or something, but Lisa told me not to mind him, saying that's just the way he is. Lisa understood my heart.

This why the song "Creep" by Radiohead my senior year of high school resonated with my emotions so much. Wanting to feel special to a girl, wanting my absence noticed when I am not around, feeling dejected and unloved, with the song ending with the line, "I don't belong here." That was me. That was how I felt. Yet Lisa always made me feel like I belonged. I remember a girl at school say that she hated that song on the radio because it was so sad, but I felt like that song was written for me. I would sometimes sing its chorus proudly in high school with my friend Oggie, who was a fellow BBSer from the Cave Creek Park GTs, and a friend of Jenny's as well as Denise's. (I actually introduced Oggie to Lisa at GCC, when the Fall semester of '97 began.) For years I had convinced myself that not a single girl could ever love me and that I should just resign myself to my fate of being alone. Yet here I was, caught in a love triangle with two beautiful foreign girls with black hair, and not only could I only choose one of them, but I was disappointing the other. I felt terrible. I didn't want this to happen. I had secretly loved dear Lisa that whole time, and now I felt so badly to think that Lisa loved me too, and that I was breaking her heart. I felt like a villain. I felt like I could no longer be Lisa's friend anymore, and that I didn't deserve to be her friend either. I honestly have no other memory of dear Lisa that summer. No memory of whether or not she returned to Berkeley, either. I felt like I'd betrayed her and I felt so sad.

Incidentally, later that year around November of '99 it was Lisa's older sister Tara who convinced me to just go ahead and propose to Mayu after I graduated college. I had said that I wanted to live in Japan for a while and spend more time with Mayu before I proposed. Tara asked me if there was any reason not to propose to her, and I said no. Mayu had accepted Christ on her own by then, and I knew that I loved her. She told me to just do it then. Tara was always a strong-willed gal. Sometimes she was bossy, sometimes we would argue, sometimes she would make fun of me and annoy me. I remember once she put this weird-ass poster of two horses copulating and I asked her why the hell she had put that on the wall. "What's this fascination with equestrian intercourse of yours?" Frickin' WEIRD. Of course I gave her shit for that crap. It was only fair, because she would make fun of me for being a nerd. She drove me nuts most of the time. But I admired her strong will and bluntness, and she was rather jovial and made me laugh. I thought highly of her. I always got a kick out of how she'd say, "Shag off, you bleedin' gobshite!" and "Lordy, child!" with her Irish accent. That killed me every time! But the way she put it, she knocked my confidence up, I quit being wishy-washy, and I decided to fly to Japan to propose in January 2000 after I graduated.

I graduated from ASU West in December 1999 and flew to Japan a month later and proposed. Mayu said yes. I began the year 2000 with a fiancee. But before then, there was actually a Taiwanese girl I met at the youth hostel in Tokyo named Cathy with whom I spent a day sightseeing together, who I am pretty sure also liked me. She was a pleasant Christian girl who loved Japan too. Dammit, I should have told her that I was in Japan to propose to my girlfriend, but I was also bracing myself for my wedding proposal to be rejected. Again, it was that lack of self-confidence. At least a month later I did tell Cathy in an email that my purpose for being in Japan was to propose to my girlfriend.

In 2000 my heart broke tremendously for dear Lisa. Suddenly, out of the blue, Lisa was dating some other dude who drove too fast in his import car. Crazy fast. He had a police radar detector in the car, and he drove like an asshole. I didn't want to be judgmental and I wanted her to be happy. As with Jason, I wanted her to be happy regardless of my role in that happiness, especially since by then Mayu was my fiancee. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but I had to remind myself that I now had a fiancee far away, waiting for me. "I'm happy for you, Lisa." I felt a bit relieved, thinking that we were both now on equal grounds, and that we could both be happy without each other. In a way, I was hoping for the best for her. If this guy, despite his crummy outward countenance, was a genuine soul who would love dear Lisa and treat her well, and if she was happy with him, then it would make it easier for me to let go of my love for her. Let him take responsibility for loving her. That way, Lisa and I would be equal at last and this love triangle in my heart would be resolved. Right?

Wrong. Mr. Speed Racer didn't last long, and he turned out to be disturbed and there was an incident with the police in which he held her hostage or something. I can't remember clearly. Lisa had made a bad decision. Where did she find that guy, and what did she see in him? I didn't mention Lisa's relationship with this guy in my journal, so I can't be sure when this was. I suppose I did not write about this in my journal because I felt so guilty. Looking back, Maybe because Lisa had lost me to Mayu, I disappointed her. So she decided to pursue a bad boy, who was the opposite of me. A guy with confidence, which was what I lacked. Was this my fault? Lisa, what were you thinking? Lisa had forgotten her promise to me, that she would seek God first in her dating relationships. But she did take him to our group's weekly Bible study a few times and I remember a group of us went mini golfing together in Scottsdale. He seemed fun, and he made me laugh a few times. I mean, he seemed nice at least, but he seemed to be an odd choice for her, going from clean-cut Jason, to me, and then to this guy (whatever his name was). At this point, I felt like I no longer knew her. Mayu had solidly won my heart, and unfortunately Lisa was becoming a stranger to me.

I felt like I was responsible for this bad situation, like I had done this to her, since I had forfeited my love for her in favor of Mayu. Lisa suffered from anorexia, which meant that like myself she too was a hurting soul who also dealt with self-worth problems just as I did, but in a way which affects girls nearly exclusively. If Lisa had loved me merely a fraction of the love I'd had for her, then she must have been at least disappointed in losing me to Mayu. Knowing that she had lost her chance with me, combined with her possibly subconsciously thinking that she did not deserve any better than Jason or I, perhaps this compelled her to forget that promise she made to me to place God first in her relationships. Compounding this, I realize that there was unintended pressure being placed on her. Kelli had gotten married in '99, Jason had gotten married in January 2000 while I was in Japan, I now had a fiancee, and Dan was engaged to a girl named Sarah in the group too. We were the original core group from the inception of the 18-29 singles' kinship group, and one by one we were either getting married or engaged. Perhaps this was giving poor Lisa psychological pressure as she was seeing her friends heading into marriage and she was acting irrationally. I now realize how obvious it is that since she did not have inner peace, she was erroneously looking for romance to fill that void; placing the expectation on others to provide her with that peace. Her anorexia was probably driving her to make such bad decisions, and I was no longer available to her. Oh God, I never wanted to hurt dear Lisa's feelings! I loved her too much to ever want that to happen. But maybe I did hurt her because I had flirted with her for years, and she had been waiting for me to act on that love I kept hinting at.

Thinking back to beautiful Christy in '97, as out-of-my-league as she seemed to be to me, I know that she'd gotten pissed off at her ex-boyfriend, Mark. Kelli and I had double dated with Christy and Mark at the Arizona State Fair when I nearly puked on the rides in the fall of '96 (back when Lisa was going out with Jason). Mark used to come to the group, and he didn't impress me. I couldn't understand what Christy saw in me in '97 when she began complimenting me a lot and showing an interest in me, but maybe she was interested in me because I was shy and eccentric. Christy told me a few times that she was amused by the peculiar way in which I talked, the way I oddly phrased things in ways that surprised her. My unconventional perspective on life. I remember when the group of us had gone out for lunch after church at the legendary restaurant Ed Debevic's, the retro '50s-style restaurant where the wait staff would dance on the tables and put on a performance. We were eating burgers and fries, and some guy in our group mentioned that he was trying to lose weight. I chimed in with a narration, "...he said, as he put another French fry into his head." Christy was sitting across from me and at the time I thought maybe she would be bored sitting across from me, but looking back I realize now that maybe she wanted to sit across from me. She laughed and told me that she'd never heard anyone describe things the way I did, the observations I'd make, and that I had a way with words. She was looking for someone more thoughtful, contemplative and considerate. In other words, a boy unlike her ex-boyfriend Mark. That's probably what she saw in me, and possibly Lisa saw that in me too. Yet I did not show an interest in Christy because my heart was secretly pointed at Lisa (and Mayu).

If I had only told dear Lisa how invaluable she was to me... how highly I regarded her... how I had placed her on a pillar in my mind and used her as a standard for other girls to live up to... of what a positive impact she had on me... I think Lisa just did not know what an incredibly wonderful girl she was and how much I adored her, so much so that I am here today with tears in my eyes, writing over two decades later of how special she was to me back then. She didn't know that she deserved much better than this. I had wanted to give her my heart, but our lives were just heading in different directions. She just needed to love herself more. To reach that inner peace on her own and overcome her toxic anorexia. That inner peace Lisa had unwittingly helped guide me to. Perhaps I regarded her more highly than she regarded herself. At this time, I was finally coming to the realization that I had no reason to hate myself as long as God loved me. She just needed to accept this for herself. If I was a better person back then, I could have helped her realize this.

What I wished I had done that night back in June of '99 when her dad hinted that he'd like me to marry her, I should have asked her to step outside with me, sit in my big-ass car with me and have a talk. To tell her that even though I was giving my heart to Mayu, I still valued her so greatly and I should have made her promise me to be my friend forever, and to find a good boy to love. One who would treat her even better than I treated her. A boy who would give her his heart, love and affection, to treat her like the best girl that she was. To tell her what a wonderful girl she was, and how she deserved the best. A boy better than Jason and me put together. Because she was the best girl in Arizona I ever knew. She only needed to believe that for herself. To know in her heart how incredible a girl she is, and to never let that go. I believe this alone could have healed her anorexia. To know that Christ did not die on the cross for her to hate herself to the point of not eating, because if he loved her enough to die for her, there was no reason for her to hate herself. Because God loved her so much, and because I loved her, too. Because a girl as beautiful, kind, and special as Lisa should never harbor such darkness in her heart. If only I had told her. To uplift and edify her. To bless her. To heal her soul. To be a light to her, as she had been to me. To tell her how truly special she was. Because she was so precious to me, and she meant so much to me...

Although I didn't write it in my journal, I remember when Lisa told our kinship group about what had transpired with Mr. Speed Racer. I was sitting next to my friend Lee and I was just in shock. She looked like she was in shock too. Dear Lisa was quiet and she looked so expressionless. This is where I think I truly failed her as a friend. Maybe she sought this guy out because I was no longer available. If only I had comforted her... If only I had encouraged her... If only I could have reminded her of the promise we made to each other... Then maybe I could have helped save her from the pain in her life that came later. Instead, I said nothing. I didn't talk to her. I'd let her become like a stranger to me. I felt apathetic and I deeply regret this. She went from being a girl I had been secretly in love with to essentially become a stranger, allowing our friendship to disintegrate. There was a time when I wanted to be her boy to love and shower her with my affection, and I would never have mistreated her. But after I chose Mayu, I saw Lisa deteriorate. Dear Lisa, I should have been a better friend to you. I should not have turned cold and distant towards you. I wish I had remained in good contact with you, to encourage you. I'm sorry. From beginning to end, this whole Mr. Speed Racer episode of our lives came as such a surprise to me and shocked me into silence.

Or... Did I take my glasses off, walk over to her, bury my face in her lap and put my arms around her waist? I seem to barely remember that evening. Maybe I did? As over two decades have passed since, dreams blur with reality. It sounds like something I would have done. Heck, I do this to my wife nearly every evening after dinner, to show her that I love her. Maybe I first did this with Lisa? I seem to remember hearing her voice above my head say, "Hey now, its alright." I seem to remember Dan getting upset by me doing this, as though I was doing something inappropriate, but I couldn't care less. (Dan was a highly-consciencious guy and dare I say it, a bit uptight at times and it sounds like something he would get upset over. He was always upset whenever I spoke innuendo around Lisa, but she never seemed to mind.) Or maybe I think it was our group leader Mark instead. And I seem to remember Lisa's older sister Tara telling me to stop it and let go of her. But I didn't want to let go of dear Lisa! I wanted her to know that I cared. I wanted her to know that my heart ached for her. I wanted her to know how precious she was to me. And I wanted to apologize to Lisa for not loving her, as stupid as that sounds, but I said nothing. I fought hard to not soak her pants with tears. I felt guilty for choosing to love Mayu over her, for I withheld my love which could have rescued her from this situation. But I am not her savior. I could only choose one girl to love, and I had already relinquished my love for dear Lisa long before this. Plus it was her poor choice that led her to this situation involving a gun and a police standoff. Lisa could have found a good boy like me to love; not a dangerous, disturbed, and suicidal guy like that. But did I put my face in her lap? I barely remember doing this. As hard as I have meditated on this, I cannot unlock this memory clearly. Was it a dream, buried for two decades so deep that I can no longer differentiate it from reality? But somehow I think this did happen, and that as I held her and people told me to step away because I was making a scene in front of everybody, I just didn't want to let go of dear Lisa. I wanted to just absorb all of her hurt and pain like a sponge and take it all away from her. She was always so dear to me. I cannot retrieve this memory well, but my face was in dear Lisa's lap. I heard Lisa's voice above me. Tara was sitting next to Lisa, so I heard her voice to my right. Dan and Mark were across the room, to my left. I'm almost certain about this, the more I think of it. My life seemed to be in fast forward that year. The months of 2000 before I moved to Japan passed by in a blur. And then once I moved to Japan, my life changed so drastically and I remember the second half of 2000 rather well. I wish I had written this down in my journal, because I had cherished dear Lisa since the first night I met her. Her life only got worse after this, as I will mention later. Dear Lisa...

It reminds me of a poem I wrote in my first journal I kept in high school, which was probably the shortest poem I ever wrote:

Starting about that time, I started attending my parents' kinship group instead. Maybe a part of it was sadness for Lisa, and just seeing her made me feel guilty. The feeling of being responsible for her grief because I did not give her my heart. Mom and Dad were encouraging me to distance myself from dear Lisa. I'd told them about what happened to her, and I think they could tell that I had that indescribable connection to her. They were afraid my feelings for her would interrupt my relationship with Mayu. I'm not that weak-minded at all, but I appreciate that they were trying to protect Mayu.

As it is, I can't definitively remember the last time I ever saw Lisa. I do have a memory I would place somewhere in that summer of 2000, close to my departure. I was with Lisa's brothers and sisters one evening, and we were sitting on lawn chairs around a swimming pool. It was their chance to see me one last time before I left. The older brother Sky kept using the word "ass" for some reason, so I chided him a bit for that. We didn't go swimming, but just sat and talked. I think that was the time that Tara introduced me to Lenny's Burgers, a local Arizona burger chain. Oh my gosh, their teriyaki mushroom Swiss burger was divine. I remember the conversation being about my imminent departure. It was a wonderful evening. But I was disappointed that Lisa was not there, and I remember that I longed to see her. I was so afraid I would not see dear Lisa again! In fact, I remember that ache in my heart more than seeing her. I think she must have arrived later. Perhaps that was the time I said goodbye to Lisa and her family properly before I moved to Japan.

And this next part is exemplary of why I hated myself so much. If memory serves me correctly, as I was about to leave, Lisa asked me to send them postcards from Japan. That sort of set something off in my mind, and I believe I made a flippant comment. Something like, "Since you have never been interested in Japan, I wouldn't want to bore you with postcards from there." I believe I did say such a lousy, crummy thing like that! At least Juliet had an interest in Asian things, and it's why I had bought her those Chinese gifts. Lisa though... If she had that same sort of interest back when I didn't think I'd ever even meet Mayu let alone marry her, Lisa may have won my heart in the end for all I know. I had a flash of memory of the resentment I'd had towards my church group all along and how indifferent they were about what my passions were and how I was made to feel embarrassed of them, because they were so abnormal. How much I wanted to share so much of myself with Lisa and the others, but I always refrained lest I'd be made fun of for it. It just ticked me off how when I first went to Japan and nobody seemed to care, so why would I send postcards after I moved there that summer? If Lisa hadn't been indifferent all along, then I would not have hesitated to open up to her and gotten closer to her, and perhaps the story of Lisa and I would have played out much differently. For a flash of a moment, I was filled with that resentment, and I thought about Lisa and the love that could have been. Suddenly 3 1/2 years of fondness I'd had for Lisa seemed to have been all for naught, and in that split second I felt frustrated and depressed because she was a girl I had loved and I didn't ever want to say goodbye to, but at least I didn't say anything worse. But there I go again, pushing others away. Oh God, I hate it! Why did I push others away like that? I'm so ashamed of myself. I can only imagine that I hurt dear Lisa's feelings more times than I can even remember. I hate how I kept hurting her feelings. Dear Lisa, I'm sorry...

Like I said though, it was just for a split second. I wanted to stay in touch with Steve, but I don't think he had email then. I miss them. Lisa's family was like my second family during those college years. I never really could figure out Lisa's younger sister Aran and I never really talked with her much, but I loved Lisa's family. I hope I hugged dear Lisa goodbye one final time that night. I really do not remember. Lisa was so beautiful and kind. I wished I had just thanked her for helping me so much, for helping me through the dark cloud of loneliness that plagued my mind for far too long, and for being the best girl I ever knew, next to Mayu. I wish that we could have promised to remain friends forever. I'll always carry fond memories of Lisa in my heart. Always. That first night I met her, I was afraid she wouldn't want to talk to me. But as time went on, she became a good friend and an invaluable part of my life. I am so proud and blessed to have been her friend.

Lisa, the white mage of my college years.

I never saw dear Lisa again. Pretty Lisa, my white mage who would heal my heart's HP and raise my spirit's MP with her kindness. :( It makes me sad, because I wanted to remain her friend forever, even though I was about to get married to Mayu. I took her for granted, and I did not hold onto her friendship as I now wish I had. Lisa and her whole family meant so much to me. Regrettably, I let lovely Lisa just become a nostalgic memory. Contact information was lost. After I moved to Japan that summer, my life changed so completely. It was like whiplash for my soul, but in an exciting way. I was living in a country where I could not speak the language well, and on top of that the people of Himeji spoke a Kansai dialect that is not taught in books. I was so enamored with Mayu and every single day felt like an adventure. I was so excited with my new life that I lost track of Lisa, but also the thought that I had broken Lisa's heart made me feel guilty. Ultimately, I gained a marriage and lost a friend. The very nature of this will come in a later essay. I lost all contact with Lisa and her family. Lisa was my precious friend, and I miss her. I'll never forget her.

Beyond what I had written down in my journals, the rest are fleeting memories. I had received a big send-off party from the crew of the student campus computing center Technopolis at ASU West. I'll write about that sometime too, I guess. But life was such a whirlwind that I was not committing time to write it all down in my journals. That summer was a bit hectic, and I spent 2 weeks in San Diego at Nathan's condo a short time before I moved to Japan. That girl Cathy from Taiwan had become a student at UCSD and I met up with her there. I took the Amtrak up to LA, spent the night at her apartment on her sofa as a gentleman should and I tried introducing her to Nathan as he had driven up to meet us the next day. I think Cathy liked me more though. After I started living in Japan, in December she contacted me and wanted to meet me in Japan, but I told her that I was engaged, was incidentally heading to America to buy a wedding dress with my fiancee that month, and that was the last time I heard from her. I wonder if I hurt her feelings, too. Crap. Well, at the very least, maybe I disappointed her. I didn't ever really correspond with her very deeply, though.

And this is coming from my sister, so I cannot say for sure because my mom passed away in 2012. But according to my sister, Mom told her that some months after I'd moved to Japan, she saw a girl I'd been friends with at church and this girl asked Mom if I was still in Japan. When Mom said yes, this girl's face quietly showed disappointment. Whoever she was, Mom could tell that she missed me. My sister had never met Lisa before, but she believes she remembers that this girl Mom spoke of was Lisa. This is just another question I would like to ask Mom, but she's passed away, taking so much knowledge and experiences with her. I miss you, Mom. Rest in peace.

While searching through my old sent folder for my emails, I did find one email that I sent to Lisa, Tara, Dan, Jason, and several other friends and pastors from the Vineyard, telling everyone about my marriage to Mayu and our honeymoon in the mountain cabin plagued with stinkbugs. Dated April 18th, 2001. I'd totally forgotten about that. I guess that was the last time I ever wrote to her back then. It was an old Juno.com email account, so I have no idea if Lisa ever read the email as I received no reply. I'd lost Lisa as a friend.

(｡•́︿•̀｡)

When Mayu and I moved to Arizona in 2002 and began attending the Vineyard together, I looked for Lisa at the church, but she was not there. Nobody from her family were there anymore, and I'd lost contact with them. Kelli and her husband Ivan were there though, so that was nice to see them. I'd grown up with Ivan since his parents and mine were friends, and we often went camping together as kids in the '80s. Kelli had married a very good boy. But how about Lisa, I wondered?

My dear pet fish Steve I had in college. I named him after Lisa's little brother, then later named my website after this fish. I just thought that "Steve" would be a weird, ironic name for a pet fish, kind of like the Monty Python skit about Eric the fish. That Siamese betta fish was a source of peace and tranquility for me, soothing my troubled soul. And when he died, I named my next betta fish Steve as well. And the one after that. And...

Here is my tranquil room I had in my parents' old house. Dad would come into my room to spend time with me, and would often comment on how peaceful my room was. You'll see my red Japanese paper lantern with the character 福 ("blessing"), my neon blue telephone, and my old 486 computer I used to log into BBSes (with an old '80s ZOIDS toy on top of the monitor). Under my TV you'll see my stack of journals, my stack of letters from my pen pal Mayu, my VCR, and my Super Nintendo. Steve's 2 gallon aquarium was on top of the computer hutch, directly above the computer monitor. That was such a wonderful room I had. (Click the image for a larger view.)

Looking back
On April 2nd, 1996 I wrote this in my journal:

I feel an overwhelming sense of peace right now. Listening to my beautiful piano music, watching my beautiful fish Steve swim around in his meditative tank, absorbed with the warm red glow of my Japanese lantern and the cool blue glow of my neon telephone. I look around my room and at myself, and I enjoy who I am. I respect myself. I feel at peace. I feel confident and secure of my future. Right now I am not worried at all about the trivial things of my current life. I feel really good.

Ironically, that was just two days before Juliet dropped that bomb on me as we sat on the swings in the park late that night on Bethany Home Road, which really set me back. But at that time, my journey towards self-acceptance was underway. On September 10th, 1996, I wrote this in my journal:

Today was a beautiful, rainy day. I feel so good about myself. Reading a book at the library on a rainy day is such a wonderful experience. Looking back over the past year or two, it seems like I am learning to enjoy myself more and more. My self-esteem is growing, and I'm improving my self-image. And my close friends turn to me for advice. That makes me feel good. Girls are not a top priority in my life. I've gone back to my New Year's resolution about not caring about whether or not I have a girlfriend. Lisa is going out with Jason. Which is perfectly okay with me; he likes her much more than I do --he always has-- and that's what Lisa deserves.

I truly did want the best for Lisa's happiness. I really wanted them to be happy together. If Lisa's happiness was a mathematical equation, then I was willing to erase myself as a variable from said equation to ensure that it would be solved perfectly. A few days later on September 15th, I wrote the following:

My life really has improved these past two years. I made a decision to change my life for the better by taking control of it. I've been taking positive steps instead of driving myself insane with self-pity.

Those college years... It was a time in which I found myself. Due to meditating on who I was and who I wanted to be, and learning to love myself for who I was, I stopped hating myself and instead focused on cultivating myself. It was a time when I learned to appreciate myself for what made me unique, and to not feel ashamed of it. It was a time when I began building this website, and it was a time when I found solace in watching my beautiful pet Siamese betta fish Steve swim elegantly in his aquarium. Maybe the things I liked were not popular, but they added to my character and made me who I was. Maybe people couldn't understand me or relate to me, but I stopped hating myself for it. It was through the grace of God how I found this solace, to learn how to love myself. To realize more of my potential and the direction I was heading in my life. And it was when I learned to become responsible for my own happiness, and not to allow my happiness to depend on whether or not I had a girlfriend. That said, Lisa provided female friendship that helped me put my loneliness in proper perspective. I'm certain that Lisa has no idea how much she helped me to arrive at that point in life. She soothed my lonely heart. I just feel guilty that I gained so much from her and did not repay the debt. Looking back, I regret losing contact with Lisa and her family.

I never did cut my lip on Lisa's ear with all the multiple piercings. I never even kissed her, so what could I have done differently to bring more peace to that crossroads in life? After Juliet broke my heart, I swore that I would never break a girl's heart like she broke mine. I wanted to refrain from gushing too much love and wearing my heart on my sleeve. And I wanted a clean life with not hurting anyone like that. Maybe I am giving myself too much credit, and maybe Lisa didn't care for me as much as I suspect that she did. Maybe Mom was full of crap and I was right all along? Maybe she thought of me as no more than a friend. Looking at the situation today, it's complicated. Like I said, I wanted to do it clean. Did I break her heart? For sure she was a love interest of mine, but at the time I was never quite sure how she felt about me, until after Mayu became my girlfriend. Perhaps if I had not taken the scenic route to her heart from the beginning, things could have played out differently. Lisa enjoyed my company for sure and she even invited me to her Toastmasters club or whatever. Regrettably, I was too busy making jokes about butter and jam and turned down her offers. The purpose was to get over fears of public speaking and it could have helped me overcome my timidness, but I declined. Stupid Greg! She wanted to spend time with you! Regardless, over time I came to realize that our lives' paths were going in different directions. This inevitably would have had to be confronted.

I haven't even mentioned about a Vietnamese girl who went to school with me at GCC And ASU West. We had COM101 class together at GCC, the Fall of '96. She was very pretty, a Chinese/Vietnamese mixed girl. I just didn't feel anything for her. I am just that kind of personality where it takes more than just good looks to interest me. She definitely wanted to marry me, but I did not pursue her; she pursued me. I had lent her the Vietnamese movie The Scent of Green Papaya that I'd bought on VHS, and that impressed the crap out of her parents. Her sister even interrogated me once, asking me if I smoked, if I drank, if my parents would be opposed to me marrying an Asian girl, etc. I'm guessing that they could tell that I wasn't just some guy with an Asian fetish and that I actually knew some stuff about things... that I was worthy of their daughter's affections. She gave me Christmas gifts (even when I asked her not to), brought Vietnamese food over to me to show how well she could cook, invited me to restaurants with her, and was asking me over to her house to fix the computer I had built for her (because her stupid brothers kept screwing it up). She tried to teach me to speak some Vietnamese words. This girl even talked about taking me to Vietnam with her family on vacation, and tried to talk me out of teaching in Japan in favor of teaching in Vietnam instead. Frankly, as nice as she was, she had a whiny voice and she sounded like an airhead. I didn't have much in common with her at all. She was a nice, pretty girl, but I did not feel love for her. I did not want any of that attention from her. I actually thought she was a little annoying. She failed to match that "Lisa standard" I mentioned earlier, by which I judged other girls. She tried hard to win me, but what was I to do? Her name was Bich (pronounced "beak"), but everyone called her by her family name because she was ashamed of her first name. She hated how some people pronounced it "bitch." I always called her Bich, and she appreciated that. She wanted to change her name to Victoria or something once she gained citizenship, but I encouraged her to not be ashamed of her name or her heritage, and to just drop the "h" to make her name Bic, like the pen company. She followed my advice and I am glad that she retained her name.

I guess this is what is called a "mid-life crisis" I have reached, in which I find myself looking back on my past, regretting situations in which I could have handled things differently so as to not hurt others. To do it clean. In terms of Juliet, I wouldn't change a thing since I grew and learned a lot from that relationship, and I handled that situation well. She came from a broken family and her mom was nuts. But as far as Lisa goes, she had great parents who loved each other. If I never had Mayu in my life, I wonder how my life would have played out? If parallel dimensions exist, perhaps there is a version of Greg who didn't feel called to live in Japan and never had Mayu as a pen pal, who took Lisa by the hand and never let go until he helped her overcome her eating disorder and married her. (And hopefully he either got her to abandon the vegetarian thing or at least gained maturity to deal with it.) She is a Scorpio and I'm a Pisces, so there is that angle as well. It's said that this is an ideal match. Thus her passion and brave ambition matched with my creativity, generosity and empathy would have worked well together. (I don't really discount the starsign angle as I once did. I don't buy into the fortune-telling angle, but personality types do tend to hold true, as these traits certainly do describe us and it could have been that which pulled us together to begin with.) I admit that I'm a little jealous of that theoretical Greg because I was so fond of her, but I'd think he would be jealous of me and the life I've had. Then again, maybe Lisa from Dimension B would have become exasperated with Greg from Dimension B with all of his nerd crap, got sick of him, and dumped him. Maybe he sang "Pinhead" by The Ramones one too many times. ("I don't wanna be a pinhead no more, I just met a nurse that I could go for...") If only I could have split myself in two... In any case, in my reality I had a decision to make and it could not have ended cleanly, as I could choose only one path.

Looking back, over time I could feel God comforting me. It's like I slowly was able to hear the Lord almost whispering to me with His reassuring voice directly to me.

She's not the one, Greg. I know you are so lonely that it weighs on your soul. Your heart hurts, full of so much restrained love that it feels like it may burst if you do not give it away. Though you may love Lisa so much, she's not the one. Just be patient. Be still. Be at peace. I am with you. Though you have suffered from heartbreaks in the past, know that I have been protecting you all along. All the times you have felt so lonely and heartbroken, know that I have seen you and have been with you all along. You are not alone, and I see your pain. You walk upright before me, and your faithfulness has not gone unnoticed. Though it seems like many of your prayers are going unanswered and that many things are not going as they should, I see your strong sense of morality and will bless you for it. There is coming a time where many good works will happen in your life, and that you will share your faith in ways that you cannot imagine... ways that you will not expect. I will help break you out of your mold in order to do this. Know that I have a plan for your life. Wait and hold onto your great love in your heart, as much as it hurts to do so. Don't squander it, lest you truly break Lisa's heart. You need to have grace and obedience to find your love. If you remain faithful, I will set you on your path and there your heart will lead you to her. She's waiting for you. For now, enjoy Lisa's company and be good to her. She will need to find her own love.

This was the combined message, taken from different sources, which I could feel in my heart during those years, a message of assurance. I could understand this message from God speaking to my heart directly, as well as prophetic words that God gave others to tell me in moments of prayer during this time of my life, from those college years. Especially the part of my prayers seemingly unanswered and that I'd be sharing my faith in ways I couldn't imagine, that was a prophecy from my new kinship leader Mark in January '97. I'd never met him before that night, and he singled me out and gave me that word of knowledge that God gave him. Nobody else; just me. Over time, I was able to relinquish my love for Lisa and I was at peace about it at the time, eventually finding that my love lay across the sea. Looking back now though, my heart breaks for dear Lisa. In theory, if I had stayed in Arizona with Lisa or anyone else for that matter, I am sure I could have been happy, but I would have had an ordinary life.

...But I was called for an extraordinary life, ever since I was in high school. It just took me a while to embrace that calling. An unconventional life for an unconventional mind. To choose Lisa, I would have devastated Mayu, whereas I figured that Lisa, being popular with boys, could easily find a boy she would be more compatible with than me, to shower her with the love she deserved. I thought, She'll be alright without me, right? She'd be happier with someone else. Moreover, to have chosen to pursue Lisa's heart, I would have had to sacrifice the trajectory towards Japan that God had sent me on ever since my senior year in high school. There is no way Lisa would be a part of what I am doing here in Japan. I've had a lot of heartaches in my 21 years of marriage, but I have lived a life that most people don't have the guts to do. Not bad for someone who struggled so much with self-confidence all while growing up. And so far I cannot count the thousands of children here in Japan I have shown kindness to, and have used Christmas as a way to share with them about Jesus Christ. The little children at my elementary school get excited when they see me, calling my name, giving me hugs. I've had the privilege of working at an elementary school for 6 years, watching my current 6th graders grow up since they were jumping on my lap and demanding piggyback rides as 1st graders. I've even had adolescent girls with obvious crushes on me, which is flattering because, I mean, I'm just a bald guy. It's been great to positively affect so many students over the years.

And now for sadness. Some years after Mayu and I moved to Arizona in August 2002, it was during one of Mom's numerous hospitalizations that Dad encountered Lisa at the hospital, where she was working as a nurse. They were by the elevator and they recognized each other. God, I wish I could have been with Dad that day! Lisa told Dad that she had gotten into a physically abusive relationship and it ended badly. God, that crushed me. This incident I failed to record in my journals, so I am not sure when it was. I remember Dad told me this on the phone one evening, I'm guessing somewhere between 2003-05. That night I wanted to get in my car, go to the hospital and find Lisa (I had no other way of contacting her), but Dad talked me out of it. He told me to bury my feelings for her and let it go. "Just pray for her," he told me. She was a hurting friend, and he was convincing me to abandon her. I was so torn. Oh God, did I cry for dear Lisa that night! I'm crying now as I type this, because I care for her so much. I know why Dad said what he did, because he knew that I'd loved Lisa and that she was so special to me. He was afraid my empathy for her could get me into trouble and have negative repercussions on my marriage. And maybe he thought that her seeing me again then could have hurt her more since I had turned down her love. So that night I resigned myself again to distance. I had no phone number for her. All I could do was pray for her and cry. Once again, I mourned for dear Lisa's broken heart.

It felt like it wasn't fair. Lisa was a girl I had loved. And while I was enjoying the early years of my marriage with Mayu, Lisa was suffering. Although I hadn't thought much of her since I moved to Japan and lost track of her, I still cared so much for her and still considered her my friend---just as I still do today. How could anyone treat her like that? I know this sounds silly, but I felt responsible because, I mean, if I had married her, I would have treated her wonderfully. But there's no way I could have done that without giving up the life path I had already embarked on. I'm not saying I regret marrying Mayu, but there's no way for the relationship with Lisa to have ended without a bit of sadness because of the poor choices that she made. For the happiness of my marriage, I can attribute a part of it to Lisa's sister Tara who encouraged me to propose to Mayu. The sad part of my marriage was relinquishing my love for Lisa and passing on that opportunity to provide her with a lifetime of happiness. If she'd found a nice boy to treat her well and make her so happy so that she could enjoy her early 20s in a happy marriage as I had, then it wouldn't be sad. It's only sad because of the path of darkness Lisa began to take as we grew distant. I didn't think I'd ever find a decent girl in America. But after I had finally found one (albeit an immigrant girl from Ireland), I realized that she and I just weren't meant to be. This anguished me so much. But my heart's compass was pointed towards Japan, and it's not somewhere she could follow. And I'd already been slowly falling in love with Mayu since a year before I met Lisa. (I'll have to write an essay focused on the providence in my relationship with Mayu another time.)

As for Lisa and the abusive relationship she told my dad about as they were by the elevator at the hospital that day, I unfortunately cannot say when Dad told me that sad news. But having reviewed the time I knew Lisa in my journals, and all the happy times I spent with her that I wrote so much about, I just think back to the prayer we prayed together in her car, with our hands together, on Saturday, September 13th, 1997. I committed that day to pen and paper in my journal. It was the day she had asked me to spend together with her at the Scottsdale art galleries district. It was our prayer to follow God first in our relationships, regardless of whether we married each other or not. I kept true to that promise and have been blessed with nearly 22 years of marriage. Lisa didn't keep that promise and she made bad decisions in guys and was hurt. She probably doesn't remember that prayer we shared. But I can only know that date we prayed together because Lisa matters to me. She always will. I will always care for her.

Whatever bad has happened to Lisa and regardless of how she felt about me back then, in my heart she will always be the charming girl I used to save a seat for at church next to me. The lovely yet distant, broken girl with problems. She was a good friend to me and I will cherish the fond memories of the years I knew her. Always. May this story I've written on this tiny, hidden corner of the internet, as well as the countless tears I have shed in writing it, be a testament to that affection and friendship. She'll always have a special place in my heart.

I've worried about Lisa over the past two decades, especially after learning that she was a victim of domestic violence. To think that anyone would ever hurt dear Lisa, who is one of the best girls I've ever known... It broke my heart. Ever since '96, Lisa's happiness was mine, regardless of my role in that happiness, and her sadness was mine because I cared for her so much. As I said before, she was a kindred spirit. There was that empathetic thread connected between us, albeit in one direction, of which she probably wasn't aware and I imagine that she has largely forgotten about me by now. And because I had followed my parents' advice of practically excommunicating all females from my life once I had a girlfriend/fiancee/wife, I lost track of her. I really wish I hadn't. I could have remained her friend all along, and perhaps I could have hopefully been a positive source of light in her life. I wish that my relationship with Lisa could have been more than it was. I wish that I had spent more time with her. I loved Lisa, and through the memories and emotions I wrote in the journals I kept, I have kept memories of her preserved in my mind forever. These emotions I've shared here in this writing, these are how I felt back then and I can remember them well.

(〒︿〒)

To be clear though: I am not littering my mind with "Maybe I should have married so-and-so instead" thoughts. To intentionally dwell on those thoughts of the past is destructive to the present. That said, I am prone to harming the present by dwelling on "if only I hadn't hurt so-and-so's feelings" type of thoughts. In some situations though, it's unavoidable. If Lisa only liked me a fraction of how much I liked her, then I am sure I at least disappointed her a bit back then. But at the risk of sounding like a complete asshole, I will say that while I do not regret marrying Mayu, I still regret not marrying Lisa. I know; I can't have my cake and eat it too. But I'm just a hopeless romantic, and a daydreamer. (I am an INFP, after all!) Lisa's starsign and my own align, and for what it's worth, we had an attraction and there was a love that could have bloomed and growed. I forfeited what could have been yet another beautiful, international love story in favor of the one I chose. And she could have taught me so much about her fascinating Irish culture and... dangit... I've always had a thing for black hair. All the girls during my college days that caught my attention, other than Kate and Juliet, had black hair. Thus dear Lisa will always have that sentimental value in my heart. However, I must have disappointed her and hurt her feelings.

I know I definitely hurt that Vietnamese girl's feelings. Bic came to visit me after I returned from Japan in '98 and we were in my room as I showed her pictures of my trip. When I told her that Mayu was now my girlfriend, she quietly asked me, "Did I do something wrong?" It took me by surprise. I could hear the disappointment in her voice, and I pretended I couldn't hear her. "Oh, nothing," she said. Crap. She had made an effort to pursue me and win my affections. She went out of her way to do nice things for me, but there really just was no spark between us for me to be interested in her that way. Even after I disappointed her, she still gave me Christmas gifts, even though I asked her not to. She was still trying to win my heart, despite my love for Mayu... Oh Bic, I'm sorry I broke your heart! Even if I could change the past somehow to ease her off the hook, I still don't know what strategy I could have employed to avoid that.

As for Lisa... I think I know how I could have handled it better. It would have entailed better communication. God, she really meant so much to me. Back then, when I was close to her and thoughts of her occupied my mind so greatly, it was easy to daydream of the possibilities of marrying her. (And I certainly enjoyed doing so!) Since then, however, sometimes I have thought about what it could have been to have a life with Lisa, but it's difficult to imagine and I try not to let my thoughts dwell on that, as much of a daydreamer as I may be. My life has changed so much since then, particularly with my life in Japan and how that has affected me so greatly. I could definitely not have the same life I have now, and I would have never left Arizona. I have a hard time imagining what my life would be like if I hadn't married Mayu. Chasing each other around our apartment building with squirt guns, driving mountain highways without knowing or caring where we were going, riding our bikes to the park to play frisbee and have a fried chicken picnic, the joy of our daughter being born, enjoying an evening eating take-out sushi and watching X-Files... Mayu and I have bonded over the past 21 years of marriage in ways that I cannot realistically imagine having done so with any other girl. I can only begin to imagine what it would've been like with Lisa, but it's difficult because I wouldn't be the same person I am today. I would have melded with her personality instead, and that version of Greg is unknown to me. The one thing that Mayu is jealous about is that Lisa and I had gone to see the Bean movie together at the movie theater as she is a huge Mr. Bean fan. Mayu has a huge collection of Mr. Bean teddy bears and books on Mr. Bean. She even has a signed autograph, correspondence, and a teddy that Rowan Atkinson gave her! So yeah, she's jealous that I had the experience of seeing that movie with Lisa at the theater.

Regardless, I have to say that suddenly Lisa's been on my mind a lot lately. I don't know if it was some sort of premonition and that she is in trouble or about to be in trouble, or perhaps someone in her family is in trouble. I felt compelled by the Spirit to reach out to dear Lisa. So I talked it over with Mayu and tried to contact Lisa, which I have never felt inclined to do since that time Dad talked to her at the hospital. Recently I did some investigating and with only a little search engine effort I learned that she's still in Arizona. When we went to school together at GCC, she was in the nursing school that my uncle Gary had graduated from. I found out that she became a doctor in 2015 and is apparently married. I used a people finder website to find a possible phone number and address, and the names of young kids I saw I assume are her own children. If so, I am happy for her. I pray for God to bless her and her family.

My college years in the latter half of the '90s seemed to go by so slowly, compared to now that I am older and each year goes by in a blur. I really came of age at the Vineyard church back then. I've been reminiscing about my friends from our 18-29 age kinship group. I remember I watched the Harrison Ford movie Six Days, Seven Nights with Dan, Jason, and Lisa. We rented it one night. I commented how the actress's nipples were clearly visible and protruding through her shirt the entire movie, and Jason said, "Yeah, she's smuggling raisins." Lisa was so embarrassed and was laughing so hard that I think she sort of flopped onto the floor. It was hilarious. God, I miss them so much! I've cried a lot this past week thinking of them. We often all sat in church together, played lousy volleyball games together at the park or in the pool, went to the drive-in theater together, played mini golf, went bowling, went to San Diego, went camping, we did all sorts of fun crap. And most of all, we prayed for each other and supported one another. It just pains me that I've never had such fellowship with other Christians since then, and that I'll never see them again. I took Lisa's brothers to do special things with them, studied the Bible with her father, and she invited me to her family's picnics at the park. I was close to her and her family. She was dear to me, and she would address me as "my dear." I adopted her mannerism and it became a part of my interaction with people, and since then I've had several people tell me to not call them "dear." HA!

I tried locating Dan too, but all I got was his answering service. I'll try again sometime. I've just been experiencing a flood of nostalgic memories of when the group of us would do stuff together. I just pray that someday in Heaven, we can all play another lousy game of volleyball together, in which nobody can neither remember the score, nor care about who is winning. We were happy just to get the ball over the net. God, I miss them and the fellowship we had. I wish I could relive those years. I miss them to the point that it brings tears to my eyes.

(⌣̩̩́_⌣̩̩̀)

Truth be known, I just think of all the time in my youth wasted on hating myself and cutting myself away from friends and family, feeling sorry for myself and drowning my mind in such melancholy. It was time I could have spent being a blessing to others, being kind to them. To find a pretty girl and have the courage to say, "I don't know you, but you are beautiful and you will make a boy happy someday." I kept telling myself I was ugly and that nobody wanted to be with me, because I'd been hurt so many times. I was too sensitive and I collected that pain in my heart because I cared too much for people. I assumed that people hated me, so it prevented me from being close to them. I figured that if I could convince myself that everybody hated me, then if this proved to be wrong, at least I'd be pleasantly surprised and I could therefore trick myself into happiness. My desire to be alone was always at odds with my sense of loneliness. I wanted to connect with others, but I just didn't know how. I think of the pain and suffering that those I've loved have gone through and looking back, I just wish that I could have done more for them. To heal them. To uplift and edify them. It wasn't until I was 20 that I mustered the courage to just come up to a pretty girl and tell her how pretty she is, without caring how she may react. If I could somehow do it all over again, I would still allow girls like Denise, Jenny and Juliet to break my heart, but I would only react in love. I could have told them, "I believe that you are a wonderful person with a beautiful soul, and I believe in your future to embrace Truth and Light." All the times I spent bickering with guy friends... I could have tried to be a better friend. Nathan, Scott, Dan, Jason, Lisa... There were times when we were together. Friends have gone their separate ways, those precious nexus points broken and lost in time. And now my heart yearns for that connection again.

There was a boy from high school who was also a BBSer. His name was Mike, but we called him Max because his username was Mad Max on the BBSes. He also went to Ironwood High School, but he was a couple of years younger. When I was out with the nerd crew in my car, he'd be in the back of my car, munching Froot Loops from the box I kept in the back seat, talking with us about bands like Frontline Assembly and such. Once Max and I had won some stuffed dolls at the claw arm catcher game at Denny's. One was a seal I named Arthur Schopenhauer (after the German philosopher), one I'd given to Juliet, and another we performed a live vivisection on the table at Denny's while two psychology major chicks at the table next to us tried to psychoanalyze us and failed miserably. Max was one of my friends at Denny's that night to help cheer me up after learning the truth about Juliet lying to me about her boyfriend status. My big friend Jonathan (Gleeman on the BBSes, big as a sumo wrestler with long hair, who graduated high school with me), he and I once invited Max to come along to a swim party at Scott's place after church. Scott's neighborhood was infested with a horrible pigeon problem, and Scott had a BB gun to help take care of that. So when Lisa, Scott, myself and others would be swimming in the pool, Max just sat on a lawn chair with that BB gun, morbidly sniping pigeons. He never joined us in the water. I wonder if Lisa remembers him? I remember Lisa got to shoot the BB gun at a soda can. All I heard about Max's parents from him is that they were terrible and mean. I was in their living room though when big Jonathan and I came to pick him up that day, and I thought they were nice people.

But in September of '99, another BBS friend of mine named Nathan, the one who introduced me to BBSing in high school during our computer programming class, told me some sad news about Max that really shook me up. (Nathan went by Darkwing on the BBSes, but the other, closer friend Nathan I've mentioned here went by the name Swordmaster). Nathan and I had gone to go see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace on opening night in May '99 and while I was in denial and was trying to convince myself that I liked the movie, Nathan had told me, "I dunno Greg, it just didn't feel like a real Star Wars movie to me." He was right, and I was wrong. Anyhow, in September Nathan said that Max's parents were good Christian parents who tried to do what they could to raise Max, but Max did nothing but give them grief. He told me of what he learned had transpired four months prior. Max's parents had came home one night and found Max dead on the floor of their bathroom, foaming at the mouth as he had ingested cleaning chemicals due to the depravity of his addiction. He had become a crystal meth addict and I did not know it because I had lost contact with him. Max used to call me up late at night around 10 or 11pm to see if I wanted to do something. But I was a college student, and I couldn't afford to spend time being a night owl with him. I had responsibilities. I never really knew him that well. When Nathan told me this, I wrote that night in my journal that I needed to stop being selfish and to start showing God's love to people more often. If I had only been a better friend to him, would he still be alive today, and embrace the love of his parents and our Heavenly Father? He was just kind of an odd boy and I never got to know him very well. Could I have been a better impact on his life? He was the first friend I ever had who died and it makes me sad. The Lord speaks to us all, but we must be patient to listen. We arrogantly call this voice our "conscience," but it is God's voice telling us right from wrong. God's greatest gift to us is free will, and He only wants us to love and obey Him with our free will. Max, did you heed that voice? Max, where are you now? I cry for your departed soul. Where does your soul await to journey to when the Last Day comes, when the finite crosses with the infinite? Will you join me in the rhapsody of jubilance, or will I lose you to the void of anguish? Oh Max, if only...

(︶︹︺)

Arizona... I haven't seen my family in nearly 11 years. Mom's dead, and I miss her so much. There are still things I wish I could talk to her about and ask her about, but she died soon after we moved back to Japan in 2012. I wish I could ask her about what she knew about Lisa back then, that which she never told me. But Mom took such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom with her when she passed away. I miss Mom. I miss my family, and I haven't been able to save enough money to visit Arizona again since then.

So too many of these memories have been buried in time, only now to be so vividly reintroduced in my mind. I believe God is bringing all these memories back to my mind for a reason, to prepare me for something that may transpire in the future. To show me how much He cares for dear Lisa, and remind me of how much I've always cared for her too. Because while most of these memories have come from my journals, soft copies of letters to my cousin Bethany, and long forgotten emails I happened to discover, some of these memories have just come to my mind on some mornings, just as I cross from sleep into consciousness, and they've stricken me with such clarity that I believe that God is leading me to discover these memories and these artifacts from back then for a reason.

So I tried reaching out to Lisa recently. I left a voice message and asked her to contact me, but I received no response. Sad Greg is sad. Ironically, the first night I met her, I was afraid she wouldn't want to talk to me. Now I feel the same way, but for very different reasons. Maybe she thinks, "Oh crap, why did I ever waste my time with that cynical, immature jackass?" I hope she doesn't hate me. Even if she did, she will always be precious to me and I won't stop praying for her. I don't even know if that was still her phone number, or if it now belongs to someone else. I just wanted to find out if she is alright and thank her for being such an excellent girl and a good friend for those years. And, of course, to ask her what I need to pray for her about. The fact that she's apparently married now and has a family eases a lot of worry I have had for her. But I know that God placed her upon my heart for a reason. For over two decades I've just thought of Lisa as the girl I could have romanced and married but did not; simply keeping her in my mind as mere thoughts and nostalgic memories. I didn't want to think too much about her because I did not want to think about the trauma she'd been through, the abuse she told my dad about. I feel that God has shown me that Lisa is not just a memory in the past, but she is a person who needs prayer, here and now in the present, for whatever reason. I do not know what problem she is going through, or where her soul is.

I know that Lisa had accepted Jesus into her heart, and I was witness to her beautiful faith. Her boldy transferring schools to Berkeley had inspired me in a way to boldy get a job in Japan. She was following God then. But I don't know anything about her anymore. Considering the dark path she seemed to go down, it's quite possible that Lisa's heart has become so covered in layers of pain, trauma, abuse, and despair that she no longer can hear His voice calling to her. Maybe her silence is because she's walked away from her faith in God, and my voice only reminds her of the past that she's abandoned. I do not know where her heart is, but perhaps this is why God has reintroduced her to my heart. All I can do is pray for my dear Lisa and her family, that she can be a light to them as she was to me.

Regardless, I am now dedicating my prayer time each day to pray for Lisa, her marriage, and her family. I sure hope her husband realizes what a wonderful gift from God he has, being married to her. I hope he makes her so happy, the happiness she deserves... the happiness I was ultimately unable to provide for her. I hope he treats her with love every day, as I do my wife. If I had remained friends with Lisa, I would have loved to attend her wedding, to see her brilliant smile in her white dress on her special day of celebration of love, and give her my well-wishes and congratulations. When I looked her up on the people finder website, I didn't pay attention to her children's names, although I think she has a daughter the same age as my own. You know, this sounds silly but a part of me was hoping that Lisa had a son my daughter's age, so that they could become pen pals and perhaps fall in love and get married, just as I did with Mayu. It would somehow make the circle complete, since Lisa and I only remained friends, but it would somehow make up for things. Plus then I'd know that my daughter's mother-in-law is one of the kindest and best girls I've ever known. That silly fantasy died when I saw that she has a daughter instead. Oh well. But who knows? Maybe they can become friends someday?

Being suddenly reminded of Lisa again has inspired me to read through these journals that I have not read in such a very, very long time. It's been an incredible experience. After reading through these old journals of mine, I've reconnected with this past version of myself, and have re-experienced joys as well as heartbreaks. People I haven't thought of in over two decades. It's like a fishing trawler, picking up all the submerged bicycles, boots, and other long-forgotten items from the bottom of the water, dredging discarded memories back to the surface of my mind. Putting a journal down has been disorienting, like disconnecting from some sort of virtual reality experience. The painful part of this was connecting with the younger Greg who was in love with Denise, Jenny, Juliet, and Lisa, and reliving the memories I had from that time in which these girls fascinated me and I desired them. I've had to make the conscious effort re-bury those feelings repeatedly. It's been hard to do so. Particularly with what I had written about Juliet. While reading what I'd written, I found myself rooting for my young self, reliving it all over again. I found myself saying to my younger self, You can do it! She likes you! Romance her! Win her heart! She wears glasses, even! But no, I had to remind myself that I already know how that story ended. And it was a sad ending. It's like I'd forgotten that as I relived those emotions.

But the heartache I felt from these four girls has given me a greater appreciation for how I grew as a young man, and each one of them taught me, in a way, how to love and appreciate myself, how to love and appreciate others, to gain self-confidence, and to abandon the shroud of loneliness and shame I felt. I learned to understand myself, to achieve agency for my soul, and to take responsibility for my own peace. And for that I am thankful to all of them. I wish all of them a good life. Even the ones who hurt me.

Re-reading those pages of my journals, I reminded myself how I overcame that self-loathing which haunted me growing up. It pains me to see, but my own daughter is going through a lot of self-hatred these days. It hurts my heart to hear my lovely daughter sometimes say that she wishes she'd never been born. Because I once wished that myself. Being half-Caucasian, half-Japanese in this small town where there is only one class for her grade at her school, she is struggling to find her identity. Her place in this world. She is so beautiful, charming, witty, and wonderful. She doesn't believe it. I now tell her that she just has to believe it. I wasted too many years of my life hating myself, and it impeded my ability to be a better person to these four girls I've mentioned in this essay. I had to learn to love what made me unique. And my daughter is extremely precious and unique.

Not only have I reconnected with this younger Greg's memories, but I have also reconnected with this younger Greg's spirituality. The positive, unjaded Greg with fewer years of cynicism, a young Greg who was far more positive about God's plan for his life, a young Greg who was far more connected to God than I am now, over twice his age. He's taught me to trust in God. This young version of myself reminded me of how I felt back then and why I chose not to pursue Lisa with all my heart (which I really needed confirmation on). This young Greg has also reignited my faith in God in a powerful way. He has taught me a lot about what it means to live by faith. And I've come to realize that all of those small ways I can uplift and edify people, I get to do so on a daily basis with my work as a teacher, as I praise my students and greet them with smiles as I see their faces light up with joy when they see me. Complimenting a boy on his cool T-shirt, complimenting a girl on her nice new hair cut, showing kindness to a horribly quiet child, or even just scrunching my nose when I make eye contact and the kids affectionately return the gesture. I love these children so much. They matter to me, and they matter to God. If I can show them even just a small bit of love in their day, then I am happy.

I have been living in spiritual isolation for nearly 11 years now. While I have not ever once entertained the idea of embracing the arrogance of atheism, truth be told I have not been a man of prayer, a man of spiritual conviction, for quite some time now. I must admit that God has not been at the center of my life. I have been a "Lone Ranger Christian," to use Lisa's phrase, and it hasn't been working well for me. I haven't been to church regularly since moving to Japan, and the town where I live has only a scattering of very few tiny churches where elderly congregate because the overly-traditional mindset of Christians in Japan has completely failed to reach out to younger generations. Yet while I have not cast aside my faith in God, I have not been committing myself to following Him. Nevertheless, I have never lost sight of that which binds our souls together, the Tao as C.S. Lewis calls it, the universal, objective moral truth from that infinite source of grace where the Platonic Forms of Truth, Beauty, Love, and Justice can be found. To reject this Tao and embrace the folly of nihilism and atheism, is not something my soul could ever do. For I have been witness to miracles such as when my mother was healed of breast cancer, I have felt the Lord prompting my heart at times and I have even been given visions.

All of this has come about because I was reminded of a stellar girl from Ireland I once had a crush on and whose feelings I'm afraid I'd hurt then, this soul-searching journey through time has played out and a great deal has been brought to my mind. I reached out to her as an old friend and not a former love interest, but for whatever reason she has not responded. I'd love to hear her to say "That's brilliant!" again, and for her to say, "Thank you for reaching out to me! You are so thoughtful," but perhaps that won't happen. I still have that Lisa-shaped void in my heart, and I've carried it with me for over two decades. I miss her friendship. I wish the situation could have been different, and that I could have held onto her friendship. A part of me wishes that I could have provided her love and happiness forever, but I could only marry one girl...

Be well, my dear Lisa. You don't know how dear you were to me back then, and you don't know how much you've helped me this month. You were a good friend to me. You have been an unwitting catalyst for positive change in my life, and you won't even know about it, this side from heaven. Thank you, Lisa. You deserve the most thanks of the girls on this list. I will always cherish the kindness and friendship you offered me. You blessed me then and have indirectly blessed me now. You are one of the best girls I've ever known. Maybe there'll be drive-in theaters in heaven we can all go to someday. That Cutlass Supreme car of mine will be there in heaven, as it died as soon as I graduated college. Maybe we can try to dent the hood together. How that car died, however, is a story for another chapter of Greg's Life.

Next: The story of how that old car of mine died

Related: Skip ahead to my love story of how I met and fell in love with my pen pal Mayu, the events of which overlaps and ties into this story you just read and the internalizations of this heartwrenching love triangle I was entangled in.

A link to my "Greg's Stuff 'N Things" Wordpress area of this site, detailing my INFP personality temperament. It describes me spot-on, as I have written about myself in this essay.

Go back to the "Greg's Life" Table of Contents

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"Monkeys have weird-looking butts." --me, 1996
mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net