Compulsion

I didn’t hear back from Alex. Not exactly a shocker seeing that she’d been unknowingly sought by a drunk lesbian, and had been innocently coerced into bringing her over and becoming intoxicated enough that she agreed to sleep with her. But still, she had been the instigator. She had to be at least that much to blame.
Even if Alex was unaware of it, some of that situation had been her fault. No, I wasn’t exactly proud of what I’d done, but she still was responsible for most of it all: staring, starting a conversation, willingly drinking, INVITING ME OVER… the dumb girl had put me in such a vulnerable state. She had let me kiss her.
I gave a frustrated groan as I thought back about Alex. That drunken night had been over two months ago and yet I still found myself thinking about it: looking back on it constantly, wishing I’d done things differently. Then maybe that cute girl could have lived…
*******
But anyhow, there I was, two days after the encounter and still not able to erase her from my mind. Those beautiful, flawless eyes…back then I couldn’t have told you why I gave “two fucks” for a girl I’d met only once; why I cared that she speak to me. I guess I liked her, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not. For some reason, that girl meant something to me, and it hurt me how she had walked away like that, without so much as an apology.
It felt like I had been used in a way. I showed interest in her and she had blown it all off. Even when Alex wasn’t sober and not in her right mind, she hadn’t particularly returned signs of complete engagement. I mean, she seemed so hesitant when I had professed my feelings. Now I felt truly humiliated. How could I have been so easily manipulated? Once again, my theory stood that girls like that, girls in bars appearing to be gay and disguising their inner deviousness with cute dimples, were no good for me.
Even so, I felt like she owed me a kinder let down. As much as it was my fault for complying with her plans, kissing her and having sex, Alex had allowed me to think differently of her. And, drunk or not, that didn’t seem fair at all. But as far as I was concerned, she was long gone and it was too late for any last words.
Honestly, though, I should’ve been fine with that. We weren’t madly in love; it had just been a one night stand. She didn’t care about me, and why should she have, she wasn’t even herself. It went the same for me as well; except for the fact that I did seem to care…
Through that night spent with her, talking and all, I guess it was accurate to say that I had developed a bit of a crush. I mean, the girl just wouldn’t stay out of my head! It was a pretty bad feeling; knowing I felt things for a girl I’d simply had a fleeting experience with. Now she was nowhere to be found and what was worse (the real “cherry topper” of the whole thing), was that she was heterosexual.
Could I have seriously been that fooled into thinking she was “different?” I mean, she had even brought up having a boyfriend. I always assumed that, even as wasted as I’d been, I was less dense than that. I thought I’d have been able to take a hint. But no; instead I’d taken one look at her and had instantly felt my heart fall a little. As if all along I had subconsciously hoped that she’d come up to say “hi.”
Then, all through us talking, I’d started to feel things for her, like we were really making a connection. How could I have been so stupid? Yeah, that’s beer for you, doing its wonders to the brain cells. But even before it had its effect I was, one way or another, “hooked” on that girl. I wasn’t drunk during those nervous butterflies felt I when we’d begun to converse. I liked her and she had misled me. Now I was left confused and alone, never to know the real truth and never to see her again…
A few days later I was back at the bar, enjoying my “after work” drink. I hadn’t been back there since that embarrassing night and I was taking comfort in my time unwinding and basically not thinking, when I saw something unnerving upon looking over the rest of the bar. She was there. Somehow, Alex had slipped inside without me noticing. Granted I wasn’t exactly anticipating her showing up (I mean, she’d only came there twice), but there she was, in any case. She was surrounded by a few friends, having a beer and laughing it up at a table near the door.
I’d quickly spun around in my barstool before she’d seen me. I was so shocked, what was I supposed to do? Ignore her? At the time, it had seemed like the best solution: don’t make things any more uncomfortable than they already were. Maybe fate had brought us into the same room that night, but obstacles had shown us that we were meant to stay apart.
*******
She had friends with her, anyways. I couldn’t just walk up to their table and go, “oh, hi, Alex! I know we had an awkward time, but my gaydar read that we’d really been hitting it off. So mind if I join you?” Yeah, no, that phrase was on my list of why-don’t-you-just-kill-me-now things to say. Besides, she was probably so drunk that night that she’d already forgotten what I looked like.
Or not…at some point that night, our eyes happened to meet. It registered with her. I could tell by her expression that she knew who I was. She had on a look of surprise, of deliberation.
“Oh, my gosh, you’re here?!” Her face seemed to be saying, “Oh, crap, what do I do, what do I do?!”
It might have seemed like she was looking at me for awhile, but the passage of unspoken feelings was actually very brief. I could tell that she didn’t want to look at me any longer than she had to, and for some reason I remember that the realization had pained me. She had to have felt SOME remorse for gay little me.
I kept on hoping that maybe she’d sneak away from her friends and briefly apologize about everything. But the longer I sat there, waiting with my back toward her, the more it hit me that it wasn’t going to happen. I downed the rest of my glass and slammed it on the counter in frustration. I then turned on my wedges and stormed out of there.
I remember not being able to fall asleep that night. I kept thinking about things, about her. I couldn’t get Alex off of my brain. She had snubbed me at the bar. Why was I in such disbelief about that, though? I barely knew the woman at all! Not to mention the fact that I had also snubbed her as well; so how did I expect her to have talked to me? I turned over in my bed, wondering why I was letting myself feel so much when the truth was that I seriously didn’t know Alex. There was no plausible cause as to why I was overly thinking about her.
Even so, when I finally did manage to find an escape into dreamland, she was still there. That night, after my first time back at the bar since meeting her, I had my first of many dreams about Alex…about those clear blue eyes.